lly, young people only care to enter a
picture gallery when there is a chance of getting leave to run a race to
the other end of it; and they had better do that in the garden below.
If, however, they have any real enjoyment of pictures, and want to look
at this one or that, the principal point is never to disturb them in
looking at what interests them, and never to make them look at what does
not. Nothing is of the least use to young people (nor, by the way, of
much use to old ones), but what interests them; and therefore, though it
is of great importance to put nothing but good art into their
possession, yet when they are passing through great houses or galleries,
they should be allowed to look precisely at what pleases them: if it is
not useful to them as art, it will be in some other way: and the
healthiest way in which art can interest them is when they look at it,
not as art, but because it represents something they like in nature. If
a boy has had his heart filled by the life of some great man, and goes
up thirstily to a Vandyck portrait of him, to see what he was like, that
is the wholesomest way in which he can begin the study of portraiture;
if he love mountains, and dwell on a Turner drawing because he sees in
it a likeness to a Yorkshire scar, or an Alpine pass, that is the
wholesomest way in which he can begin the study of landscape; and if a
girl's mind is filled with dreams of angels and saints, and she pauses
before an Angelico because she thinks it must surely be indeed like
heaven, that is the wholesomest way for her to begin the study of
religious art.

When, however, the student has made some definite progress, and every
picture becomes really a guide to him, false or true, in his own work,
it is of great importance that he should never so much as look at bad
art; and then, if the reader is willing to trust me in the matter, the
following advice will be useful to him. In which, with his permission, I
will quit the indirect and return to the epistolary address, as being
the more convenient.

First, in Galleries of Pictures:

1. You may look, with trust in their being always right, at Titian,
Veronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, John Bellini, and Velasquez; the
authenticity of the picture being of course established for you by
proper authority.

2. You may look with admiration, admitting, however question of right
and wrong,[266] at Van Eyck, Holbein, Perugino, Francia, Angelico,
Leonardo da Vinci, Corre