YALE UNIVERSITY ART AND ARCHITECTURE LIBRARY TAINE'S WORKS Uniform Library Edition. 12M0, Green Cloth, $2,50 PER VOLUME. ENGLISH LIT ERA TURE. 2 vols. ITALY, ROME, AND NAPLES. ITALY, FLORENCE, AND VENICE. ON INTELLIGENCE. 2 vols. LECTURES ON ART. First Series. Contain ing The Philosophy of Art ; The Ideal in Art. LECTURES ON ART. Second Series. Con taining The Philosophy of Art in Italy ; The Phi losophy of Art in the Netherlands ; The Philosophy of Art in Greece. NOTES ON ENGLAND. With Portrait. NOTES ON PARIS. A TOUR THROUGH THE PYRENEES. (The Same. Illustrated by Gustave Dore. 8vo, cloth, $10.00; full morocco, $20.00.) THE ANCIENT REGIME. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 3 vols. HENRY HOLT & CO., Publishes, New York. LECTURES ON ART H. TAINE PROFESSOR OF ESTHETICS AND OF THE HISTORY OF ART IN THE ECOLE DES BEAUX-ARTS, PARIS. TRANSLATED BY JOHN DURAND SECOND SERIES THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART IN ITALY THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART IN THE NETHERLANDS. THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART IN GREECE. NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1896 ~ Copyright, 1875, by HENRY HOLT. PUBLISHERS' NOTE. This volume completes a uniform edition of all works written by M. Taine which are translated into English. A list of them is given on the page facing the title. The present volume also completes, by the publication of the treatise, hitherto untranslated, upon the Philo sophy of Art in Italy, all that M. Taine has written directly upon the subject of art. These works — origi nally lectures — include, beside those in this volume.. treatises on the general principles of the Philosophy of Art and the Ideal in Art, and appear in this edition as the first series of " Lectures on Art." Uniform with this edition, the publishers expect to issue, early in 1876, the first work of a series which M. Taine is now writing on the influences which have developed the present state of French society and politics, and which he includes under the general title of " Les Origines de la France Contemj>orainc." The first work is upon the Ancien Regime. It will be followed by one upon the Revolution, and others bring ing the discussion up to the present time. November, 1875. PHILOSOPHY OF ART ITALY A MONSIEUR &DOUARD BERTIN H. TAINE SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. Object cf this study — General law governing the produc tion of the work of Art — Its application to the Italian Art in the Renaissance . . . . . • S I. I. Extent and limits of the Classic Epoch — Character of i the preceding age — Character of the following age — Apparent ' exceptions — How these are accounted for . 10 2. Characteristics of Classic Painting — In what respect it \ differs from Flemish Painting — In what respect it differs from Primitive Painting — In what respect it differs from Con temporary Painting — The ideal human form its special object 13 II. 1. Circumstances under which it is produced — Race — Special characteristics of the Italian Imagination — Difference between the Latin and Germanic Imagination — Difference between the Italian and French Imagination . . 19 2. Agreement of this native aptitude with its historic sur roundings — Proofs — The great artists of the Renaissance are . not isolated — The state of Art corresponds with a certain [ intellectual condi ion ... 28 viii SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. III. I. Conditions essential for the appearance of High Art — The cultivation of the mind . . . - *i 2. Precocity of modern culture in Italy — Intellectual vivacity of the Race — Italy less Germanic than the rest of Europe . . . . . . . ii 3. Comparison of Italy in the XVth Century with En gland, Germany and France — Appreciation of inteUectual abUity and enjoyments — The Humanists — Their discoveries — Their writings — Their repute — The new Italian Poets — Their excellence — The great number of them — Their success 29 4. // Cortegiano by Balthazar de CastigUone — The charac ters — The Palace — The Drawing-Room — Diversions — Entertainments — Style — Portraiture of the perfect gendeman and lady . . . . . . -37 IV. I. Another condition essential for the appearance of High Art — Spontaneous images . . . . . 51 2. Comparison of Italy in the XVth Century with modem people — Germany — Taste for abstract phUosophy — Influence of speculative habits on German Art — England— -The dominion of business — Influence of practical life on EngUsh Art — France — Literary painting opposed to picturesque painting — In what respect the intellect of the XlXth Century differs from that of the XVth Century — The labor, competi tion and excitement of centralized and industrial democracies 5a 3. Italy in the XVth Century — Moderate size of cities — Slight need of comforts— Fewer outlets for ambition — Equi- Ubrium between images and ideas . . . - S9 4. The equiUbrium between images and ideas disturbed by civilization — Modern imagination inadequate or morbid- Italian imagination in the XVth Century is rich and healthy 60 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. li 5. Proofs derived from costume and manners — Masquer ades, civic receptions, cavalcades and splendors — Triumphant processions in Florence . . - &j 6. Gratification of the eye and sensuous delights generally — Epicureanism and Incredulity — Judgments of Luther and Savonarola — Domestic life and manners of the Medicis — Paganism of the Roman Court — The festivals and hunts of Leo X. — Average state of minds between too Utde and too much culture . . . . . .66 V. I. Third condition for painting — Circumstances which led I Art to the representation of the human form . .81 2. Characters in Italy in the Renaissance Epoch — The manners and costumes which fashioned them — Lack of justice and a poUce — Recurrence to force and self-defense — Assassinations and affrays — Oliveretto da Formo and Caesar Borgia — Theory of murder and treachery — Machiavelli's "Prince" — Effects of these costumes on characters — De velopment of energy and familiarity with tragic passions . 82 3. Benvenuto Cellini — Force of temperament — Richness of faculties— Joyous and vigorous expansiveness — Vivacity of imagination — Violence and impetuosity in action . . 105 4. How these habits and these characters prepare men for comprehending the representation of the human form — Personal and habitual knowledge of human forms — Aptness for comprehending simple, energetic forms — Sensitiveness to beauty — The life and tastes of a modern individual com pared with those of a Renaissance Italian . . . 12a VI. I. Summary of the circumstances stated — Spontaneous and universal outgrowth of the arts of design — They are simply an offshoot of general decorative taste — Living pictures in the streets — "Triumph of the Golden Age" — Carnival choruses — "The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne " 31 x SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. 2. General conditions essential for the production of all great works — Personal originality — Sympathetic association —Examples — The Puritan Colonists of the United States — The French armies during the Revolution . . 1 39 3. The Studio in Italy during the Renaissance — The ai tist as apprentice and companion — Brotherhoods of the masters — Suppers of "The Caldron'' — Masquerades of "The Trowel" — The municipal spirit — Festival in Florence on the reception of Leo X. — Rivalries and festivities of quarters and corporations ...... 142 4. Verification of the law designated — Corresponding variations of Art and surrounding influences — The mystic school — The naturalistic school and the creation of the ideal form— The Venetian school — The school of the Caracci — Ancient Greece — Importation of Art into foreign countries — The connection indicated is not accidental but necessary . 151 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART IN ITALY. Gentlemen : Last year, at the beginning of this course ol lectures, I set before you the general law according to which works of art are at all times produced, that is to say, the exact and necessary correspond ence which is always seen between a work and the medium out of which it is evolved. This year, in pursuing the history of painting in Italy I flu j. a striking instance which allows me to apply and verify the law in question. I We have now to consider the glorious epoch which men are agreed to look upon as the most beautiful of Italian creation, and which comprises, along with the last quarter of the fifteenth century, the first thirty or forty years of the sixteenth. Within this narrow limit the most accomplished artists flourished, — Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Mi chael Angelo, Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolomeo, Giorgione, Titian, Sebastian del Piombo, and Cor- reggio; and this limit is clearly defined; and if you look backward or forward of it, you find it pre ceded by an incomplete art, and succeeded by a degenerate art; hitherto by those groping, and who are as yet dry, stiff and colorless, — Paolo Uccello, Antonio Pollaiolo, Fra Filippo Lippi, Ghirlandaijo, Verooohio, Mantegna, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini; subsequently, by exaggerating disciples or defective ART IN ITALY u restorers, — Giulio Romano, II Rosso, Primaticcio, Parmegiano, Palma the younger, the Caracci, and their school. Up to this time art is a growth, and after, it declines, its bloom being between both periods and lasting for about fifty years. If, during the early period, we encounter an all but finished artist, Masaccio, it is due to meditation rather than to an impulse of genius, a solitary originator who instinctively sees beyond his age, an unrecognized precursor who is without followers, whose sepulchre, even, bears no inscription, who lived poor and alone and whose precocious greatness is to be compre hended only half a century later. If, in the follow ing epoch, we find a flourishing and healthy school, it is at Venice, in a favored city overtaken by de cline later than the others, and which yet for a long time remains free, tolerant and eminent after con quest, oppression and final corruption have, in the rest of Italy, degraded the soul and distorted the intellect. You may compare this epoch of creative- ness, perfect and beautiful, to the zone in which the rine is cultivated on the slope of a mountain; be low, the grape is not yet good, above, it is no longe 12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF good; on the low ground the atmosphere is too dense, while on the upper it is too cold; such is tho cause and such the law; il there are exceptions they are trifling and are easily explained. Perhaps, on the low ground, we may encounter a solitary stem which, owing to its excellent sap, will produce a few rich grapes in spite of its surroundings. But it will stand alone, will not be reproductive, and will be regarded as among the irregularities which the mass and confusion of active forces always in terpose in the regular operation of nature's laws. Perhaps, on the upper ground, we may find in some out of the way place a few perfect vines; but it will be on some spot in which peculiar circum stances, the character of the soil, the protection of a wall, the possession of a spring, will furnish nour ishment and protection to the plant which it cannot obtain elsewbere. The law, accordingly, remains intact, and the conclusion is that there is a kind of soil and of temperature with which the success of the plant is connected. In like manner tho law which governs the production of a complete school of painting remains unchanged, thus enabling us to ART IN ITALY. 13 discover thc condition of mind and of manne,rs on which the school depends. First of all, we must have a clear idea of it. For, in calling it perfect or classic, according to the usual term, we do not note its characteristics, we only give it its rank. But if it has its rank it has also its characteristics, which means its proper do main from which it does not vary. It disdains or neglects landscape ; the painters of the great world of inanimate objects are to be found in Flanders ; the Italian painter selects man for his subject ; trees, the ground and structures are, to him, simply accessories ; Michael Angelo, the undisputed monarch of the entire school, de clares, according to Vasari, that these must be abandoned to the pleasure and profit of minor tal ents, and that the true object of art is the human figure. If landscape is taken up at a subsequent period it is under the later Venetians, and especially under the Caracci, when high art declines; and then they simply use it as decoration, a sort of architectural villa, an Armida's garden, a theatre for pastorals and pageantry, a noble and ingenious 2 14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF accompaniment of mythological galanteries and seignorial pleasure-parties ; there symbolic trees be long to no distinct species, the mountains being ar ranged to please the eye, while temple's, ruins and palaces are grouped together in ideal lines; nature loses her native independence and her peculiar in stincts in order to be subordinated to man, to adorn his festivities and expand his apartments. On the other hand, they still leave to the Flemings the copying of actual life, — the contemporary in his ordinary dress, in the midst of his daily duties, amongst veritable pieces of furniture, taking his walks, at market, at the table, at the town hall, in the tavern, just as the eye sees him, a gentleman, bourgeois, peasant, with the innumerable and strik ing particulars which belong to his character, pro fession and condition. They discard these details as vulgar; according as art becomes perfect they more and more avoid literal exactness and positive resemblance; it is just as this great epoch opens that they cease introducing portraits into their compositions; Filippo Lippi, Pollaiolo, Andrea da] Castagno, Verocchio, Giovanni Bellini, Ghirlandaijo ART IN ITALY. 15 Masaccio himself, all anterior painters, filled then frescoes with contemporary figures; the great step which separates perfected art from rude art is this creation of faultless forms which the eye of the soul discovers and which the physical eye cannot encounter. Thus bounded, the field of classic painting must be still further limited. In the ideal which it takes for a centre, if there is any distinction between the body and the soul, it is easy to see that the first place is not awarded to the soul. This art is neither \ mystic, nor dramatic, nor spiritual. Its aim is not to present to the eye the incorporeal and sublime world, the innocent and ecstatic spirits, the theolog ical or ecclesiastical dogmas, which, from Giotto and f Simone Memmi down to Fra Angelico, constituted the subject matter of the excellent but incomplete art of the preceding age; it abandons the Christiarj and monastic period to enter on the laic and pagan period. Its aim is not to fix some violent or pain ful circumstance on a canvas, calculated to excite pity or terror, as with Delacroix in " The Murder oi the Bishop of Li6ge," or as with Decamps in " La 16 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Morte," or in the "Bataille des Cimbres," or as with Ary Scheffer in "Le Larmoyeur." Its aim is not to express profound, extreme, complicated senti ments, as with Delacroix in his "Hamlet," or in his " Tasso." These diversified or powerful effects are not sought for until the subsequent period, when the decadence becomes visible in the se ductive, dreamy Magdalens, in the delicate, pen sive Madonnas, and in the tragic and vehement martyrs of the Bolognese school. The pathetic art which serves to arrest and disturb a morbid and ex cited sensibility is opposed to its nature. It is not preoccupied with the moral order of things at the expense of the physical; it does not portray man as a superior being betrayed by his organs; one painter alone, the precocious originator of all mod ern wonders and ideas, Leonardo da Vinci, a subtle and universal genius, an isolated and insatiate in vestigator, pushes his divinations beyond his own age until he sometimes reaches our own. But with othei artists, and frequently with himself, form is an end and not a means; it is not subordinated to physiognomy, to expression, to gesture, to the ART IN ITALY. 17 situation, to action ; their work is picturesque, and not literary or poetic. "The main thing in the art of design," says Cellini, "is to cleverly fashion a naked man or woman." The point of departure with almost all of them is, in reality, goldsmith's work and sculpture; their hands have manipulated the relief of the muscles, traced the curvature of outlines, and felt the articulation of the bones, that which they desire to present to the eye is, first, the natural human body, that is to say, healthy, active and energetic, endowed with all animal and athletic aptitudes; and, besides this, the ideal hu man body, akin to the Greek type, so well propor tioned and balanced in all its parts, selected and posed in such a happy attitude, draped and sur rounded by other bodies so well grouped, that the whole forms a harmony, and the entire work con veys the idea of a corporeal world like that of an cient Olympus, that is to say, heroic or divine, in any case, superior and complete. Such is the pecu liar genius of these artists. Others have better ex pressed, at one time, rural life, at another, the truth oi real life, at another, the throes and depths of the 1 8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF soul, at another, a moral lesson, a historical discov ery, a philosophic conception. We find in Fra An gelico, in Albert Durer, in Rembrandt, in Metzu, id Paul Potter, in Hogarth, in Delacroix, and in De camps, either more edification, more pedagogism, more psychology, more interior and domestic peace, more intense reverie, more transcendental meta physics, or internal emotions. They have created for themselves a peculiar race, that of the aristo cratic and noble bodies which live nobly, and which announce a prouder, stronger, serener, more active humanity, in short, completer than our own. It is of this race, joined to its elder born, the child of the Greek sculptors, that, in other countries, France, Spain and Italy, ideal figures have been bom by which man teaches nature how she might have made him and how she has not accomplished it. II. Such is the work; it is for us, according to ova method, to recognize its conditions. Let us first consider the race of men who accom plished it; if, in the art of design they have taken this course, it is by virtue of national and enduring instincts. The imagination of the Italian is classic, that is to say, Latin, analogous to that of the an cient Greeks and Romans. Evidence of this is found not alone in its renaissance work, its sculpt ure, edifices and paintings, but also in its mediaeval architecture and in its modem music. In the mid dle ages the Gothic architecture which spread itself over Europe penetrated into Italy but slowly, through incomplete imitations; if we encounter there two churches completely Gothic, one at Milan and the other at the convent of Assisi, they are the work of foreign architects; even under the German in> vaders, at the extreme point of Christian enthu- 20 THE 1 HILOSOPHX OF 6tasm, the Italians built in the ancient style; on reviving it they preserved the taste for substantial forms, full walls, moderate ornamentation and pure, natural light, and their edifices, through their aspect of strength, cheerfulness, serenity and unaffected elegance form a contrast with the grandiose complexity, the bristling fretwork, the gloomy sublimity, the sombre or transfigured day light of northern cathedrals. In like manner, and in our days, their vocal music, distinctly rhythmic, pleasing even in the rendering of tragic sentiments, opposes its symmetries, its fullness, its cadences, its theatrical genius, eloquent, brilliant, limpid and lim ited, to German instrumental music, so imposing, so nntrammeled, at times so vague, so well adapted to express the most delicate reveries, the most secret emotions, and I know not what of that grave soul which, in its solitary divinations and tremors, takes in the infinite and the great beyond. If we should consider the way in which the Italians, and, in gen eral, the Latin races, comprehend love, morality, and religion; if we should study their literature, their manners, and their way of contemplating lif 3, ART IN ITALY. 21 we would see a similar kind of imagination declare itself through a multitude of profound traits. Its distinguishing trait is the talent and taste for ar rangement, and therefore regularity and a harmo nious, correct form; it is less flexible and pene trating than the German imagination; it is less attached to the inward than to the outward; it pre- i fers exterior adornment to conscious truth; it is more idolatrous and less religious; more pictur esque and less philosophic; it is less broad and more beautiful. It comprehends man better than nature; it better comprehends man in society than the barbarian. It has difficulty in accommo dating itself, as the other does, to imitating and representing savagery, rusticity, the fantastic, the accidental, disorder, the eruption of spontaneous forces, the countless and incommunicable character istics of the individual, creatures of the lower grade or without forms, the still and undefined life distributed to every order of being; it is not a uni versal mirror; its sympathies are circumscribed. But in its kingdom, which is that of form, it is sov ereign; the spirit of other races, compared to it, is 22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF coarse and brutal; it alone has discovered and man ifested the natural order of ideas and of images, Of the two great races in which this is the most completely expressed, one, the French, more north ern, more prosaic and more social, has had for its province the systematizing of pure ideas, that is to Bay, the method of reasoning and the art of conver sation; the other, the Italian, more southern, more artistic and more given to imagery, has had for its province the ordination of sensible forms, that is to say, music and the arts of design. It is this native talent, visible from the beginning, permanent throughout its history, stamped on all sides of its thought and action, which, meeting with favorable circumstances at the end of the fifteenth century, produced a harvest of masterpieces. In fine, Italy then had, altogether or nearly at the same time, not only five or six great painters of extraordinary genius, superior to all we have since seen, Leo nardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Gior- gione, Titian, Veronese, and Correggio, but also a brotherhood of eminent and accomplished painters, Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolomeo, Pontormo, Al- ART IN ITALX. 23 bertinelli, il Rosso, Giulio Romano, Caravaggio, Primaticeio, Sebastian del Piombo, Palma Vecchio, Bonifazio, Paris Bordone, Tintoretto, Luini, and a hundred others less known, brought up with the same taste, possessors of the like style, and who constitute an army of which these are only the captains; and besides these there is an almost equal number of superior sculptors and architects, some a little earlier, but for the most part contemporary, Ghiberti, Donatello, Jacopa della Quercia, Baccio Bandinelli, Bambaja, Lucca della Robbia, Cellini, Brunelleschi, Bramante, San Gallo, Palladio, San- sovino; and finally, around these families of artists, so diversified and so fruitful, a crowd of connois seurs, patrons and buyers, a vast public forming ar escort, not alone of gentlemen and cultivated people, but of townsmen, artisans, simple monks, and the commonalty; so that fine taste, at this epoch, was natural, spontaneous, universal, the en tire community, in its sympathy and intelligence, contributing to the works which the masters signed with their names. We cannot, accordingly, con sider the art of the Renaissance as the result of a 24 THE PHILOSOPHY OF happy accident; we have not here a cast of dice bringing on the stage of the world a few better- endowed intellects, an extraordinary batch of pict uresque geniuses; we cannot deny that the cause of this great efflorescence is the general disposition of minds, a wonderful aptitude diffused throughout all the channels of the nation. This aptitude was mo mentary, and the art was momentary. It began and ended at fixed epochs; the art began and ended at the same fixed epochs. It developed itself in a certain sense; art developed herself in the same sense. It is like the body of which that is the shadow; she follows its birth, its growth, its de cline, and its direction. It brings her on and leads her off, and makes her vary as she varies; she de pends on it in all her parts and throughout her pathway. It is her essential and proper condition; and consequently it must be studied in detail in order that she may be understood and explained. m. Theee conditions of things are necessary to ena ble man to appreciate and produce high art. He must, in the first place, be cultivated. Poor, brutal ized rustics daily pressed to the earth, predatory chieftains, gluttons and wine bibbers occupied throughout the year with marching and fighting, are still too deeply sunk in animal life to compre hend the refinement of forms and the harmony of colors. A picture in a palace or in a church is an or nament, and to look at it with pleasure or intelli gence the spectator must be partially free from grosser preoccupations; he must not be wholly ab sorbed with strifes and revelries; he must have ad vanced out of the primitive state of barbarism and oppression; apart from the exercise of his muscles, (he gratification of bellicose instincts, and the satis faction of his physical wants, he must crave noble 3 26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF and refined pleasures. Once brutal, he is now thoughtful; once a consumer and destroyer, he now embellishes and enjoys; once merely existing, he now adorns his life, Such is the vast transformation which took place in Italy in the fifteenth century. Man, at this epoch, passes from feudal manners to the spirit of modern times, and this great change is effected in Italy sooner than anywhere else. There are many causes for this change. The first one is the extreme acuteness and readiness of mind which characterizes the people of this country. Civilization seems to them innate; they, at least, at tain to it almost without effort and almost without assistance. Even among peasants and the unculti vated, the intelligence is quick and free. Compare them with people of the same condition in the north of France, in Germany, and in England; the differ ence will become a contrast. In Italy a hotel boy, a peasant, a porter whom you meet in the street, knows how to talk, comprehend and reason; thev advance opinions, they know mankind, they discuss politics; they manipulate ideas as they do language, by instinct, sometimes brilliantly, always with fa^U ART IN ITALY. 21 tty and almost always correctly; and above all they possess the natural and impassioned sentiment for the beautiful. Only in this country do we hear the populace exclaim before a picture or a church, " Oh God, how beautiful it is ! " (0 Dio com1 & bello f) and the Italian language has for the expression of this transport of the heart and senses, an accent, a sonorousness, an emphasis perfectly admirable, whereof the saplessness of the same French words is powerless to render the effect. This race, so intelligent, has had the advantage of not being Teutonized, that is to say, crushed and transformed to the same degree, as other European countries, by the invasion of the northern peoples. The Barbarians established themselves on the soil temporarily or imperfectly. The Visigoths, the Franks, the Heruli, the Ostrogoths, all abandoned it or were soon driven away. If the Lombards re mained there, they soon profited by the Latin cult- are; in the twelfth century, the Germans, under Frederic Barbarossa, expecting to find them men of their own race were surprised to see them so Latin ized, "having discarded the fierceness of barbaric 28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ferocity and taken from the influences of the ait and soil something of Roman finesse and gentleness; having preserved the elegance of the language and the urbanity of primitive manners, even imitating the skill of the ancient Romans in the constitution of their cities and in the government of their public affairs." Latin is spoken in Italy up to the thir teenth century; Saint Anthony of Padua preaches in Latin; the people, who jabber the growing Italian, always comprehend the literary language. The Germanic crust, extending over the nation, is thin or is early found pierced by the revival of the Latin civilization. Italy knows of the troubadour's songs {chansons de geste), the chivalric and feudal poems which overspread Europe, only in translations. I but just now stated to you that Gothic architecture found its way slowly into Italy and in an imperfect manner; from the eleventh century, when the Ital ians again began to build, it was with the forms or, at least, in the spirit of Latin architecture. We see there in institutions, in manners, in language and in art, in the darkest and bitterest night of the mid dle ages, antique civilization extricating itself, oi ART IN ITALY. og reviving, on the soil over which the Barbarians had swept and melted away like the winter snow. Hence it is that if you compare Italy in the fif teenth century with other European nations yon will find her more learned, wealthier, more polished and better qualified to embellish her life, that is to say, to appreciate and produce works of art. At this moment England, issuing from the hun dred years' war, entered into that horrible contest of the Two Roses in which people cut each other's throats in cool blood, and in which, when the battle ended, unarmed children were destroyed. Up to 1550 it is simply a country of boors, huntsmen, soldiers and cultivators. Only two or three chim neys could be counted in a town in the interior of the kingdom; gentlemen's country mansions con sisted of tenements covered with thatch, plastered with the coarsest clay and only lighted through lattices. The middle classes slept on pallets ol straw, "with a good round log for a bolster." " Pillows seem to have been made only for women in confinement," while dishes consisted not of pewter but of wood SO THE PHILOSOPHY OF In Germany we see the atrocious and merciless Hussite war breaking out; the Emperor is without authority; the nobles are ignorant and insolent; evsn under Maximilian the right of the fist prevails, that is to say, the appeal to force and the custom of doing one's self justice. We see in Luther's Table Talk, also in the Memoirs of Hans von Schwei- nichen, to what extent gentlemen and the learned then carried drunkenness and brutality. As to France she is going through the most dis astrous period of her history. The country is con quered, devastated by the English. Under Charles VH. wolves enter the faubourgs of Paris. When the English are driven out the Gcorchews, military adventurers, live on the peasant, ransom him and pillage him as they please ; one of these lordly brigands and assassins, Gilles de Retz, has given birth to the legend of Bluebeard. Up to the end of the century the Uite of the nation, the nobles, re main rustic and uncultivated. The Venetian am bassadors report that all French noblemen have twisted and bowed legs because they pass their lives on horseback. Rabelais will show you in the middl« ART IN ITALY. 