7 04 
 
 I? 89i 
 
Camluitrcrc SdtaoJ d fat 
 
 .-V Q s — 
 
 MB. BUSKIN’S 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED AT CAMBRIDGE, (BMC 29 , u Z; 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 DEIDIITOK, BELL. AND CO. 
 
 LONDON : BELL & DALDY, 186 , FLEET STREET. 
 1858. 
 
 i ! «7CE oA'j- miLLiyc. 
 
ME. EUSKIN’S 
 
 INAUGUEAL ADDEESS. 
 
J. PALMER, PRINTER, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
Camtfo&ge &Ij 00 l 0 f %xt 
 
 ME. EUSKIFS 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED AT CAMBRIDGE , OCT. 29 , 1858 . 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO. 
 LONDON: BELL & DALDY, 186 , FLEET STREET. 
 1858. 
 
7 04 - 
 
 RSSl 
 
 . { 
 4s 
 
 % 
 
 The Cambridge School of Art was opened 
 by a Soiree held in the Town Hall under 
 
 > the Presidency of the Vice-Chancellor and the 
 ^ Mayor. It was thought desirable that Mr. 
 
 Euskin’s Address on the occasion should be 
 
 > preserved in a permanent form, and the Com¬ 
 mittee desire to record their thanks to Mr. 
 Euskin for his permission to publish it for the 
 
 > benefit of the School of Art. 
 
 * 
 
 

 . 
 
ME. RUSKIN’S 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 Tl/TR. Ruskin said: When first he was re- 
 quested to come and address that meeting, 
 he doubted whether he should speak out viva 
 voce , or whether he should read. On an occasion 
 like that, he always liked to speak, if he could, 
 for whenever he felt glad, he preferred making 
 a spontaneous speech to reading an address. 
 He felt glad that they had established a School 
 of Art; but before an audience like that, he 
 should not like to forget himself. In the heat 
 of speaking, he confessed that he had an un¬ 
 fortunate propensity to get confused, to get 
 round a corner and not be able to get back 
 again. Moreover, it was desirable that what 
 he had to say should be said with exactness. 
 Therefore, he was going to ask them to allow 
 him to read what he had to address to them; 
 
MB. BUSKIN'S 
 
 though in pursuing that course he felt he was 
 somewhat in the position of a new member who 
 had sent his speech to the Times , and must say 
 the whole of it, whether quite applicable to the 
 circumstances or not. He was not previously 
 aware precisely what the character of the pro¬ 
 posed school would be—whether for artisans 
 exclusively, or for amateurs and females: perhaps 
 they would say that he ought to have known, 
 but there were a great many things he ought to 
 know that he didn’t know. His own experience 
 of Schools of Art had been generally derived 
 from those of artisans; the result of that ex¬ 
 perience he would read to them. Mr. Buskin 
 then read the following address :— 
 
 I suppose the persons interested in establish¬ 
 ing a School of Art for workmen may in the 
 main be divided into two classes, namely, first, 
 those who chiefly desire to make the men them¬ 
 selves happier, wiser, and better; and secondly, 
 those who desire to enable them to produce 
 better and more valuable work. These two 
 objects may, of course, be kept both in view at 
 the same time; nevertheless, there is a wide 
 difference in the spirit with which we shall 
 approach our task, according to the motive of 
 
INATJGTJRAL ADDRESS. 
 
 3 
 
 these two which weighs most with us—a diffe¬ 
 rence great enough to divide, as I have said, 
 the promoters of any such scheme into two 
 distinct classes; one philanthropic in the gist 
 of its aim, and the other commercial in the gist 
 of its aim; one desiring the workmen to be 
 better informed chiefly for his own sake, and 
 the other chiefly that he may be enabled to 
 produce for us commodities precious in them¬ 
 selves, and which shall successfully compete 
 with those of other countries. 
 
 And this separation in motives must lead 
 also to a distinction in the machinery of the 
 work. The philanthropists address themselves, 
 not to the artisans merely, but to the labourer 
 in general, desiring in any possible way to 
 refine the habits or increase the happiness of 
 our whole working population, by giving them 
 new recreations or new thoughts : and the prin¬ 
 ciples of Art-education adopted in a school 
 which has this wide but somewhat indeterminate 
 aim, are, or should be, very different from those 
 adopted in a school meant for the special in¬ 
 struction of the artisan in his own business. I 
 do not think this distinction is yet firmly enough 
 fixed in our minds, or calculated upon in our 
 
4 
 
 ME. BUSKIN’S 
 
 plans of operation. We have hitherto acted, it 
 seems to me, under a vague impression that the 
 arts of drawing and painting might he, up to a 
 certain point, taught in a general way to every 
 one, and would do every one equal good; and 
 that each class of operatives might afterwards 
 bring this general knowledge into use in their 
 own trade, according to its requirements. Now, 
 that is not so. A wood-carver needs for his 
 business to learn drawing in quite a different 
 way from a china-painter, and a jeweller from 
 a worker in iron. They must be led to study 
 quite different characters in the natural forms 
 they introduce in their various manufacture. 
 It is of no use to teach an iron-worker to 
 observe the down on a peach, and of none to 
 teach laws of atmospheric effect to a carver in 
 wood. So far as their business is concerned, their 
 brains would be vainly occupied by such things, 
 and they would be prevented from pursuing, 
 with enough distinctness or intensity, the qualities 
 of Art which can alone be expressed in the 
 materials with which they each have to do. 
 
