king them off, as a rose-leaf shakes off rain, and remaining
debonnaire and bright in spirits, or even, as the rose would be, the
brighter for the troubles; and not at all in allowing herself to be
either drifted or depressed to the point of requiring religious
consolation. But if any real and deep sorrow, such as no metaphor can
represent, fall upon her, does she suppose that the theological advice
of this piece of modern art can be trusted? If she will take the pains
to think truly, she will remember that Christ Himself never says
anything about holding by His Cross. He speaks a good deal of bearing
it; but never for an instant of holding by it. It is His Hand, not His
Cross, which is to save either you, or St. Peter, when the waves are
rough. And the utterly reckless way in which modern religious teachers,
whether in art or literature, abuse the metaphor somewhat briefly and
violently leant on by St. Paul, simply prevents your understanding the
meaning of any word which Christ Himself speaks on this matter! So you
see this popular art of light and shade, catching you by your mere
thirst of sensation, is not only undidactic, but the reverse of
didactic--deceptive and illusory.

30. This _popular_ art, you hear me say, scornfully; and I have told
you, in some of my teaching in "Aratra Pentelici," that all great art
must be popular. Yes, but great art is popular, as bread and water are
to children fed by a father. And vile art is popular, as poisonous jelly
is, to children cheated by a confectioner. And it is quite possible to
make any kind of art popular on those last terms. The color school may
become just as poisonous as the colorless, in the hands of fools, or of
rogues. Here is a book I bought only the other day,--one of the things
got up cheap to catch the eyes of mothers at bookstalls,--Puss in Boots,
illustrated; a most definite work of the color school--red jackets and
white paws and yellow coaches as distinct as Giotto or Raphael would
have kept them. But the thing is done by fools for money, and becomes
entirely monstrous and abominable. Here, again, is color art produced by
fools for religion: here is Indian sacred painting,--a black god with a
hundred arms, with a green god on one side of him and a red god on the
other; still a most definite work of the color school. Giotto or Raphael
could not have made the black more resolutely black, (though the whole
color of the school of Athens is kept in distinct sepa