adds something to nature, and they look for conventionalisms and symbols. Tell them that in a true picture there is a gleam of the supernatural, and they will look for ghosts. Mr. Frith, in his later prosaic style, is their idol. They have been upon those Ramsgate Sands, they have seen all that there is in the Derby Day, they are quite at home at the Railway Station, and they crowd round the Royal Wedding, to see how the guests were dressed. It is the perfection of art-they say. It is all so perfectly natural that you might fancy yourself there.

The question of "the relation of art to nature" is, therefore, not a merely abstract one. Popular art-criticism proceeds on an imperfect view of that relation, but always keeps it in mind. The great public look at all works of art with a vague, unrealized and indefinite standard of comparison always present in their minds. This standard is "nature." Yet how thoroughly misleading this standard is, the demand that statuary should be draped, and the objections to a "tinted Venus," alike prove. For in art we not only see what we look for, but we are blind to what we do not look for. The supernatural beauty is always hidden from those who look for "nature." A suggestion of the sensuous drives away the spiritual. You cannot see the soul looking out from the eye if you are speculating on the colour of the pupil. You cannot feel the power of the noblest face if you are thinking of whom it reminds you. This comparing, this looking for resemblances, this search for what we have seen before, is entirely destructive of all true and pure impression. It destroys that self-surrender to the spirit of art in which all true enjoyment of its works consists. The language of the artist is a dead speech to those whe listen only for familiar accents or dim echoes of a voice which they have heard before. His guidance is useless to those who will only walk with him along well-trodden paths, where he can but freshen a fading recollection or reproduce a spent emotion. His purpose is to lead us "to fresh fields and pastures new." He has a new thought to give us, a new emotion to share with us, a glimpse of new beauty to reveal to us, a gleam of “light that never was on sea or shore" to make visible to us. But a theory of art which denies the possibility of this; which makes the artist only a copyist; which will have nothing in art which there is not in nature, paralyzes the power of genius and breaks its spell. Such a theory is involved in the popular demand of "the natural," and so far as this demand affects us, it draws a veil over the shining face of art, and darkens its unearthly light. And I venture to think that a settlement of the true relation of art to nature would take the veil away, and might make the walls of our great picture-rooms glow with a new meaning, at least to those to whom such thoughts are new.

The relation of art to nature depends on the relation of man to nature. If we are nothing but a part of nature, then art is only one of nature's works, and the question of their relationship is settled. But Paterfamilias and his daughters, who are always looking for nature in

art, would be shocked to be even suspected of thinking that there is nothing in them which there is not in nature. Yet only on such a theory of human nature can the popular theory of art be justified. A higher view of man gives a nobler aim to art. The ancients said, man is a microcosm, a little kosmos, an epitome of the universe; for all that is in it has something more than its reflection-has its consummation in him. But that is not the whole truth. For just the same reason which made the Pagan see in man the image of the world, made the Jew see in him the image of his Maker. Man is not a little kosmos, because in him the kosmos finds its top and crown, and nature comes to consciousness; but because the Being above nature culminated His work by making an epitome of the faculties whose material expression the kosmos is. There is in man, then, all that there is in nature; but there is something more. With him something new has come into the world-a new force, power, or influence. He is not merely the resultant of the forces contained in nature, but of the union of those forces with another, which comes from the supernatural region. His works, then, are not merely natural products. He is something more than one of the forces of nature; is, indeed, in some sense, antithetical to nature. A wide range of free action is given him independently of nature; and this free activity sets him above nature, not making him independent of her, but giving him an empire over her; not liberating him from any natural law, but enabling him to rule by his obedience, and through submission to rise to victory. His bodily attitude is the type of his whole position in the universe. He stands with his feet upon the earth, but he faces heaven,

