It is remarkable that while artists have long recognized the necessity of studying anatomy, and there has been from the commencement a professor of anatomy in the Royal Academy, it is only of late years that any knowledge of botany or geology has been considered desirable, and even now their importance is by no means generally recognized.
Much has been written as to the relative merits of painting, sculpture, and architecture. This, if it be not a somewhat unprofitable inquiry, would at any rate be out of place here.
Architecture not only gives intense pleasure, but even the impression of something ethereal and superhuman.
Madame de Staël described it as "frozen music;" and a cathedral is a glorious specimen of "thought in stone," whose very windows are transparent walls of gorgeous hues.
Caracci said that poets paint in their words and artists speak in their works. The latter have indeed one great advantage, for a glance at a statue or a painting will convey a more vivid idea than a long and minute description.
Another advantage possessed by Art is that it is understood by all civilized nations, whilst each has a separate language.
Even from a material point of view Art is most important. In a recent address Sir F. Leighton has observed that the study of Art "is every day becoming more important in relation to certain sides of the waning material prosperity of the country. For the industrial competition between this and other countries--a competition, keen and eager, which means to certain industries almost a race for life--runs, in many cases, no longer exclusively or mainly on the lines of excellence of material and solidity of workmanship, but greatly nowadays on the lines of artistic charm and beauty of design."
The highest service, however, that Art can accomplish for man is to become "at once the voice of his nobler aspirations, and the steady disciplinarian of his emotions; and it is with this mission, rather than with any aesthetic perfection, that we are at present concerned." [4]
Science and Art are sisters, or rather perhaps they are like brother and sister. The mission of Art is in some respects like that of woman. It is not Hers so much to do the hard toil and moil of the world, as to surround it with a halo of beauty, to convert work into pleasure.