architecture, and would have building exclusively of wood and stone.

Thoroughly British in this respect, indeed, is Ruskin's mind. The leading blemish in his writings is this one-sidedness and narrowness. His vision is clear and accurate; it is too generally narrow in range. His generalizations of principle and rule are hence unsound and dangerous. The Christian view of all dutiful occupation so well and truly given in George Herbert's familiar lyric, which glorifies even servile labors, which hallows all toil and makes the meanest work divine, is too broad for Ruskin; and the Christian doctrine of universal human brotherhood which ranges beyond narrow seas and makes the world its field of view and of effort, far out-reaches his mental grasp. But this very narrowness and particularity may help sometimes to a keener, minuter discernment, and bring into view what a broader range would confuse or dim. Even the unsound generalizations pushed in directions not generally observed to be open, are often suggestive.

This, in fact, we believe to be a characteristic feature of these lectures. The observations, the recognitions of fact, are the gifts of a vision eminently keen and accurate. His high attainments in art-skill and art-study, have lifted Ruskin to an eminence from which his patient, truth-loving gaze has been enabled to perceive what has transcended the world's eye hitherto. And his warm, sympathetic nature which prompts him to communicate to others what he himself has gathered of value, has put him on applications and extensions of his particular observations in ways and to fields of thought and practice which are rich and precious as they are new and admirable.

We propose to gather up these newer observations in art, and these applications and generalizations of them which appear to be of value, that we may help turn them to the best account for the benefit of scienee and of art, as also of general culture. We shall best accomplish our object as we distribute our gatherings into the three separate fields of 1. The proper nature and function of Art; 2. The Relations of Art; and 3. The Method in Art.

We should, however, precede this interpretation of the lectures before us with the indication of the special occasion and design which have prompted and shaped them. As already stated, they are the first lectures given from the new chair of Fine Art in the University of Oxford. The function of this new Professorship is stated to be "to establish both a practical and critical school of fine art for English gentlemen; practical, so that if they draw at all they may draw rightly; and critical, so that they may both be directed to such works of existing art as will best reward their study; and enabled to make the exercise of their patronage of living artists delightful to themselves by their consciousness of its justice, and to the utmost beneficial to their country, by being given only to the men who deserve it." But the peculiar condition and character of Englishmen impose limits on the field of art-instruction, in two specified particulars :-first, Englishmen can "never excel in decorative design," because "they have too much to think of, and they think of it too anxiously;" secondly, Englishmen can "never be successful in the highest fields of ideal or theological art," because of their characteristic "delight in the forms of burlesque which are connected in some degree with the foulness in evil." But Englishmen may hope to succeed in portraiture, which is ranked as the highest department of art, as "whatever is best in the great compositions depended on portraiture ;" and also in representation of domestic life, of animal life, and of landscape. For accomplishing his aim Professor Ruskin proposes to arrange an educational series of examples of excellent art from which shall be severally excluded all second-rate, superfluous, and "even attractively varied examples," the greater number of which shall not be costly, many of them only engravings or photographs, and to induce the attendants upon his lectures" to give at least so much time to manual practice as may enable them to understand the nature and difficulty of executive skill."

I. The proper nature and function of Art.

We must not expect from Professor Ruskin the exactest precision in his definitions. A thorough logical training unhap

pily is a sad defect as much in British schools as elsewhere; and conclusions and generalizations must therefore be taken with some caution. Here indeed the greatest criticism on Ruskin's writings fastens itself. Principles are laid down as universal and necessary, which, thoroughly examined, are but partial. Every where this defect appears, as we shall sufficiently exemplify.

Art is formally defined to be "human labor regulated by human design." But this definition includes all rational endeavor, even the lowest industrial pursuit and most menial work. Fine art, which it is the special aim of the new pro fessorship to cultivate and teach, seems to be restricted to "the production of beautiful things;" while yet, in a vague way, that art is recognized as "properly fine,' which demands the full faculties of heart and intellect."

