shapes and nondescript tints of female dress, and in the medieval structure of house furniture, endeavour to separate themselves as much as possible from the conditions of the life about them. We have given certain reasons for thinking that there is nothing absolute in the standard of art which the Præraphaelites have erected, but that, on the contrary, the art has been produced to answer the demands of a particular kind of taste. The course of our argument has further gone to show that this taste occupies a certain point in a progress of critical opinion which has advanced from one stage to another, corresponding with the successive changes in the form of society. We see the early critics, such as Addison and Pope, at first endeavouring to establish a standard of common-sense in art evidently founded on the idea of utility, and borrowed from the useful Afterwards, as the result of more philosophical methods of thought and the more settled state of society, we find men beginning to take note of their own perceptions, to enquire into their origin, and to fix them by reference to some general law. This is the aristocratic or constitutional period of taste illustrated by writers like Burke, Price, and the best of all English critics, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Presently society advances to a more democratic stage: a new school of criticism, headed by Alison and Jeffrey, appears; it is decided that there is no real standard of taste, and that all our perceptions arise from an arbitrary association of ideas. Lastly, out of this lawless scepticism has sprung the generous dogmatism of Mr. Ruskin, and out of this again the caprices and eccentricity of the artistic oligarchy which has, since the rise of the Præraphaelites, exercised such a powerful influence on English poetry and painting. Standing at this point of our intellectual life, we naturally look with anxiety to our future. What are the prospects of our art? Whither are we going? Are our artists leading us to 'fresh woods and pastures new,' or to the border of that vast and level plain where every molehill is a mountain and every thistle is a forest tree'? These questions may receive a partial answer in the ideals of those who have played so important a part in forming the taste of the times. Mr. Ruskin holds the creed of Liberalism in its most noble and generous form. He believes in the possibility of men's perfection on earth. Nature is to him the revelation of the mind of God, and every page of his writings urges on the reader to seek in the material universe the designs of an all-wise and beneficent Creator. Christianity, in his view, not only reveals to man God's law, but it has the power of so purifying the affections, that the mind is able to apprehend ideas of physical beauty beauty which were invisible to the pagan world. Hence his repugnance to the antique ideal, and his belief in the superior excellence of the painters who flourished before Raphael revolutionized taste by his revival of the Greek tradition. Assuming the certainty of man's moral progress, and the possibility of discovering the mind of God in material Nature, it is obvious that the artist might indeed expatiate in an inexhaustible region of invention. The ideal of Mr. Carr, who, with Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Pater, has developed and transformed the principles first started by Mr. Ruskin, is something very different. Mr. Ruskin's theory is grounded on his belief in a personal God; the doctrines of his successors are only intelligible as part of a Pantheistic system. Man, we understand them to say, is nothing in himself; his thoughts, feelings, and actions are merely modes of expression emanating from the Universal Being. Progress in such a system is of course an unintelligible idea; the most we can think of is change and succession: forms of life develop themselves, become exhausted, and are succeeded by others in the great kaleidoscope of Nature; and as for the individual, he is nothing but a conscious string of perceptions and emotions, more or less vivid in proportion as he is artistically constituted. He therefore has most life who most keenly analyses the transitory spirit of the age, and, on the same principle, the standard of taste is not to be sought in external law, but in the success which the artist achieves in discovering a permanent form of expression for his own evanescent thought. We cannot better illustrate the complete scepticism of this school of criticism than by three passages from Mr. Carr's book which incidentally exhibit his views of the nature of poetry, painting, and history. The first is taken from the Essay on Keats, in which the position of English poetry at the beginning of the present century is thus described: 'When the author of Endymion undertook to reshape for himself the material of his craft, recent revolt had brought tumult into the realm of verse, and with it an impatience of order and control. Poetry in its new birth was as yet only a spirit and emotion, eager, searching, and passionately free, but without a form to clothe and fitly express its soul. The dead outworn form had lately been cast away. That is to say, many distinguished English poets about the time of the French Revolution were carried away by the spirit of the times, and sought for new forms of metrical expression in which to embody their own thoughts. From this Mr. Carr con cludes, cludes, in the first place, that there was a new birth of poetry; and in the second place-ignoring the fact that Campbell still adhered to the old style, while Byron and Scott gave it a new development that the form of poetry which enshrined the 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard' and the 'Deserted Village' was discarded and obsolete. Again it is doubtless a fact that the old and expressive language of historical painting, such as it was understood in Italy, never penetrated beyond the Alps. It is a fact, too, that Rubens was a painter of marked individuality, and that the Dutch schools carried all the technical accomplishment of the art to an extraordinary perfection. Upon this Mr. Carr founds the following inference: 'In the presence of a great work of the Florentine school the beauty of the idea makes us half forget the workmanship, but in the masterpieces of modern painting the power and subtlety of the workmanship makes us forget the idea.' [What would Mr. Ruskin say to this?] Rubens was the first great master whose painting frankly expressed the change. Through him we know at last that the old order of things is dead and that a new order has arisen. His respect and reverence for the great idealists of Italy was all the more disinterested because he could not inherit their glory. It was a respect due to the dead, and, having magnificently discharged the debt, he passed on with the perfect sincerity of genius to create a new world of his own.' Once more, and with reference to sculpture, hear Mr. Carr's opinions as to the great gulf that separates the ancient from the modern world: Flaxman, in the comparative ignorance of his generation, was free to believe that the ancient world was not altogether so unlike our own. He was not afraid to trust to his imagination, while he sought to follow the beauty of antique models, for no one had as yet undertaken to prove that the modern spirit is separated by an impassable barrier from the spirit of the antique.' What are we to think of the sensibility of the critic, what of the vitality of the school of art to which he belongs, when we are by implication informed, with this air of superiority, that between us and the lamentation of Helen for Hector there is an 'impassable barrier,' and that the humour of Peisthetærus and Euelpides, or of Gorgo and Praxinoë, is altogether unlike our own'? But now let us see whether there is any sound warrant in experience either for the belief in that unlimited moral progress, to which Mr. Ruskin thinks the artist may aspire, or for that inexhaustible capacity of clothing all modes of thought in forms of art, which fascinates the imagination of Mr. Carr. In all human affairs there is progress. The individual advances from childhood to youth, from youth to maturity, and with each stage of his physical growth he acquires fresh powers of mind. The State emerges from its infancy of barbarism and proceeds to empire and civilization. Art, too, has its own development. The history of Italian painting shows us the growth of invention, from mere uniformity to composition, and afterwards to all the marvels of perspective, colour, and chiaroscuro. But this progress involves decay. Man passes from maturity to decline and death. Nations decline, not perhaps necessarily, but hitherto invariably, after they have risen to a certain height. In the youth of a State,' says Bacon,' arms do flourish ; in the middle age of a State, learning; and then both of these together for a time; and in the declining age of a State, mechanical arts and merchandise.' Art, which receives its first impulse from a religious motive, at first devotes all its energies to the expression of an idea; when it reaches its culminating point, it has discovered how to present the idea in the perfection of form; then the value of the idea appears less than that of the expression; and at last, the idea being quite lost sight of, form is pursued for its own sake, and the substance of art entirely disappears. From these considerations we think we may infer that in all human life there is a law of progress; that the progress is not on the one hand infinite, as Mr. Ruskin seems to say, nor, on the other, mere succession, as Mr. Carr and Mr. Pater maintain. In the life of men, nations, and art, there is an undying consciousness of unity; and hence the law of growth may be defined as unity developed by variety. The progress of man's life on earth is limited by death; but in the life of society and art, where no such physical dissolution occurs, there may be health and vigour so long as there is obedience to the moral law. The love of liberty and novelty is innate in the mind, and is necessary to the health of the human constitution, and our taste need set no bounds to the passion for variety, so long as the fundamental idea of unity is distinct and paramount. It is useless to lay down fixed rules for the application of this general principle. The craving for individual liberty increases with the age of society; tastes accordingly tend constantly to diverge; and men are more and more inclined to settle all differences with the convenient de gustibus non est disputandum.' Yet practically the limits of unity are not difficult to determine: for all liberty is based upon law; law itself is the product of national religion and history; and these again spring from the fountain-head of national character. When therefore therefore a nation begins to lose its sense of religion, it will also lose its sense of unity, its society will tend to become atomic, and its art, feeling the source of inspiration fail, will grow either commonplace, or affected and eccentric. This, it is needless to say, was the experience of the Athenian constitution and the Attic drama. The religious and patriotic régime, under which Marathon was won, changed into the balanced democratic system of Pericles, declined to the demagogic arts of Cleon and his successors, and, kindled into a dying flame by the eloquence of Demosthenes, expired under the rule of the Macedonians. Matched with each of these political periods, we have the religious inspiration of Eschylus; the mixed religion, philosophy, and art of Sophocles; the struggle between the scepticism of Euripides and the conservatism of Aristophanes; and, lastly, the servile 'culture' of Menander. A precisely similar progress in art may be traced from the simple exposition of the Christian idea, in the uncultivated forms of Giotto, to its dramatic expression in the complete art of Raphael; and from thence, through its comparative subordination in the chiaroscuro of Correggio and the colour of Titian, to its disappearance in the brutality of Ribera or the vulgarity of Luca Giordano. Art has also its own technical limits, and shows a tendency to lose the sense of unity in a craving after variety. The late sculptors in Italy, ignoring the fundamental difference between their own art and painting, endeavoured, in the mere spirit of emulation, to represent in marble ideas which were only possible in colour. They imitated floating draperies and effects of perspective, and thus, through thinking only of their own glory, caused the degeneracy of their art. Are not many of these symptoms of revolt against the law of Nature and of the mind apparent in the taste of our own day? Everywhere we see a passion for variety, but little thought of unity. There is a strong centrifugal force at work; men readily cast off tradition and abandon the beaten paths of social and national life to form themselves into sects, schools and coteries. In all the arts the aim is rather to astonish than to elevate or to please. Matter is made subordinate to form; the laws of form itself are confused; Poetry seeks support from Philosophy or Painting; Painting shows a tendency to abuse the natural affinities existing between itself and Music; while Music, discarding melody, strives to usurp the functions of the poetic drama. Such a state of things appears to us to indicate not progress but exhaustion. We are indeed under no apprehension that the |