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 U
 
 THE ART OF ENGLAND.
 
 The Art of England. 
 
 LECTURES GIVEN IN OXFORD, 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, D.C.L., LL.D., 
 
 HONOKARV STLDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND HONORARY FELLOW OF CORPUS-CHRLSTI COLLEGE, 
 
 DURING HIS 
 
 SECOND TENURE OF THE SLADE PROFESSORSHIP. 
 
 GEORGE ALLEN, 
 SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON. KENT. 
 
 1884.
 
 I'RINTED BV 
 
 HAZELL, WATSON, AND VINEY, LIMITED, 
 
 LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
 
 ARTS 
 
 Cv 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 REALISTIC SCHOOLS OF PAINTING I 
 
 D. G. ROSSETTI AND IV. HOLM AN HUNT. 
 
 LECTURE n. 
 
 MYTHIC SCHOOLS OF PAINTING 39 
 
 E. BURNE-yONES AND G. F. WATTS. 
 
 LECTURE IIL 
 
 CLASSIC SCHOOLS OF PAINTING 75 
 
 SIR F. LEIGHTON AND ALMA TAD EM A. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 FAIRY LAND XI7 
 
 MRS. ALLINGHAM AND KATE GREENAWAY. 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 THE FIRESIDE 161 
 
 •JOHN LEECH AND JOHN TENNIEL. 
 
 LECTURE VL 
 THE HILLSIDE ........... 20I 
 
 GEORGE ROBS ON AND COPLEY FIELDING. 
 
 APPENDIX ............ 245 
 
 INDEX 275 
 
 678331
 
 The Art of England. 
 
 LECTURES GIVEN IN OXFORD, 
 
 i;y 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, D.C.L., LL.D., 
 
 HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND HONORARY FELLOW OF CORPUS-CHRISTI COLLEGE, 
 
 DURING HIS 
 
 SECOND TENURE OF THE SLADE PROFESSORSHIP 
 
 APPENDIX AND INDEX. 
 
 GEORGE ALLEN, 
 SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT. 
 
 1884.
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 HAZELL, WATSON, AND VINEV, LIMITED 
 
 LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
 
 The Art of England. 
 
 LECTURES GIVEN IN OXFORD, 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSK IN, D.C.L, LL.D., 
 
 HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHL"RCH, AND HOXOKAKY lELLOW OF COREL'S CHRISTI COLLEGE, 
 
 DURING HIS 
 
 SECOND TENURE OF THE SLADE PROFESSORSHIP. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 REALISTIC SCHOOLS OF PAINTING. 
 
 GEORGE ALLEN, 
 SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT. 
 
 1883.
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 REALISTIC SCHOOLS OF PAINTING. \ 
 
 D. G. Rossetti and JV . Holma?t Hunt.
 
 THE ART OF ENGLAND. 
 
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 Lecture L 
 
 REALISTIC SCHOOLS OF PAINTING. 
 D. G. ROSSETTI AND W. HOLMAN HUNT. 
 
 I AM well assured that this audience is too 
 kind, and too sympathetic, to wish me 
 to enlarge on the mingled feelings of fear and 
 thankfulness, with which I find myself once 
 again permitted to enter on the duties in which 
 I am conscious that before I fell short in too 
 many ways ; and in which I only have ventured 
 to ask, and to accept, your farther trust, in the 
 hope of being able to bring to some of their 
 intended conclusions, things not in the nature 
 of them, it seems to me, beyond what yet 
 remains of an old man's energy ; but, before, 
 too eagerly begun, and too irregularly followed. 
 And indeed I am partly under the impression,
 
 2 The Art of England, 
 
 both in gratitude and regret, that Professor 
 Richmond's resignation, however justly motived 
 by his wish to pursue with uninterrupted thought 
 the career open to him in his profession, had 
 partly also for its reason the courtesy of con- 
 cession to his father's old friend; and his own 
 feeling that while yet I was able to be of 
 service in advancing the branches of elementary 
 art with which I was specially acquainted, it 
 was best that I should make the attempt on 
 lines already opened, and with the aid of old 
 friends. I am now alike comforted in having 
 left you, and encouraged in return; for on all 
 grounds it was most desirable that to the im- 
 perfect, and yet in many points new and untried 
 code of practice which I had instituted, the 
 foundations of higher study should have been 
 added by Mr. Richmond, in connection with 
 the methods of art-education recognized in 
 the Academies of Europe. And although I 
 have not yet been able to consult with him 
 on the subject, I trust that no interruption of 
 the courses of figure study, thus established.
 
 /. Rossetti a7td Holma?^ Hunt. 3 
 
 may be involved in the completion, for what 
 it is worth, of the system of subordinate 
 exercises in natural history and landscape, 
 indicated in the schools to which at present, 
 for convenience' sake, my name is attached ; 
 but which, if they indeed deserve encourage- 
 ment, will, I hope, receive it ultimately, as 
 presenting to the beginner the first aspects 
 of art, in the widest, because the humblest, 
 relation to those of divinely organized and 
 animated Nature. 
 
 The immediate task I propose to myself is 
 to make serviceable, by all the illustration I 
 can give them, the now unequalled collection 
 possessed by the Oxford schools of Turner 
 drawings and sketches, completed as it has 
 been by the kindness of the Trustees of the 
 National Gallery at the intercession of Prince 
 Leopold ; and furnishing the means of progress 
 in the study of landscape such as the great 
 painter himself only conceived the scope of 
 toward the closing period of his life. At 
 the opening of next term, I hope, with Mr. 
 
 lA
 
 4. The Art of Rngla7^d, 
 
 Macdonald's assistance, to have drawn up a 
 
 little synopsis of the elementary exercises which 
 
 in my earlier books have been recommended 
 
 for practice in Landscape, — a subject which, if 
 
 you look back to the courses of my lectures 
 
 here, you will find almost affectedly neglected, 
 
 just because it was my personal province. Other 
 
 matters under deliberation, till I get them either 
 
 done, or determined, I have no mind to talk 
 
 of; but to-day, and in the three lectures which 
 
 I hope to give in the course of the summer 
 
 term, I wish to render such account as is 
 
 possible to me of the vivid phase into which 
 
 I find our English art in general to have 
 
 developed since first I knew it: and, though 
 
 perhaps not without passing deprecation of 
 
 some of its tendencies, to rejoice with you 
 
 unqualifiedly in the honour which may most 
 
 justly be rendered to the leaders, whether passed 
 
 away or yet present with us, of England's 
 
 Modern Painters. 
 
 I may be permitted, in the reverence of 
 sorrow, to speak first of my much loved
 
 /. Rossetti and Holman Hu?it, 5 
 
 friend, Gabriel Rossetti. But, in justice, no 
 less than in the kindness due to death, I 
 believe his name should be placed first on 
 the list of men, within my own range of 
 knowledge, who have raised and changed 
 the spirit of modern Art : raised, in absolute 
 attainment ; changed, in direction of temper. 
 Rossetti added to the before accepted systems 
 of colour in painting, one based on the 
 principles of manuscript illumination, which 
 permits his design to rival the most beautiful 
 qualities of painted glass, without losing 
 either the mystery or the dignity of light 
 and shade. And he was, as I believe it is 
 now generally admitted, the chief intellectual 
 force in the establishment of the modern 
 romantic school in England. 
 
 Those who are acquainted with my for- 
 mer writings must be aware that I use the 
 word ' romantic ' always in a noble sense ; 
 meaning the habit of regarding the external 
 and real world as a singer of Romaunts 
 would have regarded it in the middle ages,
 
 6 The Art of England, 
 
 and as Scott, Burns, Byron, and Tennyson 
 have regarded it in our own times. But, as 
 Rossetti's colour was based on the former 
 art of illumination, so his romance was based 
 on traditions of earlier and more sacred 
 origin than those which have inspired our 
 highest modern romantic literature. That 
 literature has in all cases remained strongest 
 in dealing with contemporary fact. The 
 genius of Tennyson is at its highest in the 
 poems of ' Maud,' ' In Memoriam,' and the 
 ' Northern Farmer ' ; but that of Rossetti, as 
 of his greatest disciple, is seen only when on 
 pilgrimage in Palestine. 
 
 I trust that Mr. Holman Hunt will not 
 think that in speaking of him as Rossetti's 
 disciple I derogate from the respect due to 
 his own noble and determined genius. In 
 all living schools it chances often that the 
 disciple is greater than his master ; and it 
 is always the first sign of a dominant and 
 splendid intellect, that it knows of whom to 
 learn. Rossetti's great poetical genius justified
 
 /. Rossetti and Holman Hunt, 7 
 
 my claiming for him total, and, I believe, 
 earliest, originality in the sternly materialistic, 
 though deeply reverent veracity, with which 
 alone, of all schools of painters, this brother- 
 hood of Englishmen has conceived the cir- 
 cumstances of the life of Christ. And if I 
 had to choose one picture which represented 
 in purity and completeness, this manner of 
 their thought, it would be Rossetti's ' Virgin 
 in the House of St. John.' 
 
 But when Holman Hunt, under such 
 impressive influence, quitting virtually for 
 ever the range of worldly subjects, to which 
 belonged the pictures of Valentine and Sylvia, 
 of Claudio and Isabel, and of the ' Awakening 
 Conscience,' rose into the spiritual passion 
 which first expressed itself in the ' Light 
 of the World,' an instant and quite final 
 difference was manifested between his method 
 of conception, and that of his forerunner. 
 To Rossetti, the Old and New Testaments 
 were only the greatest poems he knew ; 
 and he painted scenes from them with no
 
 8 The Art of E?tgland. 
 
 more actual belief in their relation to the 
 present life and business of men than he 
 gave also to the Morte d' Arthur and the 
 Vita Xuova. But to Holman Hunt, the 
 story of the New Testament, when once his 
 mind entirely fastened on it, became what it 
 was to an old Puritan, or an old Catholic 
 of true blood, — not merely a Reality-, not 
 merely the greatest of Realities, but the only 
 Reality. So that there is nothing in the 
 earth for him any more that does not speak 
 of that : — there is no course of thoug-ht nor 
 force of skill for him, but it springs from 
 and ends in that. 
 
 So absolutely, and so inyoluntarily — I use 
 the word in its noblest meaning- — is this so 
 with him, that in all subjects which fall short 
 in the religious element, his power also is 
 shortened, and he does those things worst 
 which are easiest to other men. 
 
 Beyond calculation, greater, beyond com- 
 parison, happier, than Rossetti, in this sin- 
 cerity-, he is distinguished also from him by
 
 /. Rossetti a7id Holmait Hu?it, 9 
 
 a respect for physical and material truth 
 which renders his work far more generally, 
 far more serenely, exemplary. 
 
 The specialty of colour-method which I 
 have signalized in Rossetti, as founded on 
 missal painting, is in exactly that degree 
 conventional and unreal. Its light is not 
 the light of sunshine itself, but of sunshine 
 diffused through coloured glass. And in 
 object-painting he not only refused, partly 
 through idleness, partly in the absolute want 
 of opportunity for the study of nature in- 
 volved in his choice of abode in a garret at 
 Blackfriars, — refused, I say, the natural aid of 
 pure landscape and sky, but wilfully perverted 
 and lacerated his powers of conception with 
 Chinese puzzles and Japanese monsters, until 
 his foliage looked generally fit for nothing 
 but a fire-screen, and his landscape distances 
 like the furniture of a Noah's Ark from the 
 nearest toy-shop. Whereas Holman Hunt, in 
 the very beginning of his career, fixed his 
 mind, as a colourist, on the true representation
 
 lO The Art of Rn gland. 
 
 of actual sunshine, of growing leafage, of 
 living rock, of heavenly cloud ; and his long 
 and resolute exile, deeply on many grounds 
 to be regretted both for himself and us, bound 
 only closer to his heart the mighty forms and 
 hues of God's earth and sky, and the mysteries 
 of its appointed lights of the day and of the 
 night — opening on the foam — " Of desolate 
 seas, in — Sacred-Elands forlorn." 
 
 You have, for the last ten or fifteen years, 
 been accustomed to see among the pictures 
 principally characteristic of the English school, 
 a certain average number of attentive studies, 
 both of sunshine, and the forms of lower 
 nature, whose beauty is meant to be seen by 
 its light. Those of Mr. Brett may be named 
 with especial praise ; and you probably will 
 many of you remember with pleasure the 
 study of cattle on a Highland moor in the 
 evening, by Mr. Davis, which in last year's 
 Academy carried us out, at the end of the first 
 room, into sudden solitude among the hills. 
 But we forget, in the enjoyment of these
 
 /. Rossetti and Hohnan Hunt. 1 1 
 
 new and healthy pleasures connected with 
 painting, to whom we first owe them all. 
 The apparently unimportant picture by 
 Holman Hunt, ' The strayed Sheep,' which 
 — painted thirty years ago — you may perhaps 
 have seen last autumn in the rooms of the 
 Art Society in Bond Street, at once achieved 
 all that can ever be done in that kind : it 
 will not be surpassed — it is little likely to 
 be rivalled— by the best efforts of the times 
 to come. It showed to us, for the first time 
 in the history of art, the absolutely faithful 
 balances of colour and shade by which actual 
 sunshine might be transposed into a key in 
 which the harmonies possible with material 
 pigments should yet produce the same im- 
 pressions upon the mind which were caused 
 by the light itself. 
 
 And remember, all previous work what- 
 ever had been either subdued into narrov/ 
 truth, or only by convention suggestive of 
 the greater. Claude's sunshine is colourless, 
 — only the golden haze of a quiet afternoon;
 
 I 2 The Art of England, 
 
 — so also that of Cuyp : Turner's, so bold in 
 conventionalism that it is credible to few of 
 you, and offensive to many. But the pure 
 natural green and tufted gold of the herbage 
 in the hollow of that little sea-cliff must 
 be recognized for true merely by a minute's 
 pause of attention. Standing long before the 
 picture, you were soothed by it, and raised 
 into such peace as you are intended to find 
 in the glory and the stillness of summer, 
 possessing all things. 
 
 I cannot say of this power of true sun- 
 shine, the least thing that I would. Often 
 it is said to me by kindly readers, that 
 I have taught them to see what they had 
 not seen : and yet never — in all the many 
 volumes of effort — have I been able to tell 
 them my own feelings about what I myself 
 see. You may suppose that I have been all 
 this time trying to express my personal feel- 
 ings about Nature. No ; not a whit. I soon 
 found I could not, and did not try to. All 
 my writing is only the effort to distinguish
 
 /. Rossetti and Holman Hunt. 13 
 
 what is constantly, and to all men, loveable, 
 and if they will look, lovely, from what is 
 vile, or empty,— or, to well trained eyes and 
 hearts, loathsome ; — ^but you will never find 
 me talking about what / feel, or what / 
 think. I know that fresh air is more whole- 
 some than fog, and that blue sky is more 
 beautiful than black, to people happily born 
 and bred. But you will never find, except 
 of late, and for special reasons, effort of mine 
 to say how I am myself oppressed or com- 
 forted by such things. 
 
 This is partly my steady principle, and 
 partly it is incapacity. Forms of personal 
 feeling in this kind can only be expressed in 
 poetry; and I am not a poet, nor in any 
 articulate manner could I the least explain to 
 you what a deep element of life, for me, is in 
 the sight merely of pure sunshine on a bank 
 of living grass. 
 
 More than any pathetic music, — yet I love 
 music, — more than any artful colour — and yet 
 I love colour, — more than other merely material
 
 14 The Art of Kn gland, 
 
 thing visible to these old eyes, in earth or sky. 
 It is so, I believe, with many of you also, — 
 with many more than know it of themselves ; 
 and this picture, were it only the first that cast 
 true sunshine on the grass, would have been in 
 that virtue sacred : but in its deeper meaning, 
 it is, actually, the first of Hunt's sacred 
 paintings — the first in which, for those who 
 can read, the substance of the conviction and 
 the teaching of his after life is written, though 
 not distinctly told till afterwards in the sym- 
 bolic picture of ' The Scapegoat.' " All we 
 like sheep have gone astray, we have turned 
 every one to his own way, and the Lord hath 
 laid on Him the iniquity of us all." 
 
 None of you, who have the least acquaint- 
 ance with the general tenor of my own 
 teaching, will suspect in me any bias towards 
 the doctrine of vicarious Sacrifice, as it is 
 taught by the modern Evangelical Preacher. 
 But the great mystery of the idea of Sacrifice 
 itself, which has been manifested as one 
 united and solemn instinct by all thoughtful
 
 /. Rossetti and Holman Hu?tt. 1 5 
 
 and affectionate races, since the wide world 
 became peopled, is founded on the secret 
 truth of benevolent energy which all men 
 who have tried to gain it have learned — that 
 you cannot save men from death but by 
 facing it for them, nor from sin but by 
 resisting it for them. It is, on the contrary, 
 the favourite, and the worst falsehood of 
 modern infidel morality, that you serve your 
 fellow-creatures best by getting a percentage 
 out of their pockets, and will best provide 
 for starving multitudes by regaling yourselves. 
 Some day or other — probably now very soon, 
 — too probably by heavy afflictions of the 
 State, we shall be taught that it is not so ; 
 and that all the true good and glory even of 
 this world — not to speak of any that is to 
 come, must be bought still, as it always has 
 been, with our toil, and with our tears. That 
 is the final doctrine, the inevitable one, not of 
 Christianity only, but of all Heroic Faith and 
 Heroic Being ; and the first trial questions of 
 a true soul to itself must always be, — Have
 
 1 6 The Art of Engla7td. 
 
 I a religion, have I a country, have I a 
 love, that I am ready to die for ? 
 
 That is the Doctrine of Sacrifice ; the 
 faith in which Isaac was bound, in which 
 Iphigenia died, in which the great army of 
 martyrs have suffered, and by which all vic- 
 tories in the cause of justice and happiness 
 have been gained by the men who became 
 more than conquerors, through Him that 
 loved them. 
 
 And yet there is a deeper and stranger 
 sacrifice in the system of this creation than 
 theirs. To resolute self-denial, and to adopted 
 and accepted suffering, the reward is in the 
 conscience sure, and in the gradual advance 
 and predominance of good, practically and to 
 all men visible. But what shall we say of 
 involuntary suffering, — the misery of the poor 
 and the simple, the agony of the helpless 
 and the innocent, and the perishing, as it 
 seems, in vain, and the mother weeping for 
 the children of whom she knows only that 
 they are not ?
 
 /. Rossetti and Holman Hunt. 17 
 
 I saw it lately given as one of the incon- 
 trovertible discoveries of modern science, 
 that all our present enjoyments were only 
 the outcome of an infinite series of pain. I 
 do not know how far the statement fairly 
 represented — but it announced as incapable of 
 contradiction — this melancholy theory. If such 
 a doctrine is indeed abroad among you, let 
 me comfort some, at least, with its absolute 
 denial. That in past aeons, the pain suffered 
 throughout the living universe passes calcu- 
 lation, is true ; that it is infinite, is untrue ; 
 and that all our enjoyments are based on it, 
 contemptibly untrue. For, on the other hand, 
 the pleasure felt through the living universe 
 during past ages is incalculable also, and in 
 higher magnitudes. Our own talents, enjoy- 
 ments, and prosperities, are the outcome of 
 that happiness with its energies, not of the 
 death that ended them. So manifestly is this 
 so, that all men of hitherto widest reach in 
 natural science and logical thought have been 
 led to fix their minds only on the innume-
 
 1 8 ^he Art of England. 
 
 rable paths of pleasure, and ideals of beauty, 
 which are traced on the scroll of creation, 
 and are no more tempted to arraign as unjust, 
 or even lament as unfortunate, the essential 
 equivalent of sorrow, than in the seven-fold 
 glories of sunrise to deprecate the mingling of 
 shadow with its light. 
 
 This, however, though it has always been 
 the sentiment of the healthiest natural philo- 
 sophy, has never, as you well know, been 
 the doctrine of Christianity. That religion, 
 as it comes to us with the promise of a 
 kingdom in which there shall be no more 
 Death, neither sorrow nor crying, so it has 
 always brought with it the confession of 
 calamity to be at present in patience of 
 mystery endured ; and not by us only, but 
 apparently for our sakes, by the lower crea- 
 tures, for whom it is inconceivable that any 
 good should be the final goal of ill. To- 
 wards these, the one lesson we have to learn 
 is that of pity. For all human loss and pain, 
 there is no comfort, no interpretation worth
 
 /. Rossetti a7id Hol7}ia?i Himt. 19 
 
 a thought, except only in the doctrine of the 
 Resurrection; — of which doctrine, remember, 
 it is an immutable historical fact that all the 
 beautiful work, and all the happy existence 
 of mankind, hitherto, has depended on, or 
 consisted in, the hope of it. 
 
 The picture of which I came to-day 
 chiefly to speak, as a symbol of that doctrine, 
 was incomplete when I saw it, and is so still; 
 but enough was done to constitute it the most 
 important work of Hunt's life, as yet ; and 
 if health is granted to him for its completion, 
 it will, both in reality and in esteem, be the 
 greatest religious painting of our time. 
 
 You know that in the most beautiful 
 former conceptions of the Flight into Egypt, 
 the Holy Family were always represented 
 as watched over, and ministered to, by at- 
 tendant angels. But only the safety and 
 peace of the Divine Child and its mother 
 are thought of. No sadness or wonder of 
 meditation returns to the desolate homes of 
 Bethlehem 
 
 2A
 
 2 T'he Art of England, 
 
 But in this English picture all the story 
 of the escape, as of the flight, is told, in 
 fulness of peace, and yet of compassion. 
 The travel is in the dead of the night, the 
 way unseen and unknown; — but, partly stoop- 
 ing from the starlight, and partly floating 
 on the desert mirage, move, with the Holy 
 Family the glorified souls of the Innocents. 
 Clear in celestial light, and gathered into 
 child-garlands of gladness, they look to the 
 Child in whom they live, and yet, for them 
 to die. Waters of the River of Life flow 
 before on the sands : the Christ stretches out 
 His arms to the nearest of them; — leaning 
 from His mother's breast. 
 
 To how many bereaved households may 
 not this happy vision of conquered death 
 bring in the future, days of peace ! 
 
 I do not care to speak of other virtues 
 in this design than those of its majestic 
 thought,^ — but you may well imagine for your- 
 selves how the painter's quite separate and, in 
 its skill, better than magical, power of giving
 
 /. Rossetti a7id Hohnaii Htc?tt, 21 
 
 effects of intense light, has aided the effort 
 of his imagination, while the passion of his 
 subject has developed in him a swift grace of 
 invention which for my own part I never 
 recognized in his design till now. I can say 
 with deliberation that none even of the most 
 animated groups and processions of children 
 which constitute the loveliest sculpture of the 
 Robbias and Donatello, can more than rival 
 the freedom and felicity of motion, or the 
 subtlety of harmonious line, in the happy 
 wreath of these angel-children. 
 
 Of this picture I came to-day chiefly to 
 speak, nor will I disturb the poor impression 
 which my words can give you of it by any 
 immediate reference to other pictures by our 
 leading masters. But it is not, of course, 
 among these men of splendid and isolated 
 imagination that you can learn the modes of 
 regarding common and familiar nature which 
 you must be content to be governed by — in 
 early lessons. I count myself fortunate, in 
 renewing my effort to systematize these, that
 
 2 2 The Art of England, 
 
 I can now place in the schools, or at least 
 lend, first one and then another — some exem- 
 plary drawings by young people — youths and 
 girls of your own age — clever ones, yes, — but 
 not cleverer than a great many of you : — 
 eminent only, among the young people of the 
 present day whom I chance to know, in 
 being extremely old-fashioned; — and, — don't 
 be spiteful when I say so, — but really they all 
 are, all the four of them — two lads and two 
 lassies — quite provokingly good. 
 
 Lads, not exactly lads perhaps — one of 
 them is already master of the works in the 
 ducal palace at Venice ; lassies, to an old 
 man of sixty-four, who is vexed to be beaten 
 by them in his own business — a little older, 
 perhaps, than most of the lassies here, but 
 still brightly young ; and, mind you, not 
 artists, but drawing in the joy of their hearts 
 — and the builder at Venice only in his play- 
 time — yet, I believe you will find these, and 
 the other drawings I speak of, more helpfial, 
 and as I just said, exemplary, than any I
 
 /. Rossetti and Holman Hunt, 23 
 
 have yet been able to find for you ; and of 
 these, little stories are to be told, which bear 
 much on all that I have been most earnestly 
 trying to make you assured of, both in art 
 and in real life. 
 
 Let me, however, before going farther, 
 say, to relieve your minds from unhappily too 
 well-grounded panic, that I have no intention 
 of making my art lectures any more one- 
 half sermons. All the pieces of theological 
 or other grave talk which seemed to me a 
 necessary part of my teaching here, have been 
 already spoken, and printed ; and are, I only 
 fear at too great length, legible. Nor have I 
 any more either strength or passion to spare 
 in matters capable of dispute. I must in 
 silent resignation leave all of you who are 
 led by your fancy, or induced by the fashion 
 of the time, to follow, without remonstrance 
 on my part, those modes of studying organic 
 beauty for which preparation must be made 
 by depriving the animal under investigation 
 first of its soul within, and secondly of its
 
 24 ^'^^ ^^t ^f England, 
 
 skin without. But it chances to-day, that the 
 merely Hteral histories of the drawings which 
 I bring with me to show you or to lend, 
 do carry with them certain evidences of the 
 practical force of religious feeling on the 
 imagination, both in artists and races, such as 
 I cannot, if I would, overlook, and such as 
 I think you will yourselves, even those who 
 have least sympathy with them, not without 
 admiration recognise. 
 
 For a long time I used to say, in all my 
 elementary books, that, except in a graceful 
 and minor way, women could not paint or 
 draw. I am beginning, lately, to bow myself 
 to the much more delightful conviction that 
 nobody else can. How this very serious change 
 of mind was first induced in me it is, if not 
 necessary, I hope pardonable, to delay you by 
 telling. 
 
 When I was at Venice in 1876 — it is 
 almost the only thing that makes me now 
 content in having gone there, — two English 
 ladies, mother and daughter, were staying at
 
 /. Rossetti a7id Holma7i Hunt. 25 
 
 the same hotel, the Europa. One day the 
 mother sent me a pretty Httle note asking if 
 I would look at the young lady's drawings. 
 On my somewhat sulky permission, a few were 
 sent, in which I saw there was extremely 
 right-minded and careful work, almost totally 
 without knowledge. I sent back a request 
 that the young lady might be allowed to 
 come out sketching with me. I took her 
 over into the pretty cloister of the church of 
 La Salute, and set her, for the first time in 
 her life, to draw a little piece of gray marble 
 with the sun upon it, rightly. She may have 
 had one lesson after that — she may have had 
 two ; the three, if there were three, seem to 
 me, now, to have been only one ! She seemed 
 to learn everything the instant she was shown it 
 ■ — and ever so much more than she was taught. 
 Next year she went away to Norway, on one 
 of these frolics which are now-a-days necessary 
 to girl-existence ; and brought back a little 
 pocket-book, which she thought nothing of, 
 and which I begged of her: and have framed
 
 2 6 The Art of England. 
 
 half a dozen leaves of it (for a loan to you, 
 only, mind,) till you have enough copied them. 
 Of the minute drawings themselves, I 
 need not tell you — for you will in examining 
 them, beyond all telling, feel, that they are 
 exactly what we should all like to be able to 
 do ; and in the plainest and frankest manner 
 show us how to do it — or, more modestly 
 speaking, how, if heaven help us, it can be 
 done. They can only be seen, as you see 
 Bewick vignettes, with a magnifying glass, 
 and they are patterns to you therefore only 
 of pocket-book work; but what skill is more 
 precious to a traveller than that of minute, 
 instantaneous, and unerring record of the 
 things that are precisely best? For in this, 
 the vignettes upon these leaves differ, widely 
 as the arc of heaven, from the bitter truths of 
 Bewick. Nothing is recorded here but what 
 is lovely and honourable : how much there is 
 of both in the peasant life of Norway, many 
 an English traveller has recognized ; but not 
 always looking for the cause or enduring the
 
 /. Rossetti a7id Hohnan Hunt, 27 
 
 conclusion, that its serene beauty, its hospitable 
 patriotism, its peaceful courage, and its happy 
 virtue, were dependent on facts little resem- 
 bling our modern English institutions; — namely, 
 that the Norwegian peasant " is a free man 
 on the scanty bit of ground which he has 
 inherited from his forefathers ; that the Bible 
 is to be found in every hut; that the school- 
 master wanders from farm to farm ; that no 
 Norweman is confirmed who does not know 
 how to read ; and no Norwegian is allowed 
 to marry who has not been confirmed." I 
 quote straightforwardly, (missing only some talk 
 of Parliaments ; but not caring otherwise how 
 far the sentences are with my own notions, 
 or against,) from Dr. Hartwig's collected de 
 scriptions of the Polar world. I am not 
 myself altogether sure of the wisdom of 
 teaching everybody to read : but might be 
 otherwise persuaded if here, as in Norway, 
 every town had its public library, " while in 
 many districts the peasants annually contribute 
 a dollar towards a collection of books, which.
 
 2 8 ^ The Art of E7tgland, 
 
 under the care of the priest, are lent out to 
 all comers." 
 
 I observe that the word ' priest ' has of late 
 become more than ever offensive to the popular 
 English mind; and pause only to say that in 
 whatever capacity, or authority, the essential 
 function of a public librarian must in every 
 decent and rational country be educational ; 
 and consist in the choosing, for the public, 
 books authoritatively or essentially true, free 
 from vain speculation or evil suggestion : and 
 in noble history or cheerful fancy, to the 
 utmost, entertaining. 
 
 One kind of periodical literature, it seems 
 to me as I study these drawings, must at all 
 events in Norway be beautifully forbidden, — 
 the '' Journal des Modes." You will see evi- 
 dence here that the bright fancying alike of 
 maidens' and matrons' dress, capable of prettiest 
 variation in its ornament, is yet ancestral in 
 its form, and the white caps, in their daily 
 purity, have the untroubled constancy, of the 
 seashell and the snow.
 
 /. Rossetti and Holman Hunt. 29 
 
 Next to these illustrations of Norwegian 
 economy, I have brought you a drawing of 
 deeper and less imitable power: it is by a girl 
 of quite peculiar gift, whose life has hitherto 
 been spent in quiet and unassuming devotion 
 to her art, and to its subjects. I would fain 
 have said, an English girl, but all my preju- 
 dices have lately had the axe laid to their 
 roots one by one, — she is an American ! But 
 for twenty years she has lived with her mother 
 among the peasants of Tuscany^ — under their 
 olive avenues in summer — receiving them, as 
 they choose to come to chat with her, in 
 her little room by Santa Maria Novella in 
 Florence during winter. They come to her 
 as their loving guide, and friend, and sister 
 in all their work, and pleasure, and — suffering. 
 I lean on the last word. 
 
 For those of you who have entered into 
 the heart of modern Italy know that there is 
 probably no more oppressed, no more afflicted 
 order of gracious and blessed creatures — God's 
 own poor, who have not yet received their
 
 30 The Art of Kn gland, 
 
 consolation, than the mountain peasantry of 
 Tuscany and Romagna. What their minds 
 are, and what their state, and what their 
 treatment, those who do not know Italy may 
 best learn, if they can bear the grief of 
 learning it, from Ouida's photographic story 
 of 'A Village Commune'; yet amidst all this, 
 the sweetness of their natural character is 
 undisturbed, their ancestral religious faith 
 unshaken — their purity and simplicity of 
 household life uncorrupted. They may perish, 
 by our neglect or our cruelty, but they can- 
 not be degraded. Among them, as I have 
 told you, this American girl has lived — 
 from her youth up, with her (now widowed) 
 mother, who is as eagerly, and which is the 
 chief matter, as sympathizingly benevolent as 
 herself. The peculiar art gift of the younger 
 lady is rooted in this sympathy, the gift of 
 truest expression of feelings serene in their 
 tightness; and a love of beauty — divided 
 almost between the peasants and the flowers 
 that live round Santa Maria del Fiore. This
 
 /. Rossetti and Holma?t Hu?tt, 31 
 
 power she has trained by its Hmitation, severe, 
 and in my experience unexampled, to work 
 in Hght and shade only, with the pure pen 
 line : but the total strength of her intellect 
 and fancy being concentrated in this engraver's 
 method, it expresses of every subject what 
 she loves best, in simplicity undebased by 
 any accessory of minor emotion. 
 
 She has thus drawn, in faithfullest por- 
 traiture of these peasant Florentines, the love- 
 Hness of the young and the majesty of the 
 aged : she has listened to their legends, written 
 down their sacred songs ; and illustrated, with 
 the sanctities of mortal life, their traditions of 
 immortality. 
 
 I have brought you only one drawing 
 to-day ; in the spring I trust you shall have 
 many, — but this is enough, just now. It is 
 drawn from memory only, but the fond 
 memory which is as sure as sight — it is the 
 last sleep from which she waked on this 
 earth, of a young Florentine girl, who had 
 brought heaven down to earth, as truly as
 
 32 "The Art of England, 
 
 ever saint of old, while she lived, and of 
 whom even I, who never saw her, cannot 
 believe that she is dead. Her friend, who 
 drew this memorial of her, wrote also the 
 short story of her life, which I trust you 
 will soon be able to read. 
 
 Of this, and of the rest of these draw- 
 ings, I have much to say to you ; but this 
 first and last, — that they are representations of 
 beautiful human nature, such as could only 
 have been found among people living in the 
 pure Christian faith — such as it was, and is, 
 since the twelfth century ; and that although, 
 as I said, I have returned to Oxford only to 
 teach you technical things, this truth must 
 close the first words, as it must be the sum 
 of all that I may be permitted to speak to 
 you, — that the history of the art of the Greeks 
 is the eulogy of their virtues ; and the history 
 of Art after the fall of Greece, is that of the 
 Obedience and the Faith of Christianity. 
 
 There are two points of practical import- 
 ance which I must leave under your con-
 
 /. Rossetti and Holman Hunt. 33 
 
 sideration. I am confirmed by Mr. Macdonald 
 in my feeling that some kind of accurately 
 testing examination is necessary to give con- 
 sistency and efficiency to the present drawing- 
 school. I have therefore determined to give 
 simple certificates ot merit, annually, to the 
 students who have both passed through the 
 required course, and at the end of three 
 years have produced work satisfactory to Mr. 
 Macdonald and myself. After Easter, I will 
 at once look over such drawings as Mr. 
 Macdonald thinks well to show me, by 
 students who have till now complied with 
 the rules of the school ; and give certificates 
 accordingly ; — henceforward, if my health is 
 spared, annually : and I trust that the advan- 
 tage of this simple and uncompetitive exami- 
 nation will be felt by succeeding holders of 
 the Slade Professorship, and in time commend 
 itself enough to be held as a part of the 
 examination system of the University. 
 
 Uncompetitive^ always. The drawing cer- 
 tificate will imply no compliment, and convey 
 
 3
 
 34 T^h^ ^'^t of England, 
 
 no distinction. It will mean merely that the 
 student who obtains it knows perspective, with 
 the scientific laws of light and colour in 
 illustrating form, and has attained a certain 
 proficiency in the management of the pencil. 
 
 The second point is of more importance 
 and more difficulty. 
 
 I now see my way to making the col- 
 lection of examples in the schools, quite 
 representative of all that such a series ought 
 to be. But there is extreme difficulty in 
 finding any books that can be put into the 
 hands of the home student which may supply 
 the place of an academy. I do not mean 
 merely as lessons in drawing, but in the for- 
 mation of taste, which, when we analyse it, 
 means of course merely the right direction of 
 feeling. 
 
 I hope that in many English households 
 there may be found already — I trust some 
 day there may be found wherever there are 
 children who can enjoy them, and especially 
 in country village schools — the three series of
 
 /. Rossetti and Holma?i Hunt, 35 
 
 designs by Ludwig Richter, in illustration of 
 the Lord's Prayer, of the Sunday, and of the 
 Seasons. Perfect as types of easy line drawing, 
 exquisite in ornamental composition, and refined 
 to the utmost in ideal grace, they represent 
 all that is simplest, purest, and happiest in 
 human life, all that is most strengthening 
 and comforting in nature and in religion. 
 They are enough, in themselves, to show that 
 whatever its errors, whatever its backslidings, 
 this century of ours has in its heart understood 
 and fostered, more than any former one, the 
 joys of family affection, and of household 
 piety. 
 
 For the former fairy of the woods, Richter 
 has brought to you the angel on the threshold; 
 for the former promises of distant Paradise, 
 he has brought the perpetual blessing, " God 
 be with you": amidst all the turmoil and 
 speeding to and fro, and wandering of heart 
 and eyes which perplex our paths, and betray 
 our wills, he speaks to us continuous memorial 
 of the message — " My Peace I leave with you."
 
 The Art of England. 
 
 LECTURES GIVEN IN OXFORD, 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, D.C.L., LL.D., 
 
 HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND HONORARY FELLOW OF CORPUS-CHRISTI COLLEGE, 
 
 DURING HIS 
 
 SECOND TENURE OF THE SLADE FROFESSORSHIF. 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 MYTHIC SCHOOLS OF PAINTING. 
 
 GEORGE ALLEN, 
 SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT. 
 
 1883.
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 MYTHIC SCHOOLS OF PAINTING. 
 E, Burne-yones and G. F. Watts,
 
 Lecture II. 
 MYTHIC SCHOOLS OF PAINTING. 
 
 E. BURNE-JONES AND G. F. WATTS. 
 
 IT is my purpose, in the lectures I may 
 be permitted henceforward to give in 
 Oxford, so to arrange them as to dispense 
 with notes in subsequent printing ; and, if I 
 am forced for shortness, or in oversight, to leave 
 anything insufficiently explained, to complete 
 the passage in the next following lecture, or 
 in any one, though after an interval, which 
 may naturally recur to the subject. Thus the 
 printed text will always be simply what I have 
 read, or said ; and the lectures will be more 
 closely and easily connected than if I went 
 always on without the care of explanatory 
 retrospect. 
 
