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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: faculties or circumstances; you fancy that, among your damp, flat,
fat fields of clay, you can have as quick art-fancy as the Frenchman
among his bronzed vines, or the Italian under his volcanic cliffs;--
that Art may be learned, as book-keeping is, and when learned, will
give you more books to keep. You care for pictures, absolutely, no
more than you do for the bills pasted on your dead walls. There is
always room on the walls for the bills to be read,--never for the
pictures to be seen. You do not know what pictures you have (by
repute) in the country, nor whether they are false or true, nor
whether they are taken care of or not; in foreign countries, you
calmly see the noblest existing pictures in the world rotting in
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