catastrophe; and by her own fall--so far as she has influence--she
accelerates the ruin of the nation by which she is practised.

The study, however, of the effect of art on the mind of nations is one
rather for the historian than for us; at all events it is one for the
discussion of which we have no more time this evening. But I will ask
your patience with me while I try to illustrate, in some further
particulars, the dependence of the healthy state and power of art
itself upon the exercise of its appointed function in the
interpretation of fact.

You observe that I always say _interpretation_, never
_imitation_. My reason for so doing is, first, that good art
rarely imitates; it usually only describes or explains. But my second
and chief reason is that good art always consists of two things: First,
the observation of fact; secondly, the manifesting of human design and
authority in the way that fact is told. Great and good art must unite
the two; it cannot exist for a moment but in their unity; it consists
of the two as essentially as water consists of oxygen and hydrogen, or
marble of lime and carbonic acid.

Let us inquire a little into the nature of each of the elements. The
first element, we say, is the love of Nature, leading to the effort to
observe and report her truly. And this is the first and leading
element. Review for yourselves the history of art, and you will find
this to be a manifest certainty, that _no great school ever yet
existed which had not for primal aim the representation of some natural
fact as truly as possible_. There have only yet appeared in the
world three schools of perfect art--schools, that is to say, that did
their work as well as it seems possible to do it. These are the