ift
for fighting, and none for painting. Now, in the next great dynasty of
soldiers, the art-instinct is wholly wanting. I have not yet
investigated the Roman character enough to tell you the causes of this;
but I believe, paradoxical as it may seem to you, that, however truly
the Roman might say of himself that he was born of Mars, and suckled by
the wolf, he was nevertheless, at heart, more of a farmer than a
soldier. The exercises of war were with him practical, not poetical; his
poetry was in domestic life only, and the object of battle, 'pacis
imponere morem.' And the arts are extinguished in his hands, and do not
rise again, until, with Gothic chivalry, there comes back into the mind
of Europe a passionate delight in war itself, for the sake of war. And
then, with the romantic knighthood which can imagine no other noble
employment,--under the fighting kings of France, England, and Spain; and
under the fighting dukeships and citizenships of Italy, art is born
again, and rises to her height in the great valleys of Lombardy and
Tuscany, through which there flows not a single stream, from all their
Alps or Apennines, that did not once run dark red from battle: and it
reaches its culminating glory in the city which gave to history the most
intense type of soldiership yet seen among men;--the city whose armies
were led in their assault by their king, led through it to victory by
their king, and so led, though that king of theirs was blind, and in the
extremity of his age.

And from this time forward, as peace is established or extended in
Europe, the arts decline. They reach an unparalleled pitch of
costliness, but lose their life, enlist themselves at last on the side
of luxury and various corruption, and, among wholly tranquil nations,
wither utterly away; remaining only in partial practice among races who,
like the French and us, have still the minds, though we cannot all live
the lives, of soldiers.

'It may be so,' I can suppose that a philanthropist might exclaim.
'Perish then the arts, if they can flourish only at such a cost. What
worth is there in toys of canvas and stone if compared to the joy and
peace of artless domestic life?' And the answer is--truly, in
themselves, none. But as expressions of the highest state of the human
spirit, their worth is infinite. As results they may be worthless, but,
as signs, they are above price. For it is an assured truth that,
whenever the faculties of men are at their ful