urnal, January-July 1865; January, February, and April 1866._)

* * * * *

THE CESTUS OF AGLAIA.

"[Greek: Poikilon o eni panta teteuchatai oude se phemi
Aprekton ge neesthai, ho ti phresi sesi menoinas.]"

(HOM. _Il._ xiv. 220-21.)

PREFATORY.[62]

25. Not many months ago, a friend, whose familiarity with both living
and past schools of Art rendered his opinion of great authority, said
casually to me in the course of talk, "I believe we have now as able
painters as ever lived; but they never paint as good pictures as were
once painted." That was the substance of his saying; I forget the exact
words, but their tenor surprised me, and I have thought much of them
since. Without pressing the statement too far, or examining it with an
unintended strictness, this I believe to be at all events true, that we
have men among us, now in Europe, who might have been noble painters,
and are not; men whose doings are altogether as wonderful in skill, as
inexhaustible in fancy, as the work of the really great painters; and
yet these doings of theirs are not great. Shall I write the commonplace
that rings in sequence in my ear, and draws on my hand--"are not Great,
for they are not (in the broad human and ethical sense) Good"? I write
it, and ask forgiveness for the truism, with its implied
uncharitableness of blame; for this trite thing is ill understood and
little thought upon by any of us, and the implied blame is divided among
us all; only let me at once partly modify it, and partly define.

26. In one sense, modern Art has more goodness in it than ever Art had
before. Its kindly spirit, its quick sympathy with pure domestic and
social feeling, the occasional seriousness of its instructive purpose,
and its honest effort to grasp the reality of conceived scenes, are all
eminently "good," as compared with the insane picturesqueness and
conventional piety of many among the old masters. Such domestic
painting, for instance, as Richter's in Germany, Edward Frere's in
France, and Hook's in England, together with such historical and ideal
work as----perhaps the reader would be offended with me were I to set
down the several names that occur to me here, so I will set down one
only, and say--as that of Paul de la Roche; such work, I repeat, as
these men have done, or are doing, is entirely good in its influence on
the public mind; and may, in thankful exultation, be compared with