the century arose and
had their say--Carlyle, Tennyson, Browning, Ruskin, William Morris; it
was there all the time, that spirit of fierce hope and discontent and
emotion, that deep longing to penetrate the issues and the
significance of life.

It may be that the immense activity of science somewhat damped our
interest in beauty; but that is probably a temporary thing. The
influence exerted by the early scientists was in the direction of
facile promises to solve all mysteries, to analyse everything into
elements, to classify, to track out natural laws; and it was believed
that the methods and processes of life would be divested of their
secrecy and their irresponsibility; but the effect of further
investigation is to reveal that life is infinitely more complex than
was supposed, and that the end is as dim as ever; though science did
for a while make havoc of the stereotyped imaginative systems of faith
and belief, so that men supposed that beauty was but an accidental
emphasis of law, and that the love of it could be traced to very
material preferences.

The artist was for a time dismayed, at being confronted by the chemist
who held that he had explained emotion because he had analysed the
substance of tears; and for a time the scientific spirit drove the
spirit of art into cliques and coteries, so that artists were hidden,
like the Lord's prophets, by fifties in caves, and fed upon bread and
water.

What mostly I would believe now injures and overshadows art, is that
artists are affected by the false standard of prosperous life, are not
content to work in poverty and simplicity, but are anxious, as all
ambitious natures who love applause must be, to share in the spoils
of the Philistines. There are, I know, craftsmen who care nothing at
all for these things, but work in silence and even in obscurity at
what seems to them engrossing and beautiful; but they are rare; and
when there is so much experience and pleasure and comfort abroad, and
when security and deference so much depend upon wealth, the artist
desires wealth, more for the sake of experience and pleasure than for
the sake of accumulation.

But the spirit which one desires to see spring up is the Athenian
spirit, which finds its satisfaction in ideas and thoughts and
beautiful emotions, in mental exploration and artistic expression; and
is so absorbed, so intent upon these things that it can afford to let
prosperity flow past like a muddy stream. Unfortu