Art, with its
warlike expression, we are led on in turn to the consideration of Greek
Art, and the causes of its development. "Nothing that I am aware of in
the history of the human intelligence," he said, "is for a moment
comparable to the dazzling swiftness of the ripening of Greek Art in the
fifth century before Christ." After speaking of the fortunate balance
and interaction of races which resulted in the Greek Art of that era, he
goes on to speak of the exceptionally favouring circumstances of the
people: "Here are no vast alluvial plains, such as those along which, in
the East, whole empires surged to and fro in battle; no mighty flood of
rivers, no towering mountain walls: instead, a tract of moderate size; a
fretted promontory thrust out into the sea--far out, and flinging across
the blue a multitude of purple isles and islets towards the Ionian,
kindred, shores." Such a fortunate environment, joined to the
extraordinarily high ideal formed by the Greeks of citizenship, had much
to do with the fostering of Greek Art, in all "its nobility and its
serenity, its exquisite balance, its searching after truth, and its
thirst for the ideal."

[Illustration: HEAD OF A YOUNG GIRL
A STUDY IN OILS]

In his fourth Discourse Lord Leighton carried on his inquiry upon the
origins and conditions of Art into the difficult region of the
Etruscans; whose plastic work, like their speech, he considers, was at
best an uncouth, vigorous imitation, or re-shaping, of Greek models.
As examples of Etruscan Art, we are referred to "the two lovely bronze
mirrors, preserved at Perugia and Berlin, representing,--one, Helen
between Castor and Pollux,--the other, Bacchus, Semele, and Apollo....
In either case, the design is distinctly Greek; nevertheless a certain
ruggedness of form and handling is felt in both, betraying a temper less
subtle than the Hellenic; and we read without surprise on the one
'Pultuke,' and 'Phluphluus' on the other." Lest it should be thought
that something less than justice is done to Etruscan Art, take this fine
description of the tomb of Volumnus Violens:

"The recumbent effigy of the Volumnian is, indeed, rude and of little
merit; rude also in execution is the monument on which it rests, but in
conception and design of a dignity almost Dantesque. Facing the visitor,
as he enters the sepulchral chamber, this small sarcophagus--small in
dimensions, but in impressiveness how great!--rivets him at