chitecture, sculpture, and painting, because he
knows his business, and knows as much of any other science as is
necessary for his profession. You require a piece of work from him, and
you examine him, and then you pass him,--call him whatever you
like;--but you say to the public, Here is a workman in this branch who
will do your work well.

You do not think there would in such a system be any risk of excluding
men who might hereafter be great men who under such a system might not
be able to pass?--There are risks in every system, but I think every man
worth anything would pass. A great many who would be good for nothing
would pass, but your really great man would assuredly pass.

180. Has it ever struck you that it would be advantageous to art if
there were at the universities professors of art who might give lectures
and give instruction to young men who might desire to avail themselves
of it, as you have lectures on botany and geology?--Yes, assuredly. The
want of interest on the part of the upper classes in art has been very
much at the bottom of the abuses which have crept into all systems of
education connected with it. If the upper classes could only be
interested in it by being led into it when young, a great improvement
might be looked for; therefore I feel the expediency of such an addition
to the education of our universities.

181. Is not that want of refinement which may be observed in many of the
pictures from time to time exhibited in the Royal Academy to be
attributed in a great measure to the want of education amongst
artists?--It is to be attributed to that, and to the necessity which
artists are under of addressing a low class of spectators: an artist to
live must catch the public eye. Our upper classes supply a very small
amount of patronage to artists at present, their main patronage being
from the manufacturing districts and from the public interested in
engravings;--an exceedingly wide sphere, but a low sphere,--and you
catch the eye of that class much more by pictures having reference to
their amusements than by any noble subject better treated, and the
better treated it was the less it would interest that class.

Is it not often the case that pictures exhibiting such a want of
refinement, at the same time fetch large prices amongst what I may call
the mercantile patrons of art?--Certainly; and, the larger the price,
the more harm done of course to the school, for that is a form of
education