PBC: EXTRACT FROM GEORGE DU MAURIER, SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE (1898).

The plays and novels that succeed the most are those which treat of the life of our own day; not so the costly pictures we hang upon our walls. We do not care to have continually before our eyes elaborate representations of the life we lead every day and all day long; we like best that which rather takes us out of it—romantic or graceful episodes of another time or clime, when men wore prettier clothes than they do now—well-imagined, well-painted scenes from classic lore—historical subjects—subjects selected from our splendid literature and what not; or, if we want modern subjects, we prefer scenes chosen from a humble sphere, which is not that of those who can afford to buy pictures—the toilers of the earth—the toilers of the sea—pathetic scenes from the inexhaustible annals of the poor; or else, again, landscapes and seascapes—things that bring a whiff of nature into our feverish and artificial existence—that are in direct contrast to it.

And even with these beautiful things, how often the charm wears away with the novelty of possession! How often and how soon the lovely picture, like its frame, becomes just as a piece of wall-furniture, in which we take a pride, certainly, and which we should certainly miss if it were taken away—but which we grow to look at with the pathetic indifference of habit—if not, indeed, with aversion!

Chairs and tables minister to our physical comforts, and we cannot do without them. But pictures have not this practical hold upon us; the sense to which they appeal is not always on the alert; yet there they are hanging on the wall, morning, noon, and night, unchanged, unchangeable—the same arrested movement—the same expression of face—the same seas and trees and moors and forests and rivers and mountains—the very waves are as eternal as the hills!

Music will leave off when it is not wanted—at least it ought to! The book is shut, the newspaper thrown aside. Not so the beautiful picture; it is like a perennial nosegay, for ever exhaling its perfume for noses that have long ceased to smell it!

But little pictures in black and white, of little every-day people like ourselves, by some great little artist who knows life well and has the means at his command to express his knowledge in this easy, simple manner, can be taken up and thrown down like the book or newspaper. They are even easier to read and understand. They are within the reach of the meanest capacity, the humblest education, the most slender purse. They come to us weekly, let us say, in cheap periodicals. They are preserved and bound up in volumes, to be taken down and looked at when so disposed. The child grows to love them before he knows how to read; fifty years hence he will love them still, if only for the pleasure they gave him as a child. He will soon know them by heart, and yet go to them again and again;…