“Monotonous to paint
  Those endless cloisters and eternal aisles
  With the same series, Virgin, Babe, and Saint,
  With the same cold, calm, beautiful regard.”

Even with this there is not associated a melancholy feeling alone; for, although the object was mistaken, yet there is evinced a consciousness of purpose definite and most elevated; and again, we must remember, as a great cause of this effect, that the Arts were, for the most part, cleric, and not laic, or at least were under the predominant influence of the clergy, who were the most important patrons by far, and their houses the safest receptacles for the works of the great painter.

The modern artist does not retire to monasteries, or practise discipline; but he may show his participation in the same high feeling by a firm attachment to truth in every point of representation, which is the most just method.  For how can good be sought by evil means, or by falsehood, or by slight in any degree?  By a determination to represent the thing and the whole of the thing, by training himself to the deepest observation of its fact and detail, enabling himself to reproduce, as far as possible, nature herself, the painter will best evince his share of faith.

It is by this attachment to truth in its most severe form that the followers of the Arts have to show that they share in the peculiar character of the present age,—­a humility of knowledge, a diffidence of attainment; for, as Emerson has well observed,

  “The time is infected with Hamlet’s unhappiness,—­
      ‘Sicklied o’er with the the pale cast of thought.’

Is this so bad then?  Sight is the last thing to be pitied.  Would we be blind?  Do we fear lest we should outsee nature and God, and drink truth dry?”

It has been said that there is presumption in this movement of the modern school, a want of deference to established authorities, a removing of ancient landmarks.  This is best answered by the profession that nothing can be more humble than the pretension to the observation of facts alone, and the truthful rendering of them.  If we are not to depart from established principles, how are we to advance at all?  Are we to remain still?  Remember, no thing remains still; that which does not advance falls backward.  That this movement is an advance, and that it is of nature herself, is shown by its going nearer to truth in every object produced, and by its being guided by the very principles the ancient painters followed, as soon as they attained the mere power of representing an object faithfully.  These principles are now revived, not from them, though through their example, but from nature herself.