he had them all at hand, expressing himself in a natural language
derived from familiarity with natural objects. Beauty is the language of
art, and with this at command thoughts as they arise take visible form
perhaps almost without effort, or (certain technical difficulties
overcome) with little more than is required in writing--this not
absolving the artist or the poet from earnest thought and severe study.
In many respects the present age is far more advanced than preceding
times, incomparably more full of knowledge; but the language of great
art is dead, for general, noble beauty, pervades life no more. The
artist is obliged to return to extinct forms of speech if he would speak
as the great ones have spoken. Nothing beautiful is seen around him,
excepting always sky and trees and sea; these, as he is mainly a dweller
in cities, he cannot live enough with. But it is, perhaps, in the real
estimation in which art is held that we shall find the reason for
failure. If the world cared for her language, art could not help
speaking, the utterance being, perhaps, simply beautiful. But even in
these days when we have ceased to prize this, if it were demanded that
art should take its place beside the great intellectual outflow of the
time, the response would hardly be doubtful.

_Watts._


XLI

You refer to the use and purpose of the liberal arts; not a city in
Europe, at present, is fulfilling them. And if any one in Melbourne were
now to produce, even on a small scale, a picture fulfilling the
conditions of liberal art, then Melbourne might take the lead of
civilised cities. But it is not the ambition of leading, nor the