MR. LANDSEER'S EVIDENCE ON ART—LETTER, IV.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.

SIR-1N was a strangely mistaken species of patronage which induced the mistaken author of the American War virtually to say to the starving objects of pia patronage—" I know very well, gentle artists, that there is not taste enough Among my subjects for them to purchase your works ; but there are among them picture-gazers, although not meture-purchasers, and there is taste enough for many of them to give one shilling each per annum for the pleasure of seeing them. As you cannot well your pictures, (fur even llohAwrit is obliged to have recourse to a raffle, and cannot obtain subscribers enough to produce even a scanty percentage of remuneration) ; I say, gentlemen, since this is the awe, you would doubtless be glad to share among yourselves their produce,— that is to say, the ninnies received at the doors of your exhibition-room,- in short, like any other of my subjects who get up an attractive show.

But this, any dear protee,:s, you shall not do. :'so! the whole of the necessary expenses of educating the youthful artiste who are to minister to the rising generation, shall be defrayed out of the sums received at your door, and the whole of the surplus of this fund shall he laid by for the unspecified pur. of the Acedera." It was wisely provident of these first members, and by

pores y the best thing they did, except with their pencils, to request of his Majesty that among these purposes might be reckoned a pension-fund for superannuated members, &c. .So far was wise; but it was quite otherwise not to go further, and state to the King, through Lord BUTE or Mr. Dayton, or somebody who had wool to the Royal ear—fee all these transactions were of a back-stairs nature—that it was un- Royal to do things by halves, and unreflecting and un- jam m expect that studious men, who had painfully experienced

How hard It was to climb The steep wherelFame's proud temple shines Rrat."

sh00% descend from their lofty heights after laboriously attaining them, is order to point out the paths of easiest accessibility, and to holm ?—precisely to those who must soon become their rivals, both in honour and profit, with a pre- possession always existing in the mind of the public in favour of "rimy merit," nod a comparative indifference toward merit that has risen.

eas a-a-a-es....saasseaasesseaess. teasialitreeitararteMara

Benevolent fathers may sometimes, he found who willingly consent that their own unrest mental attainments shall become rudimental in the education of their sons ; but more than this no statesman or magistrate of common sense will expect, especially in the relaxed state of modern patriotism, well knowing that pelicans keep to their own nests. How then should calculations of national importance have been left to rest on a foundation so fallacious ! " If the teachers in the schools which are to recruit the rising intellect of the Navy, Army, Senate, and Church, are remunerated out of public funds, can your Majesty give any reason why, in those delicate operations of mind from which spring the poetry of art, elders are to victimize themselves? Have we not react that the shaft which has brought an eagle to the ground has been fledged with

its own feather ? Gracious and well-intending Sir, if you persist in this course, you will but drive your artists to a system of semblances. They will erect a showy apparatus, create a few offices (which themselves will occupy), and seem to teach ; but their Imams, instead of moving hilariously with the work, will become i the weights that play. below.' In Athens no slave might practise 71 liberal art. Will your Majesty keep the arts of Great Britain in a state so ignoble as shall reverse this Athenian law?"

Something of this kind should have been sincerely said to the founder. But it was not said: the respondents were too mealymouthed, or too poorly futo niched with brains; and, as Joni:so:sr has averred, " The present state of things is the consequence of the former." In conversation, while the chair was va- cant, T said in the Committee-room, in just so many words, that the defects of the Royal Academy were almost entirely the results of a bad bargain made with GEORGE the Third, without my meaning seeming to be at all understood, excepting by one gentleman, (whose name I know not,) who replied that lie entirely agreed with me. In the hope of extending that conviction, I am here the more detailed and explicit. The present Academicians, reluctant, (hut there is no knowing what WILKIE, or Plumes, or CHANTRICY, or CALLCOTT, or sonic others, might have said, had they been summoned or invited to attend,) the present Academicians, reluctant to state the truth—perhaps fancying them. selves bound by Royal obligations not to state it—and feeling that they have done more fur the public than could rationally have been expected from men with their purse-strings so tied that they might not honestly reimburse themselves,* have felt a natural degree of perhaps excusable indignation, at the foreign mellillings and foggy perceptions of reform that have recently been put in requisition to their annoyance. I believe all that has been complained of, excepting the disgraceful continuation of the Academical degradation of the engraver's art, and the shutting the doors of the exhibition-rooms against all exhibitors but themselves, during the days of touching and varnishing, may be traced to the same uogenial source,—nay, perhaps, even this last—this irre-

fragable proof that, " crihb'd, confined " as they are, in their means of generosity, they really cannot afford to be pelicans; they have not blood enough to spare. But no wise government will allow a valuable section of its subjects to re- main too long in a predicament where, within a land of exchanges whose natural means of happiness is oppressed by its artificial wealth, the most liberal acts they could perform would, by the wealth-holders, be liable to be stigma- tized as fully; and where, driven to ungenerous hesitations, when they should only have been liable to pleasurable attractions, " Their energies roll bock upon their hearts, And stnenete and corrupt."