3} of the sixteenth century the gross obscenities and persistent brutality of Gothic manners and customs Count Baldassare Castiglione wrote thus about 1525 : " The French know no other merit than that of arms and take no account of other things, so that not only do they not esteem learning, but again they abhor learned men and regard them as the vilest of creat nres ; and they seem to think that there is no greater insult for a man, whoever he may be, than to call him clerk."" In sum, throughout Europe, the r6gime is still feudal, and men, like powerful savage brutes, think of but little besides eating, drinking and physical activity. Italy, on the contrary, is almost a modern country. With the supremacy of the Medicis peace is established in Florence; citizens rule and rule tranquilly; like their chiefs, the Medicis, they manu facture, trade, are bankers and make money to spend it like people of intelligence. The cares of war have not the same bitter and tragic hold on them as formerly. They wage war with the paid hands of the condottieri who are shrewd tradesmen and reduce it to "cavalcades;" if they kill each other il 32 THE PHILOSOPHY OF is by mistake ; battles are cited in which three soldiers and sometimes only one rest on the field. Diplomacy is a substitute for force. "Italian sov ereigns believe," says Machiavelli, "that the quality of a prince consists in knowing how to appreciate a t pointed repartee in a document, the composition of a fine letter, how to display vivacity and finesse in language, weave a network of fraud, bedeck them selves with gold and precious stones, sleep and eat more magnificently than others and organize around themselves every description of voluptuousness." They become connoisseurs, men of letters and lovers of learned conversation. For the first time since the fall of ancient civilization we find a society which gives the first place to intellectual pleasures. The men of mark of this age are the humanists, enthusiastic restorers of Greek and Roman belles- lettres, Poggio, Filelfo, Marcile Ficin, Pio de la Mirandole, Calchondyle, Ermolao Barbaro, Laurent Valla and Politicien. They rummage all the libra- 'es of Europe to discover and publish manuscripts; not only do they decipher and study them, but they derive inspiration from them; they become antique ART IN ITALY. 3s in mind and feeling; they write Latin with almost the same purity as the contemporaries of Cicero and Virgil. Style suddenly becomes exquisite and the intellect as suddenly mature. When we turn from the tedious hexameters and heavy, pretentious epistles of Petrarch to the elegant distich of Politi- oien or to the eloquent prose of Valla, we are con scious of a pleasure almost physical. The fingers and the ear involuntarily scan the easy march of poetic dactyls and the ample unfolding of oratorical periods. Language has become noble while it has also become clear, and erudition, passing from cloister to palace, ceases to be a medium of quib bling in order to be changed into an instrument of pleasure. These savants, in fine, do not form a small and unknown class, shut up in libraries and remote from public consideration. Far from that. The title of humanist is sufficient at this epoch to draw to a man the attention and favors of princes. Duke Ludovic Sforza of Milan invites Merula and Deme trius Calchondyle to his university and appoints the learned Cecco Simoneta his minister. Leonardo 34 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Aretino, Poggio and Machiavelli are, in turn, secre taries of the Florentine Republic. Antonio Becca- delli is secretary for the King of Naples. A pope; Nicholas V., is the great patron of Italian letters, One of these sends an ancient manuscript to the King of Naples, and the king returns thanks for the gift as a great favor. Cosmo de Medici establishes an academy of philosophy and Lorenzo revives the Platonic banquets. Landino, his friend, composes dialogues in which the characters, withdrawing to the Camaldoli convent, discuss for several days the question as to which of two lives is the better, that of action or that of meditation. Pietro, son of Lorenzo, institutes a discussion on true friendship in Santa Maria del Fiore and awards a silver crown as a prize to the victor. We see the princes of commerce and of the state gather around them philosophers, artists, and savants, here Pic de la Mi- randola, Marsile Ficin, and Politicien, and there Leonardo da Vinci, Merula, and Pomponius Lcetus, to converse with them in an apartment decked with fine busts, over the recovered manuscripts of an- aient wisdom, in choice and elegant language, with ART IN ITALY. 35 out ceremony or thought of rank, with that enga ging and generous curiosity which, enlarging the field of science and making it attractive, transforms the- arena of scholastic dissensions into a festival of thinkers. It is not surprising if the vulgar tongue, almost abandoned since Petrarch, furnishes in its turn a new literature. Lorenzo de Medici, the leading banker and first magistrate of the city, is the first of the new Italian poets; alongside of him Pulci, Boiardo, Berni and, a little later, Bembo, Machia velli and Ariosto, are the standard models of pure style, of serious and fanciful poetry, of biting satire and profound reflection. Below them a crowd of story-tellers, jesters and debauchees, Molza, Bibiena, Aretino, Franco and Bandello gain the favor of princes and public applause through their ribald ry, invention and wit. The sonnet is an instrument of praise or of satire which passes through all hands. It circulates among the artists; Cellini narrates that when his Perseus was exhibited there were twenty posted up the first day. No festival and no banquet was then complete without poetry; one day Pope 36 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Leo X. gave five hundred ducats to the poet Tebal deo for an epigram which had given him pleasure At Rome, another poet, Bernardo Accolti, was sc admired that when he read in public people closed their shops to go and hear him; he read in a large apartment by torch-light: prelates, surrounded by the Swiss Guard, attended; they called him the unique. His too clever verses flashed with refined conceits (concetti)/ and those literary charms, simi lar to the embellishments which Italian singers give to their most tragic airs, were so well compre hended as to excite applause on all sides. Such, then, is an intellectual culture, refined and general, fresh in Italy, and which appears there simultaneously with the new art. I would like you to have a nearer appreciation of it, no longer through general statements, but by a complete picture of it; one circumstantial case can alone render clear ideas of it. There is a book of the time which paints the portrait of the accomplished seignior, and of the lady, that is to say, of the two personages which contemporaries could set up as models; around these ideal figures real figures move at various distances; ART IN ITALY. 35 you have a saloon before your eyes, a saloon of the year 1500, with its guests, its conversations, its deco rations, its dances, its music, its wit, its discussions, more decorous, indeed more chivalric and more spiritual than those of Rome or of Florence, but nevertheless faithfully depicted and admirable for presenting in exalted attitudes the purest and no blest group of cultivated and superior characters. To see this it suffices to turn over the pages of " II Cortegiano," by Count Baldassare de Castiglione. Count Castiglione had been in the service of Guido d' Ubaldo, duke of Urbino, and next in that of his successor, Francesco Maria della Rovere, and he wrote this book as a souvenir of the conver sations which he had heard while he was with the first named seignior. As Duke Guido was infirm and crippled with rheumatism, the little court as sembled every evening in his wife's apartments, the Duchess Elizabeth, a person of great virtue and in tellect. All sorts of distinguished men from all parts of Italy gathered around her and her most intimate friend, Signora Emilia Pia; Castiglione himself, Bernardo Accolti d' Arezzo, a famous poet, 4 38 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Bembo, who afterwards became the pope's secretary and a cardinal, Seignior Ottaviano Fregoso, Julian de Medici and many others; Pope Julius H. some times stopped there in traveling. The place and the circumstances of the entertainment were worthy of such characters. They assembled in a magnifi cent palace built by the duke's father, and which, "as many relate," was the finest in Italy. The apartments were splendidly decorated with silver vases, hangings of gold and of silk, antique busts in marble and in bronze, and paintings by Pietro della Francesca and by Giovanni Santi, the father of Raphael. It contained a large number of Latin Greek and Hebrew books, collected throughout Europe, and which, out of respect for their contents, were covered with ornaments of gold and silver. The court was one of the most gallant in Italy. There was nothing but festivals, dances, tiltings, tournaments and conversation. " The pleasant con verse and the innocent mirth of this mansion," says Castiglione, "made it the veritable house of joy." Ordinarily when the guests had supped and danced they performed a certain species of charade; these ART IN ITALY. 39 diversions were followed by more intimate conversa tions, at once grave and gay, in which the Duchess took part. There was no ceremony; all seated themselves as they pleased; each placed himself alongside of a lady and there was no formality or constraint in the intercourse; originality and inven tion had full play. One evening, at the request of a lady, Bernardo Accolti improvises a pretty sonnet in honor of the Duchess; the Duchess then orders Signora Margarita and Signora Costanza Fregoza to dance; the two ladies join hands, when the favor ite musician, Barletta, having tuned his instrument, they dance to the sound of the music, at first in a measured and afterwards with a livelier step. Towards the end of the fourth day, having forgotten themselves in the agreeable pastimes of the night, they notice the appearance of daylight. "They opened the windows on the side of the palace facing the lofty summit of Mount Catari; and they saw to the eastward a beautiful aurora of the color of roses. The stars had all vanished except Venus, the sweet messenger, who occupies the frontier between day light and darkness; from her there seemed to ema- 40 THE PHILOSOPHY OF nate a soft atmosphere which filled the sky with its bracing freshness and which in the murmuring forests of the neighboring slopes, began to awaken the sweet warblings of the gentle birds." Vou can already judge by this extract how agree able, elegant, and even flowery, the style is; Bembo, one of the interlocutors, is the most pol ished, the most Ciceronian, the most harmonious of the Italian prose writers. The tone of conversation is similar. Politeness abounds everywhere, compli ments to the ladies on their beauty, grace and virtue, and compliments to the seigniors on their valor, in telligence and knowledge. All maintain their self- respect and strive to please each other, which is th( great law of good-breeding and the most delicate charm of good society. But politeness does not exclude gayety. We often find their intercourse spiced with little piques, the skirmishings of society, and besides these, with witticisms, drolleries, anec dotes, and gay and humorous story-telling. In the effort which they make to explain true gallantry, a tady states, as a counter-illustration, how an an tiquated seignior, who was a fighting man and ART IN ITALY. 41 rusted by a country life, on paying her a visit enu merated to her the enemies he had slain, and then, suiting the action to the word, he tried to explain to her how the sword was used in cutting and thrusting. She confessed with a smile that she was uneasy, all the while looking at the door and doubting every moment whether he was not dis posed to slay her. Frequent touches of this de scription relieve the dialogue of its seriousness. But seriousness subsists nevertheless. We see that the gentlemen are familiar with Greek and Latin literature, acquainted with history, and versed in philosophy and even in scholastic philosophy. The ladies interpose, scolding a little, and warn them to return to matters of more human interest ; they do not like to see Aristotle and Plato with their surly commentators too often introduced into the conversation, together with theories on heat and cold and on forms and substance. The talkers immedi ately come back to the charming current of ordi nary topics and obtain pardon for their erudition and metaphysics by agreeable and gallant discourse. In other respects, however difficult the subject may 42 THE PHILOSOPHY 0* be, and however animated the discussion, they al ways preserve the elegance and perfection of style They are scrupulous in the choice of words, they argue on proprieties of expression, they are purists like the fine-talkers of the Hotel Rambouillet, con temporary with Vaugelas and the founders of our classic literature. But the turn of their mind is more poetic as their language is more musical. The Italian language, through its rich cadences and sonorous terminations, imparts beauty and harmony to the commonest things, placing objects which are already beautiful in themselves in a noble and volup tuous framework. Is it necessary to portray the saddening effects of old age? The style, like the Italian sky, sheds golden light on ruins and trans forms a lugubrious spectacle into a noble picture. "At that time the sweet flowers of gladness fade away and fall in our hearts like the leaves of the trees in autumn. Instead of serene and limpid thoughts comes sadness, like a dark cloud, accom panied with many calamities, so that not alone the body but the mind becomes weakened, and of all its past pleasures preserves but a fond recollection ART IN ITALY. 48 the image of that happy period, of that tender age ji which, when the mind dwells on it, heaven, earth and all things seem to us to smile and gladden our eyes, and there blooms in our soul, as if in a beauti ful and luxurious garden, the mellow spring of joy. Thus it is that when in the chilly season the sun of our days declines towards its setting and robs us of our pleasures, it would perhaps be to our profit to lose the memory of them and to find the art of oblivion." The subject of the conversation does not fail to embellish the conversation itself. Each person, at the request of the Duchess, undertakes to describe some of the qualities which form the perfect gentle man, also the accomplished lady; they seek the kind of education which is best adapted to form the soul and the body, not only for the duties of civil life, but again for the enjoyment of ordinary life. Consider all that was then required of a well-educated man, what finesse, what tact, what a variety of acqui sitions! We think that we are highly civilized and yet, after three hundred years of education and cult ure, we might still obf ain examples and lessons from them. 44 THE PHILOSOPHY OF "I would have our courtier more than ordinarily instructed in literature, at least in the department of belles-lettres; and that he should know not only the Latin tongue, but again the Greek, on account of the multitude and variety of divine writings in that tongue. . . . That he should be familiar with the poets, and, in like manner, with the orators and historians, and, moreover, exercised in writing in verse and in prose, and especially in our vulgar tongue; for, besides the satisfaction which he will find in it himself, it will never fail him in providing pleasing speech for the ladies, who commonly enjoy these things. I should not be satisfied with our gentleman if he were not, in addition to this, a mu sician, and if, besides understanding and being in the habit of reading his part on the book, he did not know how to play on divers instruments. . . . For, besides the diversion, and the soothing of care which music affords every one, it often serves to gratify the ladies, whose tender and delicate hearts are easily penetrated by harmony and filled with gentleness." The object is not to be a virtuoso and make a display cf a special capacity. Talents are ART IN ITALY. 45 only formed for society ; they are not to be acquired through pedantry, but for agreeable ends; they are not to be exercised for the admiration of others, but to afford pleasure. Hence the necessity of not being ignorant of any of the arts of pleasing. " There is another thing which I esteem of great importance, and in which our gentlemen must in no respect be backward, and that is the talent for drawing and a knowledge of art." It is one of the adornments of a superior, polished life and, in this respect, the cultivated mind ought to be devoted to it as to every other accomplishment. But in this as in other things there must be no excess. The true talent, the art to which all the rest are subordinated, is tact, " judgment, a certain prudence, a judicious choice, a knowledge of the more or less, of that of the increase or decrease of things, and so arranged as to be accomplished at the favorable or unfavor able moment. For example, even if our gentleman knew that the praise bestowed on him was true he ought not to acknowledge it openly, . . . but rather to modestly repel it, always showing and decidedly taking for his principal profession the 46 THE PHILOSOPHY OF profession of arms, and only adopting the other pursuits as ornaments. If he dances in the presence of many persons, and where there is a large assem blage, it seems to me that he should maintain a certain dignity, tempered nevertheless by an easy and gracious gentleness of movement. If he hap pens to be a musician, let it be for a pastime, as if reluctantly; . . . and although he may perfectly comprehend what he does, and be therein a master, I wish him to dissimulate the study and fatigue which are necessary in all things in order to know them well; let him have the appearance of not attaching great importance to that sort of thing, while at the same time doing it well and in such a way as to make others highly esteem it." He must not pride himself on the skill which is suited to those who belong to the craft. He must respect himself and make himself respected by others, never through this giving way to his feeling, but, on the contrary, controlling and remaining master of him self. His face must remain calm like that of a Spaniard. He must be clean and neat in his dress', in this respect his taste must be manly and not ART IN ITALY. 4 , feminine; he should prefer a dark color as the sign of a graver and more sedate character. In l:ke manner he must not let himself be carried away by gayety or impetuosity, by anger or egotism. Let him avoid vulgarity, coarse expressions, terms which would bring a blush to a lady's cheek. He must be polite, full of condescension and of consid eration for others. He must know how to utter amusing jests and to tell gay stories, but with propriety. The best rule that can be given to him is to regulate his actions so as to please the accom plished lady. Through this ingenious transition the portrait of the gentleman leads to the portrait of the lady, and the delicate touches which served in the first picture become still more delicate in the second. "As there is no court in the world, howevei great it may be, which can possess any adornment, splendor, or gayety without ladies, and as ther? is no gentleman who can be graceful, agreeabk or fearless, or perform any brilliant or manly act v ith- out the society, affection and favor of ladies, our portrait of the gentleman would remain very im- 48 THE PHILOSOPHY OF perfect if the ladies did not interpose and give it s portion of that grace by which they adorn and make perfect the life of the court." "I maintain that the lady who lives at court should, above all things, have a certain pleasing af fability through which she may be able to gracious ly entertain all classes of persons of agreeable and sincere discourse, adapted to time and place, and to the quality of the person to whom she speaks. She must have a quiet and modest deportment, a sense of propriety by which she measures all her actions, but besides this a certain mental vivacity by which she may appear estranged from all dullness; and yet she must associate with this a certain air of kindness that will cause her to be esteemed no less prudent, chaste and gentle, than amiable, discreet and sagacious. Hence it is why she has to main tain herself in a certain difficult situation, made up, as it were, of contraiy things, and to go to certain limits but without passing beyond them." "This lady, accordingly, in order to secure a rep ntation for being honest and virtuous, must not be so prudish and show so. much hon-or of company AUT IN ITALY. 49 and discourse somewhat free as to withdraw when she chances to find herself in it. because it might be easily supposed that she pretended to this austerity for the purpose of concealing something concerning herself which another might know; and moreover blunt ways are always odious. As little should she give utterance to insincere words in order to show herself liberal and amiable, and make use of a cer tain intemperate and lawless familiarity in such a way as to lead one to think of her that which may not, probably, be true. But when it happens that she is obliged to listen to insinuations, like those alluded to, she must do it with some shame and blush." If she has any tact she can turn the conversation to nobler and more proper subjects. For her education is not of a much lower standard than that of men. Ladies should be equally familiar with literature, music, painting, dancing, and the art of agreeable conversation. The ladies who take part in the entertainment combine example with precept; their good taste and their wit are displayed with moderation ; they applaud Bembo's enthusiasm, and his noble platonic 5 50 THE PHILOSOPHY OF theories on a universal and pure love. You will find at this time in Italy women who, like Vittoria Colonna, Veronica, Gambara, Costanza d'Amalfi, Tnllia d' Aragona and the Duchess of Ferrara, com bine superior talents with superior instruction. If, now, you call to mind the portraits of that day in the Louvre, the pale, pensive Venetians in dark costumes, the "Youth" by Francia, so ardent and yet so impassible, the delicate "Joanna of Naples," with the swan's neck, the "Young Man with a Statuette," by Bronzino, all those calm and intelli gent countenances, all those rich and grave cos tumes, you will be able to form some idea of the exquisite finesse, the fertile faculties, the perfect culture of that society which, three centuries before our own, stimulated ideas, loved beauty and prac ticed urbanity as much and perhaps more than our selves. IV. This leads us to distinguish another characteris tic of this civilization and another condition of fine art. Intellectual culture has been equally good at other epochs, without art having attained to the same brilliancy. In our own day, for instance, men having acquired three centuries of experience and discovery over and above the knowledge of the six teenth century, are better informed and better sup plied with ideas than ever, and yet we cannot say that the arts of design in Europe produce nowadays as fine works as in Italy in the time of the Renais sance. Accordingly, to explain the great works of the year 1500, it is not sufficient to note the active intelbgence and the finished culture of Raphael's contemporaries; we have to define this species of intelligence and culture, and, after comparing Italy with Europe of the fifteenth century, compare it with the Europe in which we are living to-dav. 52 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Let us first commence with the country which, in our time, is certainly the most learned in Europe, Germany. There, especially in northern Germany, everybody knows how to read; young people, again, pass five or six years in the universities, and not only those who are rich and comfortably off, but al most all men belonging to the middle class, includ ing men of the humbler class, at the expense of long suffering and great privations. Science, there, is held in such repute that it sometimes produces af fectation, and frequently pedantry. Many of the young men wear spectacles, although they have very good eyes, in order to give themselves a wiser look. The dominant idea in the brain of a German twenty years old is, not to make a figure at a club or a cafe, as we see in France, but the desire to ob tain general ideas of humanity, society, the super natural, nature, and countless other things, in brief, a complete philosophy. There is no other country in which we find so great a taste for, such constant preoccupation with, such a natural comprehension of, the higher abstract theories. It is the land of met aphysics and systems. This excess of profound ART IN ITALY. 53 meditation, however, has proved detrimental to the arts of design. The German painters strive hard to express on their canvases, or in their frescoes, hu manitarian and religious ideas. They subordinate color and form to thought; their work is symbolic; they depict on their walls courses of philosophy and of history; and if you should go to Munich, you will see that the greatest of them are philosophers astray in art, better qualified to appeal to reason than to the eye, and who ought to make use of a pen rather than of a brush. Let us pass over to England. There, a man oi the middle classes enters a store or a counting-room at a very early age; he works there ten hours a day, works again in his home, and strains all the energies of his mind and body to make enough money. He marries and has a good many children; he works still harder; competition is bitter, the climate is rigid and his necessities become greater. A gentle man, a man of wealth, a nobleman has scarcely more leisure. He is always busy and tied down with absorbing duties. Politics take up the atten tion of everybody. There are meetings, commit- 54 THE PHILOSOPHY OF tees, clubs, newspapers like the "Times" which daily bring you a whole volume to read, figures, statistics, a ponderous mass of undigested facts to ilevonr and digest, and, in addition to all these, weighty religious affairs, foundations, endowments, incessant preoccupation in improving public and private things, questions of finance, of the balance of power, of conscience and utilitarian or moral argu ments — such is their intellectual pasture-land! And therefore painting and the other arts, which appeal to the senses, are relegated to or fall naturally into an inferior position. People have no time to attend to them; they are concerned with graver and more urgent matters; they take art up through fashion and conventionally; they regard it simply as some thing curious; it furnishes an interesting subject to a few amateurs. It is easy to find patrons to give money for founding museums, for purchasing orig inal drawings, for establishing schools, just as they can be found for other purposes, such as evangel ical missions, the support of foundlings and the cure of epileptic patients. These patrons again are the guardians of the public and social welfare; they ART IN ITALY. 55 bf;lieve that music polishes the people and diminishes Sunday inebriation; that the arts of design render workmen good for making cloths and costly jewelry. There is an absence of taste. The feeling for beautiful forms and fine color here is only the fruit of education, an exotic orange cultivated with diffi culty in a hot-house, at great expense, and which is generally sour or rancid. The contemporary paint ers of the country are workmen of an exacting and narrow talent; they will paint a bundle of hay, the fold of a dress, a sprig of bramble with grievous dryness and minuteness; prolonged effort, the con stant strain on the physical and moral machine, has, with them, disturbed the balance of sensations and impressions; they have become insensible to the harmony of colors; they cover their canvases with parrot green, make trees of zinc or tin and paint figures with a red of the tint of rare beef; with the exception of a study of physiognomies, and in the science of moral traits, their art is disagreeable; their national exhibitions place before strangers a medley of colors as crude, discordant and violent as a chari vari. 56 THE PHILOSOPHY OF The answer may be made that these people are Teutonic and English, earnest, Protestant and de- \ Dted to erudition and to practical matters, and that in Paris, at least, there is taste and a love of pleas ure. It is true that Paris, at this time, is the city of the world where people love most to talk and read, to criticise art, tj\ moralities and Bacchanalian excesses. As for Lee X., he is a man of taste, fond of elegant latinity and clever epigrams; but for all that he does not abstain from illicit pleasure and open animal enjoyment. Around him, Bembo, Molza, Aretino, Baraballo and Querno, numbers of poets, musicians and parasites, lead not very edifying lives, while their verses, gen erally, are more than free. Cardinal Bibiena has a comedy played before him, la Calandra, which no theatre of the present day would dare have repre sented. He amuses himself with serving his guests with dishes in the shape of monkeys and crows. His clown is a mendicant monk named Mariano, and a huge eater, "who swallows a boiled or roasted pigeon at one mouthful, and who can take down forty eggs and twenty chickens." He delighted in coarse pastimes and in fantastic and burlesque crea tions; the spirit and impulse of the animal abounded in him as in others; booted and spurred, he is a passionate hunter of stag and boar among the savage hills of Civita-Vecchia, while the festivals to which he treats himself are no more ecclesiastic than his habits. A secretary of the Duke of Ferrara, an eye 72 THE PHILOSOPHY OF witness, thus describes one of his days. J udge by the contrast between his pleasures and ours how much the law of propriety has increased, how much free and powerful natural instincts have diminished, to what extent an active imagination has become subject to pure reason and what a gulf there is be tween us and those half -pagan, completely sensual but eminently picturesque times when the life of the spirit did not undermine the life of the flesh. "I was at the play on Sunday evening;* Mon- seigneur de Rangonif introduced me into one of Cibo'sJ anterooms where the Pope was with his young and right reverend cardinals. His Holiness was walking about the room, allowing those to enter it whose quality suited him, and as soon as the company reached the number he had fixed upon they betook themselves to the spot assigned for the play; our Holy Father stood by the door, and, with- * First published in the Gazette des Beaux Arts by the Marquis Joseph Campori. t Hercules Rangoni, Cardinal. X Cardinal Innocent, son of Franceschelto Cibo and of Mag dalen Medicis, sister of Leo X. ART IN ITALY. 