more caution, and less success, because in many ways
they are signs or consequences of improvement, and are associated both
with purer forms of religious feeling and with more general diffusion of
refinements and comforts; and especially because we are critically aware
of all our deficiencies, too cognizant of all that is greatest to pass
willingly and humbly through the stages that rise to it, and oppressed
in every honest effort by the bitter sense of inferiority. In every
previous development the power has been in advance of the consciousness,
the resources more abundant than the knowledge--the energy irresistible,
the discipline imperfect. The light that led was narrow and
dim--streakings of dawn--but it fell with kindly gentleness on eyes
newly awakened out of sleep. But we are now aroused suddenly in the
light of an intolerable day--our limbs fail under the sunstroke--we are
walled in by the great buildings of elder times, and their fierce
reverberation falls upon us without pause, in our feverish and
oppressive consciousness of captivity; we are laid bedridden at the
Beautiful Gate, and all our hope must rest in acceptance of the "such as
I have," of the passers by.

21. The frequent and firm, yet modest expression of this hope, gives
peculiar value to Lord Lindsay's book on Christian Art; for it is seldom
that a grasp of antiquity so comprehensive, and a regard for it so
affectionate, have consisted with aught but gloomy foreboding with
respect to our own times. As a contribution to the History of Art, his
work is unquestionably the most valuable which has yet appeared in
England. His research has been unwearied; he has availed himself of the
best results of German investigation--his own acuteness of discernment
in cases of approximating or derivative style is considerable--and he
has set before the English reader an outline of the relations of the
primitive schools of Sacred art which we think so thoroughly verified in
all its more important ramifications, that, with whatever richness of
detail the labor of succeeding writers may illustrate them, the leading
lines of Lord Lindsay's chart will always henceforth be followed. The
feeling which pervades the whole book is chastened, serious, and full of
reverence for the strength ordained out of the lips of infant
Art--accepting on its own terms its simplest teaching, sympathizing with
all kindness in its unreasoning faith; the writer evidently looking back
with mos