to every condition of folly, of frivolity, and of vice. And this new
audience brings to bear upon the art in which its foolish and wicked
interest has been unhappily awakened, the full power of its riches: the
largest bribes of gold as well as of praise are offered to the artist
who will betray his art, until at last, from the sculpture of Phidias
and fresco of Luini, it sinks into the cabinet ivory and the picture
kept under lock and key. Between these highest and lowest types, there
is a vast mass of merely imitative and delicately sensual
sculpture;--veiled nymphs--chained slaves--soft goddesses seen by
roselight through suspended curtains--drawing room portraits and
domesticities, and such like, in which the interest is either merely
personal and selfish, or dramatic and sensational; in either case,
destructive of the power of the public to sympathize with the aims of
great architects.

283. Gentlemen,--I am no Puritan, and have never praised or advocated
puritanical art. The two pictures which I would last part with out of
our National Gallery, if there were question of parting with any, would
be Titian's Bacchus and Correggio's Venus. But the noble naturalism of
these was the fruit of ages of previous courage, continence, and
religion--it was the fullness of passion in the life of a Britomart. But
the mid-age and old age of nations is not like the mid-age or old age of
noble women. National decrepitude must be criminal. National death can
only be by disease, and yet it is almost impossible, out of the history
of the art of nations, to elicit the true conditions relating to its
decline in any demonstrable manner. The history of Italian art is that
of a struggle between superstition and naturalism on one side, between
continence and sensuality on another. So far as naturalism prevailed
over superstition, there is always progress; so far as sensuality over
chastity, death. And the two contests are simultaneous. It is impossible
to distinguish one victory from the other. Observe, however, I say
victory over superstition, not over religion. Let me carefully define
the difference. Superstition, in all times and among all nations, is the
fear of a spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the
acts of a man; who is present in some places, not in others; who makes
some places holy and not others; who is kind to one person, unkind to
another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention
you p