ilderment, the differences to be
seen in the past itself, between school and school, and one age and
another, may lead him to doubt "whether Art be not indeed an ephemeral
thing, a mere efflorescence of the human intelligence, an isolated
development, incapable of organic growth." To such doubts, comes the
reassuring answer: "That Art is fed by forces that lie in the depth of
our nature, and which are as old as man himself; of which therefore we
need not doubt the durability; and to the question whether Art with all
its blossoms has but one root, the answer we shall see to be: Assuredly
it has; for its outward modes of expression are many and various, but
its underlying vital motives are the same."

The new President concluded his first Discourse with an eloquent plea
for sincerity in Art: "Without sincerity of emotion no gift, however
facile and specious, will avail you to win the lasting sympathies of
men"--a truth which perhaps needs more repeating to-day than ever it
did!

In the second Discourse (December 10th, 1881), we are called upon to
consider that other question which has so often perplexed the artist,
especially the English artist, in whom the moral sentiment is apt to
take a threatening form on occasion: "What is the relation in which Art
stands to Morals and to Religion?"

For his reply, Leighton took in turn the two contentions: one, that the
first duty of all artistic productions is the inculcation of a moral
lesson, if not indeed of a Christian truth; the other, that Art is
altogether independent of ethics. His conclusion is the only sagacious
and sane one: that whilst Art in itself is indeed independent of ethics,
yet is there no error so deadly as to deny that "the moral complexion,
the ethos, of the artist does in truth tinge every work of his hand, and
fashion, in silence, but with the certainty of fate, the course and
current of his whole career." The steps that lead irresistibly to this
conclusion, are very clearly indicated in the course of this Discourse;
and the more convincingly, because the speaker is himself so sympathetic
to the religious inspiration of Italian art, on the one hand, and to its
merely natural aesthetic growth on the other.

[Illustration: A STUDY IN OILS]

"The language of Art," he said then, "is not the appointed vehicle of
ethic truths;... On the other hand, there is a field in which she has no
rival. We have within us the faculty for a range of emotion, of
exqui