Note 124 — LETTERS ON ART.

After reading this letter to his audience Dr. Acland thus continued: “The principles thus clearly enumerated by Mr. Ruskin are, on the main, those that animate the earnest student of Gothic. It is not for me especially to advocate Gothic Art, but only to urge, that if called into life, it should be in conformity to its own proper laws of vitality. If week after week, in my youth, with fresh senses and a docile spirit, I have drank in each golden glow that is poured by a Mediterranean sun from over the blue Ægæan upon the Athenian Parthenon,—if, day by day, sitting on Mars’ Hill, I have watched each purple shadow, as the temple darkened in majesty against the evening sky,—if so, it has been to teach me, as the alphabet of all Art, to love all truth and to hate all falsehood, and to kiss the hand of every Master who has brought down, under whatever circumstance, and in whatever age, one spark of true light from the Beauty and the subtle Law, which stamps the meanest work of the Ever living, Ever-working Artist.”—“The Oxford Museum,” pp. 56-7.