pressing himself, should be put on
record as a unique tribute; the more worthy of attention, because in
each instance it was advanced not wholly as praise, but to some extent
as a reproach on Leighton's painting. No intended compliment could carry
more genuine appreciation than this warm approval from fellow experts in
the special subjects of which they are masters.

[Illustration: CAIN AND ABEL]

[Illustration: MOSES VIEWS THE PROMISED LAND]

[Illustration: SAMSON AND THE LION]

[Illustration: SAMSON CARRYING THE GATES]

CHAPTER VIII

DISCOURSES ON ART

We must next speak of the late President's Addresses and Discourses on
Art, and of that other art of oratory, which, we shall find, as he
conceived it, had something of the same monumental quality he imparted
to his painting. His presidential speeches at the annual banquet of the
Academy would alone be sufficient to show this; but it is of course to
his Addresses and Discourses that we must turn if we would understand
his feeling for the two unallied arts.

His success in the one is to be explained, we shall find, in very much
the same way as his success in the other. Like most speakers of any
distinction, Lord Leighton left nothing to chance. In his speeches and
Discourses, as in his pictures, the most careful and exact preparation
was made for every effect, however apparently casual it may have seemed.
His Discourses were obviously based upon classic models; for their full
periods, sonorously and deliberately arranged, have a rhythm that
attends to the whole period, and not merely, as is often the way with
English speakers, to each sentence in turn.

In quoting from these Discourses, we do so, however, with an eye to his
own proper art as a painter, and to his whole theory and sentiment of
that art and its functions, and its allied plastic arts, even more than
to his art as a speaker. Indeed, the Discourses form a unique
contribution to the art criticism of our time; they cover the most
interesting and various periods in the history of the Art of Europe; and
although the cycle he had mapped out was interrupted before he had
completed it--first by illness which postponed the biennial discourse,
and then by death--the portions already delivered touch incidentally on
the theory and philosophy of all Art in a highly suggestive and eloquent
way.

In his first Discourse, delivered to the Academy students on the 10th of
December, 1879, the new Pr