instance of ornamental utility, out of man's primal aimings after improvement: it was an ancient custom of certain savage tribes, and still is, in some regions of the world, to paint the face and other parts of the body in a strange fantastic fashion; now here, use is evidently the first motive, and ornament the second; the use being to add to the terror of the enemy by a singular appearance. Art the ornamental, in its earliest forms, was not a much higher creation of the human intelligence, than art the useful. But it had two advantages over it, it was less the mere product of necessity, and it was less a mere imitation. These advantages gave it a scope and a variety which the other had not, and they awakened, and to a certain extent disciplined, the imaginative and the poetic. They did not, in any notable degree, bring man nearer to a system on the subject of art; this accomplishment was reserved for a later period. But they sent his vision more appreciatingly and eclectically over the material universe. They did not, perhaps, make him think what he had not before thought, but they made him see what he had not before seen. The spiritual came no nearer to his reflection, but the sensuous came with multiplied revealings to his eyes.

Man and art would continue in this state, up to the period that the priesthood was moulded into a corporation. Art the useful, would be ornamented; art the ornamental, would be adapted to some practical purpose, according to the taste or the wants of the inhabitants of the world. But there would be no separate class of the community, artistically occupied in blending the ornamental with the useful. In the succession of human employments, peasants and shepherds came first; artisans second; and artists in a professional capacity last. Keepers of sheep, and tillers of the ground, were their own artisans, and their own artists. Then arose artisans, a distinct class, occupied solely with supplying the requirements of the useful. When the priesthood arose, one of its choicest schemes would be to convert a portion of these artisans into artists, in the various departments of painting, sculpture, and architecture. It saw, with the quick sagacity that has always distinguished it, that man needed to be dominated by something else than reverence for its mys

terious authority. Fear, from the very paroxysms of anguish and despair that it produces, inevitably conducts to a reaction; as all violent emotions of any description do inevitably conduct. And such reactions, if not provided against, would, in their occasional outbursts, have annihilated the power of the priests. To form a rampart against this danger, the resources of art were called in. Those resources, as I have said, could neither be numerous nor systematic. But the priests increased their number, and gave them a system. The liberal gifts of the people, for the support of religion, enabled the priests to form a special class, whose sole employment was to embellish the temples, and to add lustre, and grace, and pomp, to the externalities of worship. By the formation of this class, they accomplished two objects. They were furnished with an unceasing means of keeping alive the attention, and of exciting the curiosity of the people; and they had placed at their command a multitude of persons directly dependent on them for existence; and directly interested, therefore, in the maintainment of any institution, however absurd, superstitious, or tyrannical. Art, through the operation of this new process, progressed; but it progressed only at the expense of popular morality. As long as art was the natural growth of the community's habits, it had a natural adaptation to, and a natural harmony with, the whole social texture. The moral, the mental, the religious, the physical of man's life, were all interwoven and mutually influential. If the sensuous predominated, still, it did not predominate as an antagonism. But, when the Artist began to work in conjunction with the Priest, all this was changed. Man was torn from the rude simplicity of his manners, and plunged into a gulf of licentiousness. What flattered the passions, what embellished the sensual, was the sole object sought,

-an object easily attained. The Artist, in the midst of this work of degradation, had no mission of good, either conscious or unconscious. He was the subservient tool of absolute masters, whose displeasure was destruction. He was a greater slave than those whom he was helping to deceive; for he stood more immediately under the suspicious, relentless eye of sacerdotal oppression. Art kept improving in his hands, not from any desire that he habi

tually entertained for its improvement; but, from the temptation of reward offered to the more finished execution of the labour entrusted to his ingenuity.' Fear of his employers, and the gold that they gave him, were his only pervading motives; motives altogether opposed to any design for human benefit, if he had been capable of forming it.

The Artist did not become free and individual, till literature and other agencies began to operate on civilization. When the Orator, the Poet, and the Philosopher took distinct and definite spheres, then the Artist also took a distinct and definite sphere. He escaped from sacerdotal control, because the social and intellectual culture that had commenced, and was proceeding, produced a field for his talents, apart from the sacerdotal field. Statues continued to be demanded for the gods; but they were demanded in equal numbers to perpetuate the image, and to honour the name, of the great, the beautiful, and the beloved. Temples were erected as before; but likewise were erected mansions for the wealthy, halls for popular assembly, and theatres for popular amusement. Monuments of national renown and of national pride, tributes to private worth, memorials of domestic affection, all this, and much more, gave employment to the Artist's unfettered energies. That, as a result of all his newly acquired advantages, the Artist imbibed more reverence for his art, is easily supposable. Independent in his existence-sure of the plaudits of his countrymen, if his genius created some notable masterpiece—with rivals on every hand to stimulate his ambition-and with immortal fame as his longed-for inheritance, it is not astonishing that art, immediately after its liberation from the servitude of priestcraft, should take a prodigious developement. And in relation both to the Artist himself and to society, art was characterised by several fresh phases. We have seen that art, the useful, in its primeval condition-and art, the ornamental, the product of art the useful, had no sys

tem.

The adoption of art by the priesthood, gave it a system; but gave it nothing more. The emancipation of art from priestly control, evolved the longing for and the conception of an ideal. And this ideal, for ever floating before the Artist's fancy and impelling his efforts, not

only was a source of the divinest accomplishment in his particular department, whatever it might be, but, by degrees came to be blended with his personal nature, and was thus a moral regenerator as well as an intellectual excitement. And what it was for him, it unconsciously grew to be for those in the midst of whom he laboured. This ideal belongs still more intimately to poetry than to the fine arts; but in the fine arts were its potent effects first felt. And we cannot put too high a value on those effects in countries, such as ancient Greece and Rome, where morality was so vague and unfixed, and religion so utterly misunderstood; the ideal of intellectual beauty fell like the odour of an angel's breath and the shadow of an angel's wing, on many a mind that longed for brighter light, and on many a heart that sighed for purer sympathy. The ideal is a species of mental conscience, and till the moral, spiritual conscience is aroused, with its catholic range and its profound fathomings, this mental conscience is its best representative.

Having thus attempted a historical view of the Artist, I shall now briefly enumerate his principal claims to our gratitude as an Agent of Civilization.

The creations of art have tended immensely to stimulate the literature of all countries. They have done this in different ways. They have done it, by means of that invariable tendency, by which the flourishing condition of any department of human knowledge or effort, improves and impels all other departments. They have done it, by means of that ideal which I have indicated as one of the ultimate evolvements of art. The ideal responds to, and can be substituted for, the spiritualisms of the heart, when these are not yet known or developed, as I have just been affirming. But the ideal has also the inestimable value, that its different fields all throw glory and truth and teaching on each other. The ideal of the Sculptor is expanded by an acquaintance with the ideal of the Poet, and the ideal of the Poet is expanded by an acquaintance with the ideal of the Orator.

The creations of art have stimulated literature in another form; and that is, by the abundance of materials which they afford for giving freshness, variety, and vigour to every species of literary composition. Any of

you who have read extensively, must be aware, that some of the most striking images, some of the most original conceptions, some of the most brilliant passages of our own and of foreign writers, derive their principal charm and power from the tone and colouring which they have borrowed from works of art. Indeed, the metaphors and ideas derived from this source, are nearly as numerous as those derived from external nature. And they are generally of a more effective kind. Not that the objective monuments of human skill can ever be so suggestive, in themselves, as the objective monuments of Divine wisdom. But they are not so continually present to the outward sense; they are accompanied by social features, which the others seldom have; and they carry along with them an association of difficulty from which God's are altogether free. When we contemplate a flower, or a tree, or any other object of nature, we cannot help admiring its faultless symmetry. But flowers and trees are so unceasingly before us, that their familiarity destroys their effect. Whereas, the most commonplace picture or engraving excites a train of fresh thoughts and feelings, because pictures and engravings can only occasionally be the occupants of our attention. Then, again, a flower or a tree is a solitary thing; it has no human interests clinging round it. But, on the contrary, a work of art, however defective in merit, is crowded with human interests. It is an utterance from a dead or a distant fellow-creature to our heart. It is an attempt, successful or unsuccessful, to embody a sentiment common to the Artist, who entertained it, with the millions of humanity. Add to these, also, the other circumstance that I have stated, that of the difference as to difficulty between God's works and the works of man. When we contemplate at midnight the starry sky, when not a cloud veils the bosom of its deep immensity, sensations sublime, holy, pure, overwhelm us with reverence and delight— sensations that gush into grateful praise almost ere we can arrange them into thinkings. Yet the permanent impressions which such contemplations leave, are exceedingly limited. When, again, we contemplate St. Paul's Church at London, or St. Peter's at Rome, our sensations are neither so sublime, so holy, nor so pure as in the