LECTURE I.

INTRODUCTORY.

MR VICE-CHANCELLOR, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

In addressing you for the first time from this Chair it is natural that I should feel a certain amount of embarrassing emotions. Any such emotions are however but in a remote degree of a personal nature, since I regard myself simply as an instrument to carry out the wishes of the Founder of the Chair; and provided I bring to my duties. (as I do) an earnest conviction of the importance to you of the subjects upon which I may have to address you, a zealous intention to communicate all I know, which may appear to me in any wise likely to be profitable to you, and in short a hearty goodwill to do my duties, my conscience will be relieved, and I may feel that you will give me credit for more perhaps even than may be the real value of what I may have to say to you.

My emotions rather arise from the fact that it is for the first time, I believe, in the annals of your University, that the Fine Arts will have received that consideration which I believe to be their due: a consideration which may I hope in time remove the reproach, that our leading Uni

versities confer degrees as "Masters of Arts" upon students, from whose course of study almost all reference to the Fine Arts has been as it were sedulously expunged.

A cultivation of those arts ought never, in a highly civilised country, and especially in its Universities which are clearly the "foci" of its civilisation, to be regarded otherwise than as a most important branch of education; important under at least four aspects;-Firstly, from the humanising influence which such studies exert upon the student:-Secondly, from the fact that in proportion to the gravity and preponderance of such studies in the educational scheme of the population of a country, results the greater or less excellence of the works of art produced, either through their agency, or under their correcting judgment;-Thirdly, because it is impossible to study the principles upon which beauty in the Fine Arts depends, without discovering, gathering up, and storing, knowledge of laws, the action of which will be found to extend from the realms of the Fine Arts, over those cognate branches of Literature and Science, which naturally form the staple of every most advanced "curriculum" such as that adopted in your University;-and Fourthly, because one cannot but regard those whom I have the honour of addressing in this room, and such other students as in other places may be favoured with the instructions of my colleagues, as but, as it were, leaven, destined to permeate and influence the general masses of the population of this country, with whatever knowledge of Fine Art they may acquire through the Slade Foundation...

From the great Universities of the land (if the education at those Universities be but made, as it should be, to reflect and supply the intellectual wants most generally felt, corrected by a conservative respect for wisdom, not of the passing hour, but of all time) should to a great extent issue' potent influences upon mind and matter specially

adapted to develope and elevate both. Such influences should mould and fashion succeeding generations to tread boldly and steadily in those arduous paths of scientific investigation, intellectual labour, and the highly refined appreciation of the beautiful, upon which the Finest Art must ever rest; and the importance of which to our prosperity, as a country standing in the van of civilisation, increases from year to year with the intensity of the cumulative competition it has to enter into and sustain with other nations.

In France, in Germany, in Switzerland, in Italy, and even in far-away Russia and other regions of the North, those arts which will specially engage our attention henceforth in Cambridge have long and constantly received due and systematic cultivation.

In England the efforts to induce any such recognition have been more recent and more spasmodic, occasionally strenuous, and then again relaxed; the eccentricities and defalcations (if I may use such expressions) on the part of the teachers, and of the system, or rather want of system, under which they may have hitherto laboured, being partially compensated for only by the peculiar native energy of the British student.

It would be absurd to deny that the English, as a body of artists, do not at this present time stand respectably before the world; but it is rather to that vital energy to which I have alluded, than to any systematic cultivation of their abilities, that they stand indebted for the honourable position they may be held to occupy.

There is, however, left to us the happy reflection that if, with the interjectional and interrupted studies hitherto pursued by English artists, they have attained the position they now occupy as compared with their continental rivals, how much may we not hope will be effected by their talents, when fostered and encouraged, and indeed helped over the

earliest and perhaps most difficult stages of their studies, by foundations, such as that which has been so nobly endowed by the liberality of the Founder of this Chair?

This naturally leads me, before entering upon the specific subject of my first discourse, to a few words of respectful tribute to the memory of the late Felix Slade. It was my pleasure to know him, and to have learned to recognise that consolation under many trials in his old age, which he derived from his attachment to the studies and tastes of his manhood. The collections of glass, the prints, the books, and minor specimens of the art industries of the past, by which he surrounded himself, became never-failing sources of happy relaxation, when increasing infirmity rendered it difficult for him in his later years to derive the pleasure his hospitable spirit once led him to enjoy in the society of his friends. It would almost seem as though he had determined to assist others to become acquainted with the arts, from the manifestations of which he had himself derived some of his highest intellectual enjoyments, in gratitude for the pleasure and consolation he had found in cognate studies, and the friendships, sympathies, and humanising reflections to which they led him.

Permit me now to remind you of the precise terms used in the definition of the annual duties of a Professor under Mr Slade's bequest. He is bound to "deliver a course of not less than Twelve Lectures on the History, Theory and Practice of the Fine Arts, or of some section or sections of them; and no Lecture shall be twice delivered. The Lectures shall be delivered in full Term, and shall be open to all Members of the University, free of charge."

It appears to me that my first duty should be to explain to you the sense in which I understand that definition of my duties, and the action I hope to cause to result therefrom.

I trust in the course of the present year to be enabled to give from this Chair the following Course of Lectures,

which will be found I trust to strictly coincide with those prescribed by the Founder.

The first, which I am now engaged in delivering, will be introductory to the Course, and will consist mainly of an attempt to answer three questions concerning the Fine Arts, as a whole; namely, First, what is Fine Art? Secondly, why should Fine Art be studied? and Thirdly, how should Fine Art be studied?

My second Lecture will be on the History of Architecture, my third on its Theory, my fourth on its Practice.

I give precedence to Architecture, because, as ministering to man's earliest necessities, it may be held to claim priority in date; and because almost from its birth it began to include and call into being the second, third and fourth branches of the Fine Arts upon which I shall have to dwell.

My fifth Lecture will be on the History of Sculpture, my sixth on its Theory, and my seventh on its Practice.

I have given to Sculpture the second place in the family of the Fine Arts, because its earliest manifestations grew up out of Architecture, and were almost indissolubly associated with it.

My third group of Lectures will treat of that Art, Painting, which is essentially superficial, and which, in its earliest form, consisted of the decoration of surfaces prepared by the Architect and Sculptor to be enriched by the art of the Painter.

My eighth Lecture therefore will be on the History of Painting, my ninth on its Theory, and my tenth on its Practice.

The remaining two Lectures of my Course will be devoted to the Application of the Fine Arts to Industry.

I shall thus hope to pass over a vast space of ground, so vast indeed that I can only touch the most salient features of the great subject. Such light as may emanate from