73 out any confusion, he allowed admission by giving his benediction to whomsoever he pleased. Once admitted into the room we found the stage on one side and, on the other, a set of steps on which was placed the pontiff's chair who, after the laymen had entered, seated himself in his chair, raised five or six steps above the floor, followed by the right reverend cardinals and the ambassadors who took their positions around the chair according to their rank; and once the crowd was received, which might be about two thousand, they sounded the fifes and lowered the curtain on which there was painted Brother Mariano* with several devils capering about him on each side of the curtain, in the midst of which there was a scroll which stated: 'Behold the fancies of Brother Mariano!' The music com menced and the Pope, through his spectacles, ad mired the scene which was very beautiful, being * Brother Mariano Fetti, a lay Dominican who succeeded Bramante, the predecessor of Sebastiano in the department of the Piombo, one of the gayest and most agreeable spirits of the court of Leo X., conjointly with Baraballo, Querno and their fel lows and at once patron and friend of artists 74 'THE PHILOSOPHY OF executed by the hand of Raphael; it was really a fine prospect of highly-lauded issues and perspec tives. His Holiness likewise admired the sky which was marvelously represented; the candelabras weie formed with letters and each letter supported five torches inscribed with: 'Leo X., Pont. Maximus.' The Nuncio appeared on the stage and recited an argument. He ridiculed the title of the play, the Suppositi, to such an extent that the Pope, with the spectators, laughed heartily, and judging by what I heard, the French were somewhat scandalized by the subject of the Suppositi. The comedy was pre sented and well played, and at each act there was an interlude of music with fifes, bagpipes, two cornets, viols, lutes, and the small organ with such varied tones, generously presented to the Pope by the most illustrious Monseigneur of blessed memory; there was at the same time a flute and a voice which gave great pleasure; there was also a concert of voices which, in my opinion, did not succeed as well as the other musical performances. The last inter lude was the Mauresque, which represented the Gorgon fable very well, but not with that per fee- ART IN ITALY. 7«j tioc in which I have seen it reprtsented in your lordship's palace; thus the festival ended. The audience began to retire, and in such haste, and with such crowding that, it being my fate to be pushed over a small bench, I came very near having my leg broken. Bondelmonte received a violent shock from a Spaniard and whilst beginning to strike the latter with his fists, the way was made much easier for me to escape; it is certain that my leg was in great danger; I found, besides, com pensation for this mishap in a grand benediction, and in the gracious look with which the Holy Father honored me." " On the day preceding this entertainment there was a race of horses in which was seen a number of jennets, with Monseigneur Corner for master, dressed diversely d la Mauresque ; and afterwards another wholly in the Spanish style, clad in Alex andrine satin with a lining of changeable silk, capuchin and doublet, with Serapica and several valets de chambre on service, at the head of it. This race was composed of twenty horses; the Pope had presented each cavalier with forty-five ducats; and, 76 THE PHILOSOPHY OF indeed, the livery was beautiful, with the servants and trumpeters dressed in the same silken hues. Having reached the ground they began to run two and two towards the palace gate, where the Pope stood at the windows, and when both troops had finished this race the Serapica company withdrew to the other side of the square and the Cornera towards St. Peter's; the Serapica, taking cane lances, ap proached to attack the Cornera who also had theirs; the Serapica cast their lances at the Cornera who did the same thing against their rivals, and both attacked and rushed at each other, which was very beautiful to see and without danger. Many were the fine horses and mares among them. The follow ing day there were bull-fights; I was with Seignior Marc Antonio, as I have mentioned; three men were killed and five horses were wounded; two are dead, and among others a Serapica, a very fine jennet, which threw him to the ground and brought him in great danger, for the bull was upon him and if the brute had not been goaded with a pike it would not have relaxed its hold and would have killed him. The Pope, it is stated, exclaimed ' Poor Serapica ! ART IN ITALY. 77 and bewailed him a good deal. I am told that, in the evening, a certain comedy by a monk was played, .... and as it did not give great satisfac tion, the Pope, instead of ordering La JSTauresque to be danced, had the monk put in a blanket and tossed in such a way in the air as to make him come down on his belly on the stage-floor, and after that his garters were cut and he was made to take to his heels; the good monk, however, showed his teeth and bit three or four of the grooms. He was, at last, forced to mount a horse, and they struck him so many blows on his back with their hands that, I am told, it was necessary to make several cuppings on the lower parts ; he is now in bed and not at all well. It is said that the Pope did this to set an ex ample to other monks, that they might not take it into their heads to make further exhibitions of their mummeries. This Mauresque excited a good deal of laughter. To-day the turn came for the ring race before the palace gate, the Pope being there and looking on from his windows; the prizes were already inscribed on vases. Next to this came the buffalo race. It was amusing to see these ugly 78 THE PHILOSOPHY OF brutes running, now heaving ahead an d now falling backward, in order that they should arrive at the goal, and before reaching it, they required much time, for they take one step ahead and four back ward, so that it is not easy to reach the goal. The last one to get there was the one that was ahead and he accordingly bore off the prize; they num bered ten and, in faith, it was a great scramble. I withdrew afterwards to Bembo's residence; I called on His Holiness where I met the Bishop of Bayeux. Nothing was talked about but masks and matters of gaiety. "From Rome, this day, 8 March MDXVHI, at four o'clock in the night. " Of your illustrious Seigneurie " The Servant, Axphonse Pattltjzo." The above are carnival amusements at the court which apparently ought to be the soberest and most decorous in Italy. We also encounter here races of naked men as in the ancient Greek games, and we know of obscenities such as were given in the amphitheatres of the Roman empire. With such a vigorous imagination turned towards phys> ART IN ITALY. 79 ical pleasures, with a civilization which sets up pleasure as the end of human life, with such a com plete emancipation from political cares, from indus trial complications and from the moral aims which now fix minds on positive interests and on abstract ideas, it is not surprising that a race richly endowed for the arts, and highly cultivated, should have loved, created and perfected the art which repre sents to us outward forms. The Renaissance is a unique moment, intermediate between the middle ages and modern times, between a lack of culture and over-culture, between the reign of crude in stincts and the reign of ripe ideas. Man ceases then to be a gross, warlike, carnivorous animal, only capable of exercising his limbs; he has not yet become a devotee of the midnight lamp or of the drawing-room, only capable of exercising his tongue and his understanding. He partakes of both na tures. He has long and profound reveries like the savage; he is moved by keen, delicate curiosity like the civilized man. Like the former he thinks through images; like the latter he discovers laws. Like the former he seeks sensuous pleasure ; like the 80 THE PHILOSOPHY OF latter he steps beyond vulgar pleasure. His ap> petites have become refined. He is interested in the externals of things, but he requires to have them perfect; while the beautiful forms which he con templates in the works of his great artists do no more than set free the vague figures with which his brain is peopled, and satisfy the mute instincts with which his heart is moulded. V. It now remains to be shown why this great, pictur esque talent selected the human form for its prin cipal subject; by what experiences, habits and passions men were prepared to be interested in muscles; why, in this great domain of art their eyes preferred to turn towards healthy, powerful, ener getic figures which subsequent ages have only been able to find or to copy traditionally. For this purpose, after having laid before you the state of minds, I shall try to show you the kind of characters. By the state of minds is understood the kind, number and quality of ideas which are found in a human brain, and of which they are, in some sort, the furniture. But the furniture of a brain, like that of a palace, is changed without much trouble. Without touching the palace itself we may place in it other hangings, buffets, bronzes 82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF and carpets; in a similar way, without touching tht internal structure of a soul, we can place in it other ideas; a change of condition or of education is sufficient for that purpose; according as man is ignorant or learned, plebeian or noble, his ideas are different. There is within him, then, something more important than ideas, which is his structure itself; I mean his character, in other words, his natural instincts, his inborn passions, the greatness of his sensibility, the degree of his energy, in short the force and direction of his inner activity. To enable you to see this profound structure of the Italian soul, I am going to show you the circum stances, habits, and necessities that have produced it ; you will comprehend it better through its history than by a definition of it. The first trait, then, which is observed in Italy is the want of a long and firmly-established peace, impartial justice, and a watchful police like that to which we are accustomed in our country. We have some difficulty in picturing to ourselves that excess of anxiety, of disorder and of violence. We have been too long in an opposite condition. We have ART IN ITALY. 8S so many gendarmes and policemen that we are in clined to find them more troublesome than useful. With us if fifteen persons gather together in the street to look at a dog with a broken leg, a man with a moustache approaches and says, "Move on, gentlemen, crowds are forbidden." This seems to us unreasonable; we denounce it, forgetting to remark that these very men with moustaches afford both to the rich and to the weak the assurance of being able to walk lonely streets at midnight safe and unarmed. Let us suppose these dispensed with, and a society imagined in which a police force is powerless or disregarded. We find countries of this sort in Australia, or in America, as for example, in the placers where the gold-hunters flock in crowds and live haphazard without having yet formed a government. In these regions if one fears that he may receive either a blow or an insult he at once discharges his revolver at the offending party. The latter fires back, and sometimes the neighbors in terfere. One is constantly obliged there, to defend his life or his property; danger, brutal and sudden, hems man in on all sides. 84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Such was nearly the state of things in Italy about the year 1500; there was no knowledge then of any thing like this great government which, perfected with us for four hundred years past, considers that its simplest duty is to preserve to each person, not only his property and his life, but again his repose and his security. The princes of Italy were petty tyrants who had generally usurped power through assassinations or poisonings, or, at least, through violence and treachery. Naturally their sole con cern was to retain this power. As to the security of citizens, they made but little provision for it. Individuals had to defend themselves and, moreover, to do themselves justice; if a man had a too refrac tory debtor, if he encountered an impertinent fellow in the street, if he considered this or that person as dangerous or inimical to him, he found it quite natural to get rid of him as soon as possible. Instances abound; you have only to look through the memoirs of the time to see how deeply rooted thie custom of self-appeal was and this habit of personal violence. " On the 20th September," says Stefano d' Inf es- ART IN ITALY. st sura, " there was a great tumult in the city of Rome, and all the tradesmen closed their shops. Those who were in the fields or in their vineyards, went home ii great haste and all, whether citizens or strangers, took up arms because it was stated as a certain thing that Pope Innocent TTT. was dead." The feeble bond which held society together broke and the people returned to a savage state; each one took advantage of the ^our to rid himself of his enemies. It must be noticed that although assaults in ordinary times were a little less frequent they were not the less sanguinary. The private feuds of the Colonna and Orsini families extended all around Rome; these nobles kept armed men and summoned their peasants; each band devastated the lands of the enemy; if a truce was effected it was soon broken and each chief, buckling on his giacco, sent word to the Pope that his adversary was the aggressor. "Even in the city a good many murders took place day and night, and scarcely a day passed that some one was not slain. ... On the third of Sep tember a certain Salvador attacked his enemy, 86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Seignior Beneaccaduto, with whom he was nevertbe less at peace under a bond of five hundred ducats." This signifies that each had made a deposit of five hundred ducats which was to be lost by the first one that broke the truce. A guarantee, like this, of a sworn pledge was an habitual thing; there was no other way of maintaining a slight degree of public tranquillity. We find the following note in the private account book of Benvenuto Cellini: "I make note that, this day, October 26, 1556, I, Ben venuto Cellini, am released from prison and that I have made a truce with my enemy for one year. Each of us has given security in three hundred crowns." But a guarantee of money is feeble against violence of temperament and the ferocity of manners and customs. Hence it is that Salvador could not refrain from attacking Beneaccaduto; " He pierced him twice with his sword, and wounded him mortally, so that he died." The magistrates, too openly defied, now interfere, while the people take the matter up somewhat as, in our day, in San Francisco during the sway of Lynch law. In San Francisco when assassinations became ART IN ITALY. 87 too frequent, business men and respectable persons. the leading men of the city, accompanied by all well-disposed persons, went to the prison, seized the culprits and hung them forthwith. In the same way "on the fourth day, the Pope sent his vice- chamberlain with the conservators and the entire people to destroy Salvador's house. They destroyed it, and on the same fourth day of September, Jerome, brother of the said Salvador, was hung," probably because they could not lay hands on Sal vador himself. In these tumultuous and popular executions every one is responsible for his relations. There are fifty similar examples; the men of this time are accustomed to affrays, and not only men of the lower class but men who, belonging to the upper ranks or of high culture, ought, apparently, to have exercised some self-control. Guiccardini relates that, one day, Trivulcio, governor of the Milan territory for the King of France, killed with his own hand some butchers in the market "who, with the usual insolence of people of that class, made opposi tion to the levying of certain taxes from which they had not been exempted." You are accustomed now- 88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF adays to see artists as men of society, peaceable citizens, and well qualified for suitably wearmg a dress-coat and white cravat in the evening. In Cellini's memoirs you find a goldsmith named Piloto who is a "worthy man," but yet a captain of brig ands. In another place we find Raphael's pupils determining to kill Rosso because Rosso, who is given to scandal, had maligned Raphael; and Rosso thinks it most prudent to leave Rome; after threats of this kind a journey becomes urgent. The slight est excuse suffices them for killing a man. Cellini narrates again that Vasari was in the habit of wear ing his nails very long, and one night, sleeping with his apprentice Manno, "he scratched his leg with his hands thinking that he was scratching himself, whereupon Manno absolutely wanted to murder Vasari." The motive was a slight one. But at this time man is so fierce, so accustomed to blows, the blood rushes at once to his head and he strikes blindly. A bull first strikes with his horns; he first strikes with a dagger. The spectacles, accordingly, which are daily wit nessed in Rome, or in its environs, are atrocious. ART IN ITALY. 89 Punishments seem to be those of an orieiltal mon archy. Enumerate, if you can, the murders com mitted by that handsome and clever Caesar Borgia, son of the Pope, and Duke of Valentinois, whose portrait you may see at Rome in the Borghese gallery. He is a man of taste, an able politician, and fond of fetes and refined conversation; his fine form is fitted with a doublet of black velvet; he has perfect hands and the calm expression of a grand seignior. But he knows how to ensure respect, and he manages his own affairs, with his own hands, either with the sword or the dagger. "On the second Sunday," says Burchard, the Pope's chamberlain, " a man with a mask on, in the Borgo, uttered some offensive words against the Duke of Valentinois. The Duke, hearing of it, had him arrested ; they cut off his hand and the fore part of his tongue, which was attached to the little finger of the severed hand," undoubtedly to set an example. Another time, as with the chauffeurs of 1789, "the servants of the same Duke suspended two old men and eight old women by the arms, after having kindled a fire under their feet to make them confess 90 THE PHILOSOPHY OF where money was concealed, while they, not know ing, or not wishing to reveal where it was, died under the said torture." Another day, the Duke causes "gladiandi" to be led into the prison court and he himself, dressed in his finest suit, and in the presence of a numerous and select audience, pierces them with arrows. "He also killed Perotto, who was the Pope's favorite," under the Pope's own robe, in such a way that the blood spurted in the Pope's face. This fam ily is given to cutting each other's throats. He had already had his brother-in-law attacked with a sword, the Pope taking care of the wounded man; but the Duke exclaimed: '"What is not done at dinner can be done at supper.' And one day, the seventeenth of August, he entered his room, as the young man was already up, and ordered his wife and sister to leave it; then having called in three assas sins he had the said young man strangled." Besides this, he killed his own brother, the Due di Gandia, and had his body cast in the Tiber. After various enquiries they discovered a fisherman who was on the river bank at the time of the occurrence. And ART IN ITALY. 91 as they asked him why he had said njthing about it to the governor of the city, he replied, " that he did not think it worth while, for on different nights in his lifetime he had seen more than a hundred bodies thrown in at the same spot without anybody con cerning themselves about it." The Borgias, that privileged family, seem un doubtedly to have had a special taste and talent for poisonings and assassinations; but you will find, in the small Italian states, numerous personages, princes and princesses, worthy of having been their contemporaries. The Prince of Faenza had given his wife cause for jealousy; she conceals four assas sins under his bed and lets them loose at him when he enters to go to rest; but he makes vigorous resistance and she then springs out of bed, seizes a dagger attached to the bed-post, and stabs him her self in the back. She is excommunicated for this act and her father entreats Lorenzo de Medici, who is in great credit with the Pope, to intercede for her and have the ecclesiastical censure removed, alleg ing among other motives that she has " the intention of providing herself with another husband." At 92 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Milan, Duke Galeazzo is assassinated by three young men in the habit of reading Plutarch; one of them was killed in the affray and his body was cast to the hogs; the others declared, before being quartered, that they had struck the blow because the Duke "not only debauched women but, again, caused their deaths by refined torments." At Rome, Pope Leo X. just escaped being killed by his cardinals; his surgeon, in their pay, was to poison him when dressing a fistula; cardinal Petrucci, the principal instigator of the crime, was put to death. If now, we consider the house of Malatesta at Rimini, or the house of Este at Ferrara, we find with them similar hereditary habits of poisoning and assassination. If, at length, you contemplate a city which seems to be somewhat better governed, Florence, the chief of which, a Medici, is an intelligent, liberal, honest man, you will find acts committed there as savage as any of those which you have just heard described. For example, the Pazzi, irritated at seeing power wholly in the hands of the Medicis, conspired with the archbishop of Pisa to assassinate both of the Medicis, Julian and Lorenzo; Pope Sixtus TV. was ART IN ITALY. 93 an accomplice. The time selected for tLis act was the hour of mass in the church of Santa Reparata, the signal being the elevation of tie Host. One of tho conspirators, Bandini, stabbed Julian de Medici, then Francesco dei Pazzi, maddened with rage, attacked the corpse so furiously as to wound himself in the thigh, afterwards killing one of the friends of the Medici house. Lorenzo was wounded, but he was brave; he had time to draw his sword and to roll his cloak around his arm for a shield while his friends gathered around him and protected him with their swords or their bodies, well enough to enable him to retreat into the sacristie. Meanwhile the other conspirators, numbering thirty and with the archbishop at their head, had surprised the town-hall with a view to possess themselves of the seat of government. But the governor on taking command of this had arranged the gates in such a way that when they were once closed they could not be opened on the inside. The conspirators, ac cordingly, were taken as in a mousetrap. The people rushed to arms and assembled on all sides. They seized the archbishop and hung him in his 94 THE PHILOSOPHY OF pontifical robes alongside of Francesco dei Pazzi, the first instigator of the conspiracy, while the prel ate in his rage, dying and hanging as he was, grap pled the body of his accomplice and ravenously bit him. "About twenty persons of the Pazzi family were cut to pieces at the same time, as well as twenty more of the archbishop's house, while sixty persons were hung at the palace windows." A painter, whose history I have related to you, Andrea da Castagno, another assassin who slew his friend for stealing his discovery of painting in oil, was com missioned to paint this great hanging, which, later, secured to him the name of Andrea of the Sung. I should never stop if I attempted to relate to you the histories of the time, which are full of similar characteristics. Here is one, however, which I must still select because the personage will appear again on the stage and because the narrator is Machiavelli. " Oliveretto da Fermo, being left young and an or phan, was brought up by one of his maternal uncles named Giovanni Fogliani." He then learns the profession of arms under his brothers. "Ashe was ART IN ITALY. 95 naturally intelligent, and cheerful and vigorous both in body and in feeling, he in a short (ime became one of the best men of his troop. But, coruiluding that it was a disgraceful thing to remain lost in a crowd, he determined, with the assistance of some of the citizens of Fermo, to get possession of the city, and he wrote to his uncle to say that, having remained absent from his country several years, he wished to return to see it himself, also the city, and to obtain a glimpse of his patrimony. He added that, if he took so much trouble it was only to acquire honor; and, in order that his fellow citizens might satisfy themselves that he had not passed his time in a fruitless way, he wished to come accompanied by a hundred horsemen, his friends and followers, begging him to give orders to the people of Fermo to welcome him honorably, which would not alone be creditable to him, Oliveretto, but again to himself, Giovanni, who had brought up Oliveretto from infancy. Giovanni omitted none of the good offices requested of him; he caused him to be honorably received by the people of Fermo, and he lodged him in his own house 96 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Oliveretto, having passed several days in arranging all that was necessary for his nefarious crime, gave a very formal banquet to which he invited Giovanni and all the first citizens of Fermo. Towards the end of it ... . having purposely led the conversa tion to serious subjects, on the greatness of Pope Alexander, and of his son and their enterprises, he suddenly arose, saying that for such topics they must have a more retired place. He withdrew into a room and Giovanni and the others followed him. Scarcely had they seated themselves, when soldiers issued from the secret recesses of the chamber, who killed Giovanni and all the rest. After the homi cide Oliveretto mounted his horse, rode through the town, and besieged the chief magistrate in the town- hall, so that, through fear the inhabitants were con strained to obey him and to establish a government and place him at the head of it. He put to death all those who were discontented and who might an noy him .... and in one year he became formida ble to all his neighbors." Enterprises of this sort are frequent. The life of Caesar Borgia is full of them, while the submission ART IN ITALY. 97 of the Romagna to the Holy See is only one long tiain of treasons and assassinations. Such is the veritable feudal state, that in which every man, left to himself, attacks another or defends himself, pushing his ambition, villainy or vengeance to tho utmost without fearing the intervention of the gov ernment or the repression of the law. But that which marks an enormous difference be tween Italy of the fifteenth century and Europe of the middle ages is the great cultivation of the Ital ians at that period. You have but just now seen the repeated proofs of this high culture. Through an extraordinary contrast, whilst manners have be come elegant and tastes delicate, the hearts and characters of men have remained ferocious. These people who are learned, critical, fine talkers, pol ished, and men of society, are at the same time freebooters, assassins and murderers. Their actions are those of savages and their arguments those of civilized people; they may be called intelligent wolves. Suppose, now, that a wolf should form judgments of his species; he would probably found his code on murder. This is what happened in Italy; 98 THE PHILOSOPHY OF the philosophers erected the customs of which the; were witnesses into a theory, and ended by believ ing, or saying, that if you wish to subsist or tc exist in this world you must act like a scoundrel, The most profound of these theorists was Machia velli, a great man, and indeed an honest man, a patriot, a superior genius, who wrote a work called "The Prince" to justify or, at least, to sanction treachery and assassination. Or rather he neither justifies nor sanctions; he passes beyond indignation and puts conscience to one side; he analyzes and explains as a scientist and connoisseur of men; he provides documents and comments on them; he sends plain instructive reports to the magistrates of Florence, written in a style as cool as the narrative of a skillful surgical operation. "Description of the mode employed by the Duke of Valentinois to kill Vitellozo Vitelli, Oliveretto da Fermo, Seignior Pagolo and Duke Gravina Orsini. "Magnificent Seigniors, as your lordships have not received all my letters in which a large portioD of the affair of Sinigaglia is comprised, it seemed to me advisable to write it out in detail, and I think 9 ART IN ITALY. gg that this will prove agreeable to you on account of the spirit of the matter which is rare and memorable in every point of view." The Duke had been worsted by these seigniors and he found himself weak against them. He made peace with them, promised them a good deal, gave them something, lavished all sorts of fine speeches on them, became their ally and finally got them to propose a conference on a matter of mutual interest. They were afraid, and hesitated a long time. But his protestations were so winning, he handled their hopes and desires so adroitly, he pretended to be so gentle and loyal, that they came, with troops in deed, and let themselves be conducted, under the semblance of a sumptuous hospitality, to a palace which the Duke occupied at Sinigaglia. They en tered it on horseback, and the Duke received them courteously; but, "all having dismounted at the Duke's lodging, and having entered along with him into a secret chamber, they were made his prison ers. "The Duke immediately mounted his horse and ordered the followers of Oliveretto and Orsini to be 100 THE PHILOSOPHY OF plundered. But the Duke's soldiers, not content with plundering Oliveretto's followers, began to sack Sinigaglia, and if the Duke had not repressed their insolence by slaying a good many of them, they would have sacked it completely." The small as well as the great acted like brigands; force was the universal rule. "When night came, and the tumult was sup pressed, the Duke thought it advisable to have Vitellozo and Oliveretto killed, and, having them led to a certain spot he caused them to be strangled. Vitellozo implored them to entreat the Pope to give him full absolution for his sins. Oliveretto wept, casting on Vitellozo the blame of all that had been done to the Duke. Pagolo and the Duke of Gravini were allowed to live until the Duke had heard that the Pope had secured Cardinal Orsino, Archbishop of Florence, and Messire Jacopo de Santa-Croce. On receiving the news, the 18th January, at the castle of La Pieve, they were strangled in the same manner." This is simple narrative; but, not content with stating facts, Machiavelli elsewhere deduces infer ART IN ITALY. 