s to say, not as
dear as they are. For, as matters at present stand, it is wholly
impossible for any man in the ordinary circumstances of English life to
possess himself of a piece of great art. A modern drawing of average
merit, or a first-class engraving, may, perhaps, not without some
self-reproach, be purchased out of his savings by a man of narrow
income; but a satisfactory example of first-rate art--masterhands'
work--is wholly out of his reach. And we are so accustomed to look upon
this as the natural course and necessity of things, that we never set
ourselves in any wise to diminish the evil; and yet it is an evil
perfectly capable of diminution.

67. It is an evil precisely similar in kind to that which existed in the
Middle Ages, respecting good books, and which everybody then, I suppose,
thought as natural as we do now our small supply of good pictures. You
could not then study the work of a great historian, or great poet, any
more than you can now study that of a great painter, but at heavy cost.
If you wanted a book, you had to get it written out for you, or to write
it out for yourself. But printing came, and the poor man may read his
Dante and his Homer; and Dante and Homer are none the worse for that.
But it is only in literature that private persons of moderate fortune
can possess and study greatness: they can study at home no greatness in
art; and the object of that accumulation which we are at present aiming
at, as our third object in political economy, is to bring great art in
some degree within the reach of the multitude; and, both in larger and
more numerous galleries than we now possess, and by distribution,
according to his wealth and wish, in each man's home, to render the
influence of art somewhat correspondent in extent to that of literature.
Here, then, is the subtle balance which your economist has to strike: to
accumulate so much art as to be able to give the whole nation a supply
of it, according to its need, and yet to regulate its distribution so
that there shall be no glut of it, nor contempt.

68. A difficult balance, indeed, for us to hold, if it were left merely
to our skill to poise; but the just point between poverty and profusion
has been fixed for us accurately by the wise laws of Providence. If you
carefully watch for all the genius you can detect, apply it to good
service, and then reverently preserve what it produces, you will never
have too little art; and if, on the oth