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neglect of architecture and sculpture, both of which seem to 
require purer air and brighter sunshine. Manchester has had 
an immense influence on modern painting, and has encouraged 
it in the direction of honest studies and purposes; though I 
think that the encouragement has been, on the whole, better in 
its influence on landscape than on figure painting. The sort of 
figure painting encouraged by Manchester has been, I should say 
(so far as my recollection serves me), rather that which tells a 
story or incident cleverly than that which sets forth the figure 
itself with a view to its best and noblest treatment. Modern 
engraving has been immensely encouraged all over the manu- 
facturing districts, but generally more for the subject of the print 
than for the artistic qualities of the engraving itself. 
Not wishing to trespass too long upon your time, I will now try 
to answer briefly my own question—What is the good of art, 
especially with reference to the manufacturing districts? Pardon 
me, if what I say may seem to you inadequate and imperfect. It 
is always difficult to compress anything that has to be said about 
art into a small space, because the subject is such a vast one 
and has so many ramifications. The good of art is simply that 
it educates the perceptive faculties pleasurably. A good artist, 
or a good art critic, is always a person who can perceive very 
delicate distinctions, a person of keen and subtle perception. 
Many who have educated themselves, by means of art, in care- 
fully distinguishing one thing from another, find afterwards that 
the powers of analysis and of synthesis which have been so 
educated can be transferred to other fields of action,—to intel- 
lectual or social matters,—or even to political. Art is, therefore, 
a mental training of a very valuable kind. But besides this, 
the practice of art educates both the eye and the hand as 
nothing else can. A workman who is at the same time an 
artist is never as likely to spoil his work through inaccurate 
perception or clumsy manual labour, as another. His eye will 
be true and his hand will be delicate. Besides these advantages 
as a part of education, the fine arts open to us very wide fields 
of perfectly healthy and innocent enjoyment which add greatly 
to the interest of life, and which are in themselves like a rich 
estate. The enjoyment of the fine arts leads to a far higher 
enjoyment both of natural beauty and of human history. Hardly 
any scene in nature is too simple or commonplace to be beneath 
the notice of great artists; and there is hardly any period in the 
history of mankind which has not its own special interest in the 
history of the fine arts. I should say then, that to take an 
interest in art is at the same time to awaken or enhance our 
interest in very many other things: for, in one way or another, 
the fine arts are bound up with almost everything that either is, 
or ever has been, visible; and things visible, in their turn, are 
