fade from its vaults, or the queens and kings of
Chartres fall from their pedestals? They are not in his parish.

87. "What!" you will say, "are we not to produce any new art, nor take
care of our parish churches?" No, certainly not, until you have taken
proper care of the art you have got already, and of the best churches
out of the parish. Your first and proper standing is not as
churchwardens and parish overseers, in an English county, but as members
of the great Christian community of Europe. And as members of that
community (in which alone, observe, pure and precious ancient art
exists, for there is none in America, none in Asia, none in Africa), you
conduct yourselves precisely as a manufacturer would, who attended to
his looms, but left his warehouse without a roof. The rain floods your
warehouse, the rats frolic in it, the spiders spin in it, the choughs
build in it, the wall-plague frets and festers in it; and still you keep
weave, weave, weaving at your wretched webs, and thinking you are
growing rich, while more is gnawed out of your warehouse in an hour than
you can weave in a twelvemonth.

88. Even this similitude is not absurd enough to set us rightly forth.
The weaver would, or might, at least, hope that his new woof was as
stout as the old ones, and that, therefore, in spite of rain and ravage,
he would have something to wrap himself in when he needed it. But _our_
webs rot as we spin. The very fact that we despise the great art of the
past shows that we cannot produce great art now. If we could do it, we
should love it when we saw it done--if we really cared for it, we should
recognize it and keep it; but we don't care for it. It is not art that
we want; it is amusement, gratification of pride, present gain--anything
in the world but art: let it rot, we shall always have enough to talk
about and hang over our sideboards.

89. You will (I hope) finally ask me what is the outcome of all this,
practicable tomorrow morning by us who are sitting here? These are the
main practical outcomes of it: In the first place, don't grumble when
you hear of a new picture being bought by Government at a large price.
There are many pictures in Europe now in danger of destruction which
are, in the true sense of the word, priceless; the proper price is
simply that which it is necessary to give to get and to save them. If
you can get them for fifty pounds, do; if not for less than a hundred,
do; if not for less than