er hand, you never force an
artist to work hurriedly, for daily bread, nor imperfectly, because you
would rather have showy works than complete ones, you will never have
too much. Do not force the multiplication of art, and you will not have
it too cheap; do not wantonly destroy it, and you will not have it too
dear.

69. "But who wantonly destroys it?" you will ask. Why, we all do.
Perhaps you thought, when I came to this part of our subject,
corresponding to that set forth in our housewife's economy by the
"keeping her embroidery from the moth," that I was going to tell you
only how to take better care of pictures, how to clean them, and varnish
them, and where to put them away safely when you went out of town. Ah,
not at all. The utmost I have to ask of you is, that you will not pull
them to pieces, and trample them under your feet. "What!" you will say,
"when do we do such things? Haven't we built a perfectly beautiful
gallery for all the pictures we have to take care of?" Yes, you have,
for the pictures which are definitely sent to Manchester to be taken
care of. But there are quantities of pictures out of Manchester which it
is your business, and mine too, to take care of no less than of these,
and which we are at this moment employing ourselves in pulling to pieces
by deputy. I will tell you what they are, and where they are, in a
minute; only first let me state one more of those main principles of
political economy on which the matter hinges.

70. I must begin a little apparently wide of the mark, and ask you to
reflect if there is any way in which we waste money more in England than
in building fine tombs? Our respect for the dead, when they are _just_
dead, is something wonderful, and the way we show it more wonderful
still. We show it with black feathers and black horses; we show it with
black dresses and bright heraldries; we show it with costly obelisks and
sculptures of sorrow, which spoil half of our most beautiful cathedrals.
We show it with frightful gratings and vaults, and lids of dismal stone,
in the midst of the quiet grass; and last, and not least, we show it by
permitting ourselves to tell any number of lies we think amiable or
credible, in the epitaph. This feeling is common to the poor as well as
the rich; and we all know how many a poor family will nearly ruin
themselves, to testify their respect for some member of it in his
coffin, whom they never much cared for when he was out of it; and