subject, in order briefly to explain the causes and the nature of this
destruction; for the matter is simply the most important of all that can
be brought under our present consideration respecting the state of art
in Europe.
The fact is, that the greater number of persons or societies throughout
Europe, whom wealth, or chance, or inheritance has put in possession of
valuable pictures, do not know a good picture from a bad one, and have
no idea in what the value of a picture really consists. [Footnote: Many
persons, capable of quickly sympathizing with any excellence, when once
pointed out to them, easily deceive themselves into the supposition that
they are judges of art. There is only one real test of such power of
judgment. Can they, at a glance, discover a good picture obscured by the
filth, and confused among the rubbish, of the pawnbroker's or dealer's
garret?] The reputation of certain work is raised partly by accident,
partly by the just testimony of artists, partly by the various and
generally bad taste of the public (no picture, that I know of, has ever,
in modern times, attained popularity, in the full sense of the term,
without having some exceedingly bad qualities mingled with its good
ones), and when this reputation has once been completely established, it
little matters to what state the picture may be reduced: few minds are
so completely devoid of imagination as to be unable to invest it with
the beauties which they have heard attributed to it.