them.  The visitors to a museum are like travellers in a foreign country, of whom Emerson truly says that when they leave it they take nothing away but what they brought with them.  The finest wood carving, the most beautiful vase, the richest classic painting, produces on the uncultivated eye no more valuable or lasting impression than the sight of a sailing ship for the first time produces on the mind of a savage.  That is to say, the impression at the best is of wonder, not of delight or curiosity at all.  In the picture galleries, it is true, the dull eyes are lifted and the weary faces brighten, because here, if you plea, we touch upon that art which every human being all over the world can appreciate.  It is the art of story-telling.  The visitors go from picture to picture and they read the stories.  As for landscapes, figures, portraits, or slabs, they pass them by.  What they love is a picture of life in action, a picture that tells a story and quicken their pulses.  You may observe this in every picture gallery—­even at the Grosvenor and the Royal Academy—­even among the classes who are supposed to know something of Art:  for one who studies a portrait by Millsis, or a head by Leighton, there are crowds who stand before a picture which tells a story.  At the Royal Academy the story is generally, but not always, read in silence; at Bethnal Green it is read aloud.  You will perhaps observe the importance of this difference.  It is because at the Royal Academy everybody has the feeling that he is present in the character of a critic, and must therefore affect, at least, to be considering the workmanship, and passing a judgment on the artist.  But at Bethnal Green the visitors feel that they have been invited to be pleased, to wonder, and to admire the beautiful stories represented on the canvas by clever men who have learnt this trade.  As for how a story may be told on canvas, the way in which the conception of the artist has been executed, the truth of the drawing, the fidelity of colouring—­on these points no questions are asked and no curiosity is expressed.  Why should they?  Painting they regard as one of the arts which may be learned for a trade, like matchmaking or shoemaking.  Remember that it never occurs to people to learn the mysteries of any trade beside their own.  On my last visit to this museum, for instance, I chanced upon two women who were standing before a vase.  It was a large and very beautiful vase, of admirable form and proportions, and it was decorated on the top by a group representing three captives chained to the rock.  Their comment on this work of art was as follows:  ‘Look,’ said one, ’look at those poor men chained to the rock.’  ‘Yes,’ replied the other, ’poor fellows! ain’t it shocking?’

To their eyes the only thing to be looked at was the group of figures, and the only suggestion made to their minds by the vase related to the story, thus half told, of the captives.  As for the vase itself, it was nothing; the workmanship and painting were nothing; the sculpturing of the figures was nothing.