The darkest despotisms on the Continent have done more for the growth and
elevation of the fine arts than the English government. A great musical
composer in Germany and Italy is a great man in society, and a real dignity
and rank are universally conceded to him. So it is with a sculptor, or
painter, or architect. Without this sort of encouragement and patronage
such arts as music and painting will never come into great eminence. In
this country there is no general reverence for the fine arts; and the
sordid spirit of a money-amassing philosophy would meet any proposition for
the fostering of art, in a genial and extended sense, with the commercial
maxim,--_Laissez faire_. Paganini, indeed, will make a fortune, because he
can actually sell the tones of his fiddle at so much a scrape; but Mozart
himself might have languished in a garret for any thing that would have
been done for him here.
* * * * *
There are three classes into which all the women past seventy that ever I
knew were to be divided:--1. That dear old soul; 2. That old woman; 3. That
old witch.
_July_ 24. 1831.