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Introductory.
[Lect.

realise by rude representation the idea of things unseen, to constitute the basis and form the stimulant for man's first efforts towards the practice of the Fine Arts, we may fairly conclude that the first quality to cultivate on the part of any one who would aspire to practise those arts with success, is the education of the eye; the next step is unquestionably to provide such an education of the hand as shall allow the tool to follow with facility the will of the workman.

The first efforts necessary for the education of the eye will be to realise the constituent parts of complex form.

The moment attention is concentrated upon the leading forms of any of the most sublime works of nature, the primitive ideas of geometry force themselves upon the attention. As I have elsewhere had occasion to observe, "From Nature's delight in simplicity man probably derived his earliest perception of geometrical figures. The term horizontal at once betrays the source from which our idea of such a line may have been derived. Upon the horizon as a base, endless perpendiculars are erected in every plant that pierces the soil at right angles to its tangent A plain in nature furnishes the idea of a plane in geometry. Every variety of triangle is indicated by the outline of the snow-clad peaks of the loftiest mountains; every kind of cone by their substance. The thin clouds that sweep along the sky at sunset, hanging over the distant blue line of the ocean, form exquisite parallels, and where cut by the lines of trees and plants suggest every variety of square and oblong, rhombus and parallelogram. Where compactness is indispensable, the honey-yielding hexagons abound, and in her endless variety of crystals Nature has furnished us with models of the most exquisite solids. In the rainbow we have her noblest arch; in the parabola at once one of her most graceful curves, and most elegant formulæ of projection."

Such coincidences between the elementary lines and forms which the artist and art-critic are bound to marshal

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