101 ences. He writes a book, half real, half imaginary, in the style of Xenophon's Cyrus, the Life of Cas- truccio Castracani, whom he presents to the Italians as the type of an accomplished prince. This Cas- truccio Castracani, a foundling, had made himself sovereign of Lucca and Pisa two hundred years be fore, and had become sufficiently powerful to threaten Florence. He had performed "a good many acts which in their wisdom and integrity might be regarded as excellent examples," and "leaving of himself a happy memory, his friends having regretted him more than any other prince of his day." Here is one of the admirable acts of this hero, so beloved and worthy of eternal praise. The Poggio family having rebelled at Lucca against him, Stef ano Poggio, " an old and peaceable man," arrested the insurgents and promised to inter cede for them. " They then laid down their arms, as unwisely as they had taken them up." CaStruc- cio returns. " Stef ano, thinking that Castruccio was under obligations to him, went to see him and asked nothing in his own behalf, not deeming it necessary, but in behalf of others of his house, urging him to 102 THE PHILOSOPHY OF excuse much on account of youth, and much on ao count of old friendship and the obligations that he, Castruccio, owed to their family. To which Cas- truccio graciously replied, telling him to be of good cheer, evincing more gratification in finding the dis turbance arrested than resentment in learning that it had broken out. He encouraged Stefano to in duce them all to come to him, telling him that he gave thanks to God for having an opportunity to show his clemency and generosity. They all came, accordingly, on faith in the word of Stefano and of Castruccio, and all of them together, with Stefano, were made prisoners and put to death." Machiavelli's other hero is that Caesar Borgia, the greatest assassin and most complete traitor of the century, an accomplished man of his kind, who always looks upon peace the same as the Hurons and Iroquois look upon war, that is to say, as a con dition in which dissimulation, feint, perfidy and am buscade are a right, a duty and an achievement. He practiced these on everybody, even on his own fam ily, and even on those faithful to him. One day wishing to silence the rumors spread about concern' ART IN ITALY. 103 ing his cruelty, he had his governor of the Romagna seized, Remiro d'Orco, who had rendered him im portant services, and to whom he owed the tranquil lity of the whole country. And the following day the citizens saw, with satisfaction and with terror, Remiro d'Orco lying on the public square in two pieces with a bloody knife alongside of him. The Duke ordered it to be proclaimed that he had had him punished for his too great severity, thus creating for himself the reputation of a just and good ruler and a pi'otector of the people. Machiavelli, accord ingly, comes to such a conclusion as this: " Everybody knows how laudable it is for a prince to keep his word and live with integrity and not with craftiness. We nevertheless see by experience in our day that those among princes have accom plished great things who have made little account of their faith and have known how, through crafti ness, to turn men's brains and have at last destroyed those who built upon their loyalty A wise seignior cannot or ought not to keep his word when that is injurious to him, and when the motives that induced him to give it have disappeared. Besides, 104 THE PHILOSOPHY OF never did a prince lack legitimate reasons for giving a color to his bad faith. It is necessary, however, to give a good coloring to them and to be a com petent cheat and dissimulator And men are so simple, and so readily obey present necessity that he who deceives always finds some one who lets him self be deceived." It is evident that such customs and such maxims have an important bearing on characters. In the first place the entire absence of justice and of a police, that license for crime and assassination, that obliga tion to avenge oneself without pity and to be feared in order to exist, that incessant appeal to force, hardens the soul; man becomes addicted to sudden and extreme resolutions; he is constrained to know how to kill or to cause death at any moment. Again, as he lives in constant and extreme danger he is absorbed with great anxieties and tragic passions; he is not diverted by nice discriminations of sentiment; he is not a calm and curious critic. The emotions which stir him are grand and simple. It is not some detail of his observation or a portion of his fortune which is at stake, but his whole lift ART IN ITALY. 105 and that of those who belong to him. He can faU from the highest to the lowest place, and, like Remiro, Poggio, Gravina, and Oliveretto, open his eyes under the knife or the cord of the executioner. Life is tempestuous and the will strained to the utmost. The spirit is stronger and it has full play. I would like to collect all these peculiarities, and no longer present you with an abstraction, but a per son in action. There is one whose memoirs we have, written with his own hand, in a very simple style, so much the more instructive, and which will place before your eyes better than any other book the ways in which contemporaries felt, thought and acted. Benvenuto Cellini may be considered as an abridgment in high relief of the violent passions, the perilous lives, the impulsive and powerful geniuses, the fertile and dangerous faculties which produced the Renaissance in Italy and which, in dev astating society, produced the arts. The first thing that strikes us in him is the power of inward force, the energetic and courageous character, the vigorous initiative, the habit of sudden resolve and of extreme measures, the great 106 THE PHILOSOPHY OF capacity of action and of suffering, in short, the in domitable force of an intact temperament. Such was the splendid animal, at once militant and un daunted, which the harsh customs of the middle ages had nourished and which, with us, are softened by peaceful times and a police of long-standing. He was sixteen years of age, and his brother Gio vanni was fourteen. One day, Giovanni, having been insulted by another young man, challenged him to fight. They betook themselves to the city gate and fought with swords. Giovanni disarmed his antagonist, wounded him, and was continuing the battle when some of the relations of the wounded man arrived and began to stone him and attack him with swords, so effectively that he too was wounded and fell to the ground. Cellini appeared on the stage, picked up a sword and fell upon the assailants, avoiding the stones as he best could, and never leaving his brother a step; he was about to be overcome when, a few soldiers passing by and admiring his courage, they took part in the fray and aided in his deliverance. He then lifted his brothel on his shoulders and carried him home. ART IN ITALY. 107 You may find a hundred instances of the like energy. It is a miracle that he was not killed twenty times over. He always has a sword, or an arquebus, or a dagger in his hand, in the streets, on the highways, against personal enemies, disbanded soldiers, brigands, and all sorts of rivals; he is on the defensive and, more frequently, he is the attack ing party. The most surprising of these traits is his escape from the Castle of St. Angelo, where he was imprisoned after a murder. He descends from this enormous height by means of ropes which he made out of his bed clothes, encountering a sentinel whom he frightened with his terribly resolute air and who pretended not to see him, using a pole to get across the second inclosure and tying his last rope and gliding down. But his rope was too short; he fell and broke his leg below the knee; he then bound up the leg and, bleeding all the while, crawls to the city gate; it is shut and he crawls under it after digging the ground away with his poniard; dogs assail him, one of which he disembowels and then, coming across a porter he has himself carried to the house of an ambassador who was one of hie 108 THE PHILOSOPHY OF friends. He thinks he is safe, as he has the Pope's safeguard. But he is suddenly again arrested and put into a foul dungeon, into which light comes only two hours in the day. The executioner comes and, moved with pity, spares him that day. After this they are content to keep him in captivity; the walls sweat with moisture, his straw rots, his wounds do not heal. Several months pass in this way, hip strong constitution resists everything. A body and a soul thus fashioned seem to be of porphyry or of granite, whilst ours are of clay or of plaster. But the resources of his nature are as great in him as the vigor of his constitution. Nothing is more pliant and copious than these fresh and healthy natures. He found an example in his own family. His father was an architect, a good draughtsman, an impassioned musician, playing on the viol and singing only to please himself; he made admirable wooden organs, harpsichords, viols, lutes and harps; he worked in ivory, he was skillful in the construction of machines, he played on the flute amongst the fif ers of tbe seigniory, he knew a ART IN ITALY. 10(1 little Latir and wrote rerse. The men of this epoch are universal. Without mentioning Leonardo da Vir.ci, Pic de la Mirandola, Lorenzo de Medici, Leo Batista Alberti and those of superior genius, we see business men and traders, monks and artisans placing themselves, by their tastes and habits, on a level with the occupations and pleasures which nowadays seem the peculiar province of the most cultivated men and of the most delicate organiza tion. Cellini was of this number. He had got to be an excellent flute and cornet player in spite of himself, disliking these exercises and only devoting himself to them to please his father. Besides this he, very early, became an admirable draughtsman, goldsmith, niello-worker, enameler, sculptor and founder. He, at the same time, proved himself an engineer and armorer, a machinist, a builder of fortifications, loading, manoeuvring and aiming can non better than those of the profession. At the siege of Rome by the Constable Bourbon he makes great havoc with his bombs in the besieging army. A capital shot with the arquebus, he kills the Con stable with his own hand; he manufactures his own 10 110 THE PHILOSOPHY OF gun and powder and hits a bird with a ball at tw* hundred paces. His genius was so inventive that he discovered special processes in all arts and in all industries, the secret of which he kept and which excited " the admiration of the whole world." This is the age of great discovery; all is spontaneous in it; nothing is done through routine, while such is the fertility of minds they cannot touch anything without rendering it fecund. When man's nature is so vigorous, so richly en dowed, so productive, when the faculties play with such buoyancy and precision, when activity is so con stant and so striking, the tone of the soul is ordinarily an excess of joyousness, an unbounded gaiety and animation. We find Cellini, for instance, after his tragic and terrible experiences, setting out on a journey, and all along the road, he says, " I did nothing but sing and laugh." This prompt recovery of spirits is frequent in Italy, and especially in this age when minds are still simple. "My sister Liberata," he says, "after having for a while la mented her father, her sister, her husband and a little son she had lost, began to prepare supper; amij ART IN ITALY. HI during the rest of the evening there was not a word more spoken of the dead, but the conversation turned upon all of the most joyous and gay topics that could be thought of; thus we supped together in the greatest cheerfulness imaginable." The assaults, the attacks on shops, the dangers of poison and assassination amidst which he lived at Rome are intermingled constantly with suppers, masquerades, humorous devices and love scrapes so frank, so free of any delicacy or concealment that they resemble the great Venetian and Floren tine nudities in contemporary pictures. You can read of them in the text. Incidents of this kind are too broad to be exposed in public; but they are only broad; they are not made worse by low humor or refinements of obscenity; man becomes jolly and free in his pleasures as water follows a slope; healthiness of soul and senses, intact and youthful, the fire of animal exuberance, bursts out in voluptu ousness as in works and actions. A moral and physical organism of this stamp naturally evolves the lively imagination which 1 nave but just now described to you. A man thui 112 THE PHILOSOPHY OF fashioned does not perceive objects fragmentarilj and through words, as we do, but in mass and by means of images. His ideas are not sundered, classed, and cast in abstract formulas like ours; they leap forth, entire, colored, and alive. While we re flect, he sees. Hence he is often visionary. These full heads, peopled with picturesque images, are al ways boiling and tempestuous. Benvenuto has in fantile faith; he is as superstitious as the most ignor ant peasant. A certain Pierino, who vilified him and his family, exclaimed in a fit of anger, " If I do not speak truly may my house fall down on my head I " A little while after his house, in fact, did fall and he had a leg broken. Benvenuto does not fail to con sider this event as an act of Providence who wished to punish Pierino for lying. He narrates very se riously that, being at Rome, he became acquainted with a magician who, having conducted him one night to the Colosseum, cast a certain powder on burning coals, uttering, at the same time, some mag ical words; immediately the entire enclosure ap peared filled with devils. He evidently had aD hallucination that day. While in prison his head AR1 IN ITALY. 113 ferments; if he does not succumb to his wounds and the fetid atmosphere it is owing to his mind being occupied with God. He has long conversations with his guardian angel; he hopes to see the sun again either in a dream or actually, and one day he finds himself transported to the presence of a mag nificent sun from which Christ issues, and afterwards the Virgin, who make signs of mercy to him, and he beholds the heavens with the entire court of God. Imaginings of this kind are frequent in Italy. Af ter a life of debauchery and violence, even at the height of his vices, man suddenly becomes changed. The Duke of Ferrara " having been attacked with a grave malady which stopped his secretions for over forty-eight hours had recourse to God and ordered all back salaries to be paid." Hercules d'Este, on leaving an orgie, went to sing divine service with his company of French musicians; he either put out an eye or cut off the hand of two hundred and eighty prisoners before selling them, and on Holy Thursday he is found washing the feet of the poor. Pope Alexander, likewise, on learning the assassina tion of his son, beat his breast and confessed his 114 THm PHILOSOPHY OF crimes to the assembled cardinals. The imagina tion, instead of working on the side of pleasure., works on the side of fear, and, through a similai operation, their intellect receives religious images as vividly as the sensuous images which assailed them before. From this fury and feverishness of the intellect, from this interior trepidation by which absorbing and blinding images shake the whole soul and the whole corporeal machinery, is born a species of action peculiar to the men of this time. This action is impetuous and irresistible, aiming directly and suddenly at what is most extreme, at conflict, at murder, at bloodshed. There is in the life of Benvenuto hundreds of examples of these tempests and thunder gusts. He gets into a dispute with two rival goldsmiths who begin to disparage him: " I being a stranger to fear,* little regarded their menaces. . . . Whilst I spoke thus, one Gherardo Guasconti, a cousin of theirs who was in all proba bility set on by them, took the opportunity as a * EngUsh translation of the Life of Benvenuto Cellini by Thomas Nugent. ART IN ITALY. lift beast loaded with bricks happened to pass by to push it so violently against me that I was very much hurt; upon which I instantly turned about, and see ing him laugh, gave him so violent a blow on the temple, that he fell down and lay upon the ground motionless and insensible: then, turning to his cousins, I said to them, 'That is the way I use cowardly rascals like you! ' And as they, confiding in their number, seemed preparing to take their revenge, I, in a violent passion, drew a little knife, and vented my anger in these words: 'If any one of you offer to quit the shop, let another run for a con fessor, as there will be no occasion for a physician.' This declaration struck such terror into them all, that not one of them ventured to stir to the assist ance of his cousin." Upon this he is summoned before the tribunal of the Eight, a body of magis trates administering justice in Florence, and he is condemned to a penalty of four measures of meal. "Inflamed by this treatment and being naturally of a very passionate temper I waited till the court was broken up and the magistrates gone to dinner- finding myself then alone, and that I was no longe» 116 THE PHILOSOPHY OF observed by any of the officers of the court, I left the place in a violent fury, and went in all haste to my workshop, where I took up a dagger, and ran tc attack my adversaries. I found them at table, and young Gherardo, who had been the chief cause of the quarrel, immediately flew at me. I thereupon gave him a stab in the breast, which pierced through his cloak and doublet, without once reaching his skin, or doing him any sort of harm; imagining, however, from the rustling of his clothes upon my giving the stab, and from his falling flat on the ground through fright and astonishment, that I had done him some great hurt, I cried out, 'Traitors, this is the day that I shall be revenged upon you all.' The father, mother, and sisters thinking that the day of judg ment was come, fell prostrate on their knees, and, with voices full of terror and consternation, implored my protection. Seeing then that none of my adver saries stood upon the defensive, and that Gherardo lay stretched out upon the ground like a corpse, I scorned to meddle with them, but ran down stairs like a madman. When I got into the street I found the rest of the family who were above a dozen in ART IN ITALY. U, number, ready to attack me; one of them held a ball of iron, another a thick iron tube, others a hammer taken from an anvil, and others, again, had cudgels in their hands. Rushing amongst them like a mad bull I threw down four or five, and fell to the ground along with them, now aiming my dagger at one and now at another." Always, with him, the action and the blow follow the thought instantly, as the explosion follows the flash. The too powerful inward excitement prevents any reflection, fear, or sentiment of justice; any of that interference of calculation and reasoning which, in a civilized brain, or in a phlegmatic temperament, puts an interval, like some soft fender, between the first impulse of rage and the final resolution. In an inn, the uneasy host, and who, doubtless, had reason for being so, wanted to be paid in advance before supplying him with some necessary things: " I never closed my eyes the whole night, my mind being en tirely occupied with thinking of a way of avenging myself. I thought first, that I would set fire to the house, and then slay the good horses which the inn keeper had in his stable. All this seemed to me 118 THE PHILOSOPHY OF easy to carry out, but I did not see that it was equally easy for my companion and myself to es cape." He contents himself with cutting and hack ing four of the beds with a knife. Another day being at Florence, preparing to cast his Perseus, ha is attacked with a fever: the excessive heat and the length of his watches in superintending the casting, had so exhausted him that they thought his last hour had come. One of his men runs in and cries out that the casting had failed. " I uttered a yell so terrible that it might have been heard in the seventh heaven. I jumped out of bed, took my clothes and began to dress myself, giving either kicks or cuffs to the maid-servants or the boys who came to help me on with them." Another time he was sick and the physician had forbidden any one to give Mm anything to drink; the servant, taking pity on him, gave him some water. " They told me afterwards that, on learning this, my poor Felice was almost ready to drop down dead;" he took a stick and cudgeled the girl, upbraiding her bitterly for her treacherous conduct and declaring that she had been tho, cat se of his d^/ath. Servants were a« ART IN ITALY. 119 ready to strike as their masters, and not only with clubs, but with swords. Benvenuto being in prison in the castle of St. Angelo, his pupil, Ascanio, meet ing a certain Michelle, who made fun of him, was told by him that Benvenuto was undoubtedly dead. " ' He is alive,' retorted Ascanio, 'but you shall die,' and thereupon he gave him two blows with his sabre on his head. The first one stretched him on the ground while the other, glancing off, cut off three of the fingers of his right hand." There are an infi nite number of similar occurrences. Benvenuto wounds or kills his pupil Luigi, the courtesan Pen- thesilea, his enemy Pompeo, innkeepers, seigniors, brigands, in France, in Italy, everywhere. Let us take one of these stories and carefully consider the petty details of the narrative which portrays these sentiments. The death of Bertino Aldobrandi, a pupil of Ben- venuto's brother, and which had just taken place, if reported to him : " At this my brother set up a loud howl, which might be heard ten miles off, and said to Giovanni : ' Alas, unhappy wretch that I am, can you tell mo 120 THE PHILOSOPHY OF which of them it was that killed him?' Giovanni made answer that it was one of those who wore a large two-handed sword, with a blue feather a his hat. My poor brother having come forward and knowing the person by the mark he had been told of, fell upon the murderer with great agility and bravery, and in spite of all resistance ran his sword through his body, pushing him with the hilt of it to the ground. He then assailed the rest with such intrepidity that he alone, and unassisted, would have put all the guards to flight, had it not been that, unluckily turning about to discharge his fury upon a musketeer, the latter, finding himself obliged to fire in his own defense, hit the valiant but unfortunate youth just above the knee of the right leg which brought him to the ground; where upon the guards made haste to retreat, lest some other such formidable champion should fly to his assistance." The poor young fellow is carried to Cellini's house; the treatment not being successful, the sur geons of that epoch not being skillful, he dies of the wound. Cellini hereupon becomes enrage*? and his brain swims with ideas: ART IN ITALY. 121 "My sole distraction was to watch the musketeer who had killed my brother, as a man eyes a mis tress. . . . Perceiving that my solicitude and anx ious desire of revenge deprived me of both sleep and appetite I prepared to put an end to my tor ment, without giving any heed to what was not laudable in such an undertaking. ... I, with great address, came close up to him with a long dagger, similar to a hunting knife. I hoped to fell him with a blow behind his head but he turned round so suddenly the blow only fell on his right shoulder, fracturing the bone. He got up, dropped his sword and, writhing with the pain, he took to his heels. I followed him and in four paces I came up with him, when raising my dagger above his head, which he bent down low, I struck him between the collar bone and the back of his neck, so deeply that, in spite of every effort, I could not withdraw the blade." Complaint, accordingly, is made to the Pope. But, before going to the pa*ace, he takes care to execute several exquisite pieces of goldsmith's work. " When I came into the presence of the pontiff, he 11 1 2 2 THE PHIL 0 SOPHY OF frowned on me very much which caused me to tremble; but as soon as he saw my work his eoun tenance began to clear up." Another time, and after a much less excusable murder, the Pope re plies to the friends of the man killed by Cellini: " You must know that men who are unique in their art, like Cellini, must not be subjected to the law, and he less than any other for I know how right he is." This shows you to what extent the practice of murder had then taken root in Italy. The sover eign of the state, the vicar of God, finds it natural to do one's self justice, protecting the murderer through his indifference or his indulgence, through his partiality or his forgiveness. Out of this condition of mind and of manners originate innumerable consequences affecting art. In the first place the men of this period are obliged to be interested in one thing with which we are nc longer familiar, because we no longer have it before us and pay no attention to it, and that is the body, the muscles and the different attitudes which the human figure in action presents to us. At this epoch a man, no matter what his rank might be, is ART IN ITALY. 123 expected to be a man of arms, to be skilled in the use of the sword and dagger in his own defense; consequently, and without being aware of it, he charges his memory with every form and attitude of the active or militant body. Count Balthazar de Castiglione, in describing a polished society, enumerates the exercises in which a man who is well brought up should be expert. You will see that gentlemen of those days have the education and, consequently, the ideas, not only of a master of arms, but again of a bull-fighter, of a gymnast, of a horseman, of a knight-errant. " I require," says Castiglione, " that our courtier be a complete horseman, and, as it is a special merit of Italians to govern the horse with the bridle, to manoeuvre it systematically, especially horses difficult of control, to run with lances, and to joust, let him in these matters be an Italian among the best. In tourneys and passages at arms, and in races within barriers, let him be one of the good among the best of the French. ... In cudgeling, bull-fighting, casting darts and lances let him excel among the Spaniards. ... It is well, again, that he should 124 THE PHILOSOPHY OF , know how to run and to jump. Another nobis exercise is tennis, and I esteem it no slight merit to know how to leap a horse." These are not simple maxims confined to conver sation or to books; they were put in practice; the habits of men of the highest rank were in con formity with them. Julian de Medici, who was assassinated by the Pazzi, is lauded by his biog rapher, not only for his talent in poetry and his tact as a connoisseur, but again for his skill in managing the horse, in wrestling, and in throwing the lance. Caesar Borgia, that great assassin and able politician, possessed hands as vigorous as his intellect and his will. His portrait shows us the man of fashion, and his history the diplomatist; but his private life also shows us the matadore as we see it in Spain from whence his family came. "He is twenty-seven years old," says a contempo rary; "he has a very handsome figure and the Pope, his father, is much afraid of him. He has slain six wild bulls, fighting them on horseback with a pike, and he split the head of one of these bulls at a single blow." ART IN ITALY. 123 Consider men thus educated, with experience in and taste for all corporeal exercises; they are fully qualified to comprehend the representation of the body, that is to say, painting and sculpture; a rear ing horse, the curvature of a thigh, an uplifted arm, the projection of a muscle, every function and every form of the human body arouse in their minds inward and pre-existing images. They can be in terested in its members, and become connoisseurs through instinct, without any self-distrust. In the next place, the absence of justice and of a police, an aggressive life, and the constant presence of extreme danger fill the soul with energetic, sim ple and grand passions. It is accordingly ready to appreciate energy, simplicity and grandeur in attitudes and in figures; for the source of taste is sympathy, and in order that an expressive object should please us its expression must be in conform ity with our moral condition. In the last place, and for the same reasons, we have a deeper sensibility; for it is forced back within us by the terrible pressure of the various trials which encircle a human life. The more a 126 THE PHILOSOPHY OF man has suffered, dreaded or grieved, the more delighted he is to expand. The more his soul has been beset with painful anxieties or with dark thoughts, the greater his pleasure in the presence of harmonious and noble beauty. The more he has strained or bridled himself either for action or for dissimulation, the more he enjoys when he is able to give vent to and unbend himself. A calm, bloom ing Madonna in his alcove, the shape of a valiant youth over his dresser, occupies his eye the more agreeably after tragic preoccupations and funereal reveries. Pleasant, earnest, complex conversation, incessantly renewed and varied, does not exist there for his relief; in the silence in which he shuts him self up he discourses inwardly with forms and colors; while the usual solemnity of his life, the multitude of his perils and the obstacles in the way of his expansiveness only contribute to intensifying and refining the impressions which he derives from the arts. Let us try to bring together these diverse traits of character and consider, on the one hand, a man of our time, rich and well educated, and on the ART IN ITALY. 127 other, a grand seignior of the year fifteen hundred; both selected from the class in which ycu look for judges. Our contemporary gets up at eight o'clock in the morning, puts on his dressing-gown, takes his chocolate, goes into his library, overlooks some piles of papers if he is a business man, or turns over the leaves of some fresh publications if he is a man of society; after this, with his mind filled and at ease, having taken a few turns on a soft carpet and breakfasted in a handsome room warmed with a heater, he goes out to promenade on the boulevard, smoke his cigar and visit a club to read the news papers, and talk about literature, stock quotations, politics or railroad improvements. When he goes home, if on foot, an hour after midnight, he knows that the streets are lined with policemen and that no accident can well happen to him. His spirit ls perfectly calm and he goes to bed thinking that to-morrow he will do the same thing over again. Such is life to-day. What has this man seen in the way of the body ? He has perhaps entered a cold bath-house and contemplated the grotesque pool in which every human deformity is plashing about; 128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF -perhaps, if he is curious, he has looked two or three times in his life at the market athletes; and the most decided thing in the way of the nude that he has seen, is the common pink fleshings of the opera house. What experience has he been sub jected to in the matter of strong passions? Per haps to some cases of wounded vanity or to some uneasiness about investments; he has made a poor speculation at the stock exchange or he has not secured a place he hoped to get; his friends have reported in society that he was dull; his wife spends too much money or his son has committed impru dences. But the great passions which put his own life and the life of his kindred in peril, which may bring his head to the block or in a slipping-noose, which may precipitate him into a dungeon, lead him to torture or to execution, he knows nothing of. He is too tranquil, too well protected, too much parceled out into little delicate and pleasing sen sations; except the rare chance of a duel, with its ceremonial and polite accompaniments, he is ig norant of the inner state of a man who is about to kill or be killed. Consider, on the contrary, one ART IN ITALY. 