The artists ought to be: those who have had the energy, the advantages of study and education, and have grown, or are growing, rich upon the popular interest in aesthetics. But who would ever dream of sending for a Royal Academician to paint his walls and ceilings now?

To appreciate art, we must understand it; to understand it, we must have it sufficiently about us, within our reach, awaiting the momentary glance or thought when the mind is open, easy, withdrawn from sordid preoccupations.

But the artists themselves (I am speaking collectively, with noble exceptions in my mind) hinder the public from ever amending, by keeping the best art beyond their reach, and granting them, for the maturing of their taste, only the refuse of their own study. One would think sometimes in hearing these gentlemen's remarks, and especially in reading artists' written views on art, that it is a prime privilege to gaze at their pictures once or twice in a gallery, and that for this no payment can be too high, no patience too great. But what do we owe them? They seem to grudge the unfortunate public every pearl (if pearl it be) which they scatter. They forget how costly it is for a family to visit even the Royal Academy often. They talk of the artist's 'noble independence' of public opinion; and of his 'moral courage' in destroying whatever pleases the outsider's eye, as the painter Leys is said to have done, as though they hardly knew the meaning of the words they use.

But they teach us little, and that grudgingly and of necessity, without, I fear, being at all independent of the buzzing admirers who buy their pictures.

It is true, we see in all English art of the highest aim, from Watts's lofty and poetic conceptions to Poynter's unmerciful portraits, from Leighton's sweet opal ghosts to Millais's costly sketches, that art is meant to be a thing apart, not for the herd: not to teach the herd, nor gladden it, but to satisfy those who can judge accurately of the skill expended. This in itself is no generous but a vainglorious instinct, underlying the artists' contempt for the unknowing, the 'beasts of the people.'

How can we thank, how greatly should we honour, those few men who, repudiating class-prejudice, deign to recognise the sole real function of the artist - to educate the unknowing, to chronicle the best thoughts, aspirations, sympathies of his period, represented by that ' herd ' of which he himself forms one atom, as the priest educates and teaches those from whose ranks he sprang. Mr. Walter Crane, Mr. Burne Jones, Mr. Charles Eastlake, Mr. Morris, Mr. Owen Jones, Mr. William Burges, who being an architect was peculiarly fitted to understand how to harmonise colour and construction, have designed for wall-papers, windows, curtains, plate; Mr. Caldecott, like Mr. Crane, for cheap childish books, and thus have had more influence in raising public taste in ' some of the least of these/ than the rest have had in half a century's exhibiting at the Royal Academy and Bond Street show-rooms.

Architects should all be decorators, and vice versa, and no artists should be above designing for a ceiling or panel now, as they never were of old. If it be infra dig. to paint on plaster or wood, why not on thick rags - i.e. canvas?

But how is the artist to educate this public whom he so scorns? By giving them his best work, by habituating them to good work in all things great and small till they like it, just as the missionary habituates the savage to civilised manners until they become necessary to him. Far be it from me to speak disrespectfully of the public in comparing them to savages, but as the artist, so soon as he puts pen to paper, is never tired of sneering at the helpless outside community who cannot paint, I must use a simile he is likely to understand.

Some recent authoritative 'Lectures on Art' are typical of the common artistic mind, whose way of reasoning (however deft may be the hand, however devoted the heart, in the cause of culture) is far from good or wise or true, and whose mood towards the ladder which has led up to fame is often most ungrateful and unreasonable.

We find the real duties of the artist as priest and counsellor in the religion of beauty, quite ignored; we find constant complaints of the difference in the aim and results of our modern work as compared with that of the ancients. This difference is enormously exaggerated, for the ancients were not so very unlike ourselves. The main reason assigned for our 'fall' is 'that artists from motives of indolence or interest have allowed themselves to be led by the opinion of the public instead of being as of old indifferent to it.' To the first part of this amazing observation the public may answer that their opinion has been very little regarded, and hence the picture-buyers are but a small section of the public, and that small section is composed chiefly not of picture-lovers, nor of people who care for art in its highest sense, but dealers who buy to sell again. Naturally they like to 'buy safe,' so does even a picture-lover; and to object to that opens the door to ugly suspicions. But the vast prices given for certain works by no means prove that art is loved or encouraged by the masses (though the general public do care for art and for beauty when they can get it). The public supports the picture galleries, public and private, though the practice of paying one shilling per head to see one picture for a few minutes is a wrong and mischievous one.

Our artists' pictures ought to be free to all during some portion of the year.

The real reason of the difference between the aims and results of ancient and modern art is that the public having been excluded from .easy reach of the best art, forget its true use and value; and their ignorance re-acts injuriously on the artist because he is, after all, one of them, and cannot breathe another atmosphere than that of his time. He is responsible for their dulness. Certain people's affected admiration of Leys destroying whatever pleased the outsider, combined with their morbid objection to fault-finding (which they call 'criticism ') stamps them as fretful porcupines indeed. If the public find fault, they are railed at: if they are pleased, why then destroy the work - it must be worthless: if the public are silent, where is the proper encouragement of art?

The assertion that the old masters were indifferent to their public, it is necessary to answer with a query - When? and who? Not Holbein, painting portraits, saddles, walls, designing for brooches and confectionery, and anything else he was told to do. Not Cimabue, sitting in his shed open to passers-by, and hearing their criticisms pro and con. - and who knows how in consequence he may have modified this and that, perceiving that his meaning was not clear or that some stronger chord might be touched? How grand was that strength which bore and courted criticism and made it serve him - for how else won he that tremendous popularity, so that his Madonna was borne through the glad city in a pageant - save by educating-up his public, being always in contact with the public, expressing their deepest emotions, the spirit of his time?

How did all the Gothic painters and decorators become great, but by speaking the heart of the people out, in language they could all understand? When books were not, or few, the artist was the nation's spokesman, and had he been deaf to what was wanted in his time, he would have starved at the least.

How did the great Renascence painters win the world but by the same sympathy with its impulses? How did Ghiberti triumph in the competition for the Cathedral doors even against such rivals as Donatello and Bru-nelleschi, but because he had courted criticism by working openly among the people, and so profited by hints in praise and blame from every quarter whereby he carried the whole city with him?l Many another name rises up to rebuke the morbid anger of artists with 'outsiders.' Let the true knight enter the arena with robuster frame. There is no surer sign of weakness than a dread of being; touched, be the critics wise or silly; the power to criticise, like the power of free-will, is a common right which should be fostered, guided aright, not crushed.

The Gothic and Renascence masters became great because they caught the spirit of the people and expressed it to perfection. They carried the language of art to its apex. Their mastery of the tools was complete; but it was not the mastery of tools which made them great, but their having something to say, and not only the sense to say it, but the determination to be understood.

1 Vasari.