His Views and Principles
statuettes were no longer in the drawing room on my next visit.
Would that I could persuade the world to act as promptly and as sensibly as good Mr. Laskin. Yet our Art Galleries and Museums, when they are not filled with the representations of Popish Virgins and Martyrs, teem with so-called works of art such as I have just described. I sometimes see ministers of religion, schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, even mothers and aunts, conducting bands of children round the establishments which the nation is wasteful and wicked enough to support; and I confess that I view such a sight with very great misgiving, or rather, with horror. How can that be right in art which is admittedly wrong and monstrous in life? If I am not to gaze at the nude and exposed forms of the lady Sunday School teachers, why in heaven's name should this great Protestant and Christian nation subsidize exhibitions which contain dozens of such forms, forms, moreover, which in many cases add to the offence of their nakedness by
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