abstruse and difficult subject, so that it be one of legitimate
interest to mankind,--and my life on it, it shall be extensively
bought, read, and well considered.

Why do I say this? Because I believe there are in Birmingham at
this moment many working men infinitely better versed in
Shakespeare and in Milton than the average of fine gentlemen in the
days of bought-and-sold dedications and dear books. I ask anyone
to consider for himself who, at this time, gives the greatest
relative encouragement to the dissemination of such useful
publications as "Macaulay's History," "Layard's Researches,"
"Tennyson's Poems," "The Duke of Wellington's published
Despatches," or the minutest truths (if any truth can be called
minute) discovered by the genius of a Herschel or a Faraday? It is
with all these things as with the great music of Mendelssohn, or a
lecture upon art--if we had the good fortune to listen to one to-
morrow--by my distinguished friend the President of the Royal
Academy. However small the audience, however contracted the circle
in the water, in the first instance, the people are nearer the
wider range outside, and the Sister Arts, while they instruct them,
derive a wholesome advantage and improvement from their ready
sympathy and cordial response. I may instance the case of my
friend Mr. Ward's magnificent picture; {9} and the reception of
that picture here is an example that it is not now the province of
art in painting to hold itself in monastic seclusion, that it
cannot hope to rest on a single foundation for its great temple,--
on the mere classic pose of a figure, or the folds of a drapery--
but that it must be imbued with human passions and action, informed
with human right and wrong, and, being so informed, it may
fearlessly put itself upon its trial, like the criminal of old, to