works of the Greeks is a hopeless task, to approach them a triumph?
But now, admitting the force of this argument, granting that the Greek of a definite liistoric age was endowed with a genius for art which, in one point of view, has never been surpassed, the answer which I can now only indicate is simply tliis, that art has not exliausted its resources of expression when it lias told all that the perfect loveliness of corporeal form can express. There are secrets of the human heart, there is a whole world of moral and spiritual ideas, which lie beyond the range of the one art — that of sculpturesque beauty, in which the excel- lence of Greek art is undisputed. Tlirough the rent veil of mortal flesh a diviner light has streamed on Christian thought than when it was only a seamless garment which the spirit wore. The art that can leave behind it as its ideal the superficial serenity that ignores or defies pain and sorrow and unrest, to grasp the ideal of a purity that has been won by struggle and conquest, and a peace that has known and triumplied over temptation and evil, is surely nobler far. Even in the one art of sculpture, the per- fection which Greek genius acliieved, however admir- able, is but a limited perfection. It could print the idealised likeness of sensuous bliss on many a fair and stately brow; but if hidden springs of joy deeper than pagan thought knew have been opened up to the heart of man, if the radiance of a loftier hope, the light of a deeper, diviner blessedness, has kindled on many a human face since pagan art passed away, surely to the art that has that to portray grander possibilities of excellence have been afforded: ' Shall man, such step within his endeavour, Man's face, have no more play and action Than joy which is crystallised for ever, Or grief, an eternal petrifaction? ' And if we turn to that which, in one point of view, may be regarded as the highest of all arts, poetry, surely the deeper, fuller, more various, more com- plex life of the new world supplies materials for the creative imagination to work on richer far tlian the old world possessed. A religion which strips human life of its completeness, which accentuates the spiritual in contrast with the material, and turns from the pomp and glory of the present and visible life to gaze with eager, trembling hope and aspiration on the future and invisible, can no longer wholly identify itself with art. But for that very reason that its ideas transcend the highest existing forms of art, they infuse into these forms a deeper interest and significance. A richer, deeper tone is breathed into lyric song when it is no longer the light effusion of sprightly feeling or sensuous desire, but the utterance of a heart whose most transient emotions are touched by the pathos of an infinite destiny. And if the interest of the game becomes more absorbing when the stakes are incal- culably increased, surely the materials which human life now supplies to the dramatic poet give him a power to move our pity and our terror, such as ancient tragic art in the period of its greatest splendour did not and could not possess. All the passions, situa- tions, characters, collisions, out of which genius weaves the great work of dramatic art are replete with riclier possiliilities, now that on the stage of life is tlirown back the reflection of the awful mys- teries of the world unseen. Love has caught a new touch of passionate tenderness; courage, fidelity, generosity, honour, self-sacrifice, the glow of a loftier heroism; hate and fear, and remorse and crime, liave in them the capacity of stirring in us a horror of moral repugnance such as pagan art has no means of awakening; and the ideas of man's spiritual worth and immortal destiny offer, ready to hand, to the imagination that can comprehend them, contrasts which the most daring invention of an earlier time could not have surpassed — contrasts of greatness and littleness, of weakness and nobleness, of inward essence and outward circumstance, of things infinite and eternal, hustled in the crowd by things of the passing hour — contrasts which move now our laugh- ter at their incongruity, now our terror at their awfulness. The conclusion, then, to which these reflections lead us is, that there is nothing in the nature of art to exempt it from that character of progres- siveness which, as we have seen, belongs to science and philosophy, and in general to all spheres of intellectual activity. Art is but one of the ways in which the thought and culture, the spirit of an age expresses itself. It is, in one sense, the deposi- tory of its richest intuitions, its deepest reflections, its purest aspirations. If man progresses, therefore, art must progress. But though this be so, there is one great advantage attendant on the study of the productions of ancient art, and especially on the study of the poets, orators, historians of classical antiquity, viz. that they furnish models of a kind of perfection which in modern times we cannot hojie to surpass. The ideal of modern art may be far in advance of ancient, but in point of literary form, in precision, purity and beauty of expression, no modern literature can cope with the best literature of ancient times. It may be that, from their structure and genius, the Greek and Latin languages lent themselves to greater perfec- tion of form than is possible for our own or any other modern tongue. But, apart from that, the exi- gencies of modern life lower, necessarily, our standard
