se works by the fervor of those of the artist whom I have next to
name, an artist of strong intellectual bent and steeped in human
sympathies, the originator of the movement which startled humdrum people
forty or more years ago, and produced a most interesting phase of
English art! I speak of Ford Madox Brown, who recently passed away in
the fulness of respected years and in the unabated intensity of his
convictions. I am not here to defend in every point the nature of those
convictions; I am not wholly at one with them. Ardently admired by many,
stimulating and highly interesting to a still larger circle of the
intelligent, who did not, perhaps, wholly follow his doctrine, he was
not altogether acceptable to the wider and less cultured public, which
so largely influences the creation of that empty and fickle thing called
popularity; for there was that in his work which was apt to rouse the
uneasy dread of the not usual, which mostly marks the middling mind. But
this, I fearlessly affirm, apart from his technical endowments and rare
vividness of dramatic vision, in the work of no English hand burns a
more ardent sympathy with human emotion or is revealed a more subtle
observation of the outward signs and gestures by which these emotions
are conveyed. [Cheers.]

The artistic memories which associate themselves in our mind with Madox
Brown and his concentrated energies, bring vividly before us, as we look
upon the walls of this exhibition, or glance in thought over the wide
area of contemporary production in England, the changes which two-score
years have wrought in the character and tendencies of art in this
country. As we wander through these--I rejoice to say, more than ever
catholic and hospitable--galleries, within which the still young unfold,
this year, so much vitality and promise--and, gentlemen, to us, the old,
there is, believe me, no gladder sight or one more full of comfort--we
are struck, not with a concentration of aim or purpose in the school,
but rather with a radiation and scattering of effort in innumerable
directions. No one, I think, can fail to observe the extraordinary
differences of mood and manner shown in the works which have found equal
shelter on these walls, and the wide multiplicity of individual
personalities which they proclaim. In the range of figure painting, for
instance, what variety of subject as well as of temper meets us! We see,
not historic or domestic scenes alone; not alone scenes