And I should like him to probe this doubt to the
deep of it, and bring all his misgivings out to the broad light, that
we may see how we are to deal with them, or ascertain if indeed they
are too well founded to be dealt with.
And to this end I would ask him now to imagine himself entering, for
the first time in his life, the room of the Old Water-Colour
Society:[51] and to suppose that he has entered it, not for the sake of
a quiet examination of the paintings one by one, but in order to seize
such ideas as it may generally suggest respecting the state and
meaning of modern, as compared with elder, art. I suppose him, of
course, that he may be capable of such a comparison, to be in some
degree familiar with the different forms in which art has developed
itself within the periods historically known to us; but never, till
that moment, to have seen any completely modern work. So prepared, and
so unprepared, he would, as his ideas began to arrange themselves, be
first struck by the number of paintings representing blue mountains,
clear lakes, and ruined castles or cathedrals, and he would say to
himself: "There is something strange in the mind of these modern
people! Nobody ever cared about blue mountains before, or tried to
paint the broken stones of old walls.
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