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N a country that places art before all other considerations, suggestions for turning artistic enthusiasm to practical account should not be out of place. does not propose to upset the picture market, which is after all the goose that lays the golden egg, nor to compete with publications which report picture sales and dealers’ tips. It merely intends to state a few general principles drawn from a study of the financial history of modern art.

For this month we shall confine ourselves to a consideration of the individual who has only a little money to risk, but who is willing to wait twenty-five years for his returns. Let us say boldly that any one of this description can make a considerable fortune by using the proper system. "Provided only," you suggest, "he has also a little taste." On the contrary: it is not a matter of taste at all. The chances are all against you if you use your taste. By taste we mean, I suppose, a proper appreciation of the proper old masters, the ability to tell by looking at a picture whether to praise it without first hunting for the signature, perhaps even the ability to tell by looking at a picture in the morning what it is going to sell for in the afternoon. This sort of taste is obviously not worth anything when you are trying to decide in the morning what a picture is going to sell for in twenty-five years. And what we have said about your own taste applies to competent advice which is after all only somebody else's taste. Probably only ten men in a generation have a line on what the next generation is going to think it likes, and the chances are all against your meeting one of them. You might not get along with the queer fish if you did.

The winning system is this: whenever you see a picture which you see nothing in, and nobody of taste sees anything in, acquire it as cheaply as you can and put it away where it will not annoy you. The fact that you see nothing in it simply means that you have not seen anything like it before. Conversely, when you see a picture and at once something inside you says, "This picture appears to me to be a cuckoo," and every one agrees with you: keep away from that picture; or if you do buy it, remember that it is only a luxury. You may, it is true, make fifty per cent. on it in a few years, but the really