the commencement of decline. The perfection of execution
and the beauty of feature which were attained in his works, and in those
of his great contemporaries, rendered finish of execution and beauty of
form the chief objects of all artists; and thenceforward execution was
looked for rather than thought, and beauty rather than veracity.

And as I told you, these are the two secondary causes of the decline of
art; the first being the loss of moral purpose. Pray note them clearly.
In mediaeval art, thought is the first thing, execution the second; in
modern art execution is the first thing, and thought the second. And
again, in mediaeval art, truth is first, beauty second; in modern art,
beauty is first, truth second. The mediaeval principles led _up_ to
Raphael, and the modern principles lead _down_ from him.

128. Now, first, let me give you a familiar illustration of the
difference with respect to execution. Suppose you have to teach two
children drawing, one thoroughly clever and active-minded, the other
dull and slow; and you put before them Jullien's chalk studies of
heads--_etudes a deux crayons_--and desire them to be copied. The dull
child will slowly do your bidding, blacken his paper and rub it white
again, and patiently and painfully, in the course of three or four
years, attain to the performance of a chalk head, not much worse than
his original, but still of less value than the paper it is drawn upon.
But the clever child will not, or will only by force, consent to this
discipline. He finds other means of expressing himself with his pencil
somehow or another; and presently you find his paper covered with
sketches of his grandfather and grandmother, and uncles, and
cousins--sketches of the room, and the house, and the cat, and the dog,
and the country outside, and everything in the world he can set his eyes
on; and he gets on, and even his child's work has a value in it--a truth
which makes it worth keeping; no one knows how precious, perhaps, that
portrait of his grandfather may be, if any one has but the sense to keep
it till the time when the old man can be seen no more up the lawn, nor
by the wood. That child is working in the Middle-Age spirit--the other
in the modern spirit.

129. But there is something still more striking in the evils which have
resulted from the modern regardlessness of truth. Consider, for
instance, its effect on what is called historical painting. What do you
at present _mean_ by