“ET FOLIUM EJUS NON DEFLUET,
    ET OMNIA, QUAECUNQUE FACIET, PROSPERABUNTUR."[182]

  [172] Turner.

  [173] The tool of the engraver on copper.

  [174] See Paradise Lost, 6. 207 ff., and Hesiod’s Theogony, 676 ff.

  [175] Henry V, 4. 3. 29.

  [176] Luke ii, 14.

  [177] “Forward go the banners of the King,” or more commonly, “The
  royal banners forward go.”  One of the seven great hymns of the Church. 
  See the Episcopal Hymnal, 94.

  [178] Dante, Inferno, 3. 60.  “Who made through cowardice the great
  refusal.”  Longfellow’s tr.

  [179] Lyridas, 109.

  [180] Nelson’s famous signal at Trafalgar.

  [181] Milton’s Il Penseroso, 170 ff.

  [182] Psalms i, 3.

THE RELATION OF ART TO MORALS

And now I pass to the arts with which I have special concern, in which, though the facts are exactly the same, I shall have more difficulty in proving my assertion, because very few of us are as cognizant of the merit of painting as we are of that of language; and I can only show you whence that merit springs, after having thoroughly shown you in what it consists.  But, in the meantime, I have simply to tell you, that the manual arts are as accurate exponents of ethical state, as other modes of expression; first, with absolute precision, of that of the workman; and then with precision, disguised by many distorting influences, of that of the nation to which it belongs.

And, first, they are a perfect exponent of the mind of the workman:  but, being so, remember, if the mind be great or complex, the art is not an easy book to read; for we must ourselves possess all the mental characters of which we are to read the signs.  No man can read the evidence of labour who is not himself laborious, for he does not know what the work cost:  nor can he read the evidence of true passion if he is not passionate; nor of gentleness if he is not gentle:  and the most subtle signs of fault and weakness of character he can only judge by having had the same faults to fight with.  I myself, for instance, know impatient work, and tired work, better than most critics, because I am myself always impatient, and often tired:—­so also, the patient and indefatigable touch of a mighty master becomes more wonderful to me than to others.  Yet, wonderful in no mean measure it will be to you all, when I make it manifest;—­and as soon as we begin our real work, and you have learned what it is to draw a true line, I shall be able to make manifest to you,—­and undisputably so,—­that the day’s work of a man like Mantegna or Paul Veronese consists of an unfaltering, uninterrupted, succession of movements of the hand more precise than those of the finest fencer:  the pencil leaving one point and arriving at another, not only with unerring precision at the