Every art requires the whole man; the highest possible degree of art requires all mankind.
The practice of the plastic arts is mechanical, and the training of the artist rightly begins in his earliest youth with the mechanical side; the rest of his education, on the other hand, is often neglected, for it ought to be far more careful than the training of others who have opportunity of deriving advantage from life itself.
Society soon makes a rough person courteous, a business life makes the most simple person prudent; literary labors, which through print come before a great public, find opposition and correction everywhere; only the plastic artist is, for the most part, limited to a lonely workshop; he has dealings almost solely with the man who orders and pays for his labor, with a public which frequently follows only certain morbid impressions, with connoisseurs who make him restless, with auctioneers who receive every new work with praise and estimates of value such as would fitly honor the most superlative production.
But it is time to conclude this introduction lest it anticipate and forestall the work, instead of merely preceding it.

We have so far at least designated the point from which we intend to set out; how far our views can and will spread, must at first develop gradually.

The theory and criticism of literary art will, we hope, soon occupy us; and whatever life, travel, and daily events suggest to us, shall not be excluded.

In closing, let us say a word on an important concern of this moment.
For the training of the artist, for the enjoyment of the friend of art, it was from time immemorial of the greatest significance in what place the works of art happened to be.

There was a time when, except for slight changes of location, they remained for the most part in one place; now, however, a great change has occurred, which will have important consequences for art in general and in particular.
At present we have perhaps more cause than ever to regard Italy as a great storehouse of art--as it still was until recently.