You are surprised, perhaps, to hear me call this its main business.
That is indeed so, however. The giving brightness to picture is much,
but the giving brightness to life more. And remember, were it as
patterns only, you cannot, without the realities, have the pictures.
_You cannot have a landscape by Turner without a country for him to
paint; you cannot have a portrait by Titian, without a man to be
pourtrayed_. I need not prove that to you, I suppose, in these short
terms; but in the outcome I can get no soul to believe that the
beginning of art _is in getting our country clean, and our people
beautiful_. I have been ten years trying to get this very plain
certainty--I do not say believed--but even thought of, as anything but
a monstrous proposition. To get your country clean, and your people
lovely;--I assure you that is a necessary work of art to begin with!
There has indeed been art in countries where people lived in dirt to
serve God, but never in countries where they lived in dirt to serve
the devil. There has indeed been art where the people were not all
lovely,--where even their lips were thick--and their skins black,
because the sun had looked upon them;[189] but never in a country
where the people were pale with miserable toil and deadly shade, and
where the lips of youth, instead of being full with blood, were
pinched by famine, or warped with poison.
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