was no leader, and the ‘diggers,’ as they called us, fell asunder.  And I felt that if there was enough spirit amongst the young men to go out to such work as road-making for the sake of a noble ideal of life, I could from them create an artistic movement that might change, as it has changed, the face of England.  So I sought them out—­leader they would call me—­but there was no leader:  we were all searchers only and we were bound to each other by noble friendship and by noble art.  There was none of us idle:  poets most of us, so ambitious were we:  painters some of us, or workers in metal or modellers, determined that we would try and create for ourselves beautiful work:  for the handicraftsman beautiful work, for those who love us poems and pictures, for those who love us not epigrams and paradoxes and scorn.

Well, we have done something in England and we will do something more.  Now, I do not want you, believe me, to ask your brilliant young men, your beautiful young girls, to go out and make a road on a swamp for any village in America, but I think you might each of you have some art to practise.

* * * * *

We must have, as Emerson said, a mechanical craft for our culture, a basis for our higher accomplishments in the work of our hands—­the uselessness of most people’s hands seems to me one of the most unpractical things.  ’No separation from labour can be without some loss of power or truth to the seer,’ says Emerson again.  The heroism which would make on us the impression of Epaminondas must be that of a domestic conqueror.  The hero of the future is he who shall bravely and gracefully subdue this Gorgon of fashion and of convention.

When you have chosen your own part, abide by it, and do not weakly try and reconcile yourself with the world.  The heroic cannot be the common nor the common the heroic.  Congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age.

And lastly, let us remember that art is the one thing which Death cannot harm.  The little house at Concord may be desolate, but the wisdom of New England’s Plato is not silenced nor the brilliancy of that Attic genius dimmed:  the lips of Longfellow are still musical for us though his dust be turning into the flowers which he loved:  and as it is with the greater artists, poet and philosopher and songbird, so let it be with you.

LECTURE TO ART STUDENTS

Delivered to the Art students of the Royal Academy at their Club in Golden Square, Westminster, on June 30, 1883.  The text is taken from the original manuscript.

In the lecture which it is my privilege to deliver before you to-night I do not desire to give you any abstract definition of beauty at all.  For, we who are working in art cannot accept any theory of beauty in exchange for beauty itself, and, so far from desiring to isolate it in a formula appealing to the intellect, we, on the contrary, seek to materialise it in a form that gives joy to the soul through the senses.  We want to create it, not to define it.  The definition should follow the work:  the work should not adapt itself to the definition.