condemn them in the estimation of every right-minded person?"

"I don't see it," said Bagshot, making head against the torrent. "I
cannot afford to go to these swells and get original work of theirs----"

"What do you want with 'these swells' and their original work?"
interrupted my uncle fiercely. "Haven't they used up all their
originality ages ago? Is it not open to such men as yourself to
discover new men? There are men pining in garrets now for you,
Bagshot. Fancy the delight of having pictures that are unfamiliar,
pictures that catch the eye and are actually to be looked at, pictures
that suggest new remarks, pictures by a name that the stray visitor has
never heard of and which therefore puzzle him dreadfully because he
hasn't the faintest idea whether to praise or blame them! Isn't it
worth hunting studios for, and even, maybe, going to the Academy?
Besides, suppose your struggling artist comes to the front. What price
the five-guinea specimen of his early style then? Your artistic virtue
is indeed its own reward, and, besides, you can boast about finding
him. The poor man of culture and the struggling artist live for one
another, or at least they ought to--though I am afraid it is not much
of a living for the struggling artist." He paused abruptly. "I
suppose that autotype cost thirty shillings, and this carpet about five
pounds?"

Bagshot assumed an elegant attitude against his bureau. He had
discovered his reply. "You know you are bitten by the fashion for
originality. Why should I make my room hideous with the work of
third-rate mediocrity, or of men who are still learning to paint,
simply in order to be unlike my neighbour?"

"Why," returned my uncle, "should you hang up things less interesting
than your wall paper, in mere imitation of your neighbours? For this
on your walls, Bagshot, deny it though you may, is not art but fashion.
I tell you, you do not care a rap for art. You think pictures are a
part of virtue, like a silk hat--or evening dress at dinner. And in
your choice of pictures you follow after your kind. I never met a
true-born Briton yet who dared to buy a picture on his own
accord--unless he was a dealer. And then usually he was not really a
true-born Briton. He waits to see what is being hung. He has these
things now because he thinks they are right, not because they are
beautiful, just as he used to have the Stag at Bay and the Boastful
Hound. It is Leighton now;