business in all respects; the ease and pleasure of unaffected
invention; and the true sense of power to do everything better than it
had ever been yet done, coupled with general contentment in life, and
in its vigour and skill.

It is impossible to overrate the difference between such a condition of
mind, and that of the modern artist, who either does not know his
business at all, or knows it only to recognize his own inferiority to
every former workman of distinction.

79. Again: the political relation of these artificers to the State was
that of a caste entirely separate from the noblesse; [1] paid for their
daily work what was just, and competing with each other to supply the
best article they could for the money. And it is, again, impossible to
overrate the difference between such a social condition, and that of
the artists of to-day, struggling to occupy a position of equality in
wealth with the noblesse,--paid irregular and monstrous prices by an
entirely ignorant and selfish public; and competing with each other to
supply the worst article they can for the money.

[Footnote 1: The giving of knighthood to Jacopo della Quercia for his
lifelong service to Siena was not the elevation of a dexterous workman,
but grace to a faithful citizen.]

I never saw anything so impudent on the walls of any exhibition, in any
country, as last year in London. It was a daub professing to be a
"harmony in pink and white" (or some such nonsense;) absolute rubbish,
and which had taken about a quarter of an hour to scrawl or daub--it
had no pretence to be called painting. The price asked for it was two
hundred and fifty guineas.