you that the work we
enter upon to-day is no trivial one, but full of solemn hope; the hope,
namely, that among you there may be found men wise enough to lead the
national passions towards the arts of peace, instead of the arts of war.

I say the work "we enter upon," because the first four lectures I gave
in the spring were wholly prefatory; and the following three only
defined for you methods of practice. To-day we begin the systematic
analysis and progressive study of our subject.

2. In general, the three great, or fine, Arts of Painting, Sculpture,
and Architecture, are thought of as distinct from the lower and more
mechanical formative arts, such as carpentry or pottery. But we cannot,
either verbally, or with any practical advantage, admit such
classification. How are we to distinguish painting on canvas from
painting on china?--or painting on china from painting on glass?--or
painting on glass from infusion of colour into any vitreous substance,
such as enamel?--or the infusion of colour into glass and enamel from
the infusion of colour into wool or silk, and weaving of pictures in
tapestry, or patterns in dress? You will find that although, in
ultimately accurate use of the word, painting must be held to mean only
the laying of a pigment on a surface with a soft instrument; yet, in
broad comparison of the functions of Art, we must conceive of one and
the same great artistic faculty, as governing _every mode of disposing
colours in a permanent relation on, or in, a solid substance_; whether
it be by tinting canvas, or dyeing stuffs; inlaying metals with fused
flint, or coating walls with coloured stone.

3. Similarly the word "Sculpture,"--though in ultimate accuracy it is to
be limited to the development of form in hard substances by cutting away
portions of their mass--in broad definition, must be held to signify
_the reduction of any shapeless mass of solid matter into an intended
shape_, whatever the consistence of the substance, or nature of the
instrument employed; whether we carve a granite mountain, or a piece of
box-wood, and whether we use, for our forming instrument axe, or hammer,
or chisel, or our own hands, or water to soften, or fire to
fuse;--whenever and however we bring a shapeless thing into shape, we do
so under the laws of the one great Art of Sculpture.

4. Having thus broadly defined painting and sculpture, we shall see that
there is, in the third place, a class of work separated from