mmon with such practices. She is a goddess of dainty thought--reticent
of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better
others.

She is, withal, selfishly occupied with her own perfection
only--having no desire to teach--seeking and finding the beautiful in
all conditions and in all times, as did her high priest Rembrandt,
when he saw picturesque grandeur and noble dignity in the Jews'
quarter of Amsterdam, and lamented not that its inhabitants were not
Greeks.

As did Tintoret and Paul Veronese, among the Venetians, while not
halting to change the brocaded silks for the classic draperies of
Athens.

As did, at the Court of Philip, Velasquez, whose Infantas, clad in
inaesthetic hoops, are, as works of Art, of the same quality as the
Elgin marbles.

No reformers were these great men--no improvers of the way of others!
Their productions alone were their occupation, and, filled with the
poetry of their science, they required not to alter their
surroundings--for, as the laws of their Art were revealed to them they
saw, in the development of their work, that real beauty which, to
them, was as much a matter of certainty and triumph as is to the
astronomer the verification of the result, foreseen with the light
given to him alone. In all this, their world was completely severed
from that of their fellow-creatures with whom sentiment is mistaken
for poetry; and for whom there is no perfect work that shall not be
explained by the benefit conferred upon themselves.

Humanity takes the place of Art, and God's creations are excused by
their usefulness. Beauty is confounded with virtue, and, before a work
of Art, it is asked: "What good shall it do?"

Hence it is that nobility of action, in this life, is hopelessly
linked with the merit of the work that portrays it; and thus the
people have acquired the habit of looking, as who should say, not
_at_ a picture, but _through_ it, at some human fact, that shall, or
shall not, from a social point of view, better their mental or moral
state. So we have come to hear of the painting that elevates, and of
the duty of the painter--of the picture that is full of thought, and
of the panel that merely decorates.

* * * * *

A favourite faith, dear to those who teach, is that certain periods
were especially artistic, and that nations, readily named, were
notably lovers of Art.

So we are told that the Greeks were, as a people, worship