 It may have been observed, and perhaps 
 with question of my meaning, by some readers,
 
 40 The Art of England. 
 
 that in my last lecture I used the word 
 "materialistic" of the method of conception 
 common to Rossetti and Hunt, with the 
 greater number ot their scholars. I used that 
 expression to denote their peculiar tendency 
 to feel and illustrate the relation of spiritual 
 creatures to the substance and conditions of the 
 visible world; more especially, the familiar, or 
 in a sort humiliating, accidents or employ- 
 ments of their earthly life; — as, for instance, 
 in the picture I referred to, Rossetti's Virgin 
 in the house of St. John, the Madonna's being 
 drawn at the moment when she rises to trim 
 their lamp. In many such cases, the incidents 
 may of course have symbolical meaning, as, 
 in the unfinished drawing by Rossetti of the 
 Passover, which I have so long left with you, 
 the boy Christ is watching the blood struck 
 on the doorpost; — but the peculiar value and 
 character of the treatment is in what I called 
 its material veracity, compelling the spectator's 
 belief, if he have the instinct of belief in him 
 at all, in the thing's having verily happened ;
 
 //. Bicrne-yones a?id Watts, 41 
 
 and not being a mere poetical fancy. If 
 the spectator, on the contrary, have no 
 capacity of beHef in him, the use of such 
 representation is in making him detect his 
 own increduUty, and recognize that in his 
 former dreamy acceptance of the story, he 
 had never really asked himself whether these 
 things were so. 
 
 Thus, in what I believe to have been in 
 actual time the first — though I do not claim 
 for it the slightest lead in suggestive influence, 
 yet the first dated example of such literal and 
 close realization — my own endeavour in the 
 third volume of ' Modern Painters ' to describe 
 the incidents preceding the charge to Peter, I 
 have fastened on the words, " He girt his 
 fisher's coat about him, and did cast himself 
 into the sea," following them out with, "Then 
 to Peter, all wet and shivering, staring at 
 Christ in the su?2 ;'' not in the least supposing 
 or intending any symbolism either in the 
 coat, or the dripping water, or the morning 
 sunshine ; but merely and straitly striving to
 
 42 The Art of E?2gland, 
 
 put the facts before the readers' eyes as 
 positively as if he had seen the thing come 
 to pass on Brighton beach, ap.d an English 
 fisherman dash through the surf of it to the 
 feet of his captain, — once dead, and now with 
 the morning brightness on his face. 
 
 And you will observe farther, that this way 
 of thinking about a thing compels, with a 
 painter, also a certain way of painting it. I 
 do not mean a necessarily close or minute way, 
 but a necessarily complete, substantial, and 
 emphatic one. The thing may be expressed 
 with a few fierce dashes of the pencil ; but it 
 will be wholly and bodily there ; it may be 
 in the broadest and simplest terms, but nothing 
 will be hazy or hidden, nothing clouded round, 
 or melted away : and all that is told will be 
 as explanatory and lucid as may be — as of a 
 thing examined in daylight, not dreamt of in 
 moonlight. 
 
 I must delay you a little, though perhaps 
 tiresomely, to make myself well understood 
 on this point ; for the first celebrated pictures
 
 //. Burne-yo?ies and Watts, 43 
 
 of the pre-Raphaelite school having been 
 extremely minute in finish, you might easily 
 take minuteness for a speciality of the style, 
 — but it is not so in the least. Minuteness I 
 do somewhat claim, for a quality insisted upon 
 by myself, and required in the work of my 
 own pupils; it is — at least in landscape — 
 Turnerian and Ruskinian — not pre-Raphaelite 
 at all : — the pre-Raphaelism common to us all 
 is in the frankness and honesty of the touch, 
 not in its dimensions. 
 
 I think I may, once for all, explain this 
 to you, and convince you of it, by asking 
 you, when you next go up to London, to 
 look at a sketch by Vandyke in the National 
 Gallery, No. 680, purporting to represent 
 this very scene I have been speaking of, — 
 the miraculous draught of fishes. It is one 
 of the too numerous brown sketches in the 
 manner of the Flemish School, which seem to 
 me always rather done for the sake of wiping 
 the brush clean than of painting anything. 
 There is no colour in it, and no light and
 
 44 T^f^^ ^^t of Rngla7id, 
 
 shade ; — but a certain quantity of bitumen is 
 rubbed about so as to slip more or less greasily 
 into the shape of figures ; and one of St. John's 
 (or St. James's) legs is suddenly terminated by 
 a wriggle of white across it, to signify that 
 he is standing in the sea. Now that was the 
 kind of work of the Dutch School, which I 
 spent so many pages in vituperating throughout 
 the first volume of 'Modern Painters' — pages, 
 seemingly, vain to this day ; for still, the 
 brown daubs are hung in the best rooms of 
 the National Gallery, and the loveliest Turner 
 drawings are nailed to the wall of its cellar, — 
 and might as well be buried at Pompeii for 
 any use they are to the British public ; — but, 
 vain or effectless as the said chapters may 
 be, they are altogether true in that firm 
 statement, that these brown flourishes of the 
 Dutch brush are by men who lived, virtually, 
 the gentle, at court, — the simple, in the 
 pothouse; and could indeed paint, according 
 to their habitation, a nobleman or a boor, 
 but were not only incapable of conceiving.
 
 //. Bii7^7te-'Jo7ies a?icl JVatts. 45 
 
 but wholly unwishfui to conceive, anything, 
 natural or supernatural, beyond the precincts 
 of the Presence and the tavern. So that 
 they especially failed in giving the life and 
 beautv of little things in lower nature ; and 
 if, by good hap, they may sometimes more or 
 less succeed in painting St. Peter the Fisher's 
 face, never by any chance realize for you the 
 green wave dashing over his feet. 
 
 Now, therefore, understand of the opposite 
 so called 'Pre-Raphaelite,' and, much more, 
 pre-Rubensite, society, that its primary virtue 
 is the trying to conceive things as they 
 are, and thinking and feeling them quite 
 out: — believing joyfully if we may, doubting 
 bravely, if we must, — but never mystifying, 
 or shrinking from, or choosing for argu- 
 ment's sake, this or that fact ; but giving 
 every fact its own full power, and every 
 incident and accessory its own true place, — 
 so that, still keeping to our illustrations from 
 Brighton or Yarmouth beach, in that most 
 noble picture by Millais which probably
 
 /|.6 'The Art of Kngland, 
 
 most of you saw last autumn in London, the 
 'Caller Herrin',' — picture which, as a piece 
 of art, I should myself put highest of all yet 
 produced by the Pre-Raphaelite school; — in 
 that most noble picture, I say, the herrings 
 were painted just as well as the girl, and 
 the master was not the least afraid that, 
 for all he could do to them, you would 
 look at the herrings first. 
 
 Now then, I think I have got the manner 
 of Pre-Raphaelite ' Realization ' — ' Verification ' 
 — ' Materialization ' — or whatever else you 
 choose to call it, positively enough asserted 
 and defined : and hence you will see that it 
 follows, as a necessary consequence, that Pre- 
 Raphaelite subjects must usually be of real 
 persons in a solid world — not of personifi- 
 cations in a vaporescent one. 
 
 The persons may be spiritual, but they 
 are individual, — St. George, himself, not the 
 vague idea of Fortitude ; St. Cecily herself, 
 not the mere power of music. And, although 
 spiritual, there is no attempt whatever made
 
 //. Bur7te-Jo?ies a7id Watts, 47 
 
 by this school to indicate their immortal nature 
 by any evanescence or obscurity of aspect. 
 All transparent ghosts and unoutlined spectra 
 are the work of failing imagination, — rest 
 you sure of that. Botticelli indeed paints 
 the Favonian breeze transparent, but never 
 the angel Gabriel ; and in the picture I was 
 telling you of in last lecture, — if there be a 
 fault which may jar for a moment on your 
 feelings when you first see it, I am afraid it 
 will be that the souls of the Innocents are a 
 little too chubby, and one or two of them, I 
 should say, just a dimple too fat. 
 
 And here I must branch for a moment 
 from the direct course of my subject, to 
 answer another question which may by this 
 time have occurred to some of my hearers, 
 how, if this school be so obstinately realistic, 
 it can also be characterized as romantic. 
 
 When we have concluded our review of 
 the present state of English art, we will 
 collect the general evidence of its romance ; 
 meantime, I will say only this much, for you
 
 4.8 The Art of England, 
 
 to think out at your leisure, that romance 
 does not consist in the manner of represent- 
 ing or relating things, but in the kind of 
 passions appealed to by the things related. 
 The three romantic passions are those by 
 which you are told, in Wordsworth's aphor- 
 istic line, that the life of the soul is fed. 
 
 "We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love." 
 Admiration, meaning primarily all the forms 
 of Hero Worship, and secondarily, the kind 
 of feeling towards the beauty of nature, which 
 I have attempted too feebly to analyze in the 
 second volume of ' Modern Painters ' ; — Hope, 
 meaning primarily the habit of mind in which 
 we take present pain for the sake of future 
 pleasure, and expanding into the hope of 
 another world; — and Love, meaning of course 
 whatever is happiest or noblest in the life 
 either of that world or this. 
 
 Indicating, thus briefly, what, though not 
 always consciously, we mean by Romance, I 
 proceed with our present subject of enquiry, 
 from which I branched at the point where it
 
 //. Bicr7ie-yo7ies a?tcl Watts. 49 
 
 had been observed that the realistic school 
 could only develope its complete force in 
 representing persons, and could not happily 
 rest in personifications. Nevertheless, we find 
 one ot the artists whose close fi-iendship with 
 Rossetti, and fellowship with other members 
 of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, have more 
 or less identified his work with theirs, yet 
 differing fi^om them all diametrically in this, 
 that his essential gift and habit of thought 
 is i72 personification, and that, — for sharp 
 and brief instance, had both Rossetti and he 
 been set to illustrate the first chapter of 
 Genesis, Rossetti would have painted either 
 Adam or Eve — but Edward Burne-Jones, a 
 Day of Creation. 
 
 And in this gift, he becomes a painter, 
 neither of Divine History, nor of Divine 
 Natural History, but of Mythology, accepted 
 as such, and understood by its symbolic figures 
 to represent only general truths, or abstract 
 ideas. 
 
 And here I must at once pray you, as I have
 
 go The Art of England, 
 
 prayed you to remove all associations of false- 
 hood from the word romance, so also to clear 
 them out of your faith, when you begin the 
 study of mythology. Never confuse a Myth 
 with a Lie, — nay, you must even be cautious 
 how far you even permit it to be called a fable. 
 Take the frequentest and simplest of myths for 
 instance — that of Fortune and her wheel. Enid 
 does not herself conceive, or in the least intend 
 the hearers of her song to conceive, that there 
 stands anywhere in the universe a real woman, 
 turning an adamantine wheel whose revolutions 
 have power over human destiny. She means 
 only to assert, under that image, more clearly 
 the law of Heaven's continual dealing with 
 man, — "He hath put down the mighty from 
 their seat, and hath exalted the humble and 
 meek." 
 
 But in the imagined symbol, or rather let 
 me say, the visiting and visible dream, of this 
 law, other ideas variously conducive to its clear- 
 ness are gathered ; — those of gradual and 
 irresistible motion of rise and fall, — the tide of
 
 //. Bur7te-yo7ies and Watts, 5 1 
 
 Fortune, as distinguished from instant change 
 or catastrophe; — those of the connection of the 
 fates of men with each other, the yielding and 
 occupation of high place, the alternately ap- 
 pointed and inevitable humiliation : — and the 
 fastening, in the sight of the Ruler of Destiny, 
 of all to the mighty axle which moves only as 
 the axle of the world. These things are told 
 or hinted to you, in the mythic picture, not 
 with the impertinence and the narrowness of 
 words, nor in any order compelling a mono- 
 tonous succession of thought, — but each as 
 you choose or chance to read it, to be rested 
 in or proceeded with, as you will. 
 
 Here then is the ground on which the 
 Dramatic, or personal, and Mythic — or personi- 
 fying, schools of our young painters, whether 
 we find for them a general name or not, 
 must be thought of as absolutely one — that, 
 as the dramatic painters seek to show you 
 the substantial truth of persons, so the mythic 
 school seeks to teach you the spiritual truth 
 of myths.
 
 5 2 The A7't of E?2gla?td. 
 
 Truth is the vital power of the entire 
 school, Truth its armour — Truth its war- 
 word ; and the grotesque and wild forms of 
 imagination which, at first sight, seem to be 
 the reaction of a desperate fancy, and a 
 terrified faith, against the incisive scepticism 
 of recent science, so far from being so, are 
 a part of that science itself: they are the 
 results of infinitely more accurate scholar- 
 ship, of infinitely more detective examination, 
 of infinitely more just and scrupulous in- 
 tegrity of thought, than was possible to any 
 artist during the two preceding centuries ; 
 and exactly as the eager and sympathetic 
 passion of the dramatic designer now assures 
 you of the way in which an event happened, 
 so the scholarly and sympathetic thought of 
 the mythic designer now assures you of the 
 meaning, in what a fable said. 
 
 Much attention has lately been paid by 
 arch^ologists to what they are pleased to call 
 the development of myths : but, for the most 
 part, with these two erroneous ideas to begin
 
 //. Burne-yones afid JVatts. ^'i^ 
 
 with — the first, that mythology is a temporary 
 form of human iolly, from which they are 
 about in their own perfect wisdom to achieve 
 our final deliverance ; the second, that you 
 may conclusively ascertain the nature of these 
 much-to-be-lamented misapprehensions, by the 
 types which early art presents of them ! You 
 will find in the first section of my ' Queen of 
 tlie Air,' contradiction enough of the first super- 
 cilious theory; — though not with enough clear- 
 ness the counter statement, that the thoughts 
 of all the greatest and wisest men hitherto, 
 since the world was made, have been expressed 
 through mythology. 
 
 You may find a piece of most convincing 
 evidence on this point by noticing that when- 
 ever, by Plato, you are extricated from the play 
 of logic, and from the debate of points dubitable 
 or trivial; and are to be told somewhat of his 
 inner thought, and highest moral conviction, — 
 that instant you are cast free in the elements 
 of phantasy, arid delighted by a beautiful myth. 
 And I believe that every master here who is 
 
 5
 
 54 T^he Art of England, 
 
 interested, not merely in the history, but in 
 the substance^ of moral philosophy, will confirm 
 me in saying that the direct maxims of the 
 greatest sages of Greece, do not, in the sum of 
 them, contain a code of ethics either so pure, 
 or so practical, as that which may be gathered 
 by the attentive interpretation of the myths 
 of Pindar and Aristophanes. 
 
 Of the folly of the second notion above- 
 named, held by the majority of our students of 
 development' in fable, — that they can estimate 
 the dignity of ideas by the symbols used for 
 them, in early art; and trace the succession of 
 thought in the human mind by the tradition 
 of ornament in its manufactures, I have no 
 time to-day to give any farther illustration 
 than that long since instanced to you, the 
 difference between the ideas conveyed by 
 Homer's description of the shield of Achilles, 
 (much more, Hesiod's of that of Herakles,) and 
 the impression which we should receive from 
 any actually contemporary Greek art. You 
 may with confidence receive the restoration
 
 //. Btir7ie-yo?ies a?id Watts. 55 
 
 of the Homeric shield, given by Mr. A. Murray 
 in his history of Greek sculpture, as authorita- 
 tively representing the utmost graphic skill which 
 could at the time have been employed in the 
 decoration of a hero's armour. But the poet 
 describes the rude imagery as producing the 
 effect of reality, and might praise in the same 
 words the sculpture of Donatello or Ghiberti. 
 And you may rest entirely satisfied that when 
 the surrounding realities are beautiful, the 
 imaginations, in all distinguished human in- 
 tellect, are beautiful also, and that the forms 
 of gods and heroes were entirely noble in 
 dream, and in contemplation, long before the 
 clay became ductile to the hand of the potter, 
 or the likeness of a living body possible in 
 ivory and gold. 
 
 And herein you see with what a deeply 
 interesting function the modern painter of 
 mythology is invested. He is to place, at the 
 service of former imagination, the art which 
 it had not — and to realize for us, with a 
 truth then impossible, the visions described
 
 56 The Art of R7igla?id, 
 
 by the wisest of men as embodying their 
 most pious thoughts and their most exalted 
 doctrines: not indeed attempting with any 
 hteral exactitude to follow the words of the 
 visionary, for no man can enter literally into 
 the mind of another, neither can any great 
 designer refuse to obey the suggestions of 
 his own : but only bringing the resources 
 of accomplished art to unveil the hidden 
 splendour of old imagination; and showing 
 us that the forms of gods and angels which 
 appeared in fancy to the prophets and saints 
 of antiquity, were indeed more natural and 
 beautiful than the black and red shadows on 
 a Greek vase, or the dogmatic outlines of 
 a Byzantine fresco. 
 
 It should be a ground of just pride to 
 all of us here in Oxford, that out of this 
 University came the painter whose indefati- 
 gable scholarship and exhaustless fancy have 
 together fitted him for this task, in a degree 
 far distinguishing him above all contemporary 
 European designers. It is impossible for the
 
 //. Bu?vie-yo?ies and Watts. 57 
 
 general public to estimate the quantity of 
 careful and investigatory reading, and the 
 fine tact ot literary discrimination, which are 
 signified by the command now possessed by 
 Mr. Burne- Jones over the entire range both 
 of Northern and Greek mythology, or the 
 tenderness at once, and largeness, of sympathy 
 which have enabled him to harmonize these 
 with the loveliest traditions of Christian legend. 
 Hitherto, there has been adversity between the 
 schools of classic and Christian art, only in 
 part conquered by the most liberal-minded of 
 artists and poets : Nicholas of Pisa accepts 
 indeed the technical aid of antiquity, but 
 with much loss to his Christian sentiment ; 
 Dante uses the imagery of ^^schylus for the 
 more terrible picturing of the Hell to which, 
 in common w^ith the theologians of his age, 
 he condemned his instructor; but while Minos 
 and the Furies are represented by him as 
 still existent in Hades, there is no place in 
 Paradise for Diana or Athena. Contrariwise, 
 the later revival of the legends of antiquity
 
 58 The Art of Engla7id, 
 
 meant scorn of those of Christendom. It 
 is but fifty years ago that the value of the 
 latter was again perceived and represented 
 to us by Lord Lindsay : and it is only 
 within the time which may be looked back to 
 by the greater number even of my younger 
 auditors, that the transition of Athenian mytho- 
 logy, through Byzantine, into Christian, has 
 been first felt, and then traced and proved, by 
 the penetrative scholarship of the men belong- 
 ing to this Pre-Raphaelite school, chiefly 
 Mr. Burne- Jones and Mr. William Morris,— 
 noble collaborateurs, of whom, may I be 
 forgiven, in passing, for betraying to you a 
 pretty little sacredness of their private life— 
 that they solemnly and jovially have break- 
 fasted together every Sunday, Jor many and 
 many a year. 
 
 Thus far, then, I am able with security to 
 allege to you the peculiar function of this 
 greatly gifted and highly trained English 
 painter ; and with security also, the function 
 of any noble myth, in the teaching, even of
 
 //. Bur77e-yo?2es and IVatts. 59 
 
 this practical and positive British race. But 
 now, when for purposes of direct criticism I 
 proceed to ask farther in what manner or with 
 what precision of art any given myth should be 
 presented — instantly we find ourselves involved 
 in a group of questions and difficulties which 
 I feel to be quite beyond the proper sphere of 
 this Professorship. So long as we have only to 
 deal with living creatures, or solid substances, 
 I am able to tell you — and to show — that they 
 are to be painted under certain optical laws 
 which prevail in our present atmosphere ; and 
 with due respect to laws of gravity and move- 
 ment which cannot be evaded in our terrestrial 
 constitution. But when we have only an idea 
 to paint, or a symbol, I do not feel authorized to 
 insist any longer upon these vulgar appearances, 
 or mortal and temporal limitations. I cannot 
 arrogantly or demonstratively define to you 
 how the light should fall on the two sides of 
 the nose of a Day of Creation ; nor obstinately 
 demand botanical accuracy in the graining of 
 the wood employed lor the spokes of a Wheel of
 
 6o The Art of England, 
 
 Fortune. Indeed, so far from feeling justified 
 in any such vexatious and vulgar requirements, 
 I am under an instinctive impression that 
 some kind of strangeness or quaintness, or even 
 violation of probability, would be not merely 
 admissible, but even desirable, in the delineation 
 of a figure intended neither to represent a 
 body, nor a spirit, neither an animal, nor a 
 vegetable, but only an idea, or an aphorism. 
 Let me, however, before venturing one step 
 forward amidst the insecure snows and cloudy 
 wreaths of the Imagination, secure your confi- 
 dence in my guidance, so far as I may gain it 
 by the assertion of one general rule of proper 
 safeguard ; that no mystery or majesty of 
 intention can be alleged by a painter to justify 
 him in careless or erroneous drawing of any 
 object — so far as he chooses to represent it at 
 all. The more license we grant to the audacity 
 of his conception, the more careful he should 
 be to give us no causeless ground of complaint 
 or offence : while, in the degree of importance 
 and didactic value which he attaches to his
 
 //. Burne-yones and JVatts. 6i 
 
 parable, will be the strictness of his duty to 
 allow no faults, by any care avoidable, to 
 disturb the spectator's attention, or provoke 
 his criticism. 
 
 I cannot but to this day remember, partly 
 w^ith amusement, partly in vexed humiliation, 
 the simplicity with which I brought out, 
 one evening when the sculptor Marochetti 
 was dining with us at Denmark Hill, some 
 of the then but little known drawings of 
 Rossetti, for his instruction in the beauties of 
 Pre-Raphaelitism. 
 
 You may see with the slightest glance at 
 the statue of Coeur de Lion, (the only really 
 interesting piece of historical sculpture we have 
 hitherto given to our City populace), that 
 Marochetti was not only trained to perfectness 
 of knowledge and perception in the structure 
 of the human body, but had also peculiar 
 delight in the harmonies of line which express 
 its easy and powerful motion. Knowing a 
 little more both of men and things now, 
 than I did on the evening in question, I
 
 62 The Art of Engla?2d, 
 
 too clearly apprehend that the violently 
 variegated segments and angular anatomies of 
 Sir Lancelot at the grave of King Arthur must 
 have produced on the bronze-minded sculptor 
 simply the effect of a Knave of Clubs and 
 Queen of Diamonds ; and that the Italian 
 master, in his polite confession of inability 
 to recognize the virtues of Rossetti, cannot but 
 have greatly suspected the sincerity of his 
 entertainer, in the profession of sympathy 
 with his own. 
 
 No faults, then, that we can help, — this 
 we lay down for certain law to start with ; 
 therefore, especially, no ignoble faults, of 
 mere measurement, proportion, perspective, 
 and the like, may be allowed to art which 
 is by claim, learned and magistral ; therefore 
 bound to be, in terms, grammatical. And 
 yet we are not only to allow, but even to 
 accept gratefully, any kind of strangeness 
 and deliberate difference from merely realistic 
 painting, which may raise the work, not only 
 above vulgarity, but above incredulity. For
 
 //. Bu7^7ie-yo?ies and Watts. 63 
 
 it is often by realizing it most positively that 
 we shall render it least credible. 
 
 For instance, in the prettiest design of 
 the series, by Richter, illustrating the Lord's 
 Prayer, which I asked you in my last lecture 
 to use for household lessons; — that of the 
 mother giving her young children their dinner 
 in the field which their father is sowino-, — 
 
 one of the pieces of the enclosing arabesque 
 represents a little winged cherub emergent 
 from a flower, holding out a pitcher to a 
 bee, who stoops to drink. The species of 
 bee is not scientifically determinable ; the 
 wings 'of the tiny servitor terminate rather in 
 petals than plumes ; and the unpretentious 
 jug suggests nothing of the clay of Dresden, 
 Sevres, or Chelsea. You would not, I think, 
 find your children understand the lesson in 
 divinity better, or believe it more frankly, 
 if the hymenopterous insect were painted so 
 accurately that, (to use the old method of 
 eulogium on painting,) you could hear it buzz; 
 and the chervib completed into the living like-
 
 64 The Art of E72gla?id. 
 
 ness of a little boy with blue eyes and red 
 cheeks, but of the size of a humming-bird. 
 In this and in myriads of similar cases, it is 
 possible to imagine from an outline what a 
 finished picture would only provoke us to 
 deny in contempt. 
 
 Again, in my opening lecture on Light 
 and Shade, the sixth of those given in the 
 year 1870, I traced in some completeness the 
 range ot ideas which a Greek vase-painter 
 was in the habit of conveying by the mere 
 opposition of dark and light in the figures 
 and background, with the occasional use of a 
 modifying purple. It has always been matter 
 of surprise to me that the Greeks rested in 
 colours so severe, and I have in several 
 places formerly ventured to state my convic- 
 tion that their sense of colour was inferior to 
 that of other races. Nevertheless, you will 
 find that the conceptions of moral and physical 
 truth w^hich they were able with these narrow 
 means to convey, are far loftier than the utmost 
 that can be gathered from the iridescent delicacy
 
 //. Bu7^?ie-'Jones a72d Watts, 65 
 
 oi" Chinese design, or the literally imitative 
 dexterities of Japan. 
 
 Now, in both these methods, Mr. Burne- 
 Jones has developed their applicable powers 
 to their higrhest extent. His outline is the 
 purest and quietest that is possible to the 
 pencil ; nearly all other masters accentuate 
 falsely, or in some places, as Richter, add 
 shadows which are more or less conventional. 
 But an outline by Burne- Jones is as pure as 
 the lines of engraving on an Etruscan mirror ; 
 and I placed the series of drawings from the 
 story of Psyche in your school as faultlessly 
 exemplary in this kind. Whether pleasing or 
 displeasing to your taste, they are entirely 
 masterful ; and it is only by trying to copy 
 these or other such outlines, that you will 
 fully feel the grandeur of action in the moving 
 hand, tranquil and swift as a hawk's flight, 
 and never allowing a vulgar tremor, or a 
 momentary impulse, to impair its precision, or 
 disturb its serenity. 
 
 Again, though Mr. Jones has a sense of
 
 66 The Art of England, 
 
 colour, in its kind, perfect, he is essentially 
 a chiaroscurist. Diametrically opposed to 
 Rossetti, who could conceive in colour only, 
 he prefers subjects which can be divested 
 of superficial attractiveness, appeal first to the 
 intellect and the heart ; and convey their 
 lesson either through intricacies of delicate 
 line, or in the dimness or coruscation of 
 ominous light. 
 
 The heads of Medea and of Danae, which 
 I placed in your schools long ago, are repre- 
 sentative of all that you need aim at in 
 chiaroscuro ; and lately a third type of his 
 best work, in subdued pencil light and shade, 
 has been placed within your reach in Dr. 
 Acland's drawing-room,— the portrait of Miss 
 Gladstone, in which you will see the painter's 
 best powers stimulated to their utmost, and 
 reaching a serene depth of expression unattain- 
 able by photography, and nearly certain to 
 be lost in finished painting. 
 
 For there is this perpetually increasing 
 difficulty towards the completion of any work,
 
 II. Bur?ie-yo?ies a?id Watts. 67 
 
 that the added forces of colour destroy the 
 value of the pale and subtle tints or shades 
 which give the nobleness to expression ; so 
 that the most powerful masters in oil painting 
 rarely aim at expression, but only at general 
 character — and I believe the great artist whose 
 name I have associated with that of Burne- 
 Jones as representing the mythic schools, Mr. 
 G. F. Watts, has been partly restrained, and 
 partly oppressed by the very earnestness and 
 extent of the study through which he has 
 sought to make his work on all sides perfect. 
 His constant reference to the highest examples 
 of Greek art in form, and his sensitiveness to 
 the qualities at once of tenderness and breadth 
 in pencil and chalk drawing, have virtually 
 ranked him among the painters of the great 
 Athenian days, of whom, in the sixth book 
 of the Laws, Plato wrote : — " You know how 
 the anciently accurate toil of a painter seems 
 never to reach a term that satisfies him ; but 
 he must either farther touch, or soften the 
 touches laid already, and never seems to reach
 
 68 The Art of England, 
 
 a point where he has not yet some power to 
 do more, so as to make the things he has 
 drawn more beautiful, and more apparent. 
 KoXXiO) T6 Kac (papepcorepa. 
 
 Of course within the Umits of this lecture 
 there is no possibility of entering on the 
 description of separate pictures ; but I trust 
 it may be hereafter my privilege to carry 
 you back to the beginning of English historical 
 art, when Mr. Watts first showed victorious 
 powers of design in the competition for the 
 frescoes of the Houses of Parliament — and 
 thence to trace for you, in some completeness, 
 the code of mythic and heroic story which 
 these two artists, Mr. Watts and Mr. Burne- 
 Jones, have gathered, and in the most deep 
 sense written, for us. 
 
 To-day I have only brought with me a 
 few designs by Mr. Burne-Jones, of a kind 
 which may be to some extent well repre- 
 sented in photograph, and to which I shall 
 have occasion to refer in subsequent lectures. 
 They are not to be copied, but delighted in,
 
 //. Bur?2e-yo?ies aj^d Watts, 69 
 
 by those of you who care for them, — and, 
 under Mr. Fisher's care, I shall recommend 
 them to be kept out of the way of those 
 who do not. They include the Days of 
 Creation; three outlines from Solomon's Song; 
 two from the Romance of the Rose ; the 
 great one of Athena inspiring Humanity ; 
 and the story of St. George and Sabra. They 
 will be placed in a cabinet in the upper 
 gallery, together with the new series of 
 Turner sketches, and will by no means be 
 intruded on your attention, but made easily 
 accessible to your wish. 
 
 To justify this monastic treatment of them, 
 I must say a few words, in conclusion, of the 
 dislike which these designs, in common with 
 those of Carpaccio, excite in the minds of most 
 English people of a practical turn. A few 
 words only, both because this lecture is already 
 long enough, and besides, because the point 
 in question is an extremely curious one, and 
 by no means to be rightly given account of 
 in a concluding sentence. The point is, that
 
 70 The Art of Rn gland, 
 
 in the case of ordinary painters, however 
 pecuhar their manner, people either Hke them, 
 or pass them by with a merciful contempt or 
 condemnation, calling them stupid, or weak, 
 or foolish, but without any expression of 
 real disgust or dislike. But in the case of 
 painters of the mythic schools, people either 
 greatly like them, or they dislike in a sort 
 of frightened and angry way, as if they had 
 been personally aggrieved. And the persons 
 who feel this antipathy most strongly, are 
 often extremely sensible and good, and of 
 the kind one is extremely unwilling to offend; 
 but either they are not fond of art at all, 
 or else they admire, naturally, pictures from 
 real life only, such as, to name an extremely 
 characteristic example, those of the (I believe. 
 Bavarian) painter Vautier, of whom I shall 
 have much, in another place, to say in praise, 
 but of whom, with the total school he leads, 
 I must peremptorily assure my hearers that 
 their manner of painting is merely part of our 
 general modern system of scientific illustration
 
 //. Burne-yones and Watts, 71 
 
 aided by photography, and has no claim to 
 rank with works of creative art at all : and 
 farther, that it is essentially illiterate, and can 
 teach you nothing but what you can easily 
 see without the painter's trouble. Here is, 
 for instance, a very charming little picture 
 of a school girl going to her class, and 
 telling her doll to be good till she comes 
 back; — you like it, and ought to like it, 
 because you see the same kind of incident 
 in your own children every day ; but I 
 should say, on the whole, you had better 
 look at the real children than the picture. 
 Whereas, you can't every day at home see 
 the goddess Athena telling you yourselves to 
 be good, — and perhaps you wouldn't alto- 
 gether like to, if you could. 
 
 Without venturing on the rudeness of 
 hinting that any such feeling underlies the 
 English dislike of didactic art, I will pray 
 you at once to check the habit of carelessly 
 blaming the things that repel you in early or 
 existing religious artists, and to observe, for
 
 72 The Art of England. 
 
 the sum of what is to be noted respecting 
 the four of whom I have thus far ventured 
 to speak — Mr. Rossetti, Mr. Hunt, Mr. Jones, 
 and Mr. Watts, that they are in the most 
 solemn sense. Hero-worshippers ; and that, 
 whatever may be their faults or shortcomings, 
 their aim has always been the brightest and 
 the noblest possible. The more you can 
 admire them, and the longer you read, the 
 more your minds and hearts will be filled 
 with the best knowledge accessible in history, 
 and the loftiest associations conveyable by the 
 passionate and reverent skill, of which I have 
 told you in the ' Laws of Fesole,' that " All 
 great Art is Praise."
 
 The Art of England. 
 
 LECTURES GIVEN IN OXFORD, 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, D.C.L., LL.D., 
 
 HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND HONORARY FELLOW OF CORPUS-CHRISTI COLLEGE, 
 
 DURING HIS 
 
 SECOND TENURE OF THE SLADE PROFESSORSHIP. 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 CLASSIC SCHOOLS OF PAINTING. 
 
 GEORGE ALLEN, 
 
 SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT. 
 
 1883.
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 CLASSIC SCHOOLS OF PAINTING. 
 Sir F. Leighton and Ahna Tadema,
 
 Lecture III. 
 
 CLASSIC SCHOOLS Ol' PAINI'ING. 
 SIR !•. LEIGHTON AND ALMA I' A DEM A. 
 
 I HAD originally intciidcd this lecture to f)c 
 merely the exposition, with direct reference 
 to painting and literature, of the single line 
 of Horace which sums the C(;nditions of a 
 gentleman's education, be he rich r;r poor, 
 learned or unlearned : 
 
 " Est animus tibi, -sunt mores et lingua, — 
 
 fidesque. 
 
 •)■> 
 
 ^ animus ' being that part of him in which 
 he differs from an ox or an ape ; ' mores,' the 
 difference in him from the ' malignum vulgus'; 
 Mingua,' eloquence, the power of expressirni; 
 and ' fides,' fidelity, to the Master, (;r Mistress, 
 or Law, that he loves. But since I came to
 
 76 The Art of England, 
 
 London and saw the exhibitions, I have 
 thought good to address my discourse more 
 pertinently to what must at this moment 
 chiefly interest you in them. And I must at 
 once, and before everything, tell you the 
 delight given me by the quite beautiful work 
 in portraiture, with which my brother-professor 
 Richmond leads and crowns the general splen- 
 dour of the Grosvenor Gallery. I am doubly 
 thankful that his release from labour in Oxford 
 has enabled him to develope his special powers 
 so nobly, and that my own return grants me 
 the privilege of publicly expressing to him the 
 admiration we all must feel. 
 
 And now in this following lecture, you 
 must please understand at once that I use 
 the word ' classic,' first in its own sense of 
 senatorial, academic, and authoritative ; but, 
 as a necessary consequence of that first 
 meaning, also in the sense, more proper 
 to our immediate subject, of Anti-Gothic ; 
 antagonist, . that is to say, to the temper in 
 which Gothic architecture was built : and not
 
 ///. xS'/r F. Leight077 and Ahna Tadejna. 77 
 
 only antagonist to that form of art, but 
 contemptuous of it ; unforgiving to its faults, 
 cold to its enthusiasms, and impatient of its 
 absurdities. In which contempt the classic 
 mind is certainly illiberal ; and narrower than 
 the mind of an equitable art student should be 
 in these enlightened days: — for instance, in 
 the British Museum, it is quite right that the 
 British public should see the Elgin marbles to 
 the best advantage ; but not that they should 
 be unable to see any example of the sculpture of 
 Chartres or Wells, unless they go to the miscel- 
 laneous collection at Kensington, where Gothic 
 saints and sinners are confounded alike among 
 steam thrashing-machines and dynamite-proof 
 ships of war ; or to the Crystal Palace, where 
 they are mixed up with Rimmel's perfumery. 
 For this hostility, in our present English 
 schools, between the votaries of classic and 
 Gothic art, there is no ground in past history, 
 and no excuse in the nature of those arts 
 themselves. Briefly, to-day, I would sum for 
 you the statement of their historical continuity
 
 y8 The Art of E?2gland. 
 
 which you will find expanded and illustrated 
 in my former lectures. 
 
 Only observe, for the present, you must 
 please put Oriental Art entirely out of your 
 heads. I shall allow myself no allusion to 
 China, Japan, India, Assyria, or Arabia: though 
 this restraint on myself will be all the more 
 difficult, because, only a few weeks since, I 
 had a delightful audience of Sir Frederick 
 Leigh ton beside his Arabian fountain, and 
 beneath his Aladdin's palace glass. Yet I 
 shall not allude, in what I say of his designs, 
 to any points in which they may perchance 
 have been influenced by those enchantments. 
 Similarly there were some charming Zobeides 
 and Cleopatras among the variegated colour 
 fancies of Mr. Alma Tadema in the last 
 Grosvenor ; but I have nothing yet to say 
 of them : it is only as a careful and learned 
 interpreter of certain phases of Greek and 
 Roman life, and as himself a most accom- 
 plished painter, on long-established principles, 
 that I name him as representatively ' classic'
 
 ///. Sir F. Leightojt arid Ahna Tadema. 79 
 
 The summary, therefore, which I have to 
 give you of the course of Pagan and Gothic 
 Art must be understood as kept wholly on 
 this side of the Bosphorus, and recognizing 
 no farther shore beyond the Mediterranean. 
 Thus fixing our termini, you find from the 
 earliest times, in Greece and Italy, a multitude 
 of artists gradually perfecting the knowledge 
 and representation of the human body, glorified 
 by the exercises of war. And you have, north 
 of Greece and Italy, innumerably and incor- 
 rigibly savage nations, representing, with rude 
 and irregular efforts, on huge stones, and ice- 
 borne boulders, on cave-bones and forest-stocks 
 and logs, with any manner of innocent tinting 
 or scratching possible to them, sometimes beasts, 
 sometimes hobgoblins — sometimes, heaven only 
 knows what ; but never attaining any skill 
 in figure-drawing, until, whether invading or 
 invaded, Greece and Italy teach them what 
 a human being is like ; and with that help 
 they dream and blunder on through the cen- 
 turies, achieving many fantastic and amusing
 
 8o The Art of R?i gland. 
 
 things, more especially the art of rhyming, 
 whereby they usually express their notions of 
 things far better than by painting. Neverthe- 
 less, in due course we get a Holbein out of 
 them ; and, in the end, for best product 
 hitherto. Sir Joshua, and the supremely Gothic 
 Gainsborough, whose last words we may take 
 for a beautiful reconciliation of all schools 
 and souls who have done their work to the 
 best of their knowledge and conscience, — "We 
 are all going to Heaven, and Vandyke is of 
 the company." 
 
