all the rest of
nature; that is to say, a total absence of faith in the presence of
any deity therein. Whereas the mediaeval never painted a cloud, but
with the purpose of placing an angel in it; and a Greek never entered
a wood without expecting to meet a god in it; we should think the
appearance of an angel in the cloud wholly unnatural, and should be
seriously surprised by meeting a god anywhere. Our chief ideas about
the wood are connected with poaching. We have no belief that the
clouds contain more than so many inches of rain or hail, and from our
ponds and ditches expect nothing more divine than ducks and
watercresses.

Finally: connected with this profanity of temper is a strong tendency
to deny the sacred element of colour, and make our boast in blackness.
For though occasionally glaring or violent, modern colour is on the
whole eminently sombre, tending continually to grey or brown, and by
many of our best painters consistently falsified, with a confessed
pride in what they call chaste or subdued tints; so that, whereas a
mediaeval paints his sky bright blue and his foreground bright green,
gilds the towers of his castles, and clothes his figures with purple
and white, we paint our sky grey, our foreground black, and our
foliage brown, and think that enough is sacrificed to the sun in
admitting the dangerous brightness of a scarlet cloak or a blue
jacket.

These, I believe, are the principal points which would strike us
instantly, if we were to be brought suddenly into an exhibition of
modern landscapes out of a room filled with mediaeval work. It is
evident that there are both evil and good in this change; but how much
evil, or how much good, we can only estimate by considering, as in the
former divisions of our inquiry, what are the real roots of the habits
of mind which have caused them.

And first, it is evident that the title "Dark Ages," given to the
mediaeval centuries, is, respecting art, wholly inapplicable. They
were, on the contrary, the bright ages; ours are the dark ones. I do
not mean metaphysically, but literally. They were the ages of gold;
ours are the ages of umber.

This is partly mere mistake in us; we build brown brick walls, and
wear brown coats, because we have been blunderingly taught to do so,
and go on doing so mechanically. There is, however, also some cause
for the change in our own tempers. On the whole, these are much
_sadder_ ages than the early ones; not sadder in a noble