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in certain respects to the conditions of art [[?]] The manual skill of the sculptors was perhaps greater than that of their predecessors.  Never has marble been so finely handled as by them, but the dignity of inspiration had vanished. The representation of the simple, great sentiments no longer sufficed them; they strove to give their work attractiveness by depicting interesting situations or pretty conceptions of the popular deities of the minor mythology.  In the place of Athene they carved Aphrodite, and forsook Apollo for Dionysius.  This was, of course, the beginning of a distant but certain end.  Now, without pushing the parallel too far, and without implying that our artists have any past which is related to them as Phidias was to Praxiteles, it seems to us that the art of the present age, too, is characterized by skill without inspiration, by zeal not according to knowledge. Our artists--there are, of course, many brilliant individual exceptions to the general statements we are about to make--have acquired an extraordinary dexterity in the manipulation of their tools and materials, but they seem destitute of creative imagination, and their works exhibit neither originality nor insight. They resemble the man who could talk fifteen languages, but had not an idea to express in any of them; or more closely still, our army, which is supplied with weapons of incredible precision and power, while the reasons for which it fights are little, if any, better than those which guided men when they used bows and arrows. Sir Frederick Leighton's painting of the faces in "Day-drams" and "Melittion" in execution are exquisite almost beyond description, but as faces they are unimaginative and uninteresting. The same thing is true of the landscapes; they exhibit an astonishing manipulative skill, but are such mere imitations that when we are able to photograph in colors, a good part of the occupation of the landscape-painter will be gone.
A second point of similarity to the same period of Greek art is furnished by the choice of subjects. Our artists seem to choose the far-fetched, the picturesque, the startling,--in a word, the likely-to-be-talked-about. An Eton boy shot dead just as he shouts "Floreat Etona!" a fearful scene at the saving of the guns at Maiwand; "Rome and Juliet," two cats; "There's a little lady! on with her cloak!" "The first kiss"; "Tommy's got a prize'; "An anxious moment"; "Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree-top";--these are specimens of the subjects and titles at the Royal Academy. Not a few of the pictures are unintelligible without an explanatory quotation. Now, a picture is a permanent representation; it is intended to be always before us; we are to take it like a bride to our home, and to live with it. What would be the state of mind produced by being surrounded with pictures like these? One shudders at the thought. Effeminacy, weariness, finally irritation and disgust, would be our conscious state, and unconsciously we should certainly suffer a dulling of susceptibility to lofty imagination and noble motion.
Turning to another ang greater of the arts, poetry, we find its condition similar, but worse. Many of its rising votaries are men of splendid genius and accomplishments, destitute of worthy themes of song. Their themes--here, too, we bear in mind one or two glorious exceptions--are on a par with the painters' subjects; to give flow to their powers and to secure an audience they have resorted, on the one hand, to things which are simply revolting, like many of Rossetti's sonnets, the " Laus Veneris," and " Charmides," and, on the other, to trivialties, pretty ballads, rondels and conceits. What is likely to be the state of mind of the man who keeps himself well read in this poetry?  He will be excited, without being satisfied; he will become lascivious and dainty; in this case, also, the edge will be taken off his best susceptibilities.
Now, in the habits of the society in which these things are, what do we find?  That painting and poetry frequently co-exist with all kinds of petty negligencies, and even vices. A wealthy man buys pictures and books and china and Eastern carpets, believing that he is a worshipper of the arts, and yet in a railway carriage he spreads his parcels over seats which he cannot occupy, and in his business many mean actions have become second nature to him.  It is told of an old Greek professional philosopher that when a wealthy citizen was conducting him through room after room in his house, where every inch of space was occupied by costly [[?]] he turned suddenly and spat in his

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