LECTURE IX.
THE STORY OF THE HALCYON.
March 10th, 1872.
172. I must to-day briefly recapitulate the purport of the preceding lectures, as we are about now to enter on a new branch of our subject.
I stated, in the first two, that the wisdom of art and the wisdom of science consisted in their being each devoted unselfishly to the service of men; in the third, that art was only the shadow of our knowledge of facts; and that the reality was always to be acknowledged as more beautiful than the shadow. In the fourth lecture I endeavoured to show that the wise modesty of art and science lay in attaching due value to the power and knowledge of other people, when greater than our own; and in the fifth, that the wise self-sufficiency of art and science lay in a proper enjoyment of our own knowledge and power, after it was thus modestly esteemed. The sixth lecture stated that sight was a distinctly spiritual power, and that its kindness or tenderness was proportioned to its clearness. Lastly, in the seventh and eighth lectures, I asserted that this spiritual sight, concerned with external aspects of things, was the source of all necessary knowledge in art; and that the artist has no concern with invisible structures, organic or inorganic.
173. No concern with invisible structures. But much with invisible things; with passion, and with historical association. And in these two closing lectures, I hope partly to justify myself for pressing on your attention some matters as little hitherto thought of in drawing-schools, as the exact sciences have been highly, and, I believe, unjustly, esteemed;—mythology, namely, and heraldry.
I can but in part justify myself now. Your experience of the interest which may be found in these two despised sciences will be my best justification. But to-day (as we are about to begin our exercises in bird-drawing) I think it may interest you to review some of the fables connected with the natural history of a single bird, and to consider what effect the knowledge of such tradition is likely to have on our mode of regarding the animated creation in general.
174. Let us take an instance of the feeling towards birds which is especially characteristic of the English temper at this day, in its entire freedom from superstition.
You will find in your Rudimentary Series (225), Mr. Gould’s plate of the lesser Egret,—the most beautiful, I suppose, of all birds that visit, or, at least, once visited, our English shores. Perfectly delicate in form, snow-white in plumage, the feathers like frost-work of dead silver, exquisitely slender, separating in the wind like the streams of a fountain, the creature looks a living cloud rather than a bird.