The upshot of all this has been the creation of a distinct and new subject of investigation and study. Men and women get up painting as other men and women get up botany, or entomology, or conchology, and a very good subject painting is for the purpose. It is innocent, pretty, and cheap;--for I take the fact of the tour to be given as a matter of course. It leads its pursuers to nothing disagreeable, and is as open to women as to men. And it leads to very little boring of other people who are not tourists, which, perhaps, is its greatest advantage; for though the art tourist will sometimes talk to you of pictures, what is that to the persecution which you are called on to endure in inspecting cupboards full of pickled snakes or legions of drawers full of empty egg-shells? The work of an art tourist must at least be more attractive than the unalluring task of collecting postage-stamps and monograms. And, above all, let it be remembered that if it so chance that the art tourist have an eye in his head, he may at last become a lover of art.
The work of the art tourist begins about the middle of September, is carried on hotly for that and the next three months, and then completes its season at Rome in Easter. It flourishes, however, only in autumn, as the normal art tourist is one who is either away from his business for his holiday, or whose period of travelling is dependent on some such person. The work is begun at the Louvre, for the disciple in this school of learning will never condescend to use our own National Gallery, though for the purposes of such learning our own is perhaps the best gallery in the world. He begins in the Louvre; and, indeed, in the tribune of that gallery, under the influence of the great picture by Paul Veronese, which is probably the most marvellous piece of painting in the world, the resolution to get up painting is often taken by the young scholar. Then the galleries of Italy are seen--Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome, and perhaps Naples; Antwerp and Bruges probably come next; and then Dresden, Munich, and Vienna. By this time the art tourist is no longer a tyro, but, stored with much knowledge, burns for the acquisition of more. He pines after Madrid and Seville, and steals a day or two from some year's holiday for Amsterdam and the Hague. He works hard and conscientiously at his galleries, as though he could turn aside in idleness from no wall, on which pictures are hung, without dishonesty.