A snug and a clean home, no matter how tiny it be, so that it be wholesome; windows into which the sun can shine cheerily; a few good books (and who need be without a few good books in these days of universal cheapness?)—­no duns at the door, and the cupboard well supplied, and with a flower in your room!  There is none so poor as not to have about him these elements of pleasure.

But why not, besides the beauty of Nature, have a taste for the beauty of Art?  Why not hang up a picture in the room?  Ingenious methods have been discovered—­some of them quite recently—­for almost infinitely multiplying works of art, by means of wood engravings, lithographs, photographs, and autotypes, which render it possible for every person to furnish his rooms with beautiful pictures.  Skill and science have thus brought Art within reach of the poorest.

Any picture, print, or engraving, that represents a noble thought, that depicts a heroic act, or that brings a bit of nature from the fields or the streets into our room, is a teacher, a means of education, and a help to self-culture.  It serves to make the home more pleasant and attractive.  It sweetens domestic life, and sheds a grace and beauty about it.  It draws the gazer away from mere considerations of self, and increases his store of delightful associations with the world without, as well as with the world within.

The portrait of a great man, for instance, helps us to read his life.  It invests him with a personal interest.  Looking at his features, we feel as if we knew him better, and were more closely related to him.  Such a portrait, hung up before us daily, at our meals and during our leisure hours, unconsciously serves to lift us up and sustain us.  It is a link that in some way binds us to a higher and nobler nature.

It is said of a Catholic money-lender that when about to cheat, he was wont to draw a veil over the face of his favourite saint.  Thus the portraiture of a great and virtuous man is in some measure a companionship of something better than ourselves; and though we may not reach the standard of the hero, we may to a certain extent be influenced by his likeness on our walls.

It is not necessary that a picture should be high-priced in order to be beautiful and good.  We have seen things for which hundreds of guineas have been paid, that have not one-hundredth part of the meaning or beauty that is to be found in Linton’s woodcut of Rafaelle’s Madonna, which may be had for twopence.  The head reminds one of the observation made by Hazlitt upon a picture, that it seems as if an unhandsome act would be impossible in its presence.  It embodies the ideas of mother’s love, womanly beauty, and earnest piety.  As some one said of the picture:  “It looks as if a bit of Heaven were in the room.”

Picture-fanciers pay not so much for the merit, as for the age and the rarity of their works.  The poorest may have the seeing eye for beauty, while the rich man may be blind to it.  The cheapest engraving may communicate the sense of beauty to the artizan, while the thousand-guinea picture may fail to communicate to the millionaire anything,—­excepting perhaps the notion that he has got possession of a work which the means of other people cannot compass.