 " We are all going to Heaven." Either 
 that is true of men and nations, or else 
 that they are going the other way ; and the 
 question of questions for them is — not how 
 far from heaven they are, but whether they 
 are going to it. Whether in Gothic or Classic 
 Art, it is not the wisdom or the barbarism 
 that you have to estimate— not the skill nor the 
 rudeness ; — but the tende7icy. For instance, 
 just before coming to Oxford this time, I 
 received by happy chance from Florence the
 
 ///. Sir F. L,eight07i and Abna Tadema. 8i 
 
 noble book just published at Monte Cassino, 
 giving facsimiles of the Benedictine manu- 
 scripts there, between the tenth and thirteenth 
 centuries. Out of it I have chosen these four 
 magnificent letters to place in your schools — 
 magnificent I call them, as pieces of Gothic 
 writing ; but they are still, you will find on 
 close examination, extremely limited in range 
 of imaginative subject. For these, and all the 
 other letters of the alphabet in that central 
 Benedictine school at the period in question, 
 were composed of nothing else but packs 
 of white dogs, jumping, with more contortion 
 of themselves than has been contrived even by 
 modern stage athletes, through any quantity 
 of hoops. But I place these chosen examples 
 in our series of lessons, not as patterns of 
 dog-drawing, but as distinctly progressive 
 Gothic art, leading infallibly forward — ^though 
 the good monks had no notion how far, 
 — to the Benedictine collie, in Landseer's 
 ' Shepherd's Chief Mourner,' and the Benedictine 
 bulldog, in Mr. Britton Riviere's 'Sympathy.'
 
 82 The Art of R?i gland. 
 
 On the other hand, here is an enlarge- 
 ment, made to about the proper scale, from 
 a small engraving which I brought with 
 me from Naples, of a piece of the Classic 
 Pompeian art which has lately been so much 
 the admiration of the aesthetic cliques of 
 Paris and London. It purports to represent 
 a sublimely classic cat, catching a sublimely 
 cla'ssic chicken ; and is perhaps quite as 
 much like a cat as the white spectra of 
 Monte Cassino are like dogs. But at a 
 glance I can tell you, — nor will you, surely, 
 doubt the truth of the telling, — that it is art 
 in precipitate decadence; that no bettering or 
 even far dragging on of its existence is possible 
 for it ; — that it is the work of a nation 
 already in the jaws of death, and of a school 
 which is passing away in shame. 
 
 Remember, therefore, and write it on the 
 very tables of your heart, that you must 
 never, when you have to judge of character 
 in national styles, regard them in their deca- 
 dence, but always in their spring and youth.
 
 ///. Sir F. 1^ eight 071 and Alma Tad em a. 83 
 
 Greek art is to be studied from Homeric 
 days to those of Marathon ; Gothic, from 
 Alfred to the Black Prince in England, from 
 Clovis to St. Louis in France ; and the com- 
 bination of both, which occurs first with 
 absolute balance in the pulpit by Nicholas 
 of Pisa in her baptistery, thenceforward up to 
 Perugino and Sandro Botticelli. A period of 
 decadence follows among all the nations of 
 Europe, out of the ashes and embers of which 
 the flame leaps again in Rubens and Vandyke; 
 and so gradually glows and coruscates into 
 the intermittent corona of indescribably various 
 modern mind, of which in England you may, 
 as I said, take Sir Joshua and Gainsborough 
 for not only the topmost, but the hitherto 
 total, representatives ; total, that is to say, 
 out of the range of landscape, and above that 
 of satire and caricature. All that the rest 
 can do partially, they can do perfectly. They 
 do it, not only perfectly, but nationally ; they 
 are at once the greatest, and the Englishest, 
 of all our school.
 
 84 The Art of R?igla?id, 
 
 The Englishest — and observe also, there- 
 fore the greatest : take that for an universal, 
 exceptionless law ; — the largest soul of any 
 country is altogether its own. Not the citizen 
 of the world, but of his own city, — nay, for 
 the best men, you may say, of his own village. 
 Patriot always, provincial always, of his own 
 crag or field always. A Liddesdale man, or 
 a Tynedale ; Angelico from the Rock of 
 Fesole, or Virgil from the Mantuan marsh. 
 You dream of National unity !— you might as 
 well strive to melt the stars down into one 
 nugget, and stamp them small into coin with 
 one Caesar's face. 
 
 What mental qualities, especially English, 
 you find in the painted heroes and beauties 
 of Reynolds and Gainsborough, I can only 
 discuss with you hereafter. But what external 
 and corporeal qualities these masters, of our 
 masters love to paint, I must ask you to-day 
 to consider for a few moments, under Mr. 
 Carlyle's guidance, as well as mine, and with 
 the analysis of ' Sartor Resartus.' Take, as
 
 ///. Sir F. l^eighton and Alma Tadema. 85 
 
 types of the best work ever laid on British 
 canvas, — types which I am sure you will 
 without demur accept, — Sir Joshua's Age of 
 Innocence, and Mrs. Pelham feeding chickens; 
 Gainsborough's Mrs. Graham, divinely doing 
 nothing, and Blue Boy similarly occupied ; 
 and, finally, Reynolds' Lord Heathfield mag- 
 nanimously and irrevocably locking up Gibraltar. 
 Suppose, now, under the instigation of Mr. 
 Carlyle and ' Sartor,' and under the counsel 
 of Zeuxis and Parrhasius, we had it really in 
 our power to bid Sir Joshua and Gainsborough 
 paint all these over again, in the classic 
 manner. Would you really insist on having 
 her white frock taken off the Age of Inno- 
 cence; on the Blue Boy's divesting himself of 
 his blue ; on — we may not dream of any- 
 thing more classic — Mrs. Graham's taking 
 the feathers out of her hat ; and on Lord 
 Heathfield's parting, — I dare not suggest, with 
 his regimentals, but his orders of the Bath, 
 or what else ? 
 
 I own that I cannot, even myself, as I
 
 86 The Ai^t of Rn gland, 
 
 propose the alternatives, answer absolutely as 
 a Goth, nor without some wistful leanings 
 towards classic principle. Nevertheless, I feel 
 confident in your general admission that the 
 charm of all these pictures is in great degree 
 dependent on toilette ; that the fond and 
 graceful flatteries of each master do in no 
 small measure consist in his management of 
 frillings and trimmings, cuffs and collarettes ; 
 and on beautiful flingings or fastenings of 
 investiture, which can only here and there be 
 called a drapery^ but insists on the perfectness 
 of the forms it conceals, and deepens their 
 harmony by its contradiction. And although 
 now and then, when great ladies wish to be 
 painted as sibyls or goddesses. Sir Joshua 
 does his best to bethink himself of Michael 
 Angelo, and Guido, and the Lightnings, and 
 the Auroras, and all the rest of it, — you will, 
 I think, admit that the culminating sweet- 
 ness and rightness of him are in some little 
 Lady So-and-so, with round hat and strong 
 shoes; and that a final separation from the
 
 ///. Si 7^ F. Leigh ton and Abna Tade^na. 87 
 
 Greek art which can be proud in a torso 
 without a head, is achieved by the master who 
 paints for you five Uttle girls' heads, without 
 ever a torso ! 
 
 Thus, then, we arrive at a clearly in- 
 telligible distinction between the Gothic and 
 Classic schools, and a clear notion also of 
 their dependence on one another. All jesting 
 apart, — I think you may safely take Luca 
 della Robbia with his scholars for an exponent 
 of their unity, to all nations. Luca is brightly 
 Tuscan, with the dignity of a Greek ; he 
 has English simplicity, French grace, Italian 
 devotion, — and is, I think, delightful to the 
 truest lovers of art in all nations, and of all 
 ranks. The Florentine Contadina rejoices to 
 see him above her fruit-stall in the Mercato 
 Vecchio : and, having by chance the other 
 day a little Nativity by him on the floor 
 of my study (one of his frequentest designs 
 of the Infant Christ laid on the ground, and 
 the Madonna kneeling to Him) — having it, I 
 say, by chance on the floor, when a fashion-
 
 88 The Art of E?igland. 
 
 able little girl with her mother came to see 
 me, the child about three years old — though 
 there were many pretty and glittering things 
 about the room which might have caught 
 her eye or her fancy, the first thing, never- 
 theless, my little lady does, is to totter quietly 
 up to the white Infant Christ, and kiss it. 
 
 Taking, then, Luca, for central between 
 Classic and Gothic in sculpture, for central 
 art of Florence, in painting, I show you the 
 copies made for the St. George's Guild, of the 
 two frescoes by Sandro Botticelli, lately bought 
 by the French Government for the Louvre. 
 These copies, made under the direction of 
 Mr. C. F. Murray, while the frescoes were 
 still untouched, are of singular value now. 
 For in their transference to canvas for carriage 
 much violent damage was sustained by the 
 originals ; and as, even before, they were not 
 presentable to the satisfaction of the French 
 public, the backgrounds were filled in with 
 black, the broken edges cut away ; and, thus 
 repainted and maimed, they are now, dis-
 
 ///. Sir F. Leighton and Ahna Tadema. 89 
 
 graced and glassless, let into the wall of a 
 stair-landing on the outside of the Louvre 
 galleries. 
 
 You will judge for yourselves of their de- 
 servings ; but for my own part I can assure 
 you of their being quite central and classic 
 Florentine painting, and types of the manner 
 in which, so far as you follow the instructions 
 given in the ' Laws of Fesole,' you will be 
 guided to paint. Their subjects should be 
 of special interest to us in Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, as bearing on institutions of colleges 
 for maidens no less than bachelors. For these 
 frescoes represent the Florentine ideal of edu- 
 cation for maid and bachelor, — the one baptized 
 by the Graces for her marriage, and the other 
 brought to the tutelage of the Great Powers 
 of Knowledge, under a great presiding Muse, 
 whose name you must help me to interpret ; 
 and with good help, both from maid and 
 bachelor, I hope we shall soon be able to 
 name, and honour, all their graces and virtues 
 rightly.
 
 90 The Art of England. 
 
 Five out of the six Sciences and Powers 
 on her right hand and left, I know. They 
 are, on her left — geometry, astronomy, and 
 music; on her right — logic and rhetoric. 
 The third, nearest her, I do not know, and 
 will not guess. She herself bears a mighty 
 bow, and I could give you conjectural inter- 
 pretations of her, if I chose, to any extent ; 
 but will wait until I hear what you think 
 of her yourselves. I must leave you also to 
 discover by whom the youth is introduced 
 to the great conclave ; but observe, that, as 
 in the frescoes of the Spanish Chapel, before 
 he can approach that presence he has passed 
 through the ' Strait Gate,' of which the bar has 
 fallen, and the valve is thrown outwards. 
 This portion of the fresco, on which the 
 most important significance of the whole 
 depended, was cut away in the French 
 restoration. 
 
 Taking now Luca and Sandro for standards 
 of sweet consent in the feelings of either 
 school, falling aside from them according to
 
 ///. Sir F. Leigh ton a?tcl Abna Tade??ia, 91 
 
 their likings or knowledge, you have the two 
 evermore adverse parties, of whom Lord 
 Lindsay speaks, as one studying the spirit, and 
 the other the flesh : but you will find it more 
 simply true to say that the one studies the 
 head, and the other the body. And I think 
 I am almost alone among recent tutors or 
 professors, in recommending you to study both, 
 at their best, and neither the skull of the one, 
 nor skeleton of the other. 
 
 I had a special lesson, leading me to this 
 balance, when I was in Venice, in 1880. 
 The authorities of the Academy did me the 
 grace of taking down my two pet pictures of 
 St. Ursula, and putting them into a quiet 
 room for me to copy. Now in this quiet 
 room where I was allowed to paint, there 
 were a series of casts from the ^gina marbles, 
 which I never had seen conveniently before ; 
 and so, on my right hand and left, I had, 
 all day long, the best pre-Praxitelite Classic 
 art, and the best pre-Raphaelite Gothic art : 
 and could turn to this side, or that, in an
 
 92 The Art of England, 
 
 instant, to enjoy either ; — which I could do, 
 in each case, with my whole heart ; only 
 on this condition, that if I was to admire 
 St. Ursula, it was necessary on the whole to 
 be content with her face, and not to be too 
 critical or curious about her elbows; but, 
 in the ^gina marbles, one's principal atten- 
 tion had to be given to the knees and elbows, 
 while no ardent sympathies were excited by 
 the fixed smile upon the face. 
 
 Without pressing our northern cherubic 
 principle to an extreme, it is really a true 
 and extremely important consequence that all 
 portraiture is essentially Gothic. You will 
 find it stated — and with completely illustrative 
 proof, in ' Aratra PenteHci,' that portraiture 
 was the destruction of Greek design ; certain 
 exceptions being pointed out which I do not 
 wish you now to be encumbered with. You 
 may understand broadly that we Goths claim 
 portraiture altogether for our own, and con- 
 tentedly leave the classic people to round 
 their chins by rule, and fix their smiles by
 
 ///. Sir F. Leighton and Abna Tadema. 93 
 
 precedent : we like a little irregularity in 
 feature, and a little caprice in humour — and 
 with the condition of dramatic truth in pas- 
 sion, necessarily accept dramatic difference in 
 feature. 
 
 Our English masters of portraiture must 
 not therefore think that I have treated them 
 with disrespect, in not naming them, in these 
 lectures, separately from others. Portraiture 
 is simply a necessary function of good Gothic 
 painting, nor can any man claim pre-eminence 
 in epic or historic art who does not first 
 excel in that. Nevertheless, be it said in 
 passing, that the number of excellent portraits 
 given daily in our illustrated papers prove 
 the skill of mere likeness-taking to be no 
 unfrequent or particularly admirable one ; 
 and that it is to be somewhat desired that 
 ovir professed portrait-painters should render 
 their work valuable in all respects, and 
 exemplary in its art, no less than delightful 
 in its resemblance. The public, who are 
 naturally in the habit of requiring rather the
 
 94 ^/^^ v^r/ of England, 
 
 felicity and swiftness of likeness than abstract 
 excellence in painting, are always ready to 
 forgive the impetuosity which resembles force ; 
 and the interests connected with rate of 
 production tend also towards the encour- 
 agement of superficial execution. Whereas 
 in a truly great school, for the reasons given 
 in my last lecture, it may often be in- 
 evitable-, and sometimes desirable, that works 
 of high imaginative range and faculty should 
 be slightly traced, and without minuteness 
 finished ; but there is no excuse for imper- 
 fection in a portrait, or failure of attention 
 to its minor accessories. I have long ago 
 given, for one instance of perfect portraiture, 
 Holbein's George Guysen, at Berlin, quite 
 one of the most accomplished pictures in 
 the world ; and in my last visit to Florence 
 none of the pictures before known in the 
 Uffizii retained their power over me so 
 completely as a portrait of a lady in the 
 Tribune, which is placed as a pendant to 
 Raphael's Fornarina, and has always been
 
 ///. A?/r F, height on a7td Alma Taclema. 95 
 
 attributed to Raphael, being without doubt 
 by some earlier and more laborious master; 
 and, by whomsoever it may be, unrivalled 
 in European galleries for its faultless and 
 unaffected finish. 
 
 I may be permitted in this place to 
 express my admiration of the kind of por- 
 traiture, which without supporting its claim 
 to public attention by the celebrity of its 
 subjects, renders the pictures of Mr. Stacy 
 Marks so valuable as epitomes and types of 
 English life. No portrait of any recognized 
 master in science could be more interesting 
 than the gentle Professor in this year's 
 Academy, from whom even a rebelliously 
 superficial person like myself might be con- 
 tent to receive instruction in the mysteries 
 of anatomy. Many an old traveller's remem- 
 brances were quite pathetically touched by 
 his monumental record of the ' Three Jolly 
 Postboys ' ; and that he scarcely paints for 
 us but in play, is our own fault. Among 
 all the endeavours in English historical paint-
 
 96 The Art of England, 
 
 ing exhibited in recent years, quite the most 
 conscientious, vivid, and instructive, was Mr. 
 Marks' rendering of the interview between 
 Lord Say and Jack Cade ; and its quiet sin- 
 cerity was only the cause of its being passed 
 without attention. 
 
 In turning now from these subjects of 
 Gothic art to consider the classic ideal, 
 though I do so in painful sense of trans- 
 gressing the limits of my accurate knowledge, 
 I do not feel entirely out of my element, 
 because in some degree I claim even Sir 
 Frederick Leighton as a kindred Goth. For, 
 if you will overpass quickly in your minds 
 what you remember of the treasures of Greek 
 antiquity, you will find that, among them all, 
 you can get no notion of what a Greek 
 little girl was like. Matronly Junos, and 
 tremendous Demeters, and Gorgonian Minervas, 
 as many as you please ; but for my own 
 part, always speaking as a Goth, I had much 
 rather have had some idea of the Spartan 
 Helen dabbling with Castor and Pollux in
 
 ///. Sir F. Leighton and Alma Tadema. 97 
 
 the Eurotas, — none of them over ten years 
 old. And it is with extreme gratitude, there- 
 fore, and unquaHfied admiration, that I find 
 Sir Frederick condescending from the majesties 
 of Olympus to the worship of these unappalling 
 powers, which, heaven be thanked, are as 
 brightly Anglo-Saxon as Hellenic; and painting 
 for us, with a soft charm peculiarly his own, 
 the witchcraft and the wonderfulness of child- 
 hood. 
 
 I have no right whatever to speak of the 
 works of higher effort and claim, which have 
 been the result of his acutely observant and 
 enthusiastic study of the organism of the 
 human body. I am indeed able to recognize 
 his skill ; but have no sympathy with the 
 subjects that admit of its display. I am 
 enabled, however, to show you with what 
 integrity of application it has been gained, 
 by his kindness in lending me for the Ruskin 
 school two perfect early drawings, one of a 
 lemon tree, — and another, of the same date, 
 of a Byzantine well, which determine for you
 
 98 The Art of E7igla7id. 
 
 without appeal, the question respecting necessity 
 of dehneation as the first skill of a painter. 
 Of all our present masters, Sir Frederic Leighton 
 delights most in softly-blended colours, and his 
 ideal of beauty is more nearly that of Correggio 
 than any seen since Correggio's time. But 
 you see by what precision of terminal outline 
 he at first restrained, and exalted, his gift of 
 beautiful vaghezza. 
 
 Nor is the lesson one whit less sternly 
 conveyed to you by the work of M. Alma 
 Tadema, who differs from all the artists I 
 have ever known, except John Lewis, in the 
 gradual increase of technical accuracy, which 
 attends and enhances together the expanding 
 range of his dramatic invention ; while every 
 year he displays more varied and complex 
 powers of minute draughtsmanship, more espe- 
 cially in architectural detail, wherein, somewhat 
 priding myself as a specialty, I nevertheless 
 receive continual lessons from him; except 
 only in this one point, — that, with me, the 
 translucency and glow of marble is the prin-
 
 ///. Sir F. Leighton and Alma Tadenta. 99 
 
 cipal character of its substance, while with 
 M. Tadema it is chiefly the superficial lustre 
 and veining which seem to attract him ; and 
 these, also, seen, not in the strength of 
 southern sun, but in the cool twilight of 
 luxurious chambers. With which insufficient, 
 not to say degrading, choice of architectural 
 colour and shade, there is a fallacy in his 
 classic idealism, against which, while I respect- 
 fully acknowledge his scholarship and his 
 earnestness, it is necessary that you should be 
 gravely and conclusively warned. 
 
 I said that the Greeks studied the body 
 glorified by war ; but much more, remember, 
 they studied the mi?td glorified by it. It is 
 the /jbrivi<; '^;^tX?;o9, not the muscular force, 
 which the good beauty of the body itself 
 signifies ; and you may most strictly take 
 the Homeric words describing the aspect 
 of Achilles showing himself on the Greek 
 rampart as representative of the total Greek 
 ideal. Learn by heart, unforgettably, the seven 
 lines —
 
 100 'The Art of Rngland, 
 
 Avrap AxiXX€v<; copTo Ail <pt\o?' ctfjucfyi S ASrjvr] 
 fl/jbOi<; i,(p0L/jbOi(Ti /3aX Alytha dvcrcrapoeo'O'ap' 
 A/jL(f)L Se oi KGcpaXy v€<po<; kcrrecpe dla Oeacop 
 )(^pvo-€OPy 6K 8 avTOv 8ac6 <p\oya '7Ta/ji<pavo(jO(Tav, 
 ^Hmo^oc 3 €K7r\7jyeVy ewel cSop aKa/xarov irup 
 Aecvov virep KecpaXijg /aeyaOvjuov UyXeccovog 
 Aaio/jb€vov' TO 3 eSaoe Oea yXavKcoTrtg ^ AOrjvr] ; 
 
 which are enough to remind you of the 
 whole context, and to assure you of the 
 association of Hght and cloud, in their terrible 
 mystery, with the truth and majesty of human 
 form, in the Greek conception ; light and cloud, 
 whether appointed either to show or to conceal, 
 both given by a divine spirit, according to 
 the bearing of your own university shield, 
 " Dominus illuminatio." In all ancient heroic 
 subjects, you will find these two ideas of light 
 and mystery combined ; and these with height 
 of standing — the Goddess central and high in 
 the pediment of her temple, the hero on his 
 chariot, or the Egyptian king colossal above 
 his captives. 
 
 Now observe, that whether of Greek or
 
 ///. Sir F. L,eight07t ai^d Alma Tadema, loi 
 
 Roman life, M. Alma Tadema's pictures are 
 always in twilight — interiors, viro o-v/jb/jnyel aKta. 
 I don't know if you saw the collection of 
 them last year at the Grosvenor, but with that 
 universal twilight there was also universal 
 crouching or lolling posture, — either in fear 
 or laziness. And the most gloomy, the most 
 crouching, the most dastardly of all these 
 representations of classic life, was the little 
 picture called the Pyrrhic Dance, of which the 
 general effect was exactly like a microscopic 
 view of a small detachment of black-beetles, 
 in search of a dead rat. 
 
 I have named to you the Achillean 
 splendour as primary type of Greek war ; 
 but you need only glance, in your memory, 
 for a few instants, over the habitual expres- 
 sions of all the great poets, to recognize the 
 magnificence of light, terrible or hopeful ; 
 the radiance of armour, over all the field of 
 battle, or flaming at every gate of the city ; 
 as in the blazoned heraldry of the seven 
 against Thebes, — or beautiful, as in the golden
 
 I02 The A?'t of K?igland, 
 
 armour of Glaucus, down to the baser bright- 
 ness for which Camilla died: remember also 
 that the ancient Doric dance was strictly the 
 dance of Apollo ; seized again by your own 
 mightiest poet for the chief remnant of the 
 past in the Greece of to-day — 
 
 " You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet; 
 Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?" 
 
 And this is just the piece of classic life 
 which your nineteenth century fancy sets forth 
 under its fuliginous and cantharoid disfigure- 
 ment and disgrace. 
 
 I say, your nineteenth century fancy, for 
 M. Alma Tadema does but represent — or 
 rather, has haplessly got himself entangled in, 
 — the vast vortex of recent Italian and French 
 revolutionary rage against all that resists, or 
 ever did resist, its licence ; in a word, against 
 all priesthood and knighthood. 
 
 The Roman state, observe, in the strength 
 of it expresses both these ; the orders of
 
 ///. Sir F. Leighton a?2cl Alma Tadejna. 103 
 
 chivalry do not rise out of the disciplining 
 of the hordes of Tartar horsemen, but by the 
 Christianizing of the Roman eques ; and the 
 noble priesthood of Western Christendom is 
 not, in the heart of it, hieratic, but pon- 
 tifical. And it is the last corruption of this 
 Roman state, and its Bacchanalian phrenzy, 
 which M. Alma Tadema seems to hold it his 
 heavenly mission to pourtray. 
 
 I have no mind, as I told you, to darken 
 the healthy work I hope to lead you into by 
 any frequent reference to antagonist influ- 
 ences. But it is absolutely necessary for me 
 to-day to distinguish, once for all, what it 
 is above everything your duty, as scholars in 
 Oxford, to know and love — the perpetual 
 laws of classic literature and art, the laws 
 of the Muses, from what has of late again 
 infected the schools of Europe under the 
 pretence of classic study, being indeed only 
 the continuing poison of the Renaissance, and 
 ruled, not by the choir of the Muses, but by 
 the spawn of the Python. And this I have
 
 1 04 The Art of England. 
 
 been long-minded to do ; but am only now 
 enabled to do completely and clearly, and be- 
 yond your doubt, by having obtained for you 
 the evidence, unmistakable, of what remains 
 classic from the ancient life of Italy ■ — the 
 ancient Etruscan life, down to this day; which 
 is the perfection of humility, modesty, and 
 serviceableness, as opposed to the character 
 which remains in my mind as the total 
 impression of the Academy and Grosvenor, — 
 that the young people of this day desire to 
 be painted first as proud, saying. How grand 
 I am ; next as immodest, saying. How beau- 
 tiful I am ; lastly as idle, saying, I am able 
 to pay for flunkeys, and never did a stroke 
 of work in my life. 
 
 Since the day of the opening of the 
 great Manchester exhibition in 1851, every 
 Englishman, desiring to express interest in the 
 arts, considers it his duty to assert with 
 Keats, that a thing of beauty is a joy for 
 ever. I do not know in what sense the 
 saying was understood by the Manchester
 
 ///. Sir F. Leighton and Alma Tadema. 105 
 
 school. But this I know, that what joy may 
 remain still for you and for your children — • 
 in the fields, the homes, and the churches 
 of England — - you must win by otherwise 
 reading the fallacious line. A beautiful thing 
 may exist but for a moment, as a reality ; — -it 
 exists for ever as a testimony. To the law 
 and to the witness of it the nations must 
 appeal, " in secula seculorum " ; and in very 
 deed and very truth, a thing of beauty is a 
 law for ever. 
 
 That is the true meaning of classic art 
 and of classic literature ; — not the license of 
 pleasure, but the law of goodness ; and if, of 
 the two words, KoXog Kaya06<;^ one can be left 
 unspoken, as implied by the other, it is the 
 first, not the last. It is written that the 
 Creator of all things beheld them — not in 
 that they were beautiful, but in that they 
 were good. 
 
 This law of beauty may be one, for 
 aught we know, fulfilling itself more per- 
 fectly as the years roll on ; but at least it 
 
 9
 
 io6 The Art of England. 
 
 is one from which no jot shall pass. The 
 beauty of Greece depended on the laws of 
 Lycurgus; the beauty of Rome, on those of 
 Numa ; our own, on the laws of Christ. On 
 all the beautiful features of men and women, 
 throughout the ages, are written the solem- 
 nities and majesty of the law they knew, 
 with the charity and meekness of their 
 obedience ; on all unbeautiful features are 
 written either ignorance of the law, or the 
 malice and insolence of the disobedience. 
 
 I showed you, on the occasion of my 
 first address, a drawing of the death of a 
 Tuscan girl, — a saint, in the full sense of that 
 word, such as there have been, and still are, 
 among the Christian women of all nations. 
 I bring you to-day the portrait of a Tuscan 
 Sibyl, — such as there have been, and still are. 
 She herself is still living ; her portrait is 
 the first drawing illustrating the book of 
 the legends of the peasantry of Val d'Arno, 
 which I obtained possession of in Florence 
 last year ; of which book I will now read you
 
 ///. Sir F. "Leightojt aiid Abna Tadema, 107 
 
 part of the preface, in which the authoress 
 gives you the story of the life of this Etrurian 
 Sibyl. 
 
 " Beatrice was the daughter of a stonemason 
 at Melo, a little village of not very easy access 
 on the mountain-side above Cutigliano ; and 
 her mother having died in Beatrice's infancy, 
 she became, from early childhood, the com- 
 panion and assistant of her father, accompanying 
 him to his winter labours in the Maremma, 
 and as she grew stronger, helping him at his 
 work by bringing him stones for the walls 
 and bridges which he built — carrying them 
 balanced on her head. She had no education, 
 in the common sense of the word, never 
 learning even the alphabet; but she had a 
 wonderful memory, and could sing or recite 
 long pieces of poetry. As a girl, she used 
 in summer to follow the sheep, with her 
 distaff at her waist, and would hll up her 
 hours of solitude by singing such ballads as 
 ' The War of St. Michael and the Dragon,' 
 ' The Creation of the World, and the Fall
 
 io8 The Art of E?igland, 
 
 of Man,' or, ' The History of San Pelegrino, 
 son of Romano, King of Scotland : ' and now, 
 in her old age, she knows nearly all the 
 New Testament history, and much of the Old, 
 in a poetical form. She was very beautiful 
 then, they say; with curling black hair and 
 wonderful inspired-looking eyes, and there 
 must always have been a great charm in her 
 voice and smile ; so it is no great wonder 
 that Matteo Bernardi, much older than herself, 
 and owner of a fine farm at Pian degli 
 Ontani, and of many cattle, chose rather to 
 marry the shepherd girl who could sing so 
 sweetly, than another woman whom his family 
 liked better, and who might perhaps have 
 brought him more increase of worldly pros- 
 perity. On Beatrice's wedding day, according 
 to the old custom of the country, one or two 
 poets improvised verses suitable to the occasion; 
 and as she listened to them, suddenly she felt 
 in herself a new power, and began to sing the 
 poetry which was then born in her mind, 
 and having once begun, found it impossible
 
 ///. Sir F, Leighton and Ahna Tadema. 109 
 
 to stop, and kept on singing a great while, 
 so that all were astonished, and her uncle, 
 who was present, said — " Beatrice, you have 
 deceived me ! if I had known what you were, 
 I would have put you in a convent." From 
 that time forth she was the great poetess of 
 all that part of the country ; and was sent 
 for to sing and recite at weddings, and other 
 festivals, for many miles around : and perhaps 
 she might have been happy, but her husband's 
 sister, Barbara, who lived in the house, and 
 who had not approved of the marriage, tried 
 very wickedly to set her brother against his 
 wife, and to some extent succeeded. He tried 
 to stop her singing, which seemed to him a 
 sort of madness, and at times he treated her 
 with great unkindness ; but sing she must, 
 and sing she did, for it was what the Lord 
 made her for, and she lived down all their 
 dislike ; her husband loved her in his old 
 age, and Barbara, whom she nursed with 
 motherly kindness through a long and most 
 distressing illness, was her friend before she
 
 110 The Art of England, 
 
 died. Beatrice is still living, at a great age 
 now, but still retaining much of her old 
 beauty and brilliancy, and is waited on and 
 cared for with much affection by a pretty 
 granddaughter bearing the same name as 
 herself." 
 
 There are just one or two points I want 
 you to note in this biography, specially. 
 
 The girl is put, in her youth, to three 
 kinds of noble work. She is a shepherdess, 
 like St. Genevieve; a spinner and knitter, like 
 Queen Bertha ; chiefly and most singularly, 
 she is put to help her father in the pontifical 
 art of bridge-building. Gymnastic to purpose, 
 you observe. In the last, or last but one, 
 number of your favourite English chronicle, 
 the proud mother says of her well-trained 
 daughters, that there is not one who could 
 not knock down her own father : here is a 
 strong daughter who can help her father — a 
 Grace Darling of the rivers instead of the sea. 
 
 These are the first three things to be 
 noted of her. Next, the material of her
 
 ///. Sir F. Leighton and Alma Tadema. 1 1 1 
 
 education, — not in words, but in thoughts, 
 and the greatest of thoughts. You continually 
 hear that Roman Catholics are not allowed 
 to read the Bible. Here is a little shepherdess 
 who has it in her heart. 
 
 Next, the time of her inspiration, — at her 
 wedding feast ; as in the beginning of her 
 Master's ministry, at Cana. Here is right 
 honour put upon marriage; and, in spite of 
 the efforts made to disturb her household 
 peace, it was entirely blessed to her in her 
 children : nor to her alone, but to us, and 
 to myriads with us ; for her second son, 
 Angelo, is the original of the four drawings 
 of St. Christopher which illustrate the central 
 poem in Miss Alexander's book ; and which 
 are, to the best of my knowledge, the most 
 beautiful renderings of the legend hitherto 
 attained by religious imagination. 
 
 And as you dwell on these portraits of a 
 noble Tuscan peasant, the son of a noble 
 Christian mother, — learn this farther and final 
 distinction between the greatest art of past
 
 112 The Art of England. 
 
 time, and that which has become possible 
 now and in future. 
 
 The Greek, I said, pourtrayed the body 
 and the mind of man, glorified in mortal war. 
 But to us is given the task of holier portraiture, 
 of the countenance and the heart of man, 
 glorified by the peace of God. 
 
 Whether Francesca's book is to be even- 
 tually kept together or distributed I do not 
 yet know. But if distributed, the drawings 
 of St. Christopher must remain in Oxford, 
 being, as I have said, the noblest statements 
 I have ever seen of the unchangeable meaning 
 of this Ford of ours, for all who pass it 
 honestly, and do not contrive false traverse for 
 themselves over a widened Magdalen Bridge. 
 That ford, gentlemen, for ever, — know what 
 you may, — hope what you may, — believe or 
 deny what you may, — you have to pass bare- 
 foot. For it is a baptism as well as a ford, 
 and the waves of it, as the sands, are holy. 
 Your youthful days in this place are to you 
 the dipping of your feet in the brim of the
 
 ///. Sir F, LeJghto?7 and Ahna T^adema, 113 
 
 river, which is to be manfully stemmed by 
 you all your days ; not drifted with, — nor 
 toyed upon. Fallen leaves enough it is strewn 
 with, of the flowers of the forest ; moraine 
 enough it bears, of the ruin of the brave. 
 Your task is to cross it ; your doom may be 
 to go down with it, to the depths out of 
 which there is no crying. Traverse it, staff 
 in hand, and with loins girded, and with 
 whatsoever law of Heaven you know, for your 
 light. On the other side is the Promised 
 Land, the Land of the Leal. 
 
 10
 
 The Art of England. 
 
 LECTURES GIVEN IN OXFORD, 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, D.C.L., LL.D., 
 
 HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND HONORARV FELLOW OF CORPUS-CHRISTI COLLEGK, 
 
 DURING HIS 
 
 SECOND TENURE OF THE SLADE FROFESSORSHTP. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 FAIRY LAND 
 
 GEORGE ALLEN, 
 SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT. 
 
 18S3.
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 FAIRY LAND. 
 
 Mrs. yllli?igham and Kate Greenaway. 
 
 11
 
 Lecture IV. 
 
 FAIRY LAND. 
 
 MRS. ALLINGHAM AND KATE GREENAWAY. 
 
 WE have hitherto been considering the 
 uses of legendary art to grown 
 persons, and to the most learned and powerful 
 minds. To-day I will endeavour to note with 
 you some of the least controvertible facts 
 respecting its uses to children ; and to obtain 
 your consent to the main general principles 
 on which I believe it should be offered to 
 them. 
 
 Here, however, I enter on ground where 
 I must guard carefully against being misled 
 by my own predilections, and in which also 
 the questions at issue are extremely difficult, 
 because most of them new. It is only in 
 recent times that pictures have become familiar 
 means of household pleasure and education :
 
 1 1 8 The Art of England, 
 
 only in our own days — nay, even within the 
 last ten years of those, that the means of 
 illustration by colour-printing have been brought 
 to perfection, and art as exquisite as we need 
 desire to see it, placed, if our school-boards 
 choose to have it so, within the command of 
 every nursery governess. 
 
 Having then the colour-print, the magic- 
 lantern, the electric-light, and the — to any 
 row of ciphers — magnifying, lens, it becomes 
 surely very interesting to consider what we 
 may most wisely represent to children by 
 means so potent, so dazzling, and, if we will, 
 so faithful. I said just now that I must guard 
 carefully against being misled by my own pre- 
 dilections, because having been myself brought 
 up principally on fairy legends, my first im- 
 pulse would be to insist upon every story we 
 tell to a child being untrue, and every scene 
 we paint for it, impossible. But I have been 
 led, as often before confessed, gravely to doubt 
 the expediency of some parts of my early 
 training ; and perhaps some day may try to
 
 IF. Mrs. Allingha7n a?td K. Gree?taway. 119 
 
 divest myself wholly, for an hour, of these 
 dangerous recollections ; and prepare a lecture 
 for you in which I will take Mr. Gradgrind 
 on his own terms, and consider how far, 
 making it a rule that we exhibit nothing but 
 facts, we could decorate our pages of history, 
 and illuminate the slides of our lantern, in a 
 manner still sufficiently attractive to childish 
 taste. For indeed poor Louise and her brother, 
 kneeling to peep under the fringes of the 
 circus-tent, are as much in search after facts 
 as the most scientific of us all ! A circus- 
 rider, with his hoop, is as much a fact as the 
 planet Saturn and his ring, and exemplifies 
 a great many more laws of motion, both 
 moral and physical; nor are any descriptions 
 of the Valley of Diamonds, or the Lake of the 
 Black Islands, in the ' Arabian Nights,' anything 
 like so wonderful as the scenes of California 
 and the Rocky Mountains which you may find 
 described in the April number of the 'Cornhill 
 Magazine,' under the heading of ' Early Spring 
 in California'; and may see represented with
 
 I20 ' The Art of England, 
 
 most sincere and passionate enthusiasm by the 
 American landscape painter, Mr. Moran, in 
 a survey lately published by the Government 
 of the United States. 
 
 Scenes majestic as these, pourtrayed w^ith 
 mere and pure fidelity by such scientific 
 means as I have referred to, would form a 
 code of geographic instruction beyond all 
 the former grasp of young people ; and a 
 source of entertainment, — I had nearly said, 
 and most people who had not watched the 
 minds of children carefully, might think, — 
 inexhaustible. Much, indeed, I should myself 
 hope from it, but by no means an infinitude of 
 entertainment. For it is quite an inexorable 
 law of this poor human nature of ours, that 
 in the development of its healthy infancy, it 
 is put by Heaven under the absolute necessity 
 of using its imagination as well as its lungs 
 and its legs ; — that it is forced to develope its 
 power of invention, as a bird its feathers of 
 flight; that no toy you can bestow will super- 
 sede the pleasure it has in fancying something
 
 IV. Mrs. All'mgha?n and K. Greenaway. 121 
 
 that isn't there ; and the most Instructive his- 
 tories you can compile for it of the wonders 
 of the world will never conquer the interest 
 of the tale which a clever child can tell 
 itself, concerning the shipwreck of a rose-leaf 
 in the shallows of a rivulet. 
 