The gratuitnus admission of the public to the exhibition of the Royal Academy, so recently talked of, does by no means fall within the same category as ail. mitting them free of expense to the British Museum and the Cathedrals of St: Paul and st. Peter. The greedy churchnieu nod their satellites, who, through means of the two latter, iniquitously extort money from that patient people oho, by labour and taxes, have already paid for the sculpture and erection of public monuments—these heartless dignitaries (though not perhaps their curates and collectors) are, without this extortion, enormously overpaid; and in a moral and Christian view, their rapacity is highly censurable; for when clergy. men professing to imitate the humility of the Saviour, start forth and inter- cept, with the glory of great men, the very moral lessons which the Parliament must have in view when they vote monuments to those who have best served their country,—I say, a-hen this patriotic purpose is thus countervailed by Bishops and Deans—unless that sympathetic glow is afterward paid for by the spectators individually, which hail before been paid for by the public collec- tively—where shall we find an epithet more applicable and lees overcharged than irreligious rapacity ? Can these men " trust they have a good consci- ence? " Where are our Ramses and LATIMF.RS?

But are the ethical painters thug paid by the public? Where are their tithes, and glebes, and fee-simple, and opulent livings? where is even their moderate and homiest remuneration ? These questions need not be answered.

The simple inquiry for plain-minded and disinterested men, not chilled by disappointment nor heated by animosity—the question as concerns the Royal Academy, for representatives who do not legislate through clouds of cursoriness and inditrtrence exhaled from railroad speculations, and Whig and Tory hopes and fears—is, whether more good would be effected by admitting the public gratis to the Exhibition of the Royal Academy and to all other pictorial exhibitions? but, fur the present, I restrict myself to this one—whether more moral good would be effected by admitting the public without pay to the Royal Academy Exhibition, or by permitting or requiring individual spectators to lay down a shilling each, for a sight that, as compared with other sights, is honestly worth half-a-crown, or perhaps a whole one? I shall not now stop to discuss this question further. 'What hope can I en- tertain of settling it ? Know we not, Mr. SPECTATOR, that the Whigs will shuttlecock it to the Tories, and the Tories bandy it back, and that, whatever else may be said, they will play out their political and gladiatorial game, letting the end—the ostensible end of such play—wait upon the means? I shall only ask, in reference to it, why large salaries are given to our Head Magistrates, Commanders, Bishops, Sec. ? why, but from a belief that more public good is thus effected than by letting the same amount of cash remain in the pockets from whence it is taken ? The highest hind of good that mortals possessing the means can possibly effect, is by calling forth and rewarding successful mental exertion. Does it not follow that artists who accomplish this purpose of public good through pleasureable meats, should be adequately remunerated? ay, and permit me to add, that if M.P.s were also paid for their public services, their duties also would perhaps be more efficiently performed.

But, gentlemen, if you could, and if you were to, ordain that all visiters of the Royal Academy Exhibition should be admittted gratis, must it not be the same at the Suffolk Street Gallery—at the Provincial Exhibitions—at the Waters, Colour Society—and at the British Institution, where noblemen and gentlemen of high:rank and opulence, receive shillings at their doors?

For what do they so receive them ?—why to distribute among the artiste, from a thorough conviction that those artists are not from other sources sutha- eatly rewarded. To be sure, as religionists have said of the narrow way to Heaven, "few there be that find it," so it is with the disbursements at the British Institution : but what I have stated is, notwithstanding, the osten- sible purpose of the managers, which is all that is necessary to any argues aunt. I presume then, gentlemen, to recommend, that instead of entertaining this confiscating proposition, you give back to the Academicians the mesas of

• For reasons akin to the above, forensic law always calls for Or umames " Vilna teciel'imil." The commercial and legal tone is one and the lame.

heing sincere and:efficient to those public trusts and purposes whieb!are required bow them, but which mulct the present utige:iLd system may scareLly be called their duties, or esteemed to be incumbent. if you Isamild enjoin the sincere and conscientious performance of those duties, remove the obstacles to liberality, return their revenues to their own diqmsal ; at least no longer continue to take from them and return to the public in the shape of instruction to the riling generation of artists, the ironies willingly contributed by the public for the gratification they derive from the annual exhibition. But, consider whether it will not be wise to let all the fees, salaries, and other expenses incidental to the instruction of the students, be defrayed Gut of the public treasury by an annual vote of the Commons, in the same manner as the expenses of the British Aluseum. In both establishments, the object, or leading principle, is one and the same,-namely, rational pleasure and edification to the public, corn. biped, in the case of the Academy, with salutary instruction to those youths whew God and Nature appear to have appointed to perpetuate the system of amelioration and transmit its benefits to posterity.

Let no other expenses be incumbent on the Academic revenues received at the Exhibition seasons, than that of the great annual thinner given by the Boyd Academy collectively to the patrons of art. Let British artists indulge the prowl consciousness of liberally giving such an annual treat as cannot else- where be enjoyed. Juice EA NILSEER. RRATA.- From hurry in Ote printing. several IN pographical mistakes crept into Mr. LANDsEt R's Third Letter. Fur instance, ill the sixth parargrapli, (p 1097. col. 2 ) sacred asylirm " should have been "sacred Aly'vm." There were others, but or a more obvious kind.