nt, and accurate representation.

Comparisons between the history of Asiatic and of European art are
admittedly possible; but as yet we believe the precise nature of the
similarity has not been stated. It lies in the fact that both conform to
the general laws of decay. The Asiatic movement with which we are
familiar is essentially Buddhist; it expresses that sense of the
universe that is expressed in another form by Buddhist doctrine and its
later developments along the lines of Taoist idealism. How far the
spread of Buddhism in China represents a spiritual reaction from the dry
materialism of Confucianism is no matter for brief and dogmatic
discussion. We need only say that the fourth-century painting in the
British Museum by Ku K'ai-chih, though the artist himself is said to
have been a Buddhist, belongs clearly to an earlier movement than that
of which the T'ang and just pre-T'ang masterpieces are the primitives.
By comparison with early Buddhist art this exquisite picture is
sufficiently lacking in emotional significance to tempt one to suppose
that it represents the ripe and highly cultivated decadence of a
movement that the growing religious spirit was soon to displace. Slight
as his acquaintance with this early art must be, an Englishman who
visited regularly the exhibition at Shepherd's Bush was able to gather
from eight or ten pictures, a couple of large wooden Bodhisattvas, and a
few small figures in bronze, some idea of the way in which Japanese
primitives could enter and express the world of reality. That same power
he will find in the Byzantine mosaics of the sixth century, which
express the earliest triumphs of another spiritual revolution over the
cultured materialism of a moribund civilization.

That new movement spread slowly across Europe, and till the middle of
the twelfth century there was no general decline. But the best was over
in France before the twelfth century was out. Gothic architecture is
juggling in stone and glass. In Italy Giotto followed Cimabue; and
Giotto could not always resist the temptation to state the particular
and leave the universal out. He sometimes tells us facts instead of
expressing emotions. In the full Renaissance the coarsest feeling
sufficed to flavour a handsome, well-made picture.

Meanwhile, under the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) Asiatic art had reached
much the same stage. The Ming picture in the British Museum known as
_The Earthly Paradise_ is inferior to the best