the
poor best of it, by the masterful sight. So that in order to put
before you in your Standard series the best art possible, I am
obliged, even from the very strongest men, to take the portraits,
before I take the idealism. Nay, whatever is best in the great
compositions themselves has depended on portraiture; and the study
necessary to enable you to understand invention will also convince you
that the mind of man never invented a greater thing than the form of
man, animated by faithful life. Every attempt to refine or exalt such
healthy humanity has weakened or caricatured it; or else consists only
in giving it, to please our fancy, the wings of birds, or the eyes of
antelopes. Whatever is truly great in either Greek or Christian art,
is also restrictedly human; and even the raptures of the redeemed
souls who enter "celestemente ballando,"[188] the gate of Angelico's
Paradise, were seen first in the terrestrial, yet most pure, mirth of
Florentine maidens.

I am aware that this cannot but at present appear gravely questionable
to those of my audience who are strictly cognizant of the phases of
Greek art; for they know that the moment of its decline is accurately
marked, by its turning from abstract form to portraiture. But the
reason of this is simple. The progressive course of Greek art was in
subduing monstrous conceptions to natural ones; it did this by general
laws; it reached absolute truth of generic human form, and if its
ethical force had remained, would have advanced into healthy
portraiture. But at the moment of change the national life ended in
Greece; and portraiture, there, meant insult to her religion, and
flattery to her tyrants. And her skill perished, not because she
became true in sight, but because she became vile in heart....

But I have told you enough, it seems to me, at least to-day, of this
function of art in recording fact; let me now finally, and with all
distinctness possible to me, state to you its main business of
all;--its service in the actual uses of daily life.

You are surprised, perhaps, to hear me call this its main business.
That is indeed so, however. The giving brightness to picture is much,
but the giving brightness to life more. And remember, were it as
patterns only, you cannot, without the realities, have the pictures.
_You cannot have a landscape by Turner without a country for him to
paint; you cannot have a portrait by Titian, without a man to be
pourtrayed_. I need n