is commonly believed, the subject of study which it is my
special function to bring before you had no relation to the great
interests of mankind, I should have less courage in asking for your
attention to-day, than when I first addressed you; though, even then, I
did not do so without painful diffidence. For at this moment, even
supposing that in other places it were possible for men to pursue their
ordinary avocations undisturbed by indignation or pity; here, at least,
in the midst of the deliberative and religious influences of England,
only one subject, I am well assured, can seriously occupy your
thoughts--the necessity, namely, of determining how it has come to pass,
that in these recent days, iniquity the most reckless and monstrous can
be committed unanimously, by men more generous than ever yet in the
world's history were deceived into deeds of cruelty; and that prolonged
agony of body and spirit, such as we should shrink from inflicting
wilfully on a single criminal, has become the appointed and accepted
portion of unnumbered multitudes of innocent persons, inhabiting the
districts of the world which, of all others, as it seemed, were best
instructed in the laws of civilization, and most richly invested with
the honour, and indulged in the felicity, of peace.

Believe me, however, the subject of Art--instead of being foreign to
these deep questions of social duty and peril,--is so vitally connected
with them, that it would be impossible for me now to pursue the line of
thought in which I began these lectures, because so ghastly an emphasis
would be given to every sentence by the force of passing events. It is
well, then, that in the plan I have laid down for your study, we shall
now be led into the examination of technical details, or abstract
conditions of sentiment; so that the hours you spend with me may be
times of repose from heavier thoughts. But it chances strangely that, in
this course of minutely detailed study, I have first to set before you
the most essential piece of human workmanship, the plough, at the very
moment when--(you may see the announcement in the journals either of
yesterday or the day before)--the swords of your soldiers have been sent
for _to be sharpened_, and not at all to be beaten into ploughshares. I
permit myself, therefore, to remind you of the watchword of all my
earnest writings--"Soldiers of the Ploughshare, instead of Soldiers of
the Sword"--and I know it my duty to assert to