dult population, or in our large cities,
and their neighborhood. But, so far as any of the sacred influence of
former design can be brought to bear on the minds of the young, and so
far as, in rural districts, the first elements of scholarly education
can be made pure, the foundation of a new dynasty of thought may be
slowly laid. I was strangely impressed by the effect produced in a
provincial seaport school for children, chiefly of fishermen's families,
by the gift of a little colored drawing of a single figure from the
Paradise of Angelico in the Accademia of Florence. The drawing was
wretched enough, seen beside the original; I had only bought it from the
poor Italian copyist for charity: but, to the children, it was like an
actual glimpse of heaven; they rejoiced in it with pure joy, and their
mistress thanked me for it more than if I had sent her a whole library
of good books. Of such copies, the grace-giving industry of young
girls, now worse than lost in the spurious charities of the bazaar, or
selfish ornamentations of the drawing-room, might, in a year's time,
provide enough for every dame-school in England; and a year's honest
work of the engravers employed on our base novels, might represent to
our advanced students every frescoed legend of philosophy and morality
extant in Christendom.

242. For my own part, I have no purpose, in what remains to me of
opportunity, either at Oxford or elsewhere, to address any farther
course of instruction towards the development of existing schools. After
seeing the stream of the Teviot as black as ink, and a putrid carcass of
a sheep lying in the dry channel of the Jed, under Jedburgh Abbey, (the
entire strength of the summer stream being taken away to supply a single
mill,) I know, finally, what value the British mind sets on the
'beauties of nature,' and shall attempt no farther the excitement of its
enthusiasm in that direction. I shall indeed endeavor to carry out, with
Mr. Ward's help, my twenty years' held purpose of making the real
character of Turner's work known, to the persons who, formerly
interested by the engravings from him, imagined half the merit was of
the engraver's giving. But I know perfectly that to the general people,
trained in the midst of the ugliest objects that vice can design, in
houses, mills, and machinery, _all_ beautiful form and color is as
invisible as the seventh heaven. It is not a question of appreciation at
all; the thing is physically