Lectures on Art | Page 9

see the
beauty of cattle; but only qualities expressive of their serviceableness. I
waive discussion of this to-day; permit my assertion of it, under my
confident guarantee of future proof. Landscape can only be enjoyed by
cultivated persons; and it is only by music, literature, and painting, that
cultivation can be given. Also, the faculties which are thus received are
hereditary; so that the child of an educated race has an innate instinct
for beauty, derived from arts practised hundreds of years before its
birth. Now farther note this, one of the loveliest things in human nature.
In the children of noble races, trained by surrounding art, and at the
same time in the practice of great deeds, there is an intense delight in
the landscape of their country as memorial; a sense not taught to them,
nor teachable to any others; but, in them, innate; and the seal and
reward of persistence in great national life;--the obedience and the
peace of ages having extended gradually the glory of the revered
ancestors also to the ancestral land; until the Motherhood of the dust,
the mystery of the Demeter from whose bosom we came, and to whose
bosom we return, surrounds and inspires, everywhere, the local awe of
field and fountain; the sacredness of landmark that none may remove,
and of wave that none may pollute; while records of proud days, and of
dear persons, make every rock monumental with ghostly inscription,
and every path lovely with noble desolateness.
25. Now, however checked by lightness of temperament, the instinctive
love of landscape in us has this deep root, which, in your minds, I will
pray you to disencumber from whatever may oppress or mortify it, and
to strive to feel with all the strength of your youth that a nation is only
worthy of the soil and the scenes that it has inherited, when, by all its
acts and arts, it is making them more lovely for its children.
And now, I trust, you will feel that it is not in mere yielding to my own

fancies that I have chosen, for the first three subjects in your
educational series, landscape scenes;--two in England, and one in
France,--the association of these being not without purpose:--and for
the fourth Albert Dürer's dream of the Spirit of Labour. And of the
landscape subjects, I must tell you this much. The first is an engraving
only; the original drawing by Turner was destroyed by fire twenty years
ago. For which loss I wish you to be sorry, and to remember, in
connection with this first example, that whatever remains to us of
possession in the arts is, compared to what we might have had if we
had cared for them, just what that engraving is to the lost drawing. You
will find also that its subject has meaning in it which will not be
harmful to you. The second example is a real drawing by Turner, in the
same series, and very nearly of the same place; the two scenes are
within a quarter of a mile of each other. It will show you the character
of the work that was destroyed. It will show you, in process of time,
much more; but chiefly, and this is my main reason for choosing both,
it will be a permanent expression to you of what English landscape was
once;--and must, if we are to remain a nation, be again.
I think it farther right to tell you, for otherwise you might hardly pay
regard enough to work apparently so simple, that by a chance which is
not altogether displeasing to me, this drawing, which it has become, for
these reasons, necessary for me to give you, is--not indeed the best I
have, (I have several as good, though none better)--but, of all I have,
the one I had least mind to part with.
The third example is also a Turner drawing--a scene on the
Loire--never engraved. It is an introduction to the series of the Loire,
which you have already; it has in its present place a due concurrence
with the expressional purpose of its companions; and though small, it is
very precious, being a faultless, and, I believe, unsurpassable example
of water-colour painting.
Chiefly, however, remember the object of these three first examples is
to give you an index to your truest feelings about European, and
especially about your native landscape, as it is pensive and historical;
and so far as you yourselves make any effort at its representation, to

give you a motive for fidelity in handwork more animating than any
connected with mere success in the art itself.
26. With respect to actual methods of practice, I will not incur the
responsibility of determining them for you. We will take Lionardo's
treatise on painting for