to paint, or do anything else with their fingers
decently:--only, for the most part they don't think their museums are
meant to show them how to do anything decently, but rather how to be
idle, indecently. Which extremely popular and extremely erroneous
persuasion, if you please, we must get out of our way before going
further.

210. I owe some apology, by the way, to Mr. Frith, for the way I spoke
of his picture[8] in my letter to the Leicester committee, not intended
for publication, though I never write what I would not allow to be
published, and was glad that they asked leave to print it. It was not I
who instanced the picture, it had been named in the meeting of the
committee as the kind of thing that people best like, and I was obliged
to say _why_ people best liked it:--namely, not for the painting, which
is good, and worthy their liking, but for the sight of the racecourse
and its humors. And the reason that such a picture ought not to be in a
museum, is precisely because in a museum people ought not to fancy
themselves on a racecourse. If they want to see races, let them go to
races; and if rogues, to Bridewells. They come to museums to see
something different from rogues and races.

211. But, to put the matter at once more broadly, and more accurately,
be it remembered, for sum of all, that a museum is not a theater. Both
are means of noble education--but you must not mix up the two. Dramatic
interest is one thing; aesthetic charm another; a pantomime must not
depend on its fine color, nor a picture on its fine pantomime.

Take a special instance. It is long since I have been so pleased in the
Royal Academy as I was by Mr. Britton Riviere's "Sympathy." The dog in
uncaricatured doggedness, divine as Anubis, or the Dog-star; the child
entirely childish and lovely, the carpet might have been laid by
Veronese. A most precious picture in itself, yet not one for a museum.
Everybody would think only of the story in it; everybody be wondering
what the little girl had done, and how she would be forgiven, and if she
wasn't, how soon she would stop crying, and give the doggie a kiss, and
comfort his heart. All which they might study at home among their own
children and dogs just as well; and should not come to the museum to
plague the real students there, since there is not anything of especial
notableness or unrivaled quality in the actual painting.

212. On the other hand, one of the four pictures I chose for perma