hat
it would be impossible to convey more truth and life with the given
quantity of workmanship.

[Illustration: FIG. 7.]

131. Here is, indeed, a drawing by Turner, (Edu. 131), in which with
some fifty times the quantity of labour, and far more highly educated
faculty of sight, the artist has expressed some qualities of lustre and
colour which only very wise persons indeed could perceive in a John
Dory; and this piece of paper contains, therefore, much more, and more
subtle, art, than the Japan ivory; but are we sure that it is therefore
_greater_ art? or that the painter was better employed in producing this
drawing, which only one person can possess, and only one in a hundred
enjoy, than he would have been in producing two or three pieces on a
larger scale, which should have been at once accessible to, and
enjoyable by, a number of simpler persons? Suppose for instance, that
Turner, instead of faintly touching this outline, on white paper, with
his camel's hair pencil, had struck the main forms of his fish into
marble, thus (Fig. 7): and instead of colouring the white paper so
delicately that, perhaps, only a few of the most keenly observant
artists in England can see it at all, had, with his strong hand, tinted
the marble with a few colours, deceptive to the people, and harmonious
to the initiated; suppose that he had even conceded so much to the
spirit of popular applause as to allow of a bright glass bead being
inlaid for the eye, in the Japanese manner; and that the enlarged,
deceptive, and popularly pleasing work had been carved on the outside of
a great building,--say Fishmongers' Hall,--where everybody commercially
connected with Billingsgate could have seen it, and ratified it with the
wisdom of the market;--might not the art have been greater, worthier,
and kinder in such use?

132. Perhaps the idea does not once approve itself to you of having your
public buildings covered with ornaments like this; but pray, remember
that the choice of _subject_ is an ethical question, not now before us.
All I ask you to decide is whether the method is right, and would be
pleasant in giving the distinctiveness to pretty things, which it has
here given to what, I suppose it may be assumed, you feel to be an ugly
thing. Of course, I must note parenthetically, such realistic work is
impossible in a country where the buildings are to be discoloured by
coal-smoke; but so is all fine sculpture, whatsoever; and the whiter,
the