good purpose? Might we not justly be looked upon with suspicion and
fear, rather than with sympathy, by the innocent and unartistical
public? Are we even sure of ourselves? Do we know what we are about?
Are we met here as honest people? or are we not rather so many
Catilines assembled to devise the hasty degradation of our country, or,
like a conclave of midnight witches, to summon and send forth, on new
and unexpected missions, the demons of luxury, cruelty, and
superstition?

I trust, upon the whole, that it is not so: I am sure that Mr. Redgrave
and Mr. Cole do not at all include results of this kind in their
conception of the ultimate objects of the institution which owes so
much to their strenuous and well-directed exertions. And I have put
this painful question before you, only that we may face it thoroughly,
and, as I hope, out-face it. If you will give it a little sincere
attention this evening, I trust we may find sufficiently good reasons
for our work, and proceed to it hereafter, as all good workmen should
do, with clear heads, and calm consciences.

To return, then, to the first point of difficulty, the relations
between art and mental disposition in India and Scotland. It is quite
true that the art of India is delicate and refined. But it has one
curious character distinguishing it from all other art of equal merit
in design--_it never represents a natural fact_. It either forms
its compositions out of meaningless fragments of colour and flowings of
line; or if it represents any living creature, it represents that
creature under some distorted and monstrous form. To all the facts and
forms of nature it wilfully and resolutely opposes itself; it will not
draw a man, but an eight-armed monster; it will not draw a flower, but
only a spiral or a zigzag.