MEMOIR. 



against wrong, and the vehement denunciation of it. He 

 trusted his instincts far more than his reason, and on the 

 whole, his instincts served him right well, yet at times they 

 failed him, as in truth they fail us all. There were 

 occasions when a little reflection would have led him to see 

 that his first rapid impressions were at fault, and so have 

 spared himself and others some pain and misunderstanding. 

 Let a thing appear to him false, unfair, or cowardly, he 

 would lower his lance and dash full tilt at it at once, some- 

 times to our admiration, sometimes to our amusement 

 when the appearance proved but a windmill in the mist, 

 sometimes to our dismay when — a rare case — he mistook 

 friend for foe. 



No picture of John Sedding could be considered at 

 all to represent him which failed to express the blame- 

 less purity of his character and conduct. I do not 

 think the man lives who ever heard a tainted word from 

 his lips. There was in him such depth and strength of 

 moral wholesomeness that he sickened at, and revolted 

 against the unseemly jest, and still more against the scenes, 

 and experiences of the sensuous (to use no stronger word) 

 upon which in the minds of some, the artist must perforce 

 feed his gift. With his whole soul he repudiated the idea 

 that Art grew only as a flower upon the grave of virtue, 

 and that artists could, or desired to, lay claim to larger 

 moral licence than other less imaginative men. 



I have kept till last the best and deepest that was in 

 him, the hidden root of all he was, the hallowing of all he 

 did. I mean his piety — his deep, unfeigned piety. In his 

 address at the annual meeting of the Confraternity of the 

 Blessed Sacrament, a singularly outspoken and vigorous 

 exhortation to laymen to keep their practice abreast of 

 their faith, he used the following words : " In the wild 

 scene of 19th century work, and thought, and passion, when 

 old snares still have their old witchery, and new depths of 



