89. You will, however, I fear, imagine me indulging in my usual paradox, when I assure you that all the efforts we have been making to surround ourselves with heterogeneous means of instruction, will have the exactly reverse effect from that which we intend;--and that, whereas formerly we were able only to do a little well, we are qualifying ourselves now to do everything ill. Nor is the result confined to our workmen only. The introduction of French dexterity and of German erudition has been harmful chiefly to our most accomplished artists--and in the last Exhibition of our Royal Academy there was, I think, no exception to the manifest fact that every painter of reputation painted worse than he did ten years ago. 90. Admitting, however, (not that I suppose you will at once admit, but for the sake of argument, supposing,) that this is true, what, we have further to ask, can be done to discourage ourselves from calamitous emulation, and withdraw our workmen from the sight of what is too good to be of use to them? But this question is not one which can be determined by the needs, or limited to the circumstances of Art. To live generally more modest and contented lives; to win the greatest possible pleasure from the smallest things; to do what is likely to be serviceable to our immediate neighbours, whether it seem to them admirable or not; to make no pretence of admiring what has really no hold upon our hearts; and to be resolute in refusing all additions to our learning, until we have perfectly arranged and secured what learning we have got;--these are conditions, and laws, of unquestionable σοφίa and σωφροσύνη, which will indeed lead us up to fine art if we are resolved to have it fine; but will also do what is much better, make rude art precious. 91. It is not, however, by any means necessary that provincial art _should_ be rude, though it may be singular. Often it is no less delicate than quaint, and no less refined in grace than original in character. This is likely always to take place when a people of naturally fine artistic temper work with the respect which, as I endeavoured to show you in a former lecture, ought always to be paid to local material and circumstance. I have placed in your educational series the photograph of the door of a wooden house in Abbeville, and of the winding stair above; both so exquisitely sculptured that the real vine-leaves which had wreathed themselves about their pillars, cannot, in the photograph, be at once discerned from the carved foliage. The latter, quite as graceful, can only be known for art by its quaint setting. Yet this school of sculpture is altogether provincial. It could only have risen in a richly-wooded chalk country, where the sapling trees beside the brooks gave example to the workman of the most intricate tracery, and the white cliffs above the meadows furnished docile material to his hand.