 Now, I believe it to be wholly impossible to 
 teach special application of Art principles to 
 various trades in a single school. That special 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 5 
 
 application can be only learned rightly by the 
 experience of years in the particular work re¬ 
 quired. The power of each material, and the 
 difficulties connected with its treatment, are not 
 so much to be taught as to be felt: it is only 
 by repeated touch and continued trial beside the 
 forge or the furnace, that the goldsmith can find 
 out how to govern his gold, or the glass-worker 
 his crystal; and it is only by watching and 
 assisting the actual practice of a master in the 
 business, that the apprentice can learn the effi¬ 
 cient secrets of manipulation, or perceive the 
 true limits of the involved conditions of design. 
 It seems to me, therefore, that all idea of reference 
 to definite businesses should be abandoned in 
 such schools as that just established: we can 
 have neither the materials, the conveniences, nor 
 the empirical skill in the master, necessary to 
 make such teaching useful. All specific Art¬ 
 teaching must be given in schools established 
 by each trade for itself: and when our opera¬ 
 tives are a little more enlightened on these 
 matters, there will be found, as I have already 
 stated in my lectures on the political economy 
 of Art, absolute necessity for the establishment 
 of guilds of trades in an active and practical 
 
6 
 
 MR. RUSKIN’S 
 
 form, for the purposes of ascertaining the prin¬ 
 ciples of Art proper to their business, and in¬ 
 structing their apprentices in them, as well as 
 making experiments on materials, and on newly- 
 invented methods of procedure; besides many 
 other functions which I cannot now enter into 
 account of. All this for the present, and in a 
 school such as this, I repeat, we cannot hope 
 for: we shall obtain no satisfactory result, unless 
 we give up such hope, and set ourselves to 
 teaching the operative, however employed—be 
 he farmer’s labourer, or manufacturer’s; be he 
 mechanic, artificer, shopman, sailor, or plough¬ 
 man—teaching, I say, as far as we can, one 
 and the same thing to all; namely, Sight. 
 
 Not a slight thing to teach, this: perhaps, 
 on the whole, the most important thing to be 
 taught in the whole range of teaching. To be 
 taught to read—what is the use of that, if you 
 know not whether what you read is false or 
 true ? To be taught to write or to speak—but 
 what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing 
 to say? To be taught to think—nay, what is 
 the use of being able to think, if you have 
 nothing to think of? But to be taught to see 
 is to gain word and thought at once, and both 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 7 
 
 true. There is a vague acknowledgment of 
 this in the way people are continually express¬ 
 ing their longing for light, until all the com¬ 
 mon language of our prayers and hymns has 
 sunk into little more than one monotonous meta¬ 
 phor, dimly twisted into alternate languages,-— 
 asking first in Latin to he illuminated; and 
 then in English to be enlightened; and then in 
 Latin again to be delivered out of obscurity; 
 and then in English to be delivered out of 
 darkness ; and then for beams, and rays, and 
 suns, and stars, and lamps, until sometimes one 
 wishes that, at least for religious purposes, there 
 were no such words as light or darkness in ex¬ 
 istence. Still, the main instinct which makes 
 people endure this perpetuity of repetition is 
 a true one; only the main thing they want and 
 ought to ask for is, not light, but Sight. It 
 doesn’t matter how much light you have, if you 
 don’t know how to use it. It may very possibly 
 put out your eyes, instead of helping them. 
 Besides, we want, in this world of ours, very 
 often to be able to see in the dark—that’s the 
 great gift of all;—but at any rate to see; no 
 matter by what light, so only we can see things 
 as they are. On my word, we should soon 
 
8 
 
 MB. BUSKIN'S 
 
 make it a different world, if we could get but 
 a little—ever so little—of the dervish’s ointment 
 in the Arabian Nights, not to show us the 
 treasures of the earth, but the facts of it. 
 
 However, whether these things be generally 
 true or not, at all events it is certain that our 
 immediate business, in such a school as this, 
 will prosper more by attending to eyes than to 
 hands; we shall always do most good by simply 
 endeavouring to enable the student to see na¬ 
 tural objects clearly and truly. We ought not 
 even to try too strenuously to give him the 
 power of representing them. That power may 
 be acquired, more or less, by exercises which 
 are no wise conducive to accuracy of sight: and, 
 vice versa , accuracy of sight may be gained by 
 exercises which in no wise conduce to ease of 
 representation. For instance, it very much 
 assists the power of drawing to spend many 
 hours in the practice of washing in flat tints; 
 but all this manual practice does not in the 
 least increase the student’s power of determining 
 what the tint of a given object actually is. He 
 would be more advanced in the knowledge of 
 the facts by a single hour of well-directed and 
 well -corrected effort, rubbing out and putting in 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 9 
 
 again, lightening, and darkening, and scratching, 
 and blotching, in patient endeavours to obtain 
 concordance with fact, issuing perhaps, after 
 all, in total destruction or unpresentability of 
 the drawing; but also in acute perception of the 
 things he has been attempting to copy in it. 
 Of course, there is always a vast temptation, 
 felt both by the master and student, to struggle 
 towards visible results, and obtain something 
 beautiful, creditable, or saleable, in way of 
 actual drawing: but the more I see of schools, 
 the more reason I see to look with doubt upon 
 those which produce too many showy and com¬ 
 plete works by the pupils. A showy work will 
 always be found, on stern examination of it, 
 to have been done by some conventional rule; 
 —some servile compliance with directions which 
 the student does not see the reason for; and 
 representation of truths which he has not him¬ 
 self perceived: the execution of such drawings 
 will be found monotonous and lifeless; their 
 light and shade specious and formal, but false. 
 A drawing which the pupil has learned much 
 in doing, is nearly always full of blunders and 
 mishaps, and it is highly necessary for the 
 formation of a truly public or universal school 
 
10 
 
 MR. RUSKIN’S 
 
 of Art, that the masters should not try to conceal 
 or anticipate such blunders, but only seek to 
 employ the pupil’s time so as to get the most 
 precious results for his understanding and his 
 heart, not for his hand. 
 
 For, observe, the best that you can do in 
 the production of drawing, or of draughtsman¬ 
 ship, must always be nothing in itself, unless 
 the whole life be given to it. An amateur’s 
 drawing, or a workman’s drawing—anybody’s 
 drawing but an artist’s, is always valueless in 
 itself. It may be, as you have just heard Mr. 
 Redgrave tell you, most precious as a memorial, 
 or as a gift, or as a means of noting useful 
 facts; but as Art , an amateur’s drawing is 
 always wholly worthless; and it ought to be 
 one of our great objects to make the pupil un¬ 
 derstand and feel that, and prevent his trying 
 to make his valueless work look, in some super¬ 
 ficial, hypocritical, eye-catching, penny-catch¬ 
 ing way, like work that is really good. 
 
