as linking together science and art. He accordingly had great pleasure in submitting for acceptance "Literature and Art," coupling with it the name of Lord Lytton, who was not only a distinguished representative of modern literature, but had also a distinct hereditary claim to represent that of the last generation; and Sir Frederick Leighton, the distinguished President of the Royal Academy.
The Earl of Lytton.—In returning thanks for "Literature" upon an occasion when we are all met to honor science in the person of one of its most illustrious adepts, I can not but forcibly remember that we are living in an age when inquiry is more active and more wide-spread than conviction, and it is natural that in minds of the highest order under these conditions even the imaginative faculty should be more powerfully attracted to scientific research than to purely literary production. But inquiry, I think, would be very sterile if conviction in some form or another were not the ultimate fruit of it, and I think that for a period of really vigorous, creative, imaginative art, we must look forward, in the course of scientific research, to some such general resettlement of ideas upon the basis of a common conviction—which is not now, perhaps, altogether attainable—as may enable art, instead of representing, as it does now, merely the mental attitude of the individual poet or the individual painter, once more to become the universally spontaneous and universally recognized imaginative expression of ideas and emotions which are common to a whole generation or a whole community. If that is the case, if science is ultimately to render this great service to literature and art, surely, in the mean while, we can not but gratefully appreciate the literary labors of those men of science who, in our own and in other countries, are promoting, or have promoted, this result, not only as original discoverers, but also as popular and powerful interpreters of scientific fact, and who, in this latter capacity, have already enriched contemporary literature with writings of rare literary value. If, instead of returning thanks for literature, I were permitted to return thanks on behalf of literature to those writers who have powerfully influenced my own generation, not only by thoughts which stimulate and instruct the intellect, but also by words which stir and elevate the heart, then assuredly I should ask leave to mention some distinguished names which occupy in the field of literature a position only second to the high rank they hold in the hierarchy of science; and foremost among those names I should not hesitate to mention with a special personal gratitude the name of the illustrious man who is the honored guest of this great assembly to-night. I can not say it is as a student of science that I myself have studied the writings of Professor Tyndall, but this I can say, and most truly, that those writings have been to me, from a very early period of my life, companions so cherished that I learned to look upon their writer as a dear personal friend and benefactor long before it was my
