e perception, of his public was beginning to produce in
his individuality a faint trace of permanent soreness. I regretted it.
And I showed my sympathy with him by asking questions about the design
and construction of the museum (a late addition to the Institution), of
which I happened to know that he had been the architect.

He at once became interested and interesting. Although he perhaps
insisted a little too much on the difficulties which occur when
original talent encounters stupidity, he did, as he walked me up and
down, contrive to convey to me a notion of the creative processes of
the architect in a way that was in my experience entirely novel. He was
impressing me anew, and I was wondering whether he was unique of his
kind or whether there existed regiments of him in this strange parcel
of England.

'Now, you see this girder,' he said, looking upwards.

That's surely something of Fuge's, isn't it?' I asked, indicating a
small picture in a corner, after he had finished his explanation of the
functions of the girder.

As on the walls of the staircase and corridors, so on the walls here,
there were many paintings, drawings, and engravings. And of course the
best were here in the museum. The least uninteresting items of the
collection were, speaking generally, reproductions in monotint of
celebrated works, and a few second--or third-rate loan pictures from
South Kensington. Aside from such matters I had noticed nothing but the
usual local trivialities, gifts from one citizen or another,
travel-jottings of some art-master, careful daubs of apt students
without a sense of humour. The aspect of the place was exactly the
customary aspect of the small provincial museum, as I have seen it in
half-a-hundred towns that are not among 'the great towns'. It had the
terrible trite 'museum' aspect, the aspect that brings woe and
desolation to the heart of the stoutest visitor, and which seems to
form part of the purgatorio of Bank-holidays, wide mouths, and stiff
clothes. The movement for opening museums on Sundays is the most
natural movement that could be conceived. For if ever a resort was
invented and fore-ordained to chime with the true spirit of the British
sabbath, that resort is the average museum. I ought to know. I do know.

But there was the incomparable Wedgwood ware, and there was the little
picture by Simon Fuge. I am not going to lose my sense of perspective
concerning Simon Fuge. He was not the greatest pai