 If therefore we have to do with pupils be¬ 
 longing to the higher ranks of life, our main 
 duty will be to make them good judges of Art, 
 rather than artists; for though I had a month 
 to speak to you, instead of an hour, time would 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 ii 
 
 fail me if I tried to trace the various ways in 
 which we suffer, nationally, for want of powers 
 of enlightened judgment of Art in our upper 
 and middle classes. Not that this judgment can 
 ever be obtained without discipline of the hand : 
 no man ever was a thorough judge of painting 
 who could not draw; but the drawing should 
 only be thought of as a means of fixing his 
 attention upon the subtleties of the Art put 
 before him, or of enabling him to record such 
 natural facts as are necessary for comparison 
 with it. I should also attach the greatest im¬ 
 portance to severe limitation of choice in the 
 examples submitted to him. To study one 
 good master till you understand him will teach 
 you more than a superficial acquaintance with 
 a thousand: power of criticism does not consist 
 in knowing the names or the manner of many 
 painters, but in discerning the excellence of a 
 few. 
 
 If, on the contrary, our teaching is addressed 
 more definitely to the operative, we need not 
 endeavour to render his powers of criticism 
 very acute. About many forms of existing 
 Art, the less he knows the better. His sensi¬ 
 bilities are to be cultivated with respect to 
 
12 
 
 MR. R US KIN’S 
 
 nature chiefly; and his imagination, if possible, 
 to be developed, even though somewhat to the 
 disadvantage of his judgment. It is better that 
 his work should be bold, than faultless: and 
 better that it should be delightful, than dis¬ 
 creet. 
 
 And this leads me to the second, or com¬ 
 mercial, question; namely, how to get from the 
 workman, after we have trained him, the best 
 and most precious work, so as to enable our¬ 
 selves to compete with foreign countries, or 
 develope new branches of commerce in our own. 
 
 Many of us, perhaps, are under the impres¬ 
 sion that plenty of schooling will do this; that 
 plenty of lecturing will do it ; that sending 
 abroad for patterns will do it; or that patience, 
 time, and money, and good-will may do it. 
 And, alas, none of these things, nor all of them 
 put together, will do it. If you want really 
 good work, such as will be acknowledged by 
 all the world, there is but one way of getting it, 
 and that is a difficult one. You may offer any 
 premium you choose for it—but you will find 
 it can’t be done for premiums. You may send 
 for patterns to the antipodes—but you will find 
 it can’t be done upon patterns. You may lecture 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 i3 
 
 on the principles of art to every school in the 
 kingdom—and you will find it can’t he done 
 upon principles. You may wait patiently for 
 the progress of the age—and you will find your 
 Art is unprogressive. Or you may set your¬ 
 selves impatiently to urge it by the inventions 
 of the age—and you will find your chariot of 
 Art entirely immovable either by crew or paddle. 
 There’s no way of getting good Art, I repeat, 
 but one—at once the simplest and most difficult 
 —namely, to enjoy it. Examine the history 
 of nations, and you will find this great fact clear 
 and unmistakeable on the front of it—that good 
 Art has only been produced by nations who 
 rejoiced in it; fed themselves with it, as if it 
 were bread; basked in it, as if it were sun¬ 
 shine ; shouted at the sight of it; danced with 
 the delight of it; quarrelled for it; fought for 
 it; starved for it; did, in fact, precisely the 
 opposite with it of what we want to do with it 
 —they made it to keep, and we to sell. 
 
 And truly this is a serious difficulty for us as 
 a commercial nation. The very primary motive 
 with which we set about the business, makes the 
 business impossible. The first and absolute con¬ 
 dition of the thing’s ever becoming saleable is, 
 
MR. BUSKIN*S 
 
 H 
 
 that we shall make it without wanting to sell it; 
 nay, rather with a determination not to sell it at 
 any price, if once we get hold of it. Try to 
 make your Art popular, cheap—a fair article for 
 your foreign market; and the foreign market 
 will always show something better. But make 
 it only to please yourselves, and even be re¬ 
 solved that you won’t let anybody else have any; 
 and forthwith you will find everybody else wants 
 it. And observe, the insuperable difficulty is 
 this making it to please ourselves, while we are 
 incapable of pleasure. Take, for instance, the 
 simplest example, which we can all understand, 
 in the art of dress. We have made a great fuss 
 about the patterns of silk lately; wanting to vie 
 with Lyons, and make a Paris of London. 
 Well, we may try for ever: so long as we don’t 
 really enjoy silk patterns, we shall never get 
 any. And we don’t enjoy them. Of course, 
 all ladies like their dresses to sit well, and be 
 becoming ; but of real enjoyment of the beauty 
 of the silk, for the silk’s own sake, I find none; 
 for the test of that enj oyment is, that they would 
 like it also to sit well, and look well, on some¬ 
 body else. The pleasure of being well dressed, 
 or even of seeing well-dressed people—for I will 
 
IN A TIG URAL ADDRESS. 
 
 *5 
 
 suppose in my fair hearers that degree of un¬ 
 selfishness—he that pleasure great or small, is 
 quite a different thing from delight in the beauty 
 and play of the silken folds and colours them¬ 
 selves, for their own gorgeousness or grace. 
 
