But in every deep there is a lower deep;
and, through the same gods-worship, a night intenser still fell upon
art when the pantomime of David made its appearance. With these two
fearful lessons before his eyes, the modern artist can have no other
than a settled conviction that Pagan art, Devil-like, glozes but to
seduce--tempts but to betray; and hence, he chooses to avoid that
which he believes to be bad, and to follow that which he holds to be
good, and blots out from his eye and memory all art between the
present and its first taint of heathenism, and ascends to the art
previous to Raffaelle; and he ascends thither, not so much for its
forms as he does for its THOUGHT and NATURE--the root and trunk of
the art-tree, of whose numerous branches form is only one--though the
most important one: and he goes to pre-Raffaelle art for those two
things, because the stream at that point is clearer and deeper, and
less polluted with animal impurities, than at any other in its
course. And, Kalon and Kosmon, had you remembered this, and at the
same time recollected that the words, "Nature" and "Thought" express
very peculiar ideas to modern eyes and ears--ideas which are totally
unknown to Hellenic Art--you would have instantly felt, that the
artist cannot study from it things chiefest in importance to him--of
which it is destitute, even as is a shore-driven boulder of life and
verdure.
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