general term, Anatomy; whether the
junctions or joints be in mountains, or in branches of trees, or in
buildings, or in bones of animals. We have next a musical art, falling
into two distinct divisions--one using colours, the other masses, for
its elements of composition; lastly, we have an imitative art, concerned
with the representation of the outward appearances of things. And, for
many reasons, I think it best to begin with imitative Sculpture; that
being defined as _the art which, by the musical disposition of masses,
imitates anything of which the imitation is justly pleasant to us; and
does so in accordance with structural laws having due reference to the
materials employed_.

So that you see our task will involve the immediate inquiry what the
things are of which the imitation is justly pleasant to us: what, in few
words,--if we are to be occupied in the making of graven images--we
ought to like to make images _of_. Secondly, after having determined its
subject, what degree of imitation or likeness we ought to desire in our
graven image; and lastly, under what limitations demanded by structure
and material, such likeness may be obtained.

These inquiries I shall endeavour to pursue with you to some practical
conclusion, in my next four lectures, and in the sixth, I will briefly
sketch the actual facts that have taken place in the development of
sculpture by the two greatest schools of it that hitherto have existed
in the world.

27. The tenor of our next lecture then must be an inquiry into the real
nature of Idolatry; that is to say, the invention and service of Idols:
and, in the interval, may I commend to your own thoughts this question,
not wholly irrelevant, yet which I cannot pursue; namely, whether the
God to whom we have so habitually prayed for deliverance "from battle,
murder, and sudden death," _is_ indeed, seeing that the present state of
Christendom is the result of a thousand years' praying to that effect,
"as the gods of the heathen who were but idols;" or whether--(and
observe, one or other of these things _must_ be true)--whether our
prayers to Him have been, by this much, worse than Idolatry;--that
heathen prayer was true prayer to false gods; and our prayers have been
false prayers to the True One.

FOOTNOTES:

[107] I had a real ploughshare on my lecture table; but it would
interrupt the drift of the statements in the text too long if I
attempted here to illustrate by figures the relat