 I have just had a remarkable proof of the 
 total want of this feeling in the modern mind. 
 I was staying part of this summer in Turin, for 
 the purpose of studying one of the Paul Ve¬ 
 roneses there—the presentation of the Queen of 
 Sheba to Solomon. Well, one of the most 
 notable characters in this picture is the splen¬ 
 dour of its silken dresses: and, in particular, 
 there was a piece of white brocade, with designs 
 upon it in gold, which it was one of my chief 
 objects in stopping at Turin to copy. You may, 
 perhaps, be surprised at this; but I must just 
 note in passing, that I share this weakness of 
 enjoying dress patterns with all good students 
 and all good painters. It doesn’t matter what 
 school they belong to—Fra Angelico, Perugino, 
 John Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoret, Ve¬ 
 ronese, Leonardo da Vinci—no matter how they 
 differ in other respects, all of them like dress 
 patterns; and what is more, the nobler the 
 painter is, the surer he is to do his patterns well. 
 
6 
 
 MR. RTJSKIN’S 
 
 I stayed then, as I say, to make a study of 
 this white brocade. It generally happens in 
 public galleries that the best pictures are the 
 worst placed: and this Veronese is not only 
 hung at considerable height above the eye, but 
 over a door, through which, however, as all the 
 visitors to the gallery must pass, they cannot 
 easily overlook the picture, though they would 
 find great difficulty in examining it. Beside 
 this door, I had a stage erected for my work, 
 which being of some height and rather in a 
 corner, enabled me to observe, without being 
 observed myself, the impression made by the 
 picture on the various visitors. It seemed to 
 me that if ever a work of art caught popular 
 attention, this ought to do so. It was of very 
 large size; of brilliant colour, and of agreeable 
 subject. There are about twenty figures in it, 
 the principal ones being life size: that of Solo¬ 
 mon, though in the shade, is by far the most 
 perfect conception of the young king in his 
 pride of wisdom and beauty which I know in 
 the range of Italian art; the queen is one of the 
 loveliest of Veronese’s female figures; all the 
 accessories are full of grace and imagination; 
 and the finish of the whole so perfect that 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 
 one clay I was upwards of two hours vainly 
 trying to render, with perfect accuracy, the 
 curves of two leaves of the brocaded silk. The 
 English travellers used to walk through the 
 room in considerable numbers; and were in¬ 
 variably directed to the picture by their laquais 
 de place , if they missed seeing it themselves. 
 And to this painting—in which it took me six 
 weeks to examine rightly two figures—I found 
 that on an average, the English traveller who 
 was doing Italy conscientiously, and seeing 
 everything u as he ought,” gave about half 
 or three quarters of a minute; but the flying 
 or fashionable traveller, who came to do as 
 much as he could in a given time, never gave 
 more than a single glance, most of such people 
 turning aside instantly to a bad landscape hung 
 on the right, containing a vigorously painted 
 white wall, and an opaque green moat. What 
 especially impressed me, however, was that 
 none of the ladies ever stopped to look at the 
 dresses in the Veronese. Certainly, they were 
 far more beautiful than any in the shops in the 
 great square, yet no one ever noticed them. 
 Sometimes when any nice, sharp-looking, bright¬ 
 eyed girl came into the room, I used to watch 
 
i8 
 
 MR. RTF SKIN'S 
 
 her all the way, thinking — u Come, at least 
 you'll see what the Queen of Sheba has got on.” 
 But no—on she would come carelessly, with a 
 little toss of the head, apparently signifying 
 u nothing in this room worth looking at—except 
 myself,” and so trip through the door, and away. 
 
 The fact is, we don’t care for pictures: in very 
 deed we don’t. The Academy exhibition is a 
 thing to talk of and to amuse vacant hours; 
 those who are rich amongst us buy a painting 
 or two, for mixed reasons, sometimes to fill the 
 corner of a passage—sometimes to help the 
 drawing-room talk before dinner—sometimes 
 because the painter is fashionable—occasionally 
 because he is poor—not unfrequently that we 
 may have a collection of specimens of painting, 
 as we have specimens of minerals or butterflies 
 —and in the best and rarest case of all, because 
 we have really, as we call it, taken a fancy to 
 the picture; meaning the same sort of fancy 
 which one would take to a pretty arm-chair or 
 a newly-shaped decanter. But as for real love 
 of the picture, and joy of it when we have got 
 it, I do not believe it is felt by one in a thousand. 
 
 I am afraid this apathy of ours will not be 
 easily conquered; but even supposing it should, 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 J 9 
 
 and that we should begin to enjoy pictures 
 properly, and that the supply of good ones in¬ 
 creased, as in that case it would increase—then 
 conies another question. Perhaps some of my 
 hearers this evening may occasionally have 
 heard it stated of me that I am rather apt to 
 contradict myself. I hope I am exceedingly 
 apt to do so. I never met with a question yet, 
 of any importance, which did not need, for the 
 right solution of it, at least one positive and 
 one negative answer, like an equation of the 
 second degree. Mostly, matters of any con¬ 
 sequence are three-sided, or four-sided, or poly¬ 
 gonal ; and the trotting round a polygon is 
 severe work for people any way stiff in their 
 opinions. For myself, I am never satisfied 
 that I have handled a subject properly, till I 
 have contradicted myself at least three times: 
 but once must do for this evening. I have just 
 said that there is no chance of our getting good 
 Art unless we delight in it: next I say, and 
 just as positively, that there is no chance of our 
 getting good Art unless we resist our delight 
 in it. We must love it first, and restrain our 
 love for it afterwards. 
 
