§4,5. WHAT TO AVOID IN CHOOSING. 177 



encouraging it ; and how, unless shown what to avoid and 

 what to admire, can they form their taste ? 



5. And here I feel a pleasure in paying a just tribute to 

 the good judgment which adopted this mode of proceeding 

 at Marlborough House. For it is by the negative rather 

 than by the positive process that instruction is conveyed to 

 the untutored mind in the most intelligible form ; and when 

 any one has to choose one out of twenty objects, it is far 

 easier to make the selection if he begins by rejecting those 

 he will not have, than by at once attempting to fix on the 

 one he prefers. Let him rather say, " This I will not have, 

 nor this, nor this," until he has reduced the number to two ; 

 and his final choice is even then more easily made by reject- 

 ing one of them, than by trying to decide on the best. But 

 while I fully approve of the mode of instruction by showing 

 what is bad, and ivhy it is so, I must admit that a " chamber 

 of horrors" should not be confined to one, but should include 

 (under different gradations of censure) every room, except 

 a very small sanctuary, privileged to contain a few really 

 good specimens; and however gratefully I would acknow- 

 ledge the condescension, or the public spirit, of any great 

 person who sends objects of art to an exhibition, I would only 

 commend and draw attention to such as are worthy of being 

 imitated, and exclude those that are deficient in taste from 

 the recommendation that they are " sent for study ;" and 

 when so little good exists, and where few can be expected 

 to possess perfect specimens, or even perfect taste, no sensible 

 person could be offended at such an exclusion of the objects 

 of art or curiosity he might have sent to that exhibition.] 



No better mode of instruction could be devised than that 

 of reviewing some large collection of works of taste, such as 

 our Great Exhibition in 1851, and others that have followed 

 it ; so as to show at once what is bad, to select for approbation 

 whatever good points are to be found in any object, or to ex- 



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