gard;
and from being merely a necessary or conventional ornament of certain
portions of the church, was soon accounted its greatest glory.

Third, that it was accorded popular acclamation.

Fourth, that its most attractive feature in the eyes of beholders was
its life-like representation of the human form and other natural
objects.

Prosaic as these considerations may appear, they are nevertheless the
fundamental principles that underlie the whole of the subsequent
development of painting; and unless every picture in the world were
destroyed, and the art of painting wholly lost for at least a thousand
years, there could not be another picture produced which would not refer
back through continuous tradition to one or every one of them. First,
the basis of religion. Second, the development peculiar to the soil.
Third, the imitation of nature. Fourth, the approbation of the
public--there we have the four cardinal points in the chart of painting.

It would be easy enough to contend that painting had nothing whatever to
do with religion--if only by reference to the godless efforts of some of
the modernists; but such a contention could only be based on the
imperfect recognition of what religion actually means. In Italy in the
thirteenth century, as in Spain in the seventeenth, it meant the Church
of Rome. In Germany of the sixteenth, as in England in the eighteenth,
it meant something totally different. To put it a little differently,
all painting that is worth so calling has been done to the glory of God;
and after making due allowance for human frailties of every variety, it
is hard to say that among all the hundreds of great and good painters
there has ever been one who was not a good man.

As for the influence of environment, or nationality, this is so
universally recognised that the term "school" more often means locality
than tuition. We talk generally of the French, English, or Dutch
schools, and more particularly of the Paduan, Venetian, or Florentine.
It is only when we hesitate to call our national treasure a Botticelli
or a Bellini that we add the words "school of" to the name of the master
who is fondly supposed to have inspired its author. The difference
between a wood block of the early eighteenth century executed in
England and Japan respectively may be cited as an extreme instance of
the effect of locality on idea, when the method is identical.

With reference to the imitation of nature, at the mere ment