Nothing can be more pitiful and sad than the condition of one who,
having been subjected to the influence of ancient Art, has not had the
ability to recognize or the earnestness of purpose essential to the
apprehension of the truths which it has for his soul instead of his
hands. But if, through truthfulness of aim, and a sense of the divine
nature of the errand to which he seems appointed, he reach the law
of Art, then henceforth its pursuit becomes the sign of life; if the
impulse bear him no farther than rules, then all he produces goes forth
as a proclamation of death. There is no middle path. Art is high or low:
high, if it be the profoundest life of an earnest man, uttering itself
in the _real_, even though it be awkwardly, and in violation of all
accepted methods of expression; low, if it be not such utterance, even
though consummate in obedience to the finest rules of all Art-science.
There can be no other way. The life is in the man, and not in the stone;
and no affectation of vitality can atone for the absence of that soul
which should have been breathed into existence from his own divine life.

As was said, possession of self is the only condition under which the
quantity and quality of the Art-impulse may be determined. It is only
when a man stands face to face with himself, in the stillness of his own
inner world, that his possibilities become apparent; and it is only when
conscious of these, and inspired by a just sense of their dignity, that
he can achieve that which shall be genuine success. _Once_ he must be
lifted away and isolated from worldly surroundings, relieved from all
objective influences, from the pressure of all human relations; once the
very memory of all these must be blotted out; once he must be alone.
This is possible to a Mendelssohn in the awful solitude of Beethoven's
"Sonate Pathetique," to a painter in the presence of Leonardo's "Last
Supper," and to a sculptor in the hushed halls of the Vatican.

But that which lifts the true artist above externals, the externals of
his own individual being, crushes the false, to whom the marble and the
paint are in themselves the ultimate.

This train of thought has been suggested by the fact of the dominion
which classic Art has acquired over sculptors, and by the influence of
the sixteenth and seventeenth century schools upon painters. It is due,
however, to our sculptors in Italy that credit should be given them
for having resisted the influenc