9& Literary and Philosophical Society. 



it to be possible that music may take the place of language 

 some day, to guide man far beyond his present power of 

 speech. There are even some souls who have this happi- 

 ness in incipient revelation ; but to most men the indication 

 is at most a very distant one, absolutely unheeded. 



So in painting : imagine men softened by attempts at 

 faces, none of them ever so sweet as their own mothers 

 have shown, although in form more beautiful ; how woefully 

 behind are the best in feeling compared with the living 

 face ; or imagine them made devoted by the faces of saints 

 for whom, although the living human face was used as a 

 model, the very best of painters have failed to portray 

 well that piety which is supposed to be represented. We 

 say this after some care. Imagine men civilised by pictures 

 in galleries which try to imitate nature in landscape, 

 when the inexpressible beauty of nature is unheeded be- 

 fore them. Still, we yield here also something. The 

 study of the works of men striving after the highest model 

 is a great advantage to any one in a similar track ; he is 

 shown the way by easier steps ; there is, therefore, a stage 

 at which even the inferior works of artists, as much as the 

 greatest of them, may turn out to be of advantage to 

 thinking men. But strangely they seem never to begin 

 civilisation, or to improve men who have not made some 

 marked advance, whilst the subjects often produce degrada- 

 tion by increasing the love of the external and un spiritual. 

 The finest civilisations have begun in earnestness and 

 force mainly, even if joined to violence, injustice, and 

 cruelty ; not in anything refined. That is not the first stage. 



Bleaching. 1 



A curious view of the simplicity of the times with 

 1 Vol. i. p. 240. 



