[123] See next letter, pp. 131 seqq.
[124] After reading this letter to his audience Dr. Acland thus continued: “The principles thus clearly enumerated by Mr. Ruskin are, on the main, those that animate the earnest student of Gothic. It is not for me especially to advocate Gothic Art, but only to urge, that if called into life, it should be in conformity to its own proper laws of vitality. If week after week, in my youth, with fresh senses and a docile spirit, I have drank in each golden glow that is poured by a Mediterranean sun from over the blue Ægæan upon the Athenian Parthenon,—if, day by day, sitting on Mars’ Hill, I have watched each purple shadow, as the temple darkened in majesty against the evening sky,—if so, it has been to teach me, as the alphabet of all Art, to love all truth and to hate all falsehood, and to kiss the hand of every Master who has brought down, under whatever circumstance, and in whatever age, one spark of true light from the Beauty and the subtle Law, which stamps the meanest work of the Ever living, Ever-working Artist.”—“The Oxford Museum,” pp. 56-7.
[125] See “The Oxford Museum,” pp. 17-23. The following is a portion of the passage alluded to: “Without the Geologist on one side, and the Anatomist and Physiologist on the other, Zoology is not worthy of its name. The student of life, bearing in mind the more general laws which in the several departments above named he will have sought to appreciate, will find in the collections of Zoology, combined with the Geological specimens and the dissections of the Anatomist, a boundless field of interest and of inquiry, to which almost every other science lends its aid: from each science he borrows a special light to guide him through the ranges of extinct and existing animal forms, from the lowest up to the highest types, which, last and most perfect, but preshadowed in previous ages, is seen in Man. By the aid of physiological illustrations he begins to understand how hard to unravel are the complex mechanisms and prescient intentions of the Maker of all; and he slowly learns to appreciate what exquisite care is needed for discovering the real action of even an apparently comprehended machine. And so at last, almost bewildered, but not cast down, he attempts to scrutinize in the rooms devoted to Medicine, the various injuries which man is doomed to undergo in his progress towards death; he begins to revere the beneficent contrivances which shine forth in the midst of suffering and disease, and to veil his face before the mysterious alterations of structure, to which there seem attached pain, with scarce relief, and a steady advance, without a check, to death. He will look, and as he looks, will cherish hope, not unmixed with prayer, that the great Art of Healing may by all these things advance, and that by the progress of profounder science, by the spread among the people of the resultant practical knowledge, by stricter obedience to physiological laws, by a consequent more self-denying spirit, some disorders may at a future day be cured, which cannot be prevented, and some, perhaps, prevented, which never can be cured.”
[126] Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, the naturalist and author of many works, of which those on infusoria may be especially noted here. He was born in 1795, and in 1842 was elected Principal Secretary to the Berlin Academy of Science, which post he held till his death in 1876. The late Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan, Bart., will also be remembered in connection with the study of natural science, as well as for his efforts in philanthropy. He died in March, 1879. I have been unable to find any further information as to the prize mentioned by Mr. Ruskin, or as to the essay which obtained it.
[127] Mr. Brodie, who succeeded his father as Sir Benjamin Brodie in 1867, was appointed Professor of Chemistry at Oxford in 1855.
[128] Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s book “On Color and the Diffusion of Taste” was published in 1858.
[129] See note to p. 142.
“The monks of Melrose made good kail
On Friday, when they fasted.”
The kail leaf is the one principally employed in the decorations of the abbey. (Original note to “The Oxford Museum,” p. 83.)