: NATURE 
THURSDAY, JUNE 309, 1870 
NATURAL SCIENCE AT THE ROYAL 
ACADEMY 
I AM afraid the words of the title of this article will 
sound like a harsh discord to many ears. Let not 
the reader suspect that they are in any way akin to that 
incongruous phrase “ art manufacture.” 
I do not presume to address persons versed in the lan- 
guage of the artistic schools, nor the vaguely vapouring 
sentimentalists who are leaders of zsthetic cliques. 
I know a class of men more worthy of respect who are 
happily more ignorant: men who are accustomed to 
attach a defined significance to words: men who, when 
they hear noises that they do not understand, or when they 
detect the characteristic haziness of artistic cant, stand 
meekly on one side, careful and troubled only to pursue 
the orderly and laborious track of mere matters of fact. 
It is remarkable that the chasm which separates those 
groups of men who work in the adjacent fields of art and 
science is one of the most distinct in the whole system of 
modern life ; as marked as that which divides the official 
from the commercial mind, for instance, or the sacerdotal 
from the legal caste. There isno common ground between 
them. They do not teach their young in the same lan- 
guage ; the scientific men generally talking in grammatical 
and reasonable speech, whilst those who speak on behalf 
of art generally “gas,” if I may be allowed to use an 
expressive americanism. 
A small section of the crowd who throng the Academy 
galleries at this time of year, persons who habitually asso- 
ciate reason with observation, have been known to complain 
that the exertions of the painters are to a great extent 
wasted upon them for want of rudimentary knowledge of the 
principles upon which fine art is founded, and that the in- 
formation which probably exists somewhere upon this sub- 
ject seems to be so mingled with rhetorical flourishes and 
anecdotes, that if not altogether inaccessible, it demands 
far more time than most students can afford, to sift it out, 
so that when they go to look at pictures, they do so in the 
idlest possible temper, expecting to be merely amused 
with a pleasant but transient sensation like the smelling 
of a sweet odour, yet all the while not without misgivings 
that they might be deriving nobler entertainment or more 
permanent good. Are pictures mere accidents, or are 
they produced upon known principles? Are their excel- 
lencies estimable by definite methods and referable to 
known standards, or is it all caprice ? 
Such questions are very pertinent, and ought to be 
philosophically answered by able painters, but it happens 
that such men have not generally cared to spend their 
energies in speech. Ifa living painter offers one or two 
hints concerning the Academy, such as can be written in 
a weekly journal, they must needs be of a general kind, 
and with little, if any, reference to particular pictures. 
In any case, if they do not harmonise with the prevailing 
tone of dilettantism, they will stand as landmarks of heresy 
to be kicked against by critics. In the columns of 
NATURE, however, they will only be read—if at all—by 
clear-headed and simple-souled naturalists. 
VOL. IT. 
157 
The central motive of fine art may be most compactly 
expressed by the simple term beauty. We will not stop 
to define the word now. Goto the Academy to seek for 
it. Do not expect much of it; for amongst the four or 
five hundred essayists on canvas there represented, a good 
many, perhaps more than half of them, would repudiate 
that fundamental principle. Be content to take your 
beauty in small doses ; about in the same proportion as 
pure gold to the pebbles in the bed of an African river, 
or sense in a railway novel. When found, enjoy freely in 
your own way. That is the first stage in artistic culture ; 
some people say the whole—beginning, middle, and end 
of it. But this will hardly satisfy the scientific student. 
He will want to find out the relation between beauty and 
the common world, so as to determine what position this 
exquisite sensation ought to occupy in the order of his 
experiences. 
Let him then proceed to examine the pictures analyti- 
cally, and, by way of making a beginning, let him apply a 
test question all round. Let him ask himself, for instance, 
whether any example of beauty has been offered to him 
which depends on a violation of natural laws ; whether he 
has come across anything like a lovely monster. The 
question may appear to be an idle one, but there is a prin- 
ciple involved in it of the very highest importance, though 
there is no time to illustrate it here. Let him think it 
over carefully, and apply it not merely to pictures of 
monstrous animals and vegetables, but to any abnormal 
effect of the sun’s rays, any deviation from the simple laws 
by which surfaces govern shadows, and so on; any 
monstrous clouds, apparently constructed out of feather- 
beds, and yet beautiful ; any monstrous draperies, appa- 
rently made of bent metal, or cut in horn, or forced into 
novel shapes as if by explosive gases, and yet beautiful ; 
any monstrous contortions of the human countenance 
amongst the large variety of attempts to represent the 
pleasanter, or more repulsive, or more permanently in- 
teresting phases of human life. Let him take note whether 
he is likely to carry with him to his grave one image or 
suggestion of loveliness that will have had its origin in a 
picture produced in ignorance of or defiance of natural 
law ; because, if he find any, the fact will be well worth 
knowing, and I hope he will not hush it up. 
Another hint that I will venture to give the scientific 
student is, to remember that in these days art, in England, 
is in its infancy. By the time that the play-going public 
have sickened themselves with displays of trivial senti- 
mental incident ; by the time the new-born professors of 
art at the universities have taught all the growing boys how 
life may be treated artistically after it has been earned 
by doing their day’s grinding at the mill ; by the time these 
boys have travelled and studied the art of the ancient 
world and its relation to the modern ; by that time there 
will have become established a school of original painters, 
able to represent with ease and accuracy any visible fact, 
and free to choose out from the procession of phy- 
sical phenomena such special incidents or moments of 
visible history, such elements of passing scenes as shall 
be most profoundly beautiful and delightful to men, and 
to preserve in comparative permanence their evanescent 
charms. 
I toek up a scientific periodical the other day, and 
lighted upon a letter to the editor concerning the colour 
K 
