We see them, in the Royal Academy, passing by Wilkie, Turner and
Callcott, with shrugs of doubt or of scorn, to fix in gazing and
enthusiastic crowds upon kettles-full of witches, and His Majesty's
ships so and so lying to in a gale, etc., etc. But these pictures attain
no celebrity because the public admire them, for it is not to the public
that the judgment is intrusted. It is by the chosen few, by our nobility
and men of taste and talent, that the decision is made, the fame
bestowed, and the artist encouraged.
6. Not so in architecture. There, the power is generally diffused. Every
citizen may box himself up in as barbarous a tenement as suits his taste
or inclination; the architect is his vassal, and must permit him not
only to criticise, but to perpetrate. The palace or the nobleman's seat
may be raised in good taste, and become the admiration of a nation; but
the influence of their owner is terminated by the boundary of his
estate: he has no command over the adjacent scenery, and the possessor
of every thirty acres around him has him at his mercy. The streets of
our cities are examples of the effects of this clashing of different
tastes; and they are either remarkable for the utter absence of all
attempt at embellishment, or disgraced by every variety of abomination.
7. Again, in a climate like ours, those few who have knowledge and
feeling to distinguish what is beautiful, are frequently prevented by
various circumstances from erecting it.
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