hitherto, among all nations of the
world that have practiced it successfully, into three great periods.

The first, that in which their conscience is undeveloped, and their
condition of life in many respects savage; but, nevertheless, in harmony
with whatever conscience they possess. The most powerful tribes, in this
stage of their intellect, usually live by rapine, and under the
influence of vivid, but contracted, religious imagination. The early
predatory activity of the Normans, and the confused minglings of
religious subjects with scenes of hunting, war, and vile grotesque, in
their first art, will sufficiently exemplify this state of a people;
having, observe, their conscience undeveloped, but keeping their conduct
in satisfied harmony with it.

The second stage is that of the formation of conscience by the discovery
of the true laws of social order and personal virtue, coupled with
sincere effort to live by such laws as they are discovered.

All the Arts advance steadily during this stage of national growth, and
are lovely, even in their deficiencies, as the buds of flowers are
lovely by their vital force, swift change, and continent beauty.

213. The third stage is that in which the conscience is entirely formed,
and the nation, finding it painful to live in obedience to the precepts
it has discovered, looks about to discover, also, a compromise for
obedience to them. In this condition of mind its first endeavor is
nearly always to make its religion pompous, and please the gods by
giving them gifts and entertainments, in which it may piously and
pleasurably share itself; so that a magnificent display of the powers of
art it has gained by sincerity, takes place for a few years, and is then
followed by their extinction, rapid and complete exactly in the degree
in which the nation resigns itself to hypocrisy.

The works of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Tintoret belong to this period
of compromise in the career of the greatest nation of the world; and are
the most splendid efforts yet made by human creatures to maintain the
dignity of states with beautiful colors, and defend the doctrines of
theology with anatomical designs.

Farther, and as an universal principle, we have to remember that the
Arts express not only the moral temper, but the scholarship, of their
age; and we have thus to study them under the influence, at the same
moment of, it may be, declining probity, and advancing science.

214. Now in this