The fine arts, further, it is claimed, are "not necessarily imitative or representative, for their essence is being 'Tepi Téveσ-occupied in the actual production of beautiful form or color." This recognition of the creative function of true art shows Ruskin's wide departure from the current teachings, and merits emphatic mention. The conception of art as only imitative, which seems to have originated in an erroneous interpretation of a rather loose remark of Aristotle in regard to poetry, we conceive, utterly mistakes the true nature of art, and degrades and hampers it. The error has been well-nigh universally prevalent, and even Ruskin himself is misled by it, as where he makes "likeness" an essential thing in the graphic arts' so called, and coördinate with skill and beauty. The truth is, that just so far as art is merely imitative, just so far as it merely repeats from a copy, it is as purely mechanical as photography, and is as wanting in that free creative power which enters into the very essence of true art.

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Still further, Ruskin conceives of art as essentially expressive. And for this view of art, which pervades all his conceptions of it, we desire to render him our most grateful acknowl. edgments. No service he has rendered to art and culture, great and various as we deem it to be, can be compared with this of indicating and vindicating this feature as entering into the very essence of art. And we commend the following

sentence to every teacher and every pupil in every department of liberal culture as worthy of their profoundest and most careful consideration, as pregnant with meaning and fraught with the most important bearings on all teaching and study. "Not only with this, of which it is my functien to show you the laws, but much more with the art of all men, which you came here chiefly to learn-that of language, the chief vices of education have arisen from the one great fallacy of supposing that noble language is a communicable trick of grammar and accent, instead of simply the careful expression of right thought." In like manner, "all right human song is the finished expression by art of the joy or grief of noble persons for right causes."

Once more, Ruskin's view of art is radically and thoroughly pervaded with the conviction that it is essentially an exponent of moral states. This moral element in true art his previous works, particularly his "Modern Painters," have nobly recognized; and to him eminently is due the glory of redeeming art from the low and most unworthy conceptions of it which . Burke and Jeffrey have promulgated and made predominant in English literature;-the former resolving all beauty into sensuous impression, and the latter into mere accidental association.

In accordance with this view of art, as expressive ever of moral states, he insists that the arts are perfect exponents immediately of the mind of the workman, and then of that of the nation to which he belongs. He admits that "many of the strong masters had deep faults of character;" but he claims that "their faults share in their work." "All good has its origin in good, never in evil;" "the fact of either literature or painting being truly fine of their kind, whatever their mistaken aim or partial error, is proof of their noble origin" "if there is indeed sterling value in the thing done, it has come of a sterling worth in the soul that did it." High, strong teaching is this; but it comes from a true observation, if that observation be, as it doubtless is, narrowed to but a part of the field. The truth observed is strongly set; even the manual execution, he claims, to say nothing of the imaginative design of a great painter which seems at first

view to involve more immediately and fully an ethical spirit in intimate sympathy with the truth of things as they are traced by creative goodness and purity, and bear the traces of his pure character-the execution of a great painter presupposes a physical soundness which can come only from a fine race, and an incorrupt, moral person. As he bids us realize the unfaltering, uninterrupted succession of movements of the hand in a great painter, "the muscular precision, and the intellectual strain," the "muscular firmness and subtlety, and the instantaneously selective and ordinant energy of the brain, sustained all day long not only without fatigue, but with a visible joy in the exertion, like that which an eagle seems to take in the wave of his wings," he forcibly asks us to consider "what sort of an ethical state of body and mind that means!—ethic through ages past! what fineness of race there must be to get it, what exquisite balance and symmetry of the vital powers!" and then "determine whether a manhood like that is consistent with any viciousness of soul, with any mean anxiety, any gnawing lust, any wretchedness of spite or remorse, any consciousness of rebellion against law of God or man, or any actual, though unconscious, violation of even the least law to which obedience is essential for the glory of life and the pleasing of its Giver." "So far from art being immoral," he insists, "little else except art is moral; life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality; and for the words 'good' and' wicked,' used of men, you may almost substitute the words Makers' or 'Destroyers.""

Pushing this view of art as essentially ethical in its grounds, and as the outgrowth not of underived, independent, individual excellence and achievement, but the exponent of a race or nation, he instructs his pupils as the things that he has first and last to tell them, "that the fine arts are not to be learned by Locomotion, but by making the homes we live in lovely, and by staying in them; that the fine arts are not to be learned by Competition, but by doing our quiet best in our own way; that the fine arts are not to be learned by Exhibition, but by doing what is right, and making what is honest, whether it be exhibited or not, and, for the sum of all, that men must paint and build neither for pride nor for money, but