Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/208

 "process" than not to look at any pictures at all, though, in reality, it is doubtful whether bad pictures and inferior "literature" are not much worse and much more degrading to popular taste than none. That we really do care for pictures even in England (however little critical ability we may possess to distinguish good pictures from bad) is evidenced by the crowds which throng the Royal Academy. It would be better if they thronged the National Gallery; but even the Royal Academy is evidence: and the success of the sixpenny-admission plan on the days when it is adopted, and the large attendance at Burlington House on Bank Holidays, prove that the taste for pictures is shared even by the least educated part of the public. Thus there is no reason to be found in present tendencies for apprehending a decay of æestheticism as a result of material progress. Probably even the cheap papers will eventually improve, both in their reading-matter and in their illustrations, when it grows less profitable than it is at present to print the worst attainable examples of both.

Of course it would be very easy to argue that the tendency of all this is rather to develop a somewhat higher standard of mediocrity than to produce brilliant examples of art in any manifestation. Beauty, up to a certain point, can be bought. The demand will evoke the