INDUSTRIAL ART.                            503
art, faith in modes and processes, as influencing the production of excellent
works, or accounting for their excellence, may be reckoned amongst the lost
creeds. Sir Joshua Reynolds making a section of a picture by an older master,
or successively removing each coat or painting of it, from the varnish to
the
canvas, in order to find out the processes by which it was produced, is only
a
refined imitation of the boy who made a surgical investigation within the
interior
of a pair of bellows to find out where the wind came from.  The process of


Kir  C  n


'-o


II


11                aII


D


French EnameZed Vases.


painting had as little to do with the beauty and attractiveness of the picture
as
with the same features of Sir Joshua's own work; and whilst the world is
daily
and hourly increasing its love for and appreciation of the pictures produced
by
the first president of the English Royal Academy, all lovers of art must
regret
the useless experiments made by him, which have resulted in the premature
decay and destruction of many of his most beautiful works. A fruitless effort
to discover and take advantage of a secret when there was none to be found,
sacrificed much of his own work which would otherwise have been equally
permanent, and, as many would think, equal also in beauty, to the subject
of
his inquiry. Still less can monopoly of industrial art in any of its departments