of them, Art is, or should be, an agent _in the
production_ of noble life, and not merely an executant dependent upon
and presupposing its existence.

As some evidence of this intention, I may adduce the following
conclusion from an unpublished Report of the Committee to the Members
of the Society. 'In conclusion, the Committee would venture for a
moment to take their stand upon the higher plane of the Society, and to
say a word or two upon the cause which in the opinion of the Committee
constitutes the claim of the Society to attention and support. For a
small body of artists to band themselves together, simply to produce
and to exhibit objects of art for an age which is not indeed
essentially inartistic, but which, by the accident of the failure of
the imagination to grasp and mould its dominant realities, has not had
revealed to itself the splendour of its opportunities, or of the
meaning of Beauty in association with Industry and Science--for a small
body of Artists to band themselves together for such a purpose is
indeed something; but it is to leave unfulfilled, unessayed, the main
function, in this and every age, of all great Art and of all great
Artists. Such Art and such Artists would and should, whilst still
producing, as best they may, if not "things of immortal Beauty," at
least "things of their own," strive at the same time to understand the
true drift and possible Ideal of the Age in which they live. It is the
function of an Artist to divine the Ideal of an age, and to express it
in manifold Form. The Ideal of the present age has been neglected by
him. The actuality has been left as an actuality, unredeemed by ideas,
to those whose sole business it is to carry on, and to constitute, the
actuality of the age. But there is above and beyond every Actuality an
Ideal upon which it can and should be modelled. It is this Ideal which
it is the function of the Artist--which it is the function of this
Society--to discover and to express, in great things as in small, in
small as in great: and the Ideal, expressed, is then as a great Light
to those who sit in darkness; it is a light towards which the soul of
Actuality turns; it is that which, aspired to, gives to an age dignity
and immortality, and converts the work of the hand and brain from work
that is sordid and mean, to work that is imaginative and noble.'

But the claim does not rest on unpublished records alone. This I think
will be apparent if attention be g