ate in the art, and
intensifies itself in all its noblest or meanest delights. Nay, not
only as in a microscope, but as under a scalpel, and in dissection;
for a man may hide himself from you, or misrepresent himself to you,
every other way; but he cannot in his work: there, be sure, you have
him to the inmost. All that he likes, all that he sees,--all that he
can do,--his imagination, his affections, his perseverance, his
impatience, his clumsiness, cleverness, everything is there. If the
work is a cobweb, you know it was made by a spider; if a honeycomb, by
a bee; a worm-cast is thrown up by a worm, and a nest wreathed by a
bird; and a house built by a man, worthily, if he is worthy, and
ignobly, if he is ignoble.

And always, from the least to the greatest, as the made thing is good
or bad, so is the maker of it.

You all use this faculty of judgment more or less, whether you
theoretically admit the principle or not. Take that floral gable;[200]
you don't suppose the man who built Stonehenge could have built that,
or that the man who built that, _would_ have built Stonehenge? Do you
think an old Roman would have liked such a piece of filigree work? or
that Michael Angelo would have spent his time in twisting these stems
of roses in and out? Or, of modern handicraftsmen, do you think a
burglar, or a brute, or a pickpocket could have carved it? Could Bill
Sykes have done it? or the Dodger, dexterous with finger and tool? You
will find in the end, that _no man could have done it but exactly the
man who did it_; and by looking close at it, you may, if you know your
letters, read precisely the manner of man he was.

Now I must insist on this matter, for a grave reason. Of all facts
concerning art, this is the one most necessary to be known, that,
while manufacture is the work of hands only, art is the work of the
whole spirit of man; and as that spirit is, so is the deed of it: and
by whatever power of vice or virtue any art is produced, the same vice
or virtue it reproduces and teaches. That which is born of evil begets
evil; and that which is born of valour and honour, teaches valour and
honour. Al art is either infection or education. It _must_ be one or
other of these.

This, I repeat, of all truths respecting art, is the one of which
understanding is the most precious, and denial the most deadly. And I
assert it the more, because it has of late been repeatedly, expressly,
and with contumely denied; and that by h