129 of those grand seigniors of whom I have just spoken. Oliveretto del Fermo, Alfonso d'Este, Coesar Borgia, Lorenzo de Medici, and their gentle men, all those who are at the head of affairs. The first concern in the morning for a Renaissance noble or cavalier is to strip naked with his fencing master a dagger in one hand and a sword in the other Thus do we see him represented in engravings. What is his life devoted to and what is his prin cipal pleasure ? It consists of cavalcades, masquer ades, entries into cities, mythological pageants, tourneys, receptions of sovereigns, in which he figures on horseback magnificently dressed, display ing his laces, velvet doublets and gold embroid ery, proud of his imposing aspect and of the vig orous attitude by which, along with his companions, he enhances the dignity of his sovereign. On leav ing his house for the day he generally has on a full suit of armor under his doublet; he is obliged to guard against the dagger strokes and sword thrusts which may possibly greet him at the comer of the street. Even in his own palace he is not at ease; the vast stone recesses, the windows barred with 180 THE PHILOSOPHY OF thick iron, the military solidity of the entire struct ure indicate a dwelling which, like a cuirass, has got to defend its master against sudden surprises. Such a man, when he is well locked up at home and sees before him the fine form of a courtesan or of a Virgin, of a Hercules, of the Eternal grandly draped or with vigorous development of muscle, is more capable than a modern of comprehending their beauty and physical perfection. He will appreciate, without being educated in a studio, through invol untary sympathy, the heroic nudities and terrible muscularities of Michael Angelo, the health, the placidity, the pure expression of a Madonna by Raphael, the natural and hardy vitality of a bronze by Donatello, the twining, strangely seductive atti tude of a figure by da Vinci, the superb animal voluptuousness, the impetuous movement, the ath letic force and joyousness of the figures of Gior- gione and Titian. VL A picttjeesque state of mind, that is to say, mid ^ way between pure ideas and pure images, energetic characters and passionate habits suited to giving a knowledge of and taste for beautiful physical forms, constitute the temporary circumstances which, added to the innate aptitudes of the race, produced, in Italy, the great and perfect painting of the hu man form. / We have, now, only to descend into the streets, or to enter the studios, and we shall see it giving itself birth. It is not, as with us, a school production, an occupation of the critics, a pastime for the curious, an amateur's mania, an artificial plant cultivated at great cost, withering in spite of the compost heaped about it, foreign to the soil and painfully supported in an atmosphere made for maintaining the sciences, literatures, manufactures, policemen and dress-coats; it forms a portion of a 132 THE PHILOSOPHY OF whole; the cities which cover their town halls and their churches with painted figures, gather around it countless tableaux vivants more transient but more imposing; it is only a summary of these. The men of this day are amateurs of painting, not for an hour, for a single moment in their life, but throughout their life, in their religious ceremonies, in their national festivities, in their public receptions, in their avocations and in their amusements. Let us view them at work. We are only embar rassed in our selection. Corporations, cities, princes, prelates, put their pride and pleasure in picturesque parades and cavalcades. I select one instance among twenty. Judge for yourselves of the aspect of streets and public grounds filled with similar spec tacles many times a year: "Lorenzo de Medici was desirous that the Bron- coni fraternity, of which he was the chief, should surpass in magnificence that of the Diamond. He had recourse to Jacopo Nardi, a noble and learned Florentine gentleman, who constructed six cars for him." "The first car, drawn by two oxen sovered with ART IN ITALY. 133 leaves, represented the age of Saturn and Janus. Saturn was placed on the top of the car with his scythe, with Janus holding the keys cf the Temple of Peace. Beneath the feet of these divinities Pon- tormo had painted Rage in chains and other subjects relating to Saturn. Accompanying the car were twelve shepherds clad in marten and ermine skins, with antique sandals on their feet, bearing baskets and crowned with garlands of leaves. The horses on which these shepherds were mounted had for saddles the skins of lions, tigers and lynxes whose claws were gilded; the cruppers were of golden cords; the spurs were shaped in the form of the heads of rams, dogs and other animals; the bridles consisted of tresses of silver and of leaves. Each shepherd was followed by four boys, less richly dressed, holding torches re sembling branches of pine." "Four oxen, covered with rich stuffs, drew the second car. From their gilded homs hung garlands of flowers and chaplets. On the car were placed Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, sur rounded by books of religion, all of the sacerdotal ornaments and the instruments necessary for sacri- 134 THE PHILOSOPHY OF fices. After this came six priests mounted on mag nificent mules. Veils decked with ivy leaves em broidered with gold covered their heads. Their robes, imitated from the antique, were fringed with gold. Some of them held a casket filled with per fumes; others a golden vase or some other object of that sort. Alongside of them marched subaltern ministers bearing antique candelabra." "On the third car, drawn by horses of great beauty, and decorated with paintings by Pontormo, was T. Manlius Torquatus, who was consul after the first Carthaginian war and whose wise rule rendered Rome flourishing. This car was preceded by twelve senators mounted on horses covered with housings of gold and accompanied with a crowd of lictors bearing the fasces, and other insignia of justice." "Four buffaloes, disguised as elephants, pulled the fourth car, occupied by Julius Caesar. Pontormo had painted the car with the most famous actions of the conqueror, who was followed by twelve cav aliers whose brilliant arms were enriched with gold. Each of them had a lance supported against his ART IN ITALY. 135 thigh. Their squires bore torches figuring tro phies." "On the fifth car, drawn by winged horses, in the shape of griffins, was Caesar Augustus. Twelve poets on horseback, crowned with laurels, accompa nied the Emperor, whom their works had helped to immortalize. Each of these wore a scarf on which his name was inscribed." "On the sixth car, painted by Pontormo, and attached to eight heifers richly caparisoned, was seated the Emperor Trajan. He was preceded by twelve doctors or jurisconsults on horseback and clothed in long togas. Scribes, copyists, and re corders bore in one hand a torch, and in the other, books." "Succeeding these six cars came the car, or tri- amph, of the golden age, painted by Pontormo and jrnamented by Baccio Bandinelli with numerous figures in relief and, among others, the four car dinal virtues. In the middle of this car was an immense golden globe on which was stretched a corpse covered with rusty iron armor. From the flank of this corpse issued an infant, naked and 136 THE PHILOSOPHY OF gilded, to represent the resurrection of the age o! gold and the end of the age of iron for which the world was indebted to the exaltation of Leo X to the popedom. The dry branch of laurel, whose leaves were growing green, expressed the same idea, although many persons pretended that it was an allusion to Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino. I must add that the child which had been gilded died in a short time from the effects of the opera tion which it had undergone to gain ten crowns." The death of the child is the afterpiece, at once humorous and mournful, succeeding the main piece. Dry as this enumeration may be it serves to show you the picturesque tastes of the time. They were not merely pecuUar to the rich and noble, for the people possessed them likewise. Lorenzo gave his f&tes to maintain his ascendency over the people. There were others which were called carnival Chants or Triumphs. Lorenzo had enlarged and varied these; he took part in them himself; he sometimes. sang his own verses and appeared in the first rank in the sumptuous ceremony. Bear in mind, gentle men, that Lorenzo de Medici was at this epoch the ART IN ITALY. 137 principal banker, the most liberal patron of the fine arts, the leading manufacturer of the city and, at the same time, the chief magistrate. He combined in his person the qualities which, at the present day, are distributed among the Duke de Luynes, Roths child, the Prefect of the Seine, the Presidents re spectively of the Academy of the Fine Arts, the Academy of Inscriptions, the Academy of Political and Moral Sciences and the French Academy. Such was the man who, without dreaming of com promising his dignity, paraded through the streets at the head of masquerades. The taste of the time was so decided and so earnest in this direction that this zeal, far from rendering him ridiculous, was an honor to him. Towards nightfall three hundred cavaliers and three hundred men on foot issued from his palace with torches and paraded the streets of Florence until three or four o'clock in the morn ing. Amongst them were musical choruses of ten, twelve and fifteen voices; the little poems sung in these masquerades have been printed and form two large volumes. I shall quote but one of them, "Bacchus and Ariadne," which was composed by 138 THE PHILOSOPHY OF him. He is completely pagan in the sentiment of beauty and in morality. Antique paganism in fact, with its arts and intellect, then flourished a second time. " How beautiful is youth ! and yet how fleeting Let him be happy who would be for there is nc certainty of the morrow." "Behold Bacchus and Ariadne, beautiful, and mutually enamored ! While time flies and betrays us, they live happy together always." " These nymphs and their companions, enjoy the passing hour. Let him be happy who would be for there is no certainty of the morrow ! " " These sportive satyrs, enamored of the nymphs, hide and lay in wait for them through the forests and in the caves; and meanwhile, fired by Bacchus, they leap and dance. Let him be happy who would be for there is no certainty of the morrow ! " " Amorous swains and damsels, all hail to Cupid and Bacchus ! Let each tune his pipe and dance and sing ! Let your hearts glow with love's sweet warmth ! Banish all pain and sorrow ! Let him be happy who would be for there is no certainty of the morrow." ART IN ITALY. 139 "How beautiful is youth, and yet how fleeting ! " Besides this chorus there were many others, some sung by the gold-spinners and others by mendicants, girls, hermits, shoemakers, oil-manufacturers, and waffle-makers. All the corporations of the city took part in the festival. The spectacle would ap pear about the same to-day if, for several days in succession, the companies of the Opera, Opera Comique, the Chatelet and the Cirque Olympique, should parade our streets, but with this difference, that, in Florence, the crowd would not be com posed of supernumeraries, so many poor fellows paid to don a costume that did not suit them. This festival was given by the city to itself and it was the city which appeared and drilled itself in these performances, happy in self -admiration and self-contemplation like a beautiful girl offering her self to view in all the magnificence of her charms. Nothing is more efficacious in giving an impulse to human faculties than such a common enjoyment of ideas, sentiments and tastes. It has been re marked that two conditions are essential for the production of great works; the first one is the vivao- 140 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ity of a spontaneous sentiment, personal and char acteristic, expressed according as the feeling arises, without fear of any restraint or subject to any di rection; the second is the presence of sympathetic souls, the outward and steady support of kindred ideas, through which the vague ideas we carry about with us are gestated, nourished, perfected, multi plied and strengthened. This truth is patent every where, in religious foundations as in military under takings, in literary works as in social amusements. The soul is Uke a glowing firebrand ; in order to be ef fective, it must first burn with its own fire, and next through the flames of the firebrands which surround it. Mutual contact keeps them alive, while their augmented heat spreads the conflagration on all sides. Consider those brave little Protestant sects who, abandoning England, left it to found the United States of America; they were composed of men who dared to beUeve, to feel, to think pro foundly, in an original and impassioned manner, each through a vigorous and peculiar conviction, and who, when once united, penetrated with the same sentiments and sustained by the same enthn- ART IN ITALY. 141 siasm, became capable of colonizing will territory and of founding civilized governments. And so is it even in armies. When, at the end of the last century, the French armies, so badly organ ized, so ir experienced in the art of war, in the hands of officers almost as ignorant as the soldiers, met the drilled battaUons of Europe, that which sus tained them, that which impeUed them on, that which finally brought them victory, was that spirit and force of inward belief through which each soldier considered himself superior to those he had to contend with and destined to carry truth, reason and justice against all obstacles to the heart of all nations; it was also that generous fraternity, that mutual trust, that community of sympathies and aspirations by which all, the first as well as the last, the common soldier as well as the captain and the general, felt himself devoted to the same cause; each serving as volunteer, each grasping the situa tion, the danger and the necessities, each ready to aorrect mistakes, all forming but one soul and but one will, and surpassing, through native inspiration as through unconscious agreement, that mechanical 142 THE PHILOSOPHY OF perfection which tradition, parades, canings and the Prussian hierarchy had fabricated on the far bank of the Rhine. Things are not otherwise when art and pleasure are in question than when it is a question of interest and of business. People of intelligence are never more intelligent than when they are all combined together. To have works of art it is necessary first to have artists, but also studios. There were stu dios in those days and, moreover, artists formed corporate bodies. All were united, and in the large community smaller communities existed with their members closely and voluntarily bound together. FamiUarity brought them together and rivalry stimulated them. The studio of that time was a workshop and not, as nowadays, an ostentations saloon to provoke commissions. The pupils are apprentices sharing in the life and fame of the masters, and not amateurs who consider themselves free when they have paid for their lesson. A child at school learned to read and to write, also a Uttle spelling; when he got to be twelve or thirteen years of age he at once entered the painter's, goldsmith's, ART IN ITALY 148 architect's or sculptor's household; the master usually combined all these pursuits, and the young man, accordingly, studied under him not merely a fragment of art but art entire. He worked for him, he did easy things — the backgrounds of pictures, small ornamental accessories and figures; he shared in the success of the masterpiece and was interested in it the same as in his own work: he was called the master's creature.* He ate at his table, ran on errands for him, slept above him in a garret, and endured the cuffs and scoldings of his wife.f " I remained," says Raf aello di Montelupo, " from twelve to fourteen years of age, which makes two years, with Michael Agnolo Bandinelli, and the greater portion of the time I blew the bellows for the work which the master did; sometimes I made drawings for him. One day it happened that the master set me to annealing, that is to say, reheating certain bosses of gold which were being made for Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino. He was ham mering them on the anvil, and whilst he was ham- • II create f For instance those of Lucretia, Andrea del Sarto's wife. 144 THE PHILOSOPHY OF niering one I was heating the other. Stopping a moment to whisper to one of his friends, and not having noticed that I had substituted the hot one for the cold one, he took hold of it and burnt the two fingers with which he grasped it. Upon which, yelUng and capering about the shop, he tried to thrash me, while I, getting out of his way here and there, managed it so as not to be caught. But when the time came to eat, as I was passing near the door where the master stood, he seized me by the hair and gave me several good cuffings." Such are the ways of associate locksmiths or masons, rude, frank, gay, and friendly; the pupils travel with the master, boxing and fencing along side of him along the highway. They protect him from assaults and insults. You are aware of how the followers of Raphael and Cellini drew the Bword or the dagger for the honor of their houses. The masters amongst each other are equaUy familiar and keep up the same beneficial intimacy. One of their associations at Florence was called the Brotherhood or Society of the Paiuolo,* ar.d * A caldron »r pot for boiling meat ART IN ITALY U", was limited to twelve members; the principal ones consisted of Andrea del Sarto, Gian Francesco Rus tici, Aristote da San Gallo, Domenico Puligo, H ran- cesco di Pellegrino, the engraver Robetta and the musician Domenico Bacelli. Each of them had the privilege of introducing three or four persons. Each brought a dish of his own invention, and who ever coincided with another paid a forfeit. Observe the vigor and vitality of these spirits, one stimu lating the other, and how the arts of design found place even at a supper. One evening Gian Fran cesco selects an enormous cistern for a table and places his guests within it; then, from the centre of the cistern issues a tree whose branches present a dish to each one, while, underneath, are musicians playing a concert. One of the viands served up consists of a huge pie, into which is seen •" Ulysses plunging his father for the purpose of making him young again,"* the two figures (of Ulysses and Laertes) being represented by two boiled capons made into the forms of men and garnished with all * Vasari, who gives this account of the supper, is not very accurate in mythology, taking Ulysses for CEson, father of Jason. 13 146 THE PHILOSOPHY OF sorts of things good to eat. "Andrea del Savlo presented on the same occasion* a temple of eight sides, resembling the Baptistery of San Giovanni in form, but raised upon columns. The pavement of this temple was an enormous dish of jelly, divided into compartments of various colors to represent mosaic; the columns which appeared to be of por phyry, were very large and thick sausages, the capitals of the columns being made of Parmesan cheese, and the cornices of sugar work, while the pulpit was formed out of sections of marchpane, f In the centre of the temple was a singing-desk made of cold veal; the (music) book was formed of vermi celli, the letters and musical notes being made of pepper-corns; the singers standing before the desk were roasted thrushes and other small birds placed upright with their beaks wide open, as in the act of chanting; they wore a sort of shirt resembling the tunic of the choristers, an d this was made of a kind of network, contrived in the thinnest parts of a * This description, more extended than the author's, is copie 1 from Vasari's "Lives of the Painters," Bonn's edition. — Tr. t Cake something Uke German gingerbread. — Tr. AHT IN ITALY. 147 caul of hog's lard ; behind them stood two very fat pigeons as contra-bassi, with six ortolans, which represented the soprani, or trebles. . . . Domenico Puligo brought a roasted pig but so treated as to represent a scullery maid watching a brood of chickens. . . . Spillo, the figure of a tinker made from a great goose." You can almost hear the shouts of laughter proceeding from this comic and fantastic humor. Another society, that of the Trowel, gives masquer ades in addition to suppers. The company amuse themselves with representing at one time Proserpine and Pluto, at another time, the amours of Venus and Mars, at other times, the Mandragore of Machiavelli, the Suppositi of Ariosto, the Calandra of Cardinal Bibiena. On another occasion, as the Trowel is their emblem, the president orders the members to appear in mason's attire with all the tools of the craft, and to construct an edifice out of meat, bread, cakes and sugar. An excess of imagi nation thus finds vent in these picturesque junket ings. Man here seems like a child, so youthful are his spirits; he everywhere introduces the corporeal 148 THE PHILOSOPHY OF forms he loves; he resolves himself into an acto: and mimic, and plays with the art wish which he is overflowing. Above these superficial societies there were others of wider scope which combmed all artists together in a single effort. You have just observed in these sup pers their gaiety, expansiveness and good fellowship, a burlesque simplicity and good humor which seems like that of ordinary workmen; they likewise pos sessed the municipal patriotism of workmen. They speak with pride of their "glorious Florentine School." According to them there is no other in which one can learn drawing. " There," says Vasari, " come the most ac-complished men in the arts, and especially in painting; since, in this city, there are three things which stimulate them. The first is strict and frequent criticism ; for the atmosphere of the country makes minds free by nature which can not content themselves with simply mediocre works, and which esteem what is good and beautiful rather than the name of the author. The second is the necessity of working for a living, which means that it is important to be original and judicious, discern- ART IN ITALY. 149 ing and prompt in executing work, in short, to know how to earn one's Uving, because the country, being neither rich nor luxuriant, cannot support people, like other countries, with little expense. The thii I, which is of no less importance than the others, is a certain eagerness for fame and honor, which the at mosphere of the country greatly engenders in men of every profession, which makes them rebel against the idea of being the equals, I do not say the inferi ors, of those whom they consider as masters, but on whom they look as men like themselves; an ambi tion and emulation so Uvely which, unless amiable and wise by nature, makes them ungrateful and de famatory." When the honor of the city is at stake, all concur in weU-doing; the competition which leads each to surpass the other, leads them all to do bet ter. When, in 1515, Pope Leo X. came to visit Florence, his native city, all the artists were con voked to receive him magnificently. Twelve tri umphal arches were constructed in the city, deco rated with statues and paintings ; various monuments, obelisks, columns and groups, similar to those in Rome, were erected in the intermediate places. 150 THE PHILOSOPHY 01 "On the Piazzi dei Signori, Antonio da San Gallc erected an octangular temple and Baccio Bandinelli made a colossal figure for the Loggia. Between tho Abbey and the Palace of the Podestat an arch of triumph was constructed by Granaccio and Aristo- tete da San Gallo; and at the corner of the Bischeri another was erected by H Rosso whose work was much admired for the beauty of its order and the variety of the figures wherewith it was decorated. But that which was esteemed the most beautiful of all was the facade erected before the cathedral church of Santa Maria del Fiore; this was of wood, so beautifully decorated by Andrea del Sarto that nothing more admirable could be desired; and as the architecture of this work was by Jacopo Sanso- vino, as were likewise certain historical representa tions in basso-relievo, with numerous figures of sculpture in full relief, it was declared by the Pope to be so fine, that the edifice could not have been more beautiful had it been of marble. The decora tion here described had been invented during his life time by Lorenzo de Medici, the father of Pope Leo X. The same Jacopo also prepared the figure of a ART IN ITALY. 155 Horse, on the Piazza Novella. It was in imitation of that at Rome and was considered exceedingly beautiful. An immense variety of ornaments wan Ukewise added to the Hall of the Pope in the Via della Scala, and the full half of that street was also decorated with very beautiful stones by the hands of many artists, but the greater part of them de signed by Baccio Bandinelli." * You see that the sheaf of talents is complete, and to what height it attains through association. The city labors to beautify itself ; now it is given up entire to a carnival or to the reception of a prince ; to-morrow, and throughout the year, it will be its different wards, its corporations, brotherhoods or convents, each little group, " richer in feeling than in money," carried away by its zeal, at once super stitious and popular, priding itself in handsomely decorating its chapel or monastery, its portico and its pubUc meeting-place, its costumes and tourna ment banners, its cars and its insignia for the f&te of St. John. Never was mutual excitement so pow- * See Life of Andrea del Sarto in Vasari's works for the par ticulars of these commissions. 152 THE PHILOSOPHY OF erful or so universal; never was the temperature requisite for the growth of the arts of design so favorable; never has a similar moment and similai surroundings been seen. The conjunction of cir cumstances is unique; a race endowed with a rhyth mic and figurative imagination attains to modern culture while preserving feudal customs, harmonizes energetic instincts with refined ideas, uses outward forms in the process of thinking, and, its genius pushed to extreme by the spontaneous, sympathetic, contagious inspiration of the small free groups which compose it, discovers the ideal model whose bodily perfection can alone express the noble pagan ism which it, for a moment, revives. All art which represents the forms of the body depends on this cluster of conditions. The highest order of painting depends on this cluster of conditions. According as one is wanting or undergoes a change so is the other wanting and affected by the change. The former did not arise so long as the latter was incom plete. It began to weaken when the other began to disintegrate. It kept pace with the formation, the greatness, the dismemberment and the ruin of the ART IN ITALY. i„s latter. This order of painting remained symbolic and jiystic up to the end of the fourteenth century, under the control of christian theological ideas. It ¦perpetuated the symboUc and mystic school down to the middle of the fifteenth century,* during the long contest between the christian spirit and the pagan spirit. In the middle of the fifteenth century its most angelic interpreter is found in a holy spirit preserved from paganism by the seclusion of the cloister.f It began to be interested in the real and substantial body during the early years of the fif teenth century, and, foUowing in the footsteps of sculpture, through the discovery of perspective, the study of anatomy, the perfection of modeUng, the appliance of portraiture and the use of oil, when, at the same period, the mitigation of warfare, the pacification of cities, the development of manufact ures, the increase of wealth and comforts, the resto ration of ancient ideas and Uterature brought back * Paro SpineUo and the Bicri still painted in the Giotto mannei in 1444- t Fra Angelico. 154 THE PHILOSOPHY OF to the present life eyes hitherto bent on the future, and substituted for the hope of celestial felicity tho search for terrestrial happiness. It passed over from exact imitation to creative beauty when, at the time of Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Lorenzo de Medici and Francesco della Rovere, superior culture, enlarging the mind and perfecting ideas, prcdnced a national literature alongside of the classic restoration and a finished paganism far be yond the rudely sketched hellenism. It maintained itself at Venice half a century later than elsewhere, in a sort of oasis rescued from the barbarians, in an independent city where toleration was upheld in the face of the Pope, patriotism in the face of the Spaniards and military habits in the face of the Turks. It became enfeebled in the time of Cor- reggio, and chilled under the successors of Michael Angelo when accumulated miseries and invasions had broken the spring of human will; when a lay monarchy, the ecclesiastical inquisition and academ ical pedantry had regulated and reduced the sap of native invention; when habits assumed a decorous air and minds took a sentimental turn; when the painter ART IN ITALY ]5£ who was a simple artisan became a polished cavalier when the shop with its apprentices gave way to an " Academy"; when the bold and free artist, who per formed and sculptured his jests in the suppers of the " Trowel," * became a diplomatic courtier convinced of his own importance, a respecter of etiquette, a de fender of rales, and the vain flatterer of prelates and the great. By this exact and constant correspond ence we see that if high art and its surrounding conditions are contemporary it is not a chance com bination, but the second rough draught, developing, ripening, decaying, and dissolving with itself the first one, athwart the accidents of the great human medley and the unforeseen outbursts of individual originaUty. It leads or carries away art in its wake as a temperature more or less cool forms or sup presses the dew, as a weaker or stronger light nour ishes or blanches the green of a plant. Analogous customs, which were still more perfect of their kind, • "The ffites they gave," says Vasari, "were infinite in num- oer ; but the custom of forming such companies is now aban doned." By way of contrast see the Uves of Guido, the Caracci, Lanfranco. Ludivico Caracci was the first who, instead of Mes- 6er, had himself called the Magnifico. 156 THE PHILOSOPHY OF once produced an analogous and still more perfect art in the small martial cities and in the noble gymnasia of ancient Greece. Analogous customs, but of their kind a little less perfect, produced, in estabUshing itself in Spain, in Flanders and even in France, an analogous art, although altered or per verted by the original dispositions of the races amongst which it is transplanted; and we may come to this conclusion with certamty that, to bring a similar art afresh on the world's stage there must be a lapse of centuries, which wiU first establish here a similar milieu. ART NETHEBLANDS TO GrUSTAVE FLAUBERT SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS Part I. — Permanent Causes. Two groups of people in European civilization — The Italians among the Latins The Flemish and the Dutch among the Germans. — National characteristics of Flemish and Dutch art If. § I. Race. — Contrast between the Latin and Germanic races. — The Body Animal instincts and faculties. — Defects of the Germanic races. — Advantages of the Germanic races. — Aptitudo for labor and free association. — Love of Truth. 169 § II. The Nation Influence ot climate and soil.