The great English Parliament, the Senate that broke the English kings, had just moved its centre of existence. The new Houses of Parliament had opened with what seemed to the men of that time an opening world. A competition was started for the decoration of the halls, and Watts suddenly sprang into importance: he won the great prize. The cartoon of _Caractacus led in triumph through the streets of Rome_ was accepted from this almost nameless man by the great central power of English history. And until we have understood that fact we have not understood Watts: it was (one may be permitted to fancy) the supreme hour of his life. For Watts’ nature is essentially public--that is to say, it is modest and noble, and has nothing to hide. His art is an outdoor art, like that of the healthy ages of the world, like the statuesque art of Greece, like the ecclesiastical and external Gothic art of Christianity: an art that can look the sun in the face. He ought to be employed to paint factory chimneys and railway stations. I know that this will sound like an insolence: my only answer is that he, in accordance with this great conception of his, actually offered to paint a railway station. With a splendid and truly religious imagination, he asked permission to decorate Euston. The railway managers (not perceiving, in their dull classical routine, the wild poetry of their own station) declined. But until we have understood this immense notion of publicity in the soul of Watts, we have understood nothing. The fundamental modern fallacy is that the public life must be an artificial life. It is like saying that the public street must be an artificial air. Men like Watts, men like all the great heroes, only breathe in public. What is the use of abusing a man for publicity when he utters in public the true and the enduring things? What is the use, above all, of prying into his secrecy when he has cried his best from the house-tops?