How different the conditions when we turn to consider English Art, as it stands to-day: "The whole current of human life setting resolutely in a direction opposed to artistic production; no love of beauty, no sense of the outward dignity and comeliness of things, calling on the part of the public for expression at the artist's hands; and, as a corollary, no dignity, no comeliness for the most part, in their outward aspect; everywhere a narrow utilitarianism which does not include the gratification of the artistic sense amongst things useful; the works of artists sought for indeed, but too often as a profitable merchandise, or a vehicle of speculation, too often on grounds wholly foreign to their intrinsic worth as productions of a distinctive form of human genius, with laws and conditions of its own." The modern student may well question, whether the great artists of the past, if they lived now under our different conditions, would achieve all that they did then. For further bewilderment, the differences to be seen in the past itself, between school and school, and one age and another, may lead him to doubt "whether Art be not indeed an ephemeral thing, a mere efflorescence of the human intelligence, an isolated development, incapable of organic growth." To such doubts, comes the reassuring answer: "That Art is fed by forces that lie in the depth of our nature, and which are as old as man himself; of which therefore we need not doubt the durability; and to the question whether Art with all its blossoms has but one root, the answer we shall see to be: Assuredly it has; for its outward modes of expression are many and various, but its underlying vital motives are the same." The new President concluded his first Discourse with an eloquent plea for sincerity in Art: "Without sincerity of emotion no gift, however facile and specious, will avail you to win the lasting sympathies of men"--a truth which perhaps needs more repeating to-day than ever it did! In the second Discourse (December 10th, 1881), we are called upon to consider that other question which has so often perplexed the artist, especially the English artist, in whom the moral sentiment is apt to take a threatening form on occasion: "What is the relation in which Art stands to Morals and to Religion?"