cultivation of the Fine Arts,
Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, to which I may add Music. These high
ministers of the Beautiful and the Noble are, it is plain, special
attendants and handmaids of Religion; but it is equally plain that they
are apt to forget their place, and, unless restrained with a firm hand,
instead of being servants, will aim at becoming principals. Here lies the
advantage, in an ecclesiastical point of view, of their more rudimental
state, I mean of the ancient style of architecture, of Gothic sculpture
and painting, and of what is called Gregorian music, that these inchoate
sciences have so little innate vigour and life in them, that they are in
no danger of going out of their place, and giving the law to Religion. But
the case is very different when genius has breathed upon their natural
elements, and has developed them into what I may call intellectual powers.
When Painting, for example, grows into the fulness of its function as a
simply imitative art, it at once ceases to be a dependant on the Church.
It has an end of its own, and that of earth: Nature is its pattern, and
the object it pursues is the beauty of Nature, even till it becomes an
ideal beauty, but a natural beauty still. It cannot imitate that beauty of
Angels and Saints which it has never seen. At first, indeed, by outlines
and emblems it shadowed out the Invisible, and its want of skill became
the instrument of reverence and modesty; but as time went on and it
attained its full dimensions as an art, it rather subjected Religion to
its own ends than ministered to the ends of Religion, and in its long
galleries and stately chambers, did but mingle adorable figures and sacred
histories with a multitude of earthly, not to say unseemly forms, which
the Art had created, borrowing withal a colouring and a character from
that bad company. Not content with neutral ground for its development, it
was attracted by the sublimity of divine subjects to ambitious and
hazardous essays. Without my saying a word more, you will clearly
understand, Gentlemen, that under these circumstances Religion was bound
to exert itself, that the world might not gain an advantage over it. Put
out of sight the severe teaching of Catholicism in the schools of
Painting, as men now would put it aside in their philosophical studies,
and in no long time you would have the hierarchy of the Church, the
Anchorite and Virgin-martyr, the Confessor and the Doctor, the Angelic