and so little
essential that it can be skimmed away: and, as the dross to the
metal, just so little essential are the archaisms you speak of to the
early art, and just so easily can they be cast aside. But bethink
you, Kosmon. Is Hellenic art without archaisms? And that feature of
it held to be its crowning perfection--its head--is not that a very
marked one? And, is it not so completely opposed to the artist's
experience in the forms of nature that--except in subjects from Greek
history and mythology--he dares not use it--at least without
modifying it so as to destroy its Hellenism?

_Sophon._ Then Hellenic Art is like a musical bell with a flaw in it;
before it can be serviceable it must be broken up and recast. If its
sum of beauty--its line of lines, the facial angle, must be
destroyed--as it undoubtedly must,--before it can be used for the
general purposes of art, then its claims over early mediaeval art, in
respect of form, are small indeed. But is it not altogether a great
archaism?

_Kalon._ Oh, Sophon! weighty as are the reasons urged against
Hellenic art by Christian and yourself, they are not weighty enough
to outbalance its beauty, at least to me: at present they may have
set its sun in gloom; yet I know that that obscuration, like a dark
foreground to a bright distance, will make its rising again only the
more surpassingly glorious. I admire its exquisite creations, because
they are beautiful, and noble, and perfect, and they elevate me
because I think them so; and their silent capabilities, like the
stardust of heaven before the intellectual insight, resolve
themselves into new worlds of thoughts and things so ever as I
contemplate their perfections: like a prolonged music, full of sweet
yet melancholy cadences, they have sunk into my heart--my brain--my
soul--never, never to cease while life shall hold with me. But, for
all that, my hands are not full; and, whithersoever the happy seed
shall require me, I am not for withholding plough or spade, planting
or watering; and that which I am called in the spirit to do--will I
do manfully and with my whole strength.

_Sophon._ Kalon, the conclusion of your speech is better than the
commencement. It is better to sacrifice myrrh and frankincense than
virtue and wisdom, thoughts than deeds. Would that all men were as
ready as yourself to dispark their little selfish enclosures, and
burn out all their hedges of prickly briers and brambles--turning the
evil int