resulting from my own teaching, I am more answerable than most men.
Having spoken earnestly against painting without thinking, I now find
our exhibitions decorated with works of students who think without
painting; and our books illustrated by scratched wood-cuts, representing
very ordinary people, who are presumed to be interesting in the picture,
because the text tells a story about them. Of this least lively form of
modern sensational work, however, I shall have to speak on other
grounds; meantime, I am concerned only with its manner; its incontinence
of line and method, associated with the slightness of its real thought,
and morbid acuteness of irregular sensation; ungoverned all, and one of
the external and slight phases of that beautiful Liberty which we are
proclaiming as essence of gospel to all the earth, and shall presently,
I suppose, when we have had enough of it here, proclaim also to the
stars, with invitation to them _out_ of their courses.

84. "But you asked us for 'free-heart' outlines, and told us not to be
slaves, only thirty days ago."[75]

Inconsistent that I am! so I did. But as there are attractions, and
attractions; originalities, and originalities, there are liberties, and
liberties. Yonder torrent, crystal-clear, and arrow-swift, with its
spray leaping into the air like white troops of fawns, is free, I think.
Lost, yonder, amidst bankless, boundless marsh--soaking in slow
shallowness, as it will, hither and thither, listless, among the
poisonous reeds and unresisting slime--it is free also. You may choose
which liberty you will, and restraint of voiceful rock, or the dumb and
edgeless shore of darkened sand. Of that evil liberty, which men are now
glorifying,--and of its opposite continence--which is the clasp and
[Greek: chrusee perone] of Aglaia's cestus--we will try to find out
something in next chapter.[76]

FOOTNOTES:

[71] _Art Journal_, vol. iv., pp. 177-8. June 1865.--ED.

[72] Wornum's "Epochs of Painting." I have continual occasion to quarrel
with my friend on these matters of critical question; but I have deep
respect for his earnest and patient research, and we remain friends--on
the condition that I am to learn much from him, and he (though it may be
questionable whose fault that is) nothing from me.

[73] Prov. xx, 27.

[74] As I was preparing these sheets for press, I chanced on a passage
in a novel of Champfleury's, in which one young student is encouraging
another i