brought up in an anti-ideal school; the powers,
therefore, that nature has given them, are not only uncultivated, but
led astray; and similar education and similar tastes in the public,
find them a market for very low, very worthless commodities. We have,
in fact, a great deal to unlearn. The first step with us all, is, to
unlearn. Could we see nothing bad it would not be so. That which
would, at first view, be thought the greatest benefit to art,
engraving, has but spread the wider the pestilence of false taste. It
is from all this the earlier and greater painters were free. The evil,
however, having once so spread, is not to be easily corrected. Bad
taste has claimed a perpetuity of copyright. Good taste must proceed
from an opposite source, and work in spite of the bad. It must come
from publications, just criticisms, lives of painters,[4] familiar
treatises on the principles of art; and more especially from national
and other public galleries, to direct attention, and indeed to create
a demand for those other auxiliary works. People will seek to
understand and feel that which is continually put before them. Could
they never see any but fine productions, they would soon have a relish
for them that now is impossible; but by little and little, the sight
of what is good will create a liking, and the liking will soon reach
an adoration, and the unlearning process is imperceptibly going on.
Corrupted as our eyes now are, we would venture to assert, that were
you to offer, either in prints or originals, to boys of fourth and
fifth forms at our public schools, in one hand a vile and gaudy horse
and jockey, and in the other a pure and lovely picture by Raffaelle,
the former would be taken. Here is a lamentable neglect in education;
the ear must suffer the probing and the torture of metres and
verse-making, but the eye is left unguarded, unprotected, to shift for
itself, or to yield to the fascinations the first pander of evil
chooses to offer. The school-boy might be improved at the
universities; but there, too, is the same neglect. In our time, it was
a rare thing to see a "man's" room without many engravings; and that
sufficiently shows how much a school of art is wanted in those places,
and what a hold they would have upon youth. But we cannot say much for
the taste of the productions, that generally we will not say _graced_
the walls. We had hoped that the Taylor bequest would have established
at Oxford, not only a pictur