with the idea of the artist. Romantic
art had to set forth, or rather signify, the infinite and purely
spiritual, and it took refuge in a system of traditional, or rather of
parabolistic symbols, as Christ himself had sought to render clear his
spiritualistic ideas by all kinds of beautiful parables. Hence the
mystical, problematic, marvelous, and transcendental in the artwork of
the Middle Ages, in which fantasy makes her most desperate efforts to
depict the purely spiritual by means of sensible images, and invents
colossal follies, piling Pelion on Ossa and _Parsifal_ on _Titurel_ to
attain to heaven.

Among other races where poetry attempted to display the infinite, and
where monstrous fancies appeared, as, for instance, among the
Scandinavians and Indians, we find poems which, being romantic, are
given that classification.

We cannot say much as to the music of the Middle Ages, for original
documents, which might have served for our guidance, are wanting. It was
not till late in the sixteenth century that the masterpieces of Catholic
church music, which cannot be too highly praised, appeared. These
express in the most exquisite manner pure Christian spirituality. The
recitative arts, which are spiritual from their very nature, could
indeed flourish fairly in Christianity, yet it was less favorable to
those of design, for as these had to represent the victory of mind over
matter, and yet must use matter as the means wherewith to work, they had
to solve a problem against Nature. Hence we find in sculpture and
painting those revolting subjects--martyrdoms, crucifixions, dying
saints, and the flesh crushed in every form. Such themes were martyrdom
for sculpture; and when I contemplate those distorted images in which
Christian asceticism and renunciation of the senses are expressed by
distorted, pious heads, long thin arms, starveling legs, and awkwardly
fitting garments, I feel an indescribable compassion for the artists of
that time. The painters were indeed more favored, for the material for
their work, because of its susceptivity to varied play of color, did not
antagonize spirituality so obstinately as the material of the sculptors,
and yet they were obliged to load the sighing canvas with the most
repulsive forms of suffering. In truth, when we regard many galleries
which contain nothing but scenes of bloodshed, scourging, and beheading,
one might suppose that the old masters had painted for the collection of
an