That leaves, in the opinion of the men who have made a life study of the subject, not my one per cent, but only one-half per cent of the total English population as hopelessly "down." It is a bad wastage when one thinks that every human creature is a temple of the Divine, but it is not so gloomy a position as most imagine. And it can, and it will be stopped. CHAPTER XI THE ARTS IN ENGLAND That the English are an "inartistic" people, without true appreciation of pictures, music, the drama, is a statement commonly made and commonly accepted without any very serious examination of the evidence for and against. A just judge giving the benefit of a close and impartial inquiry to the case of Madam England, indicted for that she is a Philistine without any true taste in, or proper love of, the arts, would be able to go no further than the Scottish verdict of "not proven." But few of those people who find England guilty without leaving the box have attempted to make any sound examination of the evidence available. They have heard of a Hanoverian monarch of past days, who despised "boetry und bainting," and have come to a settled conviction that that represented the English mind then and represents it now. Elsewhere I have maintained that a nation which has such a noble taste in parks and gardens as have the English must be "æsthetic" at heart; and "æsthetic" and "inartistic" are not compatible. But apart from Nature love and delight in gardening, there is a great deal of evidence to be cited in the Englishman's favour as a lover of the arts. It could certainly have been said with truth a few years ago, and probably could be said now, in spite of the recent rush of American buyers into the picture market, that the finest collection of Italian Masters of painting outside of Italy could be made from English galleries and English houses, and also the finest collection of Spanish Masters outside of Spain, of Flemish Masters outside the Low Countries, of French Masters outside of France. In short, one might get the finest and most complete collection representative of all the painting schools of the world from English collections.