o say, for a populace attentive
or careless; whether it is to be a background like the sky, for a
procession of young men and maidens, because your populace revere
life--or the shadow of the vault behind a corpse stained with drops of
blackened blood, for a populace taught to worship Death. Every critical
determination of rightness depends on the obedience to some ethic law,
by the most rational and, therefore, simplest means. And you see how it
depends most, of all things, on whether you are working for chosen
persons, or for the mob; for the joy of the boudoir, or of the Borgo.
And if for the mob, whether the mob of Olympia, or of St. Antoine.
Phidias, showing his Jupiter for the first time, hides behind the temple
door to listen, resolved afterwards "[Greek: rhythmizein to agalma pros
to tois pleistois dokoun, ou gar hegeito mikran einai symboulen demou
tosoutou]," and truly, as your people is, in judgment, and in multitude,
so must your sculpture be, in glory. An elementary principle which has
been too long out of mind.

142. I leave you to consider it, since, for some time, we shall not
again be able to take up the inquiries to which it leads. But,
ultimately, I do not doubt that you will rest satisfied in these
following conclusions:

1. Not only sculpture, but all the other fine arts, must be for the
people.

2. They must be didactic to the people, and that as their chief end. The
structural arts, didactic in their manner; the graphic arts, in their
matter also.

3. And chiefly the great representative and imaginative arts--that is to
say, the drama and sculpture--are to teach what is noble in past
history, and lovely in existing human and organic life.

4. And the test of right manner of execution in these arts, is that
they strike, in the most emphatic manner, the rank of popular minds
to which they are addressed.

5. And the test of utmost fineness in execution in these arts, is that
they make themselves be forgotten in what they represent; and so fulfil
the words of their greatest Master,

"THE BEST, IN THIS KIND, ARE BUT SHADOWS."

FOOTNOTES:

[123] See date of delivery of Lecture. The picture was of a peasant girl
of eleven or twelve years old, peeling carrots by a cottage fire.

[124] In Durer's "Melencholia."

[125] Turner's, in the Hakewill series.

LECTURE V.

STRUCTURE.

_December, 1870._

143. On previous occasions of addressing you, I have endeavoured to show
you, fi