I have been informed that, since the time of which I am writing, the
business of gentlemen of Mr. Pickup's class has rather fallen off,
and that there are dealers in pictures, nowadays, who are as just and
honorable men as can be found in any profession or calling, anywhere
under the sun. This change, which I report with sincerity and reflect on
with amazement, is, as I suspect, mainly the result of certain wholesale
modern improvements in the position of contemporary Art, which
have necessitated improvements and alterations in the business of
picture-dealing.

In my time, the encouragers of modern painting were limited in number
to a few noblemen and gentlemen of ancient lineage, who, in matters of
taste, at least, never presumed to think for themselves. They either
inherited or bought a gallery more or less full of old pictures. It was
as much a part of their education to put their faith in these on hearsay
evidence, as to put their faith in King, Lords and Commons. It was an
article of their creed to believe that the dead painters were the great
men, and that the more the living painters imitated the dead, the better
was their chance of becoming at some future day, and in a minor degree,
great also. At certain times and seasons, these noblemen and gentlemen
self-distrustfully strayed into the painting-room of a modern artist,
self-distrustfully allowed themselves to be rather attracted by his
pictures, self-distrustfully bought one or two of them at prices which
would appear so incredibly low, in these days, that I really cannot
venture to quote them. The picture was sent home; the nobleman or
gentleman (almost always an amiable and a hospitable man) would ask the
artist to his house and introduce him to the distinguished individuals
who frequented it; but would never admit his picture, on terms of
equality, into the society even of the second-rate Old Masters. His work
was hung up in any out-of-the-way corner of the gallery that could be
found; it had been bought under protest; it was admitted by sufferance;
its freshness and brightness damaged it terribly by contrast with the
dirtiness and the dinginess of its elderly predecessors; and its only
points selected for praise were those in which it most nearly resembled
the peculiar mannerism of some Old Master, not those in which it
resembled the characteristics of the old mistress--Nature.