“Regarded in the right spirit, we shall wonder at the inexhaustible resources of the artist in delineating the various and opposite characters of his multifarious composition--in which no two are to be found alike, and in each of which we find the appropriate idea--and the fulness of embodiment which sustains the _dramatis personæ_ throughout, with an untiring energy of impersonation in costume, symbol, and action, which excites our warmest admiration. “We have the sanctity of the Monk, the meekness and abstraction of the supreme Pontiff; the Archbishop; the pious energy of the Bishop in the act of benediction; the prudent Abbot; the devoted Anchorite; the haughty and imposing King; the stark conqueror fiercely justifying his usurpation; the placid and impassible Confessor administering his good old laws ...; the inspired Evangelist or the malignant sprite;--each and all discovering a racy energy of conception which the informed artist may envy.” Again: “The Mediæval artist appealed sometimes to the imagination, and sometimes to the conscience; and thus gave a degree of sentiment to his works, which the moderns can scarcely attempt,--much less attain.... “But it is the moral understanding of the artist which is most affected by the contemplation of so vast an assemblage of Christian art, as contrasted with the Classical, contained in our museums or in ancient monuments. Habituated to the Grecian model, in which the pride of life, the sensuality of beauty, a superhuman energy, or an unreal Elysium are assumed, deluding with a _beau-ideal_, and disappointing to all human experience, he is brought here to the full admission of the realities and true conditions of human existence--probation by the sweat of the brow, and the grand achievement of eternal life. Art is here employed to impress the great lessons of Truth, the warfare of the world, the subjugation of the natural to the spiritual man, the honest employment of the intellect in the great cause of religion.... No characters enter into this picture which have not been signalised by some great good to society, or some great triumph over all-absorbing self. Wisdom in its true sense, and varying energies of personal or intellectual strength, in a great cause, are the only passports to admission in these records.” I need not apologise for quoting at so much length from him who has so often and so eloquently addressed you from this place, and cannot refrain from adding the following admirable reflections to which the work he was describing gave rise:--