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 brick-bats 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 meet ing 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 mathe matics 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.