y indisputable statement was untrue. There is not
one person in ten thousand who has a notion sufficiently correct, even
for the commonest purposes, of "what is meant" by wealth; still less of
what wealth everlastingly _is_, whether we mean it or not; which it is
the business of every student of economy to ascertain. We, indeed, know
(either by experience or in imagination) what it is to be able to
provide ourselves with luxurious food, and handsome clothes; and if Mr.
Mill had thought that wealth consisted only in these, or in the means
of obtaining these, it would have been easy for him to have so defined
it with perfect scientific accuracy. But he knew better: he knew that
some kinds of wealth consisted in the possession, or power of obtaining,
other things than these; but, having, in the studies of his life, no
clue to the principles of essential value, he was compelled to take
public opinion as the ground of his science; and the public, of course,
willingly accepted the notion of a science founded on their opinions.

I had, on the contrary, a singular advantage, not only in the greater
extent of the field of investigation opened to me by my daily pursuits,
but in the severity of some lessons I accidentally received in the
course of them.

When, in the winter of 1851, I was collecting materials for my work on
Venetian architecture, three of the pictures of Tintoret on the roof of
the School of St. Roch were hanging down in ragged fragments, mixed with
lath and plaster, round the apertures made by the fall of three Austrian
heavy shot. The city of Venice was not, it appeared, rich enough to
repair the damage that winter; and buckets were set on the floor of the
upper room of the school to catch the rain, which not only fell directly
through the shot holes, but found its way, owing to the generally
pervious state of the roof, through many of the canvases of Tintoret's
in other parts of the ceiling.

It was a lesson to me, as I have just said, no less direct than severe;
for I knew already at that time (though I have not ventured to assert,
until recently at Oxford,) that the pictures of Tintoret in Venice were
accurately the most precious articles of wealth in Europe, being the
best existing productions of human industry. Now at the time that three
of them were thus fluttering in moist rags from the roof they had
adorned, the shops of the Rue Rivoli at Paris were, in obedience
to a steadily-increasing public Demand,