still worked for the Artist as well as for the patriot or the religionist. It was as though the Divine Master walking through the schools, had said Children, ye do not honour Me thus, neither is this healthful to your souls." It was as though He had said "I will lead you to a better aim, a wider field of thought; ye cannot lock upon Me in the wild passions of your fellows." It was as though He had struck out the distorted sketch and broken the imperfect model. It was as though He had driven them out into the fields, there to make them stand before Him face to face.

And what was the issue? The painter found that there was another world of which the schools had no conception; to these men the world of Nature must have seemed as fresh as though it had been created for them and for their canvases.

And what a world! Thinking of it we learn how much had been sacrificed by the Greek for ideal beauty, and by the Medievalist for emotional expression; this other world-this world of Nature, where only we see beauty without sensuality, and passion without suffering or sin—this had been ignored by them both.

Filled as our eyes have been with visions of earth and seas and skies, of quiet lakes and streams, of storm and tempest, of sunny cornfields, Alpine snows, stately cities, country lanes, rocks, rivers, trees, pale moonlights, sunsets of gold and purple-remembering

F

III.

THE MODERN SCHOOLS.

OR the second time Art had sunk to a degradation

from which nothing could redeem it except a new faith, a new hope, a new creation of religious and social life. And this came with the Reformation.

Not that the Reformation came with a more powerful school of Art to overthrow or supplant the Mediæval. Mediæval Art perished from inherent causes. Like the early Christians the Reformers had to fight for things more precious than Art. The ground had to be plowed up roughly and the seed sown, but at length the reformed faith took root and became a mighty tree, and the birds sang in its branches.

The ground was indeed roughly plowed up. First came the Iconoclasts. When we think of horses stabled in our cathedral churches, of stained glass dashed from the oriel windows, and delicate tracery beaten down with axes and hammers, it is difficult to realise that these men worked, blindly it may be, but

still worked for the Artist as well as for the patriot or the religionist. It was as though the Divine Master walking through the schools, had said "Children, ye do not honour Me thus, neither is this healthful to your souls." It was as though He had said "I will lead you to a better aim, a wider field of thought; ye cannot look upon Me in the wild passions of your fellows." It was as though He had struck out the distorted sketch and broken the imperfect model. It was as though He had driven them out into the fields, there to make them stand before Him face to face.

And what was the issue? The painter found that there was another world of which the schools had no conception; to these men the world of Nature must have seemed as fresh as though it had been created. for them and for their canvases.

And what a world! Thinking of it we learn how much had been sacrificed by the Greek for ideal beauty, and by the Mediævalist for emotional expression; this other world-this world of Nature, where only we see beauty without sensuality, and passion without suffering or sin-this had been ignored by them both.

Filled as our eyes have been with visions of earth and seas and skies, of quiet lakes and streams, of storm and tempest, of sunny cornfields, Alpine snows, stately cities, country lanes, rocks, rivers, trees, pale moonlights, sunsets of gold and purple-remembering

such scenes, we stand amazed at the utter neglect of Landscape Art by the elder schools. Claude, indeed, and Poussin had ventured into the good land; but at the best we may liken them to the spies of old, who brought back a doubtful report. And the venerable Titian seems to have stood, like the great leader on Pisgah, seeing but not permitted to enter. He had studied under Bellini and Giorgione, he had been a student with Sebastiano del Piombo, he had been jealous of Tintoretto. Ghirlandaio, Andrea del Sarto, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Perugino, Albert Dürer, Matsys, had been his companions in Art, and had laid down their palettes believing that the victory was altogether on their side. He had lived to see the recognition of that higher authority both in Revelation and in Nature.

But Art is of slow growth. It does not win its way like an evangel of truth, bending the wills of men, overcoming all antagonism and making a pathway for itself. Thus the transition from Mediæval to Modern Art was the work of many generations. First came the mannerisms of the seventeenth century; Guido, Carlo Dolce, the Caracci, Rembrandt, and Rubens were great painters, but they were not of the supreme rank of Raphael, Da Vinci, Angelo, Correggio, and Titian, whose works they studied. And the secret of this is that while the masters drew their inspirations.

direct from the great source, the disciples were but schoolmen taking the fallible as a rule of faith, content to follow canons of Art derived from the schools rather than from the direct study of Nature.

This is deserving of the most earnest attention, for the question almost wholly turns upon it. Think for a moment of the relative positions of these men. Surely God was as willing to teach them whom I have called the disciples as He was to teach the masters. He held before their eyes the same beautiful creation, they had everything that the first masters had-and with it the works of the masters themselves to show them what great things could be done. Why should they not have reached a still greater excellence? Because they were content to do again what others had already done. One was ambitious to excel Raphael, another to surpass Correggio, another to out-do Titian. They followed where others had led, and followers cannot be leaders. They looked at Nature not with their own eyes but through the eyes of Angelo or Raphael; and they read her wonderful story, not direct from God's original, but through a translation, as though the original had been to them a strange language.

In the meantime Claude and Poussin of France, and Cuyp and Paul Potter of the Low Countries, were beginning to feel their way towards the school in