of the question to think of art as a
whole, without a religious origin; and as the majority of writers find
it easier to describe scenes and emotions, when a certain lapse of time
has given them what painters call atmospheric perspective, so the
Renascence began when memory already clothed the ferocious realism of
mediaeval Christianity in the softer tones of gentle chivalry and tender
romance. It is often said, half in jest, that, in order to have
intellectual culture, a man must at least have forgotten Latin, if he
cannot remember it, because the fact of having learned it leaves
something behind that cannot be acquired in any other way. Similarly, I
think that art of all sorts has reached its highest level in successive
ages when it has aimed at recalling, by an illusion, a once vivid
reality from a not too distant past. And so when it gives itself up to
the realism of the present, it impresses the senses rather than the
thoughts, and misses its object, which is to bring within our mental
reach what is beyond our physical grasp; and when, on the other hand, it
goes back too far, it fails in execution, because its models are not
only out of sight, but out of mind, and it cannot touch us because we
can no longer feel even a romantic interest in the real or imaginary
events which it attempts to describe.

The subject is too high to be lightly touched, and too wide to be
touched more than lightly here; but in this view of it may perhaps be
found some explanation of the miserable poverty of Italian art in the
eighteenth century, foreshadowed by the decadence of the seventeenth,
which again is traceable to the dissipation of force and the
disappearance of individuality that followed the Renascence, as
inevitably as old age follows youth. Besides all necessary gifts of
genius, the development of art seems to require that a race should not
only have leisure for remembering, but should also have something to
remember which may be worthy of being recalled and perhaps of being
imitated. Progress may be the road to wealth and health, and to such
happiness as may be derived from both; but the advance of civilization
is the path of thought, and its landmarks are not inventions nor
discoveries, but those very great creations of the mind which ennoble
the heart in all ages; and as the idea of progress is inseparable from
that of growing riches, so is the true conception of civilization
indivisible from thoughts of beauty and nobilit