ptres, and with relapsed wings.
The 'Paul' of Masaccio is a well-known example of the dignified
simplicity of which these artists possessed so large a share. These
instances might be multiplied without end; but surely enough have
been cited in the way of example to show the surpassing talent and
knowledge of these painters, and their consequent success, by
following natural principles, until the introduction of false and
meretricious ornament led the Arts from the simple chastity of
nature, which it is as useless to attempt to elevate as to endeavour
to match the works of God by those of man. Let the artist be content
to study nature alone, and not dream of elevating any of her works,
which are alone worthy of representation.{5}

{5} The sources from which these examples are drawn, and where many
more might be found, are principally:--_D'Agincourt: "Histoire de
l'Art par les Monumens;"--Rossini: "Storia della Pittura;"--Ottley:
"Italian School of Design,"_ and his 120 Fac-similes of scarce
prints;--and the "Gates of San Giovanni," by Ghiberti; of which last
a cast of one entire is set up in the Central School of Design,
Somerset House; portions of the same are also in the Royal Academy.

The Arts have always been most important moral guides. Their
flourishing has always been coincident with the most wholesome period
of a nation's: never with the full and gaudy bloom which but hides
corruption, but the severe health of its most active and vigorous
life; its mature youth, and not the floridity of age, which, like the
wide full open petals of a flower, indicates that its glory is about
to pass away. There has certainly always been a period like the short
warm season the Canadians call the "Indian Summer," which is said to
be produced by the burning of the western forests, causing a
factitious revival of the dying year: so there always seems to have
been a flush of life before the final death of the Arts in each
period:--in Greece, in the sculptors and architects of the time after
Pericles; in the Germans, with the successors of Albert Durer. In
fact, in every school there has been a spring, a summer, an autumn,
an "Indian Summer," and then winter; for as surely as the "Indian
Summer," (which is, after all, but an unhealthy flush produced by
destruction,) so surely does winter come. In the Arts, the winter has
been exaggerated action, conventionalism, gaudy colour, false
sentiment, voluptuousness, and poverty of invention