ained
even during the reigns of the first emperors. Christianity dealt far
differently with painting and sculpture, than with architecture. In the
latter, the Pagan form was adopted and improved; but with respect to the
former, she made a _tabula rasa_, and descended to the rudest efforts of
daubing and carving. The shapes, both of men and animals, were awkward,
cumbrous, and unnatural; every part was out of proportion, and the most
solemn scenes acquired a ludicrous grotesqueness. But the strangest
phenomenon is, that Pagan art itself, of its own accord, descended to as
low a level. The productions of Paganism in the time of Constantine were
altogether as barbarous as the clumsy attempts of the untutored hands of
Christianity. The new religion had created a new world. The forms of the
old might indeed survive for a time, but its spirit was gone. Paganism
was a corpse. Altars might be crowned with garlands, sacrifice might be
offered to the gods: but all in vain. A voice came forth from an island
in the AEgean Sea; a voice of sorrow and complaint, but of truth also. It
wailed the death of the great Pan. The mighty were indeed fallen, and so
vast was the gulf between Paganism in the days of Titus, and Paganism in
those of Constantine, that the creations of the former period could be
no lesson to the idolaters of the latter. These clung to the worship of
a departed age, but in spite of themselves. The new and mighty river of
thought swept them onward, and carried them on to the very same parting
point from which Christian art was struggling for perfection.

Christian art started with one grand error. It was warring for ever
against itself. In portraying the world, it hated it. Of all its
creations, there is not one which can be said to be really beautiful;
the effusions of symbolical enthusiasm are without all plastic truth.
Ideas were incorporated, but they did not prove men with flesh and
blood. The paintings and carvings were hieroglyphics. The same figure
expressed the same idea, and the idea once expressed, there was no
desire to extend the circle of figures or to alter their wretched
appearance. The same uncouth forms return with a killing monotony.
Centuries do not change them. The uniformity of monastic life by no
means tended to relax the inflexibility of invention. Religion, not art,
was the sculptor's or the painter's object; his production was a
creation of faith, not of beauty. Such is the character of almost