Connected with it there might be schools of design for improvement in
ornamental manufacture, the development of architecture, and whatever
aids to refine and give beauty to social life, including a simple
academic system for the elementary branches of drawing and coloring,
upon a scientific basis of accumulated knowledge and experience,
providing models and other advantages not readily accessible to
private resources, but leaving individual genius free to follow its
own promptings upon a well-laid technical foundation. As soon as the
young artist has acquired the grammar of his profession, he should be
sent forth to study directly from Nature and to mature his invention
unfettered by authoritative academic system, which more frequently
fosters conventionalism and imposes trammels upon talent than endows
it with strength and freedom.
Such is a brief sketch of institutions feasible amongst us from
humble beginnings by individual enterprise. Once founded and their
value demonstrated, the countenance of the state may be hopefully
invoked. Their very existence would become an incentive to munificent
gifts. Individuals owning fine works of art would grow ambitious to
have their memories associated with patriotic enterprise.
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