 One of the most curious proofs of the 
 need to children of this exercise of the in- 
 ventive and believing power, — the besoi?i de 
 croire^ which precedes the besoin d' aimer^ you 
 will find in the way you destroy the vitality 
 of a toy to them, by bringing it too near the 
 imitation of life. You never find a child make 
 a pet of a mechanical mouse that runs about 
 the floor— of a poodle that yelps — of a tumbler 
 who jumps upon wires. The child falls in 
 love with a quiet thing, with an ugly one — 
 nay, it may be, with one, to us, totally devoid 
 of meaning. My little — ever- so -many- times - 
 grand — cousin, Lily, took a bit of stick with 
 a round knob at the end of it for her doll 
 one day; — nursed it through any number of 
 illnesses with the most tender solicitude ; and,
 
 122 The Aj^t of E?2gla?icl, 
 
 on the deeply-important occasion of its having 
 a new nightgown made for it, bent down her 
 mother's head to receive the confidential and 
 timid whisper — " Mamma, perhaps it had better 
 have no sleeves, because, as Bibsey has no arms, 
 she mightn't like it." 
 
 I must take notice here, but only in pass- 
 ing, — the subject being one to be followed 
 out afterwards in studying more grave branches 
 of art, — that the human mind in its full 
 energy having thus the power of believing 
 simply what it likes, the responsibilities and 
 the fatalities attached to the effort of Faith 
 are greater than those belonging to bodily 
 deed, precisely in the degree of their voluntari- 
 ness. A man can't always do what he likes, 
 but he can always fancy what he likes ; and 
 he may be forced to do what he doesn't like, 
 but he can't be forced to fancy what he 
 doesn't like. 
 
 I use for the moment, the word 'to fancy' 
 instead of ' to believe,' because the whole 
 subject of Fidelity and Infidelity has been
 
 IF, Mj^s. Allingham a?2d K, G?^eenaway, 123 
 
 made a mere mess of quarrels and blunders 
 by our habitually forgetting that the proper 
 power of Faith is to trust without evidence, 
 not with evidence. You perpetually hear 
 people say, ' I won't believe this or that 
 unless you give me evidence of it.' Why, if 
 you give them evidence of it, they kiiow it, — - 
 they don't believe, any more. A man doesn't 
 believe there's any danger in nitro-glycerine ; 
 at last he gets his parlour-door blown into 
 next street. He is then better informed on 
 the subject, but the time for belief is past. 
 
 Only, observe, I don't say that you can 
 fancy what you like, to the degree of receiving 
 it for truth. Heaven forbid we should have 
 a power such as that, for it would be one of 
 voluntary madness. But we are, in the most 
 natural and rational health, able to foster the 
 fancy, up to the point of influencing our 
 feelings and character in the strongest way ; 
 and for the strength of that healthy imagi- 
 native faculty, and all the blending of the 
 good and grace, " richiesto al vero ed al
 
 124 ^^^^ ^^^ ^f E^g^(^^^d, 
 
 trastullo,"^ we are wholly responsible. We 
 may cultivate it to what brightness we choose, 
 merely by living in a quiet relation with 
 natural objects and great and good people, 
 past or present ; and we may extinguish it to 
 the last snuff, merely by living in town, and 
 reading the ' Times ' every morning. 
 
 " We are scarcely sufficiently conscious," 
 says Mr. Kinglake, with his delicate precision 
 of serenity in satire, " scarcely sufficiently 
 conscious in England, of the great debt we 
 owe to the wise and watchful press which 
 presides over the forrnation of our opinions; 
 and which brings about this splendid result, 
 namely, that in matters of belief, the humblest 
 of us are lifted up to the level of the most 
 sagacious, so that really a simple Cornet in 
 the Blues is no more likely to entertain a 
 foolish belief about ghosts, or witchcraft, or 
 any other supernatural topic, than the Lord 
 High Chancellor, or the Leader of the House 
 of Commons." 
 
 * Dante, Purg. xiv. 93.
 
 IV, Mrs. Allingham and K, Greenaway. 125 
 
 And thus, at the present day, for the edu- 
 cation or the extinction of the Fancy, we are 
 absolutely left to our choice. For its occupation, 
 not wholly so, yet in a far greater measure 
 than we know. Mr. Wordsworth speaks of it 
 as only impossible to " have sight of Proteus 
 rising from the sea," because the world is too 
 much with us ; also Mr. Kinglake, though, 
 in another place, he calls it " a vain and 
 heathenish longing to be fed with divine 
 counsels from the lips of Pallas Athene," — 
 yet is far happier than the most scientific 
 traveller could be in a trigonometric measure- 
 ment, when he discovers that Neptune could 
 really have seen Troy from the top of Samo- 
 thrace: and I believe that we should many of 
 us find it an extremely wholesome and useful 
 method of treating our ordinary affairs, if 
 before deciding, even upon very minor points 
 of conduct admitting of prudential and con- 
 scientious debate, we were in the habit of 
 imagining that Pallas Athene was actually in 
 the room with us, or at least outside the
 
 126 "The Art of England, 
 
 window in the form of a swallow, and per- 
 mitted us, on the condition always of instant 
 obedience, to ask her advice upon the matter. 
 
 Here ends my necessary parenthesis, with 
 its suspicion of preachment, for which I crave 
 pardon, and I return to my proper subject of 
 to-day, — the art which intends to address only 
 childish imagination, and whose object is 
 primarily to entertain with grace. 
 
 With grace: — I insist much on this latter 
 word. We may allow the advocates of a 
 material philosophy to insist that every wild- 
 weed tradition of fairies, gnomes, and sylphs 
 should be well ploughed out of a child's 
 mind to prepare it for the good seed of 
 the Gospel of — jD/xgrace : but no defence 
 can be offered for the presentation of these 
 ideas to its mind in a form so vulgarized as 
 to defame and pollute the masterpieces of 
 former literature. It is perfectly easy to 
 convince the young proselyte of science that 
 a cobweb on the top of a thistle cannot be 
 commanded to catch a honey-bee for him,
 
 IF. Mrs. Alling/iam and K. Greenaway, 127 
 
 without introducing a dance of ungainly fairies 
 on the site of the cabstand under the West- 
 minster clock tower, or making the Queen of 
 them fall in love with the sentry on guard. 
 
 With grace, then, assuredly, — and I think 
 we may add also, with as much seriousness as 
 an entirely fictitious subject may admit of — 
 seeing that it touches the border of that higher 
 world which is not fictitious. We are all 
 perhaps too much in the habit of thinking 
 the scenes of burlesque in the ' Midsummer 
 Night's Dream ' exemplary of Shakespeare's 
 general treatment of fairy character : we 
 should always remember that he places the 
 most beautiful words descriptive of virgin 
 purity which English poetry possesses, in the 
 mouth of the Fairy King, and that to the 
 Lord of Fancies he entrusts the praise of the 
 conquest of Fancy, — 
 
 " In maiden meditation, — Fancy free." 
 
 Still less should we forget the function of
 
 128 The Art of England, 
 
 household benediction, attributed to them 
 always by happy national superstition, and 
 summed in the closing lines of the same 
 play, — 
 
 " With this iield-dew consecrate, 
 Every fairy take his gait ; 
 And each several chamber bless. 
 Through this palace, with sweet peace." 
 
 With seriousness then, — but only, I repeat, 
 such as entirely fictitious elements properly 
 admit of. The general grace and sweetness 
 of Scott's moorland fairy, ' The White Lady,' 
 failed of appeal to the general justice of 
 public taste, because in two places he fell 
 into the exactly opposite errors of unbecoming 
 jest, and too far-venturing solemnity. The 
 ducking of the Sacristan offended even his 
 most loving readers ; but it offended them 
 chiefly for a reason of which they were in 
 great part unconscious, that the jest is carried 
 out in the course of the charge with which
 
 IF, Mrs. Allingham a7td K. Greenaway. 129 
 
 the fairy is too gravely entrusted, to protect, 
 for Mary of Avenel, her mother's Bible. 
 
 It is of course impossible, in studying 
 questions of this kind, to avoid confusion 
 between what is fit in literature and in art; 
 the leading principles are the same in both, 
 but of course much may be allowed to the 
 narrator which is impossible or forbidden to 
 the draughtsman. And I necessarily take 
 examples chiefly from literature, because the 
 greatest masters of story have never disdained 
 the playfully supernatural elements of fairy- 
 tale, while it is extremely rare to find a 
 good painter condescending to them, — or, I 
 should rather say, contending with them, the 
 task being indeed one of extreme difficulty. 
 I believe Sir Noel Paton's pictures of the 
 Court of Titania, and Fairy Raid, are all we 
 possess in which the accomplished skill of 
 painting has been devoted to fairy-subject; 
 and my impression when I saw the former 
 picture — the latter I grieve not yet to have seen 
 — was that the artist intended rather to obtain
 
 130 The Art of E?2gla?td, 
 
 leave by the closeness of ocular distance to 
 display the exquisite power of minute de- 
 lineation, which he felt in historical painting 
 to be inapplicable, than to arrest, either in 
 his own mind or the spectator's, even a 
 momentary credence in the enchantment of 
 fairy-wand and fairy-ring. 
 
 And within the range of other art which 
 I can call to mind, touching on the same 
 ground, — or rather, breathing in the same 
 air, — it seems to me a sorrowful and some- 
 what unaccountable law that only grotesque 
 or terrible fancies present themselves forcibly 
 enough, in these admittedly fabling states of 
 the imagination, to be noted with the pencil. 
 For instance, without rating too highly the 
 inventive powers of the old German outline- 
 draughtsman, Retsch, we cannot but attribute 
 to him a very real gift of making visibly terrible 
 such legend as that of the ballad of Leonora, 
 and interpreting, with a wild aspect of veracity, 
 the passages of sorcery in ' Faust.' But the 
 drawing which I possess by his hand, of the
 
 IV, Mrs. Allinghain and K. Greenaway. 131 
 
 Genius of Poetry riding upon a swan, could 
 not be placed in my school with any hope of 
 deepening your impression either of the beauty 
 of swans, or the dignity of genii. 
 
 You must, however, always carefully distin- 
 guish these states of gloomy fantasy, natural, 
 though too often fatal, to men of real imagi- 
 nation, — the spectra which appear, whether 
 they desire it or not, — to men like Orcagna, 
 Durer, Blake, and . Alfred Rethel, — and dwelt 
 upon by them, in the hope of producing some 
 moral impression of salutary awe by their 
 record — as in Blake's Book of Job, in Durer's 
 Apocalypse, in Rethel's Death the Avenger 
 and Death the Friend, — and more nobly in his 
 grand design of Barbarossa entering the grave 
 of Charlemagne ; — carefully, I say, you must 
 distinguish this natural and lofty phase of 
 visionary teiror, from the coarse delight in 
 mere pain and crisis of danger, which, in 
 our infidel art and literature for the young, 
 fills our books of travel with pictures of 
 
 alligators swallowing children, hippopotami 
 
 12
 
 132 The Art of England. 
 
 upsetting canoes full of savages, bears on 
 their hind-legs doing battle with northern 
 navigators, avalanches burying Alpine villages, 
 and the like, as the principal attractions of 
 the volume ; not, in the plurality of cases, 
 without vileness of exaggeration which amounts 
 to misleading falsehood — unless happily pushed 
 to the point where mischief is extinguished 
 by absurdity. In Strahan's ' Magazine for the 
 Youth of all Ages,' for June 1879, ^^ P^g^ 
 328, you will find it related, in a story 
 proposed for instruction in scientific natural 
 history, that " the fugitives saw an enormous 
 elephant cross the clearing, surrounded by 
 ten tigers, some clinging to its back, and 
 others keeping alongside." 
 
 I may in this place, I think, best introduce 
 — though again parenthetically — the suggestion 
 of a healthy field for the labouring scientific 
 fancy which remains yet unexhausted, and I 
 believe inexhaustible, — that of the fable, ex- 
 panded into narrative, which gives a true 
 account of the life of animals, supposing them
 
 IV. Mrs. Allingham and K. G?^eenaway. 133 
 
 to be endowed with human intelligence, 
 directed to the interests of their animal life. 
 I said just now that I had been brought up upon 
 fairy legends, but I must gratefully include, 
 under the general title of these, the stories in 
 ' Evenings at Home ' of The Transmigrations 
 of Indur, The Discontented Squirrel, The 
 Travelled Ant, The Cat and her Children, 
 and Little Fido ; and with these, one now 
 quite lost, but which I am minded soon to 
 reprint for my younger pupils, — The History 
 of a Field-Mouse, which in its pretty detail is 
 no less amusing, and much more natural, than 
 the town and country mice of Horace and 
 Pope, — classic, in the best sense, though these 
 will always be. 
 
 There is the more need that some true 
 and pure examples of fable in this kind should 
 be put within the reach of children, because 
 the wild efforts of weak writers to increase 
 their incomes at Christmas, and the unscru- 
 pulous encouragement of them by competing 
 booksellers, fill our nurseries with forms of
 
 134 ^^'^^ ^r/ of Knglaftd, 
 
 rubbish which are on the one side destructive 
 of the meaning of all ancient tradition, and 
 on the other, reckless of every really inter- 
 esting truth in exact natural history. Only 
 the other day, in examining the mixed contents 
 of a somewhat capacious nursery bookcase, the 
 first volume I opened was a fairy tale in 
 which the benevolent and moral fairy drove 
 a " matchless pair of white cockatrices." I 
 might take up all the time yet left for this 
 lecture in exposing to you the mingled folly 
 and mischief in those few words ; — the pan- 
 dering to the first notion of vulgar children 
 that all glory consists in driving a matchless 
 pair of something or other, — and the implied 
 ignorance in which only such a book could 
 be presented to a7iy children, of the most 
 solemn of scriptural promises to them,—" the 
 weaned child shall lay his hand on the 
 cockatrice' den." 
 
 And the next book I examined was a 
 series of stories imported from Japan,* most of 
 
 * Macmillan, 1871.
 
 IF. Mrs. Allinghafn a?id K, G?^ee72away. 135 
 
 them simply sanguinary and loathsome, but 
 one or two pretending to be zoological — as, 
 for instance, that of the Battle of the Ape 
 and the Crab, of which it is said in the 
 introduction that " men should lay it up in 
 their hearts, and teach it as a profitable 
 lesson to their children." In the opening of 
 this profitable story, the crab plants a " per- 
 simmon seed in his garden" (the reader is not 
 informed what manner of fruit the persimmon 
 may be), and watches the growth of the tree 
 which springs from it with great delight ; 
 being, we are told in another paragraph, " a 
 simple-minded creature." 
 
 I do not know whether this conception of 
 character in the great zodiacal crustacean is 
 supposed to be scientific or aesthetic, — but I 
 hope that British children at the seaside are 
 capable of inventing somewhat better stories of 
 crabs for themselves; and if they would farther 
 know the foreign manners of the sidelong- 
 pacing people, let me ask them to look at the 
 account given by Lord George Campbell, in
 
 136 The Art of Rn gland, 
 
 his ' Log Letters from the Challenger,' of his 
 landing on the island of St. Paul, and of the 
 manner in which the quite unsophisticated 
 crabs of that locality succeeded first in stealing 
 his fish-bait, and then making him lose his 
 temper, to a degree extremely unbecoming in 
 a British nobleman. They will not, after the 
 perusal of that piquant — or perhaps I should 
 rather say, pincant, — narrative, be disposed, 
 whatever other virtues they may possess, to 
 ascribe to the obliquitous nation that of 
 simplicity of mind. 
 
 I have no time to dwell longer on the 
 existing fallacies in the representation either 
 of the fairy or the animal kingdoms. I must 
 pass to the happier duty of returning thanks 
 for the truth with which our living painters 
 have drawn for us the lovely dynasty of little 
 creatures, about whose reality there can be no 
 doubt; and who are at once the most powerful 
 of fairies, and the most amusing, if not always 
 the most sagacious ! of animals. 
 
 In my last lecture, I noted to you, though
 
 IV. Mrs, Alli7igha7n and K, Greenaway. 137 
 
 only parenthetically, the singular defect in 
 Greek art, that it never gives you any con- 
 ception of Greek children. Neither — up to 
 the thirteenth century — does Gothic art give 
 you any conception of Gothic children ; for, 
 until the thirteenth century, the Goth was 
 not perfectly Christianized, and still thought 
 only of the strength of humanity as admirable 
 in battle or venerable in judgment, but not 
 as dutiful in peace, nor happy in simplicity. 
 
 But from the moment when the spirit of 
 Christianity had been entirely interpreted to 
 the Western races, the sanctity of womanhood 
 worshipped in the Madonna, and the sanctity 
 of childhood in unity with that of Christ, 
 became the light of every honest hearth, and 
 the joy of every pure and chastened soul. 
 Yet the traditions of art-subject, and the vices 
 of luxury which developed themselves in the 
 following (fourteenth) century, prevented the 
 manifestation of this new force in domestic 
 life for two centuries more; and then at last 
 in the child angels of Luca, Mino of Fesole,
 
 138 The Art of England, 
 
 Luini, Angelicoj Perugino, and the first days 
 of Raphael, it expressed itself as the one pure 
 and sacred passion which protected Christendom 
 from the ruin of the Renaissance. 
 
 Nor has it since failed; and whatever disgrace 
 or blame obscured the conception of the later 
 Flemish and incipient English schools, the 
 children, whether in the pictures of Rubens, 
 Rembrandt, Vandyke, or Sir Joshua, were 
 always beautiful. An extremely dark period 
 indeed follows, leading to and persisting in 
 the French Revolution, and issuing in the 
 merciless manufacturing fury, which to-day 
 grinds children to dust between millstones, 
 and tears them to pieces on engine-wheels, 
 — against which rises round us. Heaven be 
 thanked, again the protest and the power of 
 Christianity, restoring the fields of the quiet 
 earth to the steps of her infancy. 
 
 In Germany, this protest, I believe, began 
 with — it is at all events perfectly represented by 
 — the Ludwig Richter I have so often named; 
 in France, with Edward Frere, whose pictures
 
 IF, Mrs, Allingham a?id K, Greenaway, 139 
 
 of children are of quite immortal beauty. 
 But in England it was long repressed by the 
 terrible action of our wealth, compelling our 
 painters to represent the children of the poor 
 as in wickedness or misery. It is one of the 
 most terrific facts in all the history of British 
 art that Bewick nev^r draws children but in 
 mischief. 
 
 I am not able to say with whom, in Britain, 
 the reaction first begins, — but certainly not in 
 painting until after Wilkie, in all whose works 
 there is not a single example of a beautiful 
 Scottish boy or girl. I imagine in literature, 
 we may take the 'Cottar's Saturday Night' and 
 the 'toddlin' wee things' as the real beginning 
 of child benediction ; and I am disposed to 
 assign in England much value to the widely 
 felt, though little acknowledged, influence of 
 an authoress now forgotten — Mary Russell 
 Mitford. Her village children in the Low- 
 lands — in the Highlands, the Lucy Grays and 
 Alice Fells of Wordsworth — brought back 
 to us the hues of Fairy Land ; and although
 
 I 4.0 The Art of England, 
 
 long by Academic art denied or resisted, at 
 last the charm is felt in London itself, — on 
 pilgrimage in whose suburbs you find the 
 Little Nells and boy David Copperfields; and 
 in the heart of it. Kit's baby brother at 
 Astley's, indenting his cheek with an oyster- 
 shell to the admiration of all beholders ; till 
 at last, bursting out like one of the sweet 
 Surrey fountains, all dazzling and pure, you 
 have the radiance and innocence of reinstated 
 infant divinity showered again among the 
 flowers of English meadows by Mrs. Allingham 
 and Kate Greenaway. 
 
 It has chanced strangely, that every one 
 of the artists to whom in these lectures I 
 wished chiefly to direct your thoughts, has 
 been insufficiently, or even disadvantageously, 
 represented by his work in the exhibitions of 
 the season. But chiefly I have been dis- 
 appointed in finding no drawing of the least 
 interest by Mrs. Allingham in the room of the 
 Old Water-colour Society. And let me say 
 in passing, that none of these new splendours
 
 IV, Mrs. Alli7tgha7n and K, Greenaway, 141 
 
 and spaces of show galleries, with attached 
 restaurants to support the cockney constitu- 
 tion under the trial of getting from one end 
 of them to the other, will in the least make 
 up to the real art-loving public for the loss 
 of the good fellowship of our old societies, 
 every member of which sent everything he had 
 done best in the year into the room, for the 
 May meetings; shone with his debited measure 
 of admiration in his accustomed corner ; sup- 
 ported his associates without eclipsing them ; 
 supplied his customers without impoverishing 
 them ; and was permitted to sell a picture to 
 his patron or his friend, without paying fifty 
 guineas commission on the business to a 
 dealer. 
 
 Howsoever it may have chanced, Mrs. 
 Allingham has nothing of importance in the 
 water-colour room; and I am even sorrowfully 
 compelled to express my regret that she should 
 have spent unavailing pains in finishing single 
 heads, which are at the best uninteresting 
 miniatures, instead of fulfilling her true gift.
 
 14-2 The Art of Engla?td, 
 
 and doing what (in Miss Alexander's words) 
 'the Lord made her for' — in representing the 
 gesture, character, and humour of charming 
 children in country landscapes. Her ' Tea 
 Party,' in last year's exhibition, with the little 
 girl giving her doll its bread and milk, and 
 taking care that she supped it with propriety, 
 may be named as a most lovely example of 
 her feeling and her art ; and the drawing 
 which some years ago riveted, and ever since 
 has retained, the public admiration, — the two 
 deliberate housewives in their village toyshop, 
 bent on domestic utilities and economies, and 
 proud in the acquisition of two flat irons for 
 a farthing, — has become, and rightly, a classic 
 picture, which will have its place among the 
 memorable things in the art of our time, 
 when many of its loudly trumpeted magni- 
 ficences are remembered no more. 
 
 I must not in this place omit mention, 
 with sincere gratitude, of the like motives in 
 the paintings of Mr. Birkett Foster ; but with 
 regret that in too equal, yet incomplete,
 
 IV, Mrs, AUingham and K, Greenaway. 143 
 
 realization of them, mistaking, in many instances, 
 mere spotty execution for finish, he has never 
 taken the high position that was open to him 
 as an ilhistrator of rustic life. 
 
 And I am grieved to omit the names of 
 many other artists who have protested, with 
 consistent feeling, against the misery entailed 
 on the poor children of our great cities, — by 
 painting the real inheritance of childhood in 
 the meadows and fresh air. But the gracious- 
 ness and sentiment of them all is enough 
 represented by the hitherto undreamt-of, and, 
 in its range, unrivalled, fancy, which is now 
 re-establishing throughout gentle Europe, the 
 manners and customs of fairyland. 
 
 I may best indicate to you the grasp 
 which the genius of Miss Kate Greenaway 
 has taken upon the spirit of foreign lands, no 
 less than her own, by translating the last 
 paragraph of the entirely candid, and inti- 
 mately observant, review of modern English 
 art, given by Monsieur Ernest Chesneau, in 
 his small volume, ' La Peinture Anglaise,' of
 
 144 ^^^ ^r/ of England. 
 
 which I will only at present say, that any of 
 my pupils who read French with practice 
 enough to recogiiize the finesse of it in exact 
 expression, may not only accept his criticism 
 as my own, but will find it often more careful 
 than mine, and nearly always better expressed ; 
 because French is essentially a critical language, 
 and can say things in a sentence which it would 
 take half a page of English to explain. 
 
 He gives first a quite lovely passage (too 
 long to introduce now) upon the gentleness 
 of the satire of John Leech, as opposed to 
 the bitter malignity of former caricature. 
 Then he goes on : " The great softening of 
 the English mind, so manifest already in John 
 Leech, shows itself in a decisive manner by 
 the enthusiasm with which the public have 
 lately received the designs of Mr. Walter Crane, 
 Mr. Caldecott, and Miss Kate Greenaway. 
 The two first named artists began by address- 
 ing to children the stories of Perrault and of 
 the Arabian Nights, translated and adorned 
 for them in a dazzling manner; and, in the
 
 IV, Mrs. Allingham a72d K. Gree7taway, 145 
 
 works of all these three artists, landscape 
 plays an important part ; — familiar landscape, 
 very English, interpreted with a ' bonhomie 
 savante'" (no translating that), ''spiritual, deco- 
 rative in the rarest taste, — strange and precious 
 adaptation of Etruscan art, Flemish and 
 Japanese, reaching, together with the perfect 
 interpretation of nature, to incomparable chords 
 of colour harmony. These powers are found 
 in the work of the three, but Miss Greenaway, 
 with a profound sentiment of love for children, 
 puts the child alone on the scene, companions 
 him in his own solitudes, and shows the in- 
 fantine nature in all its naivete, its gaucherie, 
 its touching grace, its shy alarm, its discoveries, 
 ravishments, embarrassments, and victories ; 
 the stumblings of it in wintry ways, the 
 enchanted smiles of its spring time, and all the 
 history of its fond heart and guiltless egoism. 
 
 " From the honest but fierce lauo;h of the 
 coarse Saxon, William Hogarth, to the delicious 
 smile of Kate Greenaway, there has past a 
 century and a half. Is it the same people
 
 146 The Art of E7igland. 
 
 which applauds to-day the sweet genius and 
 tender malices of the one, and which applauded 
 the bitter genius and slaughterous satire of the 
 other ? After all, that is possible, — the hatred 
 of vice is only another manifestation of the 
 love of innocence." 
 
 Thus far M. Chesneau — and I venture only 
 to take up the admirable passage at a question 
 I did not translate: "Ira-t-on au dela, fera- 
 t-on mieux encore ? " — and to answer joyfully, 
 Yes, if you choose ; you, the British public, 
 to encourage the artist in doing the best she 
 can for you. She will, if you will receive 
 it when she does. 
 
 I have brought with me to-day in the first 
 place some examples of her pencil sketches 
 in primary design. These in general the 
 public cannot see, and these, as is always the 
 case with the finest imaginative work, contain 
 the best essence of it, — qualities never after- 
 wards to be recovered, and expressed with 
 the best of all sensitive instruments, the pencil 
 point.
 
 IF. Mrs, Allingham and K, Greenaway, 147 
 
 You have here, for consummate example, 
 a dance of fairies under a mushroom, which 
 she did under challenge to show me what 
 fairies were like. " They'll be very like 
 children," she said ; I answered that I didn't 
 mind, and should like to see them, all the 
 same ; — so here they are, with a dance, also, 
 of two girlies, outside of a mushroom ; and 
 I don't know whether the elfins or girls are 
 fairy footedest : and one or two more subjects, 
 which you may find out ; — but, in all, you 
 will see that the line is ineffably tender and 
 delicate, and can't in the least be represented 
 by the lines of a woodcut. But I have long 
 since shown you the power of line engraving 
 as it was first used in Florence ; and if you 
 choose, you may far recover the declining 
 energies of line engraving in England, by 
 encouraging its use in the multiplication, 
 whether of these, or of Turner outlines, or 
 of old Florentine silver point outlines, no 
 otherwise to be possessed by you. I have 
 given you one example of what is possible
 
 148 The Art of England, 
 
 in Mr. Rolfe's engraving of Ida; and, if all 
 goes well, before the autumn fairy rings are 
 traced, you shall see some fairy Idas caught 
 flying. 
 
 So far of pure outline. Next, for the en- 
 richment of it by colour. Monsieur Chesneau 
 doubts if the charm of Miss Greenaway's 
 work can be carried farther. I answer, with 
 security, — yes, very much farther, and that 
 in two directions : first, in her own method 
 of design ; and secondly, the manner of its 
 representation in printing. 
 
 First, her own design has been greatly 
 restricted by being too ornamental, or, in 
 your modern phrase, decorative ; — contracted 
 into any corner of a Christmas card, or 
 stretched like an elastic band round the 
 edges of an almanack. Now, her art is 
 much too good to be used merely for illu- 
 mination ; it is essentially and perfectly that 
 of true colour-picture, and that the most naive 
 and delightful manner of picture, because, on 
 the simplest terms, it comes nearest reality.
 
 IF, Mrs. Alli7igha7?i ajid K. Gree^taway, 149 
 
 No end of mischief has been done to modern 
 art by the habit of running semi-pictorial 
 illustration round the margins of ornamental 
 volumes, and Miss Greenaway has been wasting 
 her strength too sorrowfully in making the 
 edges of her little birthday books, and the 
 like, glitter with unregarded gold, whereas her 
 power should be concentrated in the direct 
 illustration of connected story, and her pic- 
 tures should be made complete on the page, 
 and far more realistic than decorative. There 
 is no charm so enduring as that of the real 
 representation of any given scene; her present 
 designs are like living flowers flattened to 
 go into an herbarium, and sometimes too 
 pretty to be believed. We must ask her for 
 more descriptive reality, for more convincing 
 simplicity, and we must get her to organize 
 a school of colourists by hand, who can abso- 
 lutely facsimile her own first drawing. 
 
 This is the second matter on which 1 have 
 to insist. I bring with me to-day twelve of 
 her original drawings, and have mounted
 
 I^o The Art of Engla?id, 
 
 beside them, good impressions of the pub- 
 lished prints. 
 
 I may heartily congratulate both the pub- 
 lishers and possessors of the book on the 
 excellence of these ; yet if you examine them 
 closely, you will find that the colour blocks 
 of the print sometimes slip a little aside, so 
 as to lose the precision of the drawing in 
 important places ; and in many other respects 
 better can be done, in at least a certain 
 number of chosen copies. I must not, how- 
 ever, detain you to-day by entering into 
 particulars in this matter. I am content to 
 ask your sympathy in the endeavour, if I can 
 prevail on the artist to undertake it. 
 
 Only with respect to this and every other 
 question of method in engraving, observe 
 farther that all the drawings I bring you 
 to-day agree in one thing, — minuteness and 
 delicacy of touch carried to its utmost limit, 
 visible in its perfectness to the eyes of youth, 
 but neither executed with a magnifying glass, 
 nor, except to aged eyes, needing one. Even
 
 IF, Mrs, Allingham and K, Greenaway. 151 
 
 I, at sixty-four, can see the essential qualities 
 ot the work without spectacles ; though only 
 the youngest of my friends here can see, for 
 instance, Kate's fairy dance, perfectly, but they 
 can, with their own bright eyes. 
 
 And now please note this, for an entirely 
 general law, again and again reiterated by 
 me for many a year. All great art is 
 delicate^ and fine to the uttermost. Wherever 
 there is blotting, or daubing, or dashing, there 
 is weakness, at least; probably, affectation; 
 certainly, bluntness of feeling. But, all deli- 
 cacy which is rightly pleasing to the human 
 mind is addressed to the unaided hu7nan 
 sights not to microscopic help or mediation. 
 
 And now generalize that law farther. As 
 all noble sight is with the eyes that God 
 has given you, so all noble motion is with 
 the limbs God has balanced for you, and all 
 noble strength with the arms He has knit. 
 Though you should put electric coils into 
 your high heels, and make spring-heeled 
 Jacks and Gills of yourselves, you will never
 
 152 The Art of England. 
 
 dance, so, as you could barefoot. Though 
 you could have machines that would swing 
 a ship of war into the sea, and drive a rail- 
 way train through a rock, all divine strength 
 is still the strength of Herakles, a man's 
 wrestle, and a man's blow. 
 
 There are two other points I must try to 
 enforce in closing, very clearly. "Landscape," 
 says M. Chesneau, ''takes great part in these 
 lovely designs." He does not say of what 
 kind ; may I ask you to look, for yourselves, 
 and think ? 
 
 There are no railroads in it, to carry 
 the children away with, are there ? no tunnel 
 or pit mouths to swallow them up, no league- 
 long viaducts — no blinkered iron bridges ? 
 There are only winding brooks, wooden foot- 
 bridges, and grassy hills without any holes 
 cut into them ! 
 
 Again, — there are no parks, no gentle- 
 men's seats with attached stables and offices ! 
 — no rows of model lodging houses ! no 
 charitable institutions ! ! It seems as if none
 
 IF. Mrs. Allingham and K. Greenaway. 153 
 
 of these things which the English mind now 
 rages after, possess any attraction whatever 
 for this unimpressionable person. She is a 
 graceful Gallio — Gallia gratia plena, and cares 
 for none of those things. 
 
 And more wonderful still, — there are no 
 gasworks ! no waterworks, no mowing machines, 
 no sewing machines, no telegraph poles, no 
 vestige, in fact, of science, civilization, eco- 
 nomical arrangements, or commercial enter- 
 prise ! ! ! 
 
 Would you wish me, with professorial 
 authority, to advise her that her conceptions 
 belong to the dark ages, and must be reared 
 on a new foundation ? Or is it, on the other 
 hand, recommendably conceivable by you^ that 
 perhaps the world we truly live in may not 
 be quite so changeable as you have thought 
 it ; — that all the gold and silver you can dig 
 out of the earth are not worth the kingcups 
 and the daisies she gave you of her grace ; 
 and that all the fury, and the flutter, and 
 the wonder, and the wistfulness, of your lives.
 
 154 ^^^ ^r/^ of Rngland, 
 
 will never discover for you any other than 
 the ancient blessing : " He maketh me to lie 
 down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside 
 the still waters, He restoreth my soul " ? 
 
 Yet one word more. Observe that what 
 this unimpressionable person does draw, she 
 draws as like it as she can. It is true that 
 the combination or composition of things is 
 not what you can see every day. You can't 
 every day, for instance, see a baby thrown 
 into a basket of roses ; but when she has 
 once pleasantly invented that arrangement for 
 you, baby is as like baby, and rose as like 
 rose, as she can possibly draw them. And 
 the beauty of them is in being like. They 
 are blissful, just in the degree that they are 
 natural ; and the fairyland she creates for 
 you is not beyond the sky nor beneath the 
 sea, but nigh you, even at your doors. She 
 does but show you how to see it, and how 
 to cherish. 
 
 Long since I told you this great law of 
 noble imagination. It does not create, it
 
 IV, Mrs, Alli?igham and K, Greenaway, 155 
 
 does not even adorn, it does but reveal^ the 
 treasures to be possessed by the spirit. I 
 told you this of the work of the great 
 painter whom, in that day, everyone accused 
 of representing only the fantastic and the 
 impossible. I said forty years ago, and say 
 at this instant, more solemnly. All his magic 
 is in his truth. 
 
 I show you, to-day, a beautiful copy 
 made for me by Mr. Macdonald, of the 
 drawing which, of all the Turners I gave 
 you, I miss the most. I never thought it 
 could have been copied at all, and have 
 received from Mr. Macdonald, in this lovely 
 rendering of it, as much a lesson as a con- 
 solation. For my purpose to-day it is just 
 as good as if I had brought the drawing 
 itself. 
 
 It is one of the Loire series, which the 
 
 engravers could not attempt, because it was 
 
 too lovely ; or would not attempt, because 
 
 there was, to their notion, nothing in it. It 
 
 is only a coteau, scarce a hundred feet above 
 
 14
 
 156 The Af^t of Engla?2d. 
 
 the river, nothing like so high as the Thames 
 banks between here and Reading, — only a 
 coteau, and a recess of calm water, and a 
 breath of mist, and a ray of sunset. The 
 simplest things, the frequentest, the dearest; 
 things that you may see any summer evening 
 by a thousand thousand streams among the 
 low hills of old familiar lands. Love them, 
 and see them rightly, — Andes and Caucasus, 
 Amazon and Indus, can give you no more. 
 
 The danger imminent on you is the de- 
 struction of what you have. I walked yesterday 
 afternoon round St. John's gardens, and found 
 them, as they always are in spring time, almost 
 an ideal of earthly Paradise,— the St. John's 
 students also disporting themselves therein in 
 games preparatory to the advent of the true 
 fairies of Commemoration. But, the afternoon 
 before, I had walked down St. John's Roady 
 and, on emerging therefrom to cross the 
 railway, found on my left hand a piece of 
 waste ground, extremely characteristic of that 
 with which we now always adorn the suburbs
 
 IV, Mrs. Alli?tgham a7id K, Greefiaway. 157 
 
 of our cities, and of which it can only be 
 said that no demons could contrive, under the 
 earth, a more uncomfortable and abominable 
 place of misery for the condemned souls of 
 dirty people, than Oxford thus allows the 
 western light to shine upon — ' nel aer dolce, 
 che dal sol s'allegra.' For many a year I 
 have now been telling you, and in the final 
 words of this first course of lectures in which 
 I have been permitted again to resume work 
 among you, let me tell you yet once more, 
 and if possible, more vehemently, that neither 
 sound art, policy, nor religion, can exist in 
 England, until, neglecting, if it must be, your 
 own pleasure gardens and pleasure chambers, 
 you resolve that the streets which are the 
 habitation of the poor, and the fields which 
 are the playgrounds of their children, shall 
 be again restored to the rule of the spirits, 
 whosoever they are in earth, and heaven, 
 that ordain, and reward, with constant and 
 conscious felicity, all that is decent and orderly, 
 beautiful and pure.
 
 The Art of England 
 
 LECTURES GIVEN IN OXFORD, 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, D.C.L., LL.D., 
 
 HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND HONORARY FELLOW OF CORPUS-CHRISTI COLLF.GE, 
 
 DURING HIS 
 
 SECOND TENURE OF THE SLADE PROFESSORSHIP. 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE FIRESIDE 
 
 GEORGE ALLEN, 
 
 SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT. 
 
 1883.
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE FIRESIDE. 
 
 yohn Leech and Johji Teniiiel. 
 
 »5
 
 Lecture V. 
 THE FIRESIDE. 
 
 JOHN LEECH AND JOHN TENNIEL. 
 
