Page:Fineartasketchi01wyatgoog.djvu/19

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