eral, noble beauty, pervades life no more. The
artist is obliged to return to extinct forms of speech if he would speak
as the great ones have spoken. Nothing beautiful is seen around him,
excepting always sky and trees and sea; these, as he is mainly a dweller
in cities, he cannot live enough with. But it is, perhaps, in the real
estimation in which art is held that we shall find the reason for
failure. If the world cared for her language, art could not help
speaking, the utterance being, perhaps, simply beautiful. But even in
these days when we have ceased to prize this, if it were demanded that
art should take its place beside the great intellectual outflow of the
time, the response would hardly be doubtful.

_Watts._

XLI

You refer to the use and purpose of the liberal arts; not a city in
Europe, at present, is fulfilling them. And if any one in Melbourne were
now to produce, even on a small scale, a picture fulfilling the
conditions of liberal art, then Melbourne might take the lead of
civilised cities. But it is not the ambition of leading, nor the
restlessness of a competitive spirit that may accomplish this.

A good poem, whether painted or written, whether large or small, should
represent _beautiful life_. Are you able to name any one who has
conceived this beauty of the life of men? I will not complicate the
requirements of painted poesy by speaking of the music of colour with
which it should be clothed; black and white were enough. The very
attempt to express the confession of love were fulfilment sufficient.

_Edward Calvert._

XLII

So art has become foolishly confounded with education, that all should
be equally qualified. Whereas, while polish, refinement, culture, and
breeding are in no way arguments for artistic result, it is also no
reproach to the most finished scholar or greatest gentleman in the land
that he be absolutely without eye for painting or ear for music--that in
his heart he prefer the popular print to the scratch of Rembrandt's
needle, or the songs of the hall to Beethoven's "C Minor Symphony."

Let him have but the wit to say so, and not let him feel the admission a
proof of inferiority.

Art happens--no hovel is safe from it, no prince may depend on it, the
vastest intelligence cannot bring it about, and puny efforts to make it
universal end in quaint comedy and coarse farce.

This is as it should be; and all attempts to make it otherwise are due
to the eloquence of th