 THE outlines of the schools of our 
 National Art which I attempted in the 
 four lectures given last spring, had led us to 
 the point where the, to us chiefly important, 
 and, it may perhaps be said, temporarily, all 
 important questions respecting the uses of art 
 in popular education, were introduced to us 
 by the beautiful drawings of Miss Alexander 
 and Miss Greenaway. But these drawings, 
 in their dignified and delicate, often reserved, 
 and sometimes severe characters, address them- 
 selves to a circle, which however large, — or 
 even (I say it with thankfulness) practically 
 infinite, yet consists exclusively of persons of 
 already cultivated sensibilities, and more or
 
 1 62 The Art of England, 
 
 less gentle and serious temper. The interests 
 of general education compel our reference 
 to a class entirely beneath these, or at least 
 distinct from them ; and our consideration 
 of art-methods to which the conditions of 
 cheapness, and rapidity of multiplication, are 
 absolutely essential. 
 
 I have stated, and it is one of the 
 paradoxes of my political economy which 
 you will find on examination to be the 
 expression of a final truth, that there is no 
 such thing as a just or real cheapness, but 
 that all things have their necessary price : 
 and that you can no more obtain them for 
 less than that price, than you can alter the 
 course of the earth. When you obtain any- 
 thing yourself for half-price, somebody else 
 must always have paid the other half. But, 
 in the sense either of having cost less labour, 
 or of being the productions of less rare genius, 
 there are, of course, some kinds of art 
 more generally attainable than others ; and, 
 of these, the kinds which depend on the use
 
 V, yoh?i Leech and John TennieL 163 
 
 of the simplest means are also those which 
 are calculated to have most influence over 
 the simplest minds. The disciplined qualities 
 of line-engraving will scarcely be relished, 
 and often must even pass unperceived, by an 
 uneducated or careless observer; but the 
 attention of a child may be excited, and the 
 apathy ot a clown overcome, by the blunt 
 lines of a vigorous woodcut. 
 
 To my own mind, there is no more 
 beautiful proof of benevolent design in the 
 creation of the earth, than the exact adaptation 
 of its materials to the art-power of man. 
 The plasticity and constancy under fire of 
 clay ; the ductility and fusibility of gold and 
 iron ; the consistent softness of marble ; and 
 the fibrous toughness of wood, are in each 
 material carried to the exact degree which 
 renders them provocative of skill by their 
 resistance, and full of reward for it by their 
 compliance : so that the delight with which, 
 after sufficiently intimate study of the methods 
 of manual work, the student ought to regard
 
 164 'The Art of England. 
 
 the excellence of a masterpiece, is never 
 merely the admiration of difficulties over- 
 come, but the sympathy, in a certain sense, 
 both with the enjoyment of the workman in 
 managing a substance so pliable to his will, 
 and with the worthiness, fitness, and obedience 
 of the material itself, which at once invites his 
 authority, and rewards his concessions. 
 
 But of all the various instruments of his 
 
 life and genius, none are so manifold in their 
 
 service to him as that which the forest leaves 
 
 gather every summer out of the air he 
 
 breathes. Think of the use of it in house 
 
 and furniture alone. I have lived in marble 
 
 palaces, and under frescoed loggie, but have 
 
 never been so comfortable in either as in the 
 
 clean room of an old Swiss inn, whose walls 
 
 and floor were of plain deal. You will find 
 
 also, in the long run, that none of your 
 
 modern aesthetic upholstery can match, for 
 
 comfort, good old English oak wainscot ; 
 
 and that the crystalline magnificence of the 
 
 marbles of Genoa and the macigno of Florence
 
 V. John Leech and yohn Tenniel, 165 
 
 can give no more pleasure to daily life than 
 the carved brackets and trefoiled gables which 
 once shaded the busy and merry streets, and 
 lifted the chiming carillons above them, in 
 Kent and Picardy. 
 
 As a material of sculpture, wood has 
 hitherto been employed chiefly by the less 
 cultivated races of Europe ; and we cannot 
 know what Orcagna would have made of his 
 shrine, or Ghiberti of his gates, if they had 
 worked in olive wood instead of marble and 
 bronze. But even as matters now stand, the 
 carving of the pinnacled stalls in our northern 
 cathedrals, and that of the foliage on the 
 horizontal beams of domestic architecture, 
 gave rise to a school of ornament of which 
 the proudest edifices of the sixteenth century 
 are only the translation into stone ; and to 
 which our somewhat dull respect for the 
 zigzags and dog-teeth of a sterner time has 
 made us alike neglectful and unjust.* 
 
 * Compare ' Bible of Amiens,' p. 14, "aisles of aspen, orchards 
 ot apple, clusters of vine."
 
 1 66 The Art of England. 
 
 But it is above all as a medium of en 
 graving that the easy submission of wood 
 to the edge of the chisel, — I will use this 
 plain word, if you please, instead of burin, — 
 and the tough durability of its grain, have 
 made it so widely serviceable to us for popu- 
 lar pleasure in art ; but mischievous also, in 
 the degree in which it encourages the cheapest 
 and vilest modes of design. The coarsest 
 scrawl with a blunt pen can be reproduced 
 on a wood-block with perfect ease by the 
 clumsiest engraver ; and there are tens of 
 thousands of vulgar artists who can scrawl 
 with a blunt pen, and with no trouble to 
 themselves, something that will amuse, as I 
 said, a child or a clown. But there is not 
 one artist in ten thousand who can draw 
 even simple objects rightly with a perfectly 
 pure line ; when such a line is drawn, 
 only an extremely skilful engraver can re- 
 produce it on wood ; when reproduced, it 
 is liable to be broken at the second or 
 third printing ; and supposing it permanent,
 
 V. yohn Leech a?2d yoh?i Tenniel. 167 
 
 not one spectator in ten thousand would 
 care for it. 
 
 There is, however, another temptation, 
 constant in the practice of wood-cutting, which 
 has been pecuharly harmful to us in the present 
 day. The action of the chisel on wood, as 
 you doubtless are aware, is to produce a white 
 touch on a black ground ; and if a few white 
 touches can be so distributed as to produce 
 any kind of effect, all the black ground 
 becomes part of the imagined picture, with no 
 trouble whatever to the workman: so that you 
 buy in your cheap magazine a picture, — say 
 four inches square, or sixteen square inches of 
 surface,- — in the whole of which there may 
 only be half an inch of work. Whereas, in 
 line engraving, every atom of the shade has to 
 be worked for, and that with extreme care, 
 evenness and dexterity of hand ; while even in 
 etching, though a great quantity of the shade 
 is mere burr and scrabble and blotch, a 
 certain quantity of real care and skill 7niist 
 be spent in covering the surface at first.
 
 1 68 The Art of England, 
 
 Whereas the common wood-cut requires 
 scarcely more trouble than a schoolboy takes 
 with a scrawl on his slate, and you might order 
 such pictures by the cartload from Coniston 
 quarries, with only a clever urchin or two to 
 put the chalk on. 
 
 But the mischief of the woodcut, considered 
 simply as a means in the publisher's hands 
 of imposing cheap work on the purchaser, is 
 trebled by its morbid power of expressing 
 ideas of ugliness or terror. While no entirely 
 beautiful thing can be represented in a wood- 
 cut, every form of vulgarity or unpleasantness 
 can be given to the life ; and the result is, that, 
 especially in our popular scientific books, the 
 mere effort to be amusing and attractive leads 
 to the publication of every species of the 
 abominable. No microscope can teach the 
 beauty of a statue, nor can any woodcut repre- 
 sent that of a nobly bred human form ; but 
 only last term we saw the whole Ashmolean 
 Society held in a trance of rapture by the 
 inexplicable decoration of the posteriors of a
 
 F, yohn Leech and yohn TennieL 169 
 
 flea ; and I have framed for you here, around 
 a page of the scientific journal which styles 
 itself ' Knowledge,' a collection of wood- 
 cuts out of a scientific survey of South 
 America, presenting collectively to you, in 
 designs ignorantly drawn and vilely engraved, 
 yet with the peculiar advantage belonging to 
 the cheap woodcut, whatever, through that 
 fourth part of the round world, from Mexico 
 to Patagonia, can be found of savage, sordid, 
 vicious, or ridiculous in humanity, without 
 so much as one exceptional indication of a 
 graceful form, a true instinct, or a cultivable 
 capacity. 
 
 The second frame is of French scientific 
 art, and still more curiously horrible. I have 
 cut these examples, not by any means the 
 ugliest, out of ' Les Pourquoi de Mademoiselle 
 Suzanne,' a book in which it is proposed to 
 instruct a young lady of eleven or twelve years 
 old, amusingly, in the elements of science. 
 
 In the course of the lively initiation, the 
 young lady has the advantage of seeing a
 
 lyo The Art of England. 
 
 garde champetre struck dead by lightning; 
 she is par parenthese entertained with the 
 history and picture of the suicide of the cook 
 Vatel ; somebody's heart, Hver, and forearm 
 are dissected for her ; all the phenomena of 
 nightmare are described and portrayed ; and 
 whatever spectres of monstrosity can be con- 
 jured into the sun, the moon, the stars, the 
 sky, the sea, the railway, and the telegraph, 
 are collected into black company by the 
 cheap engraver. Black company is a mild 
 word : you will find the right phrase now 
 instinctively adopted by the very persons who 
 are most charmed by these new modes of 
 sensation. In the 'Century' magazine for this 
 month, the reviewer of some American land- 
 scape of this class tells us that Mr. , 
 
 whoever he is, by a series of bands of black 
 and red paint, has succeeded in entirely re- 
 producing the ^Demoniac'' beauty of the sunset. 
 I have framed these French cuts, however, 
 chiefly for purposes of illustration in my last 
 lecture of this year, for they show you in
 
 V, yohn Leech and yohn T^e?mieL 171 
 
 perfect abstract all the wrong, — wroitg un- 
 questionably, whether you call it Demoniac, 
 Diabolic, or ^Esthetic, — against which my 
 entire teaching, from its first syllable to this 
 day, has been straight antagonist. Of this, 
 as I have said, in my terminal address : the 
 first frame is for to-day enough representation 
 of ordinary English cheap-trade woodcutting in 
 its necessary limitation to ugly subject, and 
 its disrespect for the very quality of the 
 material on which its value depends, elasticity. 
 There is this great difference between the 
 respect for his material proper to a workman 
 in metal or marble, and to one working in 
 clay or wood, that the former has to exhibit 
 the actual beauty of the substance itself, but 
 the latter only its special capacity of answering 
 his purpose. A sculptor in marble is required 
 to show the beauty of marble-surface, a 
 sculptor in gold its various lustre, a worker 
 in iron its ductile strength. But the wood- 
 cutter has not to exhibit his block, nor the 
 engraver his copper-plate. They have only
 
 172 The Art of England, 
 
 to use the relative softness and rigidity of 
 those substances to receive and multiply the 
 lines drawn by the human hand ; and it is 
 not the least an admirable quality in wood 
 that it is capable of printing a large blot; but 
 an entirely admirable one that by its tough 
 elasticity it can preserve through any number 
 of impressions the distinctness of a well cut 
 line. 
 
 Not admirable, I say, to print a blot ; but 
 to print a pure line unbroken, and an 
 intentionally widened space or spot of dark- 
 ness, of the exact shape wanted. In my 
 former lectures on Wood Engraving I did not 
 enough explain this quite separate virtue of the 
 material. Neither in pencil nor pen drawing, 
 neither in engraving nor etching, can a line 
 be widened arbitrarily, or a spot enlarged at 
 ease. The action of the moving point is 
 continuous ; you can increase or diminish the 
 line's thickness gradually, but not by starts ; 
 you must drive your plough-furrow, or let 
 your pen glide, at a fixed rate of motion ; nor
 
 V, yohn Leech and yohii l^ermiel. 173 
 
 can you afterwards give more breadth to the 
 pen line without overcharging the ink, nor by 
 any labour of etching tool dig out a cavity 
 of shadow such as the wood engraver leaves 
 in an instant. 
 
 Hence, the methods of design which 
 depend on irregularly expressive shapes of black 
 touch, belong to wood exclusively ; and the 
 examples placed formerly in your school from 
 Bewick's cuts of speckled plumage, and Burg- 
 maier's heraldry of barred helmets and black 
 eagles, were intended to direct your attention 
 to this especially intellectual manner of work, 
 as opposed to modern scribbling and hatching. 
 But I have now removed these old-fashioned 
 prints, (placing them, however, in always acces- 
 sible reserve,) because I found they possessed 
 no attraction for inexperienced students, and I 
 think it better to explain the qualities of 
 execution of a similar kind, though otherwise 
 directed, which are to be found in the designs 
 of our living masters, — addressed to existing 
 tastes, — and occupied with familiar scenes.
 
 1 74 The Art of E7igland, 
 
 Although I have headed my lecture only 
 with the names of Leech and Tenniel, as being 
 the real founders of ' Punch,' and by far the 
 greatest of its illustrators, both in force of art 
 and range of thought, yet in the precision of 
 the use of his means, and the subtle boldness 
 to which he has educated the interpreters of 
 his design, Mr. Du Maurier is more exemplary 
 than either ; and I have therefore had enlarged 
 by photography, — your thanks are due to the 
 brother of Miss Greenaway for the skill with 
 which the proofs have been produced, — for first 
 example of fine wood-cutting, the heads of 
 two of Mr. Du Maurier's chief heroines, Mrs. 
 Ponsonby de Tomkyns, and Lady Midas, in the 
 great scene where Mrs. Ponsonby takes on 
 herself the administration of Lady Midas's at 
 home. 
 
 You see at once how the effect in both 
 depends on the coagulation and concretion of 
 the black touches into masses relieved only by 
 interspersed sparkling grains of incised light, 
 presenting the realistic and vital portraiture
 
 V. yoh?2 Leech and yohn T'e7inieL 175 
 
 of both ladies with no more labour than would 
 occupy the draughtsman but a few minutes, 
 and the engraver perhaps an hour or two. It 
 is true that the features of the elder of the 
 two friends might be supposed to yield them- 
 selves without difficulty to the effect of the 
 irregular and blunt lines which are employed 
 to reproduce them ; but it is a matter of no 
 small wonderment to see the delicate profile 
 and softly rounded features of the younger 
 lady suggested by an outline which must have 
 been drawn in the course of a few seconds, 
 and by some eight or ten firmly swept parallel 
 penstrokes right across the cheek. 
 
 I must ask you especially to note the 
 successful result of this easy method of obtain- 
 ing an even tint, because it is the proper, and 
 the inexorably required, method of shade in 
 classic wood-engraving. Recently, very re- 
 markable and admirable efforts have been 
 made by American artists to represent flesh 
 tints with fine textures of crossed white lines 
 
 and spots. But all such attempts are futile ; 
 
 16
 
 176 The Art of Rn gland, 
 
 it is an optical law that transparency in 
 shadows can only be obtained by dark lines 
 with white spaces, not white lines with dark 
 spaces. For what we feel to be transparency 
 in any colour or any atmosphere, consists in 
 the penetration of darkness by a more distant 
 light, not in the subduing of light by a more 
 distant darkness. A snowstorm seen white on 
 a dark sky gives us no idea of transparency, 
 but rain between us and a rainbow does ; and 
 so throughout all the expedients of chiaroscuro 
 drawing and painting, transparent effects are 
 produced by laying dark over light, and 
 opaque by laying light over dark. It would 
 be tedious in a lecture to press these tech- 
 nical principles farther ; it is enough that I 
 should state the general law, and its practical 
 consequence, that no wood engraver need 
 attempt to copy Correggio or Guido ; his 
 business is not with complexions, but with 
 characters ; and his fame is to rest, not on 
 the perfection of his work, but on its propriety. 
 I must in the next place ask you to look
 
 F, yohn Leech and John Tenniel. 177 
 
 at the aphorisms given as an art catechism in 
 the second chapter of the ' Laws of Fesole.' 
 One of the principal of these gives the student, 
 as a test by which to recognize good colour, 
 that all the white in the picture is precious^ 
 and all the blacky conspicuous ; not by the 
 quantity of it, but the impassable difference 
 between it and all the coloured spaces. 
 
 The rule is just as true for wood cutting. 
 In fine examples of it, the black is left for 
 local colour only — for dark dresses, or dark 
 patterns on light ones, dark hair, or dark 
 eyes ; it is never left for general gloom, out 
 of which the figures emerge like spectres. 
 
 When, however, a number of Mr. Du 
 Maurier's compositions are seen together, and 
 compared with the natural simplicity and 
 aerial space of Leech's, they will be felt to 
 depend on this principle too absolutely and 
 undisguisedly; so that the quarterings of black 
 and white in them sometimes look more like 
 a chess board than a picture. But in minor 
 and careful passages, his method is wholly
 
 lyS The Art of England, 
 
 exemplary, and in the next example I enlarge 
 for you, — Alderman Sir Robert admiring 
 the portraits of the Duchess and the Colonel, 
 — he has not only shown you every principle 
 of wood-cutting, but abstracted for you also 
 the laws of beauty, whose definite and every 
 year more emphatic assertion in the pages of 
 'Punch' is the ruling charm and most legiti- 
 mate pride of the immortal periodical. Day 
 by day the search for grotesque, ludicrous, or 
 loathsome subject which degraded the carica- 
 tures in its original, the ' Charivari,' and 
 renders the dismally comic journals of Italy 
 the mere plagues and cancers of the State, 
 became, in our English satirists, an earnest 
 comparison of the things which were graceful 
 and honourable, with those which were grace- 
 less and dishonest, in modern life. Gradually 
 the kind and vivid genius of John Leech, 
 capable in its brightness of finding pretty jest 
 in everything, but capable in its tenderness 
 also of rejoicing in the beauty of everything, 
 softened and illumined with its loving wit
 
 V, John Leech afid John Te7t7iteL 179 
 
 the entire scope of English social scene ; the 
 graver power of Tenniel brought a steady 
 tone and law of morality into the license of 
 political contention ; and finally the acute, 
 highly trained, and accurately physiologic 
 observation of Du Maurier traced for us, to 
 its true origin in vice or virtue, every order 
 of expression in the mixed circle of metro- 
 politan rank and wealth : and has done so 
 with a closeness of delineation the like of 
 which has not been seen since Holbein, and 
 deserving the most respectful praise in that, 
 whatever power of satire it may reach by the 
 selection and assemblage of telling points of 
 character, it never degenerates into caricature. 
 Nay, the terrific force of blame which he 
 obtains by collecting, as here in the profile 
 of the Knight-Alderman, features separately 
 faultful into the closest focus, depends on the 
 very fact that they are not caricatured. 
 
 Thus far, the justice of the most careful 
 criticism may gratefully ratify the applause 
 with which the works of these three artists
 
 i8o T'he Art of Engla?td, 
 
 have been received by the British pubUc. 
 Rapidly I must now glance at the conditions 
 of defect which must necessarily occur in art 
 primarily intended to amuse the multitude, 
 and which can therefore only be for moments 
 serious, and by stealth didactic. 
 
 In the first place, you must be clear 
 about 'Punch's' politics. He is a polite Whig, 
 with a sentimental respect for the Crown, 
 and a practical respect for property. He 
 steadily flatters Lord Palmerston, from his 
 heart adores Mr. Gladstone ; steadily, but not 
 virulently, caricatures Mr. D'Israeli ; violently 
 and virulently castigates assault upon property, 
 in any kind, and holds up for the general 
 ideal of perfection, to be aimed at by all the 
 children of heaven and earth, the British 
 Hunting Squire, the British Colonel, and the 
 British Sailor. 
 
 Primarily, the British Hunting Squire, 
 with his family. The most beautiful sketch 
 by Leech throughout his career, and, on the 
 whole, in all 'Punch,' I take to be Miss Alice
 
 V, Johii Leech a?2d yoh?t 'Tenniel. 1 8 1 
 
 on her father's horse; — her, with three or four 
 more young Dians, I had put in one frame 
 for you, but found they ran each other too 
 hard, — being in each case typical of what 
 'Punch' thinks every young lady ought to be. 
 He has never fairly asked how far every 
 young lady can be like them ; nor has he in 
 a single instance endeavoured to represent the 
 beauty of the poor. 
 
 On the contrary, his witness to their 
 degradation, as inevitable in the circumstances 
 of their London life, is constant, and for the 
 most part, contemptuous ; nor can I more 
 sternly enforce what I have said at various 
 times on that subject than by placing per- 
 manently in your schools the cruelly true 
 design of Du Maurier, representing the 
 London mechanic with his family, when 
 Mr. Todeson is asked to amuse ' the dear 
 creatures ' at Lady Clara's garden tea. 
 
 I show you for comparison with it, to-day, 
 a little painting of a country girl of our 
 Westmoreland type, which I have given to
 
 I 8 2 The Art of Engla?2d, 
 
 our Coniston children's school, to show our 
 hill and vale-bred lassies that God will take 
 care of their good looks for them, even 
 though He may have appointed for them the 
 toil of the women of Sarepta and Samaria, 
 in being gatherers of wood and drawers of 
 water. 
 
 I cannot say how far with didactic 
 purpose, or how far in carelessly inevitable 
 satire, ' Punch ' contrasts with the disgrace 
 of street poverty the beauties of the London 
 drawing-room, — the wives and daughters of the 
 great upper middle class, exalted by the wealth 
 of the capital, and of the larger manufacturing 
 towns. 
 
 These are, with few exceptions, represented 
 either as receiving company, or reclining on 
 sofas in extremely elegant morning dresses, and 
 surrounded by charming children, with whom 
 they are usually too idle to play. The children 
 are extremely intelligent, and often exquisitely 
 pretty, yet dependent for great part of their 
 charm on the dressing of their back hair, and
 
 V. yohn Leech aj^d yohn Tenniel. 183 
 
 the fitting of their boots. As they grow up, 
 their girHsh beauty is more and more fixed in 
 an expression of more or less self-satisfied 
 pride and practised apathy. There is no 
 example in Punch of a girl in society whose 
 face expresses humility or enthusiasm — except 
 in mistaken directions and foolish degrees. It 
 is true that only in these mistaken feelings 
 can be found palpable material for jest, and 
 that much of Punch's satire is well intended 
 and just. 
 
 It seems to have been hitherto impossible, 
 when once the zest of satirical humour is felt, 
 even by so kind and genial a heart as John 
 Leech's, to restrain it, and to elevate into the 
 playfulness of praise. In the designs of Richter, 
 of which I have so often spoken, among scenes 
 of domestic beauty and pathos, he continually 
 introduces little pieces of play, — such, for 
 instance, as that of the design of the ' Wide, 
 Wide World,' in which the very young puppy, 
 with its paws on its — relatively as young — 
 master's shoulder, looks out with him over the
 
 184 The Art of E7igland, 
 
 fence of their cottage garden. And it is surely 
 conceivable that some day the rich power of a 
 true humorist may be given to express more 
 vividly the comic side which exists in many 
 beautiful incidents of daily life, and refuse at 
 last to dwell, even with a smile, on its follies. 
 
 This, however, must clearly be a condition 
 of future human development, for hitherto the 
 perfect power of seizing comic incidents has 
 always been associated with some liking for 
 ugliness, and some exultation in disaster. The 
 law holds — and holds with no relaxation — even 
 in the instance of so wise and benevolent a man 
 as the Swiss schoolmaster, Topffer, whose death, 
 a few years since, left none to succeed him in 
 perfection of pure linear caricature. He can 
 do more with fewer lines than any draughtsman 
 known to me, and in several plates of his 
 'Histoire d'Albert,' has succeeded in entirely 
 representing the tenor of conversation with no 
 more than half the profile and one eye of the 
 speaker. 
 
 He generally took a walking tour through
 
 F, John Leech and yoh?t Tenniel, 185 
 
 Switzerland, with his pupils, in the summer 
 holidays, and illustrated his exquisitely humorous 
 diary of their adventures with pen sketches, 
 which show a capacity of appreciating beautiful 
 landscape as great as his grotesque faculty ; 
 but his mind is drawn away from the most 
 sublime scene, in a moment, to the difficulties 
 of the halting-place, or the rascalities of the 
 inn ; and his power is never so marvellously 
 exerted as in depicting a group of roguish 
 guides, shameless beggars, or hopeless cretins. 
 
 Nevertheless, with these and such other 
 materials as our European masters of physiog- 
 nomy have furnished in portraiture of their 
 nations, I can see my way to the arrange- 
 ment of very curious series of illustrations of 
 character, if only I could also see my way to 
 some place wherein to exhibit them. 
 
 I said in my opening lecture that I hoped 
 the studies of the figure initiated by Mr. 
 Richmond might be found consistent with the 
 slighter practice in my own schools ; and I 
 must say, in passing, that the only real hind-
 
 I 86 The Art of England, 
 
 ranee to this, but at present an insuperable 
 one, is want of room. It is a somewhat cha- 
 racteristic fact, expressive of the tendencies \ 
 of this age, that Oxford thinks nothing of 
 spending c;^ 150,000 for the elevation and 
 ornature, in a style as inherently corrupt as ] 
 it is un-English, of the rooms for the torture j 
 and shame of her scholars, which to all i 
 practical purposes might just as well have ] 
 been inflicted on them in her college halls, | 
 or her professors' drawing-rooms ; but that | 
 the only place where her art- workmen can ; 
 be taught to draw, is the cellar of her old 
 Taylor buildings, and the only place where \ 
 her art-professor can store the cast of a statue, | 
 is his own private office in the gallery above. j 
 Pending the now indispensable addition of j 
 some rude workroom to the Taylor galleries, in 
 which study of the figure may be carried on 
 under a competent master, I have lent, from 
 the drawings belonging to the St. George's | 
 Guild, such studies of Venetian pictures as 
 may form the taste of the figure-student in
 
 F, Joh?t Leech aiid John Tenniel. 187 
 
 general composition, and I have presented to 
 the Ruskin schools twelve principal drawings 
 out of Miss Alexander's Tuscan book, which 
 may be standards of method, in drawing from 
 the life, to students capable of as determined 
 industry. But, no less for the better guidance 
 of the separate figure class in the room which 
 I hope one day to see built, than for immediate 
 help in such irregular figure study as may 
 be possible under present conditions, I find 
 myself grievously in want of such a grammar 
 of the laws of harmony in the human form 
 and face as may be consistent with whatever 
 accurate knowledge of elder races may have 
 been obtained by recent anthropology, and 
 at the same time authoritative in its statement 
 of the effect on human expression, of the 
 various mental states and passions. And it 
 seems to me that by arranging in groups 
 capable of easy comparison, the examples of 
 similar expression given by the masters whose 
 work we have been reviewing, we may ad- 
 vance further such a science of physiog-
 
 I 88 The Art of England, 
 
 nomy as will be morally useful, than by any 
 quantity of measuring of savage crania: and if, 
 therefore, among the rudimentary series in the 
 art schools you find, before I can get the new 
 explanatory catalogues printed, some more or 
 less systematic groups of heads collected out 
 of ' Punch,' you must not think that I am 
 doing this merely for your amusement, or that 
 such examples are beneath the dignity of acade- 
 mical instruction. My own belief is that the 
 difference between the features of a good and 
 a bad servant, of a churl and a gentleman, 
 is a much more useful and interesting subject 
 of enquiry than the gradations of snub nose 
 or flat forehead which became extinct with 
 the Dodo, or the insertions of muscle and 
 articulations of joint which are common to 
 the flesh of all humanity. 
 
 Returning to our immediate subject, and 
 considering 'Punch' as the expression of the 
 popular voice, which he virtually is, and even 
 somewhat obsequiously, is it not wonderful that 
 he has never a word to say for the British
 
 V, John Leech and yohit T'e7i?tieL 189 
 
 manufacturer, and that the true citizen of his 
 own city is represented by him only under the 
 types, either of Sir Pompey Bedell or of the 
 more tranquil magnate and potentate, the 
 bulwark of British constitutional principles 
 and initiator of British private enterprise, Mr. 
 John Smith, whose biography is given with 
 becoming reverence by Miss Ingelow, in the 
 last but one of her ' Stories told to a Child ' ? 
 And is it not also surely some overruling power 
 in the nature of things, quite other than the 
 desire of his readers, which compels Mr. 
 Punch, when the squire, the colonel, and the 
 admiral are to be at once expressed, together 
 with all that they legislate or fight for, in the 
 symbolic figure of the nation, to represent 
 the incarnate John Bull always as a farmer, 
 — never as a manufacturer or shopkeeper, and 
 to conceive and exhibit him rather as pay- 
 master for the faults of his neighbours, than as 
 watching for opportunity of gain out of their 
 follies ? 
 
 It had been well if either under this
 
 190 The Art of England. 
 
 accepted, though now antiquated, type, or 
 under the more poetical symbols of Britannia, 
 or the British Lion, ' Punch ' had ventured 
 oftener to intimate the exact degree in which 
 the nation was following its ideal; and marked 
 the occasions when Britannia's crest began too 
 fatally to lose its resemblance to Athena's, 
 and liken itself to an ordinary cockscomb, — 
 or when the British lion had — of course 
 only for a moment, and probably in pecuniary 
 difficulties — dropped his tail between his legs. 
 
 But the aspects under which either British 
 lion, Gallic eagle, or Russian bear have been 
 regarded by our contemplative serial, are 
 unfortunately dependent on the fact that all 
 his three great designers are, in the most 
 narrow sense, London citizens. I have said 
 that every great man belongs not only to his 
 own city, but to his own village. The artists 
 of ' Punch ' have no village to belong to; for 
 them^ the street corner is the face of the 
 whole earth, and the two only quarters of the 
 heavenly horizon are the east and west — End.
 
 V. John Leech and John Tenniel. 191 
 
 And although Leech's conception of the Dis- 
 tinguished Foreigner, Du Maurier's of the Herr 
 Professor, and Tenniel's of La Liberte, or La 
 France, are all extremely true and delightful, 
 — to the superficial extent of the sketch by 
 Dickens in ^Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings,' — they 
 are, effectively, all seen with Mrs. Lirriper's 
 eyes ; they virtually represent of the Continent 
 little more than the upper town of Boulogne ; 
 nor has anything yet been done by all the 
 wit and all the kindness of these great popular 
 designers to deepen the reliance of any Euro- 
 pean nation on the good qualities of its 
 neighbours. 
 
 You no doubt have at the Union the most 
 interesting and beautiful series of the Tenniel 
 cartoons which have been collectively pub- 
 lished, with the explanation of their motives. 
 If you begin with No. 38, you will find a 
 consecutive series of ten extremely forcible 
 drawings, casting the utmost obloquy in 
 the power of the designer upon the French 
 Emperor, the Pope, and the Italian clergy, 
 
 17
 
 192 The Art of England, 
 
 and alike discourteous to the head of the 
 nation which had fought side by side with us 
 at Inkerman, and impious in its representation 
 of the Catholic power to which Italy owed, 
 and still owes, whatever has made her glorious 
 among the nations of Christendom, or happy 
 among the families of the earth. 
 
 Among them you will find other two, repre- 
 senting our wars with China, and the triumph 
 of our missionary manner of compelling free 
 trade at the point of the bayonet : while, for 
 the close and consummation of the series, 
 you will see the genius and valour of your 
 country figuratively summed in the tableau, 
 subscribed, — 
 
 * John Bull defends his pudding.' 
 
 Is this indeed then the final myth of English 
 heroism, into which King Arthur, and St. 
 George, and Britannia, and the British Lion 
 are all collated, concluded, and perfected by 
 Evolution, in the literal words of Carlyle, 
 ' like four whale cubs combined by boiling ' ? 
 Do you wish your Queen in future to style
 
 V» John Leech a72d Joh?! Te?t?2ieL 193 
 
 herself Placentae, instead of Fidei Defensor ? 
 and is it to your pride, to your hope, or even 
 to your pleasure, that this once sacred as well 
 as sceptred island of yours, in whose second 
 capital city Constantine was crowned ; — to 
 whose shores St. Augustine and St. Columba 
 brought benediction ; — who gave her Lion- 
 hearts to the Tombs of the East, — her Pilgrim 
 Fathers to the Cradle of the West; — who has 
 wrapped the sea round her for her mantle, 
 and breathes with her strong bosoni the air 
 of every sign in heaven ; — is it to your good 
 pleasure that the Hero-children born to her 
 in these latter days should write no loftier 
 legend on their shields than ' John Bull defends 
 his pudding ' ? 
 
 I chanced only the other day on a minor, 
 yet, to my own mind, very frightful proof of 
 the extent to which this caitiff symbol is 
 fastening itself in the popular mind. I was 
 in search of some extremely pastoral musical 
 instrument, whereby to regulate the songs of 
 our Coniston village children, without the
 
 194- T^^^ ^^^ ^f England, 
 
 requirement of peculiar skill either in master 
 or monitor. But the only means of melody 
 offered to me by the trade of the neigh- 
 bourhood was this so-called ' harmonicon,' — 
 purchaseable, according to your present notions, 
 cheaply, for a shilling ; and with this piece of 
 cheerful mythology on its lid gratis, wherein 
 you see what ' Gradus ad Parnassum ' we 
 prepare for the rustic mind, and that the 
 virtue and the jollity of England are vested 
 only in the money-bag in each hand of him. 
 I shall place this harmonicon lid in your 
 schools, among my examples of what we call 
 liberal education, — and, with it, what instances 
 I can find of the way Florence, Siena, or Venice 
 taught their people to regard themselves. 
 
 For, indeed, in many a past year, it has 
 every now and then been a subject of recurring 
 thought to me, what such a genius as that of 
 Tenniel would have done for us, had we asked 
 the best of it, and had the feeling of the nation 
 respecting the arts, as a record of its honour, 
 been like that of the Italians in their proud
 
 F. yoh?i Leech a?td yohn Te7t7tiel, 195 
 
 days. To some extent, the memory of our 
 bravest war has been preserved for us by the 
 pathetic force of Mrs. Butler ; but her concep- 
 tions are realistic only, and rather of thrilling 
 episodes than of great military principle and 
 thought. On the contrary, Tenniel has much 
 of the largeness and symbolic mystery of imagi- 
 nation which belong to the great leaders of 
 classic art: in the shadowy masses and sweeping 
 lines of his great compositions, there are ten- 
 dencies which might have won his adoption 
 into the school of Tintoret; and his scorn of 
 whatever seems to him dishonest or con- 
 temptible in religion, would have translated 
 itself into awe in the presence of its vital power. 
 I gave you, when first I came to Oxford, 
 Tintoret's picture of the Doge Mocenigo, with 
 his divine spiritual attendants, in the cortile of 
 St. Mark's. It is surely our own fault, more 
 than Mr. Tenniel's, if the best portraits he can 
 give us of the heads of our English government 
 should be rather on the occasion of their dinner 
 at Greenwich than their devotion at St. Paul's.
 
 196 T^he Art of England, 
 
 My time has been too long spent in 
 carping ; — but yet the faults which I have 
 pointed out were such as could scarcely occur 
 to you without some such indication, and which 
 gravely need your observance, and, as far as you 
 are accountable for them, your repentance. I 
 can best briefly, in conclusion, define what I 
 would fain have illustrated at length, the charm, 
 in this art of the Fireside, which you tacitly 
 feel, and have every rational ground to rejoice 
 in. With whatever restriction you should 
 receive the flattery, and with whatever caution 
 the guidance, of these great illustrators of your 
 daily life, this at least you may thankfully 
 recognize in the sum of their work, that it 
 contains the evidence of a prevalent and 
 crescent beauty and energy in the youth of 
 our day, which may justify the most discon- 
 tented ' laudator temporis acti ' in leaving the 
 future happily in their hands. The witness of 
 ancient art points often to a general and equal 
 symmetry of body and mind in well trained 
 races \ but at no period, so far as I am able
 
 V, John Leech and John TennieL 197 
 
 to gather by the most careful comparison of 
 existing portraiture, has there ever been a 
 loveUness so variably refined, so modestly and 
 kindly virtuous, so innocently fantastic, and so 
 daintily pure, as the present girl-beauty of our 
 British Islands : and whatever, for men now 
 entering on the main battle of life, may be the 
 confused temptations or inevitable errors of a 
 period of moral doubt and social change, my 
 own experience of help already received from 
 the younger members of this University, is 
 enough to assure me that there has been no 
 time, in all the pride of the past, when their 
 country might more serenely trust in the 
 glory of her youth ; — when her prosperity was 
 more secure in their genius, or her honour 
 in their hearts.
 
 The Art of England. 
 
 LECTURES GIVEN IN OXFORD, 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSK IN, D.C.L., LL.D., 
 
 HONORARY "STUDENT OF CHRIST CHI'RCH, AND HONQRARY FELLOW OF CORPl'S CHRIRTI COLLEGK, 
 
 DURING HIS 
 
 SECOND TENURE OF THE SLADE PROFESSORSHIP. 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE H 1 1, L - S 1 D E . 
 
 GEORGE ALLEN, 
 SUNNVSIDE. ORPINGTON, KENT. 
 
 1883.
 
 LECTURE VI 
 
 THE HILL-SIDE. 
 
 George Rohson and Copley Fielding. 
 
 18
 
 Lecture VI. 
 THE HILL- SIDE. 
 
 GEORGE ROBSON AND COPLEY FIELDING. 
 
 IN the five preceding lectures given this 
 year, I have endeavoured to generalize 
 the most noteworthy facts respecting the 
 religious, legendary, classic, and, in two kinds, 
 domestic, art of England. There remains yet 
 to be defined one, far-away, and, in a manner, 
 outcast, school, which belongs as yet wholly 
 to the present century ; and which, if we were 
 to trust to appearances, would exclusively and 
 for ever belong to it, neither having been 
 known before our time, nor surviving after- 
 wards, — the art of landscape. 
 
 Not known before, — except as a trick, or 
 a pastime; not surviving afterwards, because 
 we seem straight on the way to pass our lives
 
 2 02 The Art of England. 
 
 in cities twenty miles wide, and to travel from 
 each of them to the next, underground: out- 
 cast now, even while it retains some vague 
 hold on old-fashioned people's minds, since 
 the best existing examples of it are placed by 
 the authorities of the National Gallery in a 
 cellar lighted by only two windows, and those 
 at the bottom of a well, blocked by four dead 
 brick walls fifty feet high. 
 
