tion be more
useful to yourselves, than in enabling you to perceive the quite
unparalleled subtilties of colour and inorganic form, which occur on any
ordinarily fine morning or evening horizon; and I will even confess to
you another of my perhaps too sanguine expectations, that in some far
distant time it may come to pass, that young Englishmen and Englishwomen
may think the breath of the morning sky pleasanter than that of
midnight, and its light prettier than that of candles.

113. Lastly, in Zoology. What the Greeks did for the horse, and what, as
far as regards domestic and expressional character, Landseer has done
for the dog and the deer, remains to be done by art for nearly all other
animals of high organisation. There are few birds or beasts that have
not a range of character which, if not equal to that of the horse or
dog, is yet as interesting within narrower limits, and often in
grotesqueness, intensity, or wild and timid pathos, more singular and
mysterious. Whatever love of humour you have,--whatever sympathy with
imperfect, but most subtle, feeling,--whatever perception of sublimity
in conditions of fatal power, may here find fullest occupation: all
these being joined, in the strong animal races, to a variable and
fantastic beauty far beyond anything that merely formative art has yet
conceived. I have placed in your Educational series a wing by Albert
Duerer, which goes as far as art yet has reached in delineation of
plumage; while for the simple action of the pinion it is impossible to
go beyond what has been done already by Titian and Tintoret; but you
cannot so much as once look at the rufflings of the plumes of a pelican
pluming itself after it has been in the water, or carefully draw the
contours of the wing either of a vulture or a common swift, or paint the
rose and vermilion on that of a flamingo, without receiving almost a new
conception of the meaning of form and colour in creation.

114. Lastly. Your work, in all directions I have hitherto indicated,
may be as deliberate as you choose; there is no immediate fear of the
extinction of many species of flowers or animals; and the Alps, and
valley of Sparta, will wait your leisure, I fear too long. But the
feudal and monastic buildings of Europe, and still more the streets of
her ancient cities, are vanishing like dreams: and it is difficult to
imagine the mingled envy and contempt with which future generations will
look back to us, who still p