Here we get the first glimpse of the relation of art to nature. For as art is the sphere of man's activity, it is everything to know that that activity is free. It is not free if man is only a part of nature; it is not free in so far as man is a part of nature; it is only free if in some degree he is above nature; and the limit of his superiority is the limit of his freedom. I suppose no one will dispute the assertion that we often use our free activity to contradict or contravene nature. The fact that in doing so we bring in disorder and suffering, only the more clearly proves our superiority to nature, by showing that we can add something to the forces of the world. Over against this fact stands the other, so important to my argument now, that we can make use of nature, can imitate nature, and can improve on nature. But it is just this which we call Art. In one large view of it, art is the conscious use of nature for purposes which are other than natural, and which we therefore call artificial. We interfere with nature in order to produce something which, but for that interference, would never have been produced. It will be obvious that at this point the subject touches on theology, and in this direction I pursue it no farther, except to say that, in this view, art is the converse of evil; that whereas the one is a disorderly interference with nature, the other is an orderly and obedient interference, and this is why the ancient traditions

taught that it was only when man had sinned that the arts arose. Art is the addition of something to nature. Our use of the terms natural and artificial as antithetical to each other is only correct so far as it marks a wide difference between art and nature. But "the artificial" in its truest sense is not that which is opposed to "the natural," but that which includes it, and is something more than it. Art is not man's antagonism to nature, it is his co-operation with her, his imitation of her, the union of his free force with hers to produce that which neither man nor nature could produce but for each other.

It is not needful to appeal to abstract considerations to prove this. A glance at what are called "the arts" will illustrate my meaning, while it enforces my argument. The arts are only the utilitarian side of art. They offer, therefore, practical proofs of that which in the higher spherein what we more technically call art-is hardly capable of proof. It is most instructive to observe how in the arts the artificial and the natural run into each other. Instead of that sharp line of demarcation which our ordinary speech assumes to exist, the spheres of man and nature mingle where they touch, just as the seasons do, so that you can never say precisely where one ends and the other begins. Our most complicated and wonderful machinery is only an ingenious application of natural forces and laws; we depend on nature in the workshop only less than in the field. On the other hand, most of the things we call natural products owe quite as much to art as they do to nature. Nature gives

us very little without solicitation. She does not give us metal, but the crude ore from which art extracts it. Nor does she give us her best vegetable growths herself. No one will say that wheat and barley, turnips and mangold, are the natural products of our fields; or that apples and pears, peaches and walnuts, are the natural products of our woods: the unproductive forest is the natural condition of things, and it is art which has made the wilderness a garden, and only art which keeps it from relapsing into wildness. Nor are any of the products of our fields and gardens purely natural-except the weeds. It may seem odd to say that an apple or a strawberry, a rose or a picotee, is in any sense an artificial product; but the market-gardeners could tell us that the term is strictly applicable to them. Londoners may look on the wonderful animals they see at the cattle-show as natural products-the farmers look on them, quite as justly, as works of art. They bear a certain relation to the natural product, but it is the relation which the forged iron bears to the ore, or the gentleman to the savage. They represent generations of culture, of selection, of discriminating care, of the union of man and nature. They are entirely dependent on that union. The process which has made them what they are must be continually employed to keep them as they are, much more to improve them. Left to themselves, all that art has added to them is lost, and they run rapidly backwards to their primitive crudeness and wildness. But the contrast between the cultivated and the uncul

tivated natural product exactly and most aptly illustrates the relation of art to nature. The difference between the two things is the difference between the artificial and the natural. It is the measure of what man can add to nature—it is the proof that when man and nature work together, much more can be accomplished than when nature works alone; that art can help nature, can improve upon her, can lead her on to the development of higher forms than she can produce alone.

