nded on his desire to convey a truth, rather
than to produce a merely beautiful picture; that is to say, to get a
likeness of a man, or of a place; to get some moral principle rightly
stated, or some historical character rightly described, rather than
merely to give pleasure to the eyes. Compare the feeling with which a
Moorish architect decorated an arch of the Alhambra, with that of
Hogarth painting the "Marriage a la Mode," or of Wilkie painting the
"Chelsea Pensioners," and you will at once feel the difference between
Art pursued for pleasure only, and for the sake of some useful principle
or impression.

23. But what you might not so easily discern is, that even when painting
does appear to have been pursued for pleasure only, if ever you find it
rise to any noble level, you will also find that a stern search after
truth has been at the root of its nobleness. You may fancy, perhaps,
that Titian, Veronese, and Tintoret were painters for the sake of
pleasure only: but in reality they were the only painters who ever
sought entirely to master, and who did entirely master, the truths of
light and shade as associated with color, in the noblest of all physical
created things, the human form. They were the only men who ever painted
the human body; all other painters of the great schools are mere
anatomical draughtsmen compared to them; rather makers of maps of the
body, than painters of it. The Venetians alone, by a toil almost
super-human, succeeded at last in obtaining a power almost super-human;
and were able finally to paint the highest visible work of God with
unexaggerated structure, undegraded color, and unaffected gesture. It
seems little to say this; but I assure you it is much to have _done_
this--so much, that no other men but the Venetians ever did it: none of
them ever painted the human body without in some degree caricaturing the
anatomy, forcing the action, or degrading the hue.

24. Now, therefore, the sum of all is, that you who wish to encourage
Art in England have to do two things with it: you must delight in it, in
the first place; and you must get it to serve some serious work, in the
second place. I don't mean by serious, necessarily moral: all that I
mean by serious is in some way or other useful, not merely selfish,
careless, or indolent. I had, indeed, intended before closing my
address, to have traced out a few of the directions in which, as it
seems to me, Art may be seriously and practically se