— Physical character of the Netherlands. — Formation of the positive spirit and calmness of character. — Limitations of the pliil- osophie and Uterary spirit Precocious perfection of the useful arts. — Practical inventions. — Outward Ufe, taste and customs 191 § III. Art. — Inferiority of painting among other Germanic peoples. — Causes of its incompleteness in Germany and England. — Excellence of painting in the Netherlands Causes of its. superiority Its characteristics.— In what respect it is Germanic. — In what respect it is national. — r Predominance of color. — Eeason of this predominance. — Resemblance of the cUmate of Venice to that of the Nether-, lands. — Differences. — Corresponding resemblances and differences between painters. — Rubens and Rembrandt 21? lfi°' SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. Part IL— Historic Epochs. g I. The Primitive Epoch. — Flanders in the fourteenth cen tury. — Energy of character Prosperity of the cities Decline of the ascetic and monastic spirit. — Splendor and sensuaUty. — The Burgundian Court and the Festivities of Lille. — Love of the Picturesque. — Resemblances and dif ferences between Flanders and Italy. — Maintenance of the reUgious and mystic sentiment in Flanders. — Harmony of character, of art and of society. — Exaltation of this Ufe and of Christian belief. —Types, relief, landscape, costumes, subjects, expressions, and sentiment from Hubert Van Eyek to Quintin Matsys 239 § IT. The Second Epoch. — The sixteenth century. — Emanci pation of the inteUect and Polemics against the clergy. — Picturesque and sensual customs. — Entries and festivities of the beUe-lcttre academies. — Gradual transformation of painting Predominance of laic and human subjects. — Promise of the new art. — Italian models .prevalent. — In congruity of Italian art with the Flemish mind.— The ambiguous and unsatisfactory style of the new school. — Growing influence of the Italian masters from John do Mabuse to Otto Venius. — Persistency] of the indigenous [style and spirit in genre, landscape and portrait art. — The Revolution of 1572. — Concentration of the nation and of art 26? §111. The Third Epoch.— Formation of Belgium.— How it became Catholic and was conquered. — Rule of the arch- lukes and restoration of the country. — Revival of the im agination and sensuous conception of life The school of the seventeenth century Rubens. — Analogies and dif ferences between that ajid Italian art. — Its works Catholic in name, but pagan at bottom In what respect national — Idea of the Uving body. — Crayer, Jordaens and Van Dyck.— Change in the political and moral state. — DecUne of painting. — End of the picturesque age 291 SYNOPSIS OF OONTENTS. 103 IV. The Fourth Epoch.— Formation of HoUand How it became republican and Protestant. — Development of Prim itive Instincts. — Heroism, triumphs and prosperity of the nation The revival and freedom of original inven tion. — Characteristics of Dutch art in opposition to ItaUan and classic art Portrait pictures. — Representation of actual life. — Rembrandt His conception of Light, Man and Divinity Commencement of decline towards 1667 The war of 1672. — Prolongation of art down to the eigh teenth century. — Weakness and degeneracy of Holland. — Diminution of active energies. — Decline of national art. — Temporary survival of the lesser styles.— General corres pondence between art and milieu SI? PAET I. PERMANENT CAUSES. THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART IN THE NETHERLANDS. During the last three years I have explained to you the history of painting in Italy ; this year I propose to set before you the history of painting in the Netherlands. Two groups of mankind have been, and still are, the principal factors of modern civilization ; on the one hand, the Latin or Latinized people — the Italians, French, Spanish and Portuguese, and on the other, the Germanic people — the Belgians, Dutch, Germans, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, English, Scotch and Americans. In the Latin group the Italians are unde niably the best artists ; in the Germanic group they are indisputably the Flemings and the Dutch. In studying, accordingly, the history of art along with these two races, we are studying the history of mod ern art with its greatest and most opposite repre sentatives. 168 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART A product so vast and varied, an art enduring nearly four hundred years, an art enumerating so many masterpieces and imprinting on all its works an original and common character, is a national prod uct; it is consequently intimately associated with the national life, and is rooted in the national charac ter itself. It is a flowering long and deeply matured through a development of vitality conformably to the acquired structure and primitive organization of the plant. According to our method we shall first study the innate and preliminary history which explains the outward and final history. I shall first show you the seed, that is to say the race, with its fundamental and indelible qualities, those that persist through all circumstances and in all climates ; and next the plant, that is to say the people itself, with its original qual ities expanded or contracted, in any case grafted on and transformed by its surroundings and its his tory; and finally the flower, that is to say the art, and especially painting, in which this development culminates. IN THE NETHERLANDS. l(iy I. The men who inhabit the Netherlands belong, for the most part, to that race which invaded the Roman empire in the fifth century, and which then, for tho first time, claimed its place in broad sunshine along side of Latin nations. In certain countries, in Gaul, Spain and Italy, it simply brought chiefs and a supplement to the primitive population. In other countries, as in England and the Netherlands, it drove out, destroyed and replaced the ancient inhabitants, its blood, pure, or almost pure, still flowing in the veins of the men now occupying the same soil. Throughout the middle ages the Netherlands were called Low Germany. The Belgic and Dutch lan guages are dialects of the German, and, except in the Walloon district, where a corrupt French is spoken, they form the popular idiom of the whole country. Let us consider the common characteristics of the Germanic race, and the differences by which it is opposed to the Latin race. Physically, we have 170 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART a whiter and softer skin, generally speaking, blue eyes, often of a porcelain or pale hue, paler as you approach the north, and sometimes glassy in Hol land ; hair of a flaxy blonde, and, with children, al most white ; the ancient Romans early wondered at it, and stated that infants in Germany had the hair of old men. The complexion is of a charming rose, infinitely delicate among young girls, and lively and tinged with vermilion among young men, and sometimes even among the aged ; ordinarily, how ever, among the laboring classes and in advanced life I have found it wan, turnip-hued, and in Hol land cheese-colored, and mouldy cheese at that. The body is generally large, but thick-set or burly, heavy and inelegant. In a similar manner the features are apt to be irregular, especially in Hol land, where they are flabby, with projecting cheek bones and strongly-marked jaws. They lack, in short, sculptural nobleness and delicacy. You will rarely find the features regular like the numerous pretty faces of Toulouse and Bordeaux, or like th6 spirited and. handsome heads which abound in the vicinity of Rome and Florence. You will mucb IN THE NETHERLANDS 171 oftener find exaggerated features, incoherent combi nations of form and tones, curious fleshy protuberan ces, so many natural caricatures. Taking them foi works of art, living forms testify to a clumsy and fantaetic hand through their more incorrect and weaker drawing Observe now this body in action, and you will find its animal faculties and necessities of a grossei kind than among the Latins ; matter and mass seem to predominate over motion and spirit ; it is voracious and even carnivorous. Compare the appetite of an Englishman, or even a Hollander, with that of a Frenchman or an Italian ; those among you who have visited the country can call to mind the public dinner tables and the quantities of food, especially meat, tranquilly swallowed several times a day by a citizen of London, Rotterdam or Antwerp. In English novels people are always lunching — the most sentimental heroine, at the end of the third volume, having consumed an infinite number of buttered muf fins, cups of tea, bits of chicken, and sandwiches. The climate contributes to this ; in the fogs of the north, people could not sustain themselves, like a 172 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART peasant of the Latin race, on a bowl of soup or a piece of bread flavored with garlic, or on a plate of macaroni. For the same reason the German is fond of potent beverages. Tacitus had already remarked it, and Ludovico Guiccardini, an eye-witness in the sixteenth century, whom I shall repeatedly quote, says, in speaking of the Belgians and Hollanders : " Almost all are addicted to drunkenness, which vice, with them, is a passion. They fill themselves with liquor every evening, and even at day-break." At the present time, in America and in Europe, in most of the German countries, intemperance is the national bane ; half of the suicides and mental maladies flow from it. Even among the reflective and those in good circumstances the fondness for liquor is very great : in Germany and in England it is not regarded as disreputable for a well-educated man to rise from the table partially intoxicated ; now and then he be comes completely drunk. With us, on the contrary, it is a reproach, in Italy a disgrace, and in Spain, during the last century, the name of drunkard was an insult which a duel could not wholly wipe out, provok ing, as it often did, the dagger. There is nothing of IN THE NETHERLANDS. 172 this sort in German countries ; hence the great num ber and frequency of breweries and the innumerable shops for the retailing of ardent spirits and different kinds of beer, all bearing witness to the public taste. Enter, in Amsterdam, one of these little shops, gar nished with poUshed casks, where glass after glass is swallowed of white, yellow, green and brown brandy, strengthened with pepper and pimento. Place your self at nine o'clock in the evening in a Brussels brewery, near a dark wooden table around which the hawkers of crabs, salted rolls and hard-boiled eggs circulate ; observe the people quietly seated there, each one intent on himself, sometimes in couples, but generally silent, smoking, eating, and drinking bumpers of beer which they now and then warm up with a glass of spirits ; you can understand sympathetically the strong sensation of heat and animal plenitude which they feel in their speechless solitude, in proportion as superabundant solid and liquid nourishment renews in them the living sub stance, and as the whole body partakes in the grati fication of the satisfied stomach. One point more of their exterior remains to be 174 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART shown which especially strikes people of southerr. climes, and that is the sluggishness and torpidity of their impressions and movements. An umbrella- dealer of Amsterdam, a Toulousian, almost threw himself into my arms on hearing me speak French, and for a quarter of an hour I had to listen to the story of his griefs. To a temperament as lively as his, the people of this country were intolerable — " stiff, frigid, with no sensibility or sentiment, dub and insipid, perfect turnips, sir, perfect turnips ! " And, truly, his cackling and expansiveness formed a contrast. It seems, on addressing them, as if they did not quite comprehend you, or that they required time to set their expressional machinery agoing ; the keeper of a gallery, a household servant, stands gaping at you a minute before answering. In coffee houses and in public conveyances the phlegm and passivity of their features are remarkable ; they do not feel as we do the necessity of moving about and talking — they remain stationary for hours, absorbed with their own ideas or with their pipes. At evening parties in Amsterdam, ladies, bedecked like shrines, and motionless on their chairs, seem te IN THE NETHERLANDS. 175 be statues. In Belgium, in Germany and in Eng land, the faces of the peasantry seem to us inani mate, devitalized or benumbed. A friend, return ing from Berlin, remarked to me, " those people all have dead eyes." Even the young girls look simple and drowsy. Many a time have I paused before a shop-window to contemplate some rosy, placid and candid face, a mediaeval madonna making up the fashions. It is the very reverse of this in our land and in Italy, where the grisette's eyes seem to be gossiping with the chairs for lack of something better, and where a thought, the moment it is born, translates itself into gesture. In Germanic lands the channels of sensation and expression seem to be obstructed ; delicacy, impulsiveness, and readiness of action appear impossible ; a southerner has to exclaim at their awkwardness and lack of adroit ness, and this was the deliberate opinion of our French in the wars of the Revolution and the Empire. In this respect the toilette and deportment afford us the best indications, especially if we take the middle and lower classes of society. Compare the grisettes of Rome, Bologna, Paris and Toulouse 176 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART with the huge mechanical dolls to be seen at Hamp ton Court on Sundays, starched and stiff in theii blue scarfs, staring silks and gilded belts, and othei details of a pompous extravagance. I remember at this moment two fetes — one at Amsterdam to which the rich peasant women of Friesland flocked, their heads decked with a fluted cap and a hat like a cab riolet rearing itself convulsively, whilst on the tem ples and brow were two gold plates, a gold pediment and gold corkscrews surrounding a wan and dis torted countenance ; the other at Fribourg, in Bris- gau, where, planted on their solid feet, the village women stood vaguely staring at us and exhibiting themselves in their national costume — so many black, red, purple and green skirts, with stiff folds like those of gothic statues, a swollen corsage front and rear, massive sleeves puffed out like legs of mutton, forms girded close under the armpits, dull, yellow hair twisted into a knot and drawn towards the top of the head, chignons in a net of gold and silver embroidery, and above this a man's hat, like an orange-colored pipe, the heteroclite crown of a body seemingly hewn out with a cleaver, and vaguely IN THE NETHERLANDS. 177 suggesting a painted sign-post. In brief, the human animal of this race is more passive and more gross than the other. One is tempted to regard him as inferior on comparing him with the Italian or south- em Frenchman, so temperate, so quick intellectually, who is naturally apt in expression, in chatting and in pantomine, possessing taste and attaining to elegance, and who, without effort, like the Proven cals of the twelfth, and the Florentines of the four teenth century, become cultivated, civilized and accomplished at the first effort. We must not confine ourselves to this first glance which presents only one phase of things ; there is another associated with it, as light accompanies dark. This finesse, and this precocity, natural to the Latin families, leads to many bad results. It is the source of their craving for agreeable sensa tions ; they are exacting in their comforts ; they demand many and varied pleasures, whether coarse or refined, an entertaining conversation, the ameni ties of politeness, the satisfactions of vanity, the sensualities of love, the delights of novelty and of accident, the harmonious symmetries of form and 178 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART of phrase ; they readily develope into rhetoricians dUettanti, epicureans, voluptuaries, Ubertines, gal lants and worldUngs. It is indeed through these vices that their civilization becomes corrupt or ends , you encounter them in the decline of ancient Greece and Rome, in Provence of the twelfth, in Italy of the sixteenth, in Spain of the seventeenth, and in France of the eighteenth centuries. Their more quickly cultivated temperament bears them more speedily on to subtleties. Coveting keen emotions, they cannot be happy with moderate ones : they are Uke people who, accustomed to eating oranges, throw away carrots and turnips ; and yet it is carrots and turnips, and other equally insipid vege tables, which make up our ordinary diet. It is in Italy that a noble lady exclaims, on partaking of a delicious ice-cream, " What a pity there is no sin in it ! " In France a noble lord remarks, speaking of a diplomatic roue, " Who wouldn't admire him, he is so wicked 1 " In other directions their vivacity of impression and promptness of action render them improvisators; they are so quickly and so deeply excited by a crisis as to forget duty and reason IN THE NETHERLANDS. 179 resorting to daggers in Italy and Spain, and to pis tols in France ; showing by this that they are only moderately capable of biding their time, of seif-sub- ordination, and of maintaining order. Success in life depends on knowing how to be patient, how to endure drudgery, how to unmake and remake, how to recommence and continue without allowing the tide of angor or the flight of the imagination to arrest or divert the daily effort. In fine, if we com pare their faculties with the world as it runs, it is too mechanical, too rude, and too monotonous for them, and they too lively, too delicate, and too brilliant for it. Always after the lapse of centuries this discord shows itself in their civilization; they demand too much of things, and, through their mis conduct, fail even to reach that which things might confer on them. Suppress, now, these fortunate endowments, and, on the dark side, these mischievous tendencies, — im agine on the slow and substantial body of the Ger man a well-organized brain, a sound mind, and trace the effects. With less lively impressions a man thus fashioned will be more collested and more thought- 180 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART ful ; less soUcitous of agreeable emotions, he can, with out weariness, do disagreeable things. His senses being blunter, he prefers depth to form, and truth within to show without. As he is less impulsive he is less subject to impatience and to unreasonable out bursts ; he has an idea of sequence, and can persist in enterprises the issue of which is of long achieve ment. Finally, with him the understanding is the better master, because outward temptations are weaker and inward explosions rarer ; reason governs better where there is less inward rebellion and less outward attack. Consider, in effect, the Germanic people of the present day and throughout history. They are, primarily, the great laborers of the world ; in matters of intellect none equal them ; in erudition, in philosophy, in the most crabbed linguistic studies, in voluminous editions, dictionaries and other compi lations, in researches of the laboratory, in all science, in short, whatever stern and hard, but necessary and preparatory work there is to be done, that is their province; patiently, and with most commendable self-sacrifice they hew out every stone that enters into the edifice of modern times. In material matters the IN THE NETHERLANDS. 181 English, Americans and Dutch perform the same ser vice. I should like to show you an English spinner or cloth-dresser at work ; he is a perfect automaton, occupied day in and day out without a moment's relaxation, and the tenth hour as well as the first. If he is in a workshop with French workmen, these form a striking contrast; they are unable to adapt themselves to the same mechanical regularity ; they are sooner tired and inattentive, and thus produce less at the end of the day ; instead of eighteen hun dred spools, they only turn out twelve hundred. The farther south you go the less the capacity. A Provencal or Italian must gossip, sing and dance ; he is a willing lounger, and lives as he can, and in this way easily contents himself with a threadbare coat. Indolence there seems natural and honorable. A noble life, the laziness of the man who, to save hie honor, lives on expedients, and sometimes fasts, has been the curse of Spain and Italy for the last two hundred years. On the other hand, in the same epoch, the Fleming, the Hollander, the Englishman and the German have gloried in providing themselves with all useful things ; the instinctive repugnance 182 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART which leads an ordinary man to shun trouble, tht puerile vanity which leads the cultivated man to dis tinguish himself from the artizan, disappear alongside of their good sense and reason. This same reason and this same good sense estab lish and maintain amongst them diverse descriptions of social engagements, and first, the conjugal bond. You are aware that among the Latin families this is not over respected ; in Italy, Spain and France adultery. is always the principal subject of the play ind the romance ; at all events, literature in these lands always incarnates passion in the hero, and is prodigal of sympathy for him by granting him all privileges. In England, on the contrary, the novel is a picture of loyal affection and the laudation of wedlock; in Germany, gallantry is not honorable, even among students. In Latin countries it is excused or accepted, and even sometimes approved of. The matrimonial yoke, and the monotony of the household, there seem galling. Sensational aUure- ments penetrate too deeply ; the caprices of the imagination there are too brusque ; the mind creates for itself visions of transports and of ecstatic IN THE NETHERLANDS. 183 delight, or at least a romance of exciting and varied sensuality, and at the first opportunity the suppressed flood bursts forth, carrying with it every barrier of duty and of law. Consider Spain, Italy and France in the sixteenth century ; read the tales of Bandello, the comedies of Lope de Vega, the nar ratives of Brantome, and listen for a moment to the comment of Guiccardini, a contemporary, on the social habits of the Netherlands. " They hold adultery in horror . . . Their women are extremely circumspect, and are consequently allowed much freedom. They go out alone to make visits, and even journeys without evil report ; they are able to take care of themselves. Moreover they are house keepers, and love their households." Only very lately, again, a wealthy and noble Hollander named to me several young ladies belonging to his family who had no desire to see the Great Exposition, and who remained at home whilst their husbands and brothers visited Paris. A disposition so calm and so sedentary diffuses much happiness throughout domestic life ; in the repose of curiosity and of de sire the ascendancy of pure ideas is much greater 184 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART the constant presence of the same person not being wearisome, the memory of plighted faith, the senti ment of duty and of self-respect easily prevails against temptations which elsewhere triumph be cause they are elsewhere more powerful. I can say as much of other descriptions of association, and es pecially of the free assemblage. This, practically, is a very difficult thing. To make the machine work regularly, without obstruction, those who compose it must have calm nerves and be governed by the end in view. One is expected to be patient in a 'meeting,' to allow himself to be contradicted and even vilified, await his turn for speaking, reply with moderation, and submit twenty times in suc cession to the same argument enlivened with figures and documentary facts. It will not answer to fling aside the newspaper the moment its political interest flags, nor take up politics for the pleasure of discus sion and speech-making, nor excite insurrections against officials the moment they become distasteful, which is the fashion in Spain and elsewhere. You yourselves have some knowledge of a country where the government has been overthrown because in IN THE NETHERLANDS. 185 active and because the nation felt ennui. Among Germanic populations, people meet together not to talk but to act ; politics is a matter to be wisely managed, they bring to bear on it the spirit of busi ness ; speech is simply a means, while the effect, however remote, is the end in view. They subor dinate themselves to this end, and are full of defer ence for the persons who represent it. How unique ! Here the governed respect the governing; if the latter prove objectionable they are resisted, but legally and patiently ; if institutions prove defective, they are gradually reformed without being dis rupted. Germanic countries are the patrimony of free parliamentary rule. You see it established to day in Sweden, in Norway, in England, in Belgium, in Holland, in Prussia, and even in Austria ; the colonists engaged in clearing Australia and the West of America, plant it in their soil, and, how ever rude the new-comers may be, it prospers at once, and is maintained without difficulty. We find it at the outset in Belgium and Holland ; the old cities of the Netherlands were republics, and so maintained themselves throughout the middle ages 186 THE PHIIOSOPHY OF ART in spite of their feudal suzerains. Free communities arose, and maintained themselves without effort, at once, the small as well as the great, and in the great whole. In the sixteenth century we find in each city, and even in small towns, companies of arquebu- siers and rhetoricians, of which more than two hun dred have been enumerated. In Belgium to-day there still flourish an infinity of similar corporations, societies of archers, of musicians, of pigeon fanciers, and for singing birds. In Holland volunteer asso ciations of private individuals minister to every requirement of public charity. To act in a body, no one person oppressing another, is a wholly Germanic talent, and one which gives them such an empire over matter ; through patience and reflection they conform to the laws of physical and human nature, and instead of opposing them profit by them. If, now, from action we turn to speculation, that is to say to the mode of conceiving and figuring the world, we shall find the same imprint of thi» thoughtful and slightly sensualistic genius. The Latins show a decided taste for the external and decorative aspect of things, for a pompous display IN THE NETHERLANDS. 187 feeding the senses and vanity, for logical order, out ward symmetry and pleasing arrangement, in short, for form. The Germanic people, on the contrary, have rather inclined to the inward order of things, to truth itself, in fact, to the fundamental. Their instinct leads them to avoid being seduced by appearances, to remove mystery, to seize the hidden, even when repugnant and sorrowful, and not to eliminate or withhold any detail, even when vulgar and unsightly. Among the many products of this instinct there are two which place it in full light through the strongly marked contrast in each of form and substance, and these are literature and religion. The literatures of Latin populations are classic and nearly or remotely allied to Greek poesy, Roman eloquence, the Italian renaissance, and the age of Louis XIV. ; they refine and ennoble, they embellish and prune, they systematize and give pro portion. Their latest masterpiece is the drama of Racine, who is the painter of princely ways, court proprieties, social paragons, and cultivated natures; the master of an oratorical style, skilful cc imposi tion and literary elegance. The Germanic litera 188 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART tures, on the contrary, are romantic ; their primitive source is the Edda and the ancient sagas of the north; their greatest masterpiece is the drama of Shakespeare, that is to say the crude and complete representation of actual life, with all its atrocious, ignoble and common-place details, its sublime and brutal instincts, the entire outgrowth of human character displayed before us, now in a familiar style bordering on the trivial, and now poetic even to lyricism, always independent of rule, incoherent, excessive, but of an incomparable force, and filling our souls with the warm and palpitating passion of which it is the outcry. In a similar manner take religion, and view it at the critical moment when the people of Europe had to choose their faith, that is to say in the sixteenth century; those who have studied original documents know what this at that time meant ; what seoret preferences kept some in the ancient faith and led others to take the new one. All Latin populations, up to the last, remained Catholic ; they were not willing to renounce their intellectual habits ; they remained faithful to tradi tion ; they continued subject to authority; they IN THE NETHERLANDS. 189 were affected through sensuous externalities — the pomp of worship, the imposing system of the Catho- 'ic hierarchy, the majestic conception of Catholic unity and Catholic perpetuity ; they attached abso lute importance to the rites, outward works and visi ble acts through which piety is manifested. Almost all the Germanic nations, on the contrary, became Protestants. If Belgium, which inclined to the Reformation, escaped, it was owing to force through the successes of Farnese, the destruction and flight of so many Protestant families, and to a special moral crisis which you will find in the history of Rubens. All other Germanic peoples subordinated outward to inward worship. They made salvation to consist of a renewal of the heart and of religious sentiment ; they made the formal authority of the Church yield to personal convictions ; through this predominance of the fundamental form became acces sory, worship, daily life and rites being modified in the same degree. We shall soon see that in the arts the same opposition of instincts produced an analogous contrast of taste and style. Meanwhile let it suffice for us to seize the cardinal points which 190 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART distinguish the two races. If the latter, compared with the former, presents a less sculpturesque form, grosser appetites and a more torpid temperament, it furnishes through tranquillity of nerve and cool ness of blood a stronger hold on pure reason ; its mind, less diverted from the right road by delight in sensuous attractions, the impetuosities of impulse and the illusions of external beauty, is better able to accommodate itself now to comprehend things and now to direct them. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 191 II. This race, thus endowed, has received various im prints, according to the various conditions of its abiding-place. Sow a number of seeds of the same vegetable species in different soils, under various temperatures, and let them germinate, grow, bear fruit and reproduce themselves indefinitely, each or. its own soil, and each will adapt itself to its soil producing several varieties of the same species sc much the more distinct as the contrast is greater between the diverse climates. Such is the experience of the Germanic race in the Netherlands. Ten cen turies of habitation have done their work ; the end of the middle ages shows us that, in addition to its innate character, there is an acquired character. It becomes necessary, therefore, to study the soil and the sky ; in default of travel take the next best thing, a map. Excepting the mountainous district to the south-east, the Netherlands consist of a watery plain, formed out of the deposits of three large rivers — the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt, besides sev 102 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART eral smaller streams. Add to this numerous inlets ponds and marshes. The country is an outflow of mighty waters, which, as they reach it, become slug gish and remain stagnant for want of a fall. Dig a hole anywhere and water comes. Examine the land scapes of Van der Neer and you will obtain some idea of the vast sluggish streams which, on approaching the sea, become a league wide, and lie asleep, wal lowing in their beds like some huge, flat, slimy fish, turbid and feebly glimmering with scaly reflections. The plain is oftentimes below their level, and is only protected by levies of earth. You feel as if some of them were going to give way ; a mist is constantly rising from their surfaces, and at night a dense fog envelopes all things in a bluish humidity. Follow them down to the sea, and here a second and more violent inundation, arising from the daily tides, com pletes the work of the first. The northern ocean is hostile to man. Look at the " Estacade" of Ruysdael, and imagine the frequent tempests casting up ruddy waves and monstrous foaming billows on the low, flat band of earth already half submerged by the enlarge ment of the rivers. A belt of islands, some of them IN THE NETHERLANDS. 193 equal to the half of a department, indicates, along the coast, this choking up of inland currents and the assaults of the sea — Walcheren, North and South Beveland, Tholen, Schouwen, Voorn, Beierland, Texel, Vlieland and others. Sometimes the ocean runs up and forms inner seas like that of Harlem, or deep gulfs like the Zuyder Zee. If Belgium is an alluvial expanse, formed by the rivers, Holland is simply a deposit of mud surrounded by water. Add to all this an unpropitious soil and a rigorous climate, and you are tempted to conclude that the coun try was not made tor man but for storks and beavers. When the first Germanic tribes came to encamp here it was still worse. In the time of Caesar and Strabo there was nothing but a swampy forest ; travellers narrate that one could pass from tree to tree over all Holland without touching the ground. The uprooted oaks falling into the streams formed rafts, as nowadays on the Mississippi, and barred the way to the Roman flotillas. The Waal, the Meuse and the Scheldt annually overflowed their banks, the water covering the flat country around to 194 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART a great distance. Autumnal tempests every yeai submerged the island of Batavia, while in Holland the line of the coast changed constantly. Rain fell incessantly, and the fog was as impenetrable as in Russian America ; daylight lasted only three or four hours. A solid coating of ice annually covered the Rhine. Civilization, meanwhile, as the soil became cleared, tempered the climate ; the rude HoUand of that day possessed the climate of Norway. Flanders, four centuries after the invasion, was still called " the interminable and merciless forest." In 1197 the country about Waes, now a garden, remained untilled, the monks on it being besieged by wolves. In the four teenth century droves of wild horses roamed through the forests of Holland. The sea encroached on the land. Ghent was a seaport in the ninth century, Thorout, St. Omer and Bruges in the twelfth century, Damme in the thirteenth, and Ecloo in the fourteenth. On looking at the Holland of old maps we no longer recognize it.* Still, at the present day its inhabitants are obliged to guard the soil against the » Michiels, " Histoire de la Peinture Flamande," Vol. L, p. 230 ; and Sctayes' ' Les Pays-Bas-avant et pendant la domination Romaine." IN THE NETHERLANDS. 195 rivers and the sea. In Belgium the margin of the sea is below the level of the water at high tide, the polders or low spots thus reclaimed displaying vast argillaceous flats, with a slimy soil tinged with purple reflections, between dykes, which, even in our days, sometimes break away. The danger in Holland is stiU greater, life there seeming to be very precarious. For thirteen centuries a great inundation has taken place, on an average, every seven years, besides smaller ones ; one hundred thousand persons were drowned in 1230, eighty thousand in 1287, twenty thousand in 1470, thirty thousand in 1570, and twelve thousand in 1 717. Similar disasters occurred in 1776, in 1808, and still later in 1825. Dollart Bay, about seven nriles wide by twenty deep, and the Zuyder Zee, forty-four leagues square, are invasions of the sea in the thirteenth century. In order to protect Friesland it was necessary to drive three rows of piles a distance of twenty-two leagues, each pile cost ing seven florins. To protect the coast of Harlem they had to buUd a dyke of Norway granite five miles long by forty feet in height, and which is buried two hundred feet beneath the waves. Am 196 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART sterdam, which has two hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants, is entirely built on piles, frequently thirty feet long. The foundations of every town and village in Friesland are artificial constructions. It is estimated that seven and a half billions of francs have been expended on protective works between the Scheldt and the Dollart. Life has to be purchased in Holland. And when from Harlem or Amsterdam you see the enormous yellow surf beating against that narrow strip of mud, and enclosing it as far as the eye can reach, it is evident that man, in casting this sop to the monster, obtains safety at a low rate.* Imagine, now, on this quagmire, the ancient Ger manic tribes, so many fishers and hunters roaming about in hide boats and clad in seal-skin tunics, and estimate if you can the effort those barbarians were forced to make in order to create a habitable soil and transform themselves into a civilized people. Men of another stamp would not have succeeded; the milieu was too unfavorable. In analogous con ditions the inferior races of Canada and Russian * See Alphonse Bsquiros' " La Neerlande et la Vie Nee'rlandaise. " 8 vols. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 197 America have remained savage ; other well-endowed races, the Celts of Ireland and the Highland Scotch. attained only to a chivalric standard of society and poetic legends. Here there had to be good, sound heads, a capacity to subject sensation to thought, to patiently endure ennui and fatigue, to accept priva tion and labor in view of a remote end, in short a Germanic race, meaning by this men organized to co-operate together, to toil, to struggle, to begin over and over again and ameliorate unceasingly, to dike streams, to oppose tides, to drain the soil, to turn wind, water, flats, and argillaceous mud to account, to build canals, ships and mills, to make brick, raise cattle, and organize various manufac turing and commercial enterprises. The difficulty being very great the mind was absorbed in over coming it, and, turned wholly in this direction, was diverted from other things. To subsist, to obtain shelter, food and raiment, to protect them selves against cold and damp, to accumulate stores and lay up wealth left the settlers no time to think of other matters ; the mind got to be wholly positive and practical. It is impossible in such a country to 198 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART indulge in revery, to philosophize German fashion, to stray off amidst chimeras of the fancy and through the world of metaphysical systems.* One is immediately brought back to the earth. The necessity of action is too universal, too urgent, too constant ; if people think at all, it is to act. Under this steady pressure the character forms ; that which was habit becomes instinct ; the form acquired by the parent is found hereditary in the child ; laborer, artisan, trader, factor, householder, man of common sense and nothing more, he is by birth and without effort what his ancestors got to be through necessity and constraint.f This positive spirit, moreover, is found to be tran quillized. Compared with other nations of the same stock and with a genius no less practical, the denizen of the Netherlands appears better balanced and more capable of being content. We do not see in him the violent passions, the militant disposition, the over strained will, the bull-dog instincts, the sombre and •Alfred MichielB' "Histoire de la Peinture," Vol. I., p. 238. Thll volume cor. taine a number of general views all deserving of attention. t Prosper Lucas' " De l'HerediteV' and Darwin's " Origin of Species.' IN THE NETHERLANDS. 199 grandiose pride which three permanent conquests and the secular establishment of political strife have im planted in the English ; nor that restless and exag gerated desire for action which a dry atmosphere, sudden changes from heat to cold, a surplus elec tricity, have implanted in the Americans of the United States. He lives in a moist and equable climate, one which relaxes the nerves and developea the lymphatic temperament, which moderates the insurrections, explosions and impetuosity of the spirit, soothing the asperities of passion and diverting the character to the side of sensuality and good humor. You have already observed this effect of climate in our comparisons of the genius and the art of the Venetians with those of the Florentines. Here, moreover, events come to the aid of climate, history laboring in the same direction as physiology. The natives of these countries have not undergone, like their neighbors over the channel, two or three inva sions, the overrunning of an entire people, Saxons, Danes and Normans installed on their premises ; they have not garnered a heritage of hatred which oppression, resistance, rancor, prolonged struggle aOO THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART warfare — at first open and violent, and afterwardi subdued and legal — transmit from one generation to another. From the earliest times down we find them engaged, as in the age of Pliny, in making salt, " combined together, according to ancient usage, in bringing under cultivation marshy grounds,"* free in their guilds, asserting their independence, claiming their rights and immemorial privileges, devoted to whaling, trade and manufacturing, calling their towns ports, in brief, as Guiccardini describes them in the sixteenth century, " very desirous of gain and watch ful of profit, but without anything feverish or irra tional in their desire to provide for themselves. They are by nature cool and self-possessed. They delight in wealth and other worldly things prudently and as occasion offers, and are not easily disturbed, which is at once apparent both in their discourse and in their physiognomies. They are not prone to auger or to pride, but live together on good terms, and are especially of a gay and Uvely humor." According tc him they entertain no vast and overweening ambi- * Moke's " Mceurs et Usages des Beiges," pp. Ill, 113. A capitular} ot the ninth century. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 201 tion ; many of them retire from business early, amus ing themselves with building, and taking life easily and pleasantly. All circumstances, moral and phys ical, their geographical and political state, the past and the present, combine to one end, namely, the development of one faculty and one tendency at the expense of the rest, shrewd management and tem perate emotions, a practical understanding and lim ited desires ; they comprehend the amelioration of outward things, and, this accompUshed, they crave no more. Consider, in effect, their work ; its perfection and laeunce indicate at once the limits and the power of their intellect. The profound philosophy which is so natural in Germany, and the elevated poetry which flourishes in England, they lack. They fail to over look material things and positive interests in order to yield to pure speculation, to follow the temerities of logic, to attenuate the delicacy of analysis, and bury themselves in the depths of abstraction. They ignore that spiritual turmoil, those eruptions of suppressed feeling which give to style a tragic accent, and that vagabond fancy," those exquisil* 9* 202 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART and sublime reveries which outside of life's vulgari ties reveal a new universe. They can boast of nc great philosopher; their Spinoza is a Jew, a pupil of Descartes and the rabbis, an isolated recluse of a different genius and a different race. None of their books have become European like those of Bums and Camoens, who, nevertheless, were born out of nations equally small. One only of their authors has been read by every man of his epoch, Erasmus, a refined writer but who wrote in Latin, and who, in education, taste, style and ideas belongs to the erudites and humanists of Italy. The old Dutch poets, as for example, Jacob Cats, are grave, sensi ble, somewhat tedious moralists, who laud home en joyments and the life of the family. The Flemish poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries tell their auditors that they do not recount chivalric fables — but veritable histories, their poesy ending in practical maxims and contemporary events. In vain do their belle-lettre academies cultivate and make poetry prominent, there being no talent to produce out of such resources any great or beautiful perfor mance. Chroniclers arise like Chatelain, and pam IN THE NETHERLANDS. 2u3 phleteers like Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde, tut theii unctuous narratives are inflated ; their overcharged eloquence, coarse and crude, recalls, without equal- Hng it, the rude color and vigorous grossness of their national art. They have scarcely any literature at the present day. Their only novelist, Conscience, seems to us, although a tolerable observer, dull and unrefined. If we visit their country and read their journals, those at least not got up in Paris, we seem to have fallen upon the provinces, and even lower. Polemical discussions are gross, the flowers of rheto ric stale, humor rudely indulged, and wit pointless ; a coarse joviality and a coarse anger supply the material ; their very caricatures seem to us stupid. If we attempt to ascertain their contributions to the great edifice of modern thought we find that patiently and methodically, like honest and faithful workmen, they have hewn out a few blocks. They can point to a learned school of philologists at Leyden, to jurisprudential authorities like Grotius, to naturalists and physicians like Leeuvenhoeck, Swammerdam and Boerhaave, to physicists like Huyghens, and to cosmograpners like Ortelius and 204 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART Mercator, in short, to a contingent of specialist and useful men, but to no creative intellect dis closing to the world grand original ideas or enshrin^ ing original conceptions in beautiful forms capanH of universal ascendancy. They have left to neigh boring nations the part filled by the contemplative Mary at the feet of Jesus, choosing for themselves that of Martha ; in the seventeenth century they provided pulpits for the Protestant erudites exiled from France, a country for free thought persecuted throughout Europe, and editors for all books of science and polemics; at a later period they fur nished printers for the whole of our eighteenth century philosophy, and finally booksellers, brokers and counterfeiters for the entire literature of mod ern times. All this is of service to them for they are versed in languages, and read and are in structed, instruction being an acquisition and some thing which it is good to lay up like other things. But there they stop, and neither their ancient nor their modern works show any need of or faculty for contemplating the abstract beyond the apparent world and the imaginary world outside of reality IN THE NETHERLANDS. 20£ On the contrary they have always excelled and they still excel in the arts called useful. "First >ng transalpine people," says Guiccardini, " they !vented woolen fabrics." Up to 1404 they alone were capable of weaving and manufacturing them. England supplied them with the raw material, the English doing no more than raise and shear the sheep. At the end of the sixteenth century, an unique thing in Europe, " almost everybody, even the peasantry, could read and write ; a great many even acquired the principles of grammar." We find, accordingly, belle-lettre academies, that is to say associations for oratory and dramatic representa tions, even in the small towns. This indicates the degree of perfection to which they brought their civilization. " They have," says Guiccardini, " a special and happy talent for the ready invention of all sorts of machines, ingenious and suitable for facilitating, shortening and dispatching everything they do, even in the matter of cooking." They, indeed, with the Italians, are the first in Europe tc attain to prosperity, wealth, security, liberty, com fort, and all other benefits which seem to us th« 206 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART paraphernalia of modem times. In the thirteenth century Bruges was equal to Venice; in the six teenth century Antwerp was the industrial and com mercial capital of the North. Guiccardini never wearies in praising it, and he only saw it when it was in full decline, reconquered by the Duke of Parma after the terrible siege of 1585. In the sev enteenth century Holland, remaining free, occupies for a century the place which England now holds in the world of to-day. It is in vain for Flanders to fall back into Spanish hands, to be ravaged by the wars of Louis XIV., to be surrendered to Austria, to serve as a battle-ground for the wars of the Revo lution ; she never descends to the level of Spain or Italy ; the partial prosperity she maintains through out the miseries of repeated invasion and under a bungling despotism shows the energy of her inspir ing good sense and the fecundity of her assiduous labor. Of all the countries of Europe at the present day Belgium is the one which with an equal area sup ports the most inhabitants ; she feeds twice as many as France; the most populous of our departments. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 20^ that of the North, is a portion which Louis XIV detached from her. Towards Lille and Douai you already see spread out in an indefinable circle, ex tending up to the horizon, this great kitchen garden, a deep and fertile soil diapered with pale grain sheaves, poppy-fields, and the large-leaved beet, and richly stimulated by a low, warm sky swimming with vapor. Between Brussels and Malines begins the broad prairie, here and there striped with rows of poplars, intersected with water-courses and fences where cattle browse throughout the year, an inex haustible storehouse of hay, milk, cheese and meat. In the environs of Ghent and Bruges, the land of Waes, " the classic soil of agriculture," is nourished by fertilizers gathered in all countries, and by barn yard manure brought from Zealand. Holland, in like manner, is simply a pasturage, a natural tillage, which, instead of exhausting the soil, renews it, pro viding its cultivators with the amplest crops, and affording to the consumer the most strengthening aUments. In Holland, at Buicksloot, there are mil lionaire cow-herds, the Netherlands ever seeming to the stranger to be a land »f feasting and good 208 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART cheer. If you turn from agricultural to industria\ results, you will everywhere encounter the same art of utilizing and making the best of things. Obsta cles with them are transformed into aids. The soil was flat and soaked with water ; they took advan tage of it to cover it with canals and railroads, no place in Europe presenting so many channels of com munication and of transport. They were in want of fuel ; they dug down into the bowels of the earth, the coal-pits of Belgium being as rich as those of England. The rivers annoyed them with their inun dations and inland pools deprived them of a portion of their territory ; they drained the pools, diked the streams, and profited by the rich alluvions and the slow deposits of vegetable mould with which the surplus or stagnant waters overspread their land. Their canals freeze up ; they take skates and travel in winter five leagues an hour. The sea threatened them ; after forcing it back, they avail themselves of it to traffic with all nations. The winds sweep unim peded across their flat country and over the turbu lent ocean ; they make them swell the sails of their vessels and move the wings of their windmills. In IN THE NETHERLANDS. 209 Holland you will observe at every turn of the road one of these enormous structures, a hundred feet aigh, furnished with machinery and pumps, busy in emptying the overflow of water, sawing ship-timber and manufacturing oil. From the steamer, in front of Amsterdam, you see, stretching off as far as the eye can reach, an infinite spider's web, a light, indis tinct and complex fringe of masts and arms of wind mills encircling the horizon with their innumerable fibres. The impression you carry away is that of a country transformed from end to end by the hand and the art of man, and sometimes entirely created until it becomes a comfortable and productive ter ritory. Let us go further ; let us take a near view of man, and appreciate the most important object belonging to him — his habitation. There is no stone in this country — nothing but an adhesive clay, suitable for men and horses to mire their feet in. It occurred to the people, however, to bake it, and in this way brick and tile, which are the best of defences against humidity, came into their hands. You see well con trived buildings of an agreeable aspect, with red, 210 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART brown and rosy walls covered with a bright stucco white facades varnished and sometimes decorated with sculptured flowers, animals, medallions and small columns. In the older cities the house often stands with its gable to the street, festooned with arcades, branchings and leafage, which terminate in a bird, an apple or a bust ; it is not, as in our cities, a continuation of its neighbor — an abstract compartment of vast barracks, but an object apart, endowed with a special and private character, at once interesting and picturesque. Nothing could be better kept and cleaner. At Douai the poorest have their domicile whitewashed once a year, out side and in, it being necessary to engage the white- washer six months in advance. At Antwerp, in Ghent and in Bruges, and especially in the small towns, most of the facades seem to be newly painted or freshened the day before. Washing and sweep ing are going on on all sides. When you reach Holland there is extra care even to exaggera tion. You see domestics at five o'clock in the morning scrubbing the sidewalks. In the envi rons of Amsterdam the villages seem to be seenerj IN THE NETHERLANDS. 211 from the Opera - Comique, so tidy and so weU- dusted are they. There are stables for cows, the flooring of which is cabinet work; you can enter them only in slippers or sabots placed at the entrance for that purpose ; a spot of dirt would be scandalous, and still more so any odor ; the cows' tads are held up by a small cord to prevent them from soiling themselves. Vehicles are prohibited from entering the village ; the sidewalks of brick and blue porcelain are more irreproachable than a vestibule with us. In autumn chUdren come and gather up the fallen leaves in the streets to deposit them in a pit. Everywhere, in the small rooms, seemingly the state-rooms of a ship, the order and arrangement are the same as on a ship. In Broeck, it is said, there is in each house a particular room which is entered only once a week in order to clean and rub the furniture, and then carefully closed ; in a country so damp, dirt immediately becomes a deleterious mould; man, compelled to scrupulous cleanliness, contracts the habit, experiences its neces sity, and at last falls under its tyranny. You would be pleased, however, to see the humblest shop of 212 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART the smallest street in Amsterdam, with its brown casks, its immaculate counter, its scoured benches, everything in its place, the economy of small quar ters, the intelligent and handy arrangement of all utensils. Guiccardini already remarks " that their houses and clothes are clean, handsome and well arranged, that they have much furniture, utensik and domestic objects, kept in better order and with a finer lustre than in any other country." It is necessary to see the comfort of their apartments, especially the houses of the middle classes — carpets, waxed cloths for the floors, warm and heat-saving chimneys of iron and porcelain, triple curtains at the windows, clear, dark and highly polished window- panes, vases of flowers and green plants, innumera ble knick-knacks indicative of sedentary habits and which render home life pleasant, mirrors placed so as to reflect the people passing in the street together with its changing aspects ; — every detail shows some inconvenience remedied, some want satisfied, some pleasant contrivance, some thoughtful provision, in short, the universal reign of a sagacious activity and the extreme of comfort. IN THE NETHERLANDS 213 Man, in effect, is that which his work indicates. Thus endowed and thus situated, he enjoys and knows how to enjoy. The bountiful soil furnishes him with abundant nutriment — meat, fish, vegetables, beei and brandy ; he eats and drinks copiously, while in Belgium the Germanic appetite, as it grows in fas tidiousness without decreasing, becomes gastronomic sensuality. Cooking there is scientific and perfect, even to the hotel tables ; I believe that they are the best in Europe. There is a certain hotel in Mons to which visitors from the small neighboring towns come to dine every Saturday, especially to enjoy a deUcate meal. They lack wine, but they import it from Germany and France, and boast the possession of the best vintages : we do not, in their opinion, treat our wines with the respect they deserve ; it is necessary to be a Belgian to care for and relish them in a proper manner. There is no important hotel which is not supplied with a varied and select stock ; its reputation and custom are made by the selection ; in the railroad cars the conversation tends sponta neously to the merits of two rival cellars. A prudent merchant will have twelve thousand bottles in his 214 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART sanded cellars, duly classified; it constitutes hit library. The burgomaster of a petty Dutch town possesses a cask of genuine Johannisberger, made in the best year, and this cask adds to the consideration of its owner. A man there, who gives a dinner party, knows how to make his wines succeed each other in such a way as not to impair the taste and have a? many as possible consumed. As to the pleasures of the ear and the eye, they understand them as well as those of the palate and the stomach. They in stinctively love the music whioh we only appreciate through culture. In the sixteenth century they are first in this art ; Guiccardini states that their vocalists and instrumentalists are esteemed in all the courts of Christendom ; abroad, their professors found schools, and their compositions are standards of au- i hority. Even nowadays the great musical endow ment of being able to sing in parts is encountered even amongst the populace ; the coal-miners organ ize choral societies ; I have heard laborers in Brussels and Antwerp, and the ship caulkers and sailors of Amsterdam sing in chorus, and in true time, while al work and in the street on returning home at nifrht IN THE NETHERLANDS. 215 There is no large Belgian town in which a chime of bells, perched in the belfry, does not every quarter of an hour amuse the artizan in his shop and the trader at his counter with the peculiar harmonies of their sonorous metal. In like manner their city halls their house-fronts, even their old drinking-cups are, through their complex ornamentation, their intricate lines and their original and often fantastic design, agreeable to the eye. Add to this the free or well- composed tones of the bricks forming the walls, and the richness of the brown and red tints relieving on white displayed on the roofs and facades — assuredly the towns of the Netherlands are as picturesque of their kind as any in Italy. In all times they have delighted in kermesses and^tes de Glayant, in corpor ation processions, and in the parade and glitter of costumes and materials. I shall show you the com pletely Italian pomp of the civic entries and other ceremonies in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They are epicureans as well as gourmands in the matter of comfortable living ; regularly, calmly, without heat or enthusiasm they glean up every pleasing harmony of savor, sound, color and form 216 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART that arises out of their prosperity and abundance, like tulips on a heap of compost. All this produces good sense somewhat limited, and happiness some what gross. A Frenchman would soon yawn over it, but he would make a mistake, for this civiliza tion, which seems to him unctuous and vulgar, pos sesses one sterling merit — it is healthy; the men living here ' have a gift we lack the most — wisdom, and a compensation we are equally undeserving of— contentment. LN THE NETHERLANDS 217 IH. Such, in this country, is the human plar.t; we have now to examine its art, which is the flower. Among all the branches of the Germanic trunk, this plant alone has produced a complete flower- the art which developes so happily and so naturally in the Netherlands proves abortive with the othei Germanic nations for the reason that this glorious privilege emanates from the national character as V we have just set it forth. To comprehend and love painting requires an eye sensitive to forms and to colors, and, without edu cation or apprenticeship, one which takes pleasure in the juxtaposition of tones and is delicate in the matter of optical sensations ; the man who would be a painter must be capable of losing himself in view ing the rich consonance of red and green, in watch ing the diminution of light as it is transformed into darkness, and in detecting the subtle hues of silks and satins, which according to their breaks, recesses and depths of fold, assume opaline tints, vague 10 218 THE PHIL0S0PH1 Ulf ART luminous gleams and imperceptible shades of blue. The eye is epicurean like the palate, and painting is an exquisite feast served up to it. For this reason it is that Germany and England have had no great pictorial art. In Germany the too great dom ination of abstract ideas has left no room for the sensuousness of the eye. Its early school, that of Cologne, instead of representing bodies, represented mystic, pious and tender souls. In vain did the great German artist of the sixteenth century, Albert Diirer, familiarize himself with the ItaUan masters; he retains his graceless forms, his angular folds, his ugly nudities, his dull color, his barbarous, gloomy and saddened faces ; the wild imagination, the deep religious sentiment and the vague phUoso- phic divinations which shine through his works, show an intellect to which form is inadequate. Examine the infant Christ in the Louvre, by Wohl gemuth, his master, and an Eve, by Lucas Cranach, a contemporary ; you will realize that the men who executed such groups and such bodies were bora £#r theology and not for painting. Again at the present day they esteem and eniov the inward IN THE NETHERLANDS. 