In this, as in all such cases, it was not so much conviction or reason which influenced the sufferer as the mere effect of Attention often awakened till it had become what is known as a fixed idea.
A deliberate reflection on what I have here advanced can hardly fail to make it clear to any reader that if he really desires to take an interest in any subject, it is possible to do so, because Nature has placed in every mind vast capacity for attention or fixing ideas, and where the Attention is fixed, Interest, by equally easy process, may always be induced to follow.

And note that these preliminary preparations should invariably be as elementary and easy as possible, this being a condition which it is impossible to exaggerate.

In a vast majority of cases people who would fain be known as taking an interest in Art begin at the wrong end, or in the most difficult manner possible, by running through galleries where they only acquire a superficial knowledge of results, and learn at best how to _talk_ showily about what they have skimmed.

Now to this end a good article in a cyclopaedia, or a small treatise like that of TAINE'S "AEsthetic" thoroughly read and re-read, till it be really mastered, and then verified by study of a very few good pictures in a single collection, will do more to awaken sincere _interest_ than the loose ranging through all the exhibitions in the world.

I have read in many novels thrilling descriptions of the effect and results when all the glories of the Louvre or Vatican first burst upon some impassioned and unsophisticated youth, who from that moment found himself an Artist-- but I still maintain that it would have been a hundred times better for him had his Attention and Interest been previously attracted to a few pictures, and his mind accustomed to reflect on them.
Be the subject in which we would take an interest artistic or scientific, literary or social, the best way to begin herewith is to carefully read the simplest and easiest account of it which we can obtain, in order that we may know just exactly what it is, or its definition.