feet long by 80 broad. And I am thankful to have
lived in an age when I could see this thing so done.

Considering, then, our shipping, under the three principal types of
fishing-boat, collier, and ship of the line, as the great glory of this
age; and the "New Forest" of mast and yard that follows the windings of
the Thames, to be, take it all in all, a more majestic scene, I don't
say merely than any of our streets or palaces as they now are, but even
than the best that streets and palaces can generally be; it has often
been a matter of serious thought to me how far this chiefly substantial
thing done by the nation ought to be represented by the art of the
nation; how far our great artists ought seriously to devote themselves
to such perfect painting of our ships as should reveal to later
generations--lost perhaps in clouds of steam and floating troughs of
ashes--the aspect of an ancient ship of battle under sail.

To which, I fear, the answer must be sternly this: That no great art
ever was, or can be, employed in the careful imitation of the work of
man as its principal subject. That is to say, art will not bear to be
reduplicated. A ship is a noble thing, and a cathedral a noble thing,
but a painted ship or a painted cathedral is not a noble thing. Art
which reduplicates art is necessarily second-rate art. I know no
principle more irrefragably authoritative than that which I had long ago
occasion to express: "All noble art is the expression of man's delight
in God's work; not in his own."

"How!" it will be asked, "Are Stanfield, Isabey, and Prout necessarily
artists of the second order because they paint ships and buildings
instead of trees and clouds?" Yes, necessarily of the second order; so
far as they paint ships rather than sea, and so far as they paint
buildings rather than the natural light, and color, and work of years
upon those buildings. For, in this respect, a ruined building is a noble
subject, just as far as man's work has therein been subdued by nature's;
and Stanfield's chief dignity is his being a painter less of shipping
than of the seal of time or decay upon shipping.[N] For a wrecked ship,
or shattered boat, is a noble subject, while a ship in full sail, or a
perfect boat, is an ignoble one; not merely because the one is by
reason of its ruin more picturesque than the other, but because it is a
nobler act in man to meditate upon Fate as it conquers his work, than
upon that work itself.