d show
themselves worthy of the honor?--Yes. I do not think they ought to be
mixed at all as they are now.

189. What is your opinion with reference to the present system of
traveling studentships?--I think it might be made very useful indeed.

On the one hand it has been suggested that there should be, as is the
system adopted by the French Academy, a permanent professor at Rome to
look after the students; on the other hand it has been said that it is
not desirable, if you have those traveling studentships, that the
students should go to Rome, that it is better for them to travel, and to
go to Venice or Lombardy, and to have no fixed school in connection with
the Academy at Rome. To which of those two systems do you give the
preference?--I should prefer the latter; if a man goes to travel, he
ought to travel, and not be plagued with schools.

It has been suggested that fellowships might be given to rising artists,
pecuniary assistance being attached to those fellowships, the artist
being required annually to send in some specimen of his work to show
what he was doing, but it being left optional with him to go abroad or
to work at home; should you think that would be desirable, or as has
been suggested in a letter by Mr. Armitage, supposing those fellowships
to be established for four years, that two of those years should be
spent abroad and two at home?--Without entering into any detail as to
whether two years should be spent abroad and two years at home, I feel
very strongly that one of the most dangerous and retarding influences
you have operating upon art is the enormous power of money, and the
chances of entirely winning or entirely losing, that is, of making your
fortune in a year by a large taking picture, or else starving for ten
years by very good small ones. The whole life of an artist is a lottery,
and a very wild lottery, and the best artist is liable to be warped away
from what he knows is right by the chance of at once making a vast
fortune by catching the public eye, the public eye being only to be
caught by bright colors and certain conditions of art not always
desirable. If, therefore, connected with the Academy schools there could
be the means of giving a fixed amount of income to certain men, who
would as a consideration for that income furnish a certain number of
works that might be agreed upon, or undertake any national work that
might be agreed upon, that I believe would be the healthiest way in