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87. But it is not only the rustic method of architecture which I wish you to note in this plate; it is the rustic method of drawing also. The manner in which these blunt timber carvings are drawn by Prout is just as provincial as the carvings themselves. Born in a faraway district of England, and learning to draw, unhelped, with fishing-boats for his models; making his way instinctively until he had command of his pencil enough to secure a small income by lithographic drawing; and finding picturesque character in buildings from which all the finest lines of their carving had been effaced by time; possessing also an instinct in the expression of such subjects so peculiar as to win for him a satisfying popularity, and, far better, to enable him to derive perpetual pleasure in the seclusion of country hamlets, and the quiet streets of deserted cities,—Prout had never any motive to acquaint himself with the refinements, or contend with the difficulties, of a more accomplished art. So far from this, his manner of work was, by its very imperfection, in the most perfect sympathy with the subjects he enjoyed. The broad chalk touches in which he has represented to us this house at Strasbourg are entirely sufficient to give true idea of its effect. To have drawn its ornaments with subtlety of Leonardesque delineation would only have exposed their faults, and mocked their rusticity. The drawing would have become painful to you from the sense of the time which it had taken to represent what was not worth the labour, and to direct your attention to what could only, if closely examined, be matter of offence. But here you have a simple and provincial draughtsman happily and adequately expressing a simple and provincial architecture; nor could either builder or painter have become wiser, but to their loss.

88. Is it then, you will ask me, seriously to be recommended, and, however recommendable, is it possible, that men should remain contented with attainments which they know to be imperfect? and that now, as in former times, large districts of country, and generations of men, should be enriched or amused by the products of a clumsy ignorance? I do not know how far it is possible, but I know that wherever you desire to have true art, it is necessary. Ignorance, which is contented and clumsy, will produce what is imperfect, but not offensive. But ignorance discontented and dexterous, learning what it cannot understand, and imitating what it cannot enjoy, produces the most loathsome forms of manufacture that can disgrace or mislead humanity. Some years since, as I was looking through the modern gallery at the quite provincial German School of Düsseldorf, I was fain to leave all their epic and religious designs, that I might stay long before a little painting of a shepherd boy carving his dog out of a bit of deal. The dog was sitting by, with the satisfied and dignified air of a personage about for the first time in his life to be worthily represented in sculpture; and his master was evidently succeeding to his mind in expressing the features of his friend. The little scene was one which, as you know, must take place continually among the cottage artists who supply the toys of Nuremberg and Berne. Happy, these! so long as, undisturbed by ambition, they spend their leisure time in work pretending only to amuse, yet capable, in its own way, of showing accomplished dexterity, and vivid perception of nature. We, in the hope of doing great things, have surrounded our workmen with Italian models, and tempted them with prizes into competitive mimicry of all that is best, or that we imagine to be best, in the work of every people under the sun. And the result of our instruction is only that we are able to produce—I am now quoting the statement I made last May, “the most perfectly and roundly ill-done things” that ever came from human hands. I should thankfully put upon my chimney-piece the wooden dog cut by the shepherd boy; but I should be willing to forfeit a large sum rather than keep in my room the number 1 of the Kensington Museum—thus described in its catalogue—“Statue in black and white marble, of a Newfoundland dog standing on a serpent, which rests on a marble cushion;—the pedestal ornamented with Pietra Dura fruits in relief.”

89. You will, however, I fear, imagine me indulging in my usual paradox, when I assure you that all the efforts we have been making to surround ourselves with heterogeneous means of instruction, will have the exactly reverse effect from that which we intend;—and that, whereas formerly we were able only to do a little well, we are qualifying ourselves now to do everything ill. Nor is the result confined to our workmen only. The introduction of French dexterity and of German erudition has been harmful chiefly to our most accomplished artists—and in the last Exhibition of our Royal Academy there was, I think, no exception to the manifest fact that every painter of reputation painted worse than he did ten years ago.

90. Admitting, however, (not that I suppose you will at once admit, but for the sake of argument, supposing,) that this is true, what, we have further to ask, can be done to discourage ourselves from calamitous emulation, and withdraw our workmen from the sight of what is too good to be of use to them?

But this question is not one which can be determined by the needs, or limited to the circumstances of Art. To live generally more modest and contented lives; to win the greatest possible pleasure from the smallest things; to do what is likely to be serviceable to our immediate neighbours, whether it seem to them admirable or not; to make no pretence of admiring what has really no hold upon our hearts; and to be resolute in refusing all additions to our learning, until we have perfectly arranged and secured what learning we have got;—these are conditions, and laws, of unquestionable σοφία and σωφροσύνη, which will indeed lead us up to fine art if we are resolved to have it fine; but will also do what is much better, make rude art precious.

91. It is not, however, by any means necessary that provincial art should be rude, though it may be singular. Often it is no less delicate than quaint, and no less refined in grace than original in character. This is likely always to take place when a people of naturally fine artistic temper work with the respect which, as I endeavoured to show you in a former lecture, ought always to be paid to local material and circumstance.

I have placed in your educational series the photograph of the door of a wooden house in Abbeville, and of the winding stair above; both so exquisitely sculptured that the real vine-leaves which had wreathed themselves about their pillars, cannot, in the photograph, be at once discerned from the carved foliage. The latter, quite as graceful, can only be known for art by its quaint setting.

Yet this school of sculpture is altogether provincial. It could only have risen in a richly-wooded chalk country, where the sapling trees beside the brooks gave example to the workman of the most intricate tracery, and the white cliffs above the meadows furnished docile material to his hand.

92. I have now, to my sorrow, learned to despise the elaborate intricacy, and the playful realizations, of the Norman designers; and can only be satisfied by the reserved and proud imagination of the master schools. But the utmost pleasure I now take in these is almost as nothing, compared to the joy I used to have, when I knew no better, in the fretted pinnacles of Rouen, and white lace, rather than stonework, of the chapels of Reu and Amboise.

Yet observe that the first condition of this really precious provincial work is its being the best that can be done under the given circumstances; and the second is, that though provincial, it is not in the least frivolous or ephemeral, but as definitely civic, or public, in design, and as permanent in the manner of it, as the work of the most learned academies: while its execution brought out the energies of each little state, not necessarily in rivalship, but severally in the perfecting of styles which Nature had rendered it impossible for their neighbours to imitate.

93. This civic unity, and the feeling of the workman that he is performing his part in a great scene which is to endure for centuries, while yet, within the walls of his city, it is to be a part of his own peculiar life, and to be separate from all the world besides, developes, together, whatever duty he acknowledges as a patriot, and whatever complacency he feels as an artist.

We now build, in our villages, by the rules of the Academy of London; and if there be a little original vivacity or genius in any provincial workman, he is almost sure to spend it in making a ridiculous toy. Nothing is to me much more pathetic than the way that our neglected workmen thus throw their lives away. As I was walking the other day through the Crystal Palace, I came upon a toy which had taken the leisure of five years to make; you dropped a penny into the chink of it, and immediately a little brass steam-engine in the middle started into nervously hurried action; some bell-ringers pulled strings at the bottom of a church steeple which had no top; two regiments of cavalry marched out from the sides, and manœuvred in the middle; and two well-dressed persons in a kind of opera-box expressed their satisfaction by approving gestures.

In old Ghent, or Bruges, or York, such a man as the one who made this toy, with companions similarly minded, would have been taught how to employ himself, not to their less amusement, but to better purpose; and in their five years of leisure hours they would have carved a flamboyant crown for the belfry-tower, and would have put chimes into it that would have told the time miles away, with a pleasant tune for the hour, and a variation for the quarters, and cost the passers-by in all the city and plain not so much as the dropping of a penny into a chink.

94. Do not doubt that I feel, as strongly as any of you can feel, the utter impossibility at present of restoring provincial simplicity to our country towns.

My despondency respecting this, and nearly all other matters which I know to be necessary, is at least as great,—it is certainly more painful to me,—in the decline of life,—than that which any of my younger hearers can feel. But what I have to tell you of the unchanging principles of nature, and of art, must not be affected by either hope or fear. And if I succeed in convincing you what these principles are, there are many practical consequences which you may deduce from them, if ever you find yourselves, as young Englishmen are often likely to find themselves, in authority over foreign tribes of peculiar or limited capacities.

Be assured that you can no more drag or compress men into perfection than you can drag or compress plants. If ever you find yourselves set in a position of authority, and are entrusted to determine modes of education, ascertain first what the people you would teach have been in the habit of doing, and encourage them to do that better. Set no other excellence before their eyes; disturb none of their reverence for the past; do not think yourselves bound to dispel their ignorance, or to contradict their superstitions; teach them only gentleness and truth; redeem them by example from habits which you know to be unhealthy or degrading; but cherish, above all things, local associations, and hereditary skill.

It is the curse of so-called civilization to pretend to originality by the wilful invention of new methods of error, while it quenches wherever it has power, the noble originality of nations, rising out of the purity of their race, and the love of their native land.

95. I could say much more, but I think I have said enough to justify for the present what you might otherwise have thought singular in the methods I shall adopt for your exercise in the drawing schools. I shall indeed endeavour to write down for you the laws of the art which is centrally best; and to exhibit to you a certain number of its unquestionable standards: but your own actual practice shall be limited to objects which will explain to you the meaning, and awaken you to the beauty, of the art of your own country.

The first series of my lectures on sculpture must have proved to you that I do not despise either the workmanship or the mythology of Greece; but I must assert with more distinctness than even in my earliest works, the absolute unfitness of all its results to be made the guides of English students or artists.

Every nation can represent, with prudence, or success, only the realities in which it delights. What you have with you, and before you, daily, dearest to your sight and heart, that, by the magic of your hand, or of your lips, you can gloriously express to others; and what you ought to have in your sight and heart,—what, if you have not, nothing else can be truly seen or loved,—is the human life of your own people, understood in its history, and admired in its presence.

And unless that be first made beautiful, idealism must be false and imagination monstrous.

It is your influence on the existing world which, in your studies here, you ought finally to consider; and although it is not, in that influence, my function to direct you, I hope you will not be discontented to know that I shall ask no effort from your art-genius, beyond the rational suggestion of what we may one day hope to see actually realized in England, in the sweetness of her landscape, and the dignity of her people.

In connection with the subject of this lecture, I may mention to you that I have received an interesting letter, requesting me to assist in promoting some improvements designed in the city of Oxford.

But as the entire charm and educational power of the city of Oxford, so far as that educational power depended on reverent associations, or on visible solemnities and serenities of architecture, have been already destroyed; and, as far as our own lives extend, destroyed, I may say, for ever, by the manufacturing suburb which heaps its ashes on one side, and the cheap-lodging suburb which heaps its brickbats on the other; I am myself, either as antiquary or artist, absolutely indifferent to what happens next; except on grounds respecting the possible health, cleanliness, and decency which may yet be obtained for the increasing population.

How far cleanliness and decency bear on art and science, or on the changed functions of the university to its crowd of modern students, I have partly to consider in connection with the subject of my next lecture, and I will reserve therefore any definite notice of these proposed improvements in the city, until the next occasion of meeting you.

LECTURE VI.
THE RELATION TO ART OF THE SCIENCE OF LIGHT

24th February, 1872

96. I have now, perhaps to the exhaustion of your patience, but you will find, not without real necessity, defined the manner in which the mental tempers, ascertained by philosophy to be evil or good, retard and advance the parallel studies of science and art.

In this and the two next following lectures I shall endeavour to state to you the literal modes in which the virtues of art are connected with the principles of exact science; but now, remember, I am speaking, not of the consummate science of which art is the image; but only of what science we have actually attained, which is often little more than terminology (and even that uncertain), with only a gleam of true science here and there.

I will not delay you by any defence of the arrangement of sciences I have chosen. Of course we may at once dismiss chemistry and pure mathematics from our consideration. Chemistry can do nothing for art but mix her colours, and tell her what stones will stand weather; (I wish, at this day, she did as much;) and with pure mathematics we have nothing whatever to do; nor can that abstract form of high mathesis stoop to comprehend the simplicity of art. To a first wrangler at Cambridge, under the present conditions of his trial, statues will necessarily be stone dolls, and imaginative work unintelligible. We have, then, in true fellowship with art, only the sciences of light and form, (optics and geometry). If you will take the first syllable of the word ‘geometry’ to mean earth in the form of flesh, as well as of clay, the two words sum every science that regards graphic art, or of which graphic art can represent the conclusions.

97. To-day we are to speak of optics, the science of seeing;—of that power, whatever it may be, which (by Plato’s definition), “through the eyes, manifests colour to us.”

Hold that definition always, and remember that ‘light’ means accurately the power that affects the eyes of animals with the sensation proper to them. The study of the effect of light on nitrate of silver is chemistry, not optics; and what is light to us may indeed shine on a stone; but is not light to the stone. The “fiat lux” of creation is, therefore, in the deep sense of it, “fiat anima.”

We cannot say that it is merely “fiat oculus,” for the effect of light on living organism, even when sightless, cannot be separated from its influence on sight. A plant consists essentially of two parts, root and leaf: the leaf by nature seeks light, the root by nature seeks darkness: it is not warmth or cold, but essentially light and shade, which are to them, as to us, the appointed conditions of existence.

98. And you are to remember still more distinctly that the words “fiat lux” mean indeed “fiat anima,” because even the power of the eye itself, as such, is in its animation. You do not see with the lens of the eye. You see through that, and by means of that, but you see with the soul of the eye.

99. A great physiologist said to me the other day—it was in the rashness of controversy, and ought not to be remembered, as a deliberate assertion, therefore I do not give his name, still he did say—that sight was “altogether mechanical.” The words simply meant, if they meant anything, that all his physiology had never taught him the difference between eyes and telescopes. Sight is an absolutely spiritual phenomenon; accurately, and only, to be so defined; and the “Let there be light,” is as much, when you understand it, the ordering of intelligence, as the ordering of vision. It is the appointment of change of what had been else only a mechanical effluence from things unseen to things unseeing,—from stars that did not shine to earth that could not perceive;—the change, I say, of that blind vibration into the glory of the sun and moon for human eyes; so rendering possible also the communication out of the unfathomable truth, of that portion of truth which is good for us, and animating to us, and is set to rule over the day and night of our joy and sorrow.

100. The sun was set thus ‘to rule the day.’ And of late you have learned that he was set to rule everything that we know of. You have been taught that, by the Sirens, as a piece of entirely new knowledge, much to be exulted over. We painters, indeed, have been for some time acquainted with the general look of the sun, and long before there were painters there were wise men,—Zoroastrian and other,—who had suspected that there was power in the sun; but the Sirens of yesterday have somewhat new, it seems, to tell you of his authority, ἐπι χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ. I take a passage, almost at random, from a recent scientific work.

“Just as the phenomena of water-formed rocks all owe their existence directly or indirectly chiefly to the sun’s energy, so also do the phenomena interwoven with life. This has long been recognised by various eminent British and foreign physicists; and in 1854 Professor–, in his memoir on the method of palæontology, asserted that organisms were but manifestations of applied physics and applied chemistry. Professor – puts the generalisations of physicists in a few words: When speaking of the sun, it is remarked—‘He rears the whole vegetable world, and through it the animal; the lilies of the field are his workmanship, the verdure of the meadows, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. He forms the muscle, he urges the blood, he builds the brain. His fleetness is in the lion’s foot; he springs in the panther, he soars in the eagle, he slides in the snake. He builds the forest and hews it down, the power which raised the tree and that which wields the axe being one and the same.’”

All this is exceedingly true; and it is new in one respect, namely, in the ascertainment that the quantity of solar force necessary to produce motive power is measurable, and, in its sum, unalterable. For the rest, it was perfectly well known in Homer’s time, as now, that animals could not move till they were warm; and the fact that the warmth which enables them to do so is finally traceable to the sun, would have appeared to a Greek physiologist, no more interesting than, to a Greek poet, would have been the no less certain fact, that “Tout ce qui se peut dire de beau est dans les dictionnaires; il n’y a que les mots qui sont transposés”—Everything fine, that can be said, is in the dictionaries; it is only that the words are transposed.

Yes, indeed; but to the ποιητής the gist of the matter is in the transposition. The sun does, as the delighted physicist tells you, unquestionably “slide in the snake;” but how comes he to adopt that manner, we artists ask, of (literally) transposition?

101. The summer before last, as I was walking in the woods near the Giesbach, on the Lake of Brientz, and moving very quietly, I came suddenly on a small steel-gray serpent, lying in the middle of the path; and it was greatly surprised to see me. Serpents, however, always have complete command of their feelings, and it looked at me for a quarter of a minute without the slightest change of posture: then, with an almost imperceptible motion, it began to withdraw itself beneath a cluster of leaves. Without in the least hastening its action, it gradually concealed the whole of its body. I was about to raise one of the leaves, when I saw what I thought was the glance of another serpent, in the thicket at the path side; but it was the same one, which having once withdrawn itself from observation beneath the leaves, used its utmost agility to spring into the wood; and with so instantaneous a flash of motion, that I never saw it leave the covert, and only caught the gleam of light as it glided away into the copse.

102. Now, it was to me a matter of supreme indifference whether the force which the creature used in this action was derived from the sun, the moon, or the gas-works at Berne. What was, indeed, a matter of interest to me, was just that which would have struck a peasant, or a child;—namely, the calculating wisdom of the creature’s device; and the exquisite grace, strength, and precision of the action by which it was accomplished.

103. I was interested then, I say, more in the device of the creature, than in its source of motion. Nevertheless, I am pleased to hear, from men of science, how necessarily that motion proceeds from the sun. But where did its device come from? There is no wisdom, no device in the dust, any more than there is warmth in the dust. The springing of the serpent is from the sun:—the wisdom of the serpent,—whence that?

104. From the sun also, is the only answer, I suppose, possible to physical science. It is not a false answer: quite true, like the other, up to a certain point. To-day, in the strength of your youth, you may know what it is to have the power of the sun taken out of your arms and legs. But when you are old, you will know what it is to have the power of the sun taken out of your minds also. Such a thing may happen to you, sometimes, even now; but it will continually happen to you when you are my age. You will no more, then, think over a matter to any good purpose after twelve o’clock in the day. It may be possible to think over, and, much more, to talk over, matters, to little, or to bad, purpose after twelve o’clock in the day. The members of your national legislature do their work, we know, by gaslight; but you don’t suppose the power of the sun is in any of their devices? Quite seriously, all the vital functions,—and, like the rest and with the rest, the pure and wholesome faculties of the brain,—rise and set with the sun: your digestion and intellect are alike dependent on its beams; your thoughts, like your blood, flow from the force of it, in all scientific accuracy and necessity. Sol illuminatio nostra est; Sol salus nostra; Sol sapientia nostra.

And it is the final act and outcome of lowest national atheism, since it cannot deny the sun, at least to strive to do without it; to blast the day in heaven with smoke, and prolong the dance, and the council, by night, with tapers, until at last, rejoicing—Dixit insipiens in corde suo, non est Sol.

105. Well, the sliding of the serpent, and the device of the serpent, we admit, come from the sun. The flight of the dove, and its harmlessness,—do they also?

The flight,—yes, assuredly. The Innocence?—It is a new question. How of that? Between movement and non-movement—nay, between sense and non-sense—the difference rests, we say, in the power of Apollo; but between malice and innocence, where shall we find the root of that distinction?

106. Have you ever considered how much literal truth there is in the words—“The light of the body is the eye. If, therefore, thine eye be evil”—and the rest? How can the eye be evil? How, if evil, can it fill the whole body with darkness?

What is the meaning of having one’s body full of darkness? It cannot mean merely being blind. Blind, you may fall in a ditch if you move; but you may be well, if at rest. But to be evil-eyed, is not that worse than to have no eyes? and instead of being only in darkness, to have darkness in us, portable, perfect, and eternal?

107. Well, in order to get at the meaning we may, indeed, now appeal to physical science, and ask her to help us. How many manner of eyes are there? You physical-science students should be able to tell us painters that. We only know, in a vague way, the external aspect and expression of eyes. We see, as we try to draw the endlessly-grotesque creatures about us, what infinite variety of instruments they have; but you know, far better than we do, how those instruments are constructed and directed. You know how some play in their sockets with independent revolution,—project into near-sightedness on pyramids of bone,—are brandished at the points of horns,—studded over backs and shoulders,—thrust at the ends of antennæ to pioneer for the head, or pinched up into tubercles at the corners of the lips. But how do the creatures see out of all these eyes?

108. No business of ours, you may think? Pardon me. This is no Siren’s question—this is altogether business of ours, lest, perchance, any of us should see partly in the same manner. Comparative sight is a far more important question than comparative anatomy. It is no matter, though we sometimes walk—and it may often be desirable to climb—like apes; but suppose we only see like apes, or like lower creatures? I can tell you, the science of optics is an essential one to us; for exactly according to these infinitely grotesque directions and multiplications of instrument you have correspondent, not only intellectual but moral, faculty in the soul of the creatures. Literally, if the eye be pure, the body is pure; but, if the light of the body be but darkness, how great is that darkness!

109. Have you ever looked attentively at the study I gave you of the head of the rattle-snake? The serpent will keep its eyes fixed on you for an hour together, a vertical slit in each admitting such image of you as is possible to the rattlesnake retina, and to the rattlesnake mind. How much of you do you think it sees? I ask that, first, as a pure physical question. I do not know; it is not my business to know. You, from your schools of physical science, should bring me answer. How much of a man can a snake see? What sort of image of him is received through that deadly vertical cleft in the iris;—through the glazed blue of the ghastly lens? Make me a picture of the appearance of a man, as far as you can judge it can take place on the snake’s retina. Then ask yourselves, farther, how much of speculation is possible to the snake, touching this human aspect?

110. Or, if that seem too far beneath possible inquiry, how say you of a tiger’s eye, or a cat’s? A cat may look at a king;—yes; but can it see a king when it looks at him? The beasts of prey never seem to me to look, in our sense, at all. Their eyes are fascinated by the motion of anything, as a kitten’s by a ball;—they fasten, as if drawn by an inevitable attraction, on their food. But when a cat caresses you, it never looks at you. Its heart seems to be in its back and paws, not its eyes. It will rub itself against you, or pat you with velvet tufts, instead of talons; but you may talk to it an hour together, yet not rightly catch its eye. Ascend higher in the races of being—to the fawn, the dog, the horse; you will find that, according to the clearness of sight, is indeed the kindness of sight, and that at last the noble eyes of humanity look through humanity, from heart into heart, and with no mechanical vision. And the Light of the body is the eye—yes, and in happy life, the light of the heart also.

111. But now note farther: there is a mathematical power in the eye which may far transcend its moral power. When the moral power is feeble, the faculty of measurement, or of distinct delineation, may be supreme; and of comprehension none. But here, again, I want the help of the physical science schools. I believe the eagle has no scent, and hunts by sight, yet flies higher than any other bird. Now, I want to know what the appearance is to an eagle, two thousand feet up, of a sparrow in a hedge, or of a partridge in a stubble-field. What kind of definition on the retina do these brown spots take to manifest themselves as signs of a thing eatable; and if an eagle sees a partridge so, does it see everything else so? And then tell me, farther, does it see only a square yard at a time, and yet, as it flies, take summary of the square yards beneath it? When next you are travelling by express sixty miles an hour, past a grass bank, try to see a grasshopper, and you will get some idea of an eagle’s optical business, if it takes only the line of ground underneath it. Does it take more?