THE AGE OF RESEARCH

BY WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE


Mr. Chairman, Your Royal Highness, My Lords and Gentlemen:--I think no
question can be raised as to the just claims of literature to stand upon
the list of toasts at the Royal Academy, and the sentiment is one to
which, upon any one of the numerous occasions of my attendance at your
hospitable board, I have always listened with the greatest satisfaction
until the present day arrived, when I am bound to say that that
satisfaction is extremely qualified by the arrangement less felicitous,
I think, than any which preceded it that refers to me the duty of
returning thanks for Literature. However, obedience is the principle
upon which we must proceed, and I have at least the qualification for
discharging the duty you have been pleased to place in my hands--that no
one has a deeper or more profound sense of the vital importance of the
active and constant cultivation of letters as an essential condition of
real progress and of the happiness of mankind, and here every one at
once perceives that that sisterhood of which the poet spoke, whom you
have quoted, is a real sisterhood, for literature and art are alike the
votaries of beauty. Of these votaries I may thankfully say that as
regards art I trace around me no signs of decay, and none in that
estimation in which the Academy is held, unless to be sure, in the
circumstance of your poverty of choice of one to reply to this toast.

During the present century the artists of this country have gallantly