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most valuable of aesthetic attributes, languished more and more. The edifices of this period, though improved in technical execution, are not to be compared with the cathedrals of the Middle Ages. At the same time we must remember that this imitation of ancient Art could be no more than a secondary symptom, and not an occasion of the vague and indecisive aspect of modern Art, which we have seen to be owing to the critical character of the corresponding social state. The ancient works had never been really forgotten they did not interfere with the first rise of modern Art; and their now coming up again was a sign of the decomposition which was proceeding, and also a means, however imperfect and merely provisional, of filling the gap in the career of Art, left between the expiration of the old public sympathy and the growth of the new, under a positive organization. Finding no existing sociality adequate to its objects, Art availed itself of the ancient kind, as it could be known ideally and from the monuments which remained; and this was the abstract medium with which the heterogeneous impressions of the existing environment were united, with more or less success. Inadequate and dangerous as was this method, it was the only one then possible, and the only alternative to total anarchy in art. We find accordingly not only Petrarch and Boccaccio, but the great Dante himself, earnestly and constantly recommending the diligent study of antiquity as the basis of Art; advice which was erroneous only so far as that it set up as an absolute principle what was only a temporary expedient. The necessity itself enhances our admiration of masterpieces produced under such shackles and with such imperfect means; and it certainly testifies to a growth rather than a decay of the aesthetic faculties in Man. The provisional system which impaired the preceding movement suspended the development of Art during the next. With the originality of the preceding age Art lost its popular quality and then a public had to be trained for the factitious art which was to have a provisional reign; and that public must consist of privileged classes, placed by an elaborate education at the same point of view with the artists, in order to secure that community of feeling which must exist between the interpreter and the spectator. In a normal condition of art the harmony exists naturally, because the same medium pervades all minds but in that provisional season a long preparation was necessary; and it was only when that preparation had gone on long enough to prepare a special public, destined to enlargement by means of an education founded on the study of the dead languages, that the æsthetic movement could resume its suspended course, and gradually produce the universal movement which I shall now proceed to describe. This provisional factitious system involved all the fine arts, but in unequal degrees. Its most direct and powerful influence was upon the leading art, Poetry. Sculpture and architecture were more affected by it than painting: and music suffered

least of all, being no otherwise involved than through its connection with poetry.

Arriving at the second period,-that of systematic encouragement of art, we see at once the advantage that Art had over science in the same stage, inasmuch as it excited no political Political uneasiness among rulers, while it inspired much relations. more vivid and general sympathy. The popes, who were by that time merely Italian princes, paid little honour to science, but were the most zealous patrons of the arts, which their habits and education disposed them to appreciate. It was however more as a means of influence and popularity, than from taste, that monarchs in general bestowed this encouragement; and there could not be a stronger proof of the social power which Art was acquiring among modern populations.

Of the two forms of political rule, the monarchical and Catholic was more favourable to Art than the aristocratic and Protestant. The more elevated and central authority must be the most propitious to an element which, like the aesthetic, requires and occasions a broad, equable, social sympathy; and we find accordingly that academies of poetry and the arts rose up in monarchical states, and incorporated Art with modern polity. In the other case the local distribution of political power caused the arts to be confided to the irksome and precarious resource of private patronage, among nations whose æsthetic tendencies were already checked by Protestantism; and thus, but for the transient triumph of Elizabeth, and yet more of Cromwell, over the national aristocracy, we should probably not have had the genius of Shakspere and Milton to plead in disproof of the supposed deterioration of the æsthetic faculties in modern times. There is some set-off against the unfavourable influences in the latter case in the superior originality which can work its way through by dint of independence; but the social effect, which we have here to consider, is unquestionably superior where the greatest aid is given to the propagation of Art among the people, and the training of minds in order to a future reorganization. We must refer to this political distinction the peculiarities of the dramatic art, and especially in England. It was not till now that the line was drawn between public and private life in dramatic representation; for in the Greek drama, notwithstanding the chorus, there was nothing that related to polity, except the station of the families whose passions and adventures were exhibited. This was inevitable among a people who could conceive of no social state but their own. Modern tragedy however has a more decided historical character, exhibiting former modes of social life; and its rise had a different aspect, according as it represented ancient or medieval society. The monarchical authority in France recoiled from the remembrance of the Middle Ages, in which royalty was so weak and aristocracy so strong; and it delighted in the revival of the great scenes of antiquity. Hence Corneille's

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immortal idealization of the chief phases of Roman society. In England, on the contrary, where the feudal system was much less impaired, the most general sympathies favoured the remembrances of the Middle Ages; and Shakspere's representations of them were popular accordingly. The isolation which distinguished the English polity more and more aided this result, and rendered the choice of national subjects almost exclusive. In Spain, under royal and Catholic ascendency, we see that dramatic art was very like the English, and even further from imitation of the ancients; but in that case peculiar predilections existed in favour of medieval traditions, through the close connection of Catholicism with the corresponding polity. If the Catholic spirit had been equally strong among nations which escaped Protestantism, it would have saved them, in like manner, from their recurrence to antiquity in matters of Art, which was always a token of the instinct of religious emancipation. Thus the Catholic instigation wrought in Spain as the feudal did in England; only more strongly; because there was Protestantism to encounter in England, with its unfavourableness to Art. I have thought it worth while to say thus much to indicate how a sound theory of social progress may throw light on the study of the historical development of Art. I must add that this diversity affects only the representation of public life; whereas, those compositions which delineate private life could relate only to modern civilization. Thus, this class of works, epic or dramatic, must manifest a more complete originality, and obtain a more real and extensive popularity, public life bearing too small a proportion to private to afford a clear and stable basis to Art. It was for this reason that Cervantes and Molière were always, as now, almost equally popular among various European nations, while it seems scarcely possible for Shakspere and Corneille to be admired by the same people. No great genius has endeavoured to produce any dramatic delineation of public life; and the epics which have been attempted have only proved the impossibility of success. The marvellous poem of Ariosto relates much more, in fact, to private than to public life; and, as for Tasso's epic, it would be enough to point out its coincidence with the universal success of a composition designed to efface, by means of irresistible ridicule, the last popular remembrance of the same chivalry which Tasso embalmed in glory. The time was evidently past for the full success of such subjects, though they were the finest that modern civilization could offer; whereas, the poems of Homer were as acceptable as ever in Greece after ten centuries, the popular sympathies being still attached to the struggles of their country against Asia. We see the same contrast in the case of Milton, who strove to idealize the principles of the Christian faith at the very time when they were extinguished in the most advanced minds around him. These immortal efforts did not achieve an æsthetic result incompatible with the transitional state of society; but they