 Notwithstanding these discouragements, I 
 am still minded to carry out the design in 
 which the so-called Ruskin schools were 
 founded, that of arranging in them a code of 
 elementary practice, which should secure the 
 skill of the student in the department of land- 
 scape before he entered on the branches of 
 art requiring higher genius. Nay, I am more 
 than ever minded to fulfil my former purpose 
 now, in the exact degree in which I see the 
 advantages of such a method denied or refused 
 in other academies ; and the beauty of natural 
 scenery increasingly in danger of destruction 
 by the gross interests and disquieting pleasures
 
 yi. George Robs on and Copley Fielding, 203 
 
 of the citizen. For indeed, as I before stated 
 to you, when first I undertook the duties of 
 this professorship, my own personal Hking for 
 landscape made me extremely guarded in 
 recommending its study. I only gave three 
 lectures on landscape in six years, and I never 
 published them ; my hope and endeavour was 
 to connect the study of Nature for you with 
 that of History ; to make you interested in 
 Greek legend as well as in Greek lakes and 
 limestone; to acquaint you with the relations 
 of northern hills and rivers to the schools of 
 Christian Theology ; and of Renaissance town- 
 life to the rage of its infidelity. But I have 
 done enough, — and more than enough, — ac- 
 cording to my time of life, in these directions; 
 and now, justified, I trust, in your judgment, 
 from the charge of weak concession to my 
 own predilections, I shall arrange the exercises 
 required consistently from my drawing-classes, 
 with quite primary reference to landscape 
 art ; and teach the early philosophy of 
 beauty, under laws liable to no dispute by
 
 204 T^he Art of Rn gland, 
 
 human passion, but secure in the grace of 
 Earth, and Ught of Heaven. 
 
 And I wish in the present lecture to define 
 to you the nature and meaning of landscape- 
 art, as it arose in England eighty years ago, 
 without reference to the great master whose 
 works have been the principal subject of 
 my own enthusiasm. I have always stated 
 distinctly that the genius of Turner was 
 exceptional, both in its kind and in its height : 
 and although his elementary modes of work 
 are beyond dispute authoritative, and the best 
 that can be given for example and exercise, 
 the general tenor of his design is entirely 
 beyond the acceptance of common knowledge, 
 and even of safe sympathy. For in his extreme 
 sadness, and in the morbid tones of mind out 
 of which it arose, he is one with Byron and 
 Goethe ; and is no more to be held represen- 
 tative of general English landscape art than 
 Childe Harold or Faust are exponents of the 
 total love of Nature expressed in English or 
 German literature. To take a single illustrative
 
 FI. George Robson a7id Copley Fieldi^tg. 205 
 
 instance, there is no foreground of Turner's 
 in which you can find a flower. 
 
 In some respects, indeed, the vast strength 
 of this uniollowable Eremite of a master was 
 crushing, instead of edifying, to the English 
 schools. All the true and strong men who 
 were his contemporaries shrank from the slightest 
 attempt at rivalry with him on his own lines ; 
 — and his own lines were cast far. But for 
 him, Stanfield might have sometimes painted 
 an Alpine valley, or a Biscay storm ; but the 
 moment there was any question of rendering 
 magnitude, or terror, every effort became puny 
 beside Turner, and Stanfield meekly resigned 
 himself to potter all his life round the Isle of 
 Wight, and paint the Needles on one side, and 
 squalls oS Cowes on the other. In like 
 manner, Copley Fielding in his young days 
 painted vigorously in oil, and showed promise 
 of attaining considerable dignity in classic com- 
 position ; but the moment Turner's Garden of 
 Hesperides and Building of Carthage appeared 
 in the Academy, there was an end to ambition
 
 2o6 The Art of England. 
 
 in that direction; and thenceforth Fielding 
 settled down to his quiet presidency of the 
 old Water-colour Society, and painted, in 
 unassuming replicas, his passing showers in the 
 Highlands, and sheep on the South Downs. 
 
 Which are, indeed, for most of us, much 
 more appropriate objects of contemplation ; 
 and the old water-colour room at that time, 
 adorned yearly with the complete year's labour 
 of Fielding, Robson, De Wint, Barrett, Prout, 
 and William Hunt, presented an aggregate of 
 unaffected pleasantness and truth, the like of 
 which, if you could now see, after a morning 
 spent among the enormities of luscious and 
 exotic art which frown or glare along your 
 miles of exhibition wall, would really be felt 
 by you to possess the charm of a bouquet of 
 bluebells and cowslips, amidst a prize show of 
 cactus and orchid from the hothouses of Kew. 
 
 The root of this delightfulness was an 
 extremely rare sincerity in the personal plea- 
 sure which all these men took, not in their 
 own pictures, but in the subjects of them — a
 
 FL George Robsoji and Copley Fielding. 207 
 
 form of enthusiasm which, while it was as 
 simple, was also as romantic, in the best sense, 
 as the sentiment of a young girl : and whose 
 nature I can the better both define and certify 
 to you, because it was the impulse to which I 
 owed the best force of my own life, and in 
 sympathy with which I have done or said 
 whatever of saying or doing in it has been 
 useful to others. * 
 
 When I spoke, in this year's first lecture, of 
 Rossetti, as the chief intellectual force in the 
 establishment of the modern Romantic School ; 
 and again in the second lecture promised, at the 
 end of our course, the collection of the evidence 
 of Romantic passion in all our good English 
 art, you will find it explained at the same time 
 that I do not use the word Romantic as 
 opposed to Classic, but as opposed to the 
 prosaic characters of selfishness and stupidity, 
 in all times, and among all nations. I do not 
 think of King Arthur as opposed to Theseus, 
 or to Valerius, but to Alderman Sir Robert, 
 and Mr. John Smith. And therefore I opposed
 
 2o8 The Art of Engla?td. 
 
 the child-like love of beautiful things, in even 
 the least of our English Modern Painters, from 
 the first page of the book I wrote about them 
 to the last, — in Greek Art, to what seemed 
 to me then (and in a certain sense is demon- 
 strably to me now) too selfish or too formal, 
 — and in Teutonic Art, to what was cold in 
 a far worse sense, either by boorish dulness 
 or educated afiectation. 
 
 I think the two best central types of Non- 
 Romance, of the power of Absolute Vulgarity 
 in selfishness, as distinguished from the eternal 
 dignity of Reverence and Love, are stamped 
 for you on the two most finished issues of your 
 English currency in the portraits of Henry the 
 Eighth and Charles the Second. There is no 
 interfering element in the vulgarity of them, 
 no pardon to be sought in their poverty, 
 ignorance, or weakness. Both are men of 
 strong powers of mind, and both well in- 
 formed in all particulars of human knowledge 
 possible to them. But in the one you see 
 the destroyer, according to his power, of Eng-
 
 FL George Rob son a7id Copley Fielding. 209 
 
 lish religion ; and, in the other, the destroyer, 
 according to his power, of English morality : 
 culminating types to you of whatever in the 
 spirit, or dispirit, of succeeding ages, robs God, 
 or dishonours man. 
 
 I named to you, as an example of the 
 unromantic art which was assailed by the pre- 
 Raphaelites, Vandyke's sketch of the ' Miracu- 
 lous Draught of Fishes.' Very near it, in 
 the National Gallery, hangs another piscatory 
 subject,* by Teniers, which I will ask you care- 
 fully also to examine as a perfect type of the 
 Unromantic Art which was assailed by the 
 gentle enthusiasm of the English School of 
 Landscape. It represents a few ordinary Dutch 
 houses, an ordinary Dutch steeple or two, — 
 some still more ordinary Dutch trees, — and 
 most ordinary Dutch clouds, assembled in 
 contemplation of an ordinary Dutch duck- 
 pond ; or, perhaps, in respect of its size, we 
 
 * No. 817, 'Teniers' Chateau at Perck.' The expressions 
 touching the want of hght in it are a Httle violent, being strictly 
 accurate only of such pictures of the Dutch school as Vander- 
 neer's ' Evening Landscape,' 152, and 'Canal Scene,' 732.
 
 2IO The Art of England, 
 
 may more courteously call it a goose-pond. 
 All these objects are painted either grey or 
 brown, and the atmosphere is of the kind 
 which looks not merely as if the sun had 
 disappeared for the day, but as if he had gone 
 out altogether, and left a stable lantern instead. 
 The total effect having appeared, even to 
 the painter's own mind, at last little exhilatory, 
 he has enlivened it by three figures on the 
 brink of the goose-pond, — two gentlemen and 
 a lady, — standing all three perfectly upright, 
 side by side, in court dress, the gentlemen 
 with expansive boots, and all with conical 
 hats and high feathers. In order to invest 
 these characters with dramatic interest, a 
 rustic fisherman presents to them as a tribute, 
 — or, perhaps, exhibits as a natural curiosity, 
 a large fish, just elicited from the goose-pond 
 by his adventurous companions, who have 
 waded into the middle of it, every one of them, 
 with singular exactitude, up to the calf of his 
 leg. The principles of National Gallery arrange- 
 ment of course put this picture on the line,
 
 VI, George Rohsoji a?2cl Copley Fielding, 211 
 
 while Tintoret * and Gainsborough are hung 
 out ot sight ; but in this instance I hold myself 
 fortunate in being able to refer you to an 
 example, so conveniently examinable, of the 
 utmost stoop and densest level ot human 
 stupidity yet fallen to by any art in which 
 some degree of manual dexterity is essential. 
 
 This crisis of degradation, you will observe, 
 takes place at the historical moment when by 
 the concurrent power of avaricious trade on 
 one side, and unrestrained luxury on the other, 
 the idea of any but an earthly interest, and 
 any but proud or carnal pleasures, had been 
 virtually effaced throughout Europe; and men, 
 by their resolute self-seeking, had literally at 
 last ostracised the Spiritual Sun from Heaven, 
 and lived by little more than the snuff of the 
 wick of their own mental stable lantern. 
 
 The forms of romantic art hitherto de- 
 scribed in this course of lectvires, were all 
 
 * The large new Tintoret wholly so, and the largest Gains- 
 borough, the best in England known to mc, used merely for 
 wall furniture at the top of the room,
 
 2 12 The Art of England. 
 
 distinctly reactionary against the stupor of this 
 Stygian pool, brooded over by Batavian fog. 
 But the first signs of re-awakening in the 
 vital power of imagination were, long before, 
 seen in landscape art. Not the utmost strength 
 of the great figure painters could break through 
 the bonds of the flesh. Reynolds vainly tried 
 to substitute the age of Innocence for the 
 experience of Religion — the true genius at his 
 side remained always Cupid unbinding the 
 girdle of Venus. Gainsborough knew no 
 goddesses other than Mrs. Graham or Mrs. 
 Siddons ; Vandyke and Rubens, than the 
 beauties of the court, or the graces of its 
 corpulent Mythology. But at last there arose, 
 and arose inevitably, a feeling that, if not any 
 more in Heaven, at least in the solitary 
 places of the earth, there was a pleasure to be 
 found based neither on pride nor sensuality. 
 Among the least attractive of the mingled 
 examples in your school-alcove, you will find 
 a quiet pencil-drawing of a sunset at Rome, 
 seen from beneath a deserted arch, whether
 
 FI. George Rohso?j and Copley Fieldi?!^. 213 
 
 of Triumph or of Peace. Its modest art-skill 
 is restricted almost exclusively to the expression 
 of warm light in the low harmony of evening ; 
 but it differs wholly from the learned com- 
 positions and skilled artifices of former painting 
 by its purity of unaiTected pleasure and rest 
 in the little that is given. Here, at last, 
 we feel, is an honest Englishman, who has 
 got away out of all the Camere, and the 
 Loggie, and the Stanze, and the schools, and 
 the Disputas, and the Incendios, and the 
 Battaglias, and busts of this god, and torsos 
 of that, and the chatter of the studio, and 
 the rush of the cor so ; — and has laid himself 
 down, with his own poor eyes and heart, 
 and the sun casting its light between ruins, 
 — possessor, he, of so much of the evidently 
 blessed peace of things, — he, and the poor 
 lizard in the cranny of the stones beside 
 him. 
 
 I believe that with the name of Richard 
 Wilsoii, the history of sincere landscape art, 
 founded on a meditative love of Nature, begins
 
 2 14 ^'^^ ^r/ of England, 
 
 for England : and, I may add, for Europe, 
 without any wide extension of claim; for the 
 only continental landscape work of any sterling 
 merit with which I am acquainted, consists 
 in the old-fashioned drawings, made fifty years 
 ago to meet the demand of the first influx of 
 British travellers into Switzerland after the 
 fall of Napoleon. 
 
 With Richard Wilson, at all events, our 
 own true and modest schools began, an especial 
 direction being presently given to them in the 
 rendering effects of aerial perspective by the 
 skill in water-colour of Girtin and Cousins. 
 The drawings of these two masters, recently 
 bequeathed to the British Museum, and I hope 
 soon to be placed in a well-lighted gallery, 
 contain quite insuperable examples of skill in 
 the management of clear tints, and of the 
 meditative charm consisting in the quiet and 
 unaffected treatment of literally true scenes. 
 
 But the impulse to which the new school 
 owed the discovery of its power in colour 
 was owing, I believe, to the poetry of Scott
 
 VI. George Robso7i and Copley Fielding. 215 
 
 and Byron. Both by their vivid passion and 
 accurate description, the painters of their day 
 were taught the true vahie of natural colour, 
 while the love of mountains, common to both 
 poets, forced their illustrators into reverent 
 pilgrimage to scenes which till then had been 
 thought too desolate for the spectator's interest, 
 or too difficult for the painter's skill. 
 
 I have endeavoured, in the 92nd number of 
 ' Fors Clavigera,' to give some analysis of the 
 main character of the scenery by which Scott 
 was inspired ; but, in endeavouring to mark 
 with distinctness enough the dependence of all 
 its sentiment on the beauty of its rivers, I have 
 not enough referred to the collateral charm, 
 in a Borderer's mind, of the very mists and 
 rain that feed them. In the climates of Greece 
 and Italy, the monotonous sunshine, burning 
 away the deep colours of everything into white 
 and grey, and wasting the strongest mountain- 
 streams into threads among their shingle, 
 alternates with the blue -fiery thundercloud, 
 with sheets of flooding rain, and volleying 
 
 19
 
 2i6 The Art of England, 
 
 musquetry of hail. But throughout all the 
 wild uplands of the former Saxon kingdom 
 of Northumbria, from Edwin's crag to 
 Hilda's cliff, the wreaths of softly resting mist, 
 and wandering to and fro of capricious shadows 
 of clouds, and drooping swathes, or flying 
 fringes, of the benignant western rain, cherish, 
 on every moorland summit, the deep-fibred 
 moss, — embalm the myrtle, — gild the asphodel, 
 — enchant along the valleys the wild grace 
 of their woods, and the green elf land of their 
 meadows ; and passing away, or melting into 
 the translucent calm of mountain air, leave 
 to the open sunshine a world with every 
 creature ready to rejoice in its comfort, and 
 every rock and flower reflecting new loveliness 
 to its light. 
 
 Perhaps among the confusedly riiiscellaneous 
 examples of ancient and modern, tropic or 
 arctic art, with which I have filled the niches 
 of your schools, one, hitherto of the least 
 noticeable or serviceable to you, has been the 
 dark Copley Fielding drawing above the fire-
 
 FI, George Robson a77d Copley Fieldi77^, 21 j 
 
 place; — nor am I afraid of trusting your 
 kindness with the confession, that it is placed 
 there more in memory of my old master, than 
 in the hope of its proving of any lively interest 
 or use to you. But it is now some fifty years 
 since it was brought in triumph to Heme Hill, 
 being the first picture my father ever bought, 
 and in so far the foundation of the subsequent 
 collection, some part of which has been 
 permitted to become permanently national at 
 Cambridge and Oxford. The pleasure which 
 that single drawing gave on the morning of 
 its installation in our home was greater than 
 to the purchaser accustomed to these times 
 of limitless demand and supply would be 
 credible, or even conceivable ; — and our back 
 parlour for that day was as full of surprise and 
 gratulation as ever Cimabue's joyful Borgo. 
 
 The drawing represents, as you will pro- 
 bably — not — remember, only a gleam of 
 sunshine on a peaty moor, bringing out the 
 tartan plaids of two Highland drovers, and 
 relieved against the dark grey of a range of
 
 2 I 8 T'he Art of Engla7id. 
 
 quite featureless and nameless distant moun- 
 tains, seen through a soft curtain of rapidly 
 drifting rain. 
 
 Some little time after we had acquired this 
 unobtrusive treasure, one of my fellow students, 
 — it was in my undergraduate days at Christ 
 Church — came to Heme Hill to see what the 
 picture might be which had afforded me so 
 great ravishment. He had himself, as after- 
 wards Kinglake and Curzon, been urged far 
 by the thirst of oriental travel ; — the chequer 
 of plaid and bonnet had for him but feeble 
 interest after having worn turban and capote ; 
 and the grey of Scottish hillside still less, to 
 one who had climbed Olympus and Abarim. 
 After gazing blankly for a minute or two at 
 the cheerless district through which lay the 
 drovers' journey, he turned to me and said, 
 " But, Ruskin, what is the use of painting 
 such very bad weather ? " And I had no 
 answer, except that, for Copley Fielding and 
 for me, there was no such thing as bad 
 weather, but only different kinds of pleasant
 
 FI. George Robson a?td Copley Fielding, 219 
 
 weather — some indeed inferring the exercise 
 of a little courage and patience ; but all, in 
 every hour of it, exactly what was fittest and 
 best, whether for the hills, the cattle, the 
 drovers — or my master and me. 
 
 Be the case as it might, — and admitting that 
 in a certain sense the weather might be bad in 
 the eyes of a Greek or a Saracen, — there was 
 no question that to us it was not only pleasant, 
 but picturesque ; and that we set ourselves to 
 the painting of it, with as sincere desire to 
 represent the — to our minds — beautiful aspect 
 of a mountain shower, as ever Titian a blue 
 sky, or Angelico a golden sphere of Paradise. 
 Nay, in some sort, with a more perfect delight 
 in the thing itself, and less colouring of by our 
 own thoughts or inventions. For that matter, 
 neither Fielding, nor Robson, nor David Cox, 
 nor Peter de Wint, nor any of this school, ever 
 had much thought or invention to disturb them. 
 They were, themselves, a kind of contemplative 
 cattle, and flock of the field, who merely liked 
 being out of doors, and brought as much
 
 2 20 The Art of Rngla7id, 
 
 painted fresh air as they could, back into the 
 house with them. 
 
 Neither must you think that this painting of 
 fresh air is an entirely easy or soon managed 
 business. You may paint a modern French 
 emotional landscape with a pail of whitewash 
 and a pot of gas-tar in ten minutes, at the 
 outside. I don't know how long the operator 
 himself takes to it — of course some little more 
 time must be occupied in plastering on the oil- 
 paint so that it will stick, and not run ; but the 
 skill of a good plasterer is really all that is 
 required, — the rather that in the modern idea of 
 solemn symmetry you always make the bottom 
 of your picture, as much as you can, like the 
 top. You put seven or eight streaks of the 
 plaster for your sky, to begin with ; then you 
 put in a row of bushes with the gas-tar, then 
 you rub the ends of them into the same shapes 
 upside down — you put three or four more 
 streaks of white, to intimate the presence of a 
 pool of water — and if you finish off with a log 
 that looks something like a dead body, your
 
 yi, George Robson and Copley Fielding, 221 
 
 picture will have the credit of being a digest 
 of a whole novel of Gaboriau, and lead the 
 talk of the season. 
 
 Far other was the kind of labour required 
 of even the least disciple of the old English 
 water-colour school. In the first place, the 
 skill of laying a perfectly even and smooth 
 tint with absolute precision of complex out- 
 line was attained to a degree which no amateur 
 draughtsman can have the least conception of. 
 Water-colour, under the ordinary sketcher's 
 mismanagement, drops and dries pretty nearly 
 to its own fancy, — slops over every outline, 
 clots in every shade, seams itself with undesir- 
 able edges, speckles itself with inexplicable 
 grit, and is never supposed capable of repre- 
 senting anything it is meant for, till most of 
 it has been washed out. But the great primary 
 masters of the trade could lay, with unerring 
 precision of tone and equality of depth, the 
 absolute tint they wanted without a flaw or a 
 retouch ; and there is perhaps no greater 
 marvel of artistic practice and finely accurate
 
 '122 The Art of England. 
 
 intention existing, in a simple kind, greater 
 than the study of a Yorkshire waterfall, by 
 Girtin, now in the British Museum, in which 
 every sparkle, ripple, and current is left in 
 frank light by the steady pencil which is at 
 the same instant, and with the same touch, 
 drawing the forms of the dark congeries of 
 channelled rocks, while around them it dis- 
 perses the glitter of their spray. 
 
 Then further, on such basis of well-laid 
 
 primary tint, the old water-colour men were 
 
 wont to obtain their effects of atmosphere by 
 
 the most delicate washes of transparent colour, 
 
 reaching subtleties of gradation in misty light, 
 
 which were wholly unthought of before their 
 
 time. In this kind the depth of far-distant 
 
 brightness, freshness, and mystery of morning 
 
 air with which Copley Fielding used to invest 
 
 the ridges of the South Downs, as they rose 
 
 out of the blue Sussex champaign, remains, 
 
 and I believe must remain, insuperable, while 
 
 his sense of beauty in the cloud-forms 
 
 associated with higher mountains, enabled
 
 FI, George Robson and Copley Fieldi?tg. 223 
 
 him to invest the comparatively modest scenery 
 of our own island,— out of which he never 
 travelled, — with a charm seldom attained 
 by the most ambitious painters of Alp or 
 Apennine. 
 
 I vainly tried in writing the last volume 
 of ' Modern Painters ' to explain, even to 
 myself, the cause or nature of the pure love 
 of mountains which in boyhood was the 
 ruling passion of my life, and which is de- 
 monstrably the first motive of inspiration with 
 Scott, Wordsworth, and Byron. The more I 
 analyzed, the less I could either understand, 
 or justify, the mysterious pleasure we all of 
 us, great or small, had in the land's being 
 up and down instead of level ; and the less 
 I felt able to deny the claim of prosaic and 
 ignobly-minded persons to be allowed to like 
 it level, instead of up and down. In the end 
 I found there was nothing for it but simply 
 to assure those recusant and grovelling persons 
 that they were perfectly wrong, and that 
 nothing could be expected, either in art or
 
 2 24 '^^^ v^r/ of E7igland, 
 
 literature, from people who liked to live among 
 snipes and widgeons. 
 
 Assuming it, therefore, for a moral axiom 
 that the love of mountains was a heavenly 
 gift, and the beginning of wisdom, it may be 
 imagined, if we endured for their sakes any 
 number of rainy days with philosophy, with 
 what rapture the old painters were wont to 
 hail the reappearance of their idols, with all 
 their cataracts refreshed, and all their copse 
 and crags respangled, flaming in the forehead 
 of the morning sky. Very certainly and 
 seriously there are no such emotions to be 
 had out of the hedged field or ditched fen ; 
 and I have often charitably paused in my 
 insistances in ' Fors Clavigera' that our squires 
 should live from year's end to year's end on 
 their own estates, when I reflected how many 
 of their acres lay in Leicestershire and Lincoln- 
 shire, or even on duller levels, where there was 
 neither good hunting nor duck-shooting. 
 
 I am only able to show you two drawings 
 in illustration of these sentiments of the moun-
 
 FI. George Robs on and Copley Fielding. 225 
 
 tain school, and one of those is only a copy 
 of a Robson, but one quite good enough to 
 represent his manner of work and tone ot 
 feeling. He died young, and there may perhaps 
 be some likeness to the gentle depth of sadness 
 in Keats, traceable in his refusal to paint any 
 of the leaping streams or bright kindling heaths 
 of Scotland, while he dwells with a monotony 
 of affection on the clear repose of the northern 
 twilight, and on the gathering of the shadow 
 in the mountain gorges, till all their forms 
 were folded in one kingly shroud of purple 
 death. But over these hours and colours of 
 the scene his governance was all but complete ; 
 and even in this unimportant and imperfectly 
 rendered example, the warmth of the departing 
 sunlight, and the depth of soft air in the 
 recesses of the glen, are given with harmony 
 more true and more pathetic than you will 
 find in any recent work of even the most 
 accomplished masters. 
 
 But of the loving labour, and severely 
 disciplined observation, which prepared him
 
 2 26 The Art of England, 
 
 for the expression of this feeling for chiaro- 
 scuro, you can only judge by examining at 
 leisure his outlines of Scottish scenery, a work 
 of whose existence I had no knowledge, until 
 the kindness of Mrs. Inge advised me of it, 
 and further, procured for me the loan of the 
 copy of it laid on the table ; which you will 
 find has marks placed in it at the views of 
 Byron's Lachin-y-Gair, of Scott's Ben Venue, 
 and of all Scotsmen's Ben Lomond, — plates 
 which you may take for leading types of the 
 most careful delineation ever given to moun- 
 tain scenery, for the love of it, pure and 
 simple. 
 
 The last subject has a very special interest 
 to me ; and — if you knew all I could tell 
 you, did time serve, of the associations con- 
 nected with it — would be seen gratefully by 
 you also. In the text descriptive of it, (and 
 the text of this book is quite exceptionally 
 sensible and useful, for a work of the sort), 
 Mr. Robson acknowledges his obligation for 
 the knowledge of this rarely discovered view
 
 VI, George Rohso?j a77d Copley Fielding. 227 
 
 of Ben Lomond, to Sir Thomas Acland, the 
 father of our own Dr. Henry Acland, the 
 strength of whose whole Ufe hitherto has been 
 passed in the eager and unselfish service of 
 the University of Oxford. His father was, 
 of all amateur artists I ever knew, the best 
 draughtsman of mountains, not with spasmodic 
 force, or lightly indicated feeling, but with 
 firm, exhaustive, and unerring delineation of 
 their crystalline and geologic form. From 
 him the faith in the beauty and truth of 
 natural science in connection with art was 
 learned happily by his physician-son, by 
 whom, almost unaided, the first battles were 
 fought — and fought hard — before any of you 
 eager young physicists were born, in the then 
 despised causes of natural science and indus- 
 trial art. That cause was in the end sure of 
 victory, but here in Oxford its triumph would 
 have been long deferred, had it not been for 
 the energy and steady devotion of Dr. Acland. 
 Without him — little as you may think it — the 
 great galleries and laboratories of this build-
 
 2 28 The Art of England, I 
 
 i 
 ing, in which you pursue your physical-science i 
 
 studies so advantageously, and so forgetfully of j 
 
 their first advocate, would not yet have been ; 
 
 in existence. Nor, after their erection, (if | 
 
 indeed in this there be any cause for your | 
 
 thanks,) would an expositor of the laws of 
 
 landscape beauty have had the privilege of i 
 
 addressing you under their roof. 
 
 I am indebted also to one of my Oxford 
 friends. Miss Symonds, for the privilege of ; 
 showing you, with entire satisfaction, a perfectly \ 
 good and characteristic drawing by Copley , 
 Fielding, of Cader Idris, seen down the vale of \ 
 Dolgelly; in which he has expressed with his 
 utmost skill the joy of his heart in the aerial 
 mountain light, and the iridescent wildness of ' 
 the mountain foreground ; nor could you see ; 
 enforced with any sweeter emphasis the truth 
 on which Mr. Morris dwelt so earnestly in his 
 recent address to you — that the excellence of 
 the work is, caeteris paribus, in proportion to 
 the joy of the workman. i 
 
 There is a singular character in the colour-
 
 FI. George Rohso77 cuul Copley Fteldi?ig, 229 
 
 ing of Fielding, as he uses it to express the 
 richness of beautiful vegetation ; he makes the 
 sprays of it look partly as if they were strewn 
 with jewels. He is of course not absolutely 
 right in this ; to some extent it is a conven- 
 tional exaggeration — and yet it has a basis of 
 truth which excuses, if it does not justify, 
 this expression of his pleasure ; for no colour 
 can possibly represent vividly enough the charm 
 of radiance which you can see by looking 
 closely at dew-sprinkled leaves and flowers. 
 
 You must ask Professor Clifton to explain 
 to you why it is that a drop of water, while 
 it subdues the hue of a green leaf or blue 
 flower into a soft grey, and shows itself there- 
 fore on the grass or the dock-leaf as a lustrous 
 dimness, enhances the force of all warm colours, 
 so that you never can see what the colour of 
 a carnation or a wild rose really is till you 
 get the dew on it. The effect is, of course, 
 only generalized at the distance of a paintable 
 foreground ; but it is always in reality part 
 of the emotion of the scene, and justifiably
 
 230 The Art of England, 
 
 sought in any possible similitude by the means 
 at our disposal. 
 
 It is with still greater interest and rever- 
 ence to be noted as a physical truth that in 
 states of joyful and healthy excitement the 
 eye becomes more highly sensitive to the 
 beauty of colour, and especially to the blue 
 and red rays, while in depression and disease 
 all colour becomes dim to us, and the yellow 
 rays prevail over the rest, even to the extremity 
 of jaundice. But while I direct your attention 
 to these deeply interesting conditions of sight, 
 common to the young and old, I must warn 
 you of the total and most mischievous fallacy 
 of the statements put forward a few years ago 
 by a foreign oculist, respecting the changes 
 of sight in old age. I neither know, nor care, 
 what states of senile disease exist when the 
 organ has been misused or disused ; but in 
 all cases of disciplined and healthy sight, the 
 sense of colour and form is absolutely one 
 and the same Irom childhood to death. 
 
 When I was a boy of twelve years old,
 
 FI. George Robson and Copley Fielding, 231 
 
 I saw nature with Turner's eyes, he being 
 then sixty ; and I should never have asked 
 permission to resume the guidance of your 
 schools, unless now, at sixty-four, I saw the 
 same hues in heaven and earth as when I 
 walked a child by my mother's side. 
 
 Neither may you suppose that between 
 Turner's eyes, and yours, there is any differ- 
 ence respecting which it may be disputed 
 whether of the two is right. The sight of 
 a great painter is as authoritative as the lens 
 of a camera lucida ; he perceives the form 
 which a photograph will ratify ; he is sensitive 
 to the violet or to the golden ray to the last 
 precision and gradation of the chemist's defining 
 light and intervaled line. But the veracity, as 
 the joy, of this sensation, — and the one involves 
 the other, — are dependent, as I have said, first 
 on vigour of health, and secondly on the 
 steady looking for and acceptance of the 
 truth of nature as she gives it you, and not 
 as you like to have it — to inflate your own 
 
 pride, or satisfy your own passion. If pursued 
 
 20
 
 232 The Art of Rn gland, 
 
 in that insolence, or in that concupiscence, 
 the phenomena of all the universe become first 
 gloomy, and then spectral; the sunset becomes 
 demoniac fire to you, and the clouds of heaven 
 as the smoke of Acheron. 
 
 If there is one part more than another 
 which in my early writing deservedly obtained 
 audience and acceptance, it was that in which 
 I endeavoured to direct the thoughts of my 
 readers to the colours of the sky, and to the 
 forms of its clouds. But it has been my fate 
 to live and work in direct antagonism to the 
 instincts, and yet more to the interests, of the 
 age ; since I wrote that chapter on the pure 
 traceries of the vault of morning, the fury of 
 useless traffic has shut the sight, whether of 
 morning or evening, from more than the third 
 part of England; and the foulness of sensual 
 fantasy has infected the bright beneficence 
 of the life-giving sky with the dull horrors of 
 disease, and the feeble falsehoods of insanity. 
 In the book professing to initiate a child in 
 the elements of natural science, of which I
 
 V^I. George Rohso?t a7td Copley Fieldi?ig. 233 
 
 showed you the average character of illustra- 
 tion at my last lecture, there is one chapter 
 especially given to aerial phenomena— -wherein 
 the cumulus cloud is asserted to occur '' either 
 under the form of a globe or a half globe," 
 and in such shape to present the most 
 exciting field for the action of imagination. 
 What the French artistic imagination is sup- 
 posed to produce, under the influence of this 
 excitement, we find represented by a wood- 
 cut, of which Mr. Macdonald has reproduced 
 for you the most sublime portion. May I, 
 for a minute or two, delay, and prepare you 
 for, its enjoyment by reading the lines in 
 which Wordsworth describes the impression 
 made on a cultivated and pure-hearted spec- 
 tator, by the sudden opening of the sky after 
 storm ? — 
 
 " A single step, that freed me from the skirts 
 Of the blind vapour, opened to my view 
 Glory beyond all glory ever seen 
 By waking sense or by the dreaming soul !
 
 2 34 ^^ v^r/^ of England. 
 
 The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, 
 Was of a mighty city — boldly say 
 A wilderness of building, sinking far 
 And self-withdrawn into a boundless depth, 
 Far-sinking into splendour — without end ! 
 Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold. 
 With alabaster domes, and silver spires, 
 And blazing terrace upon terrace, high 
 Uplifted ; here, serene pavilions bright. 
 In avenues disposed ; there, towers begirt 
 With battlements that on their restless fronts 
 Bore stars — illumination of all gems ! 
 By earthly nature had the effect been wrought 
 Upon the dark materials of the storm 
 Now pacified ; on them, and on the coves 
 And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto 
 The vapours had receded, taking there 
 Their station under a cerulean sky." 
 
 I do not mean wholly to ratify this Words- 
 worthian statement of Arcana Coelestia, since, 
 as far as I know clouds myself, they look 
 always like clouds, and are no more walled
 
 l^I, Geo7^ge Rohso77 a7td Copley Fieldi7ig. 235 
 
 like castles than backed like weasels. And 
 farther, observe that no great poet ever tells 
 you that he saw something finer than anybody 
 ever saw before. Great poets try to describe 
 what all men see, and to express what all men 
 feel ; if they cannot describe it, they let it 
 alone ; and what they say, say ' boldly ' always, 
 without advising their readers of that fact. 
 
 Nevertheless, though extremely feeble poetry, 
 this piece of bold Wordsworth is at least a 
 sincere effort to describe what was in truth 
 to the writer a most rapturous vision, — with 
 which we may now compare to our edification 
 the sort of object which the same sort of cloud 
 suggests to the modern French imagination. 
 
 It would be surely superfluous to tell you 
 that this representation of cloud is as false as 
 it is monstrous ; but the point which I wish 
 principally to enforce on your attention is that 
 all this loathsome and lying defacement of 
 book pages, which looks as if it would end 
 in representing humanity only in its skeleton, 
 and nature only in her ashes, is all of it
 
 236 The Art of England. 
 
 founded first on the desire to make the volume 
 saleable at small cost, and attractive to the 
 greatest number, on whatever terms of attrac- 
 tion. 
 
 The significant change which Mr. Morris 
 made in the title of his recent lecture, from 
 Art and Democracy^ to Art and Plutocracy^ 
 strikes at the root of the whole matter ; and with 
 wider sweep of blow than he permitted himself 
 to give his words. The changes which he so 
 deeply deplored, and so grandly resented, in 
 this once loveliest city, are due wholly to the 
 deadly fact that her power is now dependent 
 on the Plutocracy of Knowledge, instead of its 
 Divinity. There are indeed many splendid 
 conditions in the new impulses with which we 
 are agitated, — or it may be inspired : but 
 against one of them, I must warn you, in all 
 affection and in all duty. 
 
 So far as you come to Oxford in order 
 to get your living out of her, you are ruining 
 both Oxford and yourselves. There never 
 has been, there never can be, any other law
 
 VI. George Rohso77 and Copley Fielding, 237 
 
 respecting the wisdom that is from above, than 
 this one precept, — " Buy the Truth, and sell 
 it not." It is to be costly to you — of labour 
 and patience ; and you are never to sell it, 
 but to guard, and to give. 
 
 Much of the enlargement, though none 
 of the defacement, of old Oxford is owing to 
 the real life and the honest seeking of ex- 
 tended knowledge. But more is owing to the 
 supposed money value of that knowledge ; and 
 exactly so far forth, her enlargement is purely 
 injurious to the University and to her scholars. 
 
 In the department of her teaching, there- 
 fore, which is entrusted to my care, I wish it 
 at once to be known that I will entertain 
 no question of the saleability of this or that 
 manner of art ; and that I shall steadily dis- 
 courage the attendance of students who propose 
 to make their skill a source of income. Not 
 that the true labourer is unworthy of his hire, 
 but that, above all in the beginning and first 
 choice of industry, his heart must not be the 
 heart of an hireling.
 
 238 The Art of Engla?2fl. 
 
 You may, and with some measure of 
 truth, ascribe this determination in me to the 
 sense of my own weakness and want of 
 properly so-called artistic gift. That is indeed 
 so : there are hundreds of men better quali- 
 fied than I to teach practical technique : and, 
 in their studios, all persons desiring to be 
 artists should place themselves. But I never 
 would have come to Oxford, either before 
 or now, unless in the conviction that I was 
 able to direct her students precisely in that 
 degree and method of application to art 
 which was most consistent with the general 
 and perpetual functions of the University. 
 
 Now, therefore, to prevent much future 
 disappointment and loss of time both to you 
 and to myself, let me forewarn you that I 
 will not assist out of the schools, nor allow 
 in them, modes of practice taken up at each 
 student's fancy. 
 
 In the classes, the modes of study will be 
 entirely fixed ; and at your homes I cannot 
 help you, unless you work in accordance
 
 FI. George Robso72 a?id Copley Fielding. 239 
 
 with the class rules, — which rules, however, 
 if you do follow, you will soon be able to 
 judge and feel for yourselves, whether you 
 are doing right, and getting on, or otherwise. 
 This I tell you with entire confidence, because 
 the illustrations and examples of the modes 
 of practice in question, which I have been 
 showing you in the course of these lectures, 
 have been furnished to me by young people 
 like yourselves ; like, in all things except 
 only, — so far as they are to be excepted at 
 all, — in the perfect repose of mind, which 
 has been founded on a simply believed, and 
 unconditionally obeyed, religion. 
 
