e, and commonly to the meanest efforts
of intellect; whereas at this time (1819) the whole train of subjects
most popular in the earlier exhibitions have disappeared. The loaf and
cheese that could provoke hunger, the cat and canary bird, and the dead
mackerel on a deal board, have long ceased to produce astonishment and
delight; while truth of imitation now finds innumerable admirers though
combined with the highest qualities of beauty, grandeur and taste.

"To our public exhibitions, and to arrangements that followed in
consequence of their introduction this change must be chiefly
attributed. The present generation appears to be composed of a new and,
at least with respect to the arts, a superior order of beings. Generally
speaking, their thoughts, their feelings and language, differ entirely
from what they were sixty years ago. The state of the public mind,
incapable of discriminating excellence from inferiority proved
incontrovertibly that a right sense of art in the spectator can only be
acquired by long and frequent observation, and that without proper
opportunities to improve the mind and the eye, a nation would continue
insensible of the true value of the fine arts."

In view of these very pertinent observations it is worth inquiring a
little as to the origin of exhibitions in England, and the stimulus
given by them to British art before the institution of the Royal
Academy. From the introduction to book written by Edward Edwards, in
continuation of Walpole's "Anecdotes of Painters," and published in
1808, I extract the following account of them, as far as possible using
his own quaint phraseology.

Although the study of the human form had long been cultivated and
encouraged in Italy and France by national schools or academies, yet in
England until the eighteenth century such seminaries were unknown; and
it is therefore difficult to trace the origin or ascertain the precise
period when those nurseries of art were first attempted in this country,
especially as every establishment of that kind was, at first, of a
private and temporary nature, depending chiefly upon the protection of
some artist of rank and reputation in his day. The first attempt towards
the establishment of an academy is mentioned by Walpole as having been
formed by several artists under Sir Godfrey Kneller in 1711. Afterwards
we find, by other accounts in the same author, which are corroborated by
authentic information, that Sir James Thornhil