Eight years ago, in the close of the first volume of "Modern Painters,"I ventured to give the following advice to the young artists ofEngland:--
"They should go to nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with herlaboriously and trustingly, having no other thought but how best topenetrate her meaning; rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, andscorning nothing." Advice which, whether bad or good, involved infinitelabor and humiliation in the following it; and was therefore, for themost part, rejected.
It has, however, at last been carried out, to the very letter, by agroup of men who, for their reward, have been assailed with the mostscurrilous abuse which I ever recollect seeing issue from the publicpress. I have, therefore, thought it due to them to contradict thedirectly false statements which have been made respecting their works;and to point out the kind of merit which, however deficient in somerespects, those works possess beyond the possibility of dispute.