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nation's progress when it may be great in despite of an almost general neglect of the culture of the Fine Arts. When the hearts of men are throbbing with instincts of self-preservation, or even of national aggrandisement, there may be found few who seek that intellectual peace, and isolation from the current cares of this world, suitable for the engendering of beauty; but it has almost always happened that, as though by a compensating regulation, increased vigour has been given throughout such dark moments to the few who were enabled to isolate themselves in the midst of distraction; and that by such an exceptional increase of vigour, they have been enabled to preserve from entire extinction, the sacred fire it fell to their instincts and charge to maintain unextinguished, when the hurricanes of faction and the storms of war, were raging from every point of the compass, as though bent upon nothing less than "total eclipse."

Before proceeding to the last section of this discourse I would desire to note a fifth inducement to the study of Fine Art.

It is, briefly, that by that study alone we learn how to see. The difference between the world of vision enjoyed by the artist, and that of one who has never directed his earnest attention to an analysis of what he sees, can scarcely be conceived. The former may be said to live in a new, clearer, and more ethereal atmosphere, in which an unaccustomed light brings minute differences of surface, texture and organisation to his consciousness. With these increased powers of vision come increased intellectual activity, and aptitude for the retention of the lessons imprinted without an effort upon the vigorous imagination of youth.

The earlier in life this quickening of organisation takes place, the more easily does the human subject assimilate with, and as it were work up to, his altered conditions of existence; and the more rapidly does he learn to absorb instinctively those infinite lessons of beauty with which nature is ever teeming.