6 THE KT. HON. S. CAVE'S PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



political, may give new subject-matter and fresh impetus to 

 contemporary literature. The treasures of ancient Greece in 

 the galleries of Eome and Florence excite the admiration and 

 despair of modern sculptors. Excavations in Pompeii and 

 elsewhere have proved that while the art of painting was not 

 inferior, the secret of preserving paintings was understood in 

 a still more remarkable manner. In the museum of Cortona 

 is a female head in the highest style of art. It was dug up 

 by a peasant from the bottom of a ditch where it had proba- 

 bly lain for fifteen hundred years, was by him used as a 

 shutter, and exposed to the sun by day and the frost by night, 

 and yet appears now as perfect as when fresh from the painter's 

 hand. It is on slate, and has been by some unknown process 

 rendered practically indestructible. 



Those who presume to dogmatize on painting or sculpture 

 are on very delicate ground. We all remember the secret 

 for acquiring the reputation of a cognoscento in tlie Vicar of 

 Wakefield, which " consisted in a strict adherence to two rules, 

 the one always to observe the picture might have been better 

 if the painter had taken more pains, and the other to praise 

 the works of Pietro Perugino." The price which collections 

 of acknowledged excellence command proves the value set 

 upon the judgment of others by persons who mistrust their 

 own. How few can see any merit in a work without a cha- 

 racter is shown by the case of Lord Suffolk's stolen pictures, 

 and the famous Guido of San Bartolonieo in Bologna, which 

 were long exposed, and eventually sold for a trifle in Wardour 

 Street, no one having been attracted, except those by whom 

 the pictures were recognized. So again, in the well-known 

 instance of the buried statue of Bacchus, praise which had 

 been withheld from the work of Michael Angelo, was lavishly 

 bestowed by the connoisseurs of Florence upon the supposed 

 antique. The Greeks and Eomans seem scarcely to have 

 appreciated scenery for its own sake, though the similes of 

 Homer, the pastorals of Theocritus, passages like the apos- 

 trophe to the Clouds \\\ Aristophanes, the description of rural 

 retreats in Horace, show that they were not unobservant of 

 nature. Where cities are few, and the country wild and 

 uncultivated, full of danger and hardship to the wayfarer, 

 and perhaps peopled by superstition with malignant beings, 

 the lonely settler looks with repugnance upon the "savage 

 mountain," the " brown horror of the wood." Hence the best 

 descriptions of scenery have been written by dwellers in 

 cities. On the other hand, when population increases, when 

 towns swallow up green fields, and the sea coast becomes 



