utward appearances of things. And, for
many reasons, I think it best to begin with imitative Sculpture; that
being defined as _the art which, by the musical disposition of masses,
imitates anything of which the imitation is justly pleasant to us; and
does so in accordance with structural laws having due reference to the
materials employed_.

So that you see our task will involve the immediate inquiry what the
things are of which the imitation is justly pleasant to us: what, in few
words,--if we are to be occupied in the making of graven images,--we
ought to like to make images _of_. Secondly, after having determined its
subject, what degree of imitation or likeness we ought to desire in our
graven image; and, lastly, under what limitations demanded by structure
and material, such likeness may be obtained.

These inquiries I shall endeavor to pursue with you to some practical
conclusion, in my next four Lectures; and in the sixth, I will briefly
sketch the actual facts that have taken place in the development of
sculpture by the two greatest schools of it that hitherto have existed
in the world.

27. The tenor of our next Lecture, then, must be an inquiry into the
real nature of Idolatry; that is to say, the invention and service of
Idols: and, in the interval, may I commend to your own thoughts this
question, not wholly irrelevant, yet which I cannot pursue; namely,
whether the God to whom we have so habitually prayed for deliverance
"from battle, murder, and sudden death," _is_ indeed, seeing that the
present state of Christendom is the result of a thousand years' praying
to that effect, "as the gods of the heathen who were but idols;" or
whether--(and observe, one or other of these things _must_ be
true)--whether our prayers to Him have been, by this much, worse than
Idolatry;--that heathen prayer was true prayer to false gods; and our
prayers have been false prayers to the True One?

FOOTNOTES:

[5] I had a real plowshare on my lecture-table; but it would interrupt
the drift of the statements in the text too long if I attempted here to
illustrate by figures the relation of the colter to the share, and of
the hard to the soft pieces of metal in the share itself.

[6] A sphere of rock crystal, cut in Japan, enough imaginable by the
reader, without a figure.

[7] One of William Hunt's peaches; not, I am afraid, imaginable
altogether, but still less representable by figure.

[8] The crystal ball above mentioned