There is a prize for studies from life, given by the Society of Arts out of the income of a fund that was subscribed as a memorial to Mulready; and the studies are exhibited at these National Competitions. But the prize cannot now be given every year, as the income is too small. A patron of the Arts might well augment that fund. When models sit for great artists, they will ask them now and then why they do this or that and why they do it one way rather than another. Thinking the answers over and comparing them, the models get an insight into things that few critics understand. I have generally found professional models acuter than professional critics in their judgments upon works of art. In the days of the Pre-Raphaelites the professional critics did their best to crush the young men who could paint, and now-a-days they praise the young men who can neither paint nor draw. Both methods are annoying to real artists, though they will some day make their mark, whatever the critics may say. But the new method is more harmful, as it gives the scamps their chance. They see that critics can talk the public into giving 50 or 100 guineas for things that would not otherwise fetch more than 18 pence; and they can easily hoax the critics. I believe that public taste is guided more by Baedeker than by any other man or body of men or books. When I go sightseeing abroad, I see people of all nations relying on his Guides. They hardly look at anything unless it has a star *, and when there is a double star **, their admiration knows no bounds. Stars, however, rise and set, and single and double sometimes interchange. I have compared his treatment of the Brera at Milan in his _Northern Italy_ in the first English edition, 1868, and in the fourteenth, 1913. (I had these with me on the earliest and the latest of my visits there.) In 1868 six pictures have a star, and one has a double star. In 1913 the double star remains, and two of the single stars, but the other four have disappeared; and there now are stars to seven pictures that had none in 1868. And people go star-gazing just the same. My father made old Baedeker’s acquaintance in 1839 or ’40, and formed a very high opinion of him. At that time he was a bookseller in Coblence, and little known outside the Rhineland, the subject of his earliest Guide. Thirty years ago I thought that Hendschel would oust Bradshaw just as Baedeker had ousted Murray; but the Continental Bradshaw was afterwards brought up to date, and Murray’s Guides were not.