70 ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING

another, and one bad painting will often spoil a great many healthy judgments. I could name popular painters now living, who have retarded the taste of their generation by twenty years. Unless, therefore, we are certain not merely that we like a painting, but that we are right in liking it, we should never buy it. For there is one way of spending money which is perfectly safe, and in which we may be absolutely sure of doing good. I mean, by paying for simple sculpture of natural objects, chiefly flowers and animals. You are aware that the possibilities of error in sculpture are much less than in painting; it is altogether an easier and simpler art, invariably attaining perfection long before painting, in the progress of a national mind. It may indeed be corrupted by false taste, or thrown into erroneous forms; but for the most part, the feebleness of a sculptor is shown in imperfection and rudeness, rather than in definite error. He does not reach the fineness of the forms of Nature; but he approaches them truly up to a certain point, or, if not so, at all events an honest effort will continually improve him: so that if we set a simple natural form before him, and tell him to copy it, we are sure we have given him a wholesome and useful piece of education; but if we told him to paint it, he might, with all the honesty in the world, paint it wrongly, and falsely to the end of his days.¹

49. So much for the workman. But the workman is not the only person concerned. Observe farther, that when you buy a print, the enjoyment of it is confined to yourself and to your friends. But if you carve a piece of stone, and put it on the outside of your house, it will give pleasure to every person who passes along the street-to an innumerable multitude, instead of a few.

Nay, but, you say, we ourselves shall not be benefited by the sculpture on the outsides of our houses. Yes, you

¹ [In the MS. draft, and perhaps in the lecture as delivered, Ruskin here reverted to the lions on the Royal Institution:-

“Instead of sixty-six heads cut out of stone-suppose you had two lions cut out of white marble, with their glaring eyes inlaid in cairngorm, and every line studied from nature.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]