"
For forty years Adams kept this drawing on his mantelpiece,
partly for its own interest, but largely for curiosity to see
whether any critic or artist would ever stop to look at it. None
ever did, unless he knew the story. Adams himself never wanted to
know more about it. He refused to seek further light. He never
cared to learn whether the drawing was Rafael's, or whether the
verse were Rafael's, or whether even the water-mark was Rafael's.
The experts -- some scores of them including the British Museum,
-- had affirmed that the drawing was worth a certain moiety of
twelve shillings. On that point, also, Adams could offer no
opinion, but he was clear that his education had profited by it
to that extent -- his amusement even more.
Art was a superb field for education, but at every turn he met
the same old figure, like a battered and illegible signpost that
ought to direct him to the next station but never did. There was
no next station. All the art of a thousand -- or ten thousand --
years had brought England to stuff which Palgrave and Woolner
brayed in their mortars; derided, tore in tatters, growled at,
and howled at, and treated in terms beyond literary usage.
Whistler had not yet made his appearance in London, but the
others did quite as well. What result could a student reach from
it? Once, on returning to London, dining with Stopford Brooke,
some one asked Adams what impression the Royal Academy Exhibition
made on him.
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