organise manufacturers; these gentlemen, many of whom buy pictures
and profess to care about art, burn a deal of coal: there is an Act
in existence which was passed to prevent them sometimes and in some
places from pouring a dense cloud of smoke over the world, and, to
my thinking, a very lame and partial Act it is: but nothing hinders
these lovers of art from being a law to themselves, and making it a
point of honour with them to minimise the smoke nuisance as far as
their own works are concerned; and if they don't do so, when mere
money, and even a very little of that, is what it will cost them, I
say that their love of art is a mere pretence: how can you care
about the image of a landscape when you show by your deeds that you
don't care for the landscape itself? or what right have you to shut
yourself up with beautiful form and colour when you make it
impossible for other people to have any share in these things?

Well, and as to the smoke Act itself: I don't know what heed you
pay to it in Birmingham, {7} but I have seen myself what heed is
paid to it in other places; Bradford for instance: though close by
them at Saltaire they have an example which I should have thought
might have shamed them; for the huge chimney there which serves the
acres of weaving and spinning sheds of Sir Titus Salt and his
brothers is as guiltless of smoke as an ordinary kitchen chimney.
Or Manchester: a gentleman of that city told me that the smoke Act
was a mere dead letter there: well, they buy pictures in Manchester
and profess to wish to further the arts: but you see it must be
idle pretence as far as their rich people are concerned: they only
want to talk about it, and have themselves talked of.

I don't know what you are doing about this matter here; but you must
forgive my saying, that unless you are beginning to think of some