of hopeless imitation:  in the realization of ideas of beauty and form, they reached absolute perfection.  Hence we have a right to infer that Art can flourish under Pagan as well as Christian influences.  It was a comparatively Pagan age in Italy when the great artists arose who succeeded Da Vinci, especially under the patronage of the Medici and the Medicean popes.  Christianity has only modified Art by purifying it from sensual attractions.  Christianity added very little to Art, until cathedrals arose in their grand proportions and infinite details, and until artists sought to portray in the faces of their Saints and Madonnas the seraphic sentiments of Christian love and angelic purity.  Art even declined in the Roman world from the second century after Christ, in spite of all the efforts of Christian emperors.  In fact neither Christianity nor Paganism creates it; it seems to be independent of both, and arises from the peculiar genius and circumstances of an age.  Make Art a fashion, honor and reward it, crown its great masters with Olympic leaves, direct the energies of an age or race upon it, and we probably shall have great creations, whether the people are Christian or Pagan.  So that Art seems to be a human creation, rather than a divine inspiration.  It is the result of genius, stimulated by circumstances and directed to the contemplation of ideal excellence.

Much has been written on those principles upon which Art is supposed to be founded, but not very satisfactorily, although great learning and ingenuity have been displayed.  It is difficult to conceive of beauty or grace by definitions,—–­as difficult as it is to define love or any other ultimate sentiment of the soul.  “Metaphysics, mathematics, music, and philosophy,” says Cleghorn, “have been called in to analyze, define, demonstrate, or generalize,” Great critics, like Burke, Alison, and Stewart, have written interesting treatises on beauty and taste.  “Plato represents beauty as the contemplation of the mind.  Leibnitz maintained that it consists in perfection.  Diderot referred beauty to the idea of relation.  Blondel asserted that it was in harmonic proportions.  Leigh speaks of it as the music of the age.”  These definitions do not much assist us.  We fall back on our own conceptions or intuitions, as probably did Phidias, although Art in Greece could hardly have attained such perfection without the aid which poetry and history and philosophy alike afforded.  Art can flourish only as the taste of the people becomes cultivated, and by the assistance of many kinds of knowledge.  The mere contemplation of Nature is not enough.  Savages have no art at all, even when they live amid grand mountains and beside the ever-changing sea.  When Phidias was asked how he conceived his Olympian Jove, he referred to Homer’s poems.  Michael Angelo was enabled to paint the saints and sibyls of the Sistine Chapel from familiarity with the writings of the Jewish prophets.  Isaiah inspired him as