lessness of means.

100. It is evident that so long as incapability could shield itself
under the first of these creeds, or presumption vindicate itself by the
second; so long as the feeble painter could lay his faults on his
palette and his panel; and the self-conceited painter, from the assumed
identity of materials proceed to infer equality of power--(for we
believe that in most instances those who deny the evil of our present
methods will deny also the weakness of our present works)--little good
could be expected from the teaching of the abstract principles of the
art; and less, if possible, from the example of any mechanical
qualities, however admirable, whose means might be supposed
irrecoverable on the one hand, or indeterminate on the other, or of any
excellence conceived to have been either summoned by an incantation, or
struck out by an accident. And of late, among our leading masters, the
loss has not been merely of the system of the ancients, but of all
system whatsoever: the greater number paint as if the virtue of oil
pigment were its opacity, or as if its power depended on its polish; of
the rest, no two agree in use or choice of materials; not many are
consistent even in their own practice; and the most zealous and earnest,
therefore the most discontented, reaching impatiently and desperately
after better things, purchase the momentary satisfaction of their
feelings by the sacrifice of security of surface and durability of hue.
The walls of our galleries are for the most part divided between
pictures whose dead coating of consistent paint, laid on with a heavy
hand and a cold heart, secures for them the stability of dullness and
the safety of mediocrity; and pictures whose reckless and experimental
brilliancy, unequal in its result as lawless in its means, is as
evanescent as the dust of an insect's wing, and presents in its chief
perfections so many subjects of future regret.

101. But if these evils now continue, it can only be through rashness
which no example can warn, or through apathy which no hope can
stimulate, for Mr. Eastlake has alike withdrawn license from
experimentalism and apology from indolence. He has done away with all
legends of forgotten secrets; he has shown that the masters of the great
Flemish and early Venetian schools possessed no means, followed no
methods, but such as we may still obtain and pursue; but he has shown
also, among all these masters, the most admirable care in the