ossessed such things, yet made no effort to
preserve, and scarcely any to delineate them: for when used as material
of landscape by the modern artist, they are nearly always superficially
or flatteringly represented, without zeal enough to penetrate their
character, or patience enough to render it in modest harmony. As for
places of traditional interest, I do not know an entirely faithful
drawing of any historical site, except one or two studies made by
enthusiastic young painters in Palestine and Egypt: for which, thanks to
them always: but we want work nearer home.

115. Now it is quite probable that some of you, who will not care to go
through the labour necessary to draw flowers or animals, may yet have
pleasure in attaining some moderately accurate skill of sketching
architecture, and greater pleasure still in directing it usefully.
Suppose, for instance, we were to take up the historical scenery in
Carlyle's "Frederick." Too justly the historian accuses the genius of
past art, in that, types of too many such elsewhere, the galleries of
Berlin--"are made up, like other galleries, of goat-footed Pan, Europa's
Bull, Romulus's She-Wolf, and the Correggiosity of Correggio, and
contain, for instance, no portrait of Friedrich the Great,--no likeness
at all, or next to none at all, of the noble series of Human Realities,
or any part of them, who have sprung, not from the idle brains of
dreaming _dilettanti_, but from the head of God Almighty, to make this
poor authentic earth a little memorable for us, and to do a little work
that may be eternal there." So Carlyle tells us--too truly! We cannot
now draw Friedrich for him, but we can draw some of the old castles and
cities that were the cradles of German life--Hohenzollern, Hapsburg,
Marburg, and such others;--we may keep some authentic likeness of these
for the future. Suppose we were to take up that first volume of
"Friedrich," and put outlines to it: shall we begin by looking for Henry
the Fowler's tomb--Carlyle himself asks if he has any--at Quedlinburgh,
and so downwards, rescuing what we can? That would certainly be making
our work of some true use.

116. But I have told you enough, it seems to me, at least to-day, of
this function of art in recording fact; let me now finally, and with all
distinctness possible to me, state to you its main business of all;--its
service in the actual uses of daily life.

You are surprised, perhaps, to hear me call this its main