 On the repose of mind, I say; and there 
 is a singular physical truth illustrative of that 
 spiritual life and peace which I must yet 
 detain you by indicating in the subject of 
 our study to-day. You see how this foul- 
 ness of false imagination represents, in every 
 line, the clouds not only as monstrous, — but 
 tumultuous.. Now all lovely clouds, remember, 
 are quiet clouds, — not merely quiet in appear-
 
 240 The Art of England. 
 
 ance, because of their greater height and 
 distance, but quiet actually, fixed for hours, 
 it may be, in the same form and place. I 
 have seen a fair-weather cloud high over 
 Coniston Old Man, — not on the hill, observe, 
 but a vertical mile above it, — stand motion- 
 less, — changeless, — for twelve hours together. 
 From four o'clock in the afternoon of one 
 day I watched it through the night by the 
 north twilight, till the dawn struck it with 
 full crimson, at four of the following July 
 morning. What is glorious and good in the 
 heavenly cloud, you can, if you will, bring 
 also into your lives, — which are indeed like 
 it, in their vanishing, but how much more 
 in their not vanishing, till the morning take 
 them to itself. As this ghastly phantasy of 
 death is to the mighty clouds of which it 
 is written, ' The chariots of God are twenty 
 thousand, even thousands of angels,' are the 
 fates to which your passion may condemn 
 you, — or your resolution raise. You may 
 drift with the phrenzy of the whirlwind, —
 
 FI. George Rohson and Copley Fielding, 241 
 
 or be fastened for your part in the pacified 
 effulgence of the sky. Will you not let 
 your lives be lifted up, in fruitful rain for the 
 earth, in scatheless snow to the sunshine, — 
 so blessing the years to come, when the surest 
 knowledge of England shall be of the will of 
 her heavenly Father, and the purest art of 
 England be the inheritance of her simplest 
 children ?
 
 APPENDIX, 
 
 21
 
 APPENDIX, 
 
 THE foregoing lectures were written, 
 among other reasons, with the leading 
 object of giving some permanently rational 
 balance between the rhapsodies of praise and 
 blame which idly occupied the sheets of 
 various magazines last year on the occasion 
 of the general exhibition of Rossetti's works ; 
 and carrying forward the same temperate 
 estimate of essential value in the cases of 
 other artists — or artistes- — of real, though more 
 or less restricted, powers, whose works were 
 immediately interesting to the British public, 
 I have given this balance chiefly in the form 
 of qualified, though not fai?tt^ praise, which 
 is the real function of just criticism ; for the 
 multitude can always see the faults of good 
 work, but never, unaided, its virtues : on the
 
 246 "The Art of Kn gland. 
 
 contrary, it is equally quick-sighted to the 
 vulgar merits of bad work, but no tuition 
 will enable it to condemn the vices with 
 which it has a natural sympathy ; and, in 
 general, the blame of them is wasted on its 
 deaf ears. 
 
 When the course was completed, I found 
 that my audiences had been pleased by the 
 advisedly courteous tone of comment to which 
 I had restricted myself : and I received not 
 a few congratulations on the supposed im- 
 provement of my temper and manners, 
 under the stress of age and experience. 
 The tenor of this terminal lecture may 
 perhaps modify the opinion of my friends 
 in these respects ; but the observations it 
 contains are entirely necessary in order to 
 complete the serviceableness, such as it may 
 be, of all the preceding statements. 
 
 In the first place, may I ask the reader 
 to consider with himself why British painters, 
 great or small, are never right altogether ? 
 Why their work is always, somehow, flawed,
 
 Appendix, 247 
 
 — never in any case, or even in any single 
 picture, thorough ? Is it not a strange thing, 
 and a lamentable, that no British artist has 
 ever lived, of whom one can say to a student, 
 " Imitate him — and prosper ; " while yet the 
 great body of minor artists are continually 
 imitating the master who chances to be in 
 fashion ; and any popvilar mistake will carry 
 a large majority of the Britannic mind into 
 laboriously identical blunder, for two or 
 three artistic generations ? 
 
 I had always intended to press this 
 question home on my readers in my 
 concluding lecture ; but it was pressed much 
 more painfully home on myself by the 
 recent exhibition of Sir Joshua at Burlington 
 House and the Grosvenor. There is no 
 debate that Sir Joshua is the greatest 
 figure-painter whom England has produced, 
 — Gainsborough being sketchy and monoto- 
 nous * in comparison, and the rest virtually 
 
 * " How various the fellow is ! " Gainsborough himself, 
 jealous of Sir Joshua at the ' private view.'
 
 248 The Art of England. 
 
 out of court. But the gathering of any 
 man's work into an unintended mass, enforces 
 his faiHngs in sickening iteration, while it 
 levels his merits in monotony ; — and after 
 shrinking, here, from affectation worthy only 
 of the Bath Parade, and mourning, there, 
 over negligence ' fit for a fool to fall by,' 
 I left the rooms, really caring to remember 
 nothing, except the curl of hair over St. 
 Cecilia's left ear, the lips of Mrs. Abington, 
 and the wink of Mrs. Nesbitt's white cat. 
 
 It is true that I was tired, and more or 
 less vexed with myself, as well as with Sir 
 Joshua ; but no bad humour of mine alters 
 the fact, that Sir Joshua was always affected, 
 — often negligent, — sometimes vulgar, — and 
 never sublime ; and that, in this collective 
 representation of English Art under highest 
 patronage and of utmost value, it was seen, 
 broadly speaking, that neither the painter 
 knew how to paint, the patron to preserve, 
 nor the cleaner to restore. 
 
 If this be true of Sir Joshua, and of the
 
 Appendix, 249 
 
 public of Lords and Ladies for whom he 
 worked, — what are we to say of the multitude 
 of entirely uneducated painters, competing for 
 the patronage of entirely uneducated people ; 
 and filling our annual exhibitions, no more 
 with what Carlyle complains of as the 
 Correggiosities of Correggio, but with what 
 perhaps may be enough described and summed 
 under the simply reversed phrase — the In- 
 correggiosities of Incorreggio. 
 
 And observe that the gist of this grievous 
 question is that our English errors are those 
 of very amiable and worthy people, conscien- 
 tious after a sort, working under honourable 
 encouragement, and entirely above the tempta- 
 tions which betray the bulk of the French 
 and Italian schools into sharing, or consulting 
 the taste only of the demi-monde. 
 
 The French taste in this respect is indeed 
 widely and rapidly corrupting our own, but 
 such corruption is recognizable at once as 
 disease : it does not in the least affect the 
 broad questions concerning all English artists
 
 250 The Art of England, 
 
 that ever were or are, — why Hunt can paint 
 a flower, but not a cloud ; Turner, a cloud, 
 but not a flower ; — Bewick, a pig, but not 
 a girl ; and Miss Greenaway a girl, but not 
 a pig. 
 
 As I so often had to say in my lecture 
 on the inscrutability of Clouds, I leave the 
 question with you, and pass on. 
 
 But, extending the inquiry beyond England, 
 to the causes of failure in the art of foreign 
 countries, I have especially to signalize the 
 French contempt for the ' Art de Province,' 
 and the infectious insanity for centralization, 
 throughout Europe, which collects necessarily 
 all the vicious elements of any country's life 
 into one mephitic cancer in its centre. 
 
 All great art, in the great times of art, 
 is provincial^ showing its energy in the capital, 
 but educated, and chiefly productive, in its own 
 country town. The best works of Correggio 
 are at Parma, but he lived in his patronymic 
 village ; the best works of Cagliari at Venice, 
 but he learned to paint at Verona ; the best
 
 Appendix, 251 
 
 works of Angclico are at Rome, but he lived 
 at Fesole ; the best works of Luini at Mihin, 
 but he lived at Luino. And, with still 
 greater necessity of moral law, the cities 
 which exercise forming power on style, are 
 themselves provincial. There is no Attic 
 style, but there is a Doric and Corinthian 
 one. There is no Roman style, but there is 
 an Umbrian, Tuscan, Lombard, and Venetian 
 one. There is no Parisian style, but there 
 is a Norman and Burgundian one. There is 
 no London or Edinburgh style, but there is 
 a Kentish and Northumbrian one. 
 
 Farther, — the tendency to centralization, 
 which has been fatal to art in all times, is, 
 at this time, pernicious in totally unprecedented 
 degree, because the capitals of Europe are all 
 of monstrous and degraded architecture. An 
 artist in former ages might be corrupted by 
 the manners, but he was exalted by the 
 splendour, of the capital ; and perished amidst 
 magnificence of palaces : but now — the Board 
 of Works is capable of no higher skill than
 
 252 The Art of England, 
 
 drainage, and the British artist floats placidly 
 down the maximum current of the National 
 Cloaca, to his Dunciad rest, content, virtually, 
 that his life should be spent at one end of 
 a cigar, and his fame expire a the other. 
 
 In literal and fatal instance of fact — 
 think what ruin it is for men of any sen- 
 sitive faculty to live in such a city as 
 London is now ! Take the highest and 
 lowest state of it : you have, typically, 
 Grosvenor Square, — an aggregation of bricks 
 and railings, with not so much architectural 
 faculty expressed in the whole cumber of 
 them as there is in a wasp's nest or a 
 worm-hole; — and you have the rows of 
 houses which you look down into on the 
 south side of the South- Western line, between 
 Vauxhall and Clapham Junction. Between 
 those two ideals the London artist must seek 
 his own ; and in the humanity, or the 
 vermin, of them, worship the aristocratic 
 and scientific gods of living Israel. 
 
 In the chapter called 'The Two Boyhoods'
 
 Appendix. 253 
 
 of ' Modern Painters,' I traced, a quarter of 
 a century ago, the difference between existing 
 London and former Venice, in their effect, 
 as schools of art, on the minds of Turner 
 and Giorgione. I would reprint the passage 
 here : but it needs expansion and comment, 
 which I hope to give, with other elucidatory 
 notes on former texts, in my October lectures. 
 But since that comparison was written, a new 
 element of evil has developed itself against 
 art, which I had not then so much as seen 
 the slightest beginnings of. The description 
 of the school of Giorgione ends ('Modern 
 Painters,' vol. v., p. 291) with this sentence, — 
 " Ethereal strength of Alps, dreamlike, 
 vanishing in high procession beyond the 
 Torcellan shore ; blue islands of Paduan hills, 
 poised in the golden west. Above, free 
 winds and Jiery clouds ranging at their will ; 
 brightJiess out of the norths a?td bahn from 
 the souths and the Stars of the Evening and 
 Morning clear in the limitless light of arched 
 heaven and circling sea."
 
 2 54 ^^^^ ^r/ of E72gla72d, 
 
 Now, if I had written that sentence 
 with foreknowledge of the approach of those 
 maHgnant aerial phenomena which, beginning 
 ten years afterwards, were to induce an epoch 
 of continual diminution in the depth of the 
 snows of the Alps, and a parallel change in 
 the relations of the sun and sky to organic 
 life, I could not have set the words down 
 with more concentrated precision, to express 
 the beautiful and healthy states of natural 
 cloud and light, to which the plague-cloud 
 and plague-wind of the succeeding aera were 
 to be opposed. Of the physical character 
 of these, some account was rendered in my 
 lectures at the London Institution; of their 
 eftect on the artistic power of our time, I 
 have to speak now ; and it will be enough 
 illustrated by merely giving an accurate 
 account of the weather yesterday (20th May, 
 1884). 
 
 Most people would have called it a fine 
 day ; it was, as compared with other days 
 of this spring, exceptionally clear : Helvellyn,
 
 Appendix, 255 
 
 at a distance of fifteen miles, showing his 
 grassy sides as if one could reach them in 
 an hour's walk. The sunshine was warm and 
 full, and I went out at three in the afternoon 
 to superintend the weeding of a bed of wild 
 raspberries on the moor. I had put no 
 upper coat on — and the moment I got out 
 of shelter of the wood, found that there 
 was a brisk and extremely cold wind blowing 
 steadily from the south-west — /.^., straight 
 over Black Coomb from the sea. Now, it is 
 perfectly normal to have keen east wind with 
 a bright sun in March, but to have keen 
 south-west wind with a bright sun on the 
 20th of May is entirely abnormal, and 
 destructive to the chief beauty and character 
 of the best month in the year. 
 
 I have only called the wind keen, — bitter, 
 would have been nearer the truth ; even a 
 young and strong man could not have stood 
 inactive in it with safety for a quarter of an 
 hour ; and the danger of meeting it full after 
 getting hot in any work under shelter was
 
 256 The Art of England. 
 
 so great that I had instantly to give up all 
 idea of gardening, and went up to the higher 
 moor to study the general state of colour and 
 light in the hills and sky. 
 
 The sun was — the reader may find how 
 high for himself, three o'clock p.m., on 20th 
 May, in latitude ^^"^ '. at a guess, 40 degrees; 
 and the entire space of sky under him to 
 the horizon — and far above him towards the 
 zenith — say 40 degrees all round him, was a 
 dull pale grey, or dirty white, — very full of 
 light, but totally devoid of colour or sensible 
 gradation. Common flake - white deadened 
 with a little lampblack would give all the 
 colour there was in it, — a mere tinge of 
 yellow ochre near the sun. This lifeless 
 stare of the sky changed gradually towards 
 the zenith into a dim greyish blue, and then 
 into definite blue, — or at least what most 
 people would call blue, opposite the sun 
 answering the ordinary purpose of blue pretty 
 well, though really only a bluish gray. The 
 main point was to ascertain as nearly as possible
 
 Appendix, 257 
 
 the depth of it, as compared with other tints 
 and lights. 
 
 Holding my arm up against it so as to 
 get the shirt sleeve nearly in full sunlight, 
 but with a dark side of about a quarter its 
 breadth, I found the sky quite vigorously dark 
 against the white of the sleeve, yet vigorously 
 also detached in light beyond its dark side. 
 Now the dark side of the shirt sleeve was 
 pale grey compared to the sunlighted colour 
 of my coat-sleeve. And that again was 
 luminous compared to its own dark side, and 
 that dark side was still not black. Count 
 the scale thus obtained. You begin at the 
 bottom with a tint of russet not reaching 
 black; you relieve this distinctly against a 
 lighter russet, you relieve that strongly against 
 a pale warm grey, you relieve that against 
 the brightest white you can paint. Then the 
 sky blue is to be clearly lighter than the pale 
 warm grey, and yet as clearly darker than 
 the white. 
 
 Any landscape artist will tell you that this
 
 258 The Art of England, 
 
 opposition cannot be had in painting with its 
 natural force ; — and that in all pictorial use 
 of the effect, either the dark side must be 
 exaggerated in depth, or the relief of the 
 blue from it sacrificed. But, though I began 
 the study of such gradation just half a century 
 ago, carrying my "cyanometer" as I called 
 it^ — (a sheet of paper gradated from deepest 
 blue to white), with me always through a 
 summer's journey on the Continent in 1835, 
 I never till yesterday felt the full difficulty 
 of explaining the enormous power of contrast 
 which the real light possesses in its most 
 delicate tints. I note this in passing for 
 future inquiry ; at present I am concerned 
 only with the main fact that the darkest 
 part of the sky-hliie opposite the sun was 
 lighter, by much, than pure white in the 
 shade in open air — (that is to say, lighter by 
 much than the margin of the page of this 
 book as you read it) — and that therefore the 
 total effect of the landscape was of diffused 
 cold light, against which the hills rose clear,
 
 Appendix, 259 
 
 but monotonously grey or dull green — while 
 the lake, being over the whole space of it 
 agitated by strong wind, took no reflections 
 from the shores, and was nothing but a flat 
 piece of the same grey as the sky, traversed 
 by irregular blackness from more violent 
 squalls. The clouds, considerable in number, 
 were all of them alike shapeless, colourless, 
 and lightless, like dirty bits of wool, without 
 any sort of arrangement or order of action, 
 yet not quiet ; — touching none of the hills, 
 yet not high above them ; and whatever 
 character they had, enough expressible by 
 a little chance rubbing about of the brush 
 charged with cleanings of the palette. 
 
 Supposing now an artist in the best possible 
 frame of mind for work, having his heart set 
 on getting a good Coniston subject ; and any 
 quantity of skill, patience, and whatsoever merit 
 you choose to grant him, — set, this day, to 
 make his study ; what sort of study can he 
 get ? In the first place, he must have a tent 
 of some sort — he cannot sit in the wind — and 
 
 22
 
 2 6o The Art of England, 
 
 the tent will be always unpegging itself and 
 flapping about his ears — (if he tries to sketch 
 quickly, the leaves of his sketch-book will all 
 blow up into his eyes*); — next, he cannot 
 draw a leaf in the foreground, for they are 
 all shaking like aspens ; nor the branch of 
 a tree in the middle distance, for they are 
 all bending like switches ; nor a cloud, for 
 the clouds have no outline ; nor even the 
 effect of waves on the lake surface, for the 
 catspaws and swirls of wind drive the dark 
 spaces over it like feathers. The entire form- 
 value of the reflections, the colour of them 
 and the sentiment, are lost; (were it sea 
 instead of lake, there would be no waves, to 
 call waves, but only dodging and swinging 
 lumps of water — dirty or dull blue according 
 to the nearness to coast). The mountains have 
 no contrast of colour, nor any positive beauty 
 of it : in the distance they are not blue, and 
 though clear for the present, are sure to be 
 dim in an hour or two, and will probably 
 
 * No artist who knows his business ever uses a block book.
 
 Appendix, 261 
 
 disappear altogether towards evening in mere 
 grey smoke. 
 
 What sort of a study can he make ? 
 What sort of a picture ? He has got his 
 bread to win, and ?nust make his canvas 
 attractive to the public — somehow. What 
 resource has he, but to try by how few 
 splashes he can produce something like hills 
 and water, and put in the vegetables out 
 of his head ? — according to the last French 
 fashion. 
 
 Now, consider what a landscape painter's 
 work used to be, in ordinary spring weather 
 of old times. You put your lunch in your 
 pocket, and set out, any fine morning, sure 
 that, unless by a mischance which needn't 
 be calculated on, the forenoon, and the 
 evening, would be fine too. You chose 
 two subjects handily near each other, one 
 for A.M., the other for p.m. ; you sate down 
 on the grass where you liked, worked for 
 three or four hours serenely, with the blue 
 shining through the stems of the trees like
 
 262 The Art of E7igland. 
 
 painted glass, and not a leaf stirring ; the 
 grasshoppers singing, flies sometimes a little 
 troublesome, ants, also, it might be. Then 
 you ate your lunch — lounged a little after 
 it — perhaps fell asleep in the shade, woke in 
 a dream of whatever you liked best to dream 
 of, — set to work on the afternoon sketch, — 
 did as much as you could before the glow 
 of the sunset began to make everything 
 beautiful beyond painting : you meditated 
 awhile over that impossible, put up your 
 paints and book, and walked home, proud 
 of your day's work, and peaceful for its 
 future, to supper. 
 
 This is neither fancy, — nor exaggeration. 
 I have myself spent literally thousands of such 
 days in my forty years of happy work between 
 1830 and 1870. 
 
 I say nothing of the gain of time, temper, 
 and steadiness of hand, under such conditions, 
 as opposed to existing ones ; but we must, 
 in charity, notice as one inevitable cause of 
 the loose and flimsy tree-drawing of the
 
 Appendix, 263 
 
 moderns, as compared with that of Titian 
 or Mantegna, the quite infinite difference 
 between the look of blighted foliage quivering 
 in confusion against a sky of the colour of a 
 pail of whitewash with a little starch in it ; 
 and the motionless strength of olive and 
 laurel leaf, inlaid like the wreaths of a 
 Florentine mosaic on a ground of lapis-lazuli. 
 I have, above, supposed the effects of these 
 two different kinds of weather on mountain 
 country, and the reader might think the 
 difference of that effect would be greatest in 
 such scenery. But it is in reality greater 
 still in lowlands ; and the malignity of climate 
 most felt in common scenes. If the heath of 
 a hill side is blighted, — (or burnt into charcoal 
 by an improving farmer,) the form of the rock 
 remains, and its impression of power. But if 
 the hedges of a country lane are frizzled by 
 the plague wind into black tea, — what have 
 you left ? If the reflections in a lake are 
 destroyed by wind, its ripples may yet be 
 graceful, — or its waves sublime ; — but if you
 
 264 The Art of England, 
 
 take the reflections out of a ditch, what 
 remains for you — but ditch-water? Or again, 
 if you take the sunshine from a ravine or a 
 cHff"; or flood with rain their torrents or 
 waterfalls, the sublimity of their forms may 
 be increased, and the energy of their passion; 
 but take the sunshine from a cottage porch, 
 and drench into decay its hollyhock garden, 
 and you have left to you — how much less, 
 how much worse than nothing ? 
 
 Without in the least recognizing the 
 sources of these evils, the entire body of 
 English artists, through the space now of 
 some fifteen years, (quite enough to paralyze, 
 in the young ones, what in their nature was 
 most sensitive,) have been thus afflicted by 
 the deterioration of climate described in my 
 lectures given this last spring in London. But 
 the deteriorations of noble subject induced by 
 the progress of manufactures and engineering 
 are, though also without their knowledge, 
 deadlier still to them. 
 
 It is continually alleged in Parliament by
 
 Appendix, 265 
 
 the railroad, or building, companies, that 
 they propose to render beautiful places more 
 accessible or habitable, and that their 'works' 
 will be, if anything, decorative rather than 
 destructive to the better civilized scene. But 
 in all these cases, admitting, (though there is 
 no ground to admit) that such arguments 
 may be tenable, I observe that the question 
 of sentiment proceeding from association is 
 always omitted. And in the minds even of 
 the least educated and least spiritual artists, 
 the influence of association is strong beyond 
 all their consciousness, or even belief. 
 
 Let me take, for instance, four of the most 
 beautiful and picturesque subjects once existing 
 in Europe, — Furness Abbey, Conway Castle, 
 the Castle of Chillon, and the Falls of 
 Schaff^hausen. A railroad station has been set 
 up within a hundred yards of the Abbey, — 
 an iron railroad bridge crosses the Conway in 
 front of its castle ; a stone one crosses the 
 Rhine at the top of its cataract, and the 
 great Simplon line passes the end of the
 
 2 66 The Art of Rn gland, 
 
 drawbridge of Chillon. Since these improve- 
 ments have taken place, no picture of any of 
 these scenes has appeared by any artist of 
 eminence, nor can any in future appear. 
 Their portraiture by men of sense or feeling 
 has become for ever impossible. Discord of 
 colour may be endured in a picture — discord 
 of sentiment, never. There is no occasion in 
 such matters for the protest of criticism. The 
 artist turns unconsciously — but necessarily — 
 from the disgraced noblesse of the past, to 
 the consistent baseness of the present ; and 
 is content to paint whatever he is in the 
 habit of seeing, in the manner he thinks best 
 calculated to recommend it to his customers. 
 And the perfection of the mischief is that 
 the very few who are strong enough to 
 resist the money temptation, (on the com- 
 plexity and fatality of which it is not my 
 purpose here to enlarge,) are apt to become 
 satirists and reformers, instead of painters; and 
 to lose the indignant passion of their freedom 
 no less vainly than if they had sold them-
 
 Appendix, 267 
 
 selves with the rest into slavery. Thus Mr. 
 Herkomer, whose true function was to show 
 us the dancing of Tyrolese peasants to the 
 pipe and zither, spends his best strength in 
 painting a heap of promiscuous emigrants 
 in the agonies of starvation : and Mr. Albert 
 Goodwin, whom I have seen drawing, with 
 Turnerian precision, the cliffs of Orvieto and 
 groves of Vallombrosa, must needs moralize 
 the walls of the Old Water-colour Exhibition 
 with a scattering of skeletons out of the ugliest 
 scenes of the ' Pilgrim's Progress,' and a ghastly 
 sunset, illustrating the progress — in the con- 
 trary direction — of the manufacturing districts. 
 But in the plurality of cases the metropolitan 
 artist passively allows himself to be metro- 
 polized, and contents his pride with the 
 display of his skill in recommending things 
 ignoble. One of quite the best, and most 
 admired, pieces of painting in the same Old 
 Water-colour Exhibition was Mr. Marshall's 
 fog effect over the Westminster cab-stand ; 
 while, in the Royal Institution, Mr. Severn in
 
 268 The Art of England. 
 
 like manner spent all his power of rendering 
 sunset light in the glorification of the West- 
 minster clock tower. And although some 
 faint yearnings for the rural or marine are 
 still unextinguished in the breasts of the elder 
 academicians, or condescendingly tolerated in 
 their sitters by the younger ones, — though 
 Mr. Leslie still disports himself occasionally in 
 a punt at Henley, and Mr. Hook takes his 
 summer lodgings, as usual, on the coast, and 
 Mr. Collier admits the suggestion of the 
 squire's young ladies, that they may gracefully 
 be painted in a storm of primroses, — the 
 shade of the Metropolis never for an instant 
 relaxes its grasp on their imagination ; Mr. 
 Leslie cannot paint the barmaid at the Angler's 
 Rest, but in a pair of high-heeled shoes ; 
 Mr. Hook never lifts a wave which would be 
 formidable to a trim-built wherry; and although 
 Mr. Fildes brought some agreeable arrange- 
 ments of vegetables from Venice ; and, in 
 imitation of old William Hunt, here and 
 there some primroses in tumblers carried out
 
 Appendix, 269 
 
 the sentiment of Mr. Collier's on the floor, — 
 not all the influence of Mr. Matthew Arnold 
 and the Wordsworth Society together obtained, 
 throughout the whole concourse of the Royal 
 or plebeian salons of the town, the painting 
 of so much as one primrose nested in its rock, 
 or one branch of wind-tossed eglantine. 
 
 As I write, a letter from Miss Alexander 
 is put into my hands, of which, singularly, 
 the closing passage alludes to the picture ot 
 Giorgione's, which I had proposed, in ter- 
 minating this lecture, to give, as an instance 
 of the undisturbed art of a faultless master. 
 It is dated '' Bassano Veneto, May 27th," 
 and a few sentences of the preceding context 
 will better present the words I wish to quote. 
 
 " I meant to have told you about the 
 delightful old lady whose portrait I am taking. 
 Edwige and I set out early in the morning, 
 and have a delightful walk up to the city, 
 and through the clean little streets with their 
 low Gothic arcades and little carved balconies, 
 full of flowers \ meeting nobody but contadini,
 
 270 The Art of E^igland, 
 
 mostly women, who, if we look at them, bow, 
 and smile, and say ' Serva sua.' The old lady 
 told us she was always ready to begin her 
 sitting by six o'clock, having then finished 
 morning prayers and breakfast : pretty well 
 for eighty-five, I think : (she says that is her 
 age.) I had forgotten until this minute I had 
 promised to tell you about our visit to Castel- 
 franco. We had a beautiful day, and had the 
 good fortune to find a fair going on, and the 
 piazza full of contadini, with fruit, chickens, 
 etc., and many pretty things in wood and 
 basket work. Always a pretty sight ; but it 
 troubled me to see so many beggars, who 
 looked like respectable old people. I asked 
 Loredana about it, and she said they were 
 contadini, and that the poverty among them 
 was so great, that although a man could live, 
 poorly, by his work, he could never lay by 
 anything for old age, and when they are past 
 work they have to beg. I cannot feel as if 
 that were right, in such a rich and beautiful 
 country, and it is certainly not the case on
 
 Appe72dtx. 271 
 
 the estate of Marina and Silvia; but I am 
 afraid, from what I hear, that our friends are 
 rather exceptional people. Count Alessandro, 
 Marina's husband, always took an almost 
 paternal care of his contadini, but with regard 
 to other contadini in these parts, I have 
 heard some heartbreaking stories, which I will 
 not distress you by repeating. Giorgione's 
 Madonna, whenever I see it, always appears to 
 me more beautiful than the last time, and 
 does not look like the work of a mortal hand. 
 It reminds me of what a poor woman said to 
 me once in Florence, 'What a pity that people 
 are not as large now as they used to be ! ' and 
 when I asked her what made her suppose 
 that they were larger in old times, she said, 
 looking surprised, ' Surely you cannot think 
 that the people who built the Duomo were no 
 larger than we are ? ' 
 
 Anima Toscana gentillissima, — truly we 
 cannot think it, but larger of heart than you, 
 no ; — of thought, yes. 
 
 It has been held, I believe, an original
 
 272 The Art of England, 
 
 and valuable discovery of Mr. Taine's that 
 the art of a people is the natural product of 
 its soil and surroundings. 
 
 Allowing the art of Giorgione to be the 
 wild fruitage of Caste Ifranco, and that of 
 Brunelleschi no more than the exhalation of 
 the marsh of Arno ; and perceiving, as I do, 
 the existing art of England to be the mere 
 effluence of Grosvenor Square and Clapham 
 Junction, — I yet trust to induce in my 
 readers, during hours of future council, some 
 doubt whether Grosvenor Square and Clapham 
 Junction be indeed the natural and divinely 
 appointed produce of the Valley of the 
 Thames. 
 
 Brantwood, 
 
 W Mi- Tuesday, 1884.
 
 INDEX
 
 INDEX 
 
 Achilles' shield, 54. See Homer. 
 
 AcLAND, Dr. Henry, his work at Oxford, 227. 
 — Sir Thomas, his art-powers; and Robson, 227. 
 
 Admiration defined, 48. 
 
 ^GiNA, marbles of, their enjoyment, 91-2. 
 
 ^scHYLus, Dante's use of, 57. 
 
 Alexander, Miss ('Francesca '), her art-gift, 29-30 ; to what it appeals, 161 ; 
 letter to author from, quoted, 210, 269 seq.\ her life, 29-30; works 
 of: 'Ida,' 31, 106, 148; 'Roadside Songs of Tuscany,' drawings 
 from; plans for their use, 112; twelve given to Oxford, 1S7; portrait 
 of Beatrice degU Ontani, 106-7; portrait of St. Christopher, iii ; 
 preface to, quoted, 107, 142. 
 
 Allingham, Mrs., her art-gift, 142; children by, 140; 'Tea-party,' 142; 
 'Toyshop,' ib. 
 
 Alma Tadema. See Tadema. 
 
 America, author's prejudice against, 29; engraving in, 175; government 
 survey of U.S., 120; South, illustrations of, 169. 
 
 Angelico, children by, 138; best works of, at Rome, 197, 251. 
 
 Animals, fables about, 132-3. 
 
 " Animus " defined, 75. 
 
 ' Arabian Nights,' the, 49. 
 
 Aristophanes, use of myths by, 54. 
 
 Arnold, Mr. Matthew, 269. 
 
 Art : ancient, its methods inadequate, 54-6 ; centralization fatal to, 250-T ; 
 for children to be graceful and serious, 126-7; children and legendary 
 art, 117; Christianity and, 19, 32; creative and realistic, 71 ; criticism 
 of, 245 ; decline of, its period, 211; delight of artists in their work, 
 206; didactic, English dislike of, 71; English, its recent development, 4 ; 
 European, its rise, 79 ; and fiiU, S3 ; execution, mystery of idea no 
 ground for bad, 60 ; for both noble conception and good work are 
 needed, 62 ; finish in, 42, 94 ; great, is delicate, 151 ; great, is praise, 72; 
 
 23
 
 276 
 
 Index, 
 
 is provincial, 250; imitation and suggestion in, 63-4; legendary, and 
 children, 117; masterpiece of, ground of delight in a, 164; materials 
 provided by nature, and the needs of, 163; multiplication of, its 
 methods, 162; national, to be studied in its rise, 82; patronage, 249; 
 the product of a nation's surroundings, 272 ; public appreciation of, 245 ; 
 realistic, 71, and see Realism; romantic, 207 seg.; saleability of, 257 ; 
 schools of, head and body, 91 ; are provincial, not metropolitan, 251 ; 
 sight, the unaided, and, 151; study of, 82; surroundings of, the, 157; 
 teaching in Oxford, see Author. 
 
 Arthur, King, 207. 
 
 Artist, no English, altogether right, 246-7; life of, in great cities, ?.^\-2 \ 
 effect of modern weather on, 259 seq. 
 
 Athena, her presence to be imagined, 125. 
 
 Athleticism, useful and useless, 85, no. 
 
 Author, the. i. Personal. — His education, books ' Evenings at Home,' 133 ; 
 fairy stories, 118 ; taught by Copley Fielding, 217 ; his feelings, not talked 
 of by him, 13 ; his friends, young artists among, 22 ; "laudator temporis 
 acti," 196; his love of colour 13-14, landscape 203, mountains 223 
 {e.g. Ben Lomond 226), music 13-14, sunshine //-'. ; his manners as a 
 critic, 246; painting, days spent in, 1830-70, 262; his prejudice against 
 Americans, 29; his sight, the same in age and youth, 231; Swiss inns, 
 liked better than Genoese palaces by, 164; his religion, 14; at Brant- 
 wood, May 20, 1884 (weather described), 255 ; at Royal Academy, etc., 
 1883, 76, 248, and at Grosvenor Gallery, 248; in Venice (1876) teaches 
 young lady to draw, 24-5; (1880) copies Carpaccio's St. Ursula, 91. 
 See CoNisTON, Fielding, Leighton, and Marochettl 
 
 2. Teaching of. — On art, he teaches what is, not what he thinks, 
 beautiful, 13; on landscape, his early works, 4; later lectures on, un- 
 published, 203 ; likes minute work, 43 ; said to teach people to see, 12 ; 
 study of head and body, 70, 91 ; on clouds and sky, his early work, 
 232 (see "Clouds"); Oxford work : resumes the chair, i; plans for, 4, 
 20, 68, 203, 238, 253; pupils, 197; Tintoret given to, 195; Turners 
 given to, 155 ; Political Economy, paradoxes of his, 162. 
 
 3. His Writings. — [a) General character: — courteous tone of his 
 comments, 246; cannot express all he sees, 10, 12; impulse of his 
 best, 207; romantic love of his subject, ib.; serious parts of, 20; 
 sermons, his art lectures not to be, ib. 
 
 (/;) Particular works referred to : — 
 'Aratra Pentelici,' on portraiture and Greek art, 92.
 
 Indi 
 
 C^ i/V « 
 
 277 
 
 'Ariadne Florentina,' on Florentine engraving, 147 ; on methods of wood- 
 cutting, 172. 
 
 ' Art of England,' notes to, to be avoided, 39 ; object of, 245 ; plan 
 of, 201 ; its style, 246. 
 
 'Fors Clavigera,' No. 92; on Scott's scenery, 215; passim^ squires to 
 live on their lands, 224. 
 
 ' Laws of Fesole,' general teaching of, 89 ; great art is praise, 72 ; tests 
 of good colour, 177. 
 
 'Modern Painters,' its aim, 208; on the Dutch school, 43; Vol. II. on 
 admiration, 48; III. on Peter drowning, 41; V. on mountains, 223, 
 on the sky, 232 ; on the 'Two Boyhoods,' 252 seq. 
 
 ' Our Fathers have told us' (' Bible of Amiens,' p. 14), 165. 
 
 ' Queen of the Air,' on myths, 53. 
 
 'Storm Cloud of Nineteenth Century,' 250, 254, 264. 
 
 Barrett and the Old Water Colour Society, 206. 
 Beatrice degli Ontani. See Alexander. 
 Beauty, and goodness, 105; dependent on law, 104-6. 
 Belief. See Faith, Fancy. 
 Benedictine MS., Monte Cassino, 81. 
 Berlin, Holbein's 'George Guysen,' 94. 
 Bertha, Queen, the spinner, no. 
 
 Bewick, draws children in mischief only, 138; magnifying glass needed for 
 his vignettes, 26; can draw a pig, but not a girl, 250; plumage in his 
 woodcuts, 173. 
 Bible, the, and Roman Catholics, in. 
 Bible, quoted : — 
 
 ' And God saw that it was good ' . 
 
 ' He maketh me to lie down in green pastures " 
 
 ' The chariots of God are twenty thousand ' . 
 
 ' Buy the truth and sell it not ' . . . 
 
 ' The weaned child shall put his hand on the 
 cockatrice' den '..... 
 
 ' Rachel weeping for her children because they 
 were not '...... 
 
 ' He hath put down the mighty ' . 
 
 ' My peace I leave with you ' . . . 
 
 ' Peter girt his fisher's coat unto him ' . 
 
 ' Gallio cared for none of those things ' . 
 
 ' More than conquerors through him that loved 
 them' 
 
 * No death, neither sorrow, nor crying ' . 
 
 Genesis i. 10 
 
 • page 
 
 105 
 
 Psalm xxiii. 2 . 
 
 )> 
 
 154 
 
 Psalm Ixviii. 17. 
 
 > J 
 
 240 
 
 Proverbs xxiii. 23 
 
 >J 
 
 237 
 
 Isaiah xii. 8 
 
 ») 
 
 134 
 
 Jeremiah xxxi. 15 
 
 >) 
 
 16 
 
 Luke i. 52 
 
 )) 
 
 50 
 
 John xiv. 27 
 
 ) ) 
 
 35 
 
 John xxi. 7 
 
 S) 
 
 41 
 
 Acts xviii. 17 . 
 
 ) J 
 
 153 
 
 Romans viii. 37. 
 
 »» 
 
 16 
 
 Revelation xxi. 4 
 
 >) 
 
 18
 
 278 
 
 Inde 
 
 I/V 
 
 BiRKETT Foster. See Foster. 
 
 Blake's 'Job,' 131. 
 
 Books: on art, rarity of good, 34; cheap, their result, 235-6; choice of, by 
 public libraries, 28; French, on science for a child, 169-70, 232 ; illus- 
 trations in modern, 117 sc(/., 13 1-6. 
 
 Botticelli, Sandro, classic and Gothic art united in, S3 ; frescoes on 
 education, 88-90 ; Favonian breeze, 47. 
 
 Brantwood, weather at (May 20, 1884), 254 se^/. 
 
 Brett, John, sunshine in his pictures, 10. 
 
 British Museum, Elgin marbles, but no Gothic marbles in the, 77 ; Girtin's 
 and Cousin's drawings, 214. 
 
 Bull, John, the farmer, 189 ; 'defends his pudding,' 192-3. 
 
 Burgmaier's woodcuts of heraldry, 173. 
 
 BuRNE-JoNES, E., chiaroscuro of, 66; colour of, 66; educated at Oxford, 
 56; friend of W. Morris, 58; of Rossetti, 49; a hero-worshipper, 72; 
 knowledge of mythology, 57-S ; outline perfect, 65; personification, his 
 gift, 49; photographs from his pictures,68-9 -, pictures of: 'Danae' (Oxford 
 Schools), 66 ; ' Days of Creation,' 49, 59 ; ' Miss Gladstone' (portrait of)j 
 66 ; ' Medea ' (Oxford schools), 66 ; ' Psyche ' (Oxford galleries), 65 ; 
 ' Wheel of Fortune,' 59-60. 
 
