narrowest compass--you have had an extreme energy of virtue displayed
by the despisers of art. Among all the soldiers to whom you owe your
victories in the Crimea, and your avenging in the Indies, to none are
you bound by closer bonds of gratitude than to the men who have been
born and bred among those desolate Highland moors. And thus you have
the differences in capacity and circumstance between the two nations,
and the differences in result on the moral habits of two nations, put
into the most significant--the most palpable--the most brief
opposition. Out of the peat cottage come faith, courage, self-
sacrifice, purity, and piety, and whatever else is fruitful in the work
of Heaven; out of the ivory palace come treachery, cruelty, cowardice,
idolatry, bestiality,--whatever else is fruitful in the work of Hell.

But the difficulty does not close here. From one instance, of however
great apparent force, it would be wholly unfair to gather any general
conclusion--wholly illogical to assert that because we had once found
love of art connected with moral baseness, the love of art must be the
general root of moral baseness; and equally unfair to assert that,
because we had once found neglect of art coincident with nobleness of
disposition, neglect of art must be always the source or sign of that
nobleness. But if we pass from the Indian peninsula into other
countries of the globe; and from our own recent experience, to the
records of history, we shall still find one great fact fronting us, in
stern universality--namely, the apparent connection of great success in
art with subsequent national degradation. You find, in the first place,
that the nations which possessed a refined art were always subdued by
those who possessed none: you find the Lydian subdued by the Mede; the
Athenian by the Spartan; the Greek by the Roman; the Roman by the Goth;
the Burgundian by the Switzer: but you find, beyond this--that even
where no attack by any external power has accelerated the catastrophe