Fine art chiefly contemporary Author:William Michael Rossetti Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. THE EPOCHS OF ART AS REPRESENTED IN THE CRYSTAL PALACE. The very large and miscellaneous collection of objects of nature, art, science, and manufac... more »ture, gathered together at the Crystal Palace, professes to minister to instruction as well as recreation. Before proceeding to consider the phases of art as here represented, we must spare one glance to the especial character of the instruction supplied. Suggestions have not been wanting that a student of Praeadamite matters would derive more advantage from the study of actual fragments than from ever so much contemplation of Mr. Hawkins's and Professor Owen's bran- new resuscitations. No doubt of it. A person already learned in the question knows all that can be shown him of it here: a .thorough investigator of the question will not accept an inadequate material symbol of the results of a predecessor's investigation. But it is not the less true that an uninformed person, or one having a smattering of knowledge and a superficial interest in the subject, would neither understand nor investigate the fragments, nor even wish to do so; while he will immediately and without labour gain from the models in the Sydenham garden-lake as tolerable an idea of the appearance, habits, and affinities, of the antediluvians, as the first science of the day can put into shape. Owen and Hawkins know more of the matter than they have expressed here, and the visitor must study as hard and possess equal capacity if he wants to know the same. He will never acquire an equal amount of knowledge even by studying the models thoroughly, and he is not likely to do that; but he will get general and distinct notions on the subject after a visit of a few hours, such as no quantity of unsystematic piecemeal reading or helpless inspection of authentic ...« less