The following letter is Mr. Horsfall's answer to the one published in the _Manchester Courier_, August 30, 1890:--
SWANSCOE PARK, NEAR MACCLESFIELD, _August 20, 1890_.
DEAR SIR FREDERIC LEIGHTON,--It is most kind of you to answer my letter so fully. I shall show my gratitude by doing my best to make your counsel as useful as possible to Manchester.
The system which you suggest for giving some idea of masterpieces which are too distant to be visited seems to me to be admirable, and I cannot but believe that it will be adopted in one of our Manchester Galleries.
With regard to the advisableness of choosing for public galleries chiefly pictures of noble subjects respecting which most people have, when they see the pictures, or can be expected to gain, some knowledge, though I feel the great weight of your argument, I am still of the same opinion. I may say this without presumption, because the great question which we are discussing: "How can Art be made most useful to England?" involves the two other questions: "What are the best conditions under which artists can work?" and "How can the best work of artists be made to influence the rest of the community?" In considering the second of these questions an artist is, I think, impeded by his special gifts, while I, not an artist, aided by the _qualités de mes défauts_, and by the results of several years of experiment in the use of pictures, believe myself to have gained much trustworthy knowledge! Speaking from the standpoint which I have thus reached, I should say that whilst the artist is most conscious of the analogy which exists between painting and instrumental music, there is really a much closer analogy between painting and poetry, or between painting and song, and that it is this closer analogy which should guide the action of the directors of public galleries. Painting deals, while instrumental music does not, with subjects respecting which we think and feel, and it must accept the results for good and evil of this; its products cannot be, as instrumental music is, without definite relation to our feeling and thought, and a simply neutral relation being impossible, the relation must be ennobling or debasing in some degree. I think that my analysis of the conditions which must be fulfilled if the relations is to be an ennobling one was sound.