PREFACE. It is no doubt the business of artists to educate the public in matters of art by raising the standard of taste through their own productions, whether these are the form of architecture, sculpture painting, or the industrial arts. And it is equaly without doubt that public opinion remts, and not dvays too favourably, upon art, by creating a demand which can but rarely be up to the required leveI of taste and critical knowledge and this must be the case so long as that class of the public which possesses the means of encouraging art remains for the most part in a Dogberry-like belief that the appreciation of what is excellent in architecture, painting, or sculpture comes by nature. To be born with a love for the arts is doubtless a gift of fortune, which is possibly completely denied to many people though, however small the natural gift, it can be encouraged into the right direction. There are some amateurs of who have acquired in the course of their life a critical knowledge of the subject inferior to none- their strong predictions leading them to devote themselves to it almost as though it were the business of their lives. This class of connoisseurs, or diIettanti, or amateurs, as they are variously caIled, has already existed in greater or less numbers wherever there has been any cultivation of art but, whereas the patronage of the arts was formerly confined to a small class, in tho present day we lve entered upon a new and different phase.......