The Two Paths | Page 4

energy of virtue displayed by the despisers of art.
Among all the soldiers to whom you owe your victories in the Crimea,
and your avenging in the Indies, to none are you bound by closer bonds
of gratitude than to the men who have been born and bred among those
desolate Highland moors. And thus you have the differences in capacity
and circumstance between the two nations, and the differences in result
on the moral habits of two nations, put into the most significant--the
most palpable--the most brief opposition. Out of the peat cottage come
faith, courage, self- sacrifice, purity, and piety, and whatever else is
fruitful in the work of Heaven; out of the ivory palace come treachery,
cruelty, cowardice, idolatry, bestiality,--whatever else is fruitful in the
work of Hell.
But the difficulty does not close here. From one instance, of however
great apparent force, it would be wholly unfair to gather any general
conclusion--wholly illogical to assert that because we had once found
love of art connected with moral baseness, the love of art must be the
general root of moral baseness; and equally unfair to assert that,
because we had once found neglect of art coincident with nobleness of
disposition, neglect of art must be always the source or sign of that
nobleness. But if we pass from the Indian peninsula into other countries
of the globe; and from our own recent experience, to the records of
history, we shall still find one great fact fronting us, in stern
universality--namely, the apparent connection of great success in art
with subsequent national degradation. You find, in the first place, that
the nations which possessed a refined art were always subdued by those
who possessed none: you find the Lydian subdued by the Mede; the
Athenian by the Spartan; the Greek by the Roman; the Roman by the
Goth; the Burgundian by the Switzer: but you find, beyond this--that
even where no attack by any external power has accelerated the
catastrophe of the state, the period in which any given people reach
their highest power in art is precisely that in which they appear to sign
the warrant of their own ruin; and that, from the moment in which a
perfect statue appears in Florence, a perfect picture in Venice, or a
perfect fresco in Rome, from that hour forward, probity, industry, and
courage seem to be exiled from their walls, and they perish in a
sculpturesque paralysis, or a many-coloured corruption.
But even this is not all. As art seems thus, in its delicate form, to be one

of the chief promoters of indolence and sensuality,--so, I need hardly
remind you, it hitherto has appeared only in energetic manifestation
when it was in the service of superstition. The four greatest
manifestations of human intellect which founded the four principal
kingdoms of art, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, and Italian, were
developed by the strong excitement of active superstition in the
worship of Osiris, Belus, Minerva, and the Queen of Heaven. Therefore,
to speak briefly, it may appear very difficult to show that art has ever
yet existed in a consistent and thoroughly energetic school, unless it
was engaged in the propagation of falsehood, or the encouragement of
vice.
And finally, while art has thus shown itself always active in the service
of luxury and idolatry, it has also been strongly directed to the
exaltation of cruelty. A nation which lives a pastoral and innocent life
never decorates the shepherd's staff or the plough-handle, but races
who live by depredation and slaughter nearly always bestow exquisite
ornaments on the quiver, the helmet, and the spear.
Does it not seem to you, then, on all these three counts, more than
questionable whether we are assembled here in Kensington Museum to
any good purpose? Might we not justly be looked upon with suspicion
and fear, rather than with sympathy, by the innocent and unartistical
public? Are we even sure of ourselves? Do we know what we are about?
Are we met here as honest people? or are we not rather so many
Catilines assembled to devise the hasty degradation of our country, or,
like a conclave of midnight witches, to summon and send forth, on new
and unexpected missions, the demons of luxury, cruelty, and
superstition?
I trust, upon the whole, that it is not so: I am sure that Mr. Redgrave
and Mr. Cole do not at all include results of this kind in their
conception of the ultimate objects of the institution which owes so
much to their strenuous and well-directed exertions. And I have put this
painful question before you, only that we may face it thoroughly, and,
as I hope, out-face it. If you will give it a little sincere attention this
evening, I trust we may find sufficiently good