Say an old gentleman with his wife and two or three daughters come by mistake into an exhibition with the catalogue of some other exhibition in their possession. They glance at a picture, and fall into raptures over it: 'Beautiful, the _feeling_ is delightful. What force of touch, strength of character! Who is it by? Number So-and-So. Ah! I knew it.' (The number in the wrong catalogue points to a well-known name.) 'I felt that I could not be mistaken.' (The old gentleman adjusts his glasses and looks at the title with triumphant conviction.) 'Odd title, though, for the subject; eccentricity of genius, I suppose. No matter, it is splendid. Quite Dutch-like in its subtlety; quite Israely in its character; delicate, refined, realistic, bold, masterly!' One of the daughters, blessed with keener vision, has here discovered another signature on the corner of this masterpiece, a name not in the fashion, in fact one despised. 'Papa, it isn't by Mr. Smudge, R.A.; it is by Ernest Tyro.' 'Eh! what? Nonsense! why, the catalogue says Smudge.' The mistake is discovered, and at once the tune changes. 'Ah! vulgar, coarse, commonplace. Let us go out before we are contaminated.' Now, this is the comic part of it, with a dash of the pitiful. What difference did that signature make in the merit of the picture? If it was delicate, refined, bold, masterly before, how could it be vulgar, coarse, or commonplace afterwards? A man with piles of money to spend and a moderate modicum of brains gets hauled into the artistic stream, and goes gasping and spluttering around, spending his money on what he knows nothing about, and never will while God blesses him with cash, and his tongue can patter cant. Somebody takes him kindly in hand and educates him, as Buchanan did James VI.; he raves about the painter he has been taught to consider the master. 'Look at it! what colour, what masterly brush-marks. Did you ever see the like of that?' Never, except in a white-washer with his broad brush, or a scavenger sweeping a crossing. In his natural state he may get a picture which he can comprehend, because the houses are like the houses he sees every day, and the trees have branches and leaves definitely painted on them; that picture represented Nature as he saw her, therefore he considered it good. But under training he is taught to despise this sort of thing, and obediently despises it; the old love is turned out or with its face to the wall, and the splashes which have neither form nor finish are doted upon. Would this man care to have a wife without a nose or with indefinite features? Would he be charmed with the colour of a mashed-up bit of flesh? It is all right enough for musicians to rave over the sweetness of a piece of catgut, but the world wants to hear the whole tune, and what we as artists know to be good quality is comical affectation on their part.