consider for yourselves what an intensity of the negation of the
faculty of sculpture this implies in the national mind! What measures
can be assigned to the gulf of incapacity, which can deliberately
swallow up in the gorge of it the teaching and example of three thousand
years, and produce as the result of that instruction, what it is
courteous to call "nothing?"

61. That is the conclusion at which we arrive, on the evidence presented
by our historical sculpture. To complete the measure of ourselves, we
must endeavour to estimate the rank of the two opposite schools of
sculpture employed by us in the nominal service of religion, and in the
actual service of vice.

I am aware of no statue of Christ, nor of any apostle of Christ, nor of
any scene related in the New Testament, produced by us within the last
three hundred years, which has possessed even superficial merit enough
to attract public attention.

Whereas the steadily immoral effect of the formative art which we learn,
more or less apishly, from the French schools, and employ, but too
gladly, in manufacturing articles for the amusement of the luxurious
classes, must be ranked as one of the chief instruments used by joyful
fiends and angry fates, for the ruin of our civilization.

If, after I have set before you the nature and principles of true
sculpture, in Athens, Pisa, and Florence, you reconsider these
facts,--(which you will then at once recognize as such),--you will find
that they absolutely justify my assertion that the state of sculpture in
modern England, as compared with that of the great Ancients, is
literally one of corrupt and dishonourable death, as opposed to bright
and fameful life.

62. And now, will you bear with me, while I tell you finally why this is
so?

The cause with which you are personally concerned is your own frivolity;
though essentially this is not your fault, but that of the system of
your early training. But the fact remains the same, that here, in
Oxford, you, a chosen body of English youth, in no wise care for the
history of your country, for its present dangers, or its present duties.
You still, like children of seven or eight years old, are interested
only in bats, balls, and oars: nay, including with you the students of
Germany and France, it is certain that the general body of modern
European youth have their minds occupied more seriously by the sculpture
and painting of the bowls of their tobacco-pipes, than by all