219 rather than the outward; Cornelius and the Mu nich masters regard the idea as principal, and exe cution as secondary; the master conceives and the pupil paints; the aim of theh wholly phUosophio and symbolic work is to excite the spectator to reflect on some great moral or social verity. In like manner Overbeck aims at edification and preaches sentimental asceticism ; and even Knauss, again, who is such an able psychologist that his pictures form idyls and comedies. As to the Eng lish, up to the eighteenth century, they do but little more than import pictures and artists from abroad. Temperament in this country is too mil- itant, the will too stern, the mind too utilitarian, man too case-hardened, too absorbed and too over tasked to linger over and revel in the beautiful and delicate gradations of contours and colors. Their national painter, Hogarth, simply produced moral caricatures. Others, like Wilkie, use their pencil to render sentiments and characteristic traits visible ; even in landscape they depict the spiritual element, corporeal objects serving them simply as an index or suggestion; it is even apparent in their 220 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART two great landscapists, Constable and Turner, and in their two great portrait painters, Gainsborough and Reynolds. Their coloring of to-day, finally, is shockingly crude, and their drawing literal minu tiae. The Flemings and Hollanders alone have prized forms and colors for their own sake. This sentiment still persists. Proof of this is to be found in the picturesqueness of their towns and in the agreeable aspect of their homes ; last year at the Universal Exposition (1867) you could see for yourselves that genuine art — painting exempt from philosophic motive and literary deviation, capable of manipulating form without servility and color with out barbarisms — scarcely exists anywhere but with them and with ourselves. Thanks to this national endowment, in the fif teenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when circumstances became favorable, they were able to maintain in the face of Italy a great school of paint ing. But as they were Germans their school fol lowed the German track. What distinguishes their race from classic races is, as you have seen, a pref rence for substance over form, of actual verity tc IN THE NETHERLANDS. 231 beautiful externals, of the real, complex, irregular and natural object to the well-ordered, pruned -efined and transformed object. This instinct, of which you remark the aseendancy in their religion acd literature, has likewise controlled their art and notably their painting. " The prime significance of the Flemish school," says M. Waagen, " proceeds from its having, through its freedom from foreign influences, revealed to us the contrast of sentiments of the Greek and the German races, the two columnar capitals of ancient and modern civiUzation. WhUs the Greeks sought to idealize not merely concep tions taken from the ideal world, but even portraits, ?y simplifying the forms and accentuating the most important features, the early Flemings on the con trary translated into portraiture the ideal personifi cations of the Virgin, the apostles, the prophets and the martyrs, ever striving to represent in an exact manner the petty details of nature. Whilst the Greeks expressed the details of landscape, rivers, fountains and trees under abstract forms, the Flem ings strove to render them precisely as they saw them. In relation to the ideal and the tendency of 222 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART the Greeks to personify everything, the Flemings created a reaUstic school, a school of landscape. In this respect the Germans first and the English after wards have pursued the same course." * Run over a collection of engravings containing the works of German origin from Albert Durer, Martin Schon- gauer, the Van Eycks, Holbein and Lucas of Leyden, down to Rubens, Rembrandt, Paul Potter, Jan Steen and Hogarth ; if your imagination is fiUed with noble Italian or with elegant French forms, your eyes will be ofi'ended ; you will experience some difficulty in taking the proper standpoint ; you will often fancy that the artist purposely studied the ugly. The truth is he is not repelled by the triviaUties and deformities of life. He does not naturally enter into the symmetrical composition, the tranquil and easy action, the beautiful proportions, the healthiness and agility of the naked figure. When the Flemings in the sixteenth century resorted to the Italian school, they only succeeded in spoiling their original style. During seventy years of patient imitation they hrought forth nothing but hybrid abortions. This • "Manuel de l'historie de la Peinture," Vol. 1, \ . 79. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 223 long period of failure, placed between two long peri ods of superiority, shows the limits and the power of their original aptitudes. They were incapable of simplifying nature ; they aimed to reproduce her en tire. They did not concentrate her in the nude body they assigned equal importance to all her appear' ances — landscapes, edifices, animals, costumes and accessories.* They are not qualified to comprehend and prize the ideal body ; they are constituted to oaint and enforce the actual body. Allowing this, we easily discern in what particu- ,.ars they differ from other masters of the same race. I have described to you their national genius, so sensible and so well-balanced, exempt from lofty aspiration, limited to the present and disposed to enjoyment. Such artists wUl not create the melan- * In this respect the verdict of Michael Angelo is very instructive. *' In Flanders," he Bays, " they prefer to paint what are called landscapes and many figures scattered here and there There is neither art nor reason in this, no proportion, no symmetry, no careful selection, no grandeur If I speak so ill of Flemish painting it is not because it is wholly bad, but because it seeks to render in perfection so many objects of which one alone, through its importance, would suffice, and none is produced .n a satisfactory manner." We here recognize thc classic and Eimplifying trait of Italian genius. 324 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART choly beings in painful abstraction, weighed down with the burden of life and obstinately resigned, of Albert Diirer. They wiU not devote themselves like the mystic painters of Cologne, or the moralist painters of England, to the representation of spirit ual traits and characters; little will they concern themselves with the disproportion between mind and matter. In a fertile and luxurious country, amidst jovial customs, in the presence of placid, honest and blooming faces they are to obtain the models suited to their genius. They almost always paint man in a well-to-do condition and content with his lot. When they exalt him it is without raising him above his terrestrial condition. The Flemish school of the seventeenth century does no more than expand his appetite, his lusts, his energy and his gayety. Generally they leave him as he is. The Dutch school confines itself to reproduc ing the repose of the bourgeois interior, the com forts of shop and farm, out-door sports and tavern enjoyments, all the petty satisfactions of an orderly and tranquil existence. Nothing could be better adapted to painting ; too much though and emo- IN THE NETHERLANDS. 225 tion is detrimental to it. Subjects of this order con ceived in such a spirit, furnish works of a- rare har> mony the Greeks alone, and a few great Italian artists have set us the example ; the painters of the Netherlands on a lower stage do as they did, they represent man to us complete of his type, adapted to things around him and therefore happy without effort. One point remains to be considered. One of the leading merits of this art is the excellence and deli cacy of its coloring. This is owing to the education of the eye, which in Flanders and in Holland is pecu liar. The country is a saturated delta like that of the Po, while Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Hague and Utrecht, through their rivers, canals, sea and atmosphere resemble Venice. Here, as at Venice, nature has made man colorist. Ob serve the different aspect of things according as you are in a dry country like Provence and the neighbor hood of Florence, or on a wet plain like the Nethei> lands. In the dry country the line predominates, and at once attracts attention ; the mountains cut sharp against the sky, with their stories of architeo 10* 226 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART ture of a grand and noble style, all objects projecting upward in the limpid air in varied prominence. Here the low horizon is without interest, and the contours of objects are softened, blended and blurred out by the imperceptible vapor with which the at mosphere is always filled ; that which predominates is the spot. A cow pasturing, a roof in the centre of a field, a man leaning on a parapet appear as one tone among other tones. The object emerges; it does not start suddenly out of its surroundings as if punched out ; yon are struck by its modelling, that is to say by the different degrees of advancing lumin- ousness and the diverse gradations of melting color which transforms its general tint into a relief and give<= to the eye a sensation of thickness.* You * W. Burger's " Musees de la Hollande," p. 206 : " Modelling, and not ;lnes, is what always impresses yon in the beauty of the North. Form, in the North, does not declare itself by contour, but by relief. Nature, in expressing herself, does not avail herself of drawing, properly so called. Walk about an Italian town for an hour, and you will encounter vomen accurately defined, whose general structure brings to mind Greek fltatuary. and whose profile recalls Greek cameos. Ton might pass a year in Antwerp without, finding a single form suggesting the idea of translating it by a contour, but simply by saliencies, which color nrjly (an model Objects never present themselves as silhouettes, but, so tc •ax in full shape." IN THE NETHERLANDS. 327 would have to pass many days in this country in order to appreciate this subordination of the line to the spot. A bluish or gray vapor is constantly ris ing from the canals, the rivers, the sea, and from the saturated soil ; a universal haze forms a soft gauze over objects, even in the finest weather. Flying scuds, like thin, half-torn white drapery, float over the meadows night and morning. I have repeatedly stood on the quays of the Scheldt contemplating the broad, pallid and slightly rippled water, on which float the dark hulks. The river shines, and on its flat surface the hazy light reflects here and there unsteady scintillations. Clouds ascend constantly around the horizon, their pale, leaden hue and their motionless files suggesting an army of spectres, the spectres of the humid soil, like so many phantoms, always revived and bringing back the eternal show ers. Towards the setting sun they become ruddy, while their corpulent masses, trellissed all over with gold, remind one of the damascene copes, the bro caded simarres and the embroidered silks with which Jordaens and Rubens envelope their bleeding mar tyrs and their sorrowful madonnas. Quite low dowD 228 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART on the sky the sun seems an enormous blaze subsiding into smoke. On reaching Amsterdam or Ostend the impression again deepens ; both sea and sky have no form ; the fog and interposed showers leave nothing to remember but colors. The water changes in hue every half hour — now of a pale wine tinge, now of a chalky whiteness, now yellow like softened mortar, now black like liquid soot, and sometimes of a som bre purple striped with dashes of green. After a few days' experience you find that, in such a nature only gradations, contrasts and harmonies, in short, the value of tones is of any importance. These tones, moreover, are full and rich. A dry country is of a dull aspect; southern France and the whole of the mountainous portion of Italy leave on the eye no sensation but that of a gray and yellow checker-board. Besides this, all the tones of the soil and of buildings are lost in the prepon derating splendor of the sky and the all-pervading luminousness of the atmosphere. In truth, a south ern city, and a Provence or Tuscan landscape are simply drawings; with white paper, charcoal, and the feeble tints of colored crayons yen can express IN THE NETHERLANDS. 223 the whole thing On the contrary, in a country of humidity like the Netherlands, the earth is green, a quantity of lively spots diversifying the uniform ity of the wide prairie — sometimes it is the dark or brown color of the wet mould, again the deep red of tiles and bricks, again the white or rosy coating of the facades, again the ruddy spots of reclining cattle, again the flickering sheen of canals and streams. And these spots are not subdued by the too powerful light of the sky. Contrary to the dry country it is not the sky but the earth which has a preponderating influence. In Holland especially, for several months, " there is no transparency of at mosphere ; a kind of opaque vail hovering between sky and ground intercepts all radiance. In winter darkness seems to come from above." * The rich colors, accordingly, with which all terrestrial objects are clothed, remain unrivalled. To their strength must be added their gradation and their mobility. In Italy a tone remains fixed ; the steady light of the Bky maintains it so for many hours, and as it was yesterday so it will be to-morrow. Return to it and * W. Burger's "Musees de la Hollande," p. 213. 280 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART vou will find it the same as you placed it on yout palette a month before. In Flanders it varies inces santly along with the variations of light and the am bient vapor. Here again, I should like to take you into the country and let you appreciate yourselves the original beauty of the towns and the landscape. The red of the bricks, the lustrous white of the facades are agreeable to the eye because they are softened by the grayish atmosphere ; against the neu tral background of the sky extend rows of peaked, shell-like roofs, all of deep brown, here and there a gothic gutter, or some gigantic belfry covered with elaborate finials and heraldic animals. Frequently the crenelated cornice of chimney and of ridge is reflected as it glows in a canal or in an arm of the sea. Outside the cities, as within them, all is material for pictures — you have nothing to do but to copy. The universal green of the country is nei ther crude nor monotonous ; it is tinted by diverse degrees of maturity of foliage and herbage and by the various densities and perpetual changes of hazi ness and clouds. It has for complement or for relief the blackness of clouds which suddenly melt away IN THE NETHERLANDS. 231 in transient showers, the grayness of scattered and ragged banks of fog, the vague, bluish network enveloping distances, the sparkling of flickering light arrested in flying scuds — sometimes the daz zling satin of a motionless cloud, or some abrupt opening through which the azure penetrates. A sky which is thus filled up, thus mobUe, thus adapted to harmonizing, varying and emphasizing the tones of the earth, affords a colorist school. Here, as at Venice, art has followed nature, the hand having been forcibly guided by optical sensations. If, however, the analogies of climate have endowed the Venetian eye and that of the inhabitant of the Netherlands with an analogous education, differences of climate have given them a different education. The Netherlands are situated three hundred leagues to the north of Venice. The atmosphere there is colder, rains more frequent, and the sun the oftenest concealed. Hence a natural gamut of colors, which has provoked a corresponding artificial gamut. A full light being rare, objects do not reflect the im print of the sun. You do not meet with those golden tones, that magnificent ruddiness so frequent in the 232 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART monuments of Italy. The water is not of that deep sea-green resembling silkiness, as in the lagoons of Venice. The fields and trees have not that solid and vigorous tone visible in the verdure of Verona and Padua. The herbage is pale and softened, the water dull or dark, the flesh white, now pink like a flower grown in the shade, now rubicund after exposure to the weather and rendered coarse by food, generally yellow and flabby, sometimes, in Holland, pallid and inanimate and of a waxy tone. The tissues of the living organism, whether man, animal or plant, im bibe too much fluid, and lack the ripening power of sunshine. This is why, if we compare the two schools of painting, we find a difference in the general tone, Examine, in any gallery, the Venetian school, and afterwards the Flemish school ; pass from Canaletto and Guardi to Ruysdael, Paul Potter, Hobbema, Adrian Van der Velde, Teniers and Ostade ; from Titian and Veronese to Rubens, Van Dyck and Rem brandt, and consult your optical impressions. On going from the former to the latter, color loses a por tion of its warmth. Shadowed, ruddy and autumnal tones disappear ; you see the fiery furnace envelop- IN THE NETHERLANDS. 233 ing the Assumptions going out ; flesh becomes of the whiteness of milk or snow, the deep purple of dra peries grows lighter, and paler silks have cooler re flections. The intense brown which faintly impreg nates foliage, the powerful reds gilding sunlit dis tances, the tones of veined marble, amethyst and sapphire with which water is resplendent, all decline, in order to give place to the deadened whiteness of expanded vapor, the bluish glow of misty twilight, the slaty reflections of the ocean, the turbid hue of rivers, the pallid verdure of the fields, and the gray ish atmosphere of household interiors. Between these new tones there is established a new harmony. Sometimes a full light falls upon objects, and to which they are not accustomed ; the green campagna, the red roofs, the polished facades and the satiny flesh flushed with blood show extra ordinary brilliancy. They are adapted to the sub dued light of a northerly and humid country ; they have not been transformed as at Venice by the slow scorching of the sun ; beneath this irruption of lumi- nousness their tones become too vivid, almost crude ; they A'ibrate together like the blasts of trumpets, 234 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART leaving on the mind and senses an impression of energetic and boisterous joyousness. Such is the coloring of the Flemish painters who love the full light of day. Rubens furnishes us with the best example; if his restored canvasses in the Louvre represent his work to us as it left his hands, it is cer tain that he did not discipline his eyes ; in any event his color lacks the rich and mellow harmony of the Venetian ; the greatest extremes meet ; the snowy whiteness of flesh, the sanguine red of the draperies, the dazzling lustre of silks have their full force and are not united, tempered and enveloped, as at Ven ice, in that amber tint which prevents contrasts from being discordant and effects from being too startling. Sometimes, on the contrary, the light is feeble or nearly gone, which is commonly the case, and espe cially in Holland. Objects issue painfully out of shadow ; they are almost lost in their surroundings ; at evening, in a cellar, beneath a lamp, in an apart ment into which a dying ray from a window glides, they are effaced and seem to be only more intense darks in a universal duskiness. The eye is led to noticing these gradations of obscurity, t lis vague IN THE NETHERLANDS. 235 train of light mingling with shadow, the remains of brightness clinging to the lingering lustre of the fur niture, a reflection from a greenish window-sash, a piece of embroidery, a pearl, some golden spark astray upon a necklace. Having become sensitive to these delicacies, the painter, instead of uniting the extremes of the gamut, simply selects the beginning of it ; his entire picture, except in one point, is in shadow ; the concert he offers us is a continuous sor dine in which now and then occurs some brilliant passage. He thus discloses unknown harmonies, those of chiaroscuro, those of modeling, those of emotion, all of them infinite and penetrating ; using a daub of dirty yellow, or of wine lees, or a mixed gray, or vague darks, here and there accentuated by a vivid spot, he succeeds in stirring the very depths of our nature. Herein consists the last great pic turesque creation; it is through this that painting nowadays most powerfully addresses the modern mind, and this is the coloring with which the light of Holland supplied the genius of Rembrandt. You have seen the seed, the plant and the flower. A race with a genius totally opposed to that of the 236 ART IN THE NETHERLANDS. Latin peoples makes for itself, after and alongside of them its place in the world. Among the numerous nations of this race, one there is in which a special territory and climate develope a particular character predisposing it to art and to a certain phase of art. Painting is bora with it, lasts, becomes complete, and the physical milieu surrounding it, like the national genius which founds it, give to and im pose upon it its subjects, its types and its coloring. Such are the remote preparatives, the profound oauses, the general conditions which have nourished this sap, directed this vegetation, and produced the final efflorescence. It only remains to us now to expose historical events, the diversity and succession of which have brought about the successive and diverse phases of the great flowering epoch. PART II. HISTOEIC EPOCHS. ART IN THE NETHERLANDS. 239 I. We find four distinct periods in the pictorial art of the Netherlands, and, through a remarkable coinci dence, each corresponds to a distinct historic period. Here, as everywhere, art translates life ; the talent and taste of the painter change at the same time and in the same sense as the habits and sentiments of the public. Just as each profound geological revolution brings with it its own fauna and flora, so does each great transformation of society and intellect bring with it its ideal figures. In this respect our galleries of art resemble museums, the imaginary creations they contain being, like living organisms, both the fruit and the index of their surroundings. The first period of art lasts about a century and a half, and extends from Hubert Van Eyck to Quintin Matsys (1400-1530). It issues from a renaissance, that is to say, from a great development of pros perity, wealth and intellect. Here, as in Italy, the cities at an early period are flourishing, and almost free. I have already stated to you that in the thir- 240 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART teenth century serfdom was abolished in Flanders, and that the guilds to manufacture salt " for the pur pose of bringing under cultivation marshy grounds," ascend to the Roman epoch. From the seventh and ninth centuries, Bruges, Antwerp and Ghent are " ports," or privileged markets ; they carry on com merce on a large scale ; they fit out cruisers for the whale fishery ; they serve as the entrepots of the North and the South. Prosperous people, well sup plied with arms and provisions, accustomed through association and activity to foresight and enterprise, are better qualified to protect themselves than mis erable serfs scattered about in defenceless villages. Their great populous cities with narrow streets, and a saturated soil intersected with deep canals, are not a suitable ground for the cavalry of barons.* Hence it is that the feudal net, so close and so tightly drawn over all Europe, had, in Flanders, to enlarge its meshes. In vain did the Count appeal for aid to his suzerain, the French king, and urge his Burgun dian chivalry against the cities ; overcome at Mons- en-Puelle, at Cassel, at Rosebecque, at Othee, at * Battle of Courtenay, 1302. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 241 Gavre, at Brusthem, at Liege, they always recover themselves, and from revolt to revolt preserve the best portion of their liberties, even under the prin ces of the house of Austria. The fourteenth century is the heroic and tragic epoch of Flanders. She pos sesses brewers like Arteveldt, who are tribunes, dic tators and captains, and who end life on the field of battle or are assassinated ; civil war is mixed up witb foreign war ; people fight from city to city, trade against trade, and man to man ; there are fourteen hundred murders in Ghent in one year ; the stores of energy are so great that she survives all ills and sustains all efforts. Men seek death twenty thousand at a time, and fall in heaps before lances without giving an inch. " Banish all hope of returning with out honor," said the citizens of Ghent to the five thousand volunteers under Philip Van Arteveldt, for " so soon that we hear that you are dead or discom fited we shall fire the city and destroy ourselves with our own hands."* In 1384, in the country of the Four Trades, prisoners refused their lives, declar ing that after death their bones would rise up against . * Froissart. 11 2)2 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART the French. Fifty years later, around rebellious Ghent, the peasantry " chose death rather than ask quarter, declaring that they would perish as martyrs in a fair fight." In these swarming hives an abun dance of food and habits of personal activity main tain courage, turbulence, audacity and even inso lence, all excesses of brutal and boundless energy ; these weavers were men, and when we encounter man we may expect soon to encounter the arts. An interval of prosperity at this time was suffi cient ; under this ray of sunshine the flowering thus maturing is perfected. At the end of the fourteenth century Flanders, with Italy, is the most industri ous, the wealthiest and most flourishing country in Europe.* In 1370 there are thirty-two hundred woollen factories at Malines and on its territory. One of its merchants carries on an immense trade With Damascus and Alexandria. Another, of Valen ciennes, being at Paris during the fair, monopolizes all provisions exposed for sale with a view to dis play his opulence. Ghent in 1389 has one hundred and eighty-nine thousand men bearing arms ; the * Michiei'e " Historie de la Peinture Flaraando," Vol. II. p. a IN THE NETHERLANDS. 243 drapers alone furnish eighteen thousand men in a revolt ; the weavers form twenty-seven sections, and at the sound of the great bell, fifty-two corporations under their own banners rush to the market-place. In 1380 the goldsmiths of Bruges are numerous enough to form in war time an entire division of the army. A little later QSnius Sylvius states that she is one of the three most beautiful cities in the world ; a canal four leagues and a half in length joins her to the sea; a hundred vessels a day pass through it. Bruges was then what London is at the present time. Political matters at this period attain to a sort of equilibrium. The Duke of Burgundy finds himself by inheritance, in 1384, sovereign of Flan ders. The grandeur of his possessions and the mul tiplication of civil wars during the minority and madness of Charles VI. divorce him from France ; he is no longer, like the ancient counts, a dependant of the king, domiciliated in Paris and soliciting aid to reduce and tax his Flemish merchants. His power and the misfortunes of France render him independent. Although a prince he belongs, in Paris, to the popular party and the butchers shout 241 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART for him. Although a Frenchman his politics are Flemish, and when not in alliance with the English he negotiates with them. In the matter of money he certainly quarrels with his Flemings more than once, and is obliged to kill a good many of them But to one who is familiar with the disturbances and violence of the middle ages, the order and harmony which is then established seem sufficient; at all events they are greater than ever before. Hence forth, as at Florence about the year 1400, authority becomes recognized and society organized; hence forth, as in Italy about the year 1400, man aban dons the ascetic and ecclesiastic regime that he may interest himself in nature and enjoy life. The ancient compression is relaxed ; he begins to prize strength, health, beauty and pleasure. On all sides we see the mediaeval spirit undergoing change and disintegra tion. An elegant and refined architecture converts stone into lace, festooning churches with pinnacles, trefoils and intricate mullions, and in such a fashion that the honey-combed, gilded and flowering edifice becomes a vast and romantic casket, a product of fancy rather than of faith, less calculated to excite IN THE NETHERLANDS. 245 piety than wonder. In like manner chivalry becomes a mere parade. The nobles frequent the Valois court, devote themselves to pleasure, to " pretty con ceits " and especially to the " conceits of love." In Chaucer and in Froissart we are spectators of their pomp — their tourneys, their processions and their banquets, of the new reign of frivolity and fashion, of the creations of an infatuated and licentious ima gination, of their extravagant and overcharged cos tumes — robes twelve ells long, tight hose and Bohe mian jackets with sleeves falling to the ground, shoes terminating in the claws, horns and tail of the scor pion, suits embroidered with letters, animals, and with musical notes enabling one to read and sing a song on the owner's back, hoods adorned with golden garlands and with animals, robes covered with sapphires, rubies and jewelled swallows, each holding in its beak a golden cup ; one costume has fourteen hundred of these cups, and we find nine hun dred and sixty pearls used in embroidering a song on a coat. Women in magnificently ornamented veils, the breast nude, the head crowned with huge cones and crescents, and dressed in gaudy robes covered 246 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART with the figures of unicorns, lions and savages, plac« themselves on seats representing small sculptured and gilded cathedrals. The life of the court and of princes seems a carnival. When Charles VL is knighted a hall is prepared in the abbey of St. Denis, thirty-two toises (about two hundred feet) long, hung in white and green, with a lofty pavilion of tapestry : here, after three days of feasting and jousting, a nocturnal masked ball ends in an orgie. "Many a damsel forgot herself, many were the husbands who suffered," and, in contrast to this, showing the sentiments of the age, they cele brate the funeral of Duguesclin at the end of it. In the accounts and chronicles of the period we follow the course of a broad, golden stream, flowing, glistening, ostentatious and interminable, that is to say, the domestic history of the king and queen and the dukes of Orleans and Burgundy ; there is noth ing but entries into cities, cavalcades, masