I have at the same time made a change in the minute relating to the conditions of that post, which to a greater extent than was formerly the case associates the trustees of the National Gallery in the work of selection with the new director. The trustees have been hitherto rather those flies on the wheel of which we read in ancient fable. It is now proposed to make them working wheels, and to make them work well and co-operatively with the new director. ["Hear! Hear!">[ I hope that this arrangement will be satisfactory in its results. But, Mr. President, I have long thought, as an individual, that the task of a Minister or of a Government in co-operating with the Royal Academy, and with those who have art at heart, ought not to end with a mere appointment of this description. I take a larger view of the responsibilities of my office, and I should be glad to offer to you with great respect a few suggestions that have recently occurred to me with regard to the present position of English art, which I regard with some misgivings.

There is, first, the subject of portraiture. I am deeply concerned for the future condition of portrait-painting. It is not, as you may imagine, with any distrust whatever of those distinguished men who take a part in that branch of art; it is much more for the subjects that I am concerned. [Laughter.] And it is not so much with the subjects as with that important part of the subject which was illustrated in the famous work "Sartor Resartus," by the great Carlyle, that I chiefly trouble myself. How can it be that any man should make a decent portrait of his fellow-man in these days? No one can entertain so vindictive a hatred of his fellow-creature as to wish to paint him in the costume in which I am now addressing you. [Laughter.] I believe that that costume is practically dropped for all purposes of portraiture; and if that be so, in what costume is the Englishman of the present century to descend to remotest posterity through the vehicle of the gifted artists whom I see around me? We are not all sufficiently fortunate to be the Chancellor of the University. [Laughter and cheers.] We have not always even the happy chance to be a municipal dignitary, with a costume which I will not at present characterize. [Laughter.] We are not all of us masters of hounds; and I think that the robes of a peer, unattractive in their æsthetic aspect, have lost something of their popularity. [Laughter.] Again, the black velvet coat, with which we are accustomed to associate deep thought and artistic instincts, has become a little faded. [Laughter.]

I am told, and told four or five times every day in speeches delivered in various parts of the country, that I have no right to offer a criticism without offering a suggestive remedy. Well, Sir Frederic, I am prepared to offer my remedy for what it is worth, and for that reason I ask your co-operation. Why should not a committee of the Royal Academy gather together in order to find some chaste and interesting national costume, in which the distinguished men of the nineteenth century might descend to posterity without the drawbacks which I have pointed out? Robespierre had such a costume designed, and other great sumptuary legislators have had the same idea in their minds; and I would not push the suggestion so far as to imply that we should be compelled to wear this costume in ordinary life. It might be one kept to gratify the artistic instincts of those to whom we sit. [Laughter.] And I will make a practical suggestion by which this costume—when you, sir, have selected it—might be associated with the ordinary run of life. It might be made an official costume of a justice of the peace, and in that way the great mass of our fellow-countrymen, with only a few and insignificant exceptions, of whom I am one, might descend to remotest posterity in a graceful, becoming, and official costume. [Laughter.]

I pass on from that, because I should not limit myself to portraiture in a great survey of this kind; and I may say that I am seriously concerned for the prospects of landscape painting in this country. I have of late been doing a great deal of light travelling in behalf of the respectable firm which I represent [laughter], and I beg at once to give notice, in the hearing of the noble marquis who is more to your left [Lord Salisbury], that I now nail to the counter any proposal to call me a political bagman as wanting in originality and wit. [Laughter.]

But I have been doing a certain amount of light travelling in behalf of our excellent and creditable firm. The other day, on returning from Manchester, I was deeply and hideously impressed with the fact that all along that line of railway which we traversed, the whole of a pleasing landscape was entirely ruined by appeals to the public to save their constitutions but ruin their æsthetic senses by a constant application of a particular form of pill. [Laughter and cheers.]

Now, Sir Frederic, I view that prospect with the gravest misgiving. What is to become of our English landscape if it is to be simply a sanitary or advertising appliance? [Laughter.] I appeal to my right honorable friend the Chancellor of the Duchy [James Bryce], who sits opposite to me. His whole heart is bound up in a proposition for obtaining free access to the mountains of the Highlands. But what advantage will it be to him, or to those whose case he so justly and eloquently espouses, if at the top of Schiehallion, or any other mountain which you may have in your mind's eye, the bewildered climber can only find an advertisement of some remedy of the description of which I have mentioned [cheers], an advertisement of a kind common, I am sorry to say, in the United States—and I speak with reverence in the presence of the ambassador of that great community—but it would be in the Highlands distressing to the deer and infinitely perplexing even to the British tourist. [Laughter and cheers.]

But I turned my eyes mentally from the land, and I said that, after all, the great painter of the present may turn to the sea, and there at least he is safe. There are effects on the ocean which no one can ruin, which not even a pill can impair. [Laughter.] But I was informed in confidence—it caused me some distress—that the same enterprising firm which has placarded our rural recesses, has offered a mainsail free of expense to every ship that will accept it, on condition that it bears the same hideous legend upon it to which I have referred. [Laughter.] Think, Mr. President, of the feelings of the illustrious Turner if he returned to life to see the luggers and the coasting ships which he has made so glorious in his paintings, converted into a simple vehicle for the advertisement of a quack medicine—although I will not say "quack," because that is actionable [laughter]—I will say of a medicine of which I do not know the properties. [Laughter.]

But I turned my eyes beyond the land and ocean, and I turned them to the heavens, and I said, "There, at any rate, we are safe." The painter of the present may turn his eye from the land and ocean, but in the skies he can always find some great effect which cannot be polluted. At this moment I looked from the railway-carriage window, and I saw the skeleton of a gigantic tower arising. It had apparently been abandoned at a lofty stage, possibly in consequence of the workmen having found that they spoke different languages at the height at which they had arrived. [Laughter.] I made inquiries, and I found that it was the enterprise of a great speculator, who resides himself on a mountain, and who is equally prepared to bore under the ocean or ascend into the heavens. I was given to understand that this admirable erection comprised all the delights of a celestial occupation without any detachment from terrestrial pursuits. [Laughter.] But I am bound to say that if buildings of that kind are to cover this country, and if they are to be joined to the advertising efforts to which I have alluded, neither earth, nor sea, nor sky in Great Britain will be fit subject for any painter. [Cheers.]

What, then, is the part of Her Majesty's Government in this critical and difficult circumstance? We have—no, I will not say we have, because there would be a protest on the left—but different governments have added allotments to the attractions of rural neighborhoods. I venture to think that an allotment is not an unpicturesque thing. Certainly, small holdings are more picturesque than large holdings, but I do not say that from the point of view in which Sydney Smith said that the difference between the picturesque and the beautiful was that the rector's horse was beautiful, and that the curate's horse was picturesque. [Laughter.] I simply mean that a small holding is more picturesque than a large holding, and I think we may hope that the parish councils, if they meet, as they did in primeval times, under the shade of some large spreading oak, and not in the public house which we so much fear, as their headquarters, may yet add a picturesque feature to the rural landscape of Great Britain.

But there is one feature at which a government can always aim as adding to the landscape of Great Britain. In a very famous but too little read novel, "Pelham," by the late Lord Lytton, there is a passage which always struck me greatly. It is where Pelham goes to see an uncle from whom he is to inherit a great estate, and he asks what the uncle has done to beautify that exquisite spot. The uncle says that he has done nothing but added the most beautiful feature of landscape, which is happy faces. Well, the Government in its immediate neighborhood has little to do with making happy faces. [Laughter.] It certainly does not make its opponents happy, except on rare occasions when it leaves office, and it is not always so fortunate as to make its supporters happy. [Laughter.] But I believe that in this country all governments do aim in their various ways and methods at making a happy population around them; and in that respect, in adding happy faces to the landscape, whether we fail or whether we succeed, we have a good-will in the work, and I am quite sure we have the hearty encouragement of the great and brilliant assembly which I address. [Loud cheers.]