h both fame and
money, if they were differently treated. The Italian race has not
degenerated, whatever its enemies and its masters may say: it is as
naturally capable of distinction in all the arts as ever it was. Put a
paint-brush into the hands of a child, and he will acquire the
practice of painting in no time. An apprenticeship of three or four
years enables him to gain a livelihood. The misfortune is, that they
seldom get beyond this. I think, nay, I am almost sure, they are not
less richly gifted than the pupils of Raphael; and they reach the same
point as the pupils of M. Galimard. Is it their fault? No. I accuse
but the medium into which their birth has cast them. It may be, that
if they were at Paris, they would produce masterpieces. Give them
parts to play in the world, competition, exhibitions, the support of a
government, the encouragement of a public, the counsels of an
enlightened criticism. All these benefits which we enjoy abundantly,
are wholly denied to them, and are only known to them by hearsay.

Their sole motive for work is hunger, their sole encouragement the
flying visits of foreigners. Their work is always done in a hurry;
they knock off a copy in a week, and when it is sold, they begin
another.

If some one, more ambitious than his fellows, undertakes an original
work, whose opinion can he obtain as to its merits or demerits? The
men of the reigning class know nothing about it, and the princes very
little. The owner of the finest gallery in Rome said last year, in the
salon of an Ambassador, "I admire nothing but what you French call
_chic_" Prince Piombino gave the painter Gagliardi an order to paint
him a ceiling, and proposed to pay him by the day. The Government has
plenty to attend to without encouraging the arts: the four little
newspapers which circulate at remote periods amuse themselves by
puffing their particular friends in the silliest manner.

The foreigners who come and go are often men of taste, but they do not
make a public. In Paris, Munich, Duesseldorf, and London, the public
has an individuality; it is a man of a thousand heads. When it has
marked a rising artist, it notes his progress, encourages him, blames
him, urges him on, checks him. It takes such a one into its favour, is
extremely wroth with such another. It is, of course, sometimes in the
wrong; it is subject to ridiculous infatuations, and unjust revulsions
of feeling; yet it lives, and it vivifies, and it is wor