 Burns, on children, ' toddlin' wee things,' 139 ; romance in, 6. 
 
 Butler, Mrs. (Elizabeth Thompson), 195. 
 
 Byron, and landscape art, 215 ; morbid ('Childe Harold'), 205 ; mountains, 
 his love of, 223 ; romantic, 6 ; quoted, "You have the Pynhic dance as yet" 
 (' Don Juan,' iii. 86. 10), 102. 
 
 Cagliari, best works of, at Venice, 250. 
 
 Caldecott, M. Chesneauon, 144. 
 
 Camilla, 102. 
 
 Campbell, Lord G., 'Log letters from the " Challenger," ' 135-6. 
 
 Caricature, 179. ^SV^ 'Punch.' 
 
 Carlyle, T., on the British Lion, 192 ; on Correggio's correggiosities, 249 ; 
 
 ' Sartor Resartus,' 84-5. 
 Carpaccio, offensive to practical Englishmen, 69; S. Ursula, 91. 
 Catholics, old, view of the Bible, 8. 
 Centralization, fatal to art, 250-1. 
 ' Century Magazine,' on the "demoniac sunset," 170. 
 Certificates of merit at Oxford, author's plan for art-, 33. 
 Character and faces, 187-8.
 
 Index. 279 
 
 ' Charivari,' the, 178. 
 
 Charles II. destroys English morality, 208 ; coins of, vulgar, tb. 
 
 Cheapness, no such thing as, 162. 
 
 Chesneau, M. Ernest, his style and value, 143 ; (juoted on English art, 145-6. 
 
 Chiaroscuro, in engraving, 176. 
 
 Children, in art and literature, 137-40 ; no, in Greek art, or Gothic till 1200, 
 
 137 ; art for, to be graceful and serious, 126-7 '> ^"d legendary art, 117 ; 
 
 imagination and invention to be stimulated, 120-21 ; and fairy stories, — 
 
 are they to be told true stories only? 119 ; ' Punch's,' 183 ; toys for, 120-1. 
 Chillon, the railroad near, 265. 
 Chivalry, rise of, 103. 
 
 Christian art and classicism, 57 ; and the peace of God, T12. 
 Christianity, imports feeling for womanhood and children, 137 ; its doctrine 
 
 of human happiness and pain, 18. 
 Christmas books, modern, 133-4. 
 Cimabue's 'Borgo,' 217. 
 Cities, monstrous architecture of modern, 251 ; consequent decline of art in 
 
 them, ib. ; hugeness of, 202 ; their misery, 142. 
 Classic, means anti-Gothic, 76 ; and Gothic art, 57 ; their continuity, 77-8 ; 
 
 union of, in N. Pisano's pulpit, 83 ; no portraiture in classic art, 92. 
 Claude's sunshine colourless, 11. 
 Clifton, Prof, of Oxford, 229. 
 Clouds, always look like clouds only, 234-5 ; and Greek art, 100 ; all lovely, 
 
 are quiet and motionless, 239; in modern weather, 259. 
 Cockatrice, fairy story about a, 134. 
 Coins, of Henry VIII. and Charles IL, 208. 
 Collier, Mr., primroses by, 268. 
 Colour, Greek art and, 64 ; in early landscape, 215 ; in portraiture, 67 ; maxim 
 
 as to, " all white precious, all black conspicuous," 177 ; our sensitiveness 
 
 to, and delight in, varies with our moods, 230 ; our sight for unchanging 
 
 in age, ib. ; printing, 118; vivid radiance cannot be given by, 229. 
 Commerce, John Bull the shopkeeper, 189. 
 Competition in education, t^t,. 
 Completeness of work in art, its difficulty, 67. 
 
 Coniston 'Old Man,' clouds over, motionless, 240; school, music for, 193. 
 Constantine, crowned in England, 193. 
 Conway, railroad over the, 265. 
 Copley Fielding. See Fielding. 
 'Cornhill Magazine,' April 1883, 119.
 
 2 8o Index, 
 
 Correctness in drawing, 60. 
 
 CoRREGGio, colour-blending of, 98 ; correggiosities of, 249 ; best works of, at 
 
 Parma, 250 ; cannot be wood- engraved, 176. 
 Costume. See Dress. 
 Cousins' water-colours, 214. 
 Cox, David, his inventive power small, 219. 
 Crabs, stories of, 134-5. 
 Crane, Walter, M. Ernest Chesneau on, 144. 
 Criticism, the function of true, is qualified praise, 245. 
 Crystal Palace, examples of Gothic architecture in, 77. 
 Curzon's travels in the East, 218. 
 CuYP's sunshine colourless, 12. 
 
 Dante, use of ^schylus by, in the ' Inferno,' 57 ; quoted (' Purgatory ' xiv. 
 93), 128. 
 
 Darling, Grace, no. 
 
 Davis', W. B., 'Highland Moor,' (R.A. 1882,) 10. 
 
 De Wint, 206 ; small inventive power, 219. 
 
 Delicacy of great art, 151. 
 
 Design in creation, a proof of, 163. 
 
 Dew on flowers, effect on their colour, 229. 
 
 Dickens on children, 140; 'David Copperfield,' 140; 'Hard Times,' 119; 
 'Mrs. Tirriper's Lodgings,' 191 ; 'Old Curiosity Shop,' 140, 
 
 D'IsRAELi, 'Punch's' treatment of, 180. 
 
 Doll, author's cousin and her armless, 121. 
 
 Domestic spirit of nineteenth century, 35. 
 
 Donatello's children, 21. 
 
 Dramatic school in art, its truth, 51-2. 
 
 Drapery of Reynolds and Gainsborough, 86. 
 
 Dress, national (in Norway), and the fashion, 28 ; painting of, in Gothic art, 86. 
 
 Du Maurier, does not caricature, 179 ; keen observation of, i'l>. ; his power, 
 174, 178 ; woodcuts of, their method, 174, 177 ; pictures of: 'Alderman 
 Sir Robert,' 178; 'London Mechanic,' the, 181; 'Mrs. Ponsonby de 
 Tomkyns,' 174 ; 'Lady Midas,' ib. ; ' Herr Professor,' 191. 
 
 Durer's Apocalypse, 131. 
 
 Dutch school, the, ' Modern Painters ' on, 44 ; picture of in National Gallery, 
 described, 209 seq. 
 
 Education, choice of books, 28 ; is everyone to learn to read? 27 ; not a 
 means of livelihood, 237.
 
 htdex. 281 
 
 Elephant, absurd story of an, 132, 
 
 Elgin marbles, 77. 
 
 England, artists of, never altogether riglit, 246-7 ; engraving in, and its 
 
 decline, 147; former greatness of, 192-3; her hope, in her youth, 197; 
 
 John Bull the farmer, no longer typical, 189; 'defends his pudding,' 
 
 192-3 ; landscape-art, 10 ; the youth of their beauty and energy , 197. 
 Engraving, chiaroscuro in, 176; decline of modern, 147; English and 
 
 Florentine, 147; line, 163; modern methods of, 174-6; wood and steel 
 
 engraving, comparative difficulty of, 167. 
 Etching, labour of, 167. 
 Etruscan people, character and life of, 104. 
 Europe, the capitals of, their degraded architecture, 251. 
 Exhibitions, art, new and old, 141 ; of only one man's work, a mistake, 248. 
 
 Fables for children, about animals, etc., 132-3. 
 
 Fairies, in literature and art, 127 seq. 
 
 Fairy-land, Lect. IV.; fairy-stories, 118-19, 129, 134. 
 
 Faith, is to trust without evidence, 123 : its freedom and responsibility, 122. 
 
 Fancy, modern extinction of the, 125 ; and faith, 122 ; fostering of the, 123. 
 
 Features and character, 188. 
 
 'Fides,' defined, 75. 
 
 Fielding, Copley, atmospheric effects of, 222-3; author taught by, 217; 
 and author's father, his first art purchase a picture by, 217 ; inventive 
 power of, limited, 219; Turner's effect on, 205; vegetation of, 229; 
 ' Cader Idris,' 228 ; in Oxford Galleries, 216-17. 
 
 Figure, drawing of the, and the rise of art, 79 ; study, at Oxford, 185-8. 
 
 Fildes, Mr. Luke, Venetian pictures of, 268. 
 
 Fisher, Mr., and the Oxford Galleries, 69. 
 
 Flemish school, children of the, 138 ; manner of the, 43-5. 
 
 ' Flight into Egypt,' painting of, by H. Hunt and others, 19. 
 
 Florence, palaces of, 164; Spanish Chapel, frescos, 90; Uftizii, perfect 
 portrait in the, 94. 
 
 Fortune's wheel, idea of, 50-51. 
 
 Foster, Birkett, children by, 142. 
 
 Francesca. See Alexander. 
 
 French modern art, 249; book on science for a child, 'Les Pourquoi de 
 Mile Suzanne,' 169-70, 232; contempt for provincial art, 250; land- 
 scape, modern, 220; language, essentially critical, 144; Revo- 
 lution, 1 38.
 
 282 Index, 
 
 FRkRE, E., children by, 138. 
 FuRNESS Abbey, railroad near, 265. 
 Furniture, aesthetic, 164. 
 
 Gaboriau, 221. 
 
 Gainsborough, formal, 212; Gothic, 80; greatness of, 83; and Reynolds, 
 247; last words of (" Vandyke is of the company"), 80; pictures by: 
 ' Blue Boy,' 85 ; ' Mrs. Graham,' ih. ; ' Miss Heathfield,' //'. ; large work 
 (No. 789, 'Portraits of J. Baillie and his family') in National Gallery, 21 1 n. 
 
 Genoa, palaces of, 164. 
 
 Gentleman, essentials of a, Horace on the, 75. 
 
 Ghiberti, gates of, 165. 
 
 Giorgione, his home, Venice, 253 ; his ' Madonna ' (Florence), 269. 
 
 Girtin, T., watercolours of, 214; waterfall by (British Museum), 222. 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., 'Punch 'on, 180. 
 
 Miss, portrait of, by Burne-Jones, 66. 
 
 Glaucus' armour, 102. 
 
 Goethe, 'Faust,' 204; morbid side of, ib. 
 
 Good, all, is bought with toil and tears, 15. 
 
 Goodness and beauty, 105. 
 
 Goodwin, Mr. Albert, pictures of (Old Water-colour Society, 1884), 267. 
 
 Gothic art, no children in, till 1200 a.d., 137; and classic, 76; their 
 continuity, 77-8; and union in N. Pisano's pulpit, ^t^; portraiture, 
 especially Gothic, 92 ; period to study — in England up to Black Prince, 
 in France up to S. Louis, 83 ; writing, 81. 
 
 Grace in art, 126-7. 
 
 Great men belong to their own village, 84, 190. 
 
 Greek art, bodily beauty and, 99 ; chiaroscuro in, 64, 100 ; no children in, 
 96, 137 ; colour in, sense of, weak, 64 ; conception lofty in, ib. ; formalism 
 of, 208 ; the ideal in (Homer quoted on), 99-100 ; period to study. 
 Homer to Marathon, 8^ ; portraiture destroys, 92 ; is praise of Greek 
 virtues, 32 ; and the glory of war, 99, 112. 
 Greenaway, Kate, M. Chesneau on, 144 se^. ; children of, 140 ; delicacy of, 
 150; decorative qualities of, 148-9; design of, too ornamental, ib. 
 fairies, 147 ; genius of, 143 ; can draw a girl, but not a pig, 250 
 landscape of, simple, 152-3; minuteness of, 146; pencil-work of, 146 
 to paint pictures, not decorate books, 148-9; public, the, to whom her 
 work appeals, 161 ; realism in, 154; reproductions of her works might 
 be better, 149 seg.
 
 Index, 283 
 
 Greenaway, K., brother of, his photographs, 174. 
 GuiDO, cannot be reproduced in wood-cutting, 176. 
 
 Happiness, doctrine of, 17-18, 
 
 Harmonicon, for Coniston school, legend on, 194. 
 
 Hartwig, Dr., on Norway, quoted, 27. 
 
 Heaven, the question is, are we going toioards^ 80. 
 
 Henry VHL, destroys English religion, 208 ; coins of, vulgar, ib. 
 
 Herkomer, Mr., his proper and his actual subjects, 267. 
 
 Hero-worship, admiration is mainly, 48 ; of painters, 72. 
 
 Hesiod, on Hercules' shield, 54. 
 
 Hogarth, M. Chesneau on, 145. 
 
 Holbein, 80; delineation of, 179; 'George Guysen ' (Berlin Museum), 94. 
 
 Homer, on shield of Achilles, 54; on Achilles on the ramparts (Iliad xviii. 
 203-6, 225-7), 99-100. 
 
 Hook, Mr., his sea-pictures, 268. 
 
 Hope, defuied, 48. 
 
 Horace, quoted, 75. 
 
 Hunt, Holman, and the Bible, his view and Rossetti's, 8 ; as a colourist, 
 9-10 ; chiaroscuro of, intense light, 21 (see below, "sunshine"): chil- 
 dren by, 47; hero-worship, 72 ; invention, swift grace of, 21 ; material 
 veracity of, 40 ; Rossetti's disciple, 6 ; Rossetti compared with him, 8-9 ; 
 sunshine of, 9-10, 11, 12, 14; works by: 'Awakening Conscience,' 7; 
 ' Claudio and Isabel,' 7 ; 'Flight into Egypt,' 19, 20, 47 ; 'Light of the 
 World,' 7 ; ' Scapegoat,' 14; ' Strayed Sheep,' its greatness, marks an era 
 in art, n ; ' Valentine and Sylvia,' 7. 
 
 Hunt, William, 206 ; limited power of, 250. 
 
 Ida, ' ' The Story of. See Alexander. 
 
 Ideas, painting of, 60. 
 
 Illustrations, modern popular, 117 seq. See Books, Newspapers. 
 
 Imagination, of children to be stimulated, 120-21; conceives beautifully 
 amid beauty, 55 ; does not create^ but reveals, 154-5 ; of great men, 
 visionary, 131; after the Renaissance, its reawakening, 212; and repose 
 of mind, 239. 
 
 Infidelity, modern, 15, 122-3. 
 
 Inge, Mrs., on Robson, 226. 
 
 Ingelow, Miss, 'Stories told to a Child,' 189. 
 
 Invention, in children, to be stimulated, 121.
 
 284 
 
 Index. 
 
 ' loLANTHE,' allusion to, 126-7. 
 Iphigenia, 16. 
 Isaac, 16. 
 
 Italy, art of modern, 249; comic journals of, 178 ; peasantry and poor of, 
 29-30, 104. 
 
 Japanese, art, 65 ; book of stories (Macmillan 1871), 134. 
 
 John Bull. See Bull. 
 
 Jones, E. Burne. See Burne-Jones. 
 
 Keats, sadness of, 225 ; quoted, " A thing of beauty." 164. 
 
 Kensington Museum, examples of Gothic architecture at, 77. 
 
 Kent, wood-carving of, 165. 
 
 KiNGLAKE, on the press, 124-5 '> ^^^ travels in the East, 218. 
 
 Knowledge, divinity and value of, 236-7. 
 
 ' Knowledge,' bad illustrations to, 169. 
 
 Labour, good, bought with toil and tears, 15. 
 
 Lady-artist in Venice 1876, 24-5. 
 
 Landscape, author's love of, 203 ; and "unaided nature," 153 ; art, recent 
 and already declining, 201 ; art, as influenced by Byron and Scott, 215 ; 
 especially English, 214; French, manner of modern, 220; and the Old 
 Water-colour Society, 206; Richard Wilson and, 213 seq. See Green- 
 away. 
 
 Landseer's 'Shepherd's Chief Mourner,' 81. 
 
 Law, a thing of beauty a law for ever, 105. 
 
 Leech, John, M. Chesneau on, 144; genius of, 178; kindness of, 178; 
 founds 'Punch,' 174; satire of, 183; wood-cutting, 177; pictures of: 
 ' Miss Alice riding,' his best sketch, 180-1 ; ' Distinguished Foreigner,' 191. 
 
 Leighton, Sir F., anatomy of, 97 ; children by, ib. ; Correggio-like ' vaghezza ' 
 of, 98 ; figure-study of, 97 ; Gothic spirit of, 96 ; his house, 78 ; drawings 
 of ' Byzantine well,' 97 ; ' lemon tree,' ib. 
 
 Leopold, Prince, and the Turner drawings at Oxford, 3. 
 
 * Les Pourquoi de Mile Suzanne' [see Science), 169-70, 232. 
 
 Leslie, Mr., Thames pictures by, 268, 
 
 Lewis, John, technical accuracy of, 98. 
 
 Librarian, proper function of a public, 28. See Norway. 
 
 Libraries in Norway, 27. 
 
 LiEBREiCH, "foreign oculist," on changes of sight, 230.
 
 Index. 285 
 
 Light, sense of, in art and poetry, loi ; and cloud, in Greek art, 100. See 
 
 Sunshine 
 * Light of the World.' See Hunt, H. 
 Lily, author's cousin, and her doll, 121. 
 Lindsay, Lord, his book on " Christian art," 58 ; division of Christian art 
 
 into spiritual (head) and fleshly (body), 91. 
 Line-drawing, 172-3. 
 ' Lingua,' defined, 75. 
 Lion, the British, 190, 192. 
 
 Literature. See Books, Children, Newspapers. 
 
 London, as an art-school, 252 ; its effect on artists, 266 seg.; its misery, 18 r. 
 Love, defined, 48. 
 LucA della RoBBiA, children of, 21, 137 ; 'Nativity 'by, story of child kissing, 
 
 87 ; unites Classic and Gothic art, 87-8. 
 LuiNi, children by, 138 ; his best works at Milan, 197, 251. 
 Lycurgus, the laws of, and beauty, 106. 
 
 Macdonald, a. (author's assistant at Oxford), 4, 233 ; copy of Turner by, 155. 
 
 Magazines, modern cheap, 167. 
 
 Manchester Exhibition 1851, 104. 
 
 Mantegna's tree-drawing, 263. 
 
 Manufactures and children, 138 ; English, 189. 
 
 Marks, H. Stacey, his pictures ' The Professor,' ' Three Postboys,' ' Lord 
 
 Say and Jack Cade,' 95. 
 Marochetti, qualities of greatness, 61; his ' Richard Cceur de Lion,'//'.: 
 
 sees Rossetti's drawings at Heme Hill, ib. 
 Marriage, honour to, iii. 
 
 Marshall, Mr. Herbert, pictures of (Old Water Colour Society, 1884), 267. 
 Materialistic conception of Rossetti and Hunt, 7, 40. See Realism. 
 Microscope, use of the, in seeing art, 150-1. See Bewick. 
 MiLLAis, J. E., 'Caller Herrin,' a Pre-Raphaelite work, 46. 
 Ming da Fesole, children by, 137. 
 Minuteness of work in art, 43. 
 Misery, 16 ; of the poor in London, 18 r. 
 Missals, Gothic, 81. 
 Mist, Scotch, 215-16. 
 
 Mitford, Miss, and feeling for children, 139. 
 Modernism, selfish greed of, 15. See Infidelity. 
 Monte Cassino Benedictine MS. at, 81.
 
 2 86 Index, 
 
 Moral philosophy and Greek myths, 54. 
 
 MoRAN (American artist), 120. 
 
 ' Mores ' defined, 75. 
 
 Morris, W., lecture on ' Art and Plutocracy,' 236 ; friendship with Burne- 
 
 Jones, 58 ; maxim that excellence of work depends on our joy in it, 228 ; 
 
 on mythology, 58. 
 Mountains, love of, in Scott, Byron, and Wordsworth, 215, 223-4 ; author's 
 
 early, id., 226. 
 Mouse, fables of town and country, etc., 133. 
 Murray, A., on Greek sculpture (Achilles' shield), 55. 
 
 , C. F., his copies of Botticelli's frescoes on education, 88. 
 
 Muses, the laws of the, 103. 
 
 Musical instrument for Coniston school, 193. 
 
 Mystery, idea of, in ancient art, 100 ; of conception, no excuse for careless 
 
 treatment, 60. 
 Mythic art, its teaching and truth, 51 ; dislike of, by practical people, 69-70. 
 Mythology, 50 ; men's wisest thoughts expressed in, 53 ; painting of old, by 
 
 a modern painter, his function, 55. 
 Myths, in art, with what precision to be given, 59; defined, 50; develop- 
 ment of, 53; moral philosophy and, 54; power of noble, 58; how far 
 
 representative of the ideas they symboHze, 54. 
 
 National Gallery, pictures badly hung in the, 44, 210-11 ; Turner drawings 
 
 in its cellars, 202. See Teniers, Vandernrer, Vandyke. 
 National unity, impossible, 84. See Great men. 
 Nature, author's love of, 12 seq. ; beauty of untouched, 153, 155-6; feeling 
 
 for, 48 ; materials of, adapted to art, 163. 
 Newspapers, illustrated, good portraiture in the, 93; influence of, 124; 
 
 Italian comic, 178. 
 Niccola Pisano, engrafts classicism on Christian art, 57 ; unites Classic and 
 
 Gothic art, e.g., his pulpit, 83. 
 Nineteenth century, domestic spirit of, 35. See Modernism. 
 Nitro-glycerine, compels belief, 123. 
 
 Norway, peasant life in, 26-7 ; every town has its library, 27. 
 Numa, 106. 
 
 Old-fashioned, distinction of being, 22. 
 
 Old Water Colour Society, in former years, 206 ; Exhibition (1884), 268. 
 
 Orcagna, 155; imaginative vision of, 131.
 
 Index. 287 
 
 Oriental art, 78, 
 
 Ouida's ' Village Commune,' 30. 
 
 Oxford, — education the ford of life, 11 2- 13, but not a means of livelihood, 
 236; motto, 100 ; town ruined by improvements, 156, 186, 236-7 ; Mag- 
 dalen Bridge, widened, 112 ; Museum, and Dr. Acland, 227 ; St. John's 
 gardens, 156 ; Schools, the new, 186 ; Taylorian (Ruskin Art Schools and 
 Galleries), catalogues to, 288 ; author's plans for certificates of merit, etc., 
 7,2,, 202-3, 237-8 ; figure-study at, 2, 185 ; limited room in, 186 ; pictures, 
 etc., in : Bewick's woodcuts, 173 ; Burgmaier's woodcuts, ib. ; legend on a 
 harmonicon, 193-4 ; drawing by Copley Fielding, 216 ; ' Sunset at Rome,' 
 212-13; Tintoret, 'Doge Mocenigo,' 195; Turner drawings, 3, 155. 
 
 Pain, pleasure not its outcome, 17. 
 
 Painter, difficulty of finish, 67 ; to paint what he sees, not what he wishes to 
 
 see, 231. 
 Painting, manner of, compelled by realism, 42. 
 Palmerston, 'Punch 'on, 180. ^ 
 
 Paris, Louvre, Botticelli's frescoes in the, 88. 
 Parliament, Houses of, Watts' designs for frescoes, 68. 
 Paton, Sir Noel, fairy pictures of ' Titania,' ' Fairy Raid,' 129. 
 Pencil, the best instrument for fine work, 146. 
 Personal feelings, expressible only in poetry, 13. 
 Personification in art, 49. 
 
 Perugino, children by, 138 ; crowns Gothic art, 83. 
 Peter, drowning of, ' Modern Painters ' on the, 41. 
 Pets, children's, 121. 
 
 Photographs and art, 71 ; of Burne-Jones' pictures, 69 ; and portraiture, 66. 
 Physiognomy, study of, and character, 187-8. 
 PiCARDY, wood-carving of, 165. 
 
 Pictures, only recently made a common means of decoration, 117. 
 Pindar, myths of, 54. 
 
 Pisa, Niccola Pisano's pulpit at, 83. * 
 
 Pity, the lesson to be learnt, 18. 
 Plato, myths used by, for his highest teaching, 53 ; on finish in painting 
 
 ("Laws" quoted), 67. 
 Pleasure, not the outcome of pain^ 17. 
 Poetry, boldness of expression in great, 235 ; the only means of giving 
 
 personal feelings, 13 ; perfect, precedes perfect painting, 80. 
 Political economy, author's paradoxes of, 162.
 
 288 Ind^ 
 
 C' iA/ • 
 
 PoMPEiAN ART, Specimen of, 82. 
 
 Poor, the, and beauty, 181 ; dwellings of to be orderly, or there can be no 
 art, 157; misery of, 16. 6"^^ Italy. 
 
 Portraiture, all, is Gothic, 92 ; great portraits must also be great pictures, 93 ; 
 modern, desire to be painted as proud or grand, 103 ; perfect examples 
 oi (see Florence, Holbein) ; power of, a common gift, 93. 
 
 Power, the noblest, man's own strength, 151. 
 
 Praise. See Criticism, 
 
 Pre-Raphaelitism, modern, defined, 34, 43,45 ; dislike of by practical people, 
 69 ; minuteness of work in, not essential, 43 ; personification and, 46 ; 
 the school of, 7 ; truth of, 52. 
 
 Press, the public, its value, 124. 
 
 Price, everything has but one just, 162. 
 
 Priest, dislike of the word by English public, 28. 
 
 Priesthood of Western world, its character, 103. 
 
 Profession, choice of a, and means of livelihood, 237. 
 
 Progress, the direction more important than the distance reached, 80. 
 
 Prout, S., 206. 
 
 Public opinion and the press, 124. 
 
 'Punch,' the artists of, townsmen, 190; the laws of beauty, 178; Bedell, Sir 
 Pompey, 189; Bull, John, the farmer, 189; 'defends his pudding.' 192-3 ; 
 children in, 183; on the Continent, 191 ; the founders of, 174; girls 
 in, 182-3; illustrations to, best sketch in, 180-1; 'immortal periodical,' 
 178; on manufactures, says but little, 189; politics of, 180 {see under 
 Gladstone and others) ; on the poor, does not give their beauty, 181 ; 
 as expressing public opinion, 188; social types in, 180-1 ; on society 
 and wealth, 182 ; quoted, no. See Du Maurier, Leech, Tenniel. 
 
 Puritan, old, view of the Bible, 8. 
 
 Pyrrhic dance, the, 102. See Byron. 
 
 Railroads and scenery, 265 ; as subjects of landscape art, 152. 
 
 Raphael's children, 138. 
 
 REALrsM in art, 154 ; its value as compelling belief, 40-1 ; as affecting manner 
 
 and minuteness of work, 42. 
 Religion and repose, 239. 
 Rembrandt's children, 138. 
 
 Renaissance, luxury of the, 137 ; poison of the, 103. 
 Repose of mind, 239. 
 Resurrection, the, the mainspring of all lovely work, 19.
 
 Index, 289 
 
 Rethel, Alfred, his ' Death the Avenger ' and ' Barbarossa,' 131. 
 
 Retsch's ' Faust,' ' Leonora,' 'Poetry,' 130-1. 
 
 Reynolds, Sir J., 80; children by, 138; dress, painting of, 86; faults of, 
 
 248; formality in, 212; compared with Gainsborough, 193, 247; 
 
 greatness of, 83, 247 ; exhibition of his works at Academy and Gros- 
 
 venor Gallery (1883), 247; his variety, ib. ; pictures by: 'Mrs. 
 
 Abington ' as ' Miss Prue,' 248 ; ' Age of Innocence,' 85 ; Cherubs' 
 
 heads, 87; 'Mrs. Nesbitt ' as 'Circe,' 248; 'Mrs. Pelham,' 85; 'Mrs. 
 
 Sheridan 'as 'St Cecilia,' 248. 
 Richmond, George, old friend of author, 2. 
 , Prof. \V., at Oxford, 2; figure-study classes of, 185 ; resigns the 
 
 chair, 2 ; portraits by, Grosvenor Gallery (1883), 76. 
 RiciiTER, Ludwig, children by, 138 ; designs of, 35 ; outlines of, 65 ; 'Lord's 
 
 Prayer,' 63 ; ' Wide Wide World,' 183. 
 Rivalry, evils of, 134. 
 Riviere, B., his 'Sympathy,' 81. 
 RoBBiA. See Luca. 
 RoBSON, 206; inventive power small, 212; temper of, 225; 'outlines of 
 
 Scotch scenery,' 226 ; picture of, copied, 225. 
 Rolfe's engraving of ' Ida,' 148. 
 RoMAGNA, the poor of, 30. 
 Roman Catholics and the Bible, in. 
 Romance, of an artist in his subject, 207 ; definition of, 47-8 ; meaning of 
 
 word, 5, 207. 
 Rome, the pomp of, 103 ; sunset at (picture Oxford schools), 212-13. 
 RossETTi, D. G., anatomy of, 62 ; and the Bible, 7 ; his colour, 6, 9 ; not 
 
 a chiaroscurist, 66; exhibition of his works (1883), 245; genius of, 
 
 when highest, 6; a hero- worshipper, 72; Holman Hunt his disciple, 6; 
 
 compared with him, 8-9 ; " material veracity " of, 7, 40 ; Marochetti's 
 
 view of his drawings, 61; painting of, its faults, 9; poetical genius 
 
 of, 6 ; and the romantic school, its chief force, 5 ; temper of, 9 ; 
 
 works of: 'Passover' (Oxford schools), 40; 'Virgin in House of 
 
 St. John,' 7, 40. 
 Rubens, children of, 138; and the Renaissance, 83, 138. 
 
 Sacrifice, the doctrine of, 14. 
 
 St. Augustine in England, 193. 
 
 St. Cecilia, 46. See Reynolds. 
 
 St. Christopher, in-12. 6"^^ Alexander.
 
 290 Indi 
 
 C^ i/v • 
 
 St. Columba in England, 193. 
 
 St. Genevieve, iio. 
 
 St. George, 46. 
 
 St. George's guild, drawings of, lent to Oxford, 186. 
 
 St. Ursula, Venice Academy, 91. 
 
 Satire, power of, 183-4. See Leech. 
 
 Scenery, destruction of, 202; northern and southern compared, 215-16 
 
 and railroads, 208, 265 ; Scott's, Sir W., love of, ib. 
 Scepticism and science, 52. 
 Schaffhausen, railway over the falls of, 265. 
 Science, French book for a child on, 232-3 ; modern, on pain and pleasure, 
 
 17; and scepticism, 52 ; suggestions for, 132. 
 Scotch mists, 215. 
 Scott, Sir W., influence of, on landscape art, 214-15 ; love of mountains, 223 ; 
 
 scenery of, 215; romance of, 6; 'Monastery,' its faults, 128; 'White 
 
 Lady of Avenel,' ib. 
 Severn, Mr, Arthur, picture of Westminster (1884), 267. 
 Shakspere, ' Midsummer Night's Dream' on fairies, 127 ; quoted, 127-8. 
 Sheridan, Mrs. See Reynolds. 
 Sibyl, a Tuscan, 106. See Alexander. 
 Sight, the unaided, and art, 151; does not change in quality, 230; and 
 
 colour, 230 ; a great painter's, authoritative, 231. 
 SiMPLON, the, railroad over, 265. 
 Sketch-book, no artist uses a block-book, 260 n. 
 Sky, the blue of the, and sunlight, 256 seq. ; cyanometer, author's, 258 ; 
 
 after storm, described by Wordsworth, 233-4. 
 Smoke nuisance, the modern, 232. 
 Soul, the best questions of a true, 15-16. 
 South America, hideous illustrations of, 169. 
 Stanfield, as influenced by Turner, 205. 
 Storm Cloud, the, 254 seq. 
 
 Strahan's ' Magazine for Youth,' June 1879, 132. 
 Strength, the noblest, that of unaided man, 151. 
 Suffering, accepted and involuntary, 16. 
 Sun, the description of (May 20, 1884), 256. 
 Sunset, the 'demoniac' beauty of the (Americanism), 170, 232. 
 Sunshine, author's love of, inexpressible, 10, 11, 12-13. See Claude, Cuyp, 
 
 Hunt, Turner. 
 Symbolism in realistic art, Pre-Raphaelitism, 41.
 
 Index. 291 
 
 Symbols do not give the dignity of the ideas they represent, 54, 59. 
 
 Symonds, Miss (Oxford), Copley Fielding in possession of, 228. 
 
 Sympathy, intellectual, ' no man can enter fully into the mind of another,' 56. 
 
 Tadema, Alma, classic in what sense, 78 ; marble painting of, 98-9 ; technical 
 accuracy of, 98 ; tone of revolutionary rage in, 102 ; twilight of his 
 pictures, 101 ; works of: Grosvenor Gallery Collection, loi ; Pyrrhic- 
 dance, 10 1. 
 
 Taine, M., on the growth of art, 271-2. 
 
 Taste, the formation of, 34. 
 
 Tendency, the direction more important than the distance reached, 80. 
 
 Teniers' ' Chateau at Perck,' National Gallery, 209-11. 
 
 Tenniel, his imagination, and Tintoret's, 195 ; his power and tone, 178 9 ; 
 what he might have done, 194; 'Punch' founded by, 174; works of: 
 Cartoons Nos. 38 — 48, 191; 'John Bull defends his Pudding,' 192; 
 'Liberty and France,' 191. 
 
 Tennyson, his genius highest in ' Maud,' ' In Memoriam,' and ' Northern 
 Farmer,' 6 ; romantic, 6 ; quoted : ' Idylls of the King' — "Turn, fortune, 
 turn thy wheel," 50 ; 'In Memoriam,' liv. — "The final goal of ill," 18. 
 
 Terror in art, 132. 
 
 Thebes, the seven against, loi. 
 
 Theseus, 160, 207. 
 
 Tintoret, masses of, 195 ; pictures by: the new addition to National Gallery, 
 
 211 ; Doge Mocenigo (Oxford Schools), 195. 
 Titian, drawing of trees by, 263. 
 Tobacco, 252. 
 
 ToPFFER, Swiss caricaturist, his life, 184-5 > his ' Histoire d'Albert,' ib. 
 Toys for children, what they like, 120-1. 
 Transparency, defined, 176. 
 
 Tree-drawing, modern, as compared with Titian's, 262. 
 Truth, the, in Pre-Raphaelite art, 42, 52 ; in Turner, 155. 
 Turner, his character and genius, 204; paints clouds, but never a flower, 
 
 250 ; foregrounds of, no flower in any, 205 ; his landscape, beyond 
 
 all other, not representative of it, 205 ; effect of, on contemporary art, 
 
 204-5; minuteness in his work, 43; sadness of, 204; sight of, 231; 
 
 sunshine of, its bold conventionalism, 12 ; truth, his magic in his, 155 ; 
 
 works of: 'Loire,' 155; National Gallery drawings, 44, 202; Oxford, 
 
 drawings at, 3, 69. 
 Tuscany, the poor of, 30, 106. 
 
 24
 
 292 Ifidex. 
 
 Valerius, 207. 
 
 Vanderneer, his 'Canal Scene' (National Gallery), 209; the 'Evening 
 
 Landscape' (National Gallery), ib, 
 Vandyke, children by, 138; Gainsborough's last words on, 80; and the 
 
 Renaissance, 83, 212; ' Draught of Fishes ' by (National Gallery), 43, 
 
 209. 
 Vautier, Bavarian artist, 70. 
 Venice, Academy, Carpaccio's S. Ursula, 91; master of works at Ducal 
 
 Palace (G. Boni), 22. 
 Virtues, the, and Greek art, 32. 
 Visions of great men, 131. 
 Vivisection, 23-4. 
 Vulgarity of selfishness, 208. 
 
 Wainscoting, old English, 164. 
 
 War, and Greek art, 99. 
 
 Water, effect on colour of a drop of, 229. 
 
 Colour, old English, its methods and labour, 221-2. 
 
 Watts, G. F., completeness of his work, 67 ; Greek feeling in, //'. ; hero- 
 worship of, 72 ; Houses of Parliament frescoes, designs for, 68. 
 
 Wealth, evils of, 139. 
 
 Weather, good and bad, 218-19; bad, worse in lowlands than in highlands? 
 264; modern, its deterioration, and recent phenomena (May 20, 1884), 
 254 seq. ; the effect of it on artists, 259, 264. 
 
 WiLKiE, children by, 139. 
 
 Wilson, Richard, the first sincere landscape artist, 212-13. 
 
 Women cannot paint, author's saying that, 24. 
 
 Wood-carving, mediseval, 165. 
 
 Wood-cutting : American, 175 ; not meant to print blots, 172 ; cheap, 167 ; 
 ease and danger of, 166-7 ! A^sh tint, rendering of, 175 ; modern 
 methods of, 174-6; and sculpture, material for, 165; transparency in, 
 how given, 175 : readily expresses ugliness or terror, 168. 
 
 Wordsworth, children of, 139; love of mountains, 233; Society, 269; 
 quoted: 'Excursion,' Book ii., 233-5; Sonnets— "We live by admiration," 
 48 ; "The world is too much with us," 125. 
 
 Work, goodness of, in proportion to our joy in it, 228. 
 
 Youth, praise of modern P^nglish, 197. 
 
 THE end.
 
 
 /, .J 
 
 The Art of England. 
 
 LECTURES GIVEN IN OXFORD, 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, D.C.L., LL.D., 
 
 HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND HONORARY FELLOW OF CORPUS-CHRISTI COLLEGE, 
 
 DURING HIS 
 
 SECOND TENURE OF THE SLADE PROFESSORSHIP. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 REALISTIC SCHOOLS OF PAINTING. 
 
 GEORGE ALLEN, 
 SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT. 
 
 1883. 
 
 Price One Shilling. 
 
 B. H. BLACKWELL, 
 
 BOOKSELLER, 
 
 50, BROAD STREET. 
 
 OXFORD.
 
 The Art of England. 
 
 LECTURES GIVEN IN OXFORD, 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, D.C.L., LL.D., 
 
 HONORAKV STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND HONORARY FELLOW OF CORPUS-CHRISTI COLLEGE, 
 
 DURING HIS 
 
 SECOND TENURE OF THE SLADE PROFESSORSHIP. 
 
 APPENDIX AND INDEX. 
 
 GEORGE ALLEN, 
 SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT. 
 
 1884. 
 Price One Shillmg.
 
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