power of the Furies and the Harpies mingled, enraging, and polluting; that so long as you looked at it, no perception of pure or beautiful art was possible for you.  Suppose I were to tell you that!  What would be the use?  Would you look at Gustave Dore less?  Rather, more, I fancy.  On the other hand, I could soon put you into good humour with me, if I chose.  I know well enough what you like, and how to praise it to your better liking.  I could talk to you about moonlight, and twilight, and spring flowers, and autumn leaves, and the Madonnas of Raphael—­how motherly! and the Sibyls of Michael Angelo—­how majestic! and the Saints of Angelico—­how pious! and the Cherubs of Correggio—­how delicious!  Old as I am, I could play you a tune on the harp yet, that you would dance to.  But neither you nor I should be a bit the better or wiser; or, if we were, our increased wisdom could be of no practical effect.  For, indeed, the arts, as regards teachableness, differ from the sciences also in this, that their power is founded not merely on facts which can be communicated, but on dispositions which require to be created.  Art is neither to be achieved by effort of thinking, nor explained by accuracy of speaking.  It is the instinctive and necessary result of power, which can only be developed through the mind of successive generations, and which finally burst into life under social conditions as slow of growth as the faculties they regulate.  Whole aeras of mighty history are summed, and the passions of dead myriads are concentrated, in the existence of a noble art; and if that noble art were among us, we should feel it and rejoice; not caring in the least to hear lectures on it; and since it is not among us, be assured we have to go back to the root of it, or, at least, to the place where the stock of it is yet alive, and the branches began to die.

And now, may I have your pardon for pointing out, partly with reference to matters which are at this time of greater moment than the arts—­that if we undertook such recession to the vital germ of national arts that have decayed, we should find a more singular arrest of their power in Ireland than in any other European country.  For in the eighth century Ireland possessed a school of art in her manuscripts and sculpture, which, in many of its qualities—­apparently in all essential qualities of decorative invention—­was quite without rival; seeming as if it might have advanced to the highest triumphs in architecture and in painting.  But there was one fatal flaw in its nature, by which it was stayed, and stayed with a conspicuousness of pause to which there is no parallel:  so that, long ago, in tracing the progress of European schools from infancy to strength, I chose for the students of Kensington, in a lecture since published, two characteristic examples of early art, of equal skill; but in the one case, skill which was progressive—­in the other, skill which was at pause.  In the one case, it was work receptive of correction—­hungry for correction; and in the other, work which inherently rejected correction.  I chose for them a corrigible Eve, and an incorrigible Angel, and I grieve to say[236] that the incorrigible Angel was also an Irish angel!