The poor drawing had neither character nor consistency; it looked like
nothing under the sun, except a drawing done at Kensington--a flat,
foolish thing, but very soft and smooth. But this was enough; it was
passed by the examiners, and the student went into the Life Room to
copy an Italian model as he had copied the Apollo Belvedere. Once or
twice a week a gentleman who painted tenth-rate pictures, which were
not always hung in the Academy, came round and passed casual remarks
on the quality of the stippling. There was a head-master who painted
tenth-rate historical pictures, after the manner of a tenth-rate
German painter in a provincial town, in a vast studio upstairs, which
the State was good enough to provide him with, and he occasionally
walked through the studios; on an average, I should say, once a month.

The desire to organise art proceeded in France from a love of system,
and in England from a love of respectability. To the ordinary mind
there is something especially reassuring in medals, crowns,
examinations, professors, and titles; and since the founding of the
Kensington Schools we unfortunately hear no more of parents opposing
their children's wishes to become artists. The result of all these
facilities for art study has been to swamp natural genius and to
produce enormous quantities of vacuous little water colours and slimy
little oil colours. Young men have been prevented from going to
Australia and Canada and becoming rough farmers, and young ladies from
following them and becoming rough wives and themothers of healthy
children. Instead of such natural emigration and extension of the
race, febrile little pilgrimages have been organised to Paris and
Grey, whence astonishing methods and theories regarding the
conditions, under which painting alone can be accomplished, have been
brought back. Original Kensington stipple has been crossed with square