 This sounds strange; and yet I assure you 
 c2 
 
20 
 
 MR. R US KIN’S 
 
 it is true. In fact, whenever anything does 
 not sound strange, you may generally doubt 
 its being true; for all truth is wonderful. But 
 take an instance in physical matters, of the 
 same kind of contradiction. Suppose you were 
 explaining to a young student in astronomy 
 how the earth was kept steady in its orbit; you 
 would have to state to him—would you not? 
 —that the earth always had a tendency to fall 
 to the sun; and that also it always had a ten¬ 
 dency to fly away from the sun. These are two 
 precisely contrary statements for him to digest 
 at his leisure, before he can understand how 
 the earth moves. Now, in like manner, when 
 Art is set in its true and serviceable course, 
 it moves under the luminous attraction of plea¬ 
 sure on the one side, and with a stout moral 
 purpose of going about some useful business on 
 the other. If the artist works without delight, 
 he passes away into space, and perishes of cold: 
 if he works only for delight, he falls into the 
 sun, and extinguishes himself in ashes. On 
 the whole, this last is the fate, I do not say the 
 most to be feared, but which Art has generally 
 hitherto suffered, and which the great nations 
 of the earth have suffered with it. 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 21 
 
 For, while most distinctly you may perceive 
 in past history that Art has never been pro¬ 
 duced, except by nations who took pleasure in 
 it, just as assuredly, and even more plainly, 
 you may perceive that Art has always destroyed 
 the power and life of those who pursued it for 
 pleasure only. Surely this fact must have 
 struck you as you glanced at the career of the 
 great nations of the earth: surely it must have 
 occurred to you as a point for serious question¬ 
 ing, how far, even in our own days, we were 
 wise in promoting the advancement of pleasures 
 which appeared as yet only to have corrupted 
 the souls and numbed the strength of those who 
 attained to them. I have been complaining 
 of Englaud that she despises the Arts; but I 
 might, with still more appearance of justice, 
 complain that she does not rather dread them 
 than despise. For, what has been the source 
 of the ruin of nations since the world began? 
 Has it been plague, or famine, earthquake- 
 shock or volcano-flame? None of these ever, 
 prevailed against a great people, so as to make 
 their name pass from the earth. In every 
 period and place of national decline, you will 
 find other causes than these at work to bring 
 
22 
 
 MR. RUSK IN’S 
 
 it about, namely, luxury, effeminacy, love of 
 pleasure, fineness in Art, ingenuity in enjoy¬ 
 ment. What is the main lesson which, as far 
 as we seek any in our classical reading, we 
 gather for our youth from ancient history? 
 Surely this—that simplicity of life, of language, 
 and of manners gives strength to a nation; and 
 that luxuriousness of life, subtlety of language, 
 and smoothness of manners bring weakness and 
 destruction on a nation. While men possess 
 little and desire less, they remain brave and 
 noble: while they are scornful of all the arts 
 of luxury, and are in the sight of other nations 
 as barbarians, their swords are irresistible and 
 their sway illimitable: but let them become 
 sensitive to the refinements of taste, and quick 
 in the capacities of pleasure, and that instant 
 the fingers that had grasped the iron rod fail 
 from the golden sceptre. You cannot charge 
 me with any exaggeration in this matter; it 
 is impossible to state the truth too strongly, 
 or as too universal. For ever you will see the 
 rude and simple nation at once more virtuous 
 and more victorious than one practised in the 
 arts. Watch how the Lydian is overthrown by 
 the Persian; the Persian by the Athenian; the 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 23 
 
 Athenian by the Spartan; then the whole of 
 polished Greece by the rougher Roman; the 
 Roman, in his turn refined, only to be crushed 
 by the Goth: and at the turning point of the 
 middle ages, the liberty of Europe first asserted, 
 the virtues of Christianity best practised, and 
 its doctrines best attested, by a handful of 
 mountain shepherds, without art, without liter¬ 
 ature, almost without a language, yet remaining 
 unconquered in the midst of the Teutonic 
 chivalry, and uncorrupted amidst the hierarchies 
 of Rome.* 
 
 I was strangely struck by this great fact 
 during the course of a journey last summer 
 among the northern vales of Switzerland. My 
 mind had been turned to the subject of the 
 ultimate effects of Art on national mind before 
 I left England, and I went straight to the chief 
 fields of Swiss history: first to the centre of 
 
 * I ought perhaps to remind the reader that this statement 
 refers to two different societies among the Alps; the Waldenses 
 in the 13th, and the people of the Forest Cantons in the 14th 
 and following centuries. Protestants are perhaps apt some¬ 
 times to forget that the virtues of these mountaineers were 
 shown in connection with vital forms of opposing religions; 
 and that the patriots of Schwytz and Uri were as zealous 
 Roman Catholics as they were good soldiers. We have to lay 
 to their charge the death of Zuinglius as well as of Gessler. 
 
ME. BUSKINS 
 
 H 
 
 her feudal power, Hapsburg, the hawk’s nest 
 from which the Swiss Rodolph rose to found 
 the Austrian empire; and then to the heart of 
 her republicanism, that little glen of Morgarten 
 where first in the history of Europe the shep¬ 
 herd’s staff prevailed over the soldier’s spear. 
 And it was somewhat depressing to me to find, 
 as day by day I found more certainly, that 
 this people which first asserted the liberties of 
 Europe, and first conceived the idea of equitable 
 laws, was in all the—shall I call them the 
 slighter, or the higher ?—sensibilities of the 
 human mind, utterly deficient; and not only 
 had remained from its earliest ages till now, 
 without poetry, without Art, and without music, 
 except a mere modulated cry; but, as far as 
 I could judge from the rude efforts of their 
 early monuments, would have been, at the time 
 of their greatest national probity and power, in¬ 
 capable of producing good poetry or Art under 
 any circumstances of education. 
 
 X say, this was a sad thing for me to find. 
 And then, to mend the matter, I went straight 
 over into Italy, and came at once upon a curious 
 instance of the patronage of Art, of the character 
 that usually inclines most to such patronage, 
 and of the consequences thereof. 
 
IN A UG URAL ADDRESS. 25 
 
 From Morgarten and Grutli, I intended to 
 have crossed to the Vaudois Valleys, to examine 
 the shepherd character there; but on the way 
 I had to pass through Turin, where unex¬ 
 pectedly I found the Paul Veroneses, one of 
 which, as I told you just now, stayed me at 
 once for six weeks. Naturally, enough, one 
 asked how these beautiful Veroneses came there; 
 and found they had been commissioned by 
 Cardinal Maurice of Savoy. Worthy Cardinal, 
 I thought: that’s what Cardinals were made 
 for. However, going a little farther in the 
 gallery, one comes upon four very graceful 
 pictures by Albani—these also commissioned 
 by the Cardinal, and commissioned with special 
 directions, according to the Cardinal’s fancy. 
 Four pictures, to be illustrative of the four 
 elements. 
 
 One of the most curious things in the mind 
 of the people of that century is their delight in 
 these four elements, and in the four seasons. 
 They had hardly any other idea of decorating 
 a room, or of choosing a subject for a picture, 
 than by some renewed reference to fire and 
 water, or summer and winter; nor were ever 
 tired of hearing that summer came after spring, 
 
2 6 
 
 MR. RUS KIM’S 
 
 and that air was not earth, nntil these inter¬ 
 esting pieces of information got finally and 
 poetically expressed in that well-known piece 
 of elegant English conversation about the 
 weather, Thomson’s u Seasons.” So the Car¬ 
 dinal, not appearing to have any better idea 
 than the popular one, orders the four elements; 
 but thinking that the elements pure would be 
 slightly dull, he orders them, in one way or 
 another, to be mixed up with Cupids; to have, 
 in his own words, “una copiosa quantita di 
 Amorini.” Albani supplied the Cardinal ac¬ 
 cordingly with Cupids in clusters: they hang 
 in the sky like bunches of cherries; and leap 
 out of the sea like flying fish; grow out of the 
 earth in fairy rings ; and explode out of the fire 
 like squibs. No work whatsoever is done in 
 any of the four elements, but by the Cardinal’s 
 Cupids. They are ploughing the earth with 
 their arrows ; fishing in the sea with their bow¬ 
 strings; driving the clouds with their breath; 
 and fanning the fire with their wings. A 
 few beautiful nymphs are assisting them here 
 and there in pearl-fishing, flower-gathering, and 
 other such branches of graceful industry; the 
 moral of the whole being, that the sea was 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 27 
 
 made for its pearls ; the earth for its flowers, and 
 all the world for pleasure 
 
 Well, the Cardinal, this great encourager of 
 the arts, having these industrial and social 
 theories, carried them out in practice, as you 
 may perhaps remember, by obtaining a dispen¬ 
 sation from the Pope to marry his own niece, 
 and building a villa for her on one of the slopes 
 of the pretty hills which rise to the east of the 
 city. The villa which he built is now one of 
 the principal objects of interest to the traveller 
 as an example of Italian domestic architecture: 
 to me, during my stay in the city, it was much 
 more than an object of interest; for its deserted 
 gardens were by much the pleasantest place I 
 could find for walking or thinking in, in the 
 hot summer afternoons. 
 
 I say thinking, for these gardens often gave 
 me a good deal to think about. They are, as 
 I told you, on the slope of the hill above the 
 city, to the east; commanding, therefore, the 
 view over it and beyond it, westward—a view 
 which, perhaps, of all those that can be obtained 
 north of the Apennines, gives the most com¬ 
 prehensive idea of the nature of Italy, con¬ 
 sidered as one great country. If you glance 
 
28 
 
 MR. R US KIN’S 
 
 at the map, you will observe that Turin is 
 placed in the centre of the crescent which the 
 Alps form round the basin of Piedmont; it is 
 within ten miles of the foot of the mountains 
 at the nearest point; and from that point the 
 chain extends half round the city in one un¬ 
 broken Moorish crescent, forming three-fourths 
 of a circle from the Col de Tende to the St. 
 Gothard ; that is to say, just two hundred miles 
 of the Alps, as the bird flies. I don’t speak 
 rhetorically or carelessly; I speak as I ought 
 to speak here—with mathematical precision. 
 Take the scale on your map; measure fifty 
 miles of it accurately; try that measure from 
 the Col de Tende to the St. Gothard, and you 
 will find that four chords of fifty miles will 
 not quite reach to the two extremities of the 
 curve. 
 
 You see, then, from this spot, the plain of 
 Piedmont, on the north and south, literally as 
 far as the eye can reach; so that the plain 
 terminates as the sea does, with a level blue 
 line, only tufted with woods instead of waves, 
 and crowded with towers of cities instead of 
 ships. Then, in the luminous air beyond and 
 behind this blue horizon-line, stand, as it were, 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 29 
 
 the shadows of mountains, they themselves 
 dark, for the southern slopes of the Alps of 
 the Lago Maggiore and Bellinzona are all with¬ 
 out snow; "but the light of the unseen snow- 
 fields, lying level behind the visible peaks, is 
 sent up with strange reflection upon the clouds; 
 an everlasting light of calm Aurora in the 
 north. Then, higher and higher around the 
 approaching darkness of the plain, rise the 
 central chains, not as on the Switzer’s side, 
 a recognizable group and following of succes¬ 
 sive and separate hills, but a wilderness of 
 jagged peaks, cast in passionate and fierce pro¬ 
 fusion along the circumference of heaven; pre¬ 
 cipice behind precipice, and gulph beyond gulph, 
 filled with the flaming of the sunset, and forming 
 mighty channels for the flowings of the clouds, 
 which roll up against them out of the vast 
 Italian plain, forced together by the narrowing 
 crescent, and breaking up at last against the 
 Alpine wall in towers of spectral spray; or 
 sweeping up its ravines with long moans of 
 complaining thunder. Out from between the 
 cloudy pillars, as they pass, emerge for ever the 
 great battlements of the memorable and per¬ 
 petual hills: Yiso, with her shepherd-witnesses 
 
30 
 
 MR. R US KIN’S 
 
 to ancient faith; Rocca-melone, the highest 
 place of Alpine pilgrimage;* Iseran, who shed 
 her burial sheets of snow about the march of 
 Hannibal; Cenis, who shone with her glacier 
 light on the descent of Charlemain; Paradiso, 
 who watched with her opposite crest the stoop 
 of the French eagle to Marengo; and under¬ 
 neath all these, lying in her soft languor, this 
 tender Italy, lapped in dew£ of sleep, or more 
 than sleep—one knows not if it is trance, from 
 which morning shall yet roll the blinding mists 
 away, or if the fair shadows of her quietude are 
 indeed the shades of purple death. And, lifted 
 
 * The summit of Rocca-melone is the sharp peak seen from 
 Turin on the right hand of the gorge of the Cenis, dominant 
 oyer the low projecting pyramid of the hill called by de 
 Saussure Montagne de Musinet. Rocca-melone rises to a 
 height of 11,000 feet above the sea, and its peak is a place of 
 pilgrimage to this day, though it seems temporarily to have 
 ceased to he so in the time of de Saussure, who thus speaks 
 of it: 
 
 “ II y a eu pendant long-terns sur cette cime, une petite 
 chapelle avec une image de Notre Dame qui etoit en grande 
 veneration dans le pays, et ou un grand nombre de gens alloient 
 au mois d’ aout en procession, de Suze et des environs ; mais 
 le sentier qui conduit a cette chapelle est si etroit et si scabreux 
 qu’ il n’y avoit presque pas d’ annees qu’ il n’y perit du 
 monde; la fatigue et la rarete de Y air saisissoient ceux qui 
 avoient plutot consulte leur devotion que leurs forces; ils 
 tomberent en defaillance, et de la dans le precipice.” 
 
IN A TIG URAL ADDRESS. 
 
 3i 
 
 a little above this solemn plain, and looking 
 beyond it to its snowy ramparts, vainly guardian, 
 stands this palace dedicate to pleasure, the whole 
 legend of Italy’s past history written before 
 it by the finger of God, written as with an iron 
 pen upon the rock for ever, on all those fronting 
 walls of reproachful Alp; blazoned in gold of 
 lightning upon the clouds that still open and 
 close their unsealed scrolls in heaven; painted 
 in purple and scarlet upon the mighty missal 
 pages of sunset after sunset, spread vainly be¬ 
 fore a nation’s eyes for a nation’s prayer. So 
 stands this palace of pleasure; desolate as it 
 deserves—desolate in smooth corridor and glit¬ 
 tering chamber—desolate in pleached walk and 
 planted bower—desolate in that worst and bit¬ 
 terest abandonment which leaves no light of 
 memory. No ruins are here of walls rent by 
 war, and falling above their defenders into 
 mounds of graves: no remnants are here of 
 chapel-altar, or temple-porch, left shattered or 
 silent by the power of some purer worship : 
 no vestiges are here of sacred hearth and sweet 
 homestead, left lonely through vicissitudes of 
 fate and heaven-sent sorrow. Nothing is here 
 but the vain apparellings of pride sunk into dis- 
 
32 
 
 MR. RUSKIN'S 
 
 honour ; and vain appanages of delight now no 
 more delightsome. The. hill-waters, that once 
 flowed and flashed in the garden fountains, now 
 trickle sadly through the weeds that encumber 
 their basins, with a sound as of tears: the creep¬ 
 ing, insidious, neglected flowers weave their 
 burning nets about the white marble of the 
 balustrades, and rend them slowly, block from 
 block, and stone from stone : the thin, sweet- 
 scented leaves tremble along the old masonry 
 joints as if with palsy, at every breeze; and the 
 dark lichens, golden and grey, make the foot¬ 
 fall silent in the path’s centre. 
 
 And day by day as I walked there, the same 
 sentence seem whispered by every shaking leaf, 
 and every dying echo of garden and chamber— 
 
 u Thus end all the arts of life, only in death ; 
 and thus issue all the gifts of man, only in his 
 dishonour, when they are pursued or possessed 
 in the service of pleasure only.” 
 
 This then is the great enigma of Art History, 
 you must not follow Art without pleasure, nor 
 must you follow it for the sake of pleasure. 
 And the solution of that enigma is simply this 
 fact; that wherever Art has been followed only 
 for the sake of luxury or delight, it has con- 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 33 
 
 tributed, and largely contributed, to bring about 
 the destruction of the nation practising it: but 
 wherever Art has been used also to teach any 
 truth, or supposed truth—religious, moral, or 
 natural—there it has elevated the nation prac¬ 
 tising it, and itself with the nation. 
 
 Thus the Art of Greece rose, and did service 
 to the people, so long as it was to them the 
 earnest interpreter of a religion they believed 
 in: the Arts of northern sculpture and archi¬ 
 tecture rose, as interpreters of Christian legend 
 and doctrine: the Art of painting in Italy, not 
 only as religious, but also mainly as expressive 
 of truths of moral philosophy, and powerful in 
 pure human portraiture. The only great painters 
 in our schools of painting in England have either 
 been of portrait—Eeynolds and Gainsborough; 
 of the philosophy of social life—Hogarth; or of 
 the facts of nature in landscape—Wilson and 
 Turner. In all these cases, if I had time, I 
 could show you that the success of the painter 
 depended on his desire to convey a truth, rather 
 than to produce a merely beautiful picture; that 
 is to say, to get a likeness of a man, or of a 
 place; to get some moral principle rightly stated, 
 or some historical character rightly described, 
 
34 
 
 MK BXTSKIN'S 
 
 rather than merely to give pleasure to the eyes. 
 Compare the feeling with which a Moorish 
 architect decorated an arch of the Alhambra, 
 with that of Hogarth painting the u Marriage 
 a la mode,” or of Wilkie painting the u Chelsea 
 Pensioners/’ and you will at once feel the differ¬ 
 ence between Art pursued for pleasure only, 
 and for the sake of some useful principle or im¬ 
 pression. 
 
 But what you might not so easily discern is, 
 that even when painting does appear to have 
 been pursued for pleasure only, if ever you find 
 it rise to any noble level, you will also find that 
 a stern search after truth has been at the root 
 of its nobleness. You may fancy, perhaps, that 
 Titian, Veronese, and Tintoret were painters for 
 the sake of pleasure only: but in reality they 
 were the only painters who ever sought entirely 
 to master, and who did entirely master, the 
 truths of light and shade as associated with 
 colour, in the noblest of all physical created 
 things, the human form. They were the only 
 men who ever painted the human body; all 
 other painters of the great schools are mere 
 anatomical draughtsmen compared to them; 
 rather makers of maps of the body, than painters 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 35 
 
 of it. The Venetians alone, by a toil almost 
 superhuman, succeeded at last in obtaining a 
 power almost superhuman; and were able finally 
 to paint the highest visible work of God with 
 unexaggerated structure, undegraded colour, and 
 unaffected gesture. It seems little to say this; 
 but I assure you it is much to have done this— 
 so much, that no other men but the Venetians 
 ever did it: none of them ever painted the 
 human body without in some degree caricaturing 
 the anatomy, forcing the action, or degrading 
 the hue. 
 
 Now, therefore, the sum of all is, that you 
 who wish to encourage Art in England have to 
 do two things with it: you must delight in it, 
 in the first place; and you must get it to serve 
 some serious work, in the second place. I don’t 
 mean by serious, necessarily moral: all that I 
 mean by serious is in some way or other useful, 
 not merely selfish, careless, or indolent. I had 
 indeed intended, before closing my address, to 
 have traced out a few of the directions in which, 
 as it seems to me, Art may be seriously and 
 practically serviceable to us in the career of 
 civilization. I had hoped to show you how 
 many of the great phenomena of nature still 
 
36 
 
 MB. BUSKIN'S 
 
 remained unrecorded by it, for us to record; 
 how many of the historical monuments of Europe 
 were perishing without memorial, for the want 
 of but a little honest, simple, laborious, loving 
 draughtsmanship: how many of the most im¬ 
 pressive historical events of the day failed of 
 teaching us half of what they were meant to teach, 
 for want of painters to represent them faithfully, 
 instead of fancifully, and with historical truth 
 for their aim, instead of national self-glorification. 
 I had hoped to show you how many of the best 
 impulses of the heart were lost in frivolity or 
 sensuality, for want of purer beauty to con¬ 
 template, and of noble thoughts to associate 
 with the fervour of hallowed human passions; 
 how, finally, a great part of the vital power of 
 our religious faith was lost in us, for want of 
 such art as would realize in some rational, pro¬ 
 bable, believable way, those events of sacred 
 history which, as they visibly and intelligibly 
 occurred, may also be visibly and intelligibly 
 represented. But all this I dare not do yet. 
 I felt, as I thought over these things, that the 
 time was not yet come for their declaration: the 
 time will come for it, and I believe soon; but 
 as yet, the man would only lay himself open 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 37 
 
 to the charge of vanity, of imagination, and 
 of idle fondness of hope, who should venture 
 to trace in words the course of the higher 
 blessings which the Arts may have yet in 
 store for mankind. As yet there is no need 
 to do so: all that we have to plead for is an 
 earnest and straightforward exertion in those 
 courses of study which are opened to us day 
 by day, believing only that they are to be 
 followed gravely and for grave purposes, as by 
 men, and not by children. I appeal, finally, 
 to all those who are to become the pupils of 
 these schools, to keep clear of the notion of 
 following Art as dilettantism : it ought to delight 
 you, as your reading delights you—but you 
 never think of your reading as dilettantism. It 
 ought to delight you, as your studies of physical 
 science delight you—but you don’t call physical 
 science dilettantism. If you are determined 
 only to think of Art as a play or a pleasure, 
 give it up at once: you will do no good to 
 yourselves, and you will degrade the pursuit 
 in the sight of others. Better, infinitely better, 
 that you should never enter a picture gallery, 
 than that you should enter only to saunter and 
 to smile: better, infinitely better, that you should 
 
38 
 
 MR. RUSK IN’S 
 
 never handle a pencil at all, than handle it only 
 for the sake of complacency in your small dex¬ 
 terity : better, infinitely better, that you should 
 be wholly uninterested in pictures, and un¬ 
 informed respecting them, than that you should 
 just know enough to detect blemishes in great 
 works,—to give a colour of reasonableness to 
 presumption, and an appearance of acuteness to 
 misunderstanding. Above all, I would plead 
 for this so far as the teaching of these schools 
 may be addressed to the junior Members of the 
 University. Men employed in any kind of 
 manual labour, by which they must live, are 
 not likely to take up the notion that they can 
 learn any other art for amusement only; but 
 amateurs are : and it is of the highest importance, 
 nay, it is just the one thing of all importance, 
 to show them what drawing really means; and 
 not so much to teach them to produce a good 
 work themselves, as to know it when they see 
 it done by others. Good work, in the stern 
 sense of the word, as I before said, no mere 
 amateur can do; and good work, in any sense, 
 that is to say, profitable work for himself or for 
 any one else, he can only do by being made 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 39 
 
 in the beginning to see what is possible for him, 
 and what not;—what is accessible, and what 
 not; and by having the majesty and sternness 
 of the everlasting laws of fact set before him 
 in their infinitude. It is no matter for appalling 
 him : the man is great already who is made well 
 capable of being appalled; nor do w~e ever wisely 
 hope, nor truly understand, till we are humili¬ 
 ated by our hope, and awestruck by our un¬ 
 derstanding. Nay, I will go farther than this, 
 and say boldly, that what you have mainly 
 to teach the young men here is, not so much 
 what they can do, as what they cannot—to 
 make them see how much there is in nature 
 which cannot be imitated, and how much in 
 man which cannot be emulated. He only can 
 be truly said to be educated in Art to whom 
 all his work is only a feeble sign of glories 
 which he cannot convey, and a feeble means 
 of measuring, with ever-enlarging admiration, 
 the great and untraversable gulpli which God 
 has set between the great and the 'Common 
 intelligences of mankind: and all the triumphs 
 of Art which man can commonly achieve are 
 only truly crowned by pure delight in natural 
 
4 o 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 scenes themselves, and by the sacred and self- 
 forgetful veneration which can be nobly abashed, 
 and tremblingly exalted, in the presence of 
 a human spirit greater than his own. 
 
 J. PALMER, PRINTER, CAMBRIDGE.