uld not have us buy what we don't like?" No,
but I would have you thoroughly sure that there _is_ an absolute right
and wrong in all art, and try to find out the right, and like that; and,
secondly, sometimes to sacrifice a careless preference or fancy, to what
you know is for the good of your fellow-creatures. For instance, when
you spend a guinea upon an engraving, what have you done? You have paid
a man for a certain number of hours to sit at a dirty table, in a dirty
room, inhaling the fumes of nitric acid, stooping over a steel plate, on
which, by the help of a magnifying glass, he is, one by one, laboriously
cutting out certain notches and scratches, of which the effect is to be
the copy of another man's work. You cannot suppose you have done a very
charitable thing in this! On the other hand, whenever you buy a small
water-color drawing, you have employed a man happily and healthily,
working in a clean room (if he likes), or more probably still, out in
the pure country and fresh air, thinking about something, and learning
something every moment; not straining his eyesight, nor breaking his
back, but working in ease and happiness. Therefore if you _can_ like a
modest water-color better than an elaborate engraving, do. There may
indeed be engravings which are worth the suffering it costs to produce
them; but at all events, engravings of public dinners and laying of
foundation-stones, and such things, might be dispensed with. The
engraving ought to be a first-rate picture of a first-rate subject to be
worth buying.

48. Farther, I know that many conscientious persons are desirous of
encouraging art, but feel at the same time that their judgment is not
certain enough to secure their choice of the best kind of art. To such
persons I would now especially address myself, fully admitting the
greatness of their difficulty. It is not an easy thing to acquire a
knowledge of painting; and it is by no means a desirable thing to
encourage bad painting. One bad painter makes another, and one bad
painting will often spoil a great many healthy judgments. I could name
popular painters now living, who have retarded the taste of their
generation by twenty years. Unless, therefore, we are certain not merely
that we like a painting, but that we are _right_ in liking it, we should
never buy it. For there is one way of spending money which is perfectly
safe, and in which we may be absolutely sure of doing good. I mean, by
paying for sim