No. 647. 
 
 15 Cents. 
 
 ■>v TRI-WEEKLY PUBLICATION OF THE BEST CURREt^Y ft STANDARD LITERM'JKE 
 
 Vol. 12. No. 617. Sept. {>, 1885. Annual Subscription, UO. 
 
 ARATRA 
 
 PENTELICI 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 Author of “ MODERN PAINTERS,” 
 OF VENICE ” Etc. 
 
 STONES 
 
 Entered at the Post Office, N. Y., as sscond-class matter. 
 Copyright. 1884, by John W. Lovkll Co. 
 
 ■ john-W* Lovell- coapany 
 
 
 I£K E R 
 
 
 MATCHLESS PIAKTOiS . 
 
 MATCHLESS ^ UN|QN SQUARE N . y.J 
 
IkltOW Hll Momcn BY THESE PRESENTS, That 
 while sundfy and almost countless imitations of and substitutes for 
 Enoch Morgan’s Sons Sapolio are offered by unscrupulous parties, who 
 do not hesitate to represent them as the original article, 
 
 Gbte llnbenture WITNESSETH, That there is but one 
 Sapolio, to wit:— the original article manufactured by the E 
 Morgan’s Sons Co., of New Yprk, 
 i in popularity^ and widely known 
 not only through its own merits, 
 but through the many original 
 modes which have been adopted 
 to introduce it to the attention of 
 the public. Imitation is the sin- 
 cerest flattery. Cheapness is a 
 poor proof of quality. Cheap im- 
 itations are doubly doubtful. The 
 most critical communities are the 
 mcst liberal purchasers of Sapolio 
 which they invariably find to be 
 worth the price they pay for it. 
 
 In Witness Whereof, we hereby 
 affix a great seal and our cor- 
 porate title. 
 
 ENOCH MORGAN’S SONS CO. 
 
 FOR MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS 
 
 A Manual of Hygiene for Women and the Household. Illustrated. 
 
 By Mrs. E. G. Cook, M.D. 
 
 i 2mo, extra cloth, - - - ~ ~ - $1.50 
 
 This new work has already received strong words of commendation 
 from competent judges who have had the opportunity of examining it, 
 :as the following will show : 
 
 Commonwealth, Boston, Mass. 
 
 “This is a sensible book, written in a clear, plain, yet delicate style ; a book which 
 |o ught to be in the hands of all women and girls old enough to need its counsel. It treats 
 Jof topics on which hinge much of the world’s woe, because of silent suffering, pale 
 cheeks and broken constitutions.” 
 
 Enquirer, Philadelphia, Penn. 
 
 “ It is a plain sensible talk on subjects usually considered too delicate to be either 
 spoken or written about, but here put in a way that cannot offend anybody. It is a book 
 that every mother should read and then put in her daughter’s hand.” 
 
 N. Y. Times. 
 
 “ A book of sound advice to women.” 
 
 LADIES WANTED to act as Agents, to whom liberal terms 
 will be given. Copies sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of price, $1.50. 
 
 Address 
 
 HYGIENIC PUBLISHING CO., 917 Broadway, 
 New York, or 482 Van Buren Street, 
 Milwaukee, WiSn 
 
 unsuipasssed in quality, u 
 
If you appreciate a Corset that will neither break down nor roll up 
 in wear, 
 
 TRY RAID’S CORSETS. 
 
 If you value health and comfort, 
 
 WEAR BALL’S CORSETS. 
 
 If you desire a Corset that fits the first day you wear it, and needs 
 no “breaking in,” 
 
 BUY BALL’S CORSETS. 
 
 If you desire a Corset that yields with every motion of the body, 
 EXAMINE BALL’S CORSETS. 
 
 If you want a perfect fit and support without compression, 
 
 USE BALL’S CORSETS. 
 
 Owing to their peculiar construction it is impossible to break steels in 
 Ball’s Corsets. 
 
 The Elastic Sections in Ball’s Corsets contain no rubber, and are war- 
 ranted to out-wear the Corset. 
 
 Every pair sold with the following guarantee : 
 
 “if not perfectly satisfactory in every respect after three 
 weeks' trial, the money paid for them will be refunded (by the 
 dealer), Soiled or Unsoiled 
 
 The wonderful popularity of Ball’s Corsets has Induced rival manufacturers 
 to imitate them. If you want a Corset that will give perfect satisfaction, 
 inside on purchasing one marked, Patented Feb. 22, 1881. 
 
 And see that the name BALL is on the Box. 
 
 For Sale by all Loading Dry Goods Dealers. 
 
JOHN RUSKIN’S WORKS 
 
 - CONTAINED IN LOVELL’S LIBRARY. 
 
 NO. PRICE, 
 
 497 Sesame and Lilies, ...» 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 IOC. 
 
 505 Crown of Wild Olives, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 IOC. 
 
 510 Ethics of the Dust, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 IOC. 
 
 516 Queen of the Air, .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 IOC. 
 
 521 Seven Lamps of Architecture, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 20c. 
 
 537 Lectures on Architecture and Painting, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 15c. 
 
 542 Stones of Venice, 3 Vols., each 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 25c. 
 
 565 Modern Painters, Vol. I, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 20c. 
 
 572 Modern Painters, Vol. II, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 20a 
 
 57 7 Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, . . 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 20c. 
 
 589 Modern Painters, Vol. IV, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 25c. 
 
 608 Modern Painters, Vol. V, 
 
 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 25c. 
 
 598 King of the Golden River, 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 IOC. 
 
 623 Unto this Last, ..... 
 
 
 
 
 
 « 
 
 IOC. 
 
 627 Munera Pulveris, .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 15c. 
 
 637 “A Joy Forever," .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 « 
 
 15c. 
 
 639 The Pleasures of England,, 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 IOC. 
 
 642 The Two Paths, ..... 
 
 
 
 
 
 < 
 
 20c, 
 
 644 Lectures on Art, .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 15c. 
 
 650 Time and Tide, ..... 
 
 
 
 
 
 « 
 
 15c. 
 
 665 Mornings in Florence, 
 
 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 15c. 
 
 668 St. Mark’s Rest, ..... 
 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 I 5 C - 
 
 670 Deucalion, ..... 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 15c. 
 
 673 Art of England, ..... 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 15c. 
 
 676 Eagle’s Nest, . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 15c. 
 
 677 Aratra Pentelici, ..... 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 15c. 
 
 679 ‘ 4 Our Fathers have Told Us," . 
 
 
 
 
 
 D 
 
 15c. 
 
 682 Proserpina, ...... 
 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 15c. 
 
 685 Val d’Arno, . .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 f 
 
 15c. 
 
 688 Loye’s Meinie, ..... 
 
 
 ft 
 
 
 
 > 
 
 * 5 e » 
 
 TROW’S 
 
 PRJWTfNG AND BOOKBINDING COWPANT, 
 NEW YORK, 
 

 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface 
 
 PAGE 
 
 . 5 
 
 LECTURE 
 
 I. Of the Division of Arts 
 
 II. Idolatry 
 
 III. Imagination 
 
 • ' 
 
 IV. Likeness 
 
 V. Structure 
 
 VI. The School of Athens 
 
 r 
 
 9 
 
 26 
 
 44 
 
 72 
 
 94 
 
 117 
 
 jf £ ■ * 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I must pray the readers of the following Lectures to re- 
 member that the duty at present laid on me at Oxford is of 
 an exceptionally complex character. Directly, it is to awaken 
 the interest of my pupils in a study which they have hitherto 
 found unattractive, and imagined to be useless ; but more 
 imperatively, it is to define the principles by which the study 
 itself should be guided ; and to vindicate their security 
 against the doubts with which frequent discussion has lately 
 encumbered a subject which all think themselves competent 
 to discuss. The possibility of such vindication is, of course, 
 implied in the original consent of the Universities to the es- 
 tablishment of Art Professorships. Nothing can be .made an 
 element of education of wdiich it is impossible to determine 
 whether it is ill done or well ; and the clear assertion that 
 there is a canon law in formative Art is, at this time, a more 
 important function of each University than the instruction of 
 its younger members in any branch of practical skill. It mat- 
 ters comparatively little whether few or many of our students 
 learn to draw ; but it matters much that all who learn should 
 be taught with accuracy. And the number who may be justi- 
 fiably advised to give any part of the time they spend at col- 
 lege to the study of painting or sculpture ought to depend, 
 and finally must depend, on their being certified that paint- 
 ing and sculpture, no less than language or than reasoning, 
 have grammar and method, — that they permit a recognizable 
 distinction between scholarship and ignorance, and enforce a 
 constant distinction between Eight and Wrong. 
 
 This opening course of Lectures on Sculpture is therefore 
 restricted to the statement, not only of first principles, but of 
 
6 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 those which were illustrated by the practice of one school, 
 and by that practice in its simplest branch, the analysis of 
 which could be certified by easily accessible examples, and 
 aided by the indisputable evidence of photography.* 
 
 The exclusion of the terminal Lecture of the course from 
 the series now published, is in order to mark more definitely 
 this limitation of my subject ; but in other respects the Lect- 
 ures have been amplified in arranging them for the press, 
 and the portions of them trusted at the time to extempore 
 delivery, (not through indolence, but because explanations of 
 detail are always most intelligible when most familiar,) have 
 been in substance to the best of my power set down, and in 
 what I said too imperfectly, completed. 
 
 In one essential particular I have felt it necessary to write 
 what I would not have spoken. I had intended to make no 
 reference, in my University Lectures, to existing schools of 
 
 * Photography cannot exhibit the character of large and finished sculpt- 
 ure ; but its audacity of shadow is in perfect harmony with the more 
 roughly picturesque treatment necessary in coins. For the rendering 
 of all such frank relief, and for the better explanation of forms disturbed 
 by the lustre of metal or polished stone, the method employed in the 
 plates of this volume will be found, I believe, satisfactory. Casts are first 
 taken from the coins, in white plaster; these are photographed, and the 
 photograph printed by the heliotype process of Messrs. Edwards and 
 Kidd. Plate XII. is exceptional, being a pure mezzotint engraving of 
 the old school, excellently carried through by my assistant, Mr. Allen, 
 who was taught, as a personal favour to myself, by my friend, and Tur- 
 ner’s fellow-worker, Thomas Lupton. Plate IY. was intended to be a 
 photograph from the superb vase in the British Museum, No. 564 in 
 Mr. Newton’s Catalogue ; but its variety of colour defied photography, 
 and after the sheets had gone to press I was compelled to reduce Le 
 Normand’s plate of it, which is unsatisfactory, but answers my imme- 
 diate purpose. 
 
 The enlarged photographs for use in the Lecture Room were made 
 for me with most successful skill by Sergeant Spackman, of South Ken- 
 sington ; and the help throughout rendered to me by Mr. Burgess is 
 acknowledged in the course of the Lectures ; though with thanks which 
 must remain inadequate lest they should become tedious ; for Mr. Bur- 
 gess drew the subjects of Plates III., X., and XIII. ; drew and engraved 
 every woodcut in the book ; and printed all the plates with his own 
 hand. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 7 
 
 Art,, except in cases where it might be necessary to point out 
 some undervalued excellence. The objects specified in the 
 eleventh paragraph of my inaugural Lecture, might, I hoped, 
 have been accomplished without reference to any works de- 
 serving of blame ; but the Exhibition of the Boyal Academy 
 in the present year showed me a necessity of departing from 
 my original intention. The task of impartial criticism * is 
 now, unhappily, no longer to rescue modest skill from neg- 
 lect ; but to withstand the errors of insolent genius, and abate 
 the influence of plausible mediocrity. 
 
 The Exhibition of 1871 was very notable in this important 
 particular, that it embraced some representation of the mod- 
 ern schools of nearly every country in Europe : and I am well 
 assured that looking back upon it after the excitement of that 
 singular interest has passed away, every thoughtful judge of 
 Art will confirm my assertion, that it contained not a single 
 picture of accomplished merit ; while it contained many that 
 w^ere disgraceful to Art, and some that were disgraceful to 
 humanity. 
 
 It becomes, under such circumstances, my inevitable duty 
 to speak of the existing conditions of Art with plainness 
 enough to guard the youths whose judgments I am entrusted 
 to form, from being misled, either by their own naturally 
 vivid interest in what represents, however unworthily, the 
 scenes and persons of their own day, or by the cunningly de- 
 vised, and, without doubt, powerful allurements of Art which 
 has long since confessed itself to have no other object than to 
 allure. I have, therefore, added to the second of these Lect- 
 ures such illustration of the motives and course of modern 
 industry as naturally arose out of its subject, and shall continue 
 
 *A pamphlet by the Earl of Southesk, u Britain’s Art Paradise /’ 
 (Edmonston and Douglas, Edinburgh) contains an entirely admirable 
 criticism of the most faultful pictures of the 1871 Exhibition. It is to 
 be regretted that Lord Southesk speaks only to condemn ; but indeed, 
 in my own three days’ review of the rooms, I found nothing deserving 
 of notice otherwise, except Mr. Hook’s always pleasant sketches from 
 fisher-life, and Mr. Pettie’s graceful and powerful, though too slightly 
 painted, study from Henry VI. 
 
8 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 in future to make similar applications ; rarely, indeed, per- 
 mitting myself, in the Lectures actually read before the 
 University, to introduce subjects of instant, and therefore too 
 exciting, interest ; but completing the addresses which I pre- 
 pare for publication in these, and in any other particulars, 
 which may render them more widely serviceable. 
 
 The present course of Lectures will be followed, if I am 
 able to fulfil the design of them, by one of a like elementary 
 character on Architecture ; and that by a third series on 
 Christian Sculpture : but, in the meantime, my effort is to 
 direct the attention of the resident students to Natural His- 
 tory, and to the higher branches of ideal Landscape : and it 
 will be, I trust, accepted as sufficient reason for the delay 
 which has occurred in preparing the following sheets for the 
 press, that I have not only been interrupted by a dangerous 
 illness, but engaged, in what remained to me of the summer, 
 in an endeavour to deduce, from the overwhelming complexity 
 of modern classification in the Natural Sciences, some forms 
 capable of easier reference by Art students, to whom the 
 anatomy of brutal and floral nature is often no less important 
 than that of the human body. 
 
 The preparation of examples for manual practice, and the 
 arrangement of standards for reference, both in Painting and 
 Sculpture, had to be carried on meanwhile, as I was able. 
 For what has already been done, the reader is referred to the 
 Catalogue of the Educational Series, published at the end of 
 the Spring Term ; of what remains to be done I will make no 
 anticipatory statement, being content to have ascribed to me 
 rather the fault of narrowness in design, than of extravagance 
 in expectation. ^ 
 
 Denmark Hill, 
 
 25 th November , 1871 . 
 
ARATRA PENTELICI. 
 
 LECTURE L 
 
 OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
 
 November , 1870 . 
 
 1. If, as is commonly believed, the subject of study which 
 it is my special function to bring before you had no relation 
 to the great interests of mankind, I should have less courage 
 in asking for your attention to-day, than when I first addressed 
 you ; though, even then, I did not do so without painful diffi- 
 dence. For at this moment, even supposing that in other 
 places it were possible for men to pursue their ordinary avo- 
 cations undisturbed by indignation or pity ; here, at least, in 
 the midst of the deliberative and religious influences of Eng- 
 land, only one subject, I am well assured, can seriously occupy 
 your thoughts — the necessity, namely, of determining how it 
 has come to pass, that in these recent days, iniquity the most 
 reckless and monstrous can be committed unanimously, by men 
 more geiierous than ever yet in the world’s history were de- 
 ceived into deeds of cruelty ; and that prolonged agony of 
 body and spirit, such as we should shrink from inflicting wil- 
 fully on a single criminal, has become the appointed and ac- 
 cepted portion of unnumbered multitudes of innocent per- 
 sons, inhabiting the districts of the world which, of all others, 
 as it seemed, were best instructed in the laws of civilization, 
 and most richly invested with the honour, and indulged in the 
 felicity, of peace. 
 
 Believe me, however, the subject of Art — instead of being 
 
10 
 
 ABA TBA BENTELICL 
 
 foreign to these deep questions of social duty and peril, — is 
 so vitally connected with them, that it would he impossible 
 for me now to pursue the line of thought in which I began 
 these lectures, because so ghastly an emphasis would be given 
 to every sentence by the force of passing events. It is well, 
 then, that in the plan I * have laid down for your study, we 
 shall now be led into the examination of technical details, or 
 abstract conditions of sentiment ; so that the hours you spend 
 with me may be times of repose from heavier thoughts. But 
 it chances strangely that, in this course of minutely detailed 
 study, I have first to set before you the most essential piece 
 of human workmanship, the plough, at the very moment when 
 — (you may see the announcement 'in the journals either of 
 yesterday or the day before) — the swords of your soldiers have 
 been sent for to be sharpened , and not at all to be beaten into 
 ploughshares. I permit myself, therefore, to remind you of 
 the watchword of all my earnest writings — “ Soldiers of the 
 Ploughshare, instead of Soldiers of the Sword ” — and I know 
 it my duty to assert to you that the work we enter upon to-day 
 is no trivial one, but full of solemn hope ; the hope, namely, 
 that among you there may be found men wise enough to lead 
 the national passions towards the arts of peace, instead of the 
 arts of war. 
 
 I say the work “ we enter upon,” because the first four lect- 
 ures I gave in the spring were wholly prefatory ; and the 
 following three only defined for you methods of practice. To- 
 day we begin the systematic analysis and progressive study of 
 our subject. 
 
 2. In general, the three great, or fine, Arts of Painting, 
 Sculpture, and Architecture, are thought of as distinct from 
 the lower and more mechanical formative arts, such as car- 
 pentry or pottery. But we cannot, either verbally, or with any 
 practical advantage, admit such classification. How are we to 
 distinguish painting on canvas from painting on china? — or 
 painting on china from painting on glass? — or painting on 
 glass from infusion of colour into any vitreous substance, such 
 as enamel ? — or the infusion of colour into glass and enamel 
 from the infusion of colour into wool or silk, and weaving of 
 
OF T1IE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
 
 11 
 
 pictures in tapestry, or patterns in dress ? You will find that 
 although, in ultimately accurate use of the word, painting 
 must be held to mean only the laying of a pigment on a surface 
 with a soft instrument ; yet, in broad comparison of the func- 
 tions of Art, we must conceive of one and the same great artis* 
 tic faculty, as governing every mode of disposing colours in a 
 permanent relation on , or in, a solid substance ; whether it be by 
 tinting canvas, or dyeing stuffs ; inlaying metals with fused 
 flint, or coating walls with coloured stone. 
 
 3. Similarly the word “ Sculpture,” — though in ultimate ac- 
 curacy it is to be limited to the development of form in hard 
 substances by cutting away portions of their mass — in broad 
 definition, must be held to signify the reduction of any shape- 
 less mass of solid matter into an intended shape, whatever the 
 consistence of the substance, or nature of the instrument em- 
 ployed ; whether we carve a granite mountain, or a piece of 
 box-wood, and whether we use, for our forming instrument, 
 axe, or hammer, or chisel, or our own hands, or water to 
 soften, or fire to fuse ; — whenever and however we bring a 
 shapeless thing into shape, we do so under the laws of the one 
 great Art of Sculpture. 
 
 4. Having thus broadly defined painting and sculpture, we 
 shall see that there is, in the third place, a class of work sep- 
 arated from both, in a specific manner, and including a great 
 group of arts which neither, of necessity, tint, nor for the sake 
 of form merely, shape, the substances they deal with ; but con- 
 struct or arrange them with a view to the resistance of some 
 external force. We construct, for instance, a table with a flat 
 top, and some support c£ prop, or leg, proportioned in strength 
 to such weights as the table is intended to carry. We con- 
 struct a ship out of planks, or plates of iron, with reference 
 to certain forces of impact to be sustained, and of inertia to be 
 overcome ; or we construct a wall or roof with distinct refer- 
 ence to forces of pressure and oscillation, to be sustained or 
 guarded against ; and therefore, in every case, with especial 
 consideration of the strength of our materials, and the nature 
 of that strength, elastic, tenacious, brittle, and the like. 
 
 Now although this group of arts nearly always involves the 
 
12 
 
 ABATE A PENTEL1GI. 
 
 putting of two or more separate pieces together, we must not 
 define it by that accident. The blade of an oar is not less 
 formed with reference to external force than if it were made 
 of many pieces ; and the frame of a boat, whether hollowed 
 out of a tree-trunk, or constructed of planks nailed together, 
 is essentially the same piece of art ; to be judged by its 
 buoyancy and capacity of progression. Still, from the most 
 wonderful piece of all architecture, the human skeleton, to 
 this simple one,* the ploughshare, on which it depends for its 
 subsistence, the putting of two or more pieces together is 
 curiously necessary to the perfectness of every fine instru- 
 ment ; and the peculiar mechanical work of Daedalus, — inlay- 
 ing, — becomes all the more delightful to us in external aspect, 
 because, as in the jawbone of a Saurian, or the wood of a 
 bow, it is essential to the finest capacities of tension and re- 
 sistance. 
 
 5. And observe how unbroken the ascent from this, the 
 simplest architecture, to the loftiest. The placing of the 
 timbers in a ship’s stem, and the laying of the stones in a 
 bridge buttress, are similar in art to the construction of the 
 ploughshare, differing in no essential point, either in that they 
 deal with other materials, or because, of the three things pro- 
 duced, one has to divide earth by advancing through it, 
 another to divide water by advancing through it, and the 
 third to divide water which advances against it. And again, 
 the buttress of a bridge differs only from that of a cathedral 
 in having less weight to sustain, and more to resist. We can 
 find no term in the gradation, from the ploughshare to the 
 cathedral buttress, at which we can s§t a logical distinction. 
 
 6. Thus then we have simply three divisions of Art— one, 
 that of giving colours to substance ; another, that of giving- 
 form to it without question of resistance to force ; and the 
 third, that of giving form or position which will make it 
 capable of such resistance. All the fine arts are embraced 
 
 * I had a real ploughshare on my lecture-table ; but it Vould inter- 
 rupt the drift of the statements in the text too long if I attempted here 
 to illustrate by figures the relation of the coulter to the share, and of the 
 hard to the soft pieces of metal in the share itself. 
 
OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
 
 13 
 
 under these three divisions. Do not think that it is only a 
 .logical or scientific affectation to mass them together in this 
 manner ; it is, on the contrary, of the first practical im- 
 portance to understand that the painter’s faculty, or master- 
 hood over colour, being as subtle as a musician’s over sound, 
 must be looked to for the government of every operation in 
 'which colour is employed ; and that, in the same manner, the 
 appliance of any art whatsoever to minor objects cannot be 
 right, unless under the direction of a true master of that art. 
 Under the present system, you keep your Academician occu- 
 pied only in producing tinted pieces of canvas to be shown in 
 frames, and smooth pieces of marble to be placed in niches ; 
 while you expect your builder or constructor to design 
 coloured patterns in stone and brick, and your china-ware 
 merchant to keep a separate body of workwomen who can 
 paint china, but nothing else. By this division of labour, you 
 ruin all the arts at once. The work of the Academician be- 
 comes mean and effeminate, because he is not used to treat 
 colour on a grand scale and in rough materials ; and your 
 manufactures become base because no well educated person 
 sets hand to them. And therefore it is necessary to under- 
 stand, not merely as a logical statement, but as a practical 
 necessity, that wherever beautiful colour is to be arranged, 
 you need a Master of Painting ; and wherever noble form is 
 to be given, a Master of Sculpture ; and wherever complex 
 mechanical force is to be resisted, a Master of Architecture. 
 
 7. But over this triple division there must rule another yet 
 more important. Any of these three arts may be either 
 imitative of natural objects or limited to useful appliance. 
 You may either paint a picture that represents a scene, or 
 your street door, to keep it from rotting ; you may mould a 
 statue, or a plate ; build the resemblance of a cluster of lotus 
 stalks, or only a square pier. Generally speaking, Painting 
 and Sculpture will be imitative, and Architecture merely 
 useful ; but there is a great deal of Sculpture — as this crystal 
 ball * for instance, which is not imitative, and a great deal of 
 
 * A sphere of rock crystal, cut in Japan, enough imaginable by the 
 reader, without a figure. 
 
14 
 
 ABATE A PENTELIGL 
 
 / 
 
 Architecture which, to some extent is so, as the so called foils 
 of Gothic apertures ; and for many other reasons you will find 
 it necessary to keep distinction clear in your minds between 
 the arts — of whatever kind — which are imitative, and produce 
 a resemblance or image of something which is not present ; 
 and those which are limited to the production of some useful 
 reality, as the blade of a knife, or the wall of a house. You 
 will perceive also, as we advance, that sculpture and painting 
 are indeed in this respect only one art ; and that we shall 
 have constantly to speak and think of them as simply graphic , 
 whether with chisel or colour, their principal function being 
 to make us, in the words of Aristotle, “ OeupyriKol rov 7repl ra 
 crw/xara kolA/Ws ” (Polit. 8, 3.), “having capacity and habit of 
 contemplation of the beauty that is in material things ; ” while 
 Architecture, and its co-relative arts, are to be practised under 
 quite other conditions of sentiment. 
 
 8. Now it is obvious that so far as the fine arts consist 
 either in imitation or mechanical construction, the right judg- 
 ment of them must depend on our knowledge of the things 
 they imitate, and forces they resist : and my function of 
 teaching here would (for instance) so far resolve itself, either 
 into demonstration that this painting of a peach,* does re- 
 semble a peach, or explanation of the way in which this 
 ploughshare (for instance) is shaped so as to throw the earth 
 aside with least force of thrust. And in both of these methods 
 of study, though of course your own diligence must be your 
 chief master, to a certain extent your Professor of Art can 
 always guide you securely, and can show you, either that the 
 image does truly resemble what it attempts to resemble, or 
 that the structure is rightly prepared for the service it has to 
 perform. But there is yet another virtue of fine art which is, 
 perhaps, exactly that about which you will expect your Pro- 
 fessor to teach you most, and which, on the contrary, is 
 exactly that about which you must teach yourselves all that 
 it is essential to learn. 
 
 9. I have here in my hand one of the simplest possible 
 
 * One of William Hunt’s peaches ; not, I am afraid, imaginable alto- 
 gether, but still less representable by figure. 
 
OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
 
 15 
 
 examples of tlie union of the graphic and constructive pow- 
 ers, — one of my breakfast plates. Since all the finely archi- 
 tectural arts, we said, began in the shaping of the cup and 
 the platter, we will begin, ourselves, with the platter. 
 
 Why has it been made round ? For two structural reasons : 
 first, that the greatest holding surface may be gathered into 
 the smallest space ; and secondly, that in being pushed past 
 other things on the table, it may come into least contact with 
 them. 
 
 Next, why has it a rim ? For two other structural reasons ; 
 first, that it is convenient to put salt or mustard upon ; but 
 secondly and chiefly, that the plate may be easily laid hold of. 
 The rim is the simplest form of continuous handle. 
 
 Farther, to keep it from soiling the cloth, it will be wise to 
 put this ridge beneath, round the bottom ; for as the rim is 
 the simplest possible form of continuous handle, so this is the 
 simplest form of continuous leg. And we get the section 
 given beneath the figure for the essential one of a rightly 
 made platter. 
 
16 
 
 AR ATE A PENTELIGL 
 
 10. Thus far our art has been strictly utilitarian having 
 respect to conditions of collision, of carriage, and of support. 
 But now, on the surface of our -piece of pottery, here ape vari- 
 ous bands and spots of colour which are presumably set there 
 to make it pleasanter to the eye. Six of the spots, seen closely, 
 you discover are intended to represent flowers. These then 
 have as distinctly a graphic purpose as the other properties 
 of the plate have an architectural one, and the first critical 
 question we have to ask about them is, whether they are like 
 roses or not. I will anticipate what I have to say in subse- 
 quent lectures so far as to assure you that, if they are to be 
 like roses at all, the liker they can be, the better. Do not 
 suppose, as many people will tell you, that because this is a 
 common manufactured article, your roses on it are the better 
 for being ill-painted, or half-painted. If they had been painted 
 by the same hand that did this peach, the plate would have 
 been all the better for it ; but, as it chanced, there was no 
 hand such as William Hunt’s to paint them, and their graphic 
 power is not distinguished. In any case, however, that graphic 
 power must have been subordinate to their effect as pink 
 spots, while the band of green-blue round the plate’s edge, 
 and the spots of gold, pretend to no graphic power at all, but 
 are meaningless spaces of colour or metal. Still less have 
 they any mechanical office : they add nowise to the service- 
 ableness of the plate ; and their agreeableness, if they possess 
 any, depends, therefore, neither on any imitative, nor any 
 structural, character ; but on some inherent pleasantness in 
 themselves, either of mere colours to the eye (as of taste to 
 the tongue), or in the placing of those colours in relations 
 which obey some mental principle of order, or physical prin- 
 ciple of harmony. 
 
 11. These abstract relations and inherent pleasantnesses, 
 whether in space, number, or time, and whether of colours or 
 sounds, form what we may properly term the musical or har- 
 monic element in every art ; and the study of them is an en- 
 tirely separate science. It is the branch of art-philosophy to 
 which the word “ aesthetics ” should be strictly limited, being 
 the inquiry into the nature of things that in themselves are 
 
OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
 
 17 
 
 pleasant to the human senses or instincts, though they repre- 
 sent nothing, and serve for nothing, their only service being 
 their pleasantness. Thus it is the province of aesthetics to 
 tell you, (if you did not know it before,) that the taste and 
 colour of a peach are pleasant, and to ascertain, if it be ascer- 
 tainable, (and you have any curiosity to know,) why they are so. 
 
 12. The information would, I presume, to most of you, be 
 gratuitous. If it were not, and you chanced to be in a sick 
 state of body in which you disliked peaches, it would be, for 
 the time, to you false information, and, so far as it was true 
 of other people, to you useless. Nearly the whole study of 
 aesthetics is in like manner either gratuitous or useless. Either 
 you like the right things without being recommended to do 
 so, or if you dislike them, your mind cannot be changed by 
 lectures on the laws of taste. You recollect the story of 
 Thackeray, provoked, as he was helping himself to strawberries, 
 by a young coxcomb’s telling him that “he never took fruit 
 or sweets.” “ That ” replied, or is said to have replied, Thack- 
 eray, “ is because you are a sot, and a glutton.” And the 
 whole science of aesthetics is, jn the depth of it, expressed by 
 one passage of Goethe’s in the end of the 2nd part of Faust ; 
 — the notable one that follows the song of the Lemures, when 
 the angels enter to dispute with the fiends for the soul of 
 Faust. They enter singing — “ Pardon to sinners and life 
 to the dust.” Mephistoplieles hears them first, and exclaims 
 to his troop, “Discord I hear, and filthy jingling ” — “ Mis- 
 tone hore ich ; garstiges Geklimper.” This, you see, is the 
 extreme of bad taste in music. Presently the angelic host 
 begin strewing roses, which discomfits the diabolic crowd al- 
 together. Mephistoplieles in vain calls to them — “ What do 
 you duck and shrink for — is that proper hellish behaviour ? 
 Stand fast, and let them strew ” — “ Was duckt und zuckt ihr ; 
 ist das Hellen-brauch ? So haltet stand, und lasst sie streuen.” 
 There you have, also, the extreme of bad taste in sight and 
 smell. And in the whole passage is a brief embodiment for 
 you of the ultimate fact that all aesthetics depend on the 
 health of soul and body, and the proper exercise of both, not 
 only through years, but generations. Only by harmony of 
 2 
 
18 
 
 All AT II A PENTELIC1 . 
 
 both collateral and successive lives can the great doctrine of 
 the Muses be received which enables men “ x<u/>€«/ 6p6ws” 
 “ to have pleasures rightly ; ” and there is no other definition 
 of the beautiful, nor of any subject of delight to the aesthetic 
 faculty, than that it is what one noble spirit has created, seen 
 and felt by another of similar or equal nobility. So much as 
 there is in you of ox, or of swine, perceives no beauty, and 
 creates none : what is human in you, in exact proportion to 
 the perfectness of its humanity, can create it, and receive. 
 
 13. Returning now to the very elementary form in which 
 the appeal to our aesthetic virtue is made in our breakfast- 
 plate, you notice that there are two distinct kinds of pleasant- 
 ness attempted. One by hues of colour ; the other by pro- 
 portions of space. I have called these the musical elements 
 of the arts relating to sight ; and there are indeed two com- 
 plete sciences, one of the combinations of colour, and the 
 other of the combinations of line and form, which might each 
 of them separately engage us in as intricate study as that of 
 the science of music. But of the two, the science of colour is, 
 in the Greek sense, the more musical, being one of the divis- 
 ions of the Apoliine power ; and it is so practically educa- 
 tional, that if we are not using the faculty for colour to dis- 
 cipline nations, they will infallibly use it themselves as a 
 means of corruption. Both music and colour are naturally 
 influences of peace ; but in the war trumpet, and the war 
 shield, in the battle song and battle standard, they have con- 
 centrated by beautiful imagination the cruel passions of men ; 
 and there is nothing in all the Divina Commedia of history 
 more grotesque, yet more frightful, than the fact that, from 
 the almost fabulous period when the insanity and impiety of 
 war wrote themselves in the symbols of the shields of the 
 Seven against Thebes, colours have been the sign and stimu- 
 lus of the most furious and fatal passions that have rent the 
 nations : blue against green, in the decline of the Roman Em- 
 pire ; black against white, in that of Florence ; red against 
 white, in the wars of the Royal houses in England ; and at 
 this moment, red against white, in the contest of anarchy and 
 loyalty, in all the world. 
 
OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
 
 19 
 
 14. On the other hand, the directly ethical influence of 
 colour in the sky, the trees, flowers, and colouied creatures 
 round us, and in our own various arts massed under the one 
 name of painting, is so essential and constant that we cease to 
 recognize it, because we are never long enough altogether de- 
 prived of it to feel our need ; and the mental diseases induced 
 by the influence of corrupt colour are as little suspected, or 
 traced to their true source, as the bodily weaknesses resulting 
 from atmospheric miasmata. 
 
 15. The second musical science which belongs peculiarly to 
 sculpture (and to painting, so far as it represents form), con- 
 sists in the disposition of beautiful masses. That is to say, 
 beautiful surfaces limited by beautiful lines. Beautiful sur- 
 faces, observe ; and remember what is noted in my fourth lect- 
 ure of the difference between a space and a mass. If you 
 have at any time examined carefully, or practised from, the 
 drawings of shells placed in your copying series, you cannot 
 but have felt the difference in the grace between the aspects 
 of the same line, when enclosing a rounded or unrounded 
 space. The exact science of sculpture is that of the relations 
 between outline and the solid form it limits ; and it does not 
 matter whether that relation be indicated by drawing or carv- 
 ing, so long as the expression of solid form is the mental pur- 
 pose ; it is the science always of the beauty of relation in three 
 dimensions. To take the simplest possible line of continuous 
 limit — the circle : the flat disc enclosed by it may indeed be 
 made an element of decoration, though a very meagre one : 
 but its relative mass, the ball, being gradated in three dimen- 
 sions, is always delightful. Here * is at once the simplest, 
 and in mere patient mechanism, the most skilful, piece of 
 sculpture I can possibly show you, — a piece of the purest 
 rock-crystal, chiselled, (I believe, by mere toil of hand,) into 
 a perfect sphere. Imitating nothing, constructing nothing ; 
 sculpture for sculpture’s sake, of purest natural substance into 
 simplest primary form. 
 
 16. Again. Out of the nacre of any mussel or oyster-shell 
 you might cut, at your pleasure, any quantity of small flat cir- 
 
 * The crystal hall above mentioned. 
 
20 
 
 ARATRA PE NT E LIC 1. 
 
 cular discs of the prettiest colour and lustre. To some extenfi 
 such tinsel or foil of shell is used pleasantly for decoration. 
 But the mussel or oyster becoming itself an unwilling model- 
 ler, agglutinates its juice into three dimensions, and the fact 
 of the surface being now geometrically gradated, together 
 with the savage instinct of attributing value to what is diffi- 
 cult to obtain, make the little boss so precious in men’s sight 
 that wise eagerness of search for the kingdom of heaven can 
 be likened to their eagerness of search for it ; and the gates 
 of Paradise can be no otherwise rendered so fair to their poor 
 intelligence, as by telling them that every several gate was of 
 “ one pearl.” 
 
 17. But take note here. We have just seen that the sum of 
 the perceptive faculty is expressed in those words of Aristotle’s 
 “ to take pleasure rightly ” or straightly — x a W eiV Now, 
 
 it is not possible to do the direct opposite of that, — to take 
 pleasure iniquitously or obliquely — x ai P eiV or o-koXl ws — 
 
 more than you do in enjoying a thing because your neighbour 
 cannot get it. You may enjoy a thing legitimately because it 
 is rare, and cannot be seen often, (as you do a fine aurora, or 
 a sunset, or an unusually lovely flower) ; that is Nature’s way 
 of stimulating your attention. But if you enjoy it because 
 your neighbour cannot have it — and, remember, all value at- 
 tached to pearls more than glass beads, is merely and purely 
 for that cause, — then you rejoice through the worst of idola- 
 tries, covetousness ; and neither arithmetic, nor writing, nor 
 any other so-called essential of education, is now so vitally nec- 
 essary to the population of Europe, as such acquaintance 
 with the principles of intrinsic value, as may result in the 
 iconoclasm of jewellery ; and in the clear understanding that 
 we are not in that instinct, civilized, but yet remain wholly 
 savage, so far as we care for display of this selfish kind. 
 
 You think, perhaps, I am quitting my subject, and proceed- 
 ing, as it is too often with appearance of justice alleged against 
 me, into irrelevant matter. Pardon me ; the end, not only of 
 these lectures, but of my whole professorship, would be ac- 
 complished, — and far more than that, — if only the English 
 nation could be made to understand that the beauty which is 
 
OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
 
 21 
 
 indeed to be a joy for ever, must be a joy for all ; and that 
 though the idolatry may not have been wholly divine which 
 sculptured gods, the idolatry is wholly diabolic, which, for 
 vulgar display, sculptures diamonds. 
 
 18. To go back to the point under discussion. A pearl, or 
 a glass bead, may owe its pleasantness in some degree to its 
 lustre as well as to its roundness. But a mere and simple 
 ball of unpolished stone is enough for sculpturesque value. 
 You may have noticed that the quatrefoil used in the Ducal 
 Palace of Venice owes its complete loveliness in distant effect 
 to the finishing of its cusps. The extremity of the cusp is a 
 mere ball of Istrian marble ; and consider how subtle the 
 faculty of sight must be, since it recognizes at any distance, 
 and is gratified by, the mystery of the termination of cusp ob- 
 tained by the gradated light on the ball. 
 
 In that Venetian tracery this simplest element of sculptured 
 form is used sparingly, as the most precious that can be em- 
 ployed to finish the fa 9 ade. But alike in our own, and the 
 French, central Gothic, the ball-flower is lavished on every 
 line — and in your St. Mary’s spire, and the Salisbury spire, 
 and the towers of Notre Dame of Paris, the rich pleasantness 
 of decoration, — indeed, their so-called “ decorated style,” — 
 consists only in being daintily beset with stone balls. It is 
 true the balls are modified into dim likeness of flowers ; but 
 do you trace the resemblance to the rose in their distant, which 
 is their intended effect ? 
 
 19. Bat farther, let the ball have motion ; then the form it 
 generates will be that of a cylinder. You have, perhaps, 
 thought that pure Early English Architecture depended for 
 its charm on visibility of construction. It depends for its 
 charm altogether on the abstract harmony of groups of cylin- 
 ders,* arbitrarily bent into mouldings, and arbitrarily associ- 
 
 * All grandest effects in mouldings may be, and for tlie most part 
 have been, obtained by rolls and cavettos of circular (segmental) sec- 
 tion. More refined sections, as that of the fluting of a Doric shaft, are 
 only of use near the eye and in beautiful stone ; and the pursuit of them 
 was one of the many errors of later Gothic. The statement in the text 
 that the mouldings, even of best time, “ have no real relation to con- 
 
22 
 
 ABATE A PENT ELI CL 
 
 ated as shafts, having no real relation to construction whatso- 
 ever, and a theoretical relation so subtle that none of us had 
 seen it, till Professor Willis worked it out for us. 
 
 20. And now, proceeding to analysis of higher sculpture, 
 you may have observed the importance I have attached to the 
 porch of San Zenone, at Verona, by making it, among your 
 standards, the first of the group which is to illustrate the sys- 
 tem of sculpture and architecture founded on faith in a future 
 life. That porch, fortunately represented in the photograph, 
 from which Plate I. has been engraved, under a clear and 
 pleasant light, furnishes you with examples of sculpture of 
 every kind from the flattest incised bas-relief to solid statues, 
 both in marble and bronze. And the two points I have been 
 pressing upon you are conclusively exhibited here, namely, — 
 (1). That sculpture is essentially the production of a pleasant 
 bossiness or roundness of surface ; (2) that the pleasantness of 
 that bossy condition to the eye is irrespective of imitation on 
 one side, and of structure on the other. 
 
 21. (1.) Sculpture is essentially the production of a pleasant 
 bossiness or roundness of surface. 
 
 If you look from some distance at these two engravings of 
 Greek coins, (place the book open so that you can see the op- 
 posite plate three or four yards off,) you will find the relief on 
 each of them simplifies itself into a pearl-like portion of a 
 sphere, with exquisitely gradated light on its surface. When 
 you look at them nearer, you will see that each smaller por- 
 tion into which they are divided — cheek, or brow, or leaf, or 
 tress of hair — resolves itself also into a rounded or undulated 
 surface, pleasant by gradation of light. Every several sur- 
 face is delightful in itself, as a shell, or a tuft of rounded 
 moss, or the bossy masses of distant forest would be. That 
 these intricately modulated masses present some resemblance 
 to a girl’s face, such as the Syracusans imagined that of the 
 water-goddess Arethusa, is entirely a secondary matter ; the 
 
 struction,” is scarcely strong enough : they in fact contend with, and 
 deny the construction, their principal purpose seeming to be the con- 
 cealment of the joints of the voussoirs. 
 
OF THE DIVISION OF ADIS. 
 
 2;j 
 
 primary condition is that the masses shall be beautifully 
 rounded, and disposed with due discretion and order. 
 
 22. (2.) It is difficult for you, at first, to feel this order and 
 beauty of surface, apart from the imitation. But you can see 
 there is a pretty disposition of, and relation between, the pro- 
 jections of a fir-cone, though the studded spiral imitates noth- 
 ing. Order exactly the same in kind, only much more com- 
 plex ; and an abstract beauty of surface rendered definite by 
 increase and decline of light — (for every curve of surface has 
 its own luminous law, and the light and shade on a parabolic 
 solid differs, specifically, from that on an elliptical or spheri- 
 cal one) — it is the essential business of the sculptor to obtain ; 
 as it is the essential business of a painter to get good colour, 
 whether he imitates anything or not. At a distance from the 
 picture, or carving, where the things represented become ab- 
 solutely unintelligible, we must yet be able to say, at a glance, 
 “ That is good painting, or good carving.” 
 
 And you will be surprised to find, when you try the ex- 
 periment, how much the eye must instinctively judge in this 
 manner. Take the front of San Zenone for instance, Plate I. 
 You will find it impossible without a lens, to distinguish in 
 the bronze gates, and in great part of the wall, anything that 
 their bosses represent. You cannot tell whether the sculpture 
 is of men, animals, or trees ; only you feel it to be composed 
 of pleasant projecting masses ; you acknowledge that both 
 gates and wall are, somehow, delightfully roughened ; and 
 only afterwards, by slow degrees, can you make out what this 
 roughness means ; nay, though here (Plate III.) I magnify * 
 one of the bronze plates of the gate to a scale, which gives 
 you the same advantage as if you saw it quite close, in the 
 reality, — you may still be obliged to me for the information, 
 that this boss represents the Madonna asleep in her little bed, 
 and this smaller boss, the Infant Christ in His ; and this at 
 
 * Some of the most precious work done for me by my assistant Mr. 
 Burgess, during the course of these lectures, consisted in making en- 
 larged drawings from portions of photographs. Plate III. is engraved 
 from a drawing of his, enlarged from the original photograph of which 
 Plate I. is a reduction. 
 
24 
 
 ARATRA RE NT E LIG I. 
 
 the top, a cloud with an angel coming out of it, and these 
 jagged bosses, two of the Three Kings, with their crowns on, 
 looking up to the star, (which is intelligible enough I admit) ; 
 but what this straggling, three-legged boss beneath signifies, 
 I suppose neither you nor I can tell, unless it be the shep- 
 herd’s dog, who has come suddenly upon the Kings with their 
 crowns on, and is greatly startled at them. 
 
 23. Farther, and much more definitely, the pleasantness of 
 the surface decoration is independent of structure ; that is to 
 say, of any architectural requirement of stability. The greater 
 part of the sculpture here is exclusively ornamentation of a 
 flat wall, or of door panelling ; only a small portion of the 
 church front is thus treated, and the sculpture has no more to 
 do with the form of the building than a piece of a lace veil 
 would have, suspended beside its gates on a festal day ; the 
 proportions of shaft and arch might be altered in a hundred 
 different ways, without diminishing their stability ; and the 
 pillars would stand more safely on the ground than on the 
 backs of these carved animals. 
 
 24. I wish you especially to notice these points, because the 
 false theory that ornamentation should be merely decorated 
 structure is so pretty and plausible, that it is likely to take 
 away your attention from the far more important abstract 
 conditions of design. Structure should never be contradicted, 
 and in the best buildings it is pleasantly exhibited and en- 
 forced ; in this very porch the joints of every stone are visible, 
 and you will find me in the Fifth Lecture insisting on this 
 clearness of its anatomy as a merit ; yet so independent is the 
 mechanical structure of the true design, that when I begin my 
 Lectures on Architecture, the first building I shall give you as 
 a standard will be one in which the structure is wholly con- 
 cealed. It will be the Baptistry of Florence, which is, in reality, 
 as much a buttressed chapel with a vaulted roof, as the Chap- 
 ter House of York — but round it, in order to conceal that 
 buttressed structure, (not to decorate, observe, but to conceal) 
 a flat external wall is raised ; simplifying the whole to a mere 
 hexagonal box, like a wooden piece of Tunbridge ware, on the 
 surface of which the eye and intellect are to be interested by 
 
OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
 
 25 
 
 the relations of dimension and curve between pieces of en- 
 crusting marble of different colours, which have no more to 
 do with the real make of the building than the diaper of a 
 Harlequin’s jacket has to do with his bones. 
 
 25. The sense of abstract proportion, on which the enjoy- 
 ment of such a piece of art entirely depends, is one of the 
 aesthetic faculties which nothing can develop but time and 
 education. It belongs only to highly-trained nations ; and, 
 among them, to their most strictly refined classes, though the 
 germs of it are found, as part of their innate power, in every 
 people capable of art. It has for the most part vanished at 
 present from the English mind, in consequence of our eager 
 desire for excitement, and for the kind of splendour that ex- 
 hibits wealth, careless of dignity ; so that, I suppose, there 
 are very few now even of our best-trained Londoners who 
 know the difference between the design of Whitehall and that 
 of any modern club-house in Pall-mall. The order and har- 
 mony which, in his enthusiastic account of the Theatre of 
 Epidaurus, Pausanias insists on before beauty, can only be 
 recognized by stern order and harmony in our daily lives ; and 
 the perception of them is as little to be compelled, or taught 
 suddenly, as the laws of still finer choice in the conception of 
 dramatic incident which regulate poetic sculpture. 
 
 26. And now, at last, I think, we can sketch out the sub- 
 ject before us in a clear light. We have a structural art, 
 divine, and human, of which the investigation comes under 
 the general term, Anatomy ; whether the junctions or joints 
 be in mountains, or in branches of trees, or in buildings, or 
 in bones of animals. We have next a musical art, falling into 
 two distinct divisions — one using colours, the other masses, 
 for its elements of composition ; lastly, we have an imitative 
 art, concerned with the representation of the outward appear- 
 ances of things. And, for many reasons, I think it best to 
 begin with imitative Sculpture ; that being defined as the art 
 which , by the musical disposition of masses , imitates anything of 
 which the imitation is justly pleasant to us ; and does so in ac- 
 cordance with structural laws having due reference to the ma - 
 terials employed . 
 
26 
 
 AM AT R A PENTEL1CI. 
 
 So that you see our task will involve the immediate inquiry 
 what the things are of which the imitation is justly pleasant 
 to us : what, in few words, — if we are to be occupied in the 
 making of graven images — we ought to like to make images 
 of. Secondly, after having determined its subject, what degree 
 of imitation or likeness we ought to desire in our graven 
 image ; and lastly, under what limitations demanded by 
 structure and material, such likeness may be obtained. 
 
 These inquiries I shall endeavour to pursue with you to 
 some practical conclusion, in my next four lectures, and in the 
 sixth, I will briefly sketch the actual facts that have taken 
 place in the development of sculpture by the two greatest 
 schools of it that hitherto have existed in the world. 
 
 27. The tenor of our next lecture then must be an inquiry 
 into the real nature of Idolatry ; that is to say, the invention 
 and service of Idols : and, in the interval, may I commend to 
 your own thoughts this question, not wholly irrelevant, yet 
 which I cannot pursue ; namely, whether the God to whom 
 we have so habitually prayed for deliverance “ from battle, 
 murder, and sudden death,” is indeed, seeing that the present 
 state of Christendom is the result of a thousand years’ pray- 
 ing to that effect, “ as the gods of the heathen who were but 
 idols ; ” or whether — (and observe, one or other of these things 
 must be true) — whether our prayers to Him have been, by 
 this much, worse than Idolatry that heathen prayer was true 
 prayer to false gods ; and our prayers have been false prayers 
 to the True One. 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 IDOLATRY. 
 
 November , 1870. 
 
 28. Beginning with the simple conception of sculpture as 
 the art of fiction in solid substance, we are now to consider 
 what its subjects should be. What — having the gift of imag- 
 ery — should we by preference endeavour to image ? A ques- 
 
IDOLATRY. 
 
 27 
 
 tion which is, indeed, subordinate to the deeper one — why 
 we should wish to image anything at all. 
 
 29. Some years ago, having been always desirous that the 
 education of women should begin in learning how to cook, I 
 got leave, one day, for a little girl of eleven years old to ex- 
 change, much to her satisfaction, her schoolroom for the 
 kitchen. But as ill fortune would have it, there was some 
 pastry toward, and she was left unadvisedly in command of 
 some delicately rolled paste ; whereof she made no pies, but 
 an unlimited quantity of cats and mice. 
 
 Now you may read the works of the gravest critics of art 
 from end to end ; but you will find, at last, they can give you 
 no other true account of the spirit of sculpture than that it is 
 an irresistible human instinct for the making of cats and mice, 
 and other imitable living creatures, in such permanent form 
 that one may play with the images at leisure. 
 
 Play with them, or love them, or fear them, or worship 
 them. The cat may become the goddess Paslit, and the 
 mouse, in the hand of the sculptured king, enforce his endur- 
 ing words “ €5 €/xe ns opeto v evcrefiyjs earoj ; ” but the great 
 mimetic instinct underlies all such purpose; and is zooplastic, 
 — life-shaping, — alike in the reverent and the impious. 
 
 30. Is, I say, and has been, hitherto ; none of us dare say 
 that it will be. I shall have to . show you hereafter that the 
 greater part of the technic energy of men, as yet, has indi- 
 cated a kind of childhood ; and that the race becomes, if not 
 more wise, at least more manly,* with every gained century. 
 I can fancy that all this sculpturing and painting of ours may 
 be looked back upon, in some distant time, as a kind of doll- 
 making, and that the words of Sir Isaac Newton may be 
 smiled at no more : only it will not be for stars that we desert 
 our stone dolls, but for men. When the day comes, as come 
 it must, in which we no more deface and defile God’s image 
 in living clay, I am not sure that we ‘ shall any of us care so 
 much for the images made of Him, in burnt clay. 
 
 31. But, hitherto, the energy of growth in any people may 
 be almost directly measured by their passion for imitative art ; 
 
 * Glance forward at once to § 75, read it, and return to this. 
 
28 
 
 ABATE A PENTEL1GL 
 
 namely, for sculpture, or for the drama, which is living and 
 speaking sculpture, or, as in Greece, for both ; and in national 
 as in actual childhood, it is not merely the making , but the 
 making -believe ; not merely the acting for the sake of the 
 scene, but acting for the sake of acting, that is delightful. 
 And, of the two mimetic arts, the drama, being more passion- 
 ate, and involving conditions of greater excitement and lux 
 ury, is usually in its excellence the sign of culminating 
 strength in the people ; while fine sculpture, requiring always 
 submission to severe law, is an unfailing proof of their being 
 in early and active progress. There is no instance of fine 
 sculpture being produced by a nation either torpid , weak , or in 
 decadence. Their drama may gain in grace and wit ; but their 
 sculpture, in days of decline, is always base. 
 
 • 32. If my little lady in the kitchen had been put in com- 
 mand of colours, as well as of dough, and if the paste would 
 have taken the colours, we may be sure her mice would have 
 been painted brown, and her cats tortoise-shell ; and this, 
 partly indeed for the added delight and prettiness of colour 
 itself, but more for the sake of absolute realization to her 
 eyes and mind. Now all the early sculpture of the most ac- 
 complished nations has been thus coloured, rudely or finely ; 
 and, therefore, you see at once now necessary it is that we 
 should keep the term “ graphic ” for imitative art generally ; 
 since no separation can at first be made between carving and 
 painting, with reference to the mental powers exerted in, or 
 addressed by, them. In the earliest known art of the world, 
 a reindeer hunt may be scratched in outline on the flat side 
 of a clean-picked bone, and a reindeer’s head carved out of 
 the end of it ; both these are flint-knife work, and, strictly 
 speaking, sculpture : but the scratched outline is the begin- 
 ning of drawing, and the carved head of sculpture proper. 
 When the spaces enclosed by the scratched outline are filled 
 with colour, the colouring soon becomes a principal means of 
 effect ; so that, in the engraving of an Egyptian-colour bas- 
 relief (S. 101), Rosellini has been content to miss the outlin- 
 ing incisions altogether, and represent it as a painting only. 
 Its proper definition is, “ painting accented by sculpture ; ” 
 
IDOLATRY. 
 
 29 
 
 on the other hand, in solid coloured statues, — Dresden china 
 figures, for example, — we have pretty sculpture accented by 
 painting ; the mental purpose in both kinds of art being to 
 obtain the utmost degree of realization possible, and the 
 ocular impression being the same, whether the delineation is 
 obtained by engraving or painting. For, as I pointed out to 
 you in my fifth lecture, everything is seen by the eye as 
 patches of colour, and of colour only ; a fact which the Greeks 
 knew well ; so that when it becomes a question in the dialogue 
 of Minos, <c TLVL ovtl rrj oif/ec oparcu ra opcop,€va,” the answer is 
 ( c alcrOrjati Tavrrj rrj Sta tcjv 6(p0a\jjiu)V Syj\ol(T 7] rj pAv t a yp(o- 
 pra.” — “ What kind of power is the sight with which we see 
 things ? It is that sense which, through the eyes, can reveal 
 colours to us.” 
 
 33. And now observe that while the graphic arts begin in 
 the mere mimetic effort, they proceed, as they obtain more 
 perfect realization, to act under the influence of a stronger 
 and higher instinct. They begin by scratching the reindeer, 
 the most interesting object of sight. But presently, as the 
 human creature rises in scale of intellect, it proceeds to scratch, 
 not the most interesting object of sight only, but the most in- 
 teresting object of imagination ; not the reindeer, but the 
 Maker and Giver of the reindeer. And the second great condi- 
 tion for the advance of the art of sculpture is that the race should 
 possess, in addition to the mimetic instinct, the realistic or 
 idolizing instinct ; the desire to see as substantial the powers 
 that are unseen, and bring near those that are far off, and to 
 possess and cherish those that are strange. To make in some 
 way tangible and visible the nature of the gods — to illustrate 
 and explain it by symbols ; to bring the immortals out of the 
 recesses of the clouds, and make them Penates ; to bring back 
 the dead from darkness, and make them Lares. 
 
 34. Our conception of this tremendous and universal human 
 passion has been altogether narrowed by the current idea that 
 Pagan religious art consisted only, or chiefly, in giving person- 
 ality to the gods. The personality was never doubted ; it was 
 visibility, interpretation, and possession that the hearts of 
 men sought. Possession, first of all — the getting hold of 
 
30 
 
 ABATE A PENTELICI. 
 
 some hewn log of wild olive-wood that would fall on its knees 
 if it was pulled from its pedestal — and, afterwards, slowly 
 clearing manifestation ; the exactly right expression is used 
 in Lucian’s dream, — <baSt'as eSafe tov Ala ; “ Showed * Zeus 
 manifested him, nay, in a certain sense, brought forth, or 
 created, as you have it, in Anacreon’s ode to the Eose, of the 
 birth of Athena herself — 
 
 7To\efx6K.\ovov r ’AOrjvrjv 
 
 Kopvcfyrjs iSetKwe Zens. 
 
 But I will translate the passage from Lucian to you at length 
 — it is in every way profitable. 
 
 35. “ There came to me, in the healing + night, a divine 
 dream, so clear that it missed nothing of the truth itself ; yes, 
 and still after all this time, the shapes of what I saw remain 
 in my sight, and the sound of what I heard dwells in my 
 ears ” — (note the lovely sense of evavXos — the sound being as 
 of a stream passing always by in the same channel, — “ so dis- 
 tinct was everything to me. Tw t o women laid hold of my 
 hands and pulled me, each towards herself, so violently, that 
 I had like to have been pulled asunder ; and they cried out 
 against one another, — the one, that she was resolved to have 
 me to herself, being indeed her own, and the other that it was 
 vain for her to claim what belonged to others ; — and the one 
 who first claimed me for her own was like a hard worker, and 
 had strength as a man’s ; and her hair was dusty, and her 
 hand full of horny places, and her dress fastened tight about 
 her, and the folds of it loaded with white marble-dust, so that 
 she looked just as my uncle used to look when he was filing 
 stones : but the other was pleasant in features, and delicate in 
 form, and orderly in her dress ; and so in the end, they left 
 
 * There is a primary and vulgar sense of “exhibited” in Lucian's 
 mind ; but the higher meaning is involved in it. 
 
 f In the Greek, “ ambrosial.” Recollect always that ambrosia, as food 
 of gods, is the continual restorer of strength ; that all food is ambrosial 
 when it nourishes, and that the night is called “ambrosial ” because it 
 restores strength to the soul ’through its peace, as, in the 23rd Psalm, 
 the stillness of waters. 
 
IDOLATRY. 
 
 31 
 
 it to me to decide, after hearing what they had to say, with 
 which of them I would go ; and first the hard featured and 
 masculine one spoke : — 
 
 36. “ ‘ Dear child, I am the Art of Image-sculpture, which 
 yesterday you began to learn ; and I am as one of your own 
 people, and of your house, for your grandfather, (and she 
 named my mother’s father) c was a stone-cutter ; and both 
 your uncles had good name through me : and if you will keep 
 yourself well clear of the sillinesses and fluent follies that come 
 from this creature,’ (and she pointed to the other woman) ‘ and 
 will follow me, and live with me, first of all, you shall be 
 brought up as a man should be, and have strong shoulders ; 
 and, besides that, you shall be kept well quit of all restless 
 desires, and you shall never be obliged to go away into any 
 foreign places, leaving your own country and the people of 
 your house ; neither shall all men praise you for your talk* 
 And you must not despise this rude serviceableness of my 
 body, neither this meanness of my dusty dress ; for, pushing 
 on in their strength from such things as these, that great 
 Phidias revealed Zeus, and Polyclitus wrought out Hera, and 
 Myron was praised, and Praxiteles marvelled at : therefore 
 are these men worshipped with the gods.’ ” 
 
 37. There is a beautiful ambiguity in the use of the prep- 
 osition with the genitive in this last sentence. “ Pushing on 
 from these things ” means indeed, justly, that the sculptors 
 rose from a mean state to a noble one ; but not as leaving the 
 mean state ; — not as, from a hard life, attaining to a soft one, 
 — but as being helped and strengthened by the rough life to 
 do what was greatest. Again, “worshipped with the gods” 
 does not mean that they are thought of as in any sense equal 
 to, or like to, the gods, but as being on the side of the gods 
 against what is base and ungodly ; and that the kind of worth 
 which is in them is therefore indeed worshipful, as having its 
 source with the gods. Finally, observe that every one of the 
 expressions, used of the four sculptors, is definitely the best 
 
 * I have italicised this final promise of blessedness, given by the 
 noble Spirit of Workmanship. Compare Carlyle’s 5th Latter-day 
 pamphlet, throughout ; but especially pp. 12-14, in the first edition. 
 
32 
 
 ARATRA PENTELIGl 
 
 that Lucian could have chosen. Phidias carved like one who 
 had seen Zeus, and had only to reveal him ; Polyclitus, in 
 labour of intellect, completed his sculpture by just law, and 
 wrought out Hera ; Myron was of all most praised , because he 
 did best what pleased the vulgar ; and Praxiteles, the most 
 wondered at or admired, because he bestowed utmost exqui- 
 siteness of beauty. 
 
 38. I am sorry not to go on with the dream ; the more re- 
 fined lady, as you may remember, is liberal or gentlemanly 
 Education, and prevails at last ; so that Lucian becomes an 
 author instead of a sculptor, I think to his own regret, though 
 to our present benefit. One more passage of his I must refer 
 you to, as illustrative of the point before us ; the description 
 of the temple of the Syrian Hieropolis, where he explains the 
 absence of the images of the sun and moon. “ In the temple 
 itself,” he says, <c on the left hand as one goes in, there is set 
 first the throne of the sun ; but no form of him is thereon, for 
 of these two powers alone, the sun and the moon, they show 
 no carved images. And I also learned why this is their law, 
 for they say that it is permissible, indeed, to make of the 
 other gods, graven images, since the forms of them are not 
 visible to all men. But Helios and Selenaia are everywhere 
 clear-bright, and all men behold them ; what need is there 
 therefore for sculptured work of these, who appear in the 
 air ? ” 
 
 39. This, then, is the second instinct necessary to sculpt- 
 ure ; the desire for the manifestation, description, and com- 
 panionship of unknown powers ; and for possession of a bodily 
 substance — the “ bronze Strasbourg,” which you can embrace, 
 and hang immortelles on the head of — instead of an abstract 
 idea. But if you get nothing more in the depth of the 
 national mind than these two feelings, the mimetic and idol- 
 izing instincts, there may be still no progress possible for the 
 arts except in delicacy of manipulation and accumulative 
 caprice of design. You must have not only the idolizing in- 
 stinct, but an yOos which chooses the right thing to idolize ! 
 Else, you will get states of art like those in China or India, 
 non-progressive, and in great jiart diseased and frightful, 
 
IDOLATRY. 
 
 33 
 
 being wrought under the influence of foolish terror, or foolish 
 admiration. So that a third condition, completing and con- 
 firming both the others, must exist in order to the develop- 
 ment of the creative power. 
 
 40. This third condition is that the heart of the nation 
 shall be set on the discovery of just or equal law, and shall be 
 from day to day developing that law more perfectly. The 
 Greek school of sculpture is formed during, and in conse- 
 quence of, the national effort to discover the nature of justice ; 
 the Tuscan, during, and in consequence of, the national effort 
 to discover the nature of justification. I assert to you at 
 present briefly, what will, I hope, be the subject of prolonged 
 illustration hereafter. 
 
 41. Now when a nation with mimetic instinct and imagina- 
 tive longing is also thus occupied earnestly in the discovery 
 of Ethic law, that effort gradually brings precision and truth 
 into all its manual acts ; and the physical progress of sculpt- 
 ure as in the Greek, so in the Tuscan, school, consists in 
 gradually limiting what was before indefinite, in verifying 
 what was inaccurate, and in humanizing what was monstrous. 
 I might perhaps content you by showing these external phe- 
 nomena, and by dwelling simply on the increasing desire of 
 naturalness, which compels, in every successive decade of 
 years, literally, in the sculptured images, the mimicked bones 
 to come together, bone to his bone ; and the flesh to come 
 up upon them, until from a flattened and pinched handful of 
 clay, respecting which you may gravely question whether it 
 was intended for a human form at all ; — by slow degrees, and 
 added touch to touch, in increasing consciousness of the 
 bodily truth, — at last the Aphrodite of Melos stands before 
 you, a perfect woman. But all that search for physical accu- 
 racy is merely the external operation, in the arts, of the seek- 
 ing for truth in the inner soul ; it is impossible without that 
 higher effort, and the demonstration of it would be worse 
 than useless to you, unless I made you aware at the same time 
 of its spiritual cause. 
 
 42. Observe farther ; the increasing truth in representation 
 is co-relative with increasing beauty in the thing to be repre- 
 
34 
 
 AH AT R A PENT ELI GI. 
 
 sen ted. The pursuit of justice which regulates the imitative 
 effort, regulates also the development of the race into dignity 
 of person, as of mind ; and their culminating art-skill attains 
 the grasp of entire truth at the moment when the truth be- 
 comes most lovely. And then, ideal sculpture may go on 
 safely into portraiture. But I shall not touch on the subject 
 of portrait sculpture to-day ; it introduces many questions of 
 detail, and must be a matter for subsequent consideration. 
 
 43. These then are the three great passions which are con- 
 cerned in true sculpture. I cannot find better, or, at least, 
 more easily remembered, names for them than “ the Instincts 
 of Mimicry, Idolatry, and Discipline ; ” meaning, by the last 
 the desire of equity and wholesome restraint, in all acts and 
 works of life. Now of these, there is no question but that the 
 love of Mimicry is natural and right, and the love of Disci- 
 pline is natural and right. But it looks a grave question 
 whether the yearning for Idolatry, (the desire of companion- 
 ship with images,), is right. Whether, indeed, if such an in- 
 stinct be essential to good sculpture, the art founded on it can 
 possibly be “fine” art. 
 
 44. I must now beg for your close attention, because I have 
 to point out distinctions in modes of conception which will 
 appear trivial to you, unless accurately understood ; but of 
 an importance in the history of art which cannot be over- 
 rated. 
 
 When the populace of Paris adorned the statue of Stras- 
 bourg with immortelles, none, even the simplest of the pious 
 decorators, would suppose that the city of Strasbourg itself, 
 or any spirit or ghost of the city, was actually there, sitting in 
 the Place de la Concorde. The figure was delightful to them 
 as a visible nucleus for their fond thoughts about Strasbourg ; 
 but never for a moment supposed to be Strasbourg. 
 
 Similarly, they might have taken delight in a statue pur- 
 porting to represent a river instead of a city, — the Bhine, or 
 Garonne, suppose, — and have been touched with strong 
 emotion in looking at it, if the real river were dear to them, 
 and yet never think for an instant that the statue was the 
 river. 
 
IDOLATRY. 
 
 And yet again, similarly, but much more distinctly, they 
 might take delight in the beautiful image of a god, because it 
 gathered and perpetuated their thoughts about that god ; 
 and yet never suppose, nor be capable of being deceived by 
 any arguments into supposing, that the statue was the god. 
 
 On the other hand, if a meteoric stone fell from the sky in 
 the sight of a savage, and he picked it up hot, he would most 
 probably lay it aside in some, to him, sacred place, and be- 
 lieve the stone itself to be a kind of god, and offer prayer and 
 sacrifice to it. 
 
 In like manner, any other strange or terrifying object, 
 such, for instance, as a powerfully noxious animal or plant, 
 he would be apt to regard in the same way ; and very pos- 
 sibly also construct for himself frightful idols of some kind, 
 calculated to produce upon him a vague impression of their 
 being alive ; whose imaginary anger he might deprecate or 
 avert with sacrifice, although incapable of conceiving in them 
 any one attribute of exalted intellectual or moral nature. 
 
 45. If you will now refer to § 52-59 of my Introductory 
 Lectures, you will find this distinction between a resolute 
 conception, recognized for such, and an involuntary appre- 
 hension of spiritual existence, already insisted on at some 
 length. And you will see more and more clearly as we pro- 
 ceed, that the deliberate and intellectually commanded con- 
 ception is not idolatrous in any evil sense whatever, but is one 
 of the grandest and wholesomest functions of the human soul ; 
 and that the essence of evil idolatry begins only in the idea 
 or belief of a real presence of any kind, in a thing in which 
 there is no such presence. 
 
 46. I need not say that the harm of the idolatry must de- 
 pend on the certainty of the negative. If there be a real 
 presence in a pillar of cloud, in an unconsuming flame, or in 
 a still small voice, it is no sin to bow down before these. 
 
 But, as matter of historical fact, the idea of such presence 
 has generally been both ignoble and false, and confined to 
 nations of inferior race, who are often condemned to remain 
 for ages in conditions of vile terror, destitute of thought. 
 Nearly all Indian architecture and Chinese design arise out 
 
36 
 
 ABATE A PENT E LIC I. 
 
 of such a state : so also, though in a less gross degree, Nin- 
 evite and Phoenician art, early Irish, and Scandinavian; the 
 latter, however, with vital elements of high intellect mingled 
 in it from the first. 
 
 But the greatest races are never grossly subject to such 
 terror, even in their childhood, and the course of their minds 
 is broadly divisible into three distinct stages. 
 
 47. (I.) In their infancy they begin to imitate the real 
 animals about them, as my little girl made the cats and mice, 
 but with an undercurrent of partial superstition— a sense that 
 there must be more in the creatures than they can see ; also 
 they catch up vividly any of the fancies of the baser nations 
 round them, and repeat these more or less apishly, yet rapidly 
 naturalizing and beautifying them. They then connect all 
 kinds of shapes together, compounding meanings out of the 
 old chimeras, and inventing new ones with the speed of a 
 running wild-fire ; but always getting more of man into their 
 images, and admitting less of monster or brute ; their own 
 characters, meanwhile, expanding and purging themselves, 
 and shaking off the feverish fancy, as springing flowers 
 shake the earth off their stalks. 
 
 48. (II.) In the second stage, being now themselves perfect 
 men and women, they reach the conception of true and great 
 gods as existent in the universe; and absolutely cease to 
 think of them as in any wise present in statues or images ; 
 but they have now learned to make these statues beautifully 
 human, and to surround them with attributes that may con- 
 eentrate their thoughts of the gods. This is, in Greece, ac- . 
 eurately the Pindaric time, just a little preceding the Pliidian ; 
 the Pliidian is already dimmed with a faint shadow of infidel- 
 ity ; still, the Olympic Zeus may be taken as a sufficiently 
 central type of a statue which was no more supposed to be 
 Zeus, than the gold or elephants 5 tusks it was made of ; but 
 in which the most splendid powers of human art were ex- 
 hausted in representing a believed and honoured God to the 
 happy and holy imagination of a sincerely religions people. 
 
 49. (III.) The third stage of national existence follows, in 
 which, the imagination having now done its utmost, and be- 
 
I DO LAT11Y. 
 
 ot 
 
 in g partly restrained by the sanctities of tradition, which 
 permit no farther change in the conceptions previously 
 created, begins to be superseded by logical deduction and 
 scientific investigation. At the same moment, the elder ar- 
 tists having done all that is possible in realizing the national 
 conceptions of the Gods, the younger ones, forbidden to 
 change the scheme of existing representations, and incapable 
 of doing anything better in that kind, betake themselves to 
 refine and decorate the old ideas with more attractive skill 
 Their aims are thus more and more limited to manual dexter- 
 ity, and their fancy paralyzed. Also, in the course of centu- 
 ries, the methods of every art continually improving, and be- 
 ing made subjects of popular inquiry, praise is now to be got, 
 for eminence in these, from the whole mob of the nation ; 
 whereas intellectual design can never be discerned but by the 
 few. So that in this third sera we find every kind of imitative 
 and vulgar dexterity more and more cultivated ; while design 
 and imagination are every day less cared for, and less possible. 
 
 50. Meanwhile, as I have just said, the leading minds in 
 literature and science become continually more logical and 
 investigative ; and, once that they are established in the 
 habit of testing facts accurately, a very few 3 ^ears are enough 
 to convince all the strongest thinkers that the old imaginative 
 religion is untenable, and cannot any longer be honestly 
 taught in its fixed traditional form, except by ignorant per- 
 sons. And at this point the fate of the people absolutely de- 
 pends on the degree of moral strength into which their hearts 
 have been already trained. If it be a strong, industrious, 
 chaste, and honest race, the taking its old gods, or at least 
 the old forms of them, away from it, w r ill indeed make it 
 deeply sorrowful and amazed ; but will in no whit shake its 
 will, nor alter its practice. Exceptional persons, naturally 
 disposed to become drunkards, harlots, and cheats, but who 
 had been previously restrained from indulging these disposi- 
 tions by their fear of God, will, of course, break out into open 
 vice, when that fear is removed. But the heads of the fami- 
 lies of the people, instructed in the pure habits and perfect 
 delights of an honest life, and to whom the thought of a 
 
38 
 
 ARATIIA PENT ELI CL 
 
 Father in heaven had been a comfort, not a restraint, will 
 assuredly not seek relief from the discomfort of their orphan- 
 age by becoming uncharitable and vile. Also the high leaders 
 of their thought gather their whole strength together in the 
 gloom ; and at the first entrance of this valley of the Shadow 
 of Death, look their new enemy full in the eyeless face of him, 
 and subdue him, and his terror, under their feet. “ Metus 
 omnes, et inexorabile fatum, . . . strepitumque Aeherontis 
 avari/ > This is the condition of national soul expressed by 
 the art, and the words, of Holbein, Durer, Shakspeare, Pope, 
 and Goethe. 
 
 51. But if the people, at the moment when the trial of 
 darkness approaches, be not confirmed in moral character, 
 but are only maintaining a superficial virtue by the aid of 
 a spectral religion ; the moment the staff of their faith is 
 broken, the character of the race falls like a climbing plant 
 cut from its hold : then all the earthliest vices attack it as it 
 lies in the dust; every form of sensual and insane sin is 
 developed, and half a century is sometimes enough to close, 
 in hopeless shame, the career of the nation in literature, art, 
 and war. 
 
 52. Notably, within the last hundred years, , all religion has 
 perished from the practically active national mind of France 
 and England. No statesman in the senate of either country 
 would dare to use a sentence out of their acceptedly divine 
 Revelation, as having now a literal authority over them for 
 their guidance, or even a suggestive wisdom for their con- 
 templation. England, especially, has cast her Bible full in 
 the face of her former God ; and proclaimed, with open 
 challenge to Him, her resolved worship of His declared 
 enemy, Mammon. All the arts, therefore, founded on relig- 
 ion, and sculpture chiefly, are here in England effete and 
 corrupt, to a degree which arts never were hitherto in the 
 history of mankind : and it is possible to show you the con- 
 dition of sculpture living, and sculpture dead, in accurate op- 
 position, by simply comparing the nascent Pisan school in Italy 
 with the existing school in England. 
 
 53. You were perhaps surprised at my placing in yoiu’ 
 
IDOLATRY ; 
 
 39 
 
 educational series, as a type of original Italian sculpture, the 
 pulpit by Niccola Pisano in the Duomo of Siena. I would 
 rather, had it been possible, have given the pulpit by Giovanni 
 Pisano in the Duomo of Pisa ; but that pulpit is dispersed in 
 fragments through the upper galleries of the Duomo, and the 
 cloister of the Campo Santo ; and the casts of its fragments 
 now put together at Kensington are too coarse to be of use to 
 you. You may partly judge, however, of the method of their 
 execution by the eagle’s head, which I have sketched from the 
 marble in the Campo Santo (Edu., No. 113), and the lioness 
 with her cubs, (Edu., No. 103, more carefully studied at 
 Siena) ; and I will get you other illustrations in due time. 
 Meanwhile, I want you to compare the main purpose of the 
 Cathedral of Pisa, and its associated Bell Tower, Baptistery, 
 and Holy .Field, with the main purpose of the principal build- 
 ing lately raised for the people of London. In these days, we 
 indeed desire no cathedrals ; but we have constructed an 
 enormous and costly edifice, which, in claiming educational 
 influence over the whole London populace, and middle class, 
 is verily the Metropolitan cathedral of this century, — the 
 Crystal Palace. 
 
 54. It was proclaimed, at its erection, an example of a newly 
 discovered style of architecture, greater than any hitherto 
 known, — our best popular writers, in their enthusiasm, de- 
 scribing it as an edifice of Fairyland. You are nevertheless to 
 observe that this novel production of fairy enchantment is 
 destitute of every kind of sculpture, except the bosses pro- 
 duced by the heads of nails and rivets; while the Duomo of 
 Pisa, in the wreathen work of its doors, in the foliage of its 
 capitals, inlaid colour designs of its fa 9 ade, embossed panels 
 of its baptistery font, and figure sculpture of its two pulpits, 
 contained the germ of a school of sculpture which was to 
 maintain, through a subsequent period of four hundred years, 
 the greatest power yet reached by the arts of the world in 
 description of Form, and expression of Thought. 
 
 55. Now it is easy to show you the essential cause of the 
 vast discrepancy in the character of these two buildings. 
 
 In the vault of the apse of the Duomo of Pisa, was a 
 
40 
 
 ABATE A PENT ELI Gl. 
 
 colossal image of Christ, in coloured mosaic, bearing to the 
 temple, as nearly as possible, the relation which the statue of 
 Athena bore to the Parthenon ; and in the same manner, con- 
 centrating the imagination of the Pisan on the attributes of the 
 God in whom he believed. 
 
 In precisely the same position with respect to the nave of 
 the building, but of larger size, as proportioned to the three 
 or four times greater scale of the whole, a colossal piece of 
 sculpture was placed by English designers, at the extremity 
 of the Crystal Palace, in preparation for their solemnities in 
 honour of the birthday of Christ, in December, 1867 or 1868. 
 
 That piece of sculpture was the face of the clown in a 
 pantomime, some twelve feet high from brow to chin, which 
 face, being moved by the mechanism which is our pride, every 
 half minute opened its mouth from ear to ear, showed its 
 teeth, and revolved its eyes, the force of these periodical 
 seasons of expression being increased and explained by the 
 illuminated inscription underneath “Here we are again.” 
 
 56. When it is assumed, and with too good reason, that 
 the mind of the English populace is to be addressed, in the 
 principal Sacred Festival of its year, by sculpture such as this, 
 I need scarcely point out to you that the hope is absolutely 
 futile of advancing their intelligence by collecting within this 
 building, (itself devoid absolutely of every kind of art, and so 
 vilely constructed that those who traverse it are continually in 
 danger of falling over the cross-bars that bind it together) 
 examples of sculpture filched indiscriminately from the past 
 work, bad and good, of Turks, Greeks, Homans, Moors, and 
 Christians, miscoloured, misplaced, and misinterpreted ; * 
 here thrust into unseemly corners, and there mortised together 
 into mere confusion of heterogeneous obstacle ; pronouncing 
 itself hourly more intolerable in weariness, until any kind of 
 relief is sought from it in steam wheelbarrows or cheap toy- 
 
 * “Falsely represented,” would be the better expression. In the cast 
 of the tomb of Queen Eleanor, for a single instance, the Gothic foliage 
 of which one essential virtue is its change over every shield, is repre- 
 sented by a repetition of casts from one mould, of which the desjgn it- 
 self is entirely conjectural. 
 
IDOLATRY. 
 
 41 
 
 shops ; and most of all in beer and meat, the corks and the 
 bones being dropped through the chinks in the damp deal 
 flooring of the English Fairy Palace. 
 
 57. But you will probably think me unjust in assuming 
 that a building prepared only for the amusement of the peo- 
 ple can typically represent the architecture or sculpture of 
 modern England. You may urge, that I ought rather to de- 
 scribe the qualities of the refined sculpture which is executed 
 in large quantities for private persons belonging to the upper 
 classes, and for sepulchral and memorial purposes. But I 
 could not now criticise that sculpture with any power of con- 
 viction to you, because I have not yet stated to you the prin- 
 ciples of good sculpture in general. I will, however, in some 
 points, tell you the facts by anticipation. 
 
 58. We have much excellent portrait sculpture ; but portrait 
 sculpture, which is nothing more, is always third-rate work, 
 even when produced by men of genius ; — nor does it in the 
 least require men of genius to produce it. To paint a por- 
 trait, indeed, implies the very highest gifts of painting ; but 
 any man, of ordinary patience and artistic feeling, can carve a 
 satisfactory bust. 
 
 59. Of our powers in historical sculpture, I am, without 
 question, just, in taking for sufficient evidence the monuments 
 we have erected to our two greatest heroes by sea and land ; 
 namely, the Nelson Column, and the statue of the Duke of 
 Wellington opposite Apsley House. Nor will you, I hope, 
 think me severe, — certainly, whatever you may think me, I 
 am using only the most temperate language, in saying of both 
 these monuments, that they are absolutely devoid of high 
 sculptural merit. But, consider how much is involved in the 
 fact thus dispassionately stated, respecting the two monu- 
 ments in the principal places of our capital, to our two great- 
 est heroes. 
 
 60. Bemember that we have before our eyes, as subjects of 
 perpetual study and thought, the art of all the world for three 
 thousand years past : especially, we have the best sculpture 
 of Greece, for example of bodily perfection ; the best of Borne, 
 for example of character in portraiture ; the best of Florence, 
 
42 
 
 ABATE A PENTELICI. 
 
 for example of romantic passion : we have unlimited access 
 to books and other sources of instruction ; we have the most 
 perfect scientific illustrations of anatomy, both human and 
 comparative ; and, we have bribes for the reward of success, 
 large, in the proportion of at least twenty to one, as compared 
 with those offered to the artists of any other period. And 
 with all these advantages, and the stimulus also of fame car- 
 ried instantly by the press to the remotest corners of Europe, 
 the best efforts we can make, on the grandest of occasions, re- 
 sult in work which it is impossible in any one particular to 
 praise. 
 
 Now consider for yourselves what an intensity of the nega- 
 tion of the faculty of sculpture this implies in the national 
 mind ! What measures can be assigned to the gulf of inca- 
 pacity, which can deliberately swallow up in the gorge of it 
 the teaching and example of three thousand years, and pro- 
 duce as the result of that instruction, what it is courteous to 
 call “ nothing ? ” 
 
 61. That is the conclusion at which we arrive, on the evi- 
 dence presented by our historical sculpture. To complete the 
 measure of ourselves, we must endeavour to estimate the rank 
 of the two opposite schools of sculpture employed by us in 
 the nominal service of religion, and in the actual service of 
 vice. 
 
 I am aware of no statue of Christ, nor of any apostle of 
 Christ, nor of any scene related in the New Testament, pro- 
 duced by us within the last three hundred years, which has 
 possessed even superficial merit enough to attract public at- 
 tention. 
 
 Whereas the steadily immoral effect of the formative art 
 which we learn, more or less apishly, from the French schools, 
 and employ, but too gladly, in manufacturing articles for the 
 amusement of the luxurious classes, must be ranked as one 
 of the chief instruments used by joyful fiends and angry fates, 
 for the ruin of our civilization. 
 
 If, after I have set before you the nature and principles of 
 true sculpture, in Athens, Pisa, and Florence, you reconsider 
 these facts, — (which you will then at once recognize as such). 
 
IDOLATRY. 
 
 43 
 
 — you will find that they absolutely justify my assertion that 
 the state of sculpture in modern England, as compared with 
 that of the great Ancients, is literally one of corrupt and dis- 
 honourable death, as opposed to bright and fameful life. 
 
 G2. And now, will you bear with me, while I tell you finally 
 why this is so ? 
 
 The cause with which you are personally concerned is your 
 own frivolity ; though essentially this is not your fault, but 
 that of the system of your early training. But the fact re- 
 mains the same, that here, in Oxford, you, a chosen body of 
 English youth, in no wise care for the history of your coun- 
 try, for its present dangers, or its present duties. You still, 
 like children of seven or eight years old, are interested only in 
 bats, balls, and oars : nay, including with you the students of 
 Germany and France, it is certain that the general body of 
 modern European youth have their minds occupied more seri- 
 ously by the sculpture and painting of the bowls of their 
 tobacco-pipes, than by all the divinest workmanship and pas- 
 sionate imagination of Greece, Kome, and Mediaeval Chris- 
 tendom. 
 
 63. But the elementary causes, both of this frivolity in you, 
 and of worse than frivolity in older persons, are the two forms 
 of deadly Idolatry which are now all but universal in Eng- 
 land. 
 
 The first of these is the worship of the Eidolon, or Phan- 
 tasm of Wealth ; worship of which you will find the nature 
 partly examined in the 37th paragraph of my Munera, Pul - 
 veris ; but which is briefly to be defined as the servile appre- 
 hension of an active power in Money, and the submission to 
 it as the God of our life. 
 
 64. The second elementary cause of the loss of our nobly 
 imaginative faculty, is the worship of the Letter, instead of the 
 Spirit, in what we chiefly accept as the ordinance and teach- 
 ing of Deity ; and the apprehension of a healing sacredness in 
 the act of reading the Book whose primal commands we re- 
 fuse to obey. 
 
 No feather idol of Polynesia was ever a sign of a more 
 shameful idolatry, than the modern notion in the minds of 
 
44 
 
 ABATE A PENT ELI CL 
 
 certainly the majority of English religious persons, that the 
 Word of God, by which the heavens were of old, and the 
 earth, standing out of the water and in the water, — the Word 
 of God which came to the prophets, and comes still for ever to 
 all who will hear it, (and to many who will forbear) ; and 
 which, called Faithful and True, is to lead forth, in the judg- 
 ment, the armies of heaven, — that this “ Word of God ” may 
 yet be bound at our pleasure in morocco, and carried about 
 in a young lady’s pocket, with tasselled ribands to mark the 
 passages she most approves of. 
 
 65. Gentlemen, there has hitherto been seen no instance, 
 and England is little likely to give the unexampled spectacle, 
 of a country successful in the noble arts, yet in which the 
 youths were frivolous, the maidens falsety religious, the men, 
 slaves of money, and the matrons, of vanity. Not from all the 
 marble of the hills of Luni will such a people ever shape one 
 statue that may stand nobly against the sky ; not from all 
 the treasures bequeathed to them by the great dead, will they 
 gather, for their own descendants, any inheritance but shame. 
 
 LECTURE m. 
 
 IMAGINATION. 
 
 November , 1870. 
 
 66. The principal object of the preceding lecture (and I 
 choose rather to incur your blame for tediousness in repeat- 
 ing, than for obscurity in defining it), was to enforce the dis- 
 tinction between the ignoble and false phase of Idolatry, which 
 consists in the attribution of a spiritual power to a material 
 thing ; and the noble and truth-seeking phase of it, to which 
 I shall in these lectures * give the general term of Imagina- 
 
 * I shall be obliged in future lectures, as hitherto in my other writ- 
 ings, to use the terms, Idolatry and Imagination in a more comprehen- 
 sive sense ; but here I use them for convenience sake, limitedly, to 
 avoid the continual occurrence of the terms, noble and ignoble, or false 
 and true, with reference to modes of conception. 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 45 
 
 
 Fig. 2. 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 47 
 
 tion ; — that is to say, the invention of material symbols which 
 may lead us to contemplate the character and nature of gods, 
 spirits, or abstract virtues and powers, without in the least 
 implying the actual presence of such Beings among us, or 
 even their possession, in reality, of the forms we attribute to 
 them. 
 
 67. For instance, in the ordinarily received Greek type of 
 Athena, on vases of the Phidian time (sufficiently represented 
 in the opposite woodcut), no Greek would have supposed the 
 vase on which this was painted to be itself Athena, nor to con- 
 tain Athena inside of it, as the Arabian fisherman’s casket 
 contained the genie ; neither did he think that this rude 
 black painting, done at speed as the potter’s fancy urged his 
 hand, represented anything like the form or aspect of the 
 Goddess herself. Nor would he have thought so, even had 
 the image been ever so beautifully wrought. The goddess 
 might, indeed, visibly appear under the form of an armed 
 virgin, as she might under that of a hawk or a swallow, when 
 it pleased her to give such manifestation of her presence ; but 
 it did not, therefore, follow that she was constantly invested 
 with any of these forms, or that the best which human skill 
 could, even by her own aid, picture of her, was, indeed, a 
 likeness of her. The real use, at all events, of this rude 
 image, was only to signify to the eye and heart the facts of 
 the existence, in some manner, of a Spirit of wisdom, perfect 
 in gentleness, irresistible in anger ; having also physical do- 
 minion over the air which is the life and breadth of all creat- 
 nres, and clothed, to human eyes, with segis of fiery cloud, and 
 raiment of falling dew. 
 
 68. In the yet more abstract conception of the Spirit of 
 agriculture, in which the wings of the chariot represent the 
 winds of spring, and its crested dragons are originally a mere 
 type of the seed with its twisted root piercing the ground, 
 and sharp-edged leaves rising above it ; we are in still less 
 danger of mistaking the symbol for the presumed form of an 
 actual Person. But I must, with persistence, beg of you to 
 observe that in all the noble actions of imagination in this 
 kind, the distinction from idolatry consists, not in the denial of 
 
48 
 
 ARATRA PENT ELI Cl. 
 
 tlie being, or presence of the Spirit, but only in the due recog- 
 nition of our human incapacity to conceive the one, or compel 
 the other. 
 
 Fig. 3. 
 
 69. Farther — -and for this statement 1 claim your attention 
 still more earnestly. As no nation lias ever attained real 
 greatness during periods in which it was subject to any condi- 
 tion of Idolatry, so no nation has ever attained or persevered 
 in greatness, except in reaching and maintaining a passionate 
 Imagination of a spiritual estate higher than that of men ; and 
 of spiritual creatures nobler than men, having a quite real and 
 personal existence, however imperfectly apprehended by us. 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 49 
 
 And all the arts of the present age deserving to bo included 
 under the name of sculpture have been degraded by us, and 
 all principles of just policy have vanished from us, — and that 
 totally, — for this double reason ; that we are on one side, given 
 up to idolatries of the most servile kind, as I showed you in 
 the close of the last lecture, — while, on the other hand, we have 
 absolutely ceased from the exercise of faithful imagination ; 
 and the only remnants of the desire of truth which remain in 
 us have been corrupted into a prurient itch to discover the 
 origin of life in the nature of the dust, and prove that the 
 source of the order of the universe is the accidental concurrence 
 of its atoms. 
 
 70. Under these two calamities of our time, the art of sculpt- 
 ure has perished more totally than any other, because the 
 object of that art is exclusively the representation of form as 
 the exponent of life. It is essentially concerned only with the 
 human form, which is the exponent of the highest life we 
 know ; and with all subordinate forms only as they exhibit 
 conditions of vital power which have some certain relation to 
 humanity. It deals with the “ particula undique desecta ” of 
 the animal nature, and itself contemplates, and brings forward 
 for its disciples’ contemplation, all the energies of creation 
 which transform the 7^X0?, or lower still, the / 3 op/>opoy of the 
 trivia , by Athena’s help, into forms of power ; — (to /nlv o\ov 
 apyireVron' auros r/v. awetpya^ero Se tol i<al rj 'AOrjva ifiirveovcrcL 
 tov mrjXbv Kal e/xi^uya Trocovaa efvai ra 7rA.a07xa.Ta *)* — but it lias 
 nothing whatever to do with the representation of forms not 
 living, however beautiful, (as of clouds or waves) ; nor may 
 it condescend to use its perfect skill, except in expressing the 
 noblest conditions of life. 
 
 These laws of sculpture, being wholly contrary to the prac- 
 tice of our day, I cannot expect you to accept on my assertion, 
 nor do I wish you to do so. By placing definitely good and 
 bad sculpture before you, I do not doubt but that I shall 
 
 . * “ And in sum, he himself (Prometheus) was the master-maker, and 
 Athena worked together with him, breathing into the clay, and caused 
 the moulded things to have soul (psyche) in them. 5 ' — Lucian, Prome- 
 theus. 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 ABATE A BENT ELI CL 
 
 gradually prove to you the nature of all excelling and endur- 
 ing qualities ; but to-day I will only confirm my assertions by 
 laying before you the statement of the Greeks themselves on 
 the subject ; given in their own noblest time, and assuredly 
 authoritative, in every point which it embraces, for all time 
 to come. 
 
 71. If any of you have looked at the explanation I have 
 given of the myth of Athena in my Queen of the Air , you can- 
 not but have been surprised that I took scarcely any note of 
 the story of her birth. I did not, because that story is con- 
 nected intimately with the Apolline myths ; and is told of 
 Athena, not essentially as the goddess of the air, but as the 
 goddess of Art- Wisdom. 
 
 You have probably often smiled at the legend itself, or 
 avoided thinking of it, as revolting. It is indeed, one of the 
 most painful and childish of sacred myths ; yet remember, 
 ludicrous and ugly as it seems to us, this story satisfied the 
 fancy of the Athenian people in their highest state ; and if it 
 did not satisfy — yet it was accepted by, all later mythologists : 
 you may also remember I told you to be prepared to find that, 
 given a certain degree of national intellect, the ruder the 
 symbol, the deeper would be its purpose. And this legend 
 of the birth of Athena is the central myth of all that the 
 Greeks have left us respecting the power of their arts ; and in 
 it they have expressed, as it seemed good to them, the most 
 important things they had to tell us on these matters. We 
 may read them wrongly ; but we must read them here, if 
 anywhere. 
 
 72. There are so many threads to be gathered up in the 
 legend, that I cannot hope to put it before you in total clear- 
 ness, but I will take main points. Athena is born in the 
 island of Ehodes ; and that island is raised out of the sea by 
 Apollo, after he had been left without inheritance among the 
 gods. Zeus * would have cast the lot again, but Apollo 
 
 * His relations with the two great Titans, Themis and Mnemosyne, 
 belong to another group of myths. The father of Athena is the lower 
 and nearer physical Zeus, from whom Metis, the mother of Athena, long 
 withdraws and disguises herself. 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 51 
 
 orders tlie golden -girdled Lachesis to stretch out her hands ; 
 and not now by chance or lot, but by noble enchantment, the 
 island rises out of the sea. 
 
 Physically, this represents the action of heat and light on 
 chaos, especially on the deep sea. It is the “ Fiat lux ” of 
 Genesis, the first process in the conquest of Fate by Har- 
 mony. The island is dedicated to the Nymph Khodos, by 
 whom Apollo has the seven sons who teach crot/xorara vorjfxaTa ; 
 because the rose is the most beautiful organism existing in 
 matter not vital, expressive of the direct action of light on the 
 earth, giving lovely form and colour at once ; (compare the use 
 of it by Dante as the form of the sainted crowd in highest 
 heaven) and remember that, therefore, the rose is in the Greek 
 mind, essentially a Doric flower, expressing the worship of 
 Light, as the Iris or Ion is an Ionic one, expressing the wor- 
 ship of the Winds and Dew. 
 
 73. To understand the agency of Hephcestus at the birth of 
 Athena, we must again return to the founding of the arts on 
 agriculture by the hand. Before you can cultivate land you 
 must clear it ; and the characteristic weapon of Hephaestus, — 
 which is as much his attribute as the trident is of Poseidon, 
 and the rliabdos of Hermes, is not, as you would have ex- 
 pected, the hammer, but the clearing-axe — the doubled-edged 
 7 reAe/cvs, the same that Calypso gives Ulysses with which to cut 
 down the trees for his home voyage ; so that both the naval 
 and agricultural strength of the Athenians are expressed by 
 this weapon, with which they had to hew out their fortune. 
 And you must keep in mind this agriculturally laborious 
 character of Hephaestus, even when he is most distinctly the 
 god of serviceable fire ; thus Horace’s perfect epithet for him 
 “ avidus ” expresses at once the devouring eagerness of fire, 
 and the zeal of progressive labour, for Horace gives it to him 
 when he is fighting against the giants. And this rude symbol 
 of his cleaving the forehead of Zeus with the axe, and giving 
 birth to Athena signifies, indeed, physically the thrilling 
 power of heat in the heavens, rending the clouds, and giving 
 birth to the blue air ; but far more deeply it signifies the sub- 
 duing of adverse Fate by true labour ; until, out of the chasm, 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 v UNIVERSE 
 
 OF WJW 
 
AIUTB A TEN TE LIC I. 
 
 52 
 
 deft by resolute and industrious fortitude, springs the Spirit 
 of Wisdom. 
 
 74. Here (Fig. 4) is an early drawing of the myth, to which 
 I shall have to refer afterwards in illustration of the childish- 
 ness of the Greek mind at the time when its art-symbols 
 were first fixed; but it is of peculiar value, because the phys- 
 ical character of Vulcan, as fire, is indicated by his wearing 
 the ei/Spd/nSes of Hermes, while the antagonism of Zeus, as the 
 adverse chaos, either of cloud or of fate, is shown by his 
 striking at Hephaestus with his thunderbolt. But Plate IV. 
 gives you (as far as the light on the rounded vase will allow 
 
 Fig. 4. 
 
 it to be deciphered) a characteristic representation of the 
 scene, as conceived in later art. 
 
 75. I told you in a former lecture of this course that the 
 entire Greek intellect was in a childish phase as compared 
 to that of modern times. Observe, however, childishness 
 does not necessarily imply universal inferiority: there may 
 be a vigorous, acute, pure, and solemn childhood, and there 
 may be a weak, foul, and ridiculous condition of advanced 
 life ; but the one is still essentially the childish, and the other 
 the adult phase of existence. 
 
 76. You will find, then, that the Greeks were the first 
 people that were born into complete humanity. All nations 
 before them had been, and all around them still were, partly 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 53 
 
 savage, bestial, clay-encumbered, inhuman ; still semi-goat, or 
 semi-ant, or semi-stone, or semi-cloud. But the power of a 
 new spirit came upon the Greeks, and the stones were filled 
 with breath, and the clouds clothed with flesh ; and then 
 came the great spiritual battle between the Centaurs and Lap- 
 ithre ; and the living creatures became “Children of Men.” 
 Taught, yet by the Centaur — sown, as they knew, in the fang 
 — from the dappled skin of the brute, from the leprous scale 
 of the serpent, their flesh came again as the flesh of a little 
 child, and they were clean. 
 
 Fix your mind on this as the very central character of the 
 Greek race — the being born pure and human out of the bru- 
 tal misery of the past, and looking abroad, for the first time, 
 with their children’s eyes, wonderingly open, on the strange 
 and divine world. 
 
 77. Make some effort to remember, so far as may be possi- 
 ble to you, either what you felt in yourselves when you were 
 young, or what you have observed in other children, of the 
 action of thought and fancy. Children are continually repre- 
 sented as living in an ideal world of their own. So far as I 
 have myself observed, the distinctive character of a child is to 
 live always in the tangible present, having little pleasure in 
 memory, and being utterly impatient and tormented by antic- 
 ipation : weak alike in reflection and forethought, but having 
 an intense possession of the actual present, down to the short- 
 est moments and least objects of it ; possessing it, indeed, so 
 intensely that the sweet childish days are as long as twenty 
 days will be ; and setting all the faculties of heart and imag- 
 ination on little things, so as to be able to make anything out 
 y)f them he chooses. Confined to a little garden, lie does not 
 imagine himself somewhere else, but makes a great garden 
 out of that ; possessed of an acorn-cup, he will not despise it 
 and throw it away, and covet a golden one in its stead : it is 
 the adult who does so. The child keeps his acorn-cup as a 
 treasure, and makes a golden one out of it in his mind ; so 
 that the wondering grown-up person standing beside him is 
 always tempted to ask concerning his treasures, not, “What 
 would you have more than these?” but “What possibly can 
 
54: 
 
 ABATE A PENT E LIC I. 
 
 you see in tliese ? ” for, to tlie bystander, there is a ludicrous 
 and incomprehensible inconsistency between the child’s words 
 and the reality. The little thing tells him gravely, holding 
 up the acorn-cup, that “this is a queen’s crown, or a fairy’s 
 boat,” and, with beautiful effrontery, expects him to believe 
 the same. But observe — the acorn-cup must be there , and in 
 his own hand. “Give it me then I will make more of it 
 for myself. That is the child’s one word, always. 
 
 Fig. 5. * 
 
 78. It is also the one word of the Greek — “ Give it me.” 
 Give me any thing definite here in my sight, then I will make 
 more of it. 
 
 I cannot easily express to you how strange it seems to me 
 that I am obliged, here in Oxford, to take the position of an 
 apologist for Greek art ; that I find, in spite of all the devo- 
 tion of the admirable scholars who have so long maintained 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 55 
 
 in our public schools the authority of Greek literature, our 
 younger students take no interest in the manual work of the 
 people upon whose thoughts the tone of their early intellect- 
 ual life has exclusively depended. But I am not surprised 
 that the interest, if awakened, should not at first take the 
 form of admiration. The inconsistency between an Homeric 
 description of a piece of furniture or armour, and the actual 
 rudeness of any piece of art approximating within even three 
 or four centuries, to the Homeric period, is so great, that we 
 at first cannot recognize the art as elucidatory of, or in any 
 way related to, the poetic language. 
 
 79. You will find, however, exactly the same kind of dis- 
 crepancy between early sculpture, and the languages of deed 
 and thought, in the second birth, and childhood, of the 
 world, under Christianity. The same fair thoughts and bright 
 imaginations arise again ; and similarly, the fancy is content 
 with the rudest symbols by which they can be formalized to 
 the eyes. You cannot understand that the rigid figure (2) 
 with chequers or spots on its breast, and sharp lines of 
 drapery to its feet, could represent, to the Greek, the healing 
 majesty of heaven : but can you any better understand how a 
 symbol so haggard as this (Fig. 5) could represent to the 
 noblest hearts of the Christian ages the power and ministra- 
 tion of angels ? Yet it not only did so, but retained in the 
 rude undulatory and linear ornamentation of its dress, record 
 of the thoughts intended to be conveyed by the spotted regis 
 and falling chiton of Athena, eighteen hundred years before. 
 Greek and Venetian alike, in their noble childhood, knew with 
 the same terror the coiling wind and congealed hail in heaven 
 — saw with the same thankfulness the dew shed softly on the 
 earth, and on its flowers ; and both recognized, ruling these, 
 and symbolized by them, the great helpf ul spirit of Wisdom, 
 which leads the children of men to all knowledge, all courage, 
 and all art. 
 
 80. Read the inscription written on the sarcophagus (Plate 
 V.), at the extremity of which this angel is sculptured. It 
 stands in an open recess in the rude brick wall of the west 
 front of the church of St. John and Paul at Venice, being the 
 
50 
 
 ARATRA PENTELICI. 
 
 tomb of tlie two doges, father and son, Jacopo and Lorenzo 
 Tiepolo. This is the inscription : — 
 
 1 ‘ Quos natura pares studiis, virtutibus, arte 
 Edidit, illustres genitor natusque, sepulti 
 Hac sub rupe Duces. Venetum charissima proles 
 Theupula collatis dedit bos celebranda triumpbis. 
 
 Omnia presentis donavit predia templi 
 Dux Jacobus : valido fixit moderamine leges 
 Urbis, et ingratam redimens certamine Jadram 
 Dalmatiosque dedit patrie, post, Marte subactas 
 Graiorum pelago macula vit sanguine classes, 
 
 Suscipit oblatos princeps Laurentius Istros, 
 
 Et domuit rigidos, ingenti strage cadentes, 
 
 Bononie populos. Hinc subdita Cervia cessit. 
 
 Fundavere vias pacis ; fortique relicta 
 Re, superos sacris petierunt mentibus ambo. 
 
 a Dominus Jacbobus bobiit * M.CCLI. Dominus Laurentius bobiit 
 
 M.CCLXXVIII.” 
 
 You see, therefore, this tomb is an invaluable example of 
 thirteenth century sculpture in Venice. In Plate VI., you 
 have an example of the (coin) sculpture of the date accurately 
 corresponding in Greece to the thirteenth century in Venice, 
 when the meaning of symbols was everything and the work- 
 manship comparatively nothing. The upper head is an Athena, 
 of Athenian work in the seventh or sixth century — (the coin 
 itself may have been struck later, but the archaic type was re- 
 tained). The two smaller impressions below are the front and 
 obverse of a coin of the same age from Corinth, the head of 
 Athena on one side, and Pegasus, with the archaic Koppa, on 
 the other. The smaller head is bare, the hair being looped 
 up at the back and closely bound with an olive branch. You 
 are to note this general outline of the head, already given in 
 a more finished type in Plate II., as a most important element- 
 ary form in the finest sculpture, not of Greece only, but of all 
 Christendom. In the upper head the hair is restrained still 
 more closely by a round helmet, for the most part smooth, 
 
 * Tbe Latin verses are of later date ; the contemporary plain prose re' 
 tains tbe Venetian gutturals and aspirates. 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 57 
 
 but embossed with a single flower tendril, having one bud, 
 one flower, and above it, two olive leaves. You have thus the 
 most absolutely restricted symbol possible to human thought 
 of the power of Athena over the flowers and trees of the earth. 
 An olive leaf by itself could not have stood for the sign of a 
 tree, but the two can, when set in position of growth. 
 
 I would not give you the reverse of the coin on the same 
 plate, because you would have looked at it only, laughed at it, 
 and not examined the rest ; but here it is, wonderfully en- 
 graved for you (Fig. 6) : of it we 
 shall have more to say afterwards. 
 
 81. And now as you look at these 
 rude vestiges of the religion of 
 Greece, and at the vestiges, still 
 ruder, on the Ducal tomb, of the 
 religion of Christendom, take warn- 
 ing against two opposite errors. 
 
 There is a school of teachers who 
 will tell you that nothing but Greek 
 art is deserving of study, and thnt 
 all our work at this day should be an imitation of it. 
 
 Whenever you feel tempted to believe them, think of these 
 portraits of Athena and her owl, and be assured that Greek 
 art is not in all respects perfect, nor exclusively deserving of 
 imitation. 
 
 There is another school of teachers- who wall tell you that 
 Greek art is good for nothing ; that the soul of the Greek was 
 outcast, and that Christianity entirely superseded its faith, 
 and excelled its works. 
 
 Whenever you feel tempted to believe them, think of this 
 angel on the tomb of Jacopo Tiepolo ; and remember, that 
 Cli ristiani ty, after it had been twelve hundred years existent 
 as an imaginative power on the earth, could do no better* work 
 than this, though with all the former power of Greece to help 
 it ; nor was able to engrave its triumph in having stained its 
 fleets in the seas of Greece with the blood of her people, but 
 between barbarous imitations of the pillars which that people 
 had invented. 
 
58 
 
 ARATRA PENTEL1CI. 
 
 82. Receiving these two warnings, receive also this lesson. 
 In both examples, childish though it be, this Heathen and 
 Christian art is alike sincere, and alike vividly imaginative : 
 the actual work is that of infancy ; the thoughts, in their vi- 
 sionary simplicity, are also the thoughts of infancy, but in 
 their solemn virtue, they are the thoughts of men. 
 
 We, on the contrary, are now, in all that we do, absolutely 
 without sincerity ; — absolutely, therefore, without imagina- 
 tion, and without virtue. Our hands are dexterous with the 
 vile and deadly dexterity of machines ; our minds filled with 
 incoherent fragments of faith, which we cling to in coward- 
 ice, without believing, and make pictures of in vanity, with- 
 out loving. False and base alike, whether we admire or imi- 
 tate, we cannot learn from the Heathen’s art, but only pilfer 
 it ; we cannot revive the Christian’s art, but only galvanize it ; 
 we are, in the sum of us, not human artists at all, but mechan- 
 isms of conceited clay, masked in the furs and feathers of liv- 
 ing creatures, and convulsed with voltaic spasms, in mockery 
 of animation. 
 
 83. You think, perhaps, that I am using terms unjustifiable 
 in violence. They would, indeed, be unjustifiable, if, spoken 
 from this chair, they were violent at all. They are, unhap- 
 pily, temperate and accurate, — except in shortcoming of blame. 
 For we are not only impotent to restore, but strong to defile, 
 the work of past ages. Of the impotence, take but this one, 
 utterly liumiliatory, and, in the full meaning of it, ghastly, 
 example. We have lately been busy embanking, in the cap- 
 ital of the country, the river which, of all its waters, the im- 
 agination of our ancestors had made most sacred, and the 
 bounty of nature most useful. Of all architectural features of 
 the metropolis, that embankment will be, in future, the most 
 conspicuous ; and in its position and purpose it w r as the most 
 capable of noble adornment. 
 
 For that adornment, nevertheless, the utmost which our 
 modern poetical imagination has been able to invent, is a row 
 of gas-lamps. It has, indeed, farther suggested itself to our 
 minds as appropriate to gas-lamps set beside a river, that the 
 gas should come out of fishes’ tails ; but we have not ingenuity 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 59 
 
 enough to cast so much as a smelt or a sprat for ourselves ; 
 so we borrow the shape of a Neapolitan marble, which has 
 been the refuse of the plate and candlestick shops in every 
 capital of Europe for the last fifty years. We cast that badly, 
 and give lustre to the ill-cast fish with lacquer in imitation of 
 bronze. On the base of their pedestals, towards the road, 
 we put for advertisement’s sake, the initials of the casting 
 firm ; and, for farther originality and Christianity’s sake, the 
 caduceus of Mercury ; and to adorn the front of the pedestals 
 towards the river, being now wholly at our wit’s end, we 
 can think of nothing better than to borrow the door-knocker 
 w r hich — again for the last fifty years — has disturbed and dec- 
 orated two or three millions of London street-doors ; and 
 magnifying the marvellous device of it, a lion’s head wdth a 
 ring in its mouth (still borrowed from the Greek), we complete 
 the embankment with a row of heads and rings, on a scale 
 which enables them to produce, at the distance at which only 
 they can be seen, the exact effect of a row of sentrvboxes. 
 
 84. Farther. In the very centre of the city, and at the 
 point where the Embankment commands a view of Westmin- 
 ster Abbey on one side and of St. Paul’s on the other — that is 
 to say, at precisely the most important and stately moment 
 of its whole course — it has to pass under one of the arches of 
 Waterloo Bridge, which, in the sweep of its curve, is as vast 
 — it alone — as the Bialto at Venice, and scarcely less seemly 
 in proportions. But over the Rialto, though of late and de- 
 based Venetian work, there still reigns some power of human 
 imagination : on the two flanks of it are carved the Virgin 
 and the Angel of the Annunciation ; on the keystone the de- 
 scending Dove. It is not, indeed, the fault of living designers 
 that the Waterloo arch is nothing more than a gloomy and 
 hollow heap of wedged blocks of blind granite. But just 
 beyond the damp shadow of it, the new Embankment is 
 reached by a flight of stairs, which are, in point of fact, the 
 principal approach to it, a-foot, from central London ; the de- 
 scent from the very midst of the metropolis of England to 
 the banks of the chief river of England ; and for this ap* 
 proach, living designers are answerable. 
 
GO 
 
 AH ATE A PENT E LIC I. 
 
 85. The principal decoration of the descent is again a gas- 
 lamp, but a shattered one, with a brass crown on the top of 
 it or, rather, half-crown, and that turned the wrong way, the 
 back of it to the river and causeway, its flame supplied by a 
 visible pipe far wandering along the wall ; the whole appa- 
 ratus being supported by a rough cross-beam. Fastened to 
 the centre of the arch above is a large placard, stating that 
 the Royal Humane Society’s drags are in constant readiness, 
 and that their office is at 4, Trafalgar Square. On each side 
 of the arch are temporary, but dismally old and battered 
 boardings, across two angles capable of unseemly use by the 
 British public. Above one of these is another placard, stat- 
 ing that this is the Victoria Embankment. The steps them- 
 selves — some forty of them — descend under a tunnel, which 
 the shattered gas-lamp lights by night, and nothing by day. 
 They are covered with filthy dust, shaken off from infinitude 
 of filthy feet ; mixed up with shreds of paper, orange-peel, 
 foul straw, rags, and cigar ends, and ashes ; the whole agglu- 
 tinated, more or less, by dry saliva into slippery blotches and 
 patches ; or, when not so fastened, blown dismally by the 
 sooty wind hither and thither, or into the faces of those who 
 ascend and descend. The place is worth your visit, for you 
 are not likely to find elsewhere a spot which, either in costly 
 and ponderous brutality of building, or in the squalid and 
 indecent accompaniment of it, is so far separated from the 
 peace and grace of nature, and so accurately indicative of the 
 methods of our national resistance to the Grace, Mercy, and 
 Peace of Heaven. 
 
 86. I am obliged always to use the English word “ Grace ” 
 in two senses, but remember that the Greek yapis includes 
 them both (the bestowing, that is to say of Beauty and 
 Mercy) ; and especially it includes these in the passage of 
 Pindar’s first ode, which gives us the key to the right inter- 
 pretation of the power of sculpture in Greece. You remem- 
 ber that I told you, in my Sixth Introductory Lecture (§ 151), 
 that the mythic accounts of Greek sculpture begin in the 
 legends of the family of Tantalus ; and especially in the most 
 grotesque legend of them all, the inlaying of the ivory shoul- 
 

 IMAGINATION. Cl 
 
 der of Pelops. At that story Pindar pauses — not, indeed, 
 without admiration, nor alleging any impossibility in the cir- 
 cumstances themselves, but doubting the careless hunger of 
 Demeter — and gives his own reading of the event, instead of 
 the ancient one. He justifies this to himself, and to his hear- 
 ers, by the plea that myths have, in some sort, or degree, 
 (7 tov tl), led the mind of mortals beyond the truth : and then 
 he goes on : — 
 
 Cb Grace, which creates everything that is kindly and sooth- 
 ing for mortals, adding honour, has often made things at first 
 untrustworthy, become trustworthy through Love.” 
 
 87 . I cannot, except in these lengthened terms, give } t ou 
 the complete force of the passage ; especially of the amo-rov 
 IfjLrjcraro Tua-Tov — “ made it trustworthy by passionate desire 
 that it should be so ” — which exactly describes the temper of 
 religious persons at the present day, who are kindly and sin- 
 cere, in clinging to the forms of faith which either have long 
 been precious to themselves, or which they feel to have been 
 without question instrumental in advancing the dignity of 
 mankind. And it is part of the constitution of humanity — a 
 part which, above others, you are in danger of unwisely con- 
 temning under the existing conditions of our knowledge, that 
 the things thus sought for belief with eager passion, do, 
 indeed, become trustworthy to us ; that, to each of us, they 
 verily become what we would have them ; the force of the 
 fjLrjvis and ixvrjfir] with which we seek after them, does, indeed, 
 make them powerful to us for actual good or evil ; and if is 
 thus granted to us to create not only with our hands v things 
 that exalt or degrade our sight, but with our hearts also, 
 things that exalt or degrade our souls ; giving true substance 
 to all that we hoped for ; evidence to things that we have not 
 seen, but have desired to see ; and calling, in the sense of 
 creating, things that are not, as though they were. 
 
 88. You remember that in distinguishing Imagination from 
 Idolatry, I referred you to the forms of passionate affection 
 with which a noble people commonly regards the rivers and 
 springs of its native land. Some conception of personality 
 or of spiritual power in the stream, is almost necessarily iir 
 
62 
 
 AllA TEA PEN TELA CL 
 
 volved in such emotion ; and prolonged ya/ns i n the form of 
 gratitude, the return of Love for benefits continually bestowed, 
 at last alike in all the highest and the simplest minds, when 
 they are honourable and pure, makes this untrue thing trust' 
 worthy ; a-mo-rov ifLrjarcLTo maTov , until it becomes to them the 
 safe basis of some of the happiest impulses of their moral 
 nature. Next to the marbles of Verona, given you as a primal 
 type of the sculpture of Christianity, moved to its best energy 
 in adorning the entrance of its temples, I have not unwillingly 
 placed, as your introduction to the best sculpture of the re- 
 ligion of Greece, the forms under which it represented the 
 personality of the fountain Arethusa. But, without restriction 
 to those days of absolute devotion, let me simply point out to 
 you how this untrue thing, made true by Love, has intimate 
 and heavenly authority even over the minds of men of the 
 most practical sense, the most shrewd wit, and the most 
 severe precision of moral temper. The fair vision of Sabrina 
 in Com us, the endearing and tender promise, “ Fies nobilium 
 tu quoque fontium,” and the joyful and proud affection of the 
 great Lombard’s address to the lakes of his enchanted land, — 
 
 Te, Lari maxume, teque 
 Fluctibus et fremitu assurgens, Benace, marino, 
 
 may surely be remembered by you with regretful piety, when 
 you stand by the blank stones which at once restrain and dis- 
 grace your native river, as the final worship rendered to it by 
 modern philosophy. But a little incident which I saw last 
 summer on its bridge at Wallingford, may put the contrast of 
 ancient and modern feeling before you still more forcibty. 
 
 89. Those of you who have read with attention (none of 
 us can read with too much attention), Moliere’s most perfect 
 work, the Misanthrope , must remember Celimene’s description 
 of her lovers, and her excellent reason for being unable to re- 
 gard with any favour, “ notre grand flandrin de vicomte, — 
 depuis que je l’ai vu, trois quarts d’heure durant, craclier dans 
 un puits pour faire des ronds.” That sentence is worth noting, 
 both in contrast to the reverence paid by the ancients to wells 
 and springs, and as one of the most interesting traces of the 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 G3 
 
 extension of the loathsome habit among the upper classes of 
 Europe and America, which now renders all external grace, 
 dignity, and decency, impossible in the thoroughfares of their 
 principal cities. In connection wish that sentence of Moliere’s 
 you may advisably also remember this fact, which I chanced 
 to notice on the bridge of Wallingford. I was walking from 
 end to end of it, and back again, one Sunday afternoon of last 
 May, trying to conjecture what had made this especial bend 
 and ford of the Thames so important in all the Anglo-Saxon 
 wars. It was one of the few sunny afternoons of the bitter 
 spring, and I was very thankful for its light, and happy in 
 watching beneath it the flow and the glittering of the classical 
 river, when I noticed a well-dressed boy, apparently just out 
 of some orderly Sunday-school, leaning far over the parapet ; 
 watching, as I conjectured, some bird or insect on the bridge- 
 buttress. I went up to him to see what he was looking at ; 
 but just as I got close to him, he started over to the opposite 
 parapet, and put himself there into the same position, his ob- 
 ject being, as I then perceived, to spit from both sides upon 
 the heads of a pleasure party who were passing in a boat 
 below. 
 
 90. The incident may seem to you too trivial to be noticed 
 in this place. To me, gentlemen, it was by no means trivial. 
 It meant, in the depth of it, such absence of all true xapis, 
 reverence, and intellect, as it is very dreadful to trace in the 
 mind of any human creature, much more in that of a child 
 educated with apparently every advantage of circumstance in 
 a beautiful English country town, within ten miles of our 
 University. Most of all, is it terrific when we regard it as the 
 exponent (and this, in truth, it is), of the temper which, as 
 distinguished from former methods, either of discipline or 
 recreation, the present tenor of our general teaching fosters 
 in the mind of youth ; — teaching which asserts liberty to be a 
 right, and obedience a degradation ; and which, regardless 
 alike of the fairness of nature and the grace of behaviour, 
 leaves the insolent spirit and degraded senses to find their 
 only occupation in malice, and their only satisfaction in 
 shame. 
 
64 
 
 ABATE A PENTELICI. 
 
 91. You will, I hope, proceed with me, not scornfully any 
 more, to trace, in the early art of a noble heathen nation, the 
 feeling of what was at least a better childishness than this of 
 ours ; and the efforts to express, though with hands yet fail- 
 ing, and minds oppressed by ignorant phantasy, the first truth 
 by which they knew that they lived ; the birth of wisdom and 
 of all her powers of help to man, as the reward of his resolute 
 labour. 
 
 92. “'AcfxxLcrTov Texvcuo-L.” Note that word of Pindar in the 
 Seventh Olympic. This axe-blow of Vulcan’s was to the 
 Greek mind truly what Clytemnestra falsely asserts hers to 
 have been “ttJs Sc Sc£lgls x e P° q > Zpyov, Strata? tcktovos” ; physi- 
 cally, it meant the opening of the blue through the rent clouds 
 of heaven, by the action of local terrestrial heat (of Hephaestus 
 as opposed to Apollo, who shines on the surface of the upper 
 clouds, but cannot pierce them ; and, spiritually, it meant the 
 first birth of prudent thought out of rude labour, the clear- 
 ing-axe in the hand of the woodman being the practical ele- 
 mentary sign of his difference from the wild animals of the 
 wood. Then he goes on, “ From the high head of her Father, 
 Athenaia rushing forth, cried with her great and exceeding 
 cry ; and the Heaven trembled at her, and the Earth Mother.” 
 The cry of Athena, I have before pointed out, physically dis- 
 tinguishes her, as the spirit of the air, from silent elemental 
 powers ; but in this grand passage of Pindar it is again the 
 mythic cry of which he thinks ; that is to say, the giving 
 articulate words, by intelligence, to the silence of Fate. 
 “ Wisdom crieth aloud, she uttereth her voice in the streets,” 
 and Heaven and Earth tremble at her reproof. 
 
 93. Uttereth her voice in “the streets.” For all men, that 
 is to say ; but to what work did the Greeks think that her 
 voice was to call them ? What was to be the impulse com- 
 municated by her prevailing presence ; what the sign of the 
 people’s obedience to her ? 
 
 This was to be the sign — “But she, the goddess herself, 
 gave to them to prevail over the dwellers upon earth, with 
 best-labouring hands in every art. And by their paths there were 
 the likenesses of living and of creeping things ; and the glory 
 
IMAGINATION . 
 
 65 
 
 was deep. For to the cunning workman, greater knowledge 
 comes, undeceitful.” 
 
 94. An infinitely pregnant passage, this, of which to-day 
 you are to note mainly these three things : First, that Athena 
 is the goddess of Doing, not at all of sentimental inaction. 
 She is begotten, as it were, of the woodman’s axe ; her purpose 
 is never in a word only, but in a word and a blow. She guides 
 the hands that labour best, in every art. 
 
 95. Secondly. The victory given by Wisdom, the worker, to 
 the hands that labour best, is that the streets and ways, KtkevOoi, 
 shall be filled by likenesses of living and creeping things ? 
 
 Things living, and creeping ! Are the Reptile things not 
 alive then? You think Pindar wrote that carelessly? or that, 
 if he had only known a little modern anatomy, instead of 
 “ reptile ” things, he would have said “ monochondylous ” 
 things ? Be patient, and let us attend to the main points 
 first. 
 
 Sculpture, it thus appears, is the only work of wisdom that 
 the Greeks care to speak of ; they think it involves and crowns 
 every other. Image-making art ; this is Athena’s, as queen- 
 liest of the arts. Literature, the order and the strength of 
 word, of course belongs to Apollo and the Muses ; under 
 Athena are the Substances and the Forms of things. 
 
 96. Thirdly. By this forming of Images there is to be 
 gained a “ deep ” — that is to say — a weighty, and prevailing, 
 glory ; not a floating nor fugitive one. For to the cunning 
 workman, greater knowledge comes, “ undeceitful.” 
 
 “ AaeVrr ” I am forced to use two English words to trans- 
 late that single Greek one. The “cunning” workman, 
 thoughtful in experience, touch, and vision of the thing to be 
 done ; no machine, witless, and of necessary motion ; yet not 
 cunning only, but having perfect habitual skill of hand also ; 
 the confirmed reward of truthful doing. Recollect, in con- 
 nection with this passage of Pindar, Homer’s three verses 
 about getting the lines of ship-timber true, (//. xv. 410) 
 
 “ ’AAA.’ cocrre ( fraO/ir] dopv vifiov e^iOvvei 
 
 T6Ktovos ev TvaXafAricn Sari/iovos, os pa re Traces 
 ev eidy (Totplrjs , vTToQr);j.o<Tvvy(Tiv *A Orfi/rjSy” 
 
 5 
 
66 
 
 ARATRA PENTEL1CI. 
 
 and the beautiful epithet of Persephone, “ Saci pa” as the 
 Tryer and Knower of good work ; and remembering these, 
 trust Pindar for the truth of his saying, that to the cunning 
 workman — (and let me solemnly enforce the words by adding 
 — that to him only,) knowledge comes undeceitful. 
 
 97. You may have noticed, perhaps, and with a smile, as 
 one of the paradoxes you often hear me blamed for too fondly 
 stating, what I told you in the close of my Third Introductory 
 Lecture, that “so far from art’s being immoral, little else ex- 
 cept art is moral.” I have now farther to tell you, that little 
 else, except art, is wise ; that all knowledge, unaccompanied 
 by a habit of 4 iseful action, is too likely to become deceitful, 
 and that every habit of useful action must resolve itself into 
 some elementary practice of manual labour. And I would, in 
 all sober and direct earnestness advise you, whatever may be 
 the aim, predilection, or necessity of your lives, to resolve 
 upon this one thing at least, that you will enable yourselves 
 daily to do actually with your hands, something that is useful 
 to mankind. To do anything well with your hands, useful 
 or not ; — to be, even in trifling, 7ra\a pyai 8a rj/juov, is already 
 much ; — when we come to examine the art of the middle ages 
 I shall be able to show you that the strongest of all influences 
 of right then brought to bear upon character was the neces- 
 sity for exquisite manual dexterity in the management of the 
 spear and bridle ; and in your own experience most of you 
 will be able to recognize the wholesome effect, alike on body 
 and mind, of striving, within proper limits of time, to become 
 either good batsmen, or good oarsmen. But the bat and the 
 racer’s oar are children’s toys. Resolve that you will be men 
 in usefulness, as well as in strength ; and you will find that 
 then also, but not till then, you can become men in under- 
 standing ; and that every fine vision and subtle theorem will 
 present itself to you thenceforward undeceitfully, vTro6r]fio(Tvvrj(jiv 
 A 6rjvr]^. 
 
 98. But there is more to be gathered yet from the words of 
 Pindar. He is thinking, in his brief, intense way, at once of 
 Athena’s work on the soul, and of her literal power on the 
 dust of the Earth. His “ KekevOoc ” is a wide word meaning all 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 07 
 
 the paths of sea and land. Consider, therefore, what Athena’s 
 own work actually is — in the literal fact of it. The blue, clear 
 air is the sculpturing power upon the earth and sea. Where 
 the surface of the earth is reached by that, and its matter and 
 substance inspired with, and filled by that, organic form be- 
 comes possible. You must indeed have the sun, also, and 
 moisture ; the kingdom of Apollo risen out of the sea : but 
 the sculpturing of living things, shape by shape, is Athena’s, 
 so that under the brooding spirit of the air, what was without 
 form, and void brings forth the moving creature that hath 
 life. 
 
 99. That is her work then — the giving of Form ; then the 
 separately Apolline work is the giving of Light ; or, more 
 strictly, Sight : giving that faculty to the retina to which we 
 owe not merely the idea of light, but the existence of it ; for 
 light is to be defined only as the sensation produced in the eye 
 of an animal, under given conditions ; those same conditions 
 being, to a stone, only warmth or chemical influence, but not 
 light. And that power of seeing, and the other various per- 
 sonalities and authorities of the animal body, in pleasure and 
 pain, have never, hitherto, been, I do not say, explained, but 
 in any wise touched or approached by scientific discovery. 
 Some of the conditions of mere external animal form and of 
 muscular vitality have been shown ; but for the most part that 
 is true, even of external form, which I wrote six years ago. 
 “ You may always stand by Form against Force. To a painter, 
 the essential character of anything is the form of it, and the 
 philosophers cannot touch that. They come and tell you, for 
 instance, that there is as much heat, or motion, or calorific 
 energy (or whatever else they like to call it), in a tea-kettle, as 
 in a gier-eagle. Very good : that is so ; and it is very inter- 
 esting. It requires just as much heat as will boil the kettle, 
 to take the gier-eagle up to his nest, and as much more to 
 bring him down again on a hare or a partridge. But we 
 painters, acknowledging the equality and similarity of the 
 kettle and the bird in all scientific respects, attach, for our 
 part, our principal interest to the difference in their forms. 
 For us, the primarily cognisable facts, in the two things, are, 
 
63 
 
 ABATE A BENT ELI CL 
 
 that the kettle has a spout, and the eagle a beak ; the one a 
 lid on its back, the other a pair of wings ; not to speak of the 
 distinction also of volition, which the philosophers may prop- 
 erly call merely a form or mode of force — but, then to an art- 
 ist, the form or mode is the gist of the business. ” 
 
 100. As you will find that it is, not to the artist only, but 
 to all of us. The laws under which matter is collected and 
 constructed are the same throughout the universe : the sub- 
 stance so collected, whether for the making of the eagle, or 
 the worm, may be analyzed into gaseous identity ; a diffusive 
 vital force, apparently so closely related to mechanically meas- 
 urable heat as to admit the conception of its being itself me- 
 chanically measurable, and unchanging in total quantity, ebbs 
 and flows alike through the limbs of men, and the fibres of 
 insects. But, above all this, and ruling every grotesque or 
 degraded accident of this, are tw r o laws of beauty in form, 
 and of nobility in character, which stand in the chaos of crea- 
 tion between the Living and the Dead, to separate the things 
 that have in them a sacred and helpful, from those that have 
 in them an accursed and destroying, nature ; and the power 
 of Athena, first physically put forth in the sculpturing of these 
 
 and eprera, these living and reptile things, is put forth, 
 finally, in enabling the hearts of men to discern the one from 
 the other ; to know the unquenchable fires of the Spirit from 
 the unquenchable fires of Death ; and to choose, not unaided, 
 between submission to the Love that cannot end, or to the 
 Worm that cannot die. 
 
 101. The unconsciousness of their antagonism is the most 
 notable characteristic of the modern scientific mind ; and I 
 believe no credulity or fallacy admitted by the weakness (or 
 it may sometimes rather have been the strength) of early im- 
 agination, indicates so strange a depression beneath the due 
 scale of human intellect, as the failure of the sense of beauty 
 in form, and loss of faith in heroism of conduct, which have 
 become the curses of recent science,* art, and policy. 
 
 * ’Tlie best modern illustrated scientific works show perfect faculty of 
 representing monkeys, lizards, and insects ; absolute incapability of 
 representing either a man, a horse, or a lion. 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 69 
 
 102. That depression of intellect has been alike exhibited 
 in the mean consternation confessedly felt on one side, and 
 the mean triumph apparently felt on the other, during the 
 course of the dispute now pending as to the origin of man. 
 Dispute for the present, not to be decided, and of which the 
 decision is to persons in the modern temper of mind, wholly 
 without significance : and I earnestly desire that you, my 
 pupils, may have firmness enough to disengage your energies 
 from investigation so premature and so fruitless, and sense 
 enough to perceive that it does not matter how you have 
 been made, so long as you are satisfied with being what you 
 are. If you are dissatisfied with yourselves, it ought not to 
 console, but humiliate you, to imagine that you were once 
 seraphs ; and if you are pleased with yourselves, it is not 
 any ground of reasonable shame to you if, by no fault of 
 3 r our own, you have passed through the elementary condition 
 of apes. 
 
 103. Remember, therefore, that it is of the very highest im- 
 portance that you should know what you are , and determine 
 to be the best that you may be ; but it is of no importance 
 whatever, except as it may contribute to that end, to know 
 what you have been. Whether your Creator shaped you with 
 fingers, or tools, as a sculptor would a lump of clay, or gradu- 
 ally raised you to manhood through a series of inferior forms, 
 is only of moment to you in this respect — that in the one case 
 you cannot expect your children to be nobler creatures than 
 you are yourselves — in the other, every act and thought of 
 your present life may be hastening the advent of a race which 
 will look back to you, their fathers (and you ought at least 
 to have attained the dignity of desiring that it may be so), 
 with incredulous disdain. 
 
 104. But that you are yourselves capable of that disdain 
 and dismay ; that you are ashamed of having been apes, if 
 you ever were so ; that you acknowledge instinctively, a 
 relation of better and worse, and a law respecting what is 
 noble and base, which makes it no question to you that the 
 man is worthier than the baboon — this is a fact of infinite sig- 
 nificance. This law of preference in your hearts is the true 
 
70 
 
 ARATRA PENTELICL 
 
 essence of your being, and the consciousness of that law is a 
 more positive existence than any dependent on the coherence 
 or forms of matter. 
 
 105. Now, but a few words more of mythology, and I have 
 done. Remember that Athena holds the weaver’s shuttle, not 
 merely as an instrument of texture , but as an instrument of 
 picture ; the ideas of clothing, and of the warmth of life, be- 
 ing thus inseparably connected with those of graphic beauty, 
 and the brightness of life. I have told you that no art could 
 be recovered among us without perfectness in dress, nor with- 
 out the elementary graphic art of women, in divers colours of 
 needlework. There has been no nation of any art-energy, but 
 has strenuously occupied and interested itself in this house- 
 hold picturing, from the web of Penelope to the tapestry of 
 Queen Matilda, and the meshes of Arras and Gobelins. 
 
 106. We should then naturally ask what kind of embroidery 
 Athena put on her own robe ; “ t rriirXov iavov, ttolklXov, ov p avrrj 
 TTOiTjcraTO koX Kap,e xipcnv.” 
 
 The subject of that 7roi/«Ata of hers, as you know, was the 
 war of the giants and gods. Now the real name of these 
 giants, remember, is that used by Hesiod, “ 7rr)XoxovoL ,” “ mud- 
 begotten,” and the meaning of the contest between these and 
 Zeus, 7rr]\oy6vo)v i\cLTr]p, is, again, the inspiration of life into 
 the clay, by the goddess of breath ; and the actual confusion 
 going on visibly before you, daily, of the earth, heaping itself 
 into cumbrous war with the powers above it. 
 
 107. Thus briefly, the entire material of Art, under Athena’s 
 hand, is the contest of life with clay ; and all my task in ex- 
 plaining to you the early thought of both the Athenian and 
 Tuscan schools will only be the tracing of this battle of the 
 giants into its full heroic form, when, not in tapestry only — 
 but in sculpture — and on the portal of the Temple of Delphi 
 itself, you have the “ kXovos iv Teiyecri XaXvoicri ycyavTUv,’' and 
 their defeat hailed by the passionate cry of delight from the 
 Athenian maids, beholding Pallas in her full power, “ AevWa) 
 IIaAAa8* i[iav Oeov” my own goddess. All our work, I repeat, 
 will be nothing but the inquiry into the development of this 
 one subject, and the pressing fully home the question of Plato 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 71 
 
 about that embroidery — “ And think you that there is verily 
 war with each other among the Gods ? and dreadful enmities 
 and battle, such as the poets have told, and such as our 
 painters set forth in graven scripture, to adorn all our sacred 
 rites and holy places ; yes, and in the great Panathenaea 
 themselves, the Peplus, full of such wild picturing, is carried 
 up into the Acropolis — shall we %ay that these things are true, 
 oh Euthuphron, right-minded friend ? ” 
 
 108. Yes, we say, and know, that these things are true ; 
 and true for ever : battles of the gods, not among themselves, 
 but against the earth-giants. Battle prevailing age by age, in 
 nobler life and lovelier imagery ; creation, which no theory of 
 mechanism, no definition of force, can explain, the adoption 
 and completing of individual form by individual animation, 
 breathed out of the lips of the Father of Spirits. And to 
 recognize the presence in every knitted shape of dust, by 
 which it lives and moves and has its being — to recognize it, 
 revere, and show it forth, is to be our eternal Idolatry. 
 
 “ Thou shait not bow down to them, nor worship them.” 
 
 “ Assuredly no,” we answered once, in our pride ; and 
 through porch and aisle, broke down the carved work thereof, 
 with axes and hammers. 
 
 Who would have thought the day so near when we should 
 bow down to worship, not the creatures, but their atoms, — 
 not the forces that form, but those that dissolve them ? Trust 
 me, gentlemen, the command which is stringent against ado- 
 ration of brutality, is stringent no less against adoration of 
 chaos, nor is faith in an image fallen from heaven to be re- 
 formed by a faith only in the phenomenon of decadence. We 
 have ceased from the making of monsters to be appeased by 
 sacrifice ; — it is well, — if indeed we have also ceased from 
 making them iiYour thoughts. We have learned to distrust, 
 the adorning of fair phantasms, to which we once sought for 
 succour ; — it is well, if we learn to distrust also the adorning of 
 those to which we seek, for temptation ; but the verity of gains 
 like these can only be known by our confession of the divine 
 seal of strength and beauty upon the tempered frame, and 
 honour in the fervent heart, by which, increasing visibly, may 
 
72 
 
 ARATRA RENTE LI CL 
 
 yet be manifested to us the holy presence, and the approving 
 love, of the Loving God, who visits the iniquities of the 
 Fathers upon the Children, unto the third and fourth genera- 
 tion of them that hate Him, and shows mercy unto thousands 
 in them that love Him, and keep His Commandments. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 LIKENESS. 
 
 November, 1870. 
 
 109. You were probably vexed, and tired, towards the close of 
 my last lecture, by the time it took us to arrive at the appar- 
 ently simple conclusion, that sculpture must only represent 
 organic form, and the strength of life in its contest with mat- 
 ter. But it is no small thing to have that “ Xevcrcro) IldXXaSa ” 
 fixed in your minds, as the one necessary sign by which you 
 are to recognize right sculpture, and believe me you will find 
 it the best of all things, if you can take for yourselves the say- 
 ing from the lips of the Athenian maids, in its entirety, and 
 say also — Xevacrco HdXXaS’ e/x av Oeov. I proceed to-day into 
 the practical appliance of this apparently speculative, but in 
 reality imperative, law. 
 
 110. You observe, I have hitherto spoken of the power of 
 Athena, as over painting no less than sculpture. Bat her rule 
 over both arts is only so far as they are zoographic ; — repre- 
 sentative, that is to say, of animal life, or of such order and 
 discipline among other elements, as may invigorate and purify 
 it. Now there is a speciality of the art of painting beyond 
 this, namely, the representation of phenomena of colour and 
 shadow, as such, without question of the nature of the tilings 
 that receive them. I am now accordingly obliged to speak of 
 sculpture and painting as distinct arts, but the laws which 
 bind sculpture, bind no less the painting of the higher schools 
 which has, for its main purpose, the showing beauty in human 
 or animal form ; and which is therefore placed by the Greeks 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 73 
 
 equally under the rule of Athena, as the Spirit, first, of Life, 
 and then of Wisdom in conduct. 
 
 111. First, I say, you are to “see Pallas ” in all such work, 
 as the Queen of Life ; and the practical law which follows 
 from this, is one of enormous range and importance’ namely, 
 that nothing must be represented by sculpture, external to 
 any living form, which does not help to enforce or illustrate 
 the conception of life. Both dress and armour may be made 
 to do this, by great sculptors, and are continually so used by 
 the greatest. One of the essential distinctions between the 
 Athenian and Florentine schools is dependent on their treat- 
 ment of drapery in this respect ; an Athenian always sets it to 
 exhibit the action of the body, by flowing with it, or over it, 
 or from it, so as to illustrate both its form and gesture ; a 
 Florentine, on the contrary, always uses his drapery to con- 
 ceal or disguise the forms of the body, and exhibit mental 
 emotion : but both use it to enhance the life, either of the 
 body or soul ; Donatello and Michael Angelo, no less than the 
 sculptors of Gothic chivalry, ennoble armour in the same way ; 
 but base sculjotors carve drapery and armour for the sake of 
 their folds and picturesqueness only, and forget the body be- 
 neath. The rule is so stern that all delight in mere incidental 
 beauty, which painting often triumphs in, is wholly forbidden 
 to sculpture ; — for instance, in painting the branch of a tree, 
 you may rightly represent and enjoy the lichens and moss on 
 it, but a sculptor must not touch one of them : they are ines- 
 sential to the tree’s life, — he must give the flow and bending 
 of the branch only, else he does not enough “ see Pallas ” 
 in it. 
 
 Or to take a higher instance, here is an exquisite little 
 painted poem, by Edward Frere ; a cottage interior, one of 
 the thousands which within the last two months * have been 
 laid desolate in unhappy France. Every accessory in the 
 painting is of value — the fire-side, the tiled floor, the vegetables 
 lying upon it, and the basket hanging from the roof. But 
 not one of these accessories would have been admissible 
 
 * See date of delivery of Lecture. The picture was of a peasant girl 
 of eleven or twelve years old, peeling carrots by a cottage fire. 
 
74 
 
 ABATE A PEN TEL I GI. 
 
 in sculpture. You must carve nothing but what has life. 
 “ Why ” ? you probably feel instantly inclined to ask me. — 
 You see the principle we have got, instead of being blunt or 
 useless, is such an edged tool that you are startled the moment 
 I apply it. “ Must we refuse every pleasant accessory and 
 picturesque detail, and petrify nothing but living creatures ” ? 
 — Even so : I would not assert it on my own authority. It is 
 the Greeks who say it, but whatever they say of sculpture, be 
 assured, is true. 
 
 112. That then is the first law — you must see Pallas as the 
 Lady of Life — the second is, you must see her as the Lady of 
 Wisdom ; or o-o^i a — and this is the chief matter of all. I can- 
 not but think, that after the considerations into which we 
 have now entered, you will find more interest than hitherto 
 in comparing the statements of Aristotle, in the Ethics, with 
 those of Plato in the Polity, which are authoritative as Greek 
 definitions of goodness in art, and which you may safely hold 
 authoritative as constant definitions of it. You remember, 
 doubtless, that the cro^ta, or apery reyi^s, for the sake of which 
 Phidias is called Cronos as a sculptor, and Polyclitus as an 
 image-maker, Eth. 6. 7. (the opposition is both between ideal 
 and portrait sculpture, and between working in stone and 
 bronze) consists in the “ vovs rwv ripa^rdr^v ry <pv<rei “the 
 mental apprehension of the things that are most honourable 
 in their nature.” Therefore what is, indeed, most lovely, the 
 true image-maker will n;ost love ; and what is most hate- 
 ful, he will most hate, and in all things discern the best and 
 strongest part of them, and represent that essentially, or, if 
 the opposite of that, then with manifest detestation and horror. 
 That is his art wisdom ; the knowledge of good and evil, and 
 the love of good, so that you may discern, even in his repre- 
 sentation of the vilest thing, his acknowledgment of what re- 
 demption is possible for it, or latent power exists in it ; and, 
 contrariwise, his sense of its present misery. But for the most 
 part, he will idolize, and force us also to idolize, whatever is 
 living, and virtuous, and victoriously right ; opposing to it 
 in some definite mode the image of the conquered epnerov. 
 
 113. This is generally true of both the great arts ; but in 
 
LIKENESS . 
 
 75 
 
 severity and precision, true of sculpture. To return to our 
 illustration : this poor little girl was more interesting to Ed- 
 ward Frere, he being a painter, because she was poorly dressed, 
 and wore these clumsy shoes, and old red cap, and patched 
 gown. May we sculpture her so? No. We may sculpture 
 her naked, if we like ; but not in rags. 
 
 But if we may not put her into marble in rags, may we give 
 her a pretty frock with ribands and flounces to it, and put 
 her into marble in that? No. We may put her simplest 
 peasant’s dress, so it be perfect and orderly, into marble ; any- 
 thing finer than that would be more dishonourable in the eyes 
 of Athena than rags. If she were a French princess, you 
 might carve her embroidered robe and diadem ; if she were 
 Joan of Arc you might carve her armour — for then these also 
 would be Ct tCov rt/nwraTtor,” not otherwise. 
 
 114. Is not this an edge-tool we have got hold of, unawares ? 
 and a subtle one too ; so delicate and scimitar-like in decision. 
 For note, that even Joan of Arc’s armour must be only sculpt- 
 ured, if she has it on ; it is not the honourableness or beauty 
 of it that are enough, but the direct bearing of it by her body. 
 You might be deeply, even pathetically, interested by looking* 
 at a good knight’s dinted coat of mail, left in his desolate hall. 
 May you sculpture it where it hangs ? No ; the helmet for 
 his pillow, if yon will — no more. 
 
 You see we did not do our dull work for nothing in last 
 lecture. I define what we have gained once more, and then 
 we will enter on our new ground. 
 
 115. The proper subject of sculpture, we have determined, 
 is the spiritual power seen in the form of any living thing, 
 and so represented as to give evidence that the sculptor has 
 loved the good of it and hated the evil. 
 
 “ So represented,” we say ; but how is that to be done ? 
 Why should it not be represented, if possible, just as it is 
 seen ? What mode or limit of representation may we adopt ? 
 We are to carve things that have life ; — shall we try so to imi- 
 tate them that they may indeed seem living, — or only half 
 living, and like stone instead of flesh ? 
 
 It will simplify this question if I show you three examples 
 
76 
 
 ARATRA PEN TEL J CI. 
 
 of what the Greeks actually did : three typical pieces of their 
 sculpture, in order of perfection. 
 
 116. And now, observe that in all our historical work, I will 
 endeavour to do, myself, what I have asked you to do in your 
 drawing exercises ; namely, to outline firmly in the beginning, 
 and then fill in the detail more minutely. I will give you 
 first, therefore, in a symmetrical form, absolutely simple and 
 easily remembered, the large chronology of the Greek school ; 
 within that unforgettable scheme we will place, as we discover 
 them, the minor relations of arts and times. 
 
 I number the nine centuries before Christ thus, upwards, 
 and divide them into three groups of three each. 
 
 A. ARCHAIC. s 
 
 9 
 
 8 
 
 l 7 
 
 B. BEST. -< 
 
 C. CORRUPT. ■{ 
 
 6 
 
 5 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 Then the ninth, eighth, and seventh centuries are the period 
 of Archaic Greek Art, steadily progressive wherever it existed. 
 
 The sixth, fifth, and fourth are the period of central Greek 
 Art ; the fifth, or central century producing the finest. That 
 is easily recollected by the battle of Marathon. And the third, 
 second, and first centuries are the period of steady decline. 
 
 Learn this ABC thoroughly, and mark, for yourselves, 
 what you, at present, think the vital events in each century. 
 As you know more, you will think other events the vital ones ; 
 but the best historical knowledge only approximates to true 
 
LIKE ft ESS. 
 
 77 
 
 thought in that matter ; only be sure that what is truly vital 
 in the character which governs events, is always expressed by 
 the art of the century ; so that if you could interpret that art 
 rightly, the better part of your task in reading history would 
 be done to your hand. 
 
 117. It is generally impossible to date with precision art of 
 the archaic period — often difficult to date even that of the 
 central three hundred years. I w T ill not weary you with futile 
 minor divisions of time; here are three coins (Plate VIL) 
 roughly, but decisively, characteristic of the three ages. The 
 first is an early coin of Tarentum. The city was founded as 
 you know, by the Spartan Plialanthus, late in the eighth 
 century. I believe the head is meant for that of Apollo 
 Archegetes, it may however be Taras, the son of Poseidon ; it 
 is no matter to us at present whom it is meant for, but the 
 fact that we cannot know, is itself of the greatest import. We 
 cannot say, with any certainty, unless by discovery of some 
 collateral evidence, whether this head is intended for that of 
 a god, or demi-god, or a mortal warrior. Ought not that to 
 disturb some of your thoughts respecting Greek idealism? 
 Farther, if by investigation we discover that the head is meant 
 for that of Phalanthus, we shall know nothing of the charac- 
 ter of Phalanthus from the face ; for there is no portraiture 
 at this early time. 
 
 118. The second coin is of JEnus in Macedonia ; probably 
 of the fifth or early fourth century, and entirely characteristic 
 of the central period. This we know to represent the face of 
 a god — Hermes. The third coin is a king’s, not a city’s. I 
 will not tell you, at this moment, what king’s ; but only that 
 it is a late coin of the third period, and that it is as distinct 
 in purpose as the coin of Tarentum is obscure. We know of 
 this coin, that it represents no god nor demi-god, but a mere 
 mortal ; and we know precisely, from the portrait, what that 
 mortal’s face was like. 
 
 119. A glance at the three coins, as they are set side by 
 side, will now show you the main differences in the three great 
 Greek styles. The archaic coin is sharp and hard ; every line 
 decisive and numbered, set unhesitatingly in its place ; nothing 
 
78 
 
 A Pc A TIM PENT ELI CL 
 
 is wrong, though everything incomplete, and, to us who have 
 seen finer art, ugly. The central coin is as decisive and clear 
 in arrangement of masses, but its contours are completely 
 rounded and finished. There is no character in its execution 
 so prominent that you can give an epithet to the style. It is 
 not hard, it is not soft, it is not delicate, it is not coarse, it is 
 not grotesque, it is not beautiful ; and I am convinced, unless 
 you had been told that this is fine central Greek art, you 
 would have seen nothing at all in it to interest you. Do not 
 let yourselves be anywise forced into admiring it ; there is, 
 indeed, nothing more here, than an approximately true ren- 
 dering of a healthy youthful face, without the slightest attempt 
 to give an expression of activity, cunning, nobility, or any 
 other attribute of the Mercurial mind. Extreme simplicity, 
 unpretending vigour of work, which claims no admiration 
 either for minuteness or dexterity, and suggests no idea of 
 effort at all ; refusal of extraneous ornament, and perfectly 
 arranged disposition of counted masses in a sequent order, 
 whether in the beads, or the ringlets of hair ; this is all you 
 have to be pleased with ; neither will you ever find, in the 
 best Greek Art, more. You might at first suppose that the 
 chain of beads round the cap was an extraneous., ornament ; 
 but I have little doubt that it is as definitely the proper fillet 
 for the head of Hermes, as the olive for Zeus, or corn for 
 Triptolemus. The cap or petasus cannot have expanded edges, 
 there is no room for them on the coin ; these must be under- 
 stood, therefore ; but the nature of the cloud-petasus is ex- 
 plained by edging it with beads, representing either dew or 
 hail. The shield of Athena often bears white pellets for hail, 
 in like manner. 
 
 120. The third coin will, I think, at once strike you by 
 what we moderns should call its “ vigour of character.” 
 You may observe also that the features are finished with 
 great care and subtlety, but at the cost of simplicity and 
 breadth. But the essential difference between it and the 
 central art, is its disorder in design — you see the locks of hair 
 cannot be counted any longer — they are entirely dishevelled 
 and irregular. Now the individual character may, or may not 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 79 
 
 be, a sign of decline ; but the licentiousness, the casting loose 
 of the masses in the design, is an infallible one. The effort 
 at portraiture is good for art if the men to be portrayed are 
 good men, not otherwise. In the instance before you, the 
 head is that of Mitliridates YI. of Pontus, who had, indeed, 
 the good qualities of being a linguist and a patron of the arts ; 
 but as you will remember, murdered, according to report, his 
 mother, certainly his brother, certainly his wives and sisters, 
 I have not counted how many of his children, and from a hun- 
 dred to a hundred and fifty thousand persons besides ; these 
 last in a single day’s massacre. The effort to represent this 
 kind of person is not by any means a method of study from 
 life ultimately beneficial to art. 
 
 121. This however is not the point I have to urge to-day. 
 What I want you to observe is that, though the master of the 
 great time does not attempt portraiture, he does attempt ani- 
 mation. And as far as his means will admit, he succeeds in 
 making the face — you might almost think — vulgarly animated ; 
 as like a real face, literally, “as it can stare.” Yes: and its 
 sculptor meant it to be so ; and that was what Phidias meant 
 his Jupiter to be, if he could manage it. Not, indeed, to be 
 taken for Zeus himself ; and yet, to be as like a living Zeus as 
 art could make it. Perhaps you think he tried to make it look 
 living only for the sake of the mob, and would not have tried 
 to do so for connoisseurs. Pardon me ; for real connoisseurs, 
 he would, and did ; and herein consists a truth which belongs 
 to all the arts, and which I will at once drive home in your 
 minds, as firmly as I can. 
 
 122. All second-rate artists — (and remember, the second- 
 rate ones are a loquacious multitude, while the great come 
 only one or two in a century ; and then, silently) — all second- 
 rate artists will tell you that the object of fine art is not re- 
 semblance, but some kind of abstraction more refined than 
 reality. Put that out of your heads at once. The object of 
 the great Resemblant Arts is, and always has been, to resemble; 
 and to resemble as closely as possible. It is the function of a 
 good portrait to set the man before you in habit as he lived, 
 and I would we had a few more that did so. It is the function 
 
80 
 
 A RATE A RENT ELI CL 
 
 of a good landscape to set the scene before you in its reality ; 
 to make you, if it may be, think the clouds are flying, and 
 the streams foaming. It is the function of the best sculptor 
 — the true Daedalus — to make stillness look like breathing, 
 and marble look like flesh. 
 
 123. And in all great times of art, this purpose is as naively 
 expressed as it is steadily held. All the talk about abstraction 
 belongs to periods of decadence. In living times, people see 
 something living that pleases them ; and they try to make it 
 live for ever, or to make it something as like it as possible, that 
 will last for ever. They paint their statues, and inlay the eyes 
 with jewels, and set real crowns on their heads ; they finish, 
 in their pictures, every thread of embroidery, and would fain, 
 if they could, draw every leaf upon the trees. And their only 
 verbal expression of conscious success is, that they have made 
 their work “look real.” 
 
 124. You think all that very wrong. So did I, once ; but 
 it was I that was wrong. A long time ago, before ever I had 
 seen Oxford, I painted a picture of the Lake of Como, for my 
 father. It was not at all like the Lake of Como; but I thought 
 it rather the better for that. My father differed with me ; and 
 objected particularly to a boat with a red and yellow awning, 
 which I had put into the most conspicuous corner of my draw- 
 ing. I declared this boat to be “necessary to the composi- 
 tion.” My father not the less objected, that he had never seen 
 such a boat, either at Como or elsewhere ; and suggested that 
 if I would make the lake look a little more like water, I should 
 be under no necessity of explaining its nature by the presence 
 of floating objects. I thought him at the time a very simple 
 person for his pains ; but have since learned, and it is the very 
 gist of all practical matters, which, as professor of fine art, I 
 have now to tell you, that the great point in painting a lake is 
 — to get it to look like water. 
 
 125. So far, so good. We lay it down for a first principle, 
 that our graphic art, whether painting or sculpture, is to pro- 
 duce something which shall look as like Nature as possible. 
 But now we must go one step farther, and say that it is to 
 produce what shall look like Nature to people who know what 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 81 
 
 Nature is like ! You see this is at once a great restriction, as 
 well as a great exaltation of our aim. Our business is not to 
 deceive the simple ; but to deceive the wise ! Here, for in- 
 stance, is a modern Italian print, representing, to the best of 
 its power, St. Cecilia, in a brilliantly realistic manner. And 
 the fault of the work is not in its earnest endeavour to show 
 St. Cecilia in habit as she lived, but in that the effort could 
 only be successful with persons unaware of the habit St. Ce- 
 cilia lived in. And this condition of appeal only to the wise 
 increases the difficulty of imitative resemblance so greatly, 
 that, with only average skill or materials, w r e must surrender 
 all hope of it, and be content with an imperfect representa- 
 tion, true as far as it reaches, and such as to excite the imagi- 
 nation of a wise beholder to complete it ; though falling very 
 far short of what either he or we should otherwise have de- 
 sired. For instance, here is a suggestion, by Sir Joshua Rey- 
 nolds, of the general appearance of a British Judge — requir- 
 ing the imagination of a very wise beholder indeed, to fill it 
 up, or even at first to discover what it is meant for. Never- 
 theless, it is better art than the Italian St. Cecilia, because the 
 artist, however little he may have done to represent his knowl- 
 edge, does, indeed, know altogether what a Judge is like, and 
 appeals only to the criticism of those who know also. 
 
 126. There must be, therefore, tw T o degrees of truth to be 
 looked for in the good graphic arts ; one, the commonest, 
 which, by any partial or imperfect sign conveys to you an idea 
 which you must complete for yourself ; and the other, the 
 finest, a representation so perfect as to leave you nothing to 
 be farther accomplished by this independent exertion ; but to 
 give you the same feeling of possession and presence which 
 you would experience from the natural object itself. For in- 
 stance of the first, in this representation of a rainbow,* the 
 artist has no hope that, by the black lines of engraving, he can 
 deceive you into any belief of the rainbow’s being there, but 
 he gives indication enough of what he intends, to enable you 
 to supply the rest of the idea yourself, providing always you 
 know beforehand what a rainbow is like. But in this drawing 
 * In Durer’s “ Melancholia.” 
 
 6 
 
S2 
 
 AEATBA PENTELIGI. 
 
 of the falls of Terni,* the painter has strained his skill to the 
 utmost to give an actually deceptive resemblance of the iris, 
 dawning and fading among the foam. So far as he has not 
 actually deceived you, it is not because he would not have 
 done so if he could ; but only because his colours and science 
 have fallen short of his desire. They have fallen so little short 
 that, in a good light, you may all but believe the foam and 
 the sunshine are drifting and changing among the rocks. 
 
 127. And after looking a little while, you will begin to re- 
 gret that they are not so : you will feel that, lovely as the 
 drawing is, you would like far better to see the real place, and 
 the goats skipping among the rocks, and the spray floating 
 above the fall. And this is the true -sign of the greatest art 
 — to part voluntarily with its greatness; — to make itself poor 
 and unnoticed ; but so to exalt and set forth its theme that 
 you may be fain to see the theme instead of it. So that you 
 have never enough admired a great workman’s doing till you 
 have begun to despise it. The best homage that could be paid 
 to the Athena of Phidias would be to desire rather to see the 
 living goddess ; and the loveliest Madonnas of Christian art 
 fall short of their due power, if they do not make their be- 
 holders sick at heart to see the living Virgin. 
 
 128. We have then, for our requirement of the finest art 
 (sculpture, or anything else), that it shall be so like the 
 thing it represents as to please those who best know or can 
 conceive the original ; and, if possible, please them decep- 
 tively — its final triumph being to deceive even the wise ; 
 and (the Greeks thought) to please even the Immortals, who 
 were so wise as to be undeceivable. So that you get the 
 Greek, thus far entirely true, idea of perfectness in sculpture, 
 expressed to you by what Plialaris says, at first sight of the 
 bull of Perilaus, “It only wanted motion and bellowing to 
 seem alive ; and as soon as I saw it, I cried out, it ought to 
 be sent to the god.” To Apollo, for only he, the undeceiv- 
 able, could thoroughly understand such sculpture, and per- 
 fectly delight in it. 
 
 129. And with this expression of the Greek ideal of sculpt- 
 
 * Turner’s, in tlie Hake will series. 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 83 
 
 ure, I wish you to join the early Italian, summed in a single lino 
 by Dante — “non vide me’ di me, chi vide 1 vero.” Read the 
 12th canto of the “ Purgatory, ” and learn that whole passage 
 by heart ; and if ever you chance to go to Pistoja, look at 
 La Robbia’s coloured porcelain bas-reliefs of the seven works 
 of Mercy on the front of the hospital there ; and note es- 
 pecially the faces of the two sick men — one at the point of 
 death, and the other in the first peace and long-drawn breath- 
 ing of health after fever — and you will know what Dante 
 meant by the preceding line, “Morti li morti, e i vivi paren 
 vivi.” 
 
 130. But now, may we not ask farther, — is it impossible 
 for art such as this, prepared for the wise, to please the 
 simple also ? Without entering on the aw r kward questions 
 of degree, how many the wise can be, or how much men 
 should know, in order to be rightly called wise, may we not 
 conceive an art to be possible, which w^ould deceive every- 
 body, or everybody worth deceiving ? I showed you at my 
 first lecture, a little ringlet of Japan ivory, as a type of ele- 
 mentary bas-relief touched w 7 ith colour ; and in your rudi- 
 mentary series you have a drawing b} r Mr. Burgess, of one of 
 the little fishes enlarged, with every touch of the chisel fac- 
 similed on the more visible scale ; and showing the little 
 black bead inlaid for the eye, which in the original is hardly 
 to be seen without a lens. You may, perhaps be surprised, 
 when I tell you, that (putting the question of subject aside 
 for the moment, and speaking only of the mode of execution 
 and aim at resemblance), you have there a perfect example of 
 the Greek ideal of method in sculpture. And you will 
 admit that, to the simplest person whom we could introduce 
 as a critic, that fish would be a satisfactory, nay, almost a 
 deceptive fish ; while to any one caring for subtleties of art, I 
 need not point out that every touch of the chisel is applied 
 with consummate knowledge, and that it would be impossible 
 to convey more truth and life with the given quantity of 
 workmanship. 
 
 131. Here is, indeed, a drawing by Turner, (Edu. 131), 
 in which with some fifty times the quantity of labour, and 
 
84 
 
 ABA TEA PENTEL1CL 
 
 far more highly educated faculty of sight, the artist lias 
 expressed some qualities of lustre and colour which only 
 very wise persons indeed could perceive in a John Dory ; 
 and this piece of paper contains, therefore, much more, and 
 more subtle, art, than the Japan ivory ; but are we sure that 
 it is therefore greater art? or that the painter was better 
 
 Pig. 7. 
 
 employed in producing this drawing, which only one person 
 can possess, and only one in a hundred enjoy, than he would 
 have been in producing two or three pieces on a larger scale, 
 which should have been at once accessible to, and enjoyable 
 by, a number of simpler persons ? Suppose for instance, 
 that Turner, instead of faintly touching this outline, on white 
 paper, with his camel’s hair pencil, had struck the main forms 
 of his fish into marble, thus (Fig. 7) : and instead of colouring 
 the white paper so delicately that, perhaps, only a few of the 
 most keenly observant artists in England can see it at all, had, 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 85 
 
 with his strong hand, tinted the marble with a few colours, 
 deceptive to the people, and harmonious to the initiated ; 
 suppose that he had even conceded so much to the spirit of 
 popular applause as to allow of a bright glass bead being inlaid 
 for the eye, in the Japanese manner ; and that the enlarged, 
 deceptive, and popularly pleasing work had been carved on 
 the outside of a great building, — say Fishmongers’ Hall, — 
 where everybody commercially connected with Billingsgate 
 could have seen it, and ratified it with the wisdom of the 
 market ; — might not the art have been greater, worthier, and 
 kinder in such use ? 
 
 132. Perhaps the idea does not once approve itself to you 
 of having your public buildings covered with ornaments like 
 this ; but pray, remember that the choice of subject is an ethi- 
 cal question, not now before us. All I ask you to decide is 
 whether the method is right, and would be pleasant in giving 
 the distinctiveness to pretty things, which it has here given 
 to what, I suppose it may be assumed, you feel to be an ugly 
 thing. Of course, I must note parenthetically, such realistic 
 work is impossible in a country where the buildings are to be 
 discoloured by coal-smoke ; but so is all fine sculpture, whatso- 
 ever ; and the whiter, the worse its chance. For that which 
 is prepared for private persons, to J be kept under cover, will, 
 of necessity, degenerate into the copyism of past work, 
 or merely sensational and sensual forms of present life, unless 
 there be a governing school addressing the populace, for 
 their instruction, on the outside of buildings. So that, as I 
 partly warned you in my third lecture, you can simply have 
 )io sculpture in a coal country. Whether you like coals or 
 carvings best, is no business of mine. I merely have to 
 assure you of the fact that they are incompatible. 
 
 But, assuming that we are again, some day, to become a 
 civilized and governing race, deputing ironmongery, coal- 
 digging, and lucre-digging, to our slaves in other countries, 
 it is quite conceivable that, with an increasing knowledge of 
 natural history, and desire for such knowledge, what is now 
 done by careful, but inefficient, woodcuts, and in ill-coloured 
 engravings, might be put in quite permanent sculptures, with 
 
86 
 
 ARATRA PENTEL1CI. 
 
 inlay of variegated precious stones, on the outside of build- 
 ings, where such pictures would be little costly to the peo- 
 ple ; and in a more popular manner still, by Bobbia ware and 
 Palissy ware, and inlaid majolica, which would differ from the 
 housewives’ present favourite decoration of plates above her 
 kitchen dresser, by being every piece of it various, instructive, 
 and universally visible. 
 
 183. You hardly know, I suppose, whether I am speaking 
 in jest or earnest. In the most solemn earnest, I assure you ; 
 though such is the strange course of our popular life that 
 all the irrational arts of destruction are at once felt to be 
 earnest ; while any plan for those of instruction on a grand 
 scale, sounds like a dream or jest. Still, I do not absolutely 
 propose to decorate our public buildings with sculpture 
 wholly of this character ; though beast, and fowl, and creep- 
 ing things, and fishes, might all find room on such a building 
 as the Solomon’s House of a New Atlantis ; and some of them 
 might even become symbolic of much to us again. Passing- 
 through the Strand, only the other day, for instance, I saw 
 four highly finished and delicately coloured pictures of cock- 
 fighting, which, for imitative quality, were nearly all that 
 could be desired, going far beyond the Greek cock of Himera ; 
 and they would have delighted a Greek’s soul, if they had 
 meant as much as a Greek cock-fight ; but they were only 
 types of the “ evdo/maxas dXe/crcop,” and of the spirit of home 
 contest, which has been so fatal lately to the Bird of France ; 
 and not of the defence of one’s own barnyard, in thought of 
 which the Olympians set the cock on the pillars of their 
 chariot course ; and gave it goodly alliance in its battle, as 
 you may see here, in what is left of the angle of mouldering 
 marble in the chair of the priest of Dionusos. The cast of it, 
 from the centre of the theatre under the Acropolis, is in the 
 British Museum ; and I wanted its spiral for you, and this 
 kneeling Angel of Victory ; — it is late Greek art, but nobly 
 systematic flat bas-relief. So I set Mr. Burgess to draw it ; 
 but neither he nor I for a little while, could make out what 
 the Angel of Victory was kneeling for. His attitude is an 
 ancient and grandly conventional one among the Egyptians ; 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 87 
 
 and I was tracing it back to a kneeling goddess of the great- 
 est dynasty of the Pharaohs — a goddess of Evening, or Death, 
 laying down the sun out of her right hand ; — when, one bright 
 day, the shadows came out clear on the Athenian throne, and 
 I saw that my Angel of Victory was only backing a cock at a 
 cock-fight. 
 
 134. Still, as I have said, there is no reason why sculpture, 
 even for simplest persons, should confine itself to imagery of 
 fish, or fowl, or four-footed things. 
 
 We go back to our first principle : we ought to carve noth- 
 ing but what is honourable. And you are offended, at this 
 moment, with my fish, (as I believe, when the first sculptures 
 appeared on the windows of this museum, offence was taken 
 at the unnecessary introduction of cats), these dissatisfactions 
 being properly felt by your “ vovs tw v TL/uMTaTuv.” For in- 
 deed, in all cases, our right judgment must depend on our 
 wish to give honour only to things and creatures that deserve 
 it. 
 
 135. And now I must state to you another principle of 
 veracity, both in sculpture, and all following arts, of wider 
 scope than any hitherto examined. We have seen that sculpt- 
 ure is to be a true representation of true external form. 
 Much more is it to be a representation of true internal emo- 
 tion. You must carve only what you yourself see as you see 
 it; but, much more, you must carve only what you yourself 
 feel, as you feel it. You may no more endeavour to feel 
 through other men’s souls, than to see with other men’s eyes. 
 Whereas generally now in Europe and America, every man’s 
 energy is bent upon acquiring some false emotion, not his 
 own, but belonging to the past, or to other persons, because 
 he has been taught that such and such a result of it will be 
 fine. Every attempted sentiment in relation to art is hypo- 
 critical ; our notions of sublimity, of grace, or pious serenity, 
 are all second hand ; and we are practically incapable of de- 
 signing so much as a bell-handle or a door-knocker without 
 borrowing the first notion of it from those who are gone — 
 where we shall not wake them with our knocking. I would 
 we could. 
 
88 
 
 ABATE A PEN TE LI Cl. 
 
 
 136. In the midst of this desolation we have nothing to 
 count on for real growth, but what we can find of honest lik- 
 ing and longing, in ourselves and in others. We must dis- 
 cover, if we would healthily advance, what things are verily 
 Ti/xtoj-rara among us ; and if we delight to honour the dis- 
 honourable, consider how, in future, we may better bestow 
 our likings. Now it appears to me from all our popular 
 declarations, that we, at present, honour nothing so much as 
 liberty and independence ; and no person so much as the Free 
 man and Self-made man, who will be ruled by no one, and 
 has been taught, or helped, by no one. And the reason I 
 chose a fish for you as the first subject of sculpture, was that 
 in men who are free and self-made, you have the nearest ap- 
 proach, humanly possible, to the state of the fish, and finely 
 organized epTrerov. You get the exact phrase in Habakkuk, if 
 you take the Septuagint text . — “ TToirjcrtLs rows avOpdirovs ws rovs 
 l^Ovas riys OaXdcrays, koI ws ra kpirtTa rd ovk e^ovra rjyovpievov .” 
 “ Thou wilt make men as the fishes of the sea, and as the 
 reptile things, that have no ruler over them A And it chanced 
 that as I was preparing this lecture, one of our most able and 
 popular prints gave me a woodcut of the “ self-made man,” 
 specified as such, so vigorously drawn, and with so few 
 touches, that Phidias or Turner himself could scarcely have 
 done it better ; so that I had only to ask my assistant to en- 
 large it with accuracy, and it became comparable with my 
 fish at once. Of course it is not given by the caricaturist as 
 an admirable face ; only, I am enabled by his skill to set be- 
 fore you, without any suspicion of unfairness on my part, the 
 expression to which the life we profess to think most honour- 
 able, naturally leads. If we were to take the hat off, you see 
 how nearly the profile corresponds with that of the typical 
 fish. 
 
 137. Such, then, being the definition by your best popular 
 art, of the ideal of feature at which we are gradually arriving by 
 self-manufacture ; when I place opposite to it (in Plate VIII.) 
 the profile of a man not in any wise self-made, neither by the 
 law of his own will, nor by the love of his own interest — nor 
 capable, for a moment, of any kind of “ Independence,” or of 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 89 
 
 the idea of independence ; but wholly dependent upon, and 
 subjected to, external influence of just law, wise teaching, and 
 trusted love and truth, in his fellow-spirits ; — setting before 
 you, I say, this profile of a God-made instead of a self-made, 
 man, I know that you will feel, on the instant, that you are 
 brought into contact with the vital elements of human art ; 
 and that this, the sculpture of the good, is indeed the only 
 permissible sculpture. 
 
 138. A God-made man , I say. The face, indeed, stands as 
 a symbol of more than man in its sculptor’s mind. For as I 
 gave you, to lead your first effort in the form of leaves, the 
 sceptre of Apollo, so this, which I give you as the first type of 
 rightness in the form of flesh, is the countenance of the holder 
 of that sceptre, the Sun-God of Syracuse. But there is noth- 
 ing in the face (nor did the Greek suppose there was) more 
 perfect than might be seen in the daily beauty of the creat- 
 ures the Sun-God shone upon, and whom his strength and 
 honour animated. This is not an ideal, but a quite literally 
 true, face of a Greek youth ; nay, I will undertake to show 
 you that it is not supremely beautiful, and even to surpass it 
 altogether with the literal portrait of an Italian one. It is in 
 verity no more than the form habitually taken by the features 
 of a well educated young Athenian or Sicilian citizen ; and 
 the one requirement for the sculptors of to-day is not, as it 
 has been thought, to invent the same ideal, but merely to see 
 the same reality. 
 
 Now, you know I told you in my fourth lecture, that the 
 beginning of art was in getting our country clean and our 
 people beautiful, and you supposed that to be a statement ir- 
 relevant to my subject ; just as, at this moment, you perhaps 
 think, I am quitting the great subject of this present lecture 
 — the method of likeness-making — and letting myself branch 
 into the discussion of what things we are to make likeness of. 
 But you shall see hereafter that the method of imitating a 
 beautiful thing must be different from the method of imitat- 
 ing an ugly one ; and that, with the change in subject from 
 what is dishonourable to what is honourable, there will be in- 
 volved a parallel change in the management of tools, of lines, 
 
90 
 
 AEA TEA PENTELICI. 
 
 and of colours. So that before I can determine for you how 
 you are to imitate, you must tell me what kind of face you 
 wish to imitate. The best draughtsmen in the world could 
 not draw this Apollo in ten scratches, though he can draw the 
 self-made man. Still less this nobler Apollo of Ionian Greece, 
 (Plate IX.) in which the incisions are softened into a harmony 
 like that of Correggio’s painting. So that you see the method 
 itself, — the choice between black incision or fine sculpture, 
 and perhaps, presently, the choice between colour or no 
 colour, ^ill depend on what you have to represent. Colour 
 may be expedient for a glistening dolphin or a spotted fawn ; 
 — perhaps inexpedient for white Poseidon, and gleaming 
 Dian. So that, before defining the laws of sculpture, I am 
 compelled to ask you, what you mean to carve ; and that, little 
 as you think it, is asking you how you mean to live, and what 
 the laws of your State are to be, for they determine those of 
 your statue. You can only have this kind of face to study 
 from, in the sort of state that produced it. And you will find 
 that sort of state described in the beginning of the fourth 
 book of the laws of Plato ; as founded, for one thing, on the 
 conviction that of all the evils that can happen to a state, 
 quantity of money is the greatest ! jmec^ov kclkov, <Ls tiros threw, 
 7 roXtc ovSiv av y iyvoiTO, eh ytvv&Low kcll Slkclloiv tjOojv KTrjcnv, Ci for, 
 to speak shortly, no greater evil, matching each against each, 
 can possibly happen to a city, as adverse to its forming just 
 or generous character,” than its being full of silver and gold. 
 
 139. Of course, the Greek notion may be wrong, and ours 
 right, only — ws tiros threw — you can have Greek sculpture 
 only on that Greek theory : shortly expressed by the words 
 put into the mouth of Poverty herself, in the Plutus of Aris- 
 tophanes “ Tov ttXovtov irapt^ji fitXTLOvas avSpas, kcll tt}V yvoi^r] v, 
 kcll ryv ISeav,” “ I deliver to you better men than the God of 
 Money can, both in imagination and feature.” So on the 
 other hand, this ichthyoid, reptilian, or mono-chondyloid 
 ideal of the self-made man can only be reached, universally, 
 by a nation which holds that poverty, either of purse or spirit, 
 
 • — but especially the spiritual character of being m-cox™ r( ? 
 Trvtv/jLCLTi, is the lowest of degradations ; and which believes 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 91 
 
 that the desire of wealth is the first of manly and moral sen- 
 timents. As I have been able to get the popular ideal repre- 
 sented by its own living art, so I can give you this popular 
 faith in its own living words ; but in words meant seriously 
 and not at all as caricature, from one of our leading journals, 
 professedly aesthetic also in its very name, the Spectator, of 
 August 6th, 1870. 
 
 “ Mr. Buskin’s plan,” it says, “ would make England poor, 
 in order that she might be cultivated, and refined and artistic. 
 A wilder proposal was never broached by a man of ability ; 
 and it might be regarded as a proof that the assiduous study 
 of art emasculates the intellect, and even the moral sense. Such 
 a theory almost warrants the contempt with which art is often 
 regarded by essentially intellectual natures, like Proudhon ” 
 (sic). “Art is noble as the flower of life, and the creations of 
 a Titian are a great heritage of the race ; but if England could 
 secure high art and Venetian glory of colour only by the sacri- 
 fice of her manufacturing supremacy, and by the acceptance of 
 national poverty , then the pursuit of such artistic achievements 
 would imply that we had ceased to possess natures of manly 
 strength, or to know the meaning of moral aims. If we must 
 choose between a Titian and a Lancashire cotton mill, then, 
 in the name of manhood and of morality, give us the cotton 
 mill. Only the dilettantism of the studio ; that dilettantism 
 which loosens the moral no less than the intellectual fibre, and 
 which is as fatal to rectitude of action as to correctness of 
 reasoning power, would make a different choice.” 
 
 You see also, by this interesting and most memorable pas- 
 sage, how completely the question is admitted to be one of 
 ethics — the only real point at issue being, whether this face 
 or that is developed on the truer moral principle. 
 
 140. I assume, however, for the present, that this Apolline 
 type is the kind of form you wish to reach and to represent. 
 And now observe, instantly, the whole question of manner of 
 imitation is altered for us. The fins of the fish, the plumes of 
 the swan, and the flowing of the Sun-God’s hair are all repre- 
 sented by incisions — but the incisions do sufficiently repre- 
 sent the fin and feather, — they insufficiently represent the 
 
92 
 
 ABATE A PENTELICI. 
 
 hair. If I chose, with a little more care and labour, I could 
 absolutely get the surface of the scales and spines of the fish, 
 and the expression of its mouth ; but no quantity of labour 
 would obtain the real surface of a tress of Apollo’s hair, and 
 the full expression of his mouth. So that we are compelled 
 at once to call the imagination to help us, and say to it, You 
 know what the Apollo Chrysocomes must be like ; finish all 
 this for yourself. Now, the law under which imagination 
 works, is just that of other good workers. “ You must give 
 me clear orders ; show me what I have to do, and where I am 
 to begin, and let me alone. ” And the orders can be ..given, 
 quite clearly, up to a certain point, in form ; but they cannot 
 be given clearly in colour, now that the subject is subtle. All 
 beauty of this high kind depends on harmony ; let but the 
 slightest discord come into it, and the finer the thing is, the 
 more fatal will be the flaw. Now, on a flat surface, I can 
 command my colour to be precisely what and wdiere I mean 
 it to be ; on a round one I cannot. For all harmony depends 
 first, on the fixed proportion of the colour of the light, to that 
 of the relative shadow ; and therefore, if I fasten my colour, I 
 must fasten my shade. But on a round surface the shadow 
 changes at every hour of the day ; and therefore, all colouring 
 which is expressive of form, is impossible ; and if the form is 
 fine, (and here there is nothing but what is fine), you may bid 
 farewell to colour. 
 
 141. Farewell to colour ; that is to say, if the thing is to be 
 seen distinctly, and you have only wise people to show it to ; 
 but if it is to be seen indistinctly, at a distance, colour may 
 become explanatory ; and if you have simple people to show 
 it to, colour may be necessary to excite their imaginations, 
 though not to excite yours. And the art is great always 
 by meeting its conditions in the straightest way ; and if it is 
 to please a multitude of innocent and bluntfy-minded persons, 
 must exjrress itself in the terms that will touch them ; else it 
 is not good. And I have to trace for you through the history 
 of the past, and possibilities of the future, the expedients used 
 by great sculptors to obtain clearness, impressiveness, or 
 splendour ; and the manner of their appeal to the people. 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 93 
 
 under various light and shadow, and with reference to differ- 
 ent degrees of public intelligence : such investigation resol v- 
 ^ ing itself again and again, as we proceed, into questions 
 absolutely ethical ; as for instance, whether colour is to be 
 bright or dull, that is to say, for a populace cheerful or heart- 
 less ; — whether it is to be delicate or strong, that is to say, 
 for a populace attentive or careless ; whether it is to be a 
 background like the sky, for a procession of young men and 
 maidens, because your populace revere life — or the shadow of 
 a vault behind a corpse, stained with drops of blackened blood, 
 for a populace taught to worship Death. Every critical deter- 
 mination of rightness depends on the obedience to some ethic 
 law, by the most rational and, therefore, simplest, means. 
 And you see how it depends most, of all things, on whether 
 you are working for chosen persons or for the mob ; for the 
 joy of the boudoir, or of the Borgo. And if for the mob, 
 whether the mob of Olympia, or of St. Antoine. Phidias, 
 showing his Jupiter for the first time, hides behind the 
 temple door to listen, resolved afterwards, “ pyO^uv to 
 ayaXfxa 7 r/?os to tols 7rAetcrTOis Sokow, ov yap ryyaro pitKpay etVat 
 crvpLpov\r)v Stjulov too-ovtov” and truly, as your people is, in 
 judgment, and in multitude, so must your sculpture be, in 
 glory. An elementary principle which has been too long out 
 of mind. 
 
 142. I leave you to consider it, since, for some time, we 
 shall not again be able to take up the inquiries to which it 
 leads. But, ultimately, I do not doubt that you will rest 
 satisfied in these following conclusions : 
 
 1. Not only sculpture, but all the other fine arts, must be 
 for the people. 
 
 2. They must be didactic to the people, and that as their chief 
 end. The structural arts, didactic in their manner ; the 
 graphic arts in their matter also. 
 
 3. And chiefly the great representative and imaginative arts, 
 that is to say, the drama, and sculpture, are to teach what is 
 noble in past history, and lovely in existing human and or- 
 ganic life. 
 
 4. And the test of right manner of execution in these arts, 
 
94 
 
 ABATE A PENTEL1CL 
 
 is that they strike, in the most emphatic manner, the rank of 
 popular minds to which they are addressed. 
 
 5. And the test of utmost fineness in execution in these 
 arts, is that they make themselves be forgotten in what they 
 represent ; and so fulfil the words of their greatest Master, 
 
 “The best, in this kind, are but shadows.” 
 
 LECTURE Y. 
 
 STRUCTURE. 
 
 December , 1870. 
 
 143. On previous occasions of addressing you, I have en- 
 deavoured to show you, first, how sculpture is distinguished 
 from other arts ; then its proper subjects, then its proper 
 method in the realization of these subjects. To-day, we 
 must, in the fourth place, consider the means at its command 
 for the accomplishment of these ends ; the nature of its ma- 
 terials ; and the mechanical or other difficulties of their treat- 
 ment. 
 
 And however doubtful we may have remained, as to the 
 justice of Greek ideals, or propriety of Greek methods of rep- 
 resenting them, we may be certain that the example of the 
 Greeks will be instructive in all practical matters relating to 
 this great art, peculiarly their own. I think even the evidence 
 I have already laid before you is enough to convince you, 
 that it was by rightness and reality, not by idealism or delight- 
 fulness only, that their minds were finally guided ; and I am 
 sure that, before closing the present course, I shall be able so 
 far to complete that evidence, as to prove to you that the 
 commonly received notions of classic art are, not only un- 
 founded, but even in many respects, directly contrary to the 
 truth. You are constantly told that Greece idealized what- 
 ever she contemplated. She did the exact contrary : she real- 
 ized and verified it. You are constantly told she sought only 
 the beautiful. She sought, indeed, with all her heart ; but 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 95 
 
 she found, because she never doubted that the search was to 
 be consistent with propriety and common sense. And the 
 first thing you will always discern in Greek work is the first 
 which you ought to discern in all work ; namely, that the 
 object of it has been rational, and has been obtained by sim- 
 ple and unostentatious means. 
 
 144. “That the object of the work has been rational!” 
 Consider how much that implies. That it should be by all 
 means seen to have been determined upon, and carried 
 through, with sense and discretion ; these being gifts of intel- 
 lect far more precious than any knowledge of mathematics, or 
 of the mechanical resources of art. Therefore, also, that it 
 should be a modest and temperate work, a structure fitted to 
 the actual state of men ; proportioned to their actual size, as 
 animals, — to their average strength, — to their true necessities, 
 — and to the degree of easy command they have over the 
 forces and substances of nature. 
 
 145. You see how much this law excludes ! All that is 
 fondly magnificent, insolently ambitious, or vainly difficult. 
 There is, indeed, such a thing as Magnanimity in design, but 
 never unless it be joined also with modesty and ^uanimity. 
 Nothing extravagant, monstrous, strained, or singular, can be 
 structurally beautiful. No towers of Babel envious of the 
 skies ; no pyramids in mimicry of the mountains of the earth ; 
 no streets that are a weariness to traverse, nor temples that 
 make pigmies of the worshippers. 
 
 It is one of the primal merits and decencies of Greek work 
 that it was, on the whole, singularly small in scale, and wholly 
 within reach of sight, to its finest details. And, indeed, the 
 best buildings that I know are thus modest ; and some of 
 the best are minute jewel.<cases for sweet sculpture. The 
 Parthenon would hardly attract notice, if it were set by the 
 Charing Cross Railway Station : the Church of the Miracoli, 
 at Venice, the Chapel of the Rose, at Lucca, and the Chapel 
 of the Thorn, at Pisa, would not, I suppose, all three together, 
 fill the tenth part, cube, of a transept of the Crystal Palace. 
 And they are better so. 
 
 146. In the chapter on Power in the “Seven Lamps of Arclii- 
 
96 
 
 ABATE A PENTELICL 
 
 tecture,” I have stated what seems, at first, the reverse of what 
 I am saying now ; namely, that it is better to have one grand 
 building than any number of mean ones. And that is true, 
 but you cannot command grandeur by size till you can com- 
 mand grace in minuteness ; and least of all, remember, will 
 you so command it to-day, when magnitude has become the 
 chief exponent of folly and misery, co-ordinate in the fra- 
 ternal enormities of the Factory and Poorhouse, — the Bar- 
 racks and Hospital. And the final law in this matter is, that 
 if you require edifices only for the grace and health of man- 
 kind, and build them without pretence and without chicanerv, 
 they will be sublime on a modest scale, and lovely with little 
 decoration. 
 
 147. From these principles of simplicity and temperance, 
 two very severely fixed laws of construction follow ; namely, 
 first, that our structure, to be beautiful, must be produced 
 with tools of men ; and secondly, that it must be composed 
 of natural substances. First, I say, produced with tools of 
 men. All fine art requires the application of the whole 
 strength and subtlety of the body, so that such art is not pos- 
 sible to any sickly person, but involves the action and force of 
 a strong man’s arm from the shoulder, as w r ell as the delicatest 
 touch of his finger : and it is the evidence that this full and 
 fine strength has been spent on it which makes the art execu- 
 tively noble ; so that no instrument must be used, habitually, 
 which is either too heavy to be delicately restrained, or too small 
 and weak to transmit a vigorous impulse ; much less any 
 mechanical aid, such as would render the sensibility of the 
 fingers ineffectual.* 
 
 148. Of course, any kind of work in glass, or in metal, on a 
 
 * Nothing is more wonderful, or mbre disgraceful among the forms 
 of ignorance engendered by modern vulgar occupations in pursuit of 
 gain, than the unconsciousness, now total, that fine art is essentially 
 Athletic. I received a letter from Birmingham, some little time since, 
 inviting me to see how much, in glass manufacture, “ machinery 
 excelled rude hand work.” The writer had not the remotest concep- 
 tion that he might as well have asked me to come and see a mechanical 
 boat-race rowed by automata, and “ how much machinery excelled rude 
 arm- work. 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 97 
 
 large scale, involves some painful endurance of heat ; and 
 working in clay, some habitual endurance of cold ; but the 
 point beyond which the effort must not be carried is marked 
 by loss of power of manipulation. As long as the eyes and 
 fingers have complete command of the material (as a glass 
 blower has, for instance, in doing fine ornamental work) — 
 the law is not violated ; but all our great engine and furnace 
 work, in gun-making and the like, is degrading to the intel- 
 lect ; and no nation can long persist in it without losing many 
 of its human faculties. Nay, even the use of machinery, other 
 than the common rope and pully, for the lifting of weights, is 
 degrading to architecture ; the invention of expedients for the 
 raising of enormous stones has always been a characteristic of 
 partly savage or corrupted races. A block of marble not 
 larger than a cart with a couple of oxen could carry, and a 
 cross-beam, with a couple of pulleys, raise, is as large as 
 should generally be used in any building. The employment 
 of large masses is sure to lead to vulgar exhibitions of geomet- 
 rical arrangement,* and to draw away the attention from the 
 sculpture. In general, rocks naturally break into such pieces 
 as the human beings that have to build with them can easily 
 lift, and no larger should be sought for. 
 
 149. In this respect, and in many other subtle ways, the 
 law that the work is to be with tools of men is connected 
 with the farther condition of its modesty, that it is to be 
 wrought in substance provided by Nature, and to have a 
 faithful respect to all the essential qualities of such substance. 
 
 And here I must ask your attention to the idea, and, more 
 than idea, — the fact, involved in that infinitely misused term, 
 “ Providentia,” when applied to the Divine Power. In its 
 truest sense and scholarly use, it is a human virtue, UpopL^Oeia ; 
 the personal type of it is in Prometheus, and all the first 
 power of Tey vr), is from him, as compared to the weakness of 
 days when men without foresight “ « fcvpov Ulkyj irdvraT But, 
 so far as we use the word “ Providence ” as an attribute of the 
 Maker and Giver of all things, it does not mean that in a 
 
 *Such as the sculptureless arch of Waterloo Bridge, for instance : 
 referred to in the Third Lecture, § 84. 
 
 7 
 
98 
 
 A RAT R A PENT ELI CI. 
 
 shipwreck He takes care of the passengers who are to be saved 
 and takes none of those who are to be drowned ; but it does 
 mean that every race of creatures is born into the world un- 
 der circumstances of approximate adaptation to its necessities ; 
 and, beyond all others, the ingenious and observant race of 
 man is surrounded with elements naturally good for his food, 
 pleasant to his sight, and suitable for the subjects of his in- 
 genuity ; — the stone, metal, and clay of the earth he walks 
 upon lending themselves at once to his hand, for all manner 
 of workmanship. 
 
 150. Thus, his truest respect for the law of the entire crea- 
 tion is shown by his making the most of what he can get most 
 easily ; and there is no virtue of art, nor application of com- 
 mon sense, more sacredly necessary than this respect to the 
 beauty of natural substance, and the ease of local use ; neither 
 are there any other precepts of construction so vital as these 
 — that you show all the strength of your material, tempt none 
 of its weaknesses, and do with it only what can be simply and 
 permanently done. 
 
 151. Thus, all good building will be with rocks, or pebbles, 
 or burnt clay, but with no artificial compound ; all good paint- 
 ing, with common oils and pigments on common canvas, paper, 
 plaster, or wood, — admitting, sometimes for precious work, 
 precious things, but all applied in a simple and visible way. 
 The highest imitative art should not, indeed, at first sight, call 
 attention to the means of it ; but even that, at length, should 
 do so distinctly, and provoke the observer to take pleasure in 
 seeing how completely the workman is master of the particu- 
 lar material he has used, and how beautiful and desirable a 
 substance it was, for work of that kind. In oil painting its 
 unctious quality is to be delighted in ; in fresco, its chalky 
 quality ; in glass, its transparency ; in wood, its grain ; in 
 marble, its softness ; in porphyry, its hardness ; in iron, its 
 toughness. In a flint country, one should feel the delightful- 
 ness of having flints to pick up, and fasten together into rug- 
 ged walls. In a marble country one should be always more 
 and more astonished at the exquisite colour and structure of 
 marble ; in a slate country one should feel as if every rock 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 99 
 
 cleft itself only for tlie sake of being built with con- 
 veniently. 
 
 152. Now, for sculpture, there are, briefly, two materials — 
 Clay, and Stone ; for glass is only a clay that gets clear and 
 brittle as it cools, and metal a clay that gets opaque and 
 tough as it cools. Indeed, the true use of gold in this world 
 is only as a very pretty and very ductile clay, which you can 
 spread as flat as you like, spin as fine as you like, and which 
 will neither crack, nor tarnish. 
 
 All the arts of sculpture in clay may be summed up under 
 the word “ Plastic,” and all of those in stone, under the word 
 “ Glyptic.” 
 
 153. Sculpture in clay will accordingly include all cast 
 brick-work, pottery, and tile-work * — a somewhat important 
 branch of human skill. Next to the potter’s work, you have 
 all the arts in porcelain, glass, enamel, and metal ; everything^ 
 that is to say, playful and familiar in design, much of what is 
 most felicitously inventive, and, in bronze or gold, most pre- 
 cious and permanent. 
 
 154. Sculpture in stone, whether granite, gem, or marble, 
 while we accurately use the general term “ glyptic ” for it, 
 may be thought of with, perhaps, the most clear force under 
 the English word “ engraving/’ Eor, from the mere angular 
 incision which the Greek consecrated in the triglyphs of his 
 greatest order of architecture, grow forth all the arts of bas- 
 relief, and methods of localized groups of sculpture connected 
 with each other and with architecture : as, in another direc- 
 tion, the arts of engraving and wood-cutting themselves. 
 
 155. Over all this vast field of human skill the laws which I 
 have enunciated to you rule with inevitable authority, embrac- 
 ing the greatest, and consenting to the humblest, exertion ; 
 strong to repress the ambition of nations, if fantastic and vain, 
 but gentle to approve the efforts of children, made in accord- 
 ance with the visible intention of the Maker of all flesh, and 
 
 * It is strange, at this day, to think of the relation of the Athenian 
 Ceramicus to the French Tile-fields, Tileries, or Tuileries ; and how 
 tlie.se last may yet become — have already partly become — “the Potter’s 
 field,” blood-bouglit. (December, 1870.) 
 
100 
 
 ARA TEA PENTELIC1. 
 
 the Giver of all Intelligence. These laws, therefore, I now re* 
 peat, and beg of you to observe them as irrefragable. 
 
 1. That the work is to be with tools of men. 
 
 2. That it is to be in natural materials. 
 
 3. That it is to exhibit the virtues of those materials, and 
 aim at no quality inconsistent with them. 
 
 4. That its temper is to be quiet and gentle, in harmony 
 with common needs, and in consent to common intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 We will now observe the bearing of these laws on the ele- 
 mentary conditions of the art at present under discussion. 
 
 156. There is, first, work in baked clay, which contracts as 
 it dries, and is very easily frangible. Then you must put no 
 work into it requiring niceness in dimension, nor any so elabo- 
 rate that it would be a great loss if it were broken, but as the 
 clay yields at once to the hand, and the sculptor can do any- 
 thing with it he likes^ it is a material for him to sketch with 
 and play with, — to record his fancies in, before they escape 
 him — and to express roughly, for people who can enjoy such 
 sketches, what he has not time to complete in marble. The 
 clay, being ductile, lends itself to all softness of line ; being 
 easily frangible, it would be ridiculous to give it sharp edges, 
 so that a blunt and massive rendering of grace idl gesture will 
 be its natural function ; but as it can be pinched, or pulled, 
 or thrust in a moment into projection which it would take 
 hours of chiselling to get in stone, it will also properly be 
 used for all fantastic and grotesque form, not involving sharp 
 edges. Therefore, what is true of chalk and charcoal, for 
 painters, is equally true of clay, for sculptors ; they are all 
 most precious materials for true masters, but tempt the false 
 ones into fatal license ; and to judge rightly of terra-cotta 
 work is a far higher reach of skill in sculpture-criticism than 
 to distinguish the merits of a finished statue. 
 
 157. We have, secondly, work in bronze, iron, gold, and 
 other metals ; in which the laws of structure are still more 
 definite. 
 
 All kinds of twisted and wreathen work on every scale be- 
 come delightful when wrought in ductile or tenacious metal ° 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 101 
 
 but metal which is to be hammered into form separates itself 
 into two great divisions — solid, and flat. 
 
 (A.) In solid metal work, i. e., metal cast thick enough to 
 resist bending, whether it be hollow or not, violent and various 
 projection may be admitted, which would be offensive in mar- 
 ble ; but no sharp edges, because it is difficult to produce 
 them with the hammer. But since the permanence of the 
 material justifies exquisiteness of workmanship, whatever del- 
 icate ornamentation can be wrought with rounded surfaces 
 may be advisedly introduced ; and since the colour of bronze 
 or any other metal is not so pleasantly representative of flesh 
 as that of marble, a wise sculptor will depend less on flesh 
 contour, and more on picturesque accessories, which, though 
 they would be vulgar if attempted in stone, are rightly enter- 
 taining in bronze or silver. Yerrochio’s statue 
 of Colleone at Venice, Cellini’s Perseus at 
 Florence, and Ghiberti’s gates at Florence, are 
 models of bronze treatment. 
 
 (B.) When metal is beaten thin, it becomes 
 what is technically called “plate,” (th e flattened 
 thing) and may be treated advisabty in two ways ; 
 one, by beating it out into bosses, the other by 
 cutting it into strips and ramifications. The 
 vast schools of goldsmith’s work and of iron dec- 
 oration, founded on these two principles, have 
 had the most powerful influences over general 
 taste in all ages and countries. One of the sim- 
 plest and most interesting elementary examples 
 of the treatment of flat metal by cutting is the 
 common branched iron bar, Fig. 8, used to close 
 small apertures in countries possessing any good 
 primitive style of ironwork, formed by alternate cuts on its 
 sides, and the bending down of the several portions. The 
 ordinary domestic window balcony of Verona is formed by 
 mere ribands of iron, bent into curves as studiously refined 
 as those of a Greek vase, and decorated merely by their own 
 terminations in spiral volutes. 
 
 All cast work in metal, unfinished by hand, is inadmissible 
 
 Fig. a 
 
102 
 
 A RAT BA PENTELIGI. 
 
 in any school of living art, since it cannot possess the perfec- 
 tion of form due to a permanent substance ; and the continual 
 sight of it is destructive of the faculty of taste : but metal 
 stamped with precision, as in coins, is to sculpture what en- 
 graving is to painting. 
 
 158. Thirdly. Stone-sculpture divides itself into three 
 schools : one in very hard material ; one in very soft, and one 
 in that of centrally useful consistence. 
 
 A. The virtue of work in hard material is the expression of 
 form in shallow relief, or in broad contours ; deep cutting in 
 hard material is inadmissible, and the art, at once pompous 
 and trivial, of gem engraving, has been in the last degree 
 destructive of the honour and service of sculpture. 
 
 B. The virtue of work in soft material is deep cutting, with 
 studiously graceful disposition of the masses of light and 
 shade. The greater number of flamboyant churches of France 
 are cut out of an adhesive chalk ; and the fantasy of their 
 latest decoration was, in great part, induced by the facility of 
 obtaining contrast of black space, undercut, with white tracery 
 easily left in sweeping and interwoven rods — the lavish use of 
 wood in domestic architecture materially increasing the habit 
 of delight in branched complexity of line. These points, 
 however, I must reserve for illustration in my lectures on ar- 
 chitecture. To-day, I shall limit myself to the illustration of 
 elementary sculptural structure in the best material ; — that is 
 to say, in crystalline marble, neither soft enough to encourage 
 the caprice of the workman, nor hard enough to resist his 
 will. 
 
 159. C. By the true “ Providence ” of Nature, the rock 
 which is thus submissive has been in some places stained with 
 the fairest colours, and in others blanched into the fairest ab- 
 sence of colour, that can be found to give harmony to inlay- 
 ing, or dignity to form. The possession by the Greeks of 
 their \cvk 6 s \l 60 s was indeed the first circumstance regulating 
 the development of their art ; it enabled them at once to ex- 
 press their passion for light by executing the faces, hands, and 
 feet of their dark wooden statues in white marble, so that 
 what we look upon only with pleasure for fineness of texture 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 103 
 
 was to them an imitation of the luminous body of the deity 
 shining from behind its dark robes ; and ivory afterwards 
 is employed in their best statues for its yet more soft and 
 flesh-like brightness, receptive also of the most delicate colour 
 — (therefore to this day the favourite ground of miniature 
 painters). In like manner, the existence of quarries of peach- 
 coloured marble within twelve miles of Yerona, and of white 
 marble and green serpentine between Pisa and Genoa, defined 
 the manner both of sculpture and architecture for all the 
 Gothic buildings of Italy. No subtlety of education could 
 have formed a high school of art without these materials. 
 
 160. Next to the colour, the fineness of substance which 
 will take a perfectly sharp edge, is essential ; and this not 
 merely to admit fine delineation in the sculpture itself, but to 
 secure a delightful precision in placing the blocks of which it 
 is composed. For the possession of too fine marble, as far as 
 regards the work itself, is a temptation instead of an advantage 
 to an inferior sculptor ; and the abuse of the facility of under- 
 cutting, especially of undercutting so as to leave profiles de- 
 fined by an edge against shadow, is one of the chief causes of 
 decline of style in such encrusted bas-reliefs as those of the 
 Certosa of Pavia and its contemporary monuments. But no 
 undue temptation ever exists as to the fineness of block fit- 
 ting ; nothing contributes to give so pure and healthy a tone 
 to sculpture as the attention of the builder to the jointing of 
 his stones ; and his having both the power to make them fit so 
 perfectly as not to admit of the slightest portion of cement 
 showing externally, and the skill to insure, if needful, and to 
 suggest always, their stability in cementiess construction. 
 Plate X. represents a piece of entirely fine Lombardic build- 
 ing, the central portion of the arch in the Duomo of Verona, 
 which corresponds to that of the porch of San Zenone, repre- 
 sented in Plate I. In both these pieces of building, the only 
 line that traces the architrave round the arch, is that of the 
 masonry joint ; yet this line is drawn with extremes t subtlety, 
 with intention of delighting the eye by its relation of varied 
 curvature to the arch itself ; and it is just as much considered 
 as the finest pen-line of a Raphael drawing. Every joint of 
 
104 
 
 ABATE A PENT ELI Cl 
 
 the stone is used, in like manner, as a thin black line, which 
 the slightest sign of cement would spoil like a blot. And so 
 proud is the builder of his fine jointing, and so fearless of 
 any distortion or strain spoiling the adjustment afterwards, 
 that in one place he runs his joint quite gratuitously through 
 a bas-relief, and gives the keystone its only sign of pre-emi- 
 nence by the minute inlaying of the head of the Lamb, into 
 the stone of the course above. 
 
 161. Proceeding from this fine jointing to fine draughts- 
 manship, you have, in the very outset and earliest stage of 
 sculpture, your flat stone surface given you as a sheet of white 
 paper, on which you are required to produce the utmost effect 
 you can with the simplest means, cutting away as little of the 
 stone as may be, to save both time and trouble ; and, above 
 all, leaving the block itself, when shaped, as solid as you can, 
 that its surface may better resist weather, and the carved parts 
 be as much protected as possible by the masses left around 
 them. 
 
 162. The first thing to be done is clearly to trace the out- 
 line of subject with an incision approximating in section to 
 that of the furrow of a plough, only more equal-sided. A fine 
 sculptor strikes it, as his chisel leans, freely, on marble ; an 
 Egyptian, in hard rock, cuts it sharp, as in cuneiform inscrip- 
 tions. In any case, you have a result somewhat like the 
 upper figure, Plate XL, in which I show you the most ele- 
 mentary indication of form possible, by cutting the outline of 
 the typical archaic Greek head with an incision like that of a 
 Greek triglypli, only not so precise in edge or slope, as it is to 
 be modified afterwards. 
 
 163. Now, the simplest thing we can do next, is to round 
 off the flat surface within the incision, and put what form we 
 can get into the feebler projection of it thus obtained. The 
 Egyptians do this, often with exquisite skill, and then, as I 
 showed you in a former lecture, colour the whole — using the 
 incision as an outline. Such a method of treatment is capable 
 of good service in representing, at little cost of pains, subjects 
 in distant effect, and common, or merely picturesque, subjects 
 even near. To show you what it is capable of, and what 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 105 
 
 coloured sculpture would be in its rudest type, I have pre- 
 pared the coloured relief of the John Dory * as a natural his- 
 tory drawing for distant effect. You know, also, that I meant 
 him to be ugly — as ugly as any creature can well be. In 
 time, I hope to show you prettier things — peacocks and king- 
 fishers, — butterflies and flowers, on grounds of gold, and the 
 like, as they were in Byzantine work. I shall expect you, in 
 right use of your aesthetic faculties, to like those better than 
 what I show you to-day. But it is now a question of method 
 only ; and if you will look, after the lecture, first at the mere 
 white relief, and then see how much may be gained by a few 
 dashes of colour, such as a practised workman could lay in a 
 quarter of an hour, — the whole forming, if well done, almost a 
 deceptive image — you will, at least, have the range of power 
 in Egyptian sculpture clearly expressed to you. 
 
 164. But for fine sculpture, we must advance by far other 
 methods. If we carve the subject with real delicacy, the cast 
 shadow of the incision will interfere with its outline, so that, 
 for representation of beautiful things, you must clear away 
 the ground about it, at all events for a little distance. As the 
 law of work is to use the least pains possible, you clear it only 
 just as far back as you need, and then for the sake of order 
 and finish, you give the space a geometrical outline. By tak- 
 ing, in this case, the simplest I can, — a circle, — I can clear 
 the head with little labor in the removal of surface round it ; 
 (see the lower figure in Plate XI.) 
 
 165. Notv, these are the first terms of all well-constructed 
 bas-relief. The mass you have to treat consists of a piece of 
 stone, which, however you afterwards carve it, can but, at its 
 most projecting point, r#ach the level of the external plane 
 surface out of which it was mapped, and defined by a depres- 
 sion round it ; that depression being at first a mere trench, 
 then a moat of certain width, of which the outer sloping bank 
 is in contact, as a limiting geometrical line, with the laterally 
 salient portions of sculpture. This, I repeat, is the primal 
 
 * Tliis relief is now among the other casts which I have placed in the 
 lower school in the University galleries. 
 
106 
 
 ARATRA PENTELICL 
 
 construction of good bas-relief, implying, first, perfect pro- 
 tection to its surface from any transverse blow, and a geo- 
 metrically limited space to be occupied by the design, into 
 which it shall pleasantly (and as you shall ultimately see, 
 ingeniously,) contract itself: implying, secondly, a determined 
 depth of projection, which it shall rarely reach, and never ex- 
 ceed : and implying, finally, the production of the whole jfiece 
 with the least possible labor of chisel and loss of stone. 
 
 166. And these, which are the first, are very nearly the last 
 constructive laws of sculpture. You will be surprised to find 
 how much they include, and how much of minor propriety in 
 treatment their observance involves. 
 
 In a very interesting essay on the architecture of the Par- 
 thenon, by the professor of architecture of the Ecole Polytech- 
 nique, M. Emile Boutmy, you will find it noticed that the 
 Greeks do not usually weaken, by carving, the constructive 
 masses of their building ; but put their chief sculpture in the 
 empty spaces between the triglyphs, or beneath the roof. 
 This is true ; but in so doing, they merely build their panel 
 instead of carving it ; they accept no less than the Goths, the 
 laws of recess and limitation, as being vital to the safety and 
 dignity of their design ; and their noblest recumbent statues 
 are, constructively, the fillings of the acute extremity of a 
 panel in the form of an obtusely summitted triangle. 
 
 167. In gradual descent from that severest type, you will 
 find that an immense quantity of sculpture of all times and 
 styles may be generally embraced under the notion of a mass 
 hewn out of, or, at least, placed in, a panel or recess, deepen- 
 ing, it may be, into a niche ; the sculpture being always de- 
 signed with reference to its position in such recess ; and, 
 therefore, to the effect of the building out of which the re- 
 cess is hewn. 
 
 But, for the sake of simplifying our inquiry, I will at first 
 suppose no surrounding protective ledge to exist, and that the 
 area of stone we have to deal with is simply a flat slab, extant 
 from a flat surface depressed all round it. 
 
 168. A flat slab, observe. The flatness of surface is essen- 
 tial to the problem of bas-relief. The lateral limit of the 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 107 
 
 panel may, or may not, be required ; but the vertical limit of 
 surface must be expressed ; and the art of bas-relief is to 
 give the effect of true form on that condition. For observe, 
 if nothing more were needed than to make first a cast of a 
 solid form, then cut it in half, and apply the half of it to the 
 flat surface ; — if, for instance, to carve a bas-relief of an ap- 
 ple, all I had to do was to cut my sculpture of the whole apple 
 in half, and pin it to the wall, any ordinary trained sculptor, 
 or even a mechanical workman, could produce bas-relief ; 
 but the business is to carve a round thing out of a flat thing ; 
 to carve an apple out of a biscuit ! — to conquer, as a subtle 
 Florentine has here conquered,* his marble, so as not only to 
 get motion into what is most rigidly fixed, but to get bound- 
 lessness into what is most narrowly bounded ; and carve Ma- 
 donna and Child, rolling clouds, flying angels, and space of 
 heavenly air behind all, out of a film of stone not the third of 
 an inch thick where it is thickest. 
 
 169. Carried, however, to such a degree of subtlety as this, 
 and with so ambitious and extravagant aim, bas-relief be- 
 comes a tour-de-force ; and, you know, I have just told you 
 all tours-de-force are wrong. The true law of bas-relief is to 
 begin with a depth of incision proportioned justly to the dis- 
 tance of the observer and the character of the subject, and out 
 of that rationally determined depth, neither increased for os- 
 tentation of effect, nor diminished for ostentation of skill, to 
 do the utmost that will be easily visible to an observer, sup- 
 posing him to give an average human amount of attention, 
 but not to peer into, or critically scrutinize the work. 
 
 170. I cannot arrest you to day by the statement of any of 
 the laws of sight and distance which determine the proper 
 depth of bas-relief. Suppose that depth fixed ; then observe 
 what a pretty problem, or, rather, continually varying cluster 
 of problems, will be offered to us. You might, at first, imag- 
 ine that, given what we may call our scale of solidity, or scale 
 of depth, the diminution from nature would be in regular 
 
 * The reference is to a cast from a small and low relief of Florentine 
 work in the Kensington Museum. 
 
108 
 
 ABATE A PENTEL1GI. 
 
 proportion, as for instance, if the real depth of your subject 
 be, suppose a foot, and the depth of your bas-relief an inch, 
 then the parts of the real subject which were six inches round 
 the side of it would be carved, you might imagine, at the 
 depth of half-an-inch, and so the whole thing* mechanically 
 reduced to scale. But not a bit of it. Here is a Greek bas- 
 relief of a chariot with two horses (upper figure, Plate XXI). 
 Your whole subject has therefore the depth of two horses side 
 by side, say six or eight feet. Your bas-relief has, on the 
 scale,* say the depth of the third of an inch. Now, if you 
 gave only the sixth of an inch for the depth of the off horse, 
 and, dividing him again, only the twelfth of an inch for that 
 of each foreleg, you would make him look a mile away from 
 the other, and his owui forelegs a mile apart. Actually, the 
 Greek has made the near leg of the off horse project much be- 
 yond the off leg of the near horse ; and has put nearly the 
 whole depth and power of his relief into the breast of the off 
 horse, while for the whole distance from the head of the near- 
 est to the neck of the other, he has allowed himself onty a 
 shallow line ; knowing that, if he deepened that, he would 
 give the nearest horse the look of having a thick nose ; where- 
 as, by keeping that line down, he has not only made the head 
 itself more delicate, but detached it from the other by giving 
 no cast shadow, and left the shadow 7- below to serve for thick- 
 ness of breast, cutting it as sharp down as he possibly can, to 
 make it bolder. 
 
 171. Here is a fine piece of business we have got into ! 
 — even supposing that all this selection and adaptation were 
 to be contrived under constant laws, and related only to the 
 expression of given forms. But the Greek sculptor, all this 
 while, is not only debating and deciding how 7 to show what 
 he wants, but, much more, debating and deciding what, as he 
 can’t show everything, he w 7 ill choose to show at all. Thus, 
 being himself interested, and supposing that you will be, in 
 
 * The actual bas-relief is on a coin, and the projection not above the 
 twentieth of an inch, but I magnified it in photograph, for this Lecture, 
 so as to represent a relief with about the third of an inch for maximum 
 projection. 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 109 
 
 the manner of the driving, he takes great pains to carve the 
 reins, to show you where they are knotted, and how thfey are 
 fastened round the driver’s waist (you recollect how Hippoly- 
 tus was lost by doing that), but he does not care the least bit 
 about the chariot, and having rather more geometry than he 
 likes in the cross and circle of one wheel of it, entirely omits 
 the other ! 
 
 172. I think you must see by this time that the sculptor’s 
 is not quite a trade which you can teach like brickmaking ; 
 nor its produce an article of which you can supply any quan- 
 tity “ demanded ” for the next railroad waiting-room. It may 
 perhaps, indeed, seem to you that, in the difficulties thus pre- 
 sented by it, bas-relief involves more direct exertion of intel- 
 lect than finished solid sculpture. It is not so, however. The 
 questions involved by bas-relief are of a more curious and 
 amusing kind, requiring great variety of expedients ; though 
 none except such as a true workmanly instinct delights in in- 
 venting and invents easily ; but design in solid sculpture in- 
 volves considerations of weight in mass, of balance, of per- 
 spective and opposition, in projecting forms, and of restraint 
 for those which must not project, such as none but the great- 
 est masters have ever completely solved ; and they, not always ; 
 the difficulty of arranging the composition so as to be agree- 
 able from points of view on all sides of it, being, itself, arduous 
 enough. 
 
 173. Thus far, I have been speaking only of the laws of 
 structure relating to ‘the projection of the mass which becomes 
 itself the sculpture. Another most interesting group of con- 
 structive laws governs its relation to the line that contains or 
 defines it. 
 
 In your Standard Series I have placed a photograph of the 
 south transept of Kouen Cathedral. Strictly speaking, all 
 standards of Gothic are of the thirteenth century ; but, in the 
 fourteenth, certain qualities of richness are obtained by the 
 diminution of restraint ; out of which we must choose what is 
 best in their kinds. The pedestals of the statues which once 
 occupied the lateral recesses are, as you see, covered with 
 groups of figures, enclosed each in a quatrefoil panel ; the 
 
110 
 
 ABATE A PEN l 1 ELI CL 
 
 spaces between this panel and the enclosing square being 
 filled tvith sculptures of animals. 
 
 You cannot anywhere find a more lovely piece of fancy, or 
 more illustrative of the quantity of result that may be obtained 
 with low and simple chiselling. The figures are all perfectly 
 simple in drapery, the story told by lines of action only in the 
 main group, no accessories being admitted. There is no un- 
 dercutting anywhere, nor exhibition of technical skill, but 
 the fondest and tenderest appliance of it ; and one of the prin- 
 cipal charms of the whole is the adaptation of every subject 
 to its quaint limit. The tale must be told within the four 
 petals of the quatrefoil, and the wildest and playfullest beasts 
 must never come out of their narrow corners. T fie attention 
 with which spaces of this kind are filled by the Gothic design- 
 ers is not merely a beautiful compliance with architectural re- 
 quirements, but a definite assertion of their delight in the 
 restraint of law ; for, in illuminating books, although, if they 
 chose it, they might have designed floral ornaments, as we 
 now usually do, rambling loosely over the leaves, and although, 
 in later works, such license is often taken by them, in all books 
 of the fine time the wandering tendrils are enclosed by limits 
 approximately rectilinear, and in gracefullest branching often 
 detach themselves from the right line only by curvature of ex- 
 treme severity. 
 
 174. Since the darkness and extent of shadow by which 
 the sculpture is relieved necessarily vary with the depth of the 
 x*ecess, there arise a series of problems, in deciding which the 
 wholesome desire for emphasis by means of shadow is too often 
 exaggerated by the ambition of the sculptor to show his skill 
 in undercutting. The extreme of vulgarity is usually reached 
 when the entire bas-relief is cut hollow underneath, as in 
 much Indian and Chinese work, so as to relieve its forms 
 against an absolute darkness ; but no formal law can ever be 
 given ; for exactly the same thing may be beautifully done for 
 a wise purpose, by one person, which is basely done, and to 
 no purpose, or to a bad one, by another. Thus, the desire for 
 emphasis itself may be the craving of a deadened imagination, 
 or the passion of a vigorous one ; and relief against shadow 
 
' 
 
 STRUCTURE . 1H 
 
 may be sought by one man only for sensation, and by another 
 for intelligibility. John of Pisa undercuts fiercely, in order 
 to bring out the vigour of life which no level contour could 
 render ; the Lombardi of Venice undercut delicately, in order 
 to obtain beautiful lines, and edges of faultless precision ; but 
 the base Indian craftsmen undercut only that people may 
 wonder how the chiselling was done through the holes, or that 
 they may see every monster white against black. 
 
 175. Yet, here again we are met by another necessity for 
 discrimination. There may be a true delight in the inlaying 
 of white on dark, as there is a true delight in vigorous round- 
 ing. Nevertheless, the general law is always, that, the lighter 
 the incisions, and the broader the surface, the grander, cseteris 
 paribus, will be the work. Of the structural terms of that 
 work you now know enough to understand that the schools of 
 good sculpture, considered in relation to projection, divide 
 themselves into four entirely distinct groups : — 
 
 1st. Flat Relief, in which the surface is, in many places, 
 absolutely fiat ; and the expression depends greatly 
 on the lines of its outer contour, and on fine incis- 
 ions within them. 
 
 2nd. Round Relief, in which, as in the best coins, the sculpt- 
 ured mass projects so as to be capable of complete 
 modulation into form, but is not anywhere undercut. 
 The formation of a coin by the blow of a die neces- 
 sitates, of course, the severest obedience to this law. 
 
 3rd. Edged Relief. Undercutting admitted, so as to throw 
 out the forms against a background of shadow. 
 
 4th. Full Relief. The statue completely solid in form, and 
 unreduced in retreating depth of it, yet connected 
 locally with some definite part of the building, so as 
 to be still dependent on the shadow of its back- 
 ground and direction of protective line. 
 
 176. Let me recommend you at once to take what pains 
 may be needful to enable you to distinguish these four kinds 
 of sculpture, for the distinctions between them are not founded 
 on mere differences in gradation of depth. They are truly 
 four species, or orders, of sculpture, separated from each other 
 
112 
 
 ABATE A PENT ELI CL 
 
 by determined characters. I have used, you may have noted, 
 hitherto in my Lectures, the word “ bas-relief ” almost indis- 
 criminately for all, because the degree of lowness or highness 
 of relief is not the question, but the method of relief. Observe 
 again, therefore — 
 
 A. If a portion of the surface is absolutely hat, you have the 
 first order — Flat Belief. 
 
 B. If every portion of the surface is rounded, but none un- 
 dercut, you have Bound Belief — essentially that of seals and 
 coins. 
 
 C. If any part of the edges be undercut, but the general 
 projection of solid form reduced, you have what I think you 
 may conveniently call Foliate Belief, — the parts of the design 
 overlapping each other in places, like edges of leaves. 
 
 D. If the undercutting is bold and deep, and the projection 
 of solid form unreduced, you have full relief. 
 
 Learn these four names at once by heart : — • 
 
 Flat Belief. 
 
 Bound Belief. 
 
 Foliate Belief. 
 
 Full Belief. 
 
 And whenever you look at any piece of sculpture, determine 
 first to which of these classes it belongs ; and then consider 
 how the sculptor has treated it with reference to the neces- 
 sary structure — that reference, remember, being partly to the 
 mechanical conditions of the material, partly to the means of 
 light and shade at his command. 
 
 177. To take a single instance. You know, for these many 
 years, I have been telling our architects with all the force of 
 voice I had in me, that they could design nothing until they 
 could carve natural forms rightly. Many imagine that work 
 was easy ; but judge for yourselves whether it be or not. In 
 Plate XII., I have drawn,* with approximate accuracy, a cluster 
 of Pliillyrea leaves as they grow. Now, if we wanted to cut 
 them in bas-relief, the first thing we should have to consider 
 would be the position of their outline on the marble ; — here 
 it is, as far down as the spring of the leaves. But do you 
 suppose that is what an ordinary sculptor could either lay for 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 113 
 
 his first sketch, or contemplate as a limit to he worked down 
 to ? Then consider how the interlacing and springing of the 
 leaves can he expressed within this outline. It must be done 
 by leaving such projection in the marble as will take the light 
 in the same proportion as the drawing does ; — and a Floren- 
 tine workman could do it, for close sight, without driving one 
 incision deeper, or raising a single surface higher, than the 
 eighth of an inch. Indeed, no sculptor of the finest time 
 
 Fig. 9. 
 
 router design such a complex cluster of leaves as this, except 
 for bronze or iron work ; they would take simpler contours 
 for marble ; but the laws of treatment would, under these 
 conditions, remain just as strict : and you may, perhaps, be- 
 lieve me now when I tell you that, in any piece of fine struct- 
 ural sculpture by the great masters, there is more subtlety 
 and noble obedience to lovely laws than could be explained to 
 you if I took twenty lectures to do it in, instead of one. 
 
 178. There remains yet a point of mechanical treatment, on 
 which I have not yet touched at all ; nor that the least impor- 
 8 
 
114 
 
 ABATE A PENTELICI. 
 
 tant, — namely, the actual method and style of handling. A 
 great sculptor uses his tools exactly as a painter his pencil, 
 and you may recognize the decision of his thought, and glow 
 of his temper, no less in the workmanship than the design. 
 The modern system of modelling the work in clay, getting it 
 into form by machinery, and by the hands of subordinates, 
 and touching it at last, if indeed the (so called) sculptor touch 
 it at all, only to correct their inefficiencies, renders the pro- 
 duction of good work in marble a physical impossibility. The 
 first result of it is that the sculptor thinks in clay instead of 
 marble, and loses his instinctive sense of the proper treatment 
 of a brittle substance. The second is that neither he nor the 
 public recognize the touch of the chisel as expressive of per- 
 sonal feeling or power, and that nothing is looked for except 
 mechanical polish. 
 
 179. The perfectly simple piece of Greek relief represented 
 in Plate XIII., will enable you to understand at once, — exam- 
 ination of the original, at your leisure, will prevent you, I 
 trust, from ever forgetting — what is meant by the virtue of 
 handling in sculpture. 
 
 The projection of the heads of the four horses, one behind 
 the other, is certainly not more, altogether, than three-quarters 
 of an inch from the flat ground, and the one in front does not 
 in reality project more than the one behind it, yet, by mere 
 drawing,* you see the sculptor has got them to appear to re- 
 cede in due order, and by the soft rounding of the flesh sur- 
 faces, and modulation of the veins, he has taken away all look 
 of flatness from the necks. He has drawn the eyes and nos- 
 trils with dark incision, careful as the finest touches of a 
 painter’s pencil : and then, at last, when he comes to the manes, 
 he has let fly hand and chisel with their full force, and where 
 a base workman, (above all, if he had modelled the thing in 
 clay first,) would have lost himself in laborious imitation of 
 hair, the Greek has struck the tresses out with angular inci- 
 
 * This plate has been executed from a drawing by Mr. Burgess, in 
 which he has followed the curves of incision with exquisite care, and 
 preserved the effect of the surface of the stone, where a photograph 
 would have lost it by exaggerating accidental stains. 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 115 
 
 sions, deep driven, every one in appointed place and deliberate 
 curve, yet flowing so free under his noble hand that you can- 
 not alter, without harm, the bending of any single ridge, nor 
 contract, nor extend, a point of them. And if* you will look 
 back to Plate IX. you will see the difference between this sharp 
 incision, used to express horse-hair, and the soft incision with 
 intervening rounded ridge, used to express the hair of Apollo 
 Chrysocomes ; and, beneath, the obliquely ridged incision used 
 to express the plumes of his swan ; in both these cases the 
 handling being much more slow, because the engraving is in 
 metal ; but the structural importance of incision, as the means 
 of effect, never lost sight of. Finally, here are two actual ex- 
 amples of the work in marble of the two great schools of the 
 w r orld ; one, a little Fortune, standing tiptoe on the globe of 
 the Earth, its surface traced with lines in hexagons ; not cha- 
 otic under Fortune’s feet ; Greek, this, and by a trained work- 
 man ; — dug up in the temple of Neptune at Corfu ; — and here, 
 a Florentine portrait-marble, found in the recent alterations, 
 face downwards, under the pavement of St a Maria Novella ; * 
 both of them first-rate of their kind ; and both of them, while 
 exquisitely finished at the telling points, showing, on all their 
 unregarded surfaces, the rough furrow of the fast-driven 
 chisel, as distinctly as the edge of a common paving-stone. 
 
 180. Let me suggest to you, in conclusion, one most inter- 
 esting point of mental expression in these necessary aspects 
 of finely executed sculpture. I have already again and again 
 pressed on your attention the beginning of the arts of men in 
 the make and use of the ploughshare. Bead more carefully 
 — you might indeed do well to learn at once by heart, — the 
 twenty-seven lines of the Fourth Pythian, which describe the 
 ploughing of Jason. There is nothing grander extant in 
 human fancy, nor set down in human words : but this great 
 mythical expression of the conquest of the earth-clay, and 
 brute-force, by vital human energy, will become yet more 
 interesting to you w r hen you reflect what enchantment has 
 been cut, on whiter clay, by the tracing of finer furrows ; — 
 
 * These two marbles will always, henceforward, be sufficiently ac- 
 cessible for reference bi my room at Corpus Christi College. 
 
116 
 
 ARATRA PENTELICL 
 
 what the delicate and consummate arts of man have done by 
 the ploughing of marble, and granite, and iron. You will 
 learn daily more and more, as you advance in actual practice, 
 how the primary manual art of engraving, in the steadiness, 
 clearness, and irrevocableness of it, is the best art- discipline 
 that can be given either to mind or hand ; * you will recog- 
 nize one law of right, pronouncing itself in the well-resolved 
 work of every age ; you w T ill see the firmly traced and irrev- 
 ocable incision determining not only the forms, but, in great 
 part, the moral temper, of all Vitally progressive art ; you will 
 trace the same principle and power in the furrows which the 
 oblique sun shows on the granite of his own Egyptian city, — 
 in the white scratch of the stylus through the colour on a 
 Greek vase — in the first delineation, on the wet wall, of the 
 groups of an Italian fresco ; in the unerring and unalterable 
 touch of the great engraver of Nuremberg, — and in the deep 
 driven and deep bitten ravines of metal by which Turner 
 closed, in embossed limits, the shadows of the Liber Studi- 
 orum. 
 
 Learn, therefore, in its full extent, the force of the great 
 Greek word, x a pa v™ ; — and, give me pardon — if you think 
 pardon needed, that I ask you also to learn the full meaning 
 of the English word derived from it. Here, at the Ford of 
 the Oxen of Jason, are other furrows to be driven than these 
 in the marble of Pentelicus. The fruitfullest, or the fatallest 
 of all ploughing is that by the thoughts of your youth, on the 
 white field of its imagination. For by these, either down to 
 the disturbed spirit, “ k£k.ottt(u kclI x a P ( ^ cr(TeTaL ireSoi/;” or 
 around the quiet spirit, and on all the laws of conduct that 
 hold it, as a fair vase its frankincense, are, ordained the pure 
 colours, and engraved the just Characters, of JEonian life. 
 
 * Tli at it was also, in some cases, the earliest that the Greeks gave, 
 is proved by Lucian’s account of his first lesson at his uncle’s ; the 
 cyKoirevs, literally “in-cutter” — being the first tool put into his hand, 
 and an earthenware tablet to cut upon, which the boy pressing too hard, 
 presently breaks; — gets beaten— goes home crying, and becomes, after 
 his dream above quoted, a philosopher instead of a sculptor. 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 117 
 
 LECTUKE VI. 
 
 THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 December , 1870. 
 
 181. It can scarcely be needful for me to tell even the younger 
 members of my present audience, that the conditions neces- 
 sary for the production of a perfect school of sculpture have 
 only twice been met in the history of the world, and then for 
 a short time ; nor for short time only, but also in narrow dis- 
 tricts, namely, in the valleys and islands of Ionian Greece, and 
 in the strip of land deposited by the Arno, between the Apen- 
 nine crests and the sea. 
 
 All other schools, except these two, led severally by Athens 
 in the fifth century before Christ, and by Florence in the 
 fifteenth of our own era, are imperfect ; and the best of them 
 are derivative : these two are consummate in themselves, and 
 the origin of what is best in others. 
 
 182. And observe, these Athenian and Florentine schools 
 are both of equal rank, as essentially original and independ- 
 ent. The Florentine, being subsequent to the Greek, bor- 
 rowed much frctm it ; but it would have existed just as strongly 
 — and, perhaps, in some respects, more nobly — had it been 
 the first, instead of the latter of the two. The task set to each 
 of these mightiest of the nations was, indeed, practically the 
 same, and as hard to the one as to the other. The Greeks 
 found Phoenician and Etruscan art monstrous, and had to 
 make them human. The Italians found Byzantine and Nor- 
 man art monstrous, and had to make them human. The 
 original power in the one case is easily traced ; in the other 
 it has partly to be unmasked, because the change at Florence 
 was, in many points, suggested and stimulated by the former 
 school. But we mistake in supposing that Athens taught 
 Florence the laws of design ; she taught her, in reality, only 
 the duty of truth. 
 
 183. You remember that I told you the highest art could 
 
118 ABATE A PENT ELI CL 
 
 do no more than rightly represent the human form. This is 
 the simple test, then, of a perfect school, — -that it has repre- 
 sented the human form, so that it is impossible to conceive of 
 its being better done. And that, I repeat, has been accom- 
 plished twice only : once in Athens, once in Florence. And 
 so narrow is the excellence even of these two exclusive schools, 
 that it cannot be said of either of them that they represented 
 the entire human form. The Greeks perfectly drew, and per- 
 fectly moulded the body and limbs ; but there is, so far as I 
 am aware, no instance of their representing the face as well 
 as any great Italian. On the other hand, the Italian painted 
 and carved the face insuperably ; but I believe there is no in- 
 stance of his having perfectly represented the body, which, 
 by command of his religion, it became his pride to despise, 
 and his safety to mortify. 
 
 184. The general course of your study here renders it de- 
 sirable that you should be accurately acquainted with the lead- 
 ing principles of Greek sculpture ; but I cannot lay these be- 
 fore you without giving undue prominence to some of the 
 special merits of that school, unless I previously indicate the 
 relation it holds to the more advanced, though less disciplined, 
 excellence of Christian art. 
 
 In this and the last lecture of the present course,* I shall 
 endeavour, therefore, to mass for you, in such rude and dia- 
 gram-like outline as may be possible or intelligible, the main 
 characteristics of the two schools, completing and correcting 
 the details of comparison afterwards ; and not answering, ob- 
 serve, at present, for any generalization I give you, except as a 
 ground for subsequent closer and more qualified statements. 
 
 And in carrying out this parallel, I shall speak indifferently 
 of works of sculpture, and of the modes of ' painting which 
 
 * Tlie closing Lecture, on the religious temper of the Florentine, 
 though necessary for the complete explanation of the subject to my 
 class, at the time, introduced new points of inquiry which I do not 
 choose to lay before the general reader until they can be examined in 
 fuller sequence. The present volume, therefore, closes with the Sixth 
 Lecture, and that on Christian art will be given as the first of the pub- 
 lished course on Florentine Sculpture. 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 119 
 
 propose to themselves the same objects as sculpture. And 
 this indeed Florentine, as opposed to Venetian, painting, and 
 that of Athens in the fifth century, nearly always did. 
 
 185. I begin, therefore, by comparing two designs of the 
 simplest kind — engravings, or, at least, linear drawings, both ; 
 one on clay, one on copper, made in the central periods of 
 each style, and representing the same goddess — Aphrodite,, 
 They are now set beside each other in your Rudimentary 
 Series. The first is from a patera lately found at Camirus, 
 authoritatively assigned by Mr. Newton, in his recent catalogue, 
 to the best period of Greek art. The second is from one of 
 the series of engravings executed, probably, by Baccio Baldini, 
 in 1485, out of which I chose your first practical exercise — the 
 Sceptre of Apollo. I cannot, however, make the comparison 
 accurate iu all respects, for I am obliged to set the restricted 
 type of the Aphrodite Urania of the Greeks beside the univer- 
 sal Deity conceived by the Italian as governing the air, earth, 
 and sea ; nevertheless the restriction in the mind of the Greek, 
 and expatiation in that of the Florentine, are both character- 
 istic. The Greek Venus Urania is*flying in heaven, her power 
 over the waters symbolized by her being borne by a swan, and 
 her power over the earth by a single flower in her right hand ; 
 but the Italian Aphrodite is rising out of the actual sea, and 
 only half risen : her limbs are still in the sea, her merely ani- 
 mal strength filling the waters with their life ; but her body 
 to the loins is in the sunshine, her face raised to the sky ; her 
 hand is about to lay a garland of flowers on the earth. 
 
 186. The Venus Urania of the Greeks, in her relation to 
 men, has power only over lawful and domestic love ; there- 
 fore, she is fully dressed, and not only quite dressed, but most 
 daintily and trimly : her feet delicately sandalled, her gown 
 spotted with little stars, her hair brushed exquisitely smooth 
 at the top of her head, trickling in minute waves down her 
 forehead ; and though, because there’s such a quantity of it, 
 she can’t possibly help having a chignon, look how tightly she 
 lias fastened it in with her broad fillet. Of course she is 
 married, so she must wear a cap with pretty minute pendant 
 jewels at the border ; and a very small necklace, all that her 
 
120 
 
 ABATE A PE NT ELI CL 
 
 husband can properly afford, just enough to go closely round 
 the neck, and no more. On the contrary, the Aphrodite of 
 the Italian, being universal love, is pure-naked ; and her long- 
 hair is thrown wild to the wind and sea. 
 
 These primal differences in the symbolism, observe, are 
 only because the artists are thinking of separate powers : 
 they do not necessarily involve any national distinction in 
 feeling. But the differences I have next to indicate are es- 
 sential, and characterize the two opposed national modes of 
 mind. 
 
 187. First, and chiefly. The Greek Aphrodite is a very 
 pretty person, and the Italian a decidedly plain one. That is 
 because a Greek thought no one could possibly love any but 
 pretty people ; but an Italian thought that love could give 
 dignity to the meanest form that it inhabited, and light to the 
 poorest that it looked upon. So his Aphrodite will not con- 
 descend to be pretty. 
 
 188. Secondly. In the Greek Venus the breasts are broad 
 and full, though perfectly severe in their almost conical pro- 
 file ; — (you are allowed on 'purpose to see the outline of the 
 right breast, under the chiton ;) — also the right arm is left bare, 
 and you can just see the contour of the front of the right 
 limb and knee ; both arm and limb pure and firm, but lovely. 
 The plant she holds in her hand is a branching and flowering- 
 one, the seed vessel prominent. These signs all mean that 
 her essential function is child-bearing. 
 
 On the contrary, in the Italian Venus the breasts are so 
 small as to be scarcely traceable ; the body strong, and almost 
 masculine in its angles ; the arms meagre and unattractive, 
 and she lays a decorative garland of flowers on the earth. 
 These signs mean that the Italian thought of love as the 
 strength of an eternal spirit, for ever helpful ; and for ever 
 crowned with flowers, that neither know seed-time nor har- 
 vest, and bloom where there is neither death, nor birth. 
 
 189. Thirdly. The Greek Aphrodite is entirely calm, and 
 looks straight forward. Not one feature of her face is dis- 
 turbed, or seems ever to have been subject to emotion. The 
 Italian Aphrodite looks up, her face a]l quivering and burning 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 121 
 
 with passion and wasting anxiety. The Greek one is quiet, 
 self-possessed, and self-satisfied ; the Italian incapable of rest ; 
 she has had no thought nor care for herself ; her hair has 
 been bound by a fillet like the Greeks ; but it is now all fallen 
 loose, and clotted with the sea, or clinging to her body ; only 
 the front tress of it is caught by the breeze from her raised 
 forehead, and lifted, in the place where the tongues of fire 
 rest on the brows, in the early Christian pictures of Pentecost, 
 and the waving fires abide upon the heads of Angelico’s ser- 
 aphim. 
 
 190. There are almost endless points of interest, great and 
 small, to be noted in these differences of treatment. This 
 binding of the hair by the single fillet marks the straight 
 course of one great system of art method, from that Greek 
 head which I showed you on the archaic coin of the seventh 
 century before Christ, to this of the fifteenth of our own era 
 — nay, when you look close, you will see the entire action of 
 the head depends on one lock of hair falling back from the 
 ear, which it does in compliance with the old Greek observance 
 of its being bent there by the pressure of the helmet.. That 
 rippling of it down her shoulders comes from the Athena of 
 of Corinth ; the raising of it on her forehead, from the knot 
 of the hair of Diana, changed into the vestal fire of the angels. 
 But chiefly, the calmness of the features in the one face, and 
 their anxiety in the other, indicate first, indeed, the character- 
 istic difference in every conception of the schools, the Greek 
 never representing expression, the Italian primarily seeking 
 it ; but far more, mark for us here the utter change in the 
 conception of love ; from the tranquil guide and queen of a 
 happy terrestrial domestic life, accepting its immediate 
 pleasures and natural duties, to the agonizing hope of an in- 
 finite good, and the ever mingled joy and terror of a love di- 
 vine in jealousy, crying, “ Set me a| a seal upon thine heart, 
 as a seal upon thine arm ; for love is strong as death, jealousy 
 is cruel as the grave.” 
 
 The vast issues dependent on this change in the conception 
 of the ruling passion of the human soul, I will endeavour to 
 show you, on a future occasion : in my present lecture, I 
 
122 
 
 ARATRA RENTE LICI 
 
 shall limit myself to the definition of the temper of Greek 
 sculpture, and of its distinctions from Florentine in the treat- 
 ment of any subject whatever, be it love or hatred, hope or 
 despair. 
 
 These great differences are mainly the following. 
 
 191. 1. A Greek never expresses momentary passion ; a 
 Florentine looks to momentary passion as the ultimate object 
 of his skill. 
 
 When you are next in London, look carefully in the British 
 Museum at the casts from the statues in the pediment of the 
 Temple of Minerva at JEgina. You have there Greek work of 
 definite date ; — about 600 b.c., certainly before 580 — of the 
 purest kind ; and you have the representation of a noble ideal 
 subject, the combats of the iEacidse at Troy, with Athena her- 
 self looking on. But there is no attempt whatever to repre- 
 sent expression in the features, none to give complexity of 
 action or gesture ; there is no struggling, no anxiety, no visi- 
 ble temporary exertion of muscles. There are fallen figures, 
 one pulling a lance out of his wound, and others in attitudes 
 of attack and defence ; several kneeling to draw their bows. 
 But all inflict and suffer, conquer or expire, with the same 
 smile. 
 
 192. Plate XIV. gives you examples, from more advanced 
 art, of true Greek representation ; the subjects being the two 
 contests of leading import to the Greek heart — that of Apollo 
 with the Python, and of Hercules with the NemeanLion. You 
 see that in neither case is there the slightest effort to repre- 
 sent the kvoraa, or agony of contest. No good Greek artist 
 would have you behold the suffering, either of gods, heroes, 
 or men ; nor allow you to be apprehensive of the issue of their 
 contest with evil beasts, or evil spirits. All such lower 
 sources of excitement are to be closed to you ; your interest 
 is to be in the thoughts involved by the fact of the war ; and 
 in the beauty or rightness of form, whether active or in- 
 active. I have to work out this subject with you afterwards, 
 and to compare with the pure Greek method, of thought, that 
 of modern dramatic passion, engrafted on it, as typically in 
 Turner’s contest of Apollo and the Python : in the meantime, 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 123 
 
 be content with, the statement of this first great principle — 
 that a Greek, as such, never expresses momentary passion. 
 
 193. Secondly. The Greek, as such, never expresses per- 
 sonal character, while a Florentine holds it to be the ultimate 
 condition of beauty. You are startled, I suppose, at my 
 saying this, having had it often pointed out to you, as a tran- 
 scendent piece of subtlety in Greek art, that you could dis- 
 tinguish Hercules from Apollo by his being stout, and Diana 
 from Juno by her being slender. That is very true ; but those 
 are general distinctions of class, not special distinctions of 
 personal character. Even as general, they are bodily, not 
 mental. They are the distinctions, in fleshly aspect, between 
 an athlete and a musician, — between a matron and a huntress ; 
 but in no wise distinguish the simple-hearted hero from the 
 subtle Master of the Muses, nor the wilful and fitful girl- 
 goddess from the cruel and resolute matron-goddess. But 
 judge for yourselves ; — In the successive plates, XY. — XVIII., I 
 show you,* typically represented as the protectresses of nations, 
 the Argive, Cretan, and Lacinian Hera, the Messenian Demeter, 
 the Athena of Corinth, the Artemis of Syracuse, the fountain 
 Arethusa of Syracuse, and the Sirem Ligeia of Terina. Now, 
 of these heads, it is true that some are more delicate in feature 
 than the rest, and some softer in expression : in other respects, 
 can you trace any distinction between the Goddesses of Earth 
 and Heaven, or between the Goddess of Wisdom and the Water 
 Nymph of Syracuse ? So little can you do so, that it would have 
 remained a disputed question — had not the name luckily been 
 inscribed on some Syracusan coins — whether the head upon 
 them was meant for Arethusa at all ; and, continually, it becomes 
 a question respecting finished statues, if without attributes, “Is 
 this Bacchus or Apollo — Zeus or Poseidon ? ” There is a fact for 
 you ; noteworthy, I think ! There is no personal character in 
 
 * These plates.of coins are given for future reference and examina- 
 tion, not merely for the use made of them in this place. The Lacinian 
 Hera, if a coin could be found unworn in surface, would be very noble ; 
 her hair is thrown free because she is the goddess of the cape of storms, 
 though in her temple, there, the wind never moved the ashes on its 
 altar. (Livy, xxiv. 3.) 
 
24 
 
 ABATE A PENT ELIO I. 
 
 :ue Greek art : — abstract ideas of youth and age, strength 
 nd swiftness, virtue and vice, — yes : but there is no individu- 
 Lity ; and the negative holds down to the revived conven- 
 onalism of the Greek school by Leonardo, when he tells you 
 ow you are to paint young women, and how old ones ; though 
 Greek would hardly have been so discourteous to age as the 
 talian is in his canon of it, — “ old women should be repre- 
 mted as passionate and hasty, after the manner of Infernal 
 ’uries.” 
 
 194. “ But at least, if the Greeks do not give character, they 
 ive ideal beauty ? ” So it is said, without contradiction. But 
 ill you look again at the series of coins of the best time of 
 rreek art, which I have just set before you ? Are any of these 
 oddesses or nymphs very beautiful? Certainly the Junos 
 re not. Certainly the Demeters are not. The Siren, and 
 .rethusa, have well-formed and regular features ; but I am 
 uite sure that if you look at them without prejudice, you will 
 link neither reach even the average standard of pretty Eng- 
 sh girls. The Venus Urania suggests at first, the idea of a 
 3ry charming person, but you will find there is no real depth 
 or sweetness in the contours, looked at closely. And re- 
 lember, these are chosen examples ; the best I can find of 
 ft current in Greece at, the great time ; and if even I were to 
 ike the celebrated statues, of which only two or three are 
 dant, not one of them excels the Venus of Melos ; and she, 
 3 1 have already asserted, in The Queen of the Air , has notli- 
 ig notable in feature except dignity and simplicity. Of Athena 
 do not know one authentic type of great beauty ; but the 
 itense ugliness which the Greeks could tolerate in their sym- 
 olism of her will be convincingly proved to you by the coin 
 ^presented in Plate VI. You need only look at two or three 
 ases of the best time, to assure yourselves that beauty of 
 mature was, in popular art, not only unattained, but unat- 
 mapted ; and finally, — and this you may accept ^s a conclusive 
 roof of the Greek insensitiveness to the most subtle beauty — 
 :iere is little evidence even in their literature, and none in 
 leir art, of their having ever perceived any beauty in infancy, 
 r early childhood. 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 125 
 
 195. The Greeks, then, do not give passion, do not give 
 character, do not give refined or naive beauty. But you may 
 think that the absence of these is intended to give dignity to 
 the gods and nymphs ; and that their calm faces would be 
 found, if you long observed them., instinct with some expres- 
 sion of divine mystery or power. 
 
 I will convince you of the narrow range of Greek thought 
 in these respects, by showing you, from the two sides of one 
 and the same coin, images of the most mysterious of their 
 Deities, and the most powerful, — Demeter and Zeus. 
 
 Bemember, that just as the west coasts of Ireland and Eng- 
 land catch first on their hills the rain of the Atlantic, so the 
 western Peloponnese arrests, in the clouds of the first moun- 
 tain ranges of Arcadia, the moisture of the Mediterranean ; 
 and over all the plains of Elis, Pylos, and Messene, the strength 
 and sustenance of men was naturally felt to be granted by 
 Zeus ; as, on the east coast of Greece, the greater clearness of 
 the air by the power of Athena. If you will recollect the 
 prayer of Bhea, in the single line of Callimachus — “ Tala 
 t€kc kcll cnr real S’ d) Sivcs e\a<fipaL” (compare Pausanias iv. 33, 
 at the beginning,) — it will mark for you the connection, in the 
 Greek mind, of the birth of the mountain springs of Arcadia 
 with the birth of Zeus. And the centres of Greek thought on 
 this western coast are necessarily Elis, and, (after the time of 
 Epaminondas,) Messene. 
 
 196. I show you the coin of Messene, because the splendid 
 height and form of Mount Ithome were more expressive of 
 the physical power of Zeus than the lower hills of Olympia ; 
 and also because it was struck just at the time of the most 
 finished and delicate Greek art — a little after the main 
 strength of Phidias, but before decadence had generally pro-: 
 nounced itself. The coin is a silver didrachm, bearing or* 
 one side a head of Demeter (Plate XVI, at the top); on the 
 other a full figure of Zeus Aietophoros (Plate XIX., at the 
 top) ; the two together signifying the sustaining strength of 
 the earth and heaven, Look first at the head of Demeter. It 
 is merely meant to personify fulness of harvest ; there is no 
 mystery in it, no sadness, no vestige of the expression which 
 
126 
 
 A RAT 11 A PENTELICL 
 
 we should have looked for in any effort to realize the Greek 
 thoughts of the Earth Mother, as we find them spoken by the 
 poets. But take it merely as personified abundance ; — the 
 goddess of black furrow and tawny grass — how commonplace 
 it is, and how poor ! The hair is grand, and there is one 
 stalk of wheat set in it, which is enough to indicate the god- 
 dess who is meant ; but, in that very office, ignoble, for it shows 
 that the artist could only inform you that this was Demeter 
 by such a symbol. How easy it would have been for a great 
 designer to have made the hair lovely with fruitful flowers, 
 and the features noble in mystery of gloom, or of tenderness. 
 But here you have nothing to interest you, except the com- 
 mon Greek perfections of a straight nose and a full chin. 
 
 197. We pass, on the reverse of the die, to the figure of 
 Zeus Aietophoros. Think of the invocation to Zeus in the 
 Suppliants, (52 5), “King of Kings, and Happiest of the 
 Happy, Perfectest of the Perfect in strength, abounding in 
 all things, Jove — hear us and be with us ; ” and then, consider 
 what strange phase of mind it was, which, under the very 
 mountain-home of the god, was content with this symbol of 
 him as a well-fed athlete, holding a diminutive and crouching 
 eagle on his fist. The features and the right hand have been 
 injured in this coin, but the action of the arms shows that it 
 held a thunderbolt, of which, I believe, the twisted rays were 
 triple. In the, presumably earlier, coin engraved by Mil- 
 lingen, however,* it is singly pointed only ; and the added 
 inscription in the field, renders the conjecture of 
 
 Millingen probable, that this is a rude representation of the 
 statue of Zeus Ithomates, made by Ageladas, the master of 
 Phidias ; and I think it has, indeed, the aspect of the endeav- 
 our, by a workman of more advanced knowledge, and more 
 vulgar temper, to put the softer anatomy of later schools 
 into the simple action of an archaic figure. Be that as it 
 may, here is one of the most refined cities of Greece content 
 with the figure of an athlete as the representative of their 
 own mountain god ; marked as a divine power merely by the 
 attributes of the eagle and thunderbolt. 
 
 * Ancient Cities and Kings, Plate IV, No. 20, 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 127 
 
 198. Lastly. The Greeks have not, it appears, in any 
 supreme way, given to their statues character, beauty, or 
 divine strength. Can they give divine sadness ? Shall we 
 find in their artwork any of that pensiveness and yearning 
 for the dead, which fills the chants of their tragedy ? I sup- 
 pose if anything like nearness or firmness of faith in after- 
 life is to be found in Greek legend, you might look for it in 
 the stories about the Island of Leuce, at the mouth of the 
 Danube, inhabited by the ghosts of Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax 
 the son of O ileus, and Helen ; and in which the pavement of 
 the Temple of Achilles was washed daily by the sea-birds 
 with their wings, dipping them in the sea. 
 
 Now it happens that we have actually on a coin of the 
 Locrians the representation of the ghost of the Lesser Ajax. 
 There is nothing in the history of human imagination more 
 lovely, than their leaving always a place for his spirit, vacant 
 in their ranks of battle. But here is their sculptural repre- 
 sentation of the phantom ; (lower figure, Plate XIX. ), and I 
 think you will at once agree with me in feeling that it would be 
 impossible to conceive anything more completely unspiritual. 
 You might more than doubt that it could have been meant for 
 the departed soul, unless you were aware of the meaning of 
 this little circlet between the feet. On other coins you find his 
 name inscribed there, but in this you have his habitation, 
 the haunted Island of Leuce itself, with the waves flowing 
 round it. 
 
 199. Again and again, however, I have to remind you, 
 with respect to these apparently frank and simple failures, 
 that the Greek always intends you to think for yourself, and 
 understand, more than he can speak. Take this instance at 
 our hands, the trim little circlet for the Island of Leuce. 
 The workman knows very well it is not like the island, and 
 that he could not make it so ; that at its best, his sculpture 
 can be little more than a letter ; and yet, in putting this cir- 
 clet, and its encompassing fretwork of minute waves, he does 
 more than if he had merely given you a letter L, or written 
 “ Leuce.” If you know anything of beaches and sea, this 
 symbol will set your imagination at work in recalling them ; 
 
128 
 
 All A TEA PENTELICL 
 
 then you will think of the temple service of the novitiate sea- 
 birds, and of the ghosts of Achilles and Patroclus appearing* 
 like the Dioscuri, above the storm-clouds of the Euxine. And 
 the artist, throughout his work, never for an instant loses 
 faith in your sympathy and passion being ready to answer his ; 
 - — if you have none to give, he does not care to take you into 
 his counsel ; on the whole, would rather that you should not 
 look at his work. 
 
 200. But if you have this sympathy to give, you may be 
 sure that whatever he does for you will be right, as far as he 
 can render it so. It may not be sublime, nor beautiful, nor 
 amusing ; but it will be full of meaning, and faithful in guid- 
 ance. He will give you clue to myriads of things that he can- 
 not literally teach ; and, so far as he does teach, you may trust 
 him. Is not this saying much ? 
 
 And as he strove only to teach what was true, so, in his 
 sculptured symbol, he strove only to carve what was — Eight. 
 He rules over the arts to this day, and will for ever, because 
 he sought not first for beauty, nor first for passion, or for inven- 
 tion, but for Bightness ; striving to display, neither himself 
 nor his art, but the thing that he dealt with, in its simplicity. 
 That is his specific character as a Greek. Of course, every 
 nation's character is connected with that of others surround- 
 ing or preceding it ; and in the best Greek work you will find 
 some things that are still false, or fanciful ; but whatever in it 
 is false or fanciful, is not the Greek part of it — it is the 
 Phoenician, or Egyptian, or Pelasgian part. The essential Hel- 
 lenic stamp is veracity : — Eastern nations drew their heroes 
 with eight legs, but the Greeks drew them with two ; — Egyp- 
 tians drew their deities with cats’ heads, but the Greeks drew 
 them with men’s ; and out of all fallacy, disproportion, and 
 indefiniteness, they were, day by day, resolvedly withdraw- 
 ing and exalting themselves into restricted and demonstrable 
 truth. 
 
 201. And now, having cut away the misconceptions which 
 encumbered our thoughts, I shall be able to put the Greek 
 school into some clearness of its position for you, with respect 
 to the art of the world. That relation is strangely duplicate ; 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 129 
 
 for on one side, Greek art is the root of all simplicity ; and on 
 the other, of all complexity. 
 
 On one side I say, it is the root of all simplicity. If you 
 were for some prolonged period to study Greek sculpture ex- 
 clusively in the Elgin Room of the British Museum, and were 
 then suddenly transported to the Hotel de Cluny, or any 
 other museum of Gothic and barbarian workmanship, you 
 would imagine the Greeks were the masters of all that was 
 grand, simple, wise, and tenderly human, opposed to the pet- 
 tiness of the toys of the rest of mankind. 
 
 202. On one side of their work they are so. From all vain 
 and mean decoration — all weak and monstrous error, the 
 Greeks rescue the forms of man and beast, and sculpture 
 them in the nakedness of their true flesh, and with the fire 
 of their living soul. Distinctively from other races, as I have 
 now, perhaps to your weariness, told you, this is the work of 
 the Greek, to give health to what was diseased, and chastise- 
 ment to what was untrue. So far as this is found in any other 
 school, hereafter, it belongs to them by inheritance from the 
 Greeks, or invests them with the brotherhood of the Greek. 
 And this is the deep meaning of the myth of Daedalus as the 
 giver of motion to statues. The literal change from the bind- 
 ing together of the feet to their separation, and the other 
 modifications of action which took place, either in progressive 
 skill, or often, as the mere consequence of the transition from 
 wood to stone, (a figure carved out of one wooden log must 
 have necessarily its feet near each other, and hands at its 
 sides), these literal changes are as nothing, in the Greek fable, 
 compared to the bestowing of apparent life. The figures of 
 monstrous gods on Indian temples have their legs separate 
 enough ; but they are infinitely more dead than the rude fig- 
 ures at Branchidae sitting with their hands on their knees. 
 And, briefly, the work of Daedalus is the giving of deceptive 
 life, as that of Prometheus the giving of real life ; and I can 
 put the relation of Greek to all other art, in this function, be- 
 fore you in easily compared and remembered examples. 
 
 203. Here, on the right, in Plate XX., is an Indian bull, 
 colossal, and elaborately carved, which you may take as a 
 
 9 
 
130 
 
 ARATRA PENTELICL 
 
 , sufficient type of the bad art of all the earth. False in form, 
 dead in heart, and loaded with wealth, externally. We will 
 not ask the date of this ; it may rest in the eternal obscurity 
 of evil art, everywhere, and for ever. Now, besides this colos- 
 sal bull, here is a bit of Daedalus work, enlarged from a coin 
 not bigger than a shilling : look at the two together, and you 
 ought to know, henceforward, what Greek art means, to the 
 end of your days. 
 
 204. In this aspect of it then, I say, it is the simplest and 
 naked est of lovely veracities. But it has another aspect, or 
 rather another pole, for the opposition is diametric. As the 
 simplest, so also it is the most complex of human art. I told 
 you in my fifth Lecture, showing you the spotty picture of 
 Velasquez, that an essential Greek character is a liking for 
 things that are dappled. And you cannot but have noticed 
 how often and how prevalently the idea which gave its name 
 to the Porch of Polygnotus, “ cr t o d tt o l k occurs to the 
 
 Greeks as connected with the finest art. Thus, when the lux- 
 urious city is opposed to the simple and healthful one, in the 
 second book of Plato’s Polity, you find that, next to perfumes, 
 pretty ladies, and dice, you must have in it “ irouakCa” which 
 observe, both in that place and again in the third book, is the 
 separate art of joiners’ work, or inlaying ; but the idea of ex- 
 quisitely divided variegation or division, both in sight and 
 sound — the “ ravishing division to the lute,” as in Pindar’s 
 “ 7 tolklXol v/jlvol ’ ’ — runs through the compass of all Greek art- 
 description ; and if, instead of studying that art among marbles, 
 you were to look at it only on vases of a fine time, (look back, 
 for instance, to Plate IV. here), your impression of it would 
 be, instead of breadth and simplicity, one of universal spot- 
 tiness and chequeredness, “ kv ayyeW ''FtpKecnv 7ra/x7rot,/a/\ois ; ” 
 and of the artist’s delighting in nothing so much as in crossed 
 or starred or spotted things ; which, in right places, he and 
 his public both do unlimitedly. Indeed they hold it compli- 
 mentary even to a trout, to call him a “ spotty.” Do you 
 recollect the trout in the tributaries of the Ladon, which 
 Pausanias says were spotted, so that they were like thrushes, 
 and which, the Arcadians told him, could speak ? In this last 
 
Tim school of Arums. 
 
 131 
 
 TToi/aXta, however, they disappointed him. “I, indeed, saw 
 some of them caught,’’ he says, “but I did not hear any of 
 them speak, though I waited beside the river till sunset.” 
 
 205. I must sum roughly now, for I have detained you too 
 long. 
 
 The Greeks have been thus the origin not only of all broad, 
 mighty, and calm conception, but of all that is divided, deli- 
 cate, and tremulous ; <£ variable as the shade, by the light 
 quivering* aspen made.” To them, as first leaders of orna- 
 mental design, belongs, of right, the praise of glistenings in 
 gold, piercings in ivory, stainings in purple, burnishings 
 in dark blue steel ; of the fantasy of the Arabian roof 
 — quartering of the Christian shield, — rubric and arabesque 
 of Christian scripture ; in fine, all enlargement, and all 
 diminution of adorning thought, from the temple to the 
 toy, and from the mountainous pillars of Agrigen turn 
 to the last fineness of fretwork in the Pisan Chapel of the 
 Thorn. 
 
 And in their doing all this, they stand as masters of human 
 order and justice, subduing the animal nature guided by the 
 spiritual one, as you see the Sicilian Charioteer stands, hold- 
 ing his horse-reins, with the wild lion racing beneath him, and 
 the flying angel above, on the beautiful coin of early Syracuse ; 
 (lowest in Plate XXL). 
 
 And the beginnings of Christian cliivalary were in that 
 Greek bridling of the dark and the white horses. 
 
 208. Not that a Greek never made mistakes. He made as 
 many as we do ourselves, nearly ; — he died of his mistakes at 
 last — as we shall die of them ; but so far he was separated 
 from the herd of more mistaken and more wretched nations 
 — so far as he was Greek — it was by his rightness. He lived, 
 and worked, and was satisfied with the fatness of his land, and 
 the fame of his deeds, by his justice, and reason, and modesty. 
 He became Grceculus esuriens , little, and hungry, and every 
 man’s errand-boy, by his iniquity, and his competition, and 
 his love of talk. But his Graecism was in having done, at least 
 at one period of his dominion, more than anybody else, what 
 was modest, useful, and eternally true ; and as a workman, he 
 
132 
 
 ABATE A PENTELICI. 
 
 verily did, or first suggested the doing of, everything possible 
 to man. 
 
 Take Daedalus, his great type of the practically executive 
 craftsman, and the inventor of expedients in craftsmanship, 
 (as distinguished from Prometheus, the institutor of moral 
 order in art). Daedalus invents, — he, or his nephew, — 
 
 The potter’s wheel, and all work in clay ; 
 
 The saw, and all work in wood ; 
 
 The masts and sails of ships, and all modes of motion ; 
 (wings only proving too dangerous !) 
 
 The entire art of minute ornament ; 
 
 And the deceptive life of statues. 
 
 By his personal toil, he involves the fatal labyrinth for 
 Minos ; builds an impregnable fortress for the Agrigentines ; 
 adorns healing baths among the wild parsley fields of Selinus ; 
 buttresses the precipices of Eryx, under the temple of Aph- 
 rodite ; and for her temple itself — finishes in exquisiteness 
 the golden honeycomb. 
 
 207. Take note of that last piece of his art : it is connected 
 with many things which I must bring before you when we 
 enter on the study of architecture. That study we shall begin 
 at the foot of the Baptistery of Florence, which, of all build- 
 ings known to me, unites the most perfect symmetry with the 
 quaintest miKikia. Then, from the tomb of your own Edward 
 the Confessor, to the farthest shrine of the opposite Arabian 
 and Indian world, I must show you how the glittering and 
 iridescent dominion of Daedalus prevails ; and his ingenuity 
 in division, interposition, and labyrinthine sequence, more 
 widely still. Only this last summer I found the dark red 
 masses of the rough sandstone of Furness Abbey had been 
 fitted by him, with no less pleasure than he had in carving 
 them, into wedged hexagons — reminiscences of the honey- 
 comb of Yenus Erycina. His ingenuity plays around the 
 framework of all the noblest things ; and yet the brightness 
 of it has a lurid shadow. The spot of the fawn, of the bird, 
 and the moth, may be harmless. But Daedalus reigns no less 
 over the spot of the leopard and snake. That cruel and venom- 
 ous power of his art is marked, in the legends of him, by 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS . 
 
 183 
 
 his invention of the saw from the serpent’s tooth ; and his 
 seeking refuge, under blood-guiltiness, *with Minos, who can 
 judge evil, and measure, or remit, the penalty of it, but not 
 reward good : Rhadamanthus only can measure that : but 
 Minos is essentially the recognizer of evil deeds “ conoscitor 
 delle peccata,” whom, therefore, you find in Dante under the 
 form of the epirerov. “ Cignesi con la coda tante volte, quan~ 
 tunque gradi vuol che giu sia messa.” 
 
 And this peril of the influence of Daedalus is twofold ; first 
 in leading us to delight in glitterings and semblances of 
 things, more than in*their form, or truth ; — admire the harle- 
 quin’s jacket more than the hero’s strength ; and love the 
 gilding of the missal more than its words ; — but farther, and 
 worse, the ingenuity of Daedalus may even become bestial, an 
 instinct for mechanical labour only, strangely involved with a 
 feverish and ghastly cruelty (you will find this distinct in 
 the intensely Daedal work of the Japanese) ; rebellious, finally, 
 against the laws of nature and honour, and building labyrinths 
 for monsters, — not combs for bees. 
 
 208. Gentlemen, we of the rough northern race may never, 
 perhaps, be able to learn from the Greek his reverence for 
 beauty : but we may at least learn his disdain of mechanism : 
 — of all work which he felt to be monstrous and inhuman in 
 its imprudent dexterities. 
 
 We hold ourselves, we English, to be good workmen. I do 
 not think I speak with light reference to recent calamity, (for 
 I myself lost a young relation, full of hope and good purpose, 
 in the foundered ship London ,) when I say that either an 
 iEginetan or Ionian shipwright built ships that could be fought 
 from, though they were under water ; and neither of them 
 would have been proud of having built one that would fill and 
 sink helplessly if the sea washed over her deck, or turn upside 
 down if a squall struck her topsail. 
 
 Believe me, gentlemen, good workmanship consists in con- 
 tinence and common sense, more than in frantic expatiation 
 of mechanical ingenuity ; and if you would be continent and 
 rational, you had better learn more of Art than you do now, 
 and less of Engineering. What is taking place at this very 
 
134 
 
 ABATE A PENTELICI. 
 
 hour,* among the streets, once so bright, and avenues once so 
 pleasant, of the fairest city in Europe, may surely lead us all 
 to feel that the skill of Daedalus, set to build impregnable 
 fortresses, is not so wisely applied as in framing the rpr^rov 
 7rovov , — the golden honeycomb. 
 
 * The siege of Paris, at the time of the delivery of this Lecture, was 
 in one of its most destructive phases. 
 
 *T']Ej[E ENJX 
 
Mamed at the CSon&ition 
 
 of her surroundings, with friends and family thoroughly disgueted by the 
 Accumulation of dirt from cellar to garret, and parlor to kitchen, many & 
 woman undertakes a gigantic reform in one chapter and in one week. 
 Life is rendered almost unendurable during that time, and at the end of it 
 she — the heroine of the house-cleaning, — collapses, and goes to bed for a 
 fortnight. If she used Sapolio every week in the year the dirt would be 
 kept down, and the paint, and the pots and pans would be easily brightened 
 in a few hours, ,10c. a cake at all grocers. 
 
 GRAND, SQUARE AND UPRIGHT 
 
 Received First Medal of Merit and Di- 
 ploma of Hon or at the Centenrral Exhi- 
 bition, 1 876. 
 
 First Prize Diploma of Honor and Hon- 
 orable Mention and a Diploma of Special 
 Excellence for Baby Grands at the Mon- 
 treal Exhibition, 1 88 1 . 
 
 Are preferred by leading: Artists. 
 
 SOHMER &u CO., 
 Manufacturers, 149 to 155 FOURTEENTH STREET, N. Y. 
 
 TSSJEfl BEST 
 
 WASHING COMPOUKD 
 
 EVER UNVENTED- 
 No Lady. Married or 
 Single, Rich or Poor, 
 Housekeeping or Board- 
 ing, will be without it 
 after testing- its utility. 
 
 Sold by all first-class 
 Grocers, but beware d 
 worthless imitations. 
 
LOVELL’S LIBRARY. 
 
 COMPLETE CATALOGUE BY AUTHORS. 
 
 Lovell’S Library now contains the complete writings of most of the best standard 
 authors, such as Dickens, Thackeray, Eliot, Carlyle, Ruskin, Scott, Lytton, Black, etc., 
 etc. 
 
 Each number is issued in neat 12mo form, and the type will be found larger, and the 
 paper better, than in any other cheap series published. 
 
 JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY, 
 
 P. O. Box 1902. 14t and 16 Vesey St., New York. 
 
 BY MAX ADELER 
 
 295 Random Shots 20 
 
 325 Elbow Room 20 
 
 BY GUSTAVE AXMARD 
 
 560 The Adventurers 10 
 
 567 The Trail-Hunter 10 
 
 573 Pearl of the Andes.. 10 
 
 BY MRS. ALDERDICE 
 
 346 An Interesting Case 20 
 
 BY MRS. ALEXANDER 
 
 62 The Wooing O’t, 2 Parts, each 15 
 
 99 The Admiral’s Ward 20 
 
 209 The Executor .20 
 
 349 Valerie's Fate 10 
 
 664 At Bay JO 
 
 746 Beaton’s Bargain 20 
 
 BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN 
 
 419 Fairy Tales 20 
 
 BY F. ANSTEY 
 
 30 Vice Versa; or, A Lesson to Fathers. .20 
 
 394 The Giant’s Robe .. . 20 
 
 453 Black Poodle, and Other Tales 20 
 
 616 The Tinted Venus 15 
 
 755 A Fallen Idol 20 
 
 BY EDWIN ARNOLD 
 
 BY ADAM BADEAU 
 
 756 Conspiracy 25 
 
 BY SIR SAMUEL BAKER 
 
 206 Cast up by the Sea 20 
 
 227 Rifle and Hound in Ceylon 20 
 
 233 Eight Years’ Wandering in Ceylon. . 20 
 
 BY C. W. BALESTIER 
 
 381 A Fair Device 20 
 
 405 Life of J. G. Biaine 20 
 
 BY R. M. BALLANTYNE 
 
 215 The Red Eric 20 
 
 226 T he F ire Brigade 20 
 
 239 Erling the Bold 20 
 
 241 Deep Down 20 
 
 BY GEORGE MIDDLETON BAYNE 
 
 460 Galaski 20 
 
 BY AUGUST BEBEL 
 
 712 Woman 30 
 
 BY MRS. E. BEDELL BENJAMIN 
 
 748 Our Roman Palace 20 
 
 BY A. EENRIMO 
 
 470 Vic 15 
 
 BY W. BERGSOE 
 
 436 The Light of Asia 20 
 
 455 Pearls of the Faith 15 
 
 472 Indian Song of Songs 10 
 
 BY T. S. ARTHUR 
 
 496 Woman’s Trials 20 
 
 507 T he T wo W i ves 15 
 
 518 Married Life 15 
 
 538 The Ways of Providence 15 
 
 545 Home Scenes 15 
 
 554 Stories for Parents 15 
 
 563 Seed-Time and Harvest 15 
 
 568 Words for the Wise 15 
 
 5T4 Stories for Young Housekeepers 15 
 
 579 Lessons in Life 15 
 
 582 O ff-IL md Sketches 15 
 
 585 Tried anil Tempted 15 
 
 BY W E. AYTOUN 
 
 351 Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers ,,,,,, 20 
 
 77 Pillone 15 
 
 BY E. BERTHET 
 
 366 The Sergeant's Legacy .20 
 
 BY BESANT AND RICE 
 
 103 Let Nothing You Dismay 10 
 
 118 They Were Married 10 
 
 257 All in a Garden Fair 20 
 
 268 When the Ship Comes Home iJ 
 
 384 Dorothy Forster 20 
 
 699 Self or Bearer 10 
 
 BY BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON 
 
 3 The Happy Boy 10 
 
 4 Arne 1U 
 
 BY WILLIAM BLACK 
 
 40 An Adventure in Thule, etc 10 
 
 48 A Princess of Thule ,,,,,,,,,, 20 
 
 1 
 
LOVELI/S LIBRARY, 
 
 82 A Daughter of Heth 20 
 
 35 Shandon Bells 20 
 
 03 Maeleod of Bare 20 
 
 186 Yolande 20 
 
 1-12 Strange Adventures of a Phaeton. . . 20 
 
 146 White Wings 20 
 
 153 Sunrise, 2 Parts, each 15 
 
 178 Madcap Violet 20 
 
 180 Kilmeny 20 
 
 182 That Beautiful Wretch 20 
 
 184 Green Pastures, etc 20 
 
 188 In Silk Attire.. . . 20 
 
 213 The Three Feathers 20 
 
 216 Lady Silverdale’s Sweetheart 10 
 
 217 The Four MacNicols 10 
 
 218 Mr. Pisistratus Brown, M.P 10 
 
 225 Oliver Goldsmith 10 
 
 282 Monarch of Mincing Lane 20 
 
 456 Judith Shakespeare 20 
 
 584 Wise Women of Inverness 10 
 
 678 White Heather 20 
 
 BY LILLIE D. BLAKE 
 
 105 Woman’s Place To-day 20 
 
 597 Fettered for Life 25 
 
 BY MISS M. E. BRADBGN 
 
 88 The Golden Calf 20 
 
 104 Lady Aud ley’s Secret 20 
 
 214 Phantom Fortune .20 
 
 266 Under the Bed Flag 10 
 
 444 An Ishmaelite 20 
 
 555 Aurora Floyd .-.20 
 
 588 To the Bitter End 20 
 
 698 The Mistletoe Bough 20 
 
 766 Vixen 20 
 
 BY ANNIE BEAD SHAW 
 
 716 A Crimson Stain 20 
 
 BY CHAELOTTE BEEMEE 
 
 448 Life of Fredrika Bremer 20 
 
 BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE 
 
 74 Jane Eyre 20 
 
 BY EHODA BROUGHTON 
 
 23 Second Thoughts 20 
 
 230 Belinda 20 
 
 BY ELIZABETH BARRETT 
 BROWNING. 
 
 421 Aurora Leigh 20 
 
 479 Poems 35 
 
 BY ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 552 Selections from Poetical Works 20 
 
 BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 
 
 443 Poems 20 
 
 BY ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 318 The New Abelard 20 
 
 696 The Master of the Mine 10 
 
 BY JOHN BUNYAN 
 
 200 The Pilgrim’s Progress . . . .* 20 
 
 BY ROBERT BURNS 
 
 430 Poems. 20 
 
 BY REV. JA5. S. BUSH 
 
 113 More Words about the Bible. ...... .21 
 
 BY E. LA33ETER BYNNER 
 
 100 Nimport, 2 Parts, each 15 
 
 102 Tritons, 2 Parts, each 15 
 
 BY THOMAS CAMPBELL 
 
 526 Poems 20 
 
 596 Dead Sea Fruit 20 
 
 BY ROSA NOUCHETE CAREY 
 
 660 For Lilias 26 
 
 BY WM. CARLETON 
 
 190 Willy Reilly .20 
 
 BY THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 486 History of French Revolution, 2 
 
 Parts, each 25 
 
 494 Past and Present 20 
 
 500 The Diamond Necklace ; and Mira- 
 
 beau 20 
 
 503 Chartism 20 
 
 508 Sartor Resartus 20 
 
 514 Early Kings of Norway 20 
 
 520 Jean Paul Friedrich Richter 10 
 
 522 Goethe, and Miscell meous Essays. . . 10 
 
 525 Life of Heyne 15 
 
 528 Voltaire and Novalis 15 
 
 541 Heroes, and Hero-Worship 20 
 
 546 Signs of the Times 15 
 
 550 German Literature 15 
 
 561 Portraits of John Knox ..15 
 
 571 Count Cagliostro, etc 15 
 
 578 Frederick the Great, Vol. I 20 
 
 580 “ “ “ Vol. II 20 
 
 591 “ “ “ Vol. Ill 20 
 
 610 “ “ “ Vol. IV 20 
 
 619 “ “ “ Vol. V 20 
 
 622 “ “ “ Vol. VI 20 
 
 626 “ “ “ Vol. VII 20 
 
 628 “ “ “ Vol. VIII 20 
 
 630 Life of John Sterling 20 
 
 633 Latter-Day Pamphlets 20 
 
 636 Life of Schiller 20 
 
 613 Oliver Cromwell, Vol. 1 25 
 
 646 “ “ Vol. II.... 25 
 
 649 “ “ Vol. Ill 25 
 
 652 Characteristics and other Essays. . . 15 
 656 Corn Law Rhymes and other Essays . 15 
 658 Baillie the Covenanter and other Es- 
 says 15 
 
 661 Dr. Francia and other Essays 15 
 
 BY LEWIS CARROLL 
 
 480 Alice’s Adventures £0 
 
 481 Through the Looking-Glass .... .... 20 
 
 BY “ CAVENDISH” 
 
 422 Cavendish Card Essays 15 
 
 BY CERVANTES 
 
 417 Don Quixote 30 
 
 BY L. W. CHAMPNEY 
 
 119 Bourbon Lilies 2(f 
 
 BY VICTOR CHERBULIEZ 
 
 242 Samuel Brolil & Co 31 
 
 2 
 
lovell’s library. 
 
 BY 
 
 16? 
 
 183 
 
 27? 
 
 287 
 
 420 
 
 423 
 
 458 
 
 465 
 
 474 
 
 476 
 
 558 
 
 593 
 
 651 
 
 669 
 
 689 
 
 692 
 
 694 
 
 695 
 
 700 
 
 701 
 718 
 720 
 727 
 730 
 733 
 
 738 
 
 739 
 
 740 
 744 
 752 
 764 
 
 23 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 24 
 
 87 
 
 418 
 
 437 
 
 683 
 
 686 
 
 722 
 
 429 
 
 462 
 
 612 
 
 617 
 
 (531 
 
 607 
 
 672 
 
 715 
 
 745 
 
 750 
 
 6 
 
 58 
 
 3(55 
 
 378 
 
 441 
 
 463 
 
 467 
 
 471 
 
 m 
 
 REV. JAS, FREEMAN CLARK 
 
 Anti-Slavery Days • 20 
 
 BY BERTHA M. CLAY 
 
 Her Mother’s Sin 20 
 
 Dora Thorne. 20 
 
 Beyond Pardon 20 
 
 A Broken Wedding-Ring . . .20 
 
 Repented at Leisure 20 
 
 Sunshine and Roses. 20 
 
 The Earl’s Atonement 20 
 
 A Woman’s Temptation. 20 
 
 Love Works Wonders 20 
 
 Pair but False 10 
 
 Between Two Sins 10 
 
 At War with Herself 15 
 
 Hilda 10 
 
 Her Martyrdom 20 
 
 Lord Lynn’s Choice 10 
 
 The Shadow of a Sin 10 
 
 Wedded and Parted 10 
 
 In Cupid’s Net 10 
 
 Lady Darner’s Secret 20 
 
 A Gilded Sin 10 
 
 Between Two Loves 20 
 
 For Another’s Sin 20 
 
 Romance of a Young Girl 20 
 
 A Queen Amongst Women 10 
 
 A Golden Dawn 10 
 
 Like no Other Love 10 
 
 A Bitter Atonement 20 
 
 Evelyn’s Folly 20 
 
 Set in Diamonds 20 
 
 A Fair Mystery 20 
 
 488 The Water- Witch 
 
 491 The Red Rover 
 
 501 The Pilot 
 
 506 Wing and Wing 
 
 512 Wyandotte 
 
 517 Heidenmauer 
 
 519 The Headsman •. 
 
 524 The Bravo 
 
 527 Lionel Lincoln 
 
 529 Wept of Wish-ton- Wish 
 
 532 Afloat and Ashore 
 
 539 Miles Wallingford 
 
 543 The Monikins 
 
 548 Mercedes of Castile 
 
 553 The Sea Lions 
 
 559 The Crater 
 
 562 Oak Openings 
 
 570 Satanstoe . . . , 
 
 576 The Chain-Bearer 
 
 587 Ways of the Hour 
 
 601 Precaution 
 
 603 Redskins 
 
 611 Jack Tier 
 
 BY KINAHAN CORNWALLIS 
 
 409 Adrift with a Vengeance 
 
 BY R. CRISWELL 
 
 350 Grandfather Lickshingle 
 
 BY R. H. DANA, JR. 
 
 464 Two Years before the Mast 
 
 BY DANTE 
 
 20 
 
 20 
 
 .20 
 
 20 
 
 20 
 
 ,20 
 
 20 
 
 20 
 
 .20 
 
 20 
 
 .20 
 
 .20 
 
 20 
 
 20 
 
 20 
 
 ,20 
 
 20 
 
 20 
 
 20 
 
 .20 
 
 .20 
 
 25 
 
 .20 
 
 25 
 
 20 
 
 20 
 
 BY S. T. COLERIDGE 
 
 Poems 
 
 345 
 
 Dante’s Vision of Hell, Purgatory, 
 and Paradise 20 
 
 BY WILKIE COLLINS 
 
 BY FLORA A. DARLING 
 
 The Moonstone, Part 1 10 
 
 The Moonstone, Part II 10 
 
 The New Magdalen 20 
 
 Heart and Science 20 
 
 “I Say No” 20 
 
 Tales of Two Idle Apprentices 15 
 
 The Ghost’s Touch 10 
 
 My Lady’s Money 10 
 
 The Evil Genius 20 
 
 BY HUGH CONWAY 
 
 260 Mrs. Darling’s War Letters 20 
 
 BY JOYCE DARRELL 
 
 315 Winifred Power 20 
 
 BY ALPHONSE BAXJDET 
 
 478 Tartarin of Tarascon 20 
 
 604 Sidonie 20 
 
 613 Jack 20 
 
 615 The Little Good-for-Nothing 20 
 
 645 The Nabob 25 
 
 Called Back 15 
 
 Dark Days 15 
 
 Carriston’s Gift 10 
 
 Paul Vargas ; a Mystery 10 
 
 A Family Affair: 20 
 
 Story of a Sculptor 10 
 
 Slings and Arrows 10 
 
 A Cardinal Sin 20 
 
 Living or Dead 20 
 
 Somebody’s Story 10 
 
 BY J. FENIMORE COOPER 
 
 The Last of the Mohicans 20 
 
 The Spy 20 
 
 The Pathfinder 20 
 
 Homeward Bound 20 
 
 Home as Found 20 
 
 The Deerslayer 30 
 
 The Prairie 20 
 
 The Pioneer 25 
 
 The Two A-dmirals . . • 20 
 
 BY REV. C. H. DAVIES, D.D. 
 
 453 Mystic London 20 
 
 BY THE DEAN OF ST. PAUL’S 
 
 431 Life of Spenser - 10 
 
 BY C. DEBANS 
 
 475 A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing .20 
 
 BY REV. C. F. DEEMS, D.D. 
 
 704 Evolution 20 
 
 BY DANIEL DEFOE 
 
 428 Robinson Crusoe 25 
 
 BY THOS. BE QUXNCEY 
 
 20 The Spanish Nun .10 
 
 BY CARL DETLEF 
 
 27 Irene; or, The Lonely Manor 20 
 
 3 
 
10 
 
 38 
 
 75 
 
 91 
 
 140 
 
 144 
 
 150 
 
 158 
 
 170 
 
 192 
 
 201 
 
 210 
 
 219 
 
 223 
 
 228 
 
 231 
 
 234 
 
 237 
 
 244 
 
 246 
 
 261 
 
 267 
 
 270 
 
 273 
 
 274 
 
 282 
 
 288 
 
 293 
 
 297 
 
 298 
 
 302 
 
 437 
 
 404 
 
 498 
 
 68 
 
 76 
 
 78 
 
 86 
 
 90 
 
 92 
 
 126 
 
 132 
 
 162 
 
 168 
 
 284 
 
 451 
 
 477 
 
 530 
 
 618 
 
 621 
 
 624 
 
 721 
 
 735 
 
 737 
 
 95 
 
 761 
 
 761 
 
 LOVELL S LIBRARY. 
 
 BY CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Oliver Twist 20 
 
 A Tale of Two Cities 20 
 
 Child’s History of England 20 
 
 Pickwick Papers, 2 Parts, each 20 
 
 The Cricket on the Hearth 10 
 
 Old Curiosity Shop, 2 Parts, each... 15 
 
 Barnaby Rudge, 2 Parts, each 15 
 
 David Copperfield, 2 Parts, each 20 
 
 Hard Times 20 
 
 Great Expectations 20 
 
 Martin Chuzzlewit, 2 Parts, each. . ..20 
 
 American Notes 20 
 
 Dombey and Son, 2 Parts, each 20 
 
 Little Dorrit, 2 Parts, each 20 
 
 Our Mutual Friend, 2 Parts, each.. .20 
 
 Nicholas Nickleby, 2 Parts, each 20 
 
 Pictures from Italy 10 
 
 The Boy at Mugby 10 
 
 Bleak House, 2 Parts, each 20 
 
 Sketches of the Young Couples 10 
 
 Master Humphrey’s Clock 10 
 
 The Haunted House, etc 10 
 
 The Mudfog Papers, etc 10 
 
 Sketches by Boz. ... 20 
 
 A Christmas Carol, etc. 15 
 
 Uncommercial Traveller 20 
 
 Somebody’s Luggage, etc. 10 
 
 The Battle of Life, etc 10 
 
 Mystery of Edwin Drood 20 
 
 Reprinted Pieces 20 
 
 No Thoroughfare 15 
 
 Tales of Two Idle Apprentices 10 
 
 BY PROF. DOWDEN 
 
 Life of Southey 10 
 
 BY JOHN BRYDEN 
 
 Poems 30 
 
 BY THE “DUCHESS” 
 
 Portia 20 
 
 Molly Bawn 20 
 
 Phyllis 20 
 
 Monica 10 
 
 Mrs. Geoffrey 20 
 
 Airy Fairy Lilian 20 
 
 Loys, Lord Beresford 20 
 
 Moonshine and Marguerites 10 
 
 Faith and Unfaith 20 
 
 Beauty’s Daughters 20 
 
 Rossmoyne .. 20 
 
 Doris 20 
 
 A Week in Killarney .....10 
 
 In Durance Vile 10 
 
 Dick’s Sweetheart ; or, “ O Tender 
 
 Dolores” 20 
 
 A Maiden all Forlorn 10 
 
 A Passive Crime 10 
 
 Lady Brmksmere 20 
 
 A Mental Struggle \ . . . 20 
 
 The Haunted Chamber 10 
 
 BY LORD DUFFERIN 
 
 Letters from High Latitudes 20 
 
 BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS 
 
 Count of Monte Cristo, Part 1 20 
 
 Count of Monte Cristo, Part II 20 
 
 BY MRS. ANNIE EDWARDES 
 
 681 A Girton Girl 20 
 
 BY M. BETHAM-EDWARBS 
 
 203 Disarmed 15 
 
 603 The Flower of Doom 1U 
 
 BY GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 56 Adam Bede, 2 Parts, each 15 
 
 69 Amos Barton 10 
 
 71 Silas Marner ...10 
 
 79 Romola, 2 Parts, each 15 
 
 149 Janet’s Repentance 10 
 
 151 Felix Holt 20 
 
 174 Middlemarch, 2 Parts, each 20 
 
 195 Daniel Deronda, 2 Parts, each 20 
 
 202 Theophrastus Such 10 
 
 2C5 The Spanish Gypsy, Jubal,and other 
 Poems 20 
 
 207 The Mill on the Floss, 2 Parts, each .15 
 
 208 Brother Jacob, etc 10 
 
 374 Essays, and Leaves from a Note- 
 
 Book 20 
 
 BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 373 Essays 20 
 
 ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS. 
 EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY 
 
 348 Bunyan, by J. A. Froude 10 
 
 407 Burke, by John Morley. 10 
 
 334 Burns, by Principal Shairp 10 
 
 347 Byron, by Professor Nichol .10 
 
 413 Chaucer, by Prof. A. W. Ward 10 
 
 424 Cowper, by Goldwin Smith 10 
 
 377 Defoe, by William Minto 10 
 
 383 Gibbon, by J. C. Morison 10 
 
 225 Goldsmith, by William Black 10 
 
 369 Hume, by Professor Huxley 10 
 
 401 Johnson, by Leslie Stephen 10 
 
 380 Locke, by Thomas Fowler 10 
 
 392 Milton, by Mark Pattison 10 
 
 398 Pope, by Leslie Stephen 10 
 
 364 Scott, by R. H. Hutton 10 
 
 361 Shelley, by J. Synionds 10 
 
 404 Southey, by Professor Dowden 10 
 
 431 Spencer, by the Dean of St. Paul’s. .10 
 
 344 Thackeray, by Anthony Trollope. . .10 
 
 410 Wordsworth, by F. Myers 10 
 
 BY B. L. FARJEON 
 
 243 Gautran ; or, House of White Shad- 
 ows 20 
 
 654 Love’s Harvest 20 
 
 BY HARRIET FARLEY 
 
 473 Christmas Stories . . 20 
 
 BY F. W. FARRAR, D.D. 
 
 19 Seekers after, God .20 
 
 50 Early Days of Christianity, 2 Parts, 
 
 each 20 
 
 BY OCTAVE FEUILLET 
 
 41 A Marriage in High Life 20 
 
 BY MRS. FORRESTER 
 
 760 Fair Women 20 
 
 4 
 
OUR ROMAN PALACE 
 
 Or, HILDA AND I. 
 
 BY E. BEDELL BENJAMIN. 
 
 One Volume , 12mo Paper, 20 cts.$ Cloth, 35 cts . 
 
 Opinions of the Press. 
 
 “ One of tlie most charming of recent novels —Philadelphia Item. 
 
 “ It is refined in tone, and will doubtless find many readers to welcome 
 it.”— New York Daily Graphic. 
 
 “ The story is worth the reading, and Hilda is a character that must excite 
 sympathy and admiration, especially of the S. P. C. Philadelphia Eve- 
 ning Bulletin. 
 
 “ A love story of the better class ; the tone is elevating and refined, and 
 reading it is like living with nice people, and enjoying their pleasures and 
 social life. It is one of the most fascinating novels we have seen for a long 
 time. A real treat.”— Portland Argus. 
 
 “ What shall we say of a book in which is not one love story alone, but in 
 which three full-fledged ones are concentered ? The author writes not only 
 entertainingly, but she interweaves much that is excellent in tone and com- 
 mendable in precept and example.”— Troy Whig. 
 
 “ It is pure in tone, refined in sentiment, and with a movement sufficiently 
 rapid to keep the reader interested to the very end. Some conversations on 
 music show that the author understands the divine art.”— New York Evening 
 Mail. 
 
 ‘“Hilda and I’ is a rest to the weary after the turbulence of recent un- 
 limited folios of tragedy. It is a rich feast of pleasantness in all possible 
 directions. Music, art and all charming things rise up before one in the right 
 place and at the proper moment.”— New York Home Journal. 
 
 “ Fresh and breezy as sea air ; full of originality in plot and incident, with 
 well-drawn characters, who live and move with individuality and interest. 
 The heroine, Hilda, is at once charming, and a new creation in fiction.”— 
 
 Godey's Magazine, Philadelphia. 
 
 “ The conversations are lively and sparkling— the characters are always 
 pure and true, and, although sometimes idealized beyond the requirements of 
 a realistic standard, are not ud natural. The tone of the story is high, and its 
 moral excellent.”— Bridgeport Standard. 
 
 JOHN W. LOVELL 00., PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK. 
 
By Milne own soul’s law, learn to live ; 
 
 And If men thwart thee, take no heed, 
 
 ^nd if men hate thee, have no care— 
 
 Sing thou thy song, and do thy deed ; 
 
 Jope thou thy hope, and i>ray thy prayei. 
 
 And claim no crown they will not give. 
 
 John G. Wnrm»rc* 
 
 JUST PUBLISHED. 
 
 INTEGRAL CO-OPERATION ! 
 
 By ALBERT K. OWEN. 
 
 A bool (200 pages, 12mo) containing three plans illustrating sections and 
 buildings suggested for “Pacific Colony Site,” and two maps showing 
 Topolobampo Bay, Sinaloa, Mexico, including “Mochis Ranch,” the valley of 
 the Rio Fuerte and its vicinage. 
 
 Price, 30 cents* Sent, postage free, by John W. Lovell Co., Nos. 
 
 14 and 16 Yesey Street, New York City. 
 
 Also, a Weekly Paper, 
 
 ‘TIE CREDIT FONCIER #F SINM" 
 
 Edited by MARIE and EDWARD HOWLAND, 
 
 Hammonton, New Jersey. 
 
 Annual Subscription, $1/ site months, 50c. j three months, 25c . 
 
 This paper (16-page pamphlet) is devoted exclusively to the propaganda 
 for the practical application of integral-co-operation. 
 
 While being an uncompromising exponent of Socialism, the Credit 
 Foncier urges constructive measures and counsels against destructive 
 methods. Its Colonists are to be known as “ constructionists ” and “ individ- 
 - ualists ” in contradestinction to a branch of socialists who favor destruction 
 and communism. 
 
 The Credit Foncier presents a matured plan, with details, for farm, 
 city, factory, and clearing house ; and invites the farmer, manufacturer, 
 artizan, engineer, architect, contractor, and accountant to unite and organize 
 to bniid for themselves homes, in keeping with solidity, art, and sanitation. 
 
 It asks for evolution and not for revolution ; for inter-dependence and not 
 for independence : for co-operation and not for competition ; for equity and 
 not for equality ; for duty and not for liberty ; for employment and not for 
 charity ; for eclecticism and not for dogma ; for one law and not for class 
 legislation ; for corporate management and not for political control ; for State 
 responsibility for every person, at all times and in every place, and not for 
 municipal irresponsibility for any person, at any time or in any place ; and 
 it demands that the common interests of the citizen— the atmosphere, land, 
 water, light, jjower, exchange, transportation, construction, sanitation, edu- 
 cation, entertainment, insurance, production, distribution, etc., etc.— “be 
 pooled,” and that the private life of the citizen be held sacred. 
 
LOVELL’S 
 
 LATEST 
 
 LIBRARY. 
 
 ISSUES. 
 
 664 At Bay, by Mrs. Alexander 10 
 
 605 Mornings in Florence, by Ruskin.,15 
 
 665 Barbara’s Rival, by Ernest Young. 20 
 607 Story of a Sculptor, by Conway.. .10 
 60S St. Mark's Rest, by John Ruskin.,15 
 
 669 Hilda, by Bertha M. Clay 10 
 
 670 Deucalion, by Ruskin 10 
 
 671 The Scout, by Simms 85 
 
 672 Slings and Arrows, by Conway 10 
 
 673 Art of England, by Ruskin 15 
 
 674 The Wigwam and Cabin, by Simms.80 
 
 6T5 A Rainy June, by Ouida 10 
 
 676 Eagle’s Nest, by Ruskin 15 
 
 677 Yasconselos, by Simms, 80 
 
 678 White Heather, by Black 20 
 
 679 Our Fathers have Told Us, Ruskin. 15 
 
 680 Confession, by Simms 80 
 
 681 A Girton Girl, by Mrs. Edwards.. .20 
 
 682 Proserpina, by Rusldn 15 
 
 683 The Ghost’s Touch, by Collins 10 
 
 634 Woodcraft, by Simms 30 
 
 685 Val d’Arno, by Ruskin 15 
 
 686 My Lady’s Money, by Collins 10 
 
 687 Richard Hurdis, by Simms 30 
 
 688 Love’s Meinie, by Raskin 15 
 
 689 Her Martyrdom, by B. M. Clay . . . 20 
 
 690 Guy Rivers, by Simms 30 
 
 691 A Woman’s Honor, by Young 20 
 
 692 Lord Lynne’s Choice, B. M. Clay.. 10 
 
 693 Border Beagles, by W. G. Simms.. 30 
 
 694 The Shadow of a Sin, B. M. Clay.. 10 
 
 695 Wedded and Parted, by B. M. Clay.10 
 
 696 The Master of the Mine, Buchanan. 10 
 
 697 The Forayers, by Simms 30 
 
 698 The Mistletoe Bough, M.E.Braddon. 20 
 
 699 Self or Bearer, Walter Besant . . .10 
 
 700 In Cupid’s Net, by B. M. Clay 10 
 
 701 Lady Darner’s Secret, B. M. Clay.. 20 
 
 702 Charlemont, by W. G. Simms .30 
 
 703 Eutaw, by W. G. Simms 30 
 
 704 Evolution, Rev. C. F. Deems, D.D.20 
 
 705 Beauchampe, by W. G. Simms 30 
 
 706 No. 99, by Arthur Griffiths 10 
 
 707 Fors Clavigera, by Ruskin. P’t I. 30 
 
 708 Fors Clavigera, by Ruskin. P’t II.. 30 
 
 709 Woman against Woman, by Holmes . 20 
 
 710 Picciola, by J. X. B. Saintine. ... .10 
 
 711 Undine, by Baron de la Motte 
 
 Fouque 10 
 
 712 Woman, by August Bebel .80 
 
 713 Fors Clavigera, by Ruskin. P’t III. 30 
 
 714 Fors Clavigera, by Ruskin. P’t IY.30 
 
 715 A Cardinal Sin, by Hugh Con way. 20 
 
 716 A Crimson Stain, Annie Bradshaw. 20 
 
 717 ACountryGentleman,Mrs.Oliphant.20 
 
 718 A Gilded Sin, by B. M. Clay 10 
 
 719 Rory O’More, by Samuel Lover 20 
 
 720 Between Two Loves, B. M. Clay. . . 20 
 
 721 Lady Branksmere, by The Duchess. 20 
 
 722 The Evil Genius, by Wilkie Collins.20 
 
 723 Running the Gauntlet, by Yates. . .20 
 
 724 Broken to Harness, Edmund Yates.20 
 
 725 Dr. Wilmer’s Love, Margaret Lee.. 25 
 
 726 Austin Eliot, by Henry Kingsley.. 20 
 
 727 For Another’s Sin, by B. M. Clay. .20 
 
 728 The Hdlyars and Burtons, Kingsley 20 
 
 729 In Prison and Out, by Stretton. . . .20 
 
 730 Romance of a Young Girl, by Clay.20 
 
 731 Leighton Court, by Kingsley 20 
 
 732 Victory Deane, by Cecil Griffith. .20 
 
 733 A Queen amongst Women, by Clay.10 
 
 734 Vineta, by E. Werner 20 
 
 735 A Mental Struggle, The Duchess., 20 
 
 736 Geoffrey Hamlyn, by H- Kingsley.. 80 
 
 737 The Haunted Chamber, “Duchess’’.10 
 
 738 A Golden Dawn, by B. M. Clay. ... 10 
 
 739 Like no Other Love, by B. M. Clay.10 
 
 740 A Bitter Atonement, by B. M. Clay.20 
 
 741 Lorimer and Wife, by Margaret Lee.20 
 
 742 Social Solutions No. 1, by Howland.10 
 
 743 A Woman’s Vengeance, by Holmes. 20 
 
 744 Evelyn’s Folly, by B. M. Clay 20 
 
 745 Living or Dead, by Hugh Conway.. 20 
 
 746 Beaton’s Bargain, Mrs. Alexander.. 20 
 
 747 Social Solutions, No. 2, by Howland.10 
 
 748 Our Roman Palace, by Benjamin.. . 20 
 
 749 Mayor of Casterbridge, by Hardy. 20 
 
 750 Somebody's Story, by Hugh Conway.10 
 
 751 King Arthur, by Miss Mulock 20 
 
 752 Set in Diamonds, by B. M. Clay.. . . 20 
 
 753 Social Solutions, No. 3, by Howland.10 
 
 754 A Modern Midas, by Maurice Jokai.20 
 
 755 A Fallen Idol, by F. Anstey 20 
 
 756 Conspiracy, by Adam Badeau ... .25 
 
 757 Doris’ Fortune, by F. Warden 10 
 
 758 Cynic Fortune, by D. C. Murray. .,10 
 
 759 Foul Play, by Chas. Reade. 20 
 
 760 Fair Women, by Mrs. Forrester 20 
 
 761 Count of Monte Cristo, Part I., by 
 
 Alexandre Dumas 20 
 
 761 Count of Monte Cristo, Part II., by 
 
 Alexandre Dumas .20 
 
 762 Social Solutions, No. 4, by Howland.10 
 
 763 Moths, by Ouida .20 
 
 764 A Fair Mystery, by Bertha M. Clay.20 
 
 765 Social Solutions, No. 5, by Howland.10 
 
 766 Vixen, by Miss Braddon, 20 
 
 767 Kidnapped, by R. L. Stevenson — 20 
 
 768 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and 
 
 Mr. Hyde, by R. L. Stevenson. . 10 
 
 769 Prince Otto, by R. L. Stevenson. . .10 
 
 770 The Dynamiter, by R. L. Stevenson. 20 
 
 771 The Old Mam’selle’s Secret, by E. 
 
 Marlitt 20 
 
 772 Mysteries of Paris, Part I.. by Sue.20 
 
 772 Mysteries of Paris, Part II., by Sue.20 
 
 773 Put Yourself in His Place, by Reade. 20 
 
 774 Social Solutions, No. 6, by Howland.10 
 
 775 The Three Guardsmen, by Dumas. 20 
 
 776 The Wandering Jew, Part I., by Sue.20 
 
 776 The Wandering Jew. Part II., by Sue. 20 
 
 777 A Second Life, by Mrs. Alexander.20 
 
 778 Social Solutions, No. 7, by Howland.10 
 
 779 My Friend Jim, by W. E. Norris . . 10 
 
 780 Bad to Beat, by Hawley Smart. . 10 
 
 781 Betty’s Visions, by Broughton. 15 
 
 782 Social Solutions, No. 8, by Howland.10 
 
 783 The Octoroon, by Miss Braddon.... 10 
 
 Any of the above can be obtained from all booksellers and newsdealers, or will be 
 sent free by mail, on receipt of price, by the publishers. 
 
 JOHN W. LOYELL COMPANY, 
 
 Nos. 14 and 16 Vesey Stkeet, New Yoke. 
 
Tid-Bits or bonnebouches chosen from ihe wisest and wit- 
 tiest words that find their way into %yrint about alt 
 the topics that make the world interesting • 
 
 THE CHEAPEST WEEKLY PUBLISHED. 
 
 TID-BITS 
 
 ILLUSTRATED. 
 
 Offering, at the extremely low price of 
 
 =~FIVE CENTS^— 
 
 Sixteen Pages filled with the sifted goodness and richness of 
 the current periodicals and newspapers. 
 
 It Never Prints a Pull Line! 
 
 Sixteen Pages filled with original matter written for 
 Tid-Bits by the best writers. Tid-Bits touches the life of our 
 times on every side, and is an “ abstract and brief chronicle” 
 of current thought -grave and gay. 
 
 HUMOROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. — Tid-Bits’ car- 
 toons are the work of the cleverest caricaturists. They are 
 graphic and pointed. 
 
 PRIZES. — A prize of $10 is offered weekly for the best 
 short story — not necessarily original — submitted to the editor, 
 and prizes for answers to questions of various sorts are also 
 offered from time to time. 
 
 If there is anything new worth knowing you will find it in 
 Tid-Bits. • 
 
 If there is anything new worth laughing at you will find 
 it in Tid-Bits. 
 
 So much intelligence, liveliness, and humor cannot be 
 had for 5 cents in any other form. 
 
 A sample copy will be sent free of postage to anyone 
 addressing the publishers. Subscription, $2.50 a year 
 
 JOHN W. LOVELL CO., 14 Vesey Street, New York. 
 
100 years established as the cleanest and best preparation for^SHAVINC. it 
 makes a profuse, Creamy, and Fragrant Lather, which leaves the Skin smooth.clean.cool 
 and comfortable. SOAP' & C A S E .JZ