educational series, by the blossom of the wild strawberry; which in
rising from its trine cluster of trine leaves,--itself as beautiful as
a white rose, and always single on its stalk, like an ear of corn, yet
with a succeeding blossom at its side, and bearing a fruit which is as
distinctly a group of seeds as an ear of corn itself, and yet is the
pleasantest to taste of all the pleasant things prepared by nature for
the food of men, [1]--may accurately symbolize, and help you to
remember, the conditions of this liberal and delightful, yet entirely
modest and orderly, art, and thought.

[Footnote 1: I am sorry to pack my sentences together in this confused
way. But I have much to say; and cannot always stop to polish or adjust
it as I used to do.]

64. You will find in the fourth of my inaugural lectures, at the 98th
paragraph, this statement,--much denied by modern artists and authors,
but nevertheless quite unexceptionally true,--that the entire vitality
of art depends upon its having for object either to _state a true
thing_, or _adorn a serviceable one_. The two functions of art in
Italy, in this entirely liberal and virescent phase of it,--virgin art,
we may call it, retaining the most literal sense of the words virga and
virgo,--are to manifest the doctrines of a religion which now, for the
first time, men had soul enough to understand; and to adorn edifices or
dress, with which the completed politeness of daily life might be
invested, its convenience completed, and its decorous and honourable
pride satisfied.

65. That pride was, among the men who gave its character to the
century, in honourableness of private conduct, and useful magnificence
of public art. Not of private or domestic art: observe this very