Independents and Royalists, of Papists and Covenanters, of Iconoclasts and Free-thinkers, all offer stirring scenes; and yet, if we want to see on canvas pictures of our past, we must turn to France or Germany for them. I am sorry to say that until lately the Iconoclasts have borne all before them. As, however, the ‘National Association’ has at length consented to allow the discussion of art, and as words are in general precursors of deeds, we may expect some results from our awakened interest in art-matters.

3. ‘What is the influence of academies upon the art of the nation?’

Answer.—Academies have no influence whatever, if the nation itself takes no interest in art, and has no art-education from a general, theoretical, and historical point of view. So long as art is considered a mere luxury, because a house does not keep out cold and wet better, if it be outwardly decorated; so long as it is thought that a parlour need but have red curtains to be a parlour; that our walls may be covered with any description of hideously-shaped, realistically-wrought Chinese or Japanese flowers, if they are only kept in greenish or brownish neutral tints; so long as we fancy that our wainscotings may be bright light, though the paper above be dark; and that a window is admirable, if only provided with a pointed arch, and some trefoil or quatrefoil to keep out as much light as possible; academies can do nothing. So long as we neglect higher esthetical culture and training in our public schools, our academy will but reflect this neglect. In reviewing the past I have throughout endeavoured to show the close connection of art-forms with the general, social, religious, intellectual, and moral conditions of the different nations and periods in which they appeared. It is erroneous to suppose that art has only to treat of straight or waving lines, of triangles, squares, and circles, of imitations of flowers, animals, and men, of nature and nothing but nature. The study of art comprises man in all his thoughts and actions, and has to add to this the phenomena of the whole outer world, from crystallisations to the heavenly vault, studded with innumerable stars at night, or glowing with light and life in colours at day-time. If our academy were to take this to heart, and expand its curriculum so as to have the students taught the beauties of Greek, English, and German poetry, we should not be obliged to turn to foreigners for worthy illustrations of our immortal Shakespeare, Milton, or even Tennyson. The art-historian knows that academies neither produced a Pheidias nor a Praxiteles, neither a Raphael nor an Albert Dürer; neither a Rubens nor a Holbein; neither a Gainsborough nor a Hogarth; neither a Canova nor a Flaxman. For art-academies, as mere outgrowths of fashion, unless rooted in the earnest, artistic spirit of a nation, only foster mannerism, pander to the general bad taste of the wealthy classes, and one-sidedly cultivate portrait-painting, whilst they shut out landscape or historical figure-painting. Academies have rarely encouraged grand ideas; they create a kind of parlour or bed-room art, with nice, but very small, sentiments, water-colour effusions and flower imitations, in which the Chinese surpass us by far. So long as our academy will have great names on its programmes, as nominal lecturers, so called because they do not lecture; so long as it will systematically neglect to teach our rising artists Universal History, Art History, Archæology, Comparative Mythology, Symbolism, Iconography, Esthetics from a higher scientific point, and Psychology with special reference to artistic composition, and so long as these subjects are ignored in our general educational establishments, we shall in vain try to compete at large with other nations, however many isolated great artists we may produce. Artists in all ages reflected in their products the general sentiments of the times in which they lived, and of the people for whom they worked; every page of this book bears out this assertion. Art is a mighty civiliser of humanity and elevates the whole of our earthly existence, for it purifies passions and pacifies our mind. Art is the eternally-active genius of humanity. Let our academy acknowledge this, and it will at least try to imitate the Art Training School at South Kensington, which has continually worked in the direction of enlarging the range of the studies of its students.

4. ‘What is the influence upon society of Decorative Art and Art-workmanship in all household details?’

Answer.—If this question had been asked with an eye to business, we might answer that decorative art makes trade brisk, induces people to buy ornaments, and fills the pockets of dealers in curiosities. But this is not our aim. So long as we fail to look upon art as an earnest and serious study, as important and necessary to our social wellbeing as either ethics or science, the influence of decorative art must be confined to enticing people to plaster their walls with all sorts of China plate, or pay dearly for Japanese trays, screens, or cupboards, because they have not learnt to distinguish between the quaint and the comical, the beautiful and the ugly. Their taste is still on a level with that of untrained children, who have plenty of money in their pockets, do not know what to buy, and rush to purchase the ugliest monstrosities. If half the money that is wasted in these directions were to be devoted to the encouragement of our hard-working rising artists, we might soon boast of still greater successes than we can proudly point to, despite the adverse circumstances under which artists have to labour amongst us. Art with us is still looked upon as an extravagance, a luxury, as it was with the Romans of old, and this produces a craving for oddities. We hang up big china cockatoos, or place big china dogs, or stags with big china antlers, on our hearth-rugs. We have coarse china frogs and lizards, crabs or lobsters, from which we eat our fruit or fish; or a life-like salmon with staring eyes is brought on our table, its back takes off, and we scoop out the real cooked salmon with which its inside is filled. Form of dish, association of ideas, and action of the host are more worthy of anthropophagi than civilised beings of the nineteenth century. So long as art-history and esthetics are not made regular studies, not only in art-schools but also in general educational establishments, and especially ladies’ schools, our national consciousness of art in general and the requirements of our age in particular cannot improve. Art is a branch of human knowledge, ingenuity, and creative force in which ladies, trained to appreciate beauty, might be made better ‘helps,’ than in the kitchen, the pantry, or the larder. The national wealth of France consists in the nation’s superiority in taste and artistic skill. The French arrange a few artificial flowers with an exquisite understanding of the juxtaposition of colours and the combination of forms, and make us pay for a ‘bouquet’ on a bonnet from fifty to sixty francs, whilst the raw material costs from five to six francs; they do the same in terra-cotta, bronze, or iron. So long as everyone with us thinks himself justified in having his own bad taste gratified, because he can pay for it, decorative artists will serve that bad taste in all our household details. Art-history comprises not merely measurements of temples, heights of spires in feet, or of statues in cubits and inches.

We have of late years made gigantic strides in the advancement of street-architecture, though we do not yet know how to create perspective views of artistic beauty; we still indulge too much in mediæval crookedness and unintelligible windings. We still decorate too gaudily, or, falling into the other extreme,