Especially this is to be regretted in the effect produced on the
schools of line engraving, which had reached in England an executive
skill of a kind before unexampled, and which of late have lost much of
their more sterling and legitimate methods. Still, I have seen plates
produced quite recently, more beautiful, I think, in some qualities
than anything ever before attained by the burin:[173] and I have not the
slightest fear that photography, or any other adverse or competitive
operation, will in the least ultimately diminish,--I believe they will,
on the contrary, stimulate and exalt--the grand old powers of the wood
and the steel.
Such are, I think, briefly the present conditions of art with which
we have to deal; and I conceive it to be the function of this
Professorship, with respect to them, to establish both a practical and
critical school of fine art for English gentlemen: practical, so that,
if they draw at all, they may draw rightly; and critical, so that,
being first directed to such works of existing art as will best reward
their study, they may afterwards make their patronage of living
artists delightful to themselves in their consciousness of its
justice, and, to the utmost, beneficial to their country, by being
given only to the men who deserve it; in the early period of their
lives, when they both need it most and can be influenced by it to the
best advantage.
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