ble youth, at the time when the world opens to him, of
having faithful and touching representations put before him of the acts
and presences of great men--how many a resolution, which would alter and
exalt the whole course of his after-life, might be formed, when in some
dreamy twilight he met, through his own tears, the fixed eyes of those
shadows of the great dead, unescapable and calm, piercing to his soul;
or fancied that their lips moved in dread reproof or soundless
exhortation? And if but for one out of many this were true--if yet, in a
few, you could be sure that such influence had indeed changed their
thoughts and destinies, and turned the eager and reckless youth, who
would have cast away his energies on the race-horse or the
gambling-table, to that noble life-race, that holy life-hazard, which
should win all glory to himself and all good to his country,--would not
that, to some purpose, be "political economy of art"?

109. And observe, there could be no monotony, no exhaustibleness, in the
scenes required to be thus portrayed. Even if there were, and you
wanted for every school in the kingdom, one death of Leonidas; one
battle of Marathon; one death of Cleobis and Bito; there need not
therefore be more monotony in your art than there was in the repetition
of a given cycle of subjects by the religious painters of Italy. But we
ought not to admit a cycle at all. For though we had as many great
schools as we have great cities (one day I hope we _shall_ have),
centuries of painting would not exhaust, in all the number of them, the
noble and pathetic subjects which might be chosen from the history of
even one noble nation. But, beside this, you will not, in a little
while, limit your youths' studies to so narrow fields as you do now.
There will come a time--I am sure of it--when it will be found that the
same practical results, both in mental discipline and in political
philosophy, are to be attained by the accurate study of mediaeval and
modern as of ancient history; and that the facts of mediaeval and modern
history are, on the whole, the most important to us. And among these
noble groups of constellated schools which I foresee arising in our
England, I foresee also that there will be divided fields of thought;
and that while each will give its scholars a great general idea of the
world's history, such as all men should possess--each will also take
upon itself, as its own special duty, the closer study of the c