power of accurate attention to
work of a higher order.

Especially this is to be regretted in the effect produced on the
schools of line engraving, which had reached in England an executive
skill of a kind before unexampled, and which of late have lost much of
their more sterling and legitimate methods. Still, I have seen plates
produced quite recently, more beautiful, I think, in some qualities
than anything ever before attained by the burin:[173] and I have not the
slightest fear that photography, or any other adverse or competitive
operation, will in the least ultimately diminish,--I believe they will,
on the contrary, stimulate and exalt--the grand old powers of the wood
and the steel.

Such are, I think, briefly the present conditions of art with which
we have to deal; and I conceive it to be the function of this
Professorship, with respect to them, to establish both a practical and
critical school of fine art for English gentlemen: practical, so that,
if they draw at all, they may draw rightly; and critical, so that,
being first directed to such works of existing art as will best reward
their study, they may afterwards make their patronage of living
artists delightful to themselves in their consciousness of its
justice, and, to the utmost, beneficial to their country, by being
given only to the men who deserve it; in the early period of their
lives, when they both need it most and can be influenced by it to the
best advantage.

And especially with reference to this function of patronage, I believe
myself justified in taking into account future probabilities as to the
character and range of art in England; and I shall endeavour at once to
organize with you a system of study calculated to develope chiefly the
knowledge of those branches in which the English schools have shown,
and are likely to show, peculiar excellence.

Now, in asking your sanction both for the nature of the general plans I
wish to adopt, and for what I conceive to be necessary limitations of
them, I wish you to be fully aware of my reasons for both: and I will
therefore risk the burdening of your patience while I state the
directions of effort in which I think English artists are liable to
failure, and those also in which past experience has shown they are
secure of success.

I referred, but now, to the effort we are making to improve the designs
of our manufactures. Within certain limits I believe this improvement
may indeed take effect: