Lectures on Art | Page 8

passed through the symbolic or suggestive stage of design, and have
enabled themselves to comply, by truth of representation, with the
strictest or most eager demands of accurate science, and of disciplined
passion. I shall therefore direct your observation, during the greater part
of the time you may spare to me, to what is indisputably best, both in
painting and sculpture; trusting that you will afterwards recognise the
nascent and partial skill of former days both with greater interest and
greater respect, when you know the full difficulty of what it attempted,
and the complete range of what it foretold.
21. And with this view, I shall at once endeavour to do what has for
many years been in my thoughts, and now, with the advice and
assistance of the curators of the University Galleries, I do not doubt
may be accomplished here in Oxford, just where it will be preëminently
useful--namely, to arrange an educational series of examples of
excellent art, standards to which you may at once refer on any
questionable point, and by the study of which you may gradually attain
an instinctive sense of right, which will afterwards be liable to no
serious error. Such a collection may be formed, both more perfectly,
and more easily, than would commonly be supposed. For the real utility
of the series will depend on its restricted extent,--on the severe
exclusion of all second-rate, superfluous, or even attractively varied
examples,--and On the confining the students' attention to a few types
of what is insuperably good. More progress in power of judgment may
be made in a limited time by the examination of one work, than by the
review of many; and a certain degree of vitality is given to the
impressiveness of every characteristic, by its being exhibited in clear
contrast, and without repetition.

The greater number of the examples I shall choose will be only
engravings or photographs: they shall be arranged so as to be easily
accessible, and I will prepare a catalogue, pointing out my purpose in
the selection of each. But in process of time, I have good hope that
assistance will be given me by the English public in making the series
here no less splendid than serviceable; and in placing minor collections,
arranged on a similar principle, at the command also of the students in
our public schools.
22. In the second place, I shall endeavour to prevail upon all the
younger members of the University who wish to attend the art lectures,
to give at least so much time to manual practice as may enable them to
understand the nature and difficulty of executive skill. The time so
spent will not be lost, even as regards their other studies at the
University, for I will prepare the practical exercises in a double series,
one illustrative of history, the other of natural science. And whether
you are drawing a piece of Greek armour, or a hawk's beak, or a lion's
paw, you will find that the mere necessity of using the hand compels
attention to circumstances which would otherwise have escaped notice,
and fastens them in the memory without farther effort. But were it even
otherwise, and this practical training did really involve some sacrifice
of your time, I do not fear but that it will be justified to you by its felt
results: and I think that general public feeling is also tending to the
admission that accomplished education must include, not only full
command of expression by language, but command of true musical
sound by the voice, and of true form by the hand.
23. While I myself hold this professorship, I shall direct you in these
exercises very definitely to natural history, and to landscape; not only
because in these two branches I am probably able to show you truths
which might be despised by my successors: but because I think the vital
and joyful study of natural history quite the principal element requiring
introduction, not only into University, but into national, education,
from highest to lowest; and I even will risk incurring your ridicule by
confessing one of my fondest dreams, that I may succeed in making
some of you English youths like better to look at a bird than to shoot it;
and even desire to make wild creatures tame, instead of tame creatures

wild. And for the study of landscape, it is, I think, now calculated to be
of use in deeper, if not more important modes, than that of natural
science, for reasons which I will ask you to let me state at some length.
24. Observe first;--no race of men which is entirely bred in wild
country, far from cities, ever enjoys landscape. They may enjoy the
beauty of animals, but scarcely even that: a true peasant cannot