Note 261 — 1100. A SCENE IN A PLAY. (continued 5)

According to William Morris, most visitors to the Gallery are apt to pass by some of its principal treasures. "If ordinary people go to our National Gallery, the thing which they want to see is the Blenheim Raphael, which, though well done, is a very dull picture to any one not an artist. While, when Holbein shows them the Danish princess of the sixteenth century yet living on the canvas ...; when Van Eyck opens a window for them into Bruges of the fourteenth century; when Botticelli shows them Heaven as it lived in the hearts of men before theology was dead, these things produce no impression on them, not so much even as to stimulate their curiosity and make them ask what 'tis all about; because these things were done to be looked at, and to make the eyes tell the mind tales of the past, the present, and the future" (Mackail's Life of William Morris, ii. 273).