Nor can there be
any question that, in many respects, their judgment would have been
just. It is true that the indignation of the Spartan or Roman would
have been equally excited against any appearance of luxurious
industry; but the mediaeval knight would, to the full, have admitted
the nobleness of art; only he would have had it employed in decorating
his church or his prayer-book, not in imitating moors and clouds. And
the feelings of all the three would have agreed in this,--that their
main ground of offence must have been the want of _seriousness_ and
_purpose_ in what they saw. They would all have admitted the nobleness
of whatever conduced to the honour of the gods, or the power of the
nation; but they would not have understood how the skill of human life
could be wisely spent in that which did no honour either to Jupiter or
to the Virgin; and which in no wise tended, apparently, either to the
accumulation of wealth, the excitement of patriotism, or the
advancement of morality.
And exactly so far forth their judgment would be just, as the
landscape-painting could indeed be shown, for others as well as for
them, to be art of this nugatory kind; and so far forth unjust, as
that painting could be shown to depend upon, or cultivate, certain
sensibilities which neither the Greek nor mediaeval knight possessed,
and which have resulted from some extraordinary change in human nature
since their time.
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