The question is, how has the falling-off in Italian painting been caused? And by doing what may we again get Bellinis and Andrea Mantegnas as in old time? The fault does not lie in any want of raw material: nor yet does it lie in want of taking pains. The modern Italian painter frets himself to the full as much as his predecessor did--if the truth were known, probably a great deal more. I am sure Titian did not take much pains after he was more than about twenty years old. It does not lie in want of schooling or art education. For the last three hundred years, ever since the Caraccis opened their academy at Bologna, there has been no lack of art education in Italy. Curiously enough, the date of the opening of the Bolognese Academy coincides as nearly as may be with the complete decadence of Italian painting. The academic system trains boys to study other people's works rather than nature, and, as Leonardo da Vinci so well says, it makes them nature's grandchildren and not her children. This I believe is at any rate half the secret of the whole matter. If half-a-dozen young Italians could be got together with a taste for drawing; if they had power to add to their number; if they were allowed to see paintings and drawings done up to the year A.D. 1510, and votive pictures and the comic papers; if they were left with no other assistance than this, absolutely free to please themselves, and could be persuaded not to try and please any one else, I believe that in fifty years we should have all that was ever done repeated with fresh naivete, and as much more delightfully than even by the best old masters, as these are more delightful than anything we know of in classic painting. The young plants keep growing up abundantly every day--look at Bastianini, dead not ten years since--but they are browsed down by the academies. I remember there came out a book many years ago with the title, "What becomes of all the clever little children?" I never saw the book, but the title is pertinent.