The annual exposure of the abortive attempts of untaught learners
to copy the pictures of the Old Masters, took place this week at the British Institution ; and, melancholy as has always been the sight of so much misemployed labour and time, and painful the evidence of such various incapacity, the spectacle this year is more lamentable and ludicrous than ever. Indeed, this practice of copying ought to be dis- continued altogether ; for it cannot profit those who are deficient in ordinary perception and the first rudiments of drawing and painting, and it tends to throw ridicule upon the inszitution and bring art into contempt ; while the semblance of eclat given to the display of in- competence serves to delude and flatter the vanity of the would-be artists, by leading them to suppose that their wretched performances are worth looking at. Exceptions only prove the rule.
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