proved that the poetic faculty in Man was alive and advancing in growth. The operation of Art was of a critical nature, like every other genuine influence of the period. It not only awakened mental activity, but almost all the chief artists joined in attacking the Catholic and feudal constitution, under such forms as suited their art, in Italy, Spain, England, and France. Dramatic poetry was compelled to this by the sacerdotal anathemas aimed at the theatre, when the Church was obliged to relinquish the direction of it. Comedy was the most favourable to this work, because it most clearly reflected the instinct of the time. Molière's satires of the Catholic and feudal spirit, by no means sparing the metaphysical, or overlooking the empirical, extravagancies of the influential classes, are an evidence of the tone of dramatic art; and the protection granted to the moral disciplinarian against priestly and aristocratic rancour during the youth of Louis XIV. shows that the monarch had some dim instinct of the tendency of such criticism to aid in the establishment of the monarchical dictatorship. The final period is marked by a development of Art, similar to that of Industry. Hitherto, the ruling powers had Spread of Art. patronized Art for the sake of their glory and popularity but now, the fine arts had advanced so far, and were so firmly established as a part of civilization, that it had become a duty of government to aid them by regular active encouragement, proceeding not from personal generosity, but from public solicitude. At the same time, the growing taste for the fine arts was rendering the life of poets and artists more and more independent, by releasing them from the necessity of that patronage which was still needed by the less popular pursuits of science. The institution of journalism was then becoming practically important,-to literature at first, and then indirectly, by its popularizing influence, to all the other arts. While the æsthetic element was thus obtaining independence and power, its special expansion underwent a remarkable change. The imitation of the ancients must come to an end, and some new form be assumed, yielding impressions more complete and more general. After a season of æsthetic anarchy the discussion arose, about the comparative merits of the ancients and moderns, which may be truly regarded as an event in the history of human progress, as it discredited for ever the old régime of Art, which henceforth made only abortive attempts, and proved its incapacity to produce any more masterpieces. But, at the same time, the other system, regarded as peculiar to England and Spain, underwent a similar change, and sank into decline and sterility, through the decay of medieval associations. The progress that was made was therefore necessarily in those productions that exhibit the interests of private life. On the stage, it is true, there was no surpassing Molière, who remains without a rival; but in the epic delineation of private manners, which is the most original and extensive kind of literary creation proper to modern society,

we have, among many others, the masterpieces of Fielding and Lesage, which are a standing testimony against the decline of the poetic faculties of Man. Another character of this phase is the decisive progress of dramatic music; especially in Italy and Germany and its influence must be powerful in incorporating Art with social life in general.

The demolition of the ancient system by the negative philosophy was extremely unfavourable to Art, in as far as it permitted it to have none but fleeting inspirations, incompatible with all fundamental truth of poetic conception: but, at the same time, the decrepitude of the old régime gave a force to the artistic influence, through its connection with the social polity, which is sufficient to support it till the period of reorganization arrives. Thus it is that poets and artists, who were scarcely emancipated from patronage at the beginning of this phase, rapidly rose to be, in some sort, the spiritual leaders of modern peoples against the system of retrograde resistance, which was now to be irrevocably destroyed; the movement being before so prepared for by the metaphysicians that it suited æsthetic better than philosophical intellects, and afforded them a means of activity not then yielded by Art, properly so called. The consequences of so unnatural a state of things could not but be fatal both to society and to Art, if it were too long protracted: and the evil effects are seen in the rule of the men of letters, who are the offspring of the transition, and the leaders of the social revolution. We here find the necessary close of the preparatory season of the aesthetic element; for its incorporation with the sociality of a modern age has thus been urged to excess; and the time for reorganization has evidently arrived.

We have now to take a similar review of the scientific evolution, and after that, of the philosophical,-the separation The scientific of the two being provisional, as I explained before. development. When we have completed the process, we shall obtain from their common issue the true immediate principle of the spiritual organization, and therefore of the temporal, which can have no other sufficient basis.

Though the scientific and philosophical faculties are, as I have so often said, the least powerful of any, the scientific and philosophical spirit obtains the rule over human progress, by means of its relation to the great general conceptions which support the whole system of our ideas about the external universe and Man. The slowness of the great changes wrought by this spirit may disguise the reality of its power; but it confirms the eminent difficulty and importance of those changes. We have seen how the primitive speculative exercises of mankind originated a theological philosophy which was modified more and more, and at length destroyed, without any possibility of its being replaced. We have now to explain how, starting from the Middle Ages (the cradle of all great subse

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