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Page 2
In which assurance I ask them to-day to begin the examination with
me, very earnestly, of the question laid before you in that seventh
of my last year's lectures, whether London, as it is now, be indeed
the natural, and therefore the heaven-appointed outgrowth of the
inhabitation, these 1800 years, of the valley of the Thames by a
progressively instructed and disciplined people; or if not, in what
measure and manner the aspect and spirit of the great city may be
possibly altered by your acts and thoughts.
In my introduction to the Economist of Xenophon I said that every
fairly educated European boy or girl ought to learn the history of
five cities,--Athens, Rome, Venice, Florence, and London; that of
London including, or at least compelling in parallel study, knowledge
also of the history of Paris.
A few words are enough to explain the reasons for this choice. The
history of Athens, rightly told, includes all that need be known of
Greek religion and arts; that of Rome, the victory of Christianity
over Paganism; those of Venice and Florence sum the essential facts
respecting the Christian arts of Painting, Sculpture, and Music;
and that of London, in her sisterhood with Paris, the development of
Christian Chivalry and Philosophy, with their exponent art of Gothic
architecture.
Without the presumption of forming a distinct design, I yet hoped at
the time when this division of study was suggested, with the help of
my pupils, to give the outlines of their several histories during
my work in Oxford. Variously disappointed and arrested, alike by
difficulties of investigation and failure of strength, I may yet hope
to lay down for you, beginning with your own metropolis, some of the
lines of thought in following out which such a task might be most
effectively accomplished.
You observe that I speak of architecture as the chief exponent of
the feelings both of the French and English races. Together with
it, however, most important evidence of character is given by the
illumination of manuscripts, and by some forms of jewellery and
metallurgy: and my purpose in this course of lectures is to illustrate
by all these arts the phases of national character which it is
impossible that historians should estimate, or even observe, with
accuracy, unless they are cognizant of excellence in the aforesaid
modes of structural and ornamental craftsmanship.
In one respect, as indicated by the title chosen for this course, I
have varied the treatment of their subject from that adopted in all
my former books. Hitherto, I have always endeavoured to illustrate the
personal temper and skill of the artist; holding the wishes or taste
of his spectators at small account, and saying of Turner you ought to
like him, and of Salvator, you ought not, etc., etc., without in the
least considering what the genius or instinct of the spectator might
otherwise demand, or approve. But in the now attempted sketch of
Christian history, I have approached every question from the people's
side, and examined the nature, not of the special faculties by which
the work was produced, but of the general instinct by which it was
asked for, and enjoyed. Therefore I thought the proper heading for
these papers should represent them as descriptive of the _Pleasures_
of England, rather than of its _Arts_.
And of these pleasures, necessarily, the leading one was that of
Learning, in the sense of receiving instruction;--a pleasure totally
separate from that of finding out things for yourself,--and an
extremely sweet and sacred pleasure, when you know how to seek it, and
receive.
On which I am the more disposed, and even compelled, here to insist,
because your modern ideas of Development imply that you must all
turn out what you are to be, and find out what you are to know, for
yourselves, by the inevitable operation of your anterior affinities
and inner consciences:--whereas the old idea of education was that the
baby material of you, however accidentally or inevitably born, was
at least to be by external force, and ancestral knowledge, bred; and
treated by its Fathers and Tutors as a plastic vase, to be shaped or
mannered as _they_ chose, not as _it_ chose, and filled, when its form
was well finished and baked, with sweetness of sound doctrine, as with
Hybla honey, or Arabian spikenard.
Without debating how far these two modes of acquiring
knowledge--finding out, and being told--may severally be good, and
in perfect instruction combined, I have to point out to you that,
broadly, Athens, Rome, and Florence are self-taught, and internally
developed; while all the Gothic races, without any exception, but
especially those of London and Paris, are afterwards taught by these;
and had, therefore, when they chose to accept it, the delight of being
instructed, without trouble or doubt, as fast as they could read or
imitate; and brought forward to the point where their own northern
instincts might wholesomely superimpose or graft some national ideas
upon these sound instructions. Read over what I said on this subject
in the third of my lectures last year (page 79), and simplify that
already brief statement further, by fastening in your mind Carlyle's
general symbol of the best attainments of northern religious
sculpture,--"three whalecubs combined by boiling," and reflecting that
the mental history of all northern European art is the modification
of that graceful type, under the orders of the Athena of Homer and
Phidias.
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