Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/207

 for natural beauty, already manifest in the revolt against advertisement-boards in juxtaposition with notable scenery and even along the sides of railways (where one would have thought that a little more ugliness could do no great harm) will no doubt be accentuated when the unviolated virginities of Nature have become fewer; and a steady growth of public taste is evidenced even now by the success of the better sort of street advertisements and the failure of the uglier kind, as demonstrated by the steady abandonment of the latter. The most fashionable artists no longer think it beneath them to design wall-posters. If the advertisers who pay their large fees find it profitable to purchase art in an expensive market, it must be because popular taste is better than it used to be; and even if the cult of the photograph and the process block in illustrated newspapers, to the detriment of drawings and wood engravings, be cited as evidence in the other direction, we have a right to quote in rebuttal of this the rather violent efforts of the more intelligent class of amateurs to secure a recognition of selective and manipulated photography as an art. Moreover, just as some critics have argued that it is better for the people to read the atrocious letterpress of the popular papers than not to read anything, it can also presumably be contended that it is better for the people to look at photographs reproduced by