408 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

armour that Turner might bear away a dishonourable victory in the noble passage of arms to which he has challenged his rival from the grave.* Nor can the public suppose that the curators of the National Gallery have any interest in destroying the works with which they are intrusted. If, acting to the best of their judgment, they have done harm, to whom are we to look for greater prudence or better success? Are the public prepared to withdraw their confidence from Sir C. Eastlake and the members of the Royal Academy, and intrust the national property to Mr. Morris Moore, or to any of the artists and amateurs who have inflamed the sheets of the Times with their indignation? Is it not evident that the only security which the nation can possess for its pictures must be found in taking such measures as may in future prevent the necessity of their being touched at all? For this is very certain, that all question respecting the effects of cleaning is merely one of the amount of injury. Every picture which has undergone more friction than is necessary at intervals for the removal of dust or chill¹ has suffered injury to some extent. The last touches of the master leave the surface of the colour with a certain substantial texture, the bloom of which, if once reached under the varnish, must inevitably be more or less removed by friction of any kind,-how much more by friction aided by solvents? I am well assured that every possessor of pictures who truly loves them, would keep-if it might be-their surfaces from

* The public may not, perhaps, be generally aware that the condition by which the nation retains the two pictures bequeathed to it by Turner, and now in the National Gallery, is that “they shall be hung beside Claudes.”2

¹ [The word “chill” in the Times was printed “dirt” in Arrows of the Chace. In the MS. draft the word is “damp.” Chill or damp seems to be what Ruskin meant: see the end of § 6, below.]

² [“Dido building Carthage” (No. 498), and “The Sun rising in a Mist” (No. 479). The actual wording of Turner’s will on the matter ran thus: “I direct that the said pictures, or paintings, shall be hung, kept, and placed, that is to say, always between the two pictures painted by Claude, the Seaport and the Mill.” Accordingly they now hang side by side with these two pictures (Nos. 5 and 12) in the National Gallery.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]