But this is done in obedience to an important and prolific principlethe principle of submission. We do not even attempt what we will, but what we can. Our free action on nature is necessarily confined within narrow limits. We have no creative power, but only a small power of ordering, combining, and controlling. We cannot develope new fruit or flowers, we can only watch for nature's own movements in the direction of variety, and by eliminating adverse influences fix and retain varieties which would else have been transitory. We cannot create any force, we can only use old forces in new ways, combining and transmuting them, and adding to them the new force of thought and purpose. So that art has its basis not in will, but in science; and science is self-surrender, submission. It is power because it is knowledge-knowledge that has been gained by giving up pre-established theories, resigning all desire, putting away the self-will which would decide beforehand what nature ought to be, and whither discovery ought to tend, and "for better for worse" going to the feet of nature, and learning her ways from her alone. When science has, in that spirit of humility which is her true spirit, learned what is the established order of nature's procedure-her laws-art is the use of those laws by obedience to them. But art can only use them in the spirit in which science discovers them, by laying all resistances aside, and patiently submitting to nature's imperial way. We give up our ways to learn nature's ways, and put ourselves in a position in which nature can do our work, and we can work together with her. Then it is that she rewards our obedience, lavishes her wealth upon us, and does our bidding with her might. So all art is the establishment of an understanding with nature, the creation of those conditions in which nature can serve us, the free use of our will to take obstructions from her path, and give her free course to help us. We stoop to nature to conquer: we enter into compact with her, promising to honour and obey, but in that honour and obedience exercising a gentle rule. The relation of art to nature is typified by this union. It is the marriage of free-will to necessity; of mind to force; of liberty to law; of the soul of man to the great works of nature. The masculine side of the union is represented by nature, the feminine by art; for art can do nothing but obey, and by her obedience rule.

This principle extends to art in all its developments. It is more. obvious in those lower forms of it which we call the arts, but it is equally present in its highest forms. Perfect art is the perfect union of man and

nature; but in the hierarchical arrangement of the arts those are highest in which there is the most of man, and the least of nature; and those are lowest in which there is the most of the material, and the least of the spiritual. The productive and mechanical arts are lowest; they lie at the base, and are in closest contact with nature, and in most subjection to her. Then come the constructive and decorative arts, in which imagination comes into restricted play, and there is more of man and less of nature. Lastly come the imaginative arts-painting and sculpture and music, and, at the head of all, poetry and song. These arts stand nearer to or farther from nature, as the stones of a pyramid are nearer to or farther from the earth they rest on. But their relation to nature is in all cases the same, and on the preservation of that relation all their purity and beauty depend. That is not art in which there is not some purely human element, nor is that art from which nature is absent. There is material and spiritual in all art, body and soul, nature and man. Even a machine exhibits this. It is a process of reasoning worked out in metal. It is a thought embodied. It is a purpose in action. Its beauty consists in the perfect victory of the presiding thought or purpose over the reluctance of natural forces and laws. But in a machine the whole thought of the maker has been directed to one end-utility. There has been present no thought of anything else. The human element in it is represented only by a practical, presiding purpose which the machine obeys. But utility belongs to "the arts;" they only rise to the dignity of "art" as there is in them a moral and spiritual element. When the soul of the artist has entered into his work, he has made of it a work of art, and he speaks to the souls of others. Perhaps it is in architecture that we see most clearly the growth of the arts into art. Architecture stands between "the arts" and "art," and partakes of both. Practical utility is its first aim, but beauty is its second. The true architect thinks not only of the purpose of his work, but of its influence on the minds of those who see it. He makes it express not only a presiding purpose, but an inspiring thought. The difference between King's Cross Railway Station and Westminster Hall is just the difference between architecture as the art of building and architecture as art. In the one the architect has been only a builder, in the other he has been an artist. The one has thought only of his useful purpose the other has lavished love, and therefore beauty, on his work. The one has built a most convenient place for passengers to come to and go from-the other has built a place for men and women to gather in. The one has made a roof that lets in the light and keeps out the rain-the other has made one into which thought can soar and where imagination is at home. And that is the true test of a building as a work of art. It does not obtrude its purpose. The Manchester Assize Courts do not remind you of judge and jury. The splendid halls at Liverpool and Leeds do not call up irresistible associations either of municipal politics or of music. Our Gothic cathedrals do not merely