If you care to give your class a word directly from me, say to
them that they will find it well, throughout life, never to trouble
themselves about what they ought _not_ to do, but about what they
_ought_ to do. The condemnation given from the Judgment
Throne--most solemnly described--is all for the _undones_ and not
for the _dones_. People are perpetually afraid of doing wrong; but
unless they are doing its reverse energetically, they do it all day
long, and the degree does not matter. Make your young hearers
resolve to be honest in their work in this life. Heaven will take
care of them for the other."

That was all he could say: he did not _know_ there was another life: he
_hoped_ there was: and yet, if he were not a saint or a Christian, was
there any man in the world who was nearer to the kingdom of Heaven than
this stubborn heretic?

His heretical attitude was singular. He was just as far removed from
adopting the easy antagonism of science to religion as from siding with
religion against science. In a paper singularly interesting--and in his
biography important--on the "Nature and Authority of Miracle," read to
the Metaphysical Society (February 11, 1873), he tried to clear up his
position and to state a qualified belief in the supernatural.

With that year expired the term for which he had been elected to the
Slade Professorship, and in January 1873 he was re-elected. In his first
three years he had given five courses of lectures designed to introduce
an encyclopaedic review and reconstruction of all he had to say upon art.
Beginning with general principles, he had proceeded to their application
in history, by tracing certain phases of Greek sculpture, and by
contrasting the Greek and the Gothic spirit as shown in the treatment of
landscape, from which he went on to the study of early engraving. The
application of his principles to theory was made in the course on
Science and Art ("The Eagle's Nest"). Now, on his re-election, he
proceeded to take up these two sides of his subject, and to illustrate
this view of the right way to apply science to art, by a course on
Birds, in Nature, Art and Mythology, and next year by a study of Alpine
forms. The historical side was continued with lectures on Niccola Pisano
and early Tuscan sculpture, and in 1874 with an important, though
unpublished, course on Florentine Art.

It is to this cycle of lectures that we must look for th