I am confident of the truth and propriety of the advice which I have recommended; at the same time I am aware how much by this advice I have laid myself open to the sarcasms of those critics who imagine our Art to be a matter of inspiration. But I should be sorry it should appear even to myself that I wanted that courage which I have recommended to the Students in another way; equal courage, perhaps, is required in the adviser and the advised; they both must equally dare and bid defiance to narrow criticism and vulgar opinion. That the Art has been in a gradual state of decline, from the age of Michel Angelo to the present, must be acknowledged; and we may reasonably impute this declension to the same cause to which the ancient Critics and Philosophers have imputed the corruption of eloquence. Indeed, the same causes are likely at all times and in all ages to produce the same effects; indolence--not taking the same pains as our great predecessors took--desiring to find a shorter way--are the general imputed causes. The words of Petronius[19] are very remarkable. After opposing the natural chaste beauty of the eloquence of former ages to the strained, inflated style then in fashion, "neither," says he, "has the Art of Painting had a better fate, after the boldness of the Egyptians had found out a compendious way to execute so great an art." By _compendious_, I understand him to mean a mode of Painting such as has infected the style of the later Painters of Italy and France; commonplace, without thought, and with as little trouble, working as by a receipt; in contradistinction to that style for which even a relish cannot be acquired without care and long attention, and most certainly the power of executing cannot be obtained without the most laborious application. I have endeavoured to stimulate the ambition of Artists to tread in this great path of glory, and, as well as I can, have pointed out the track which leads to it, and have at the same time told them the price at which it may be obtained. It is an ancient saying, that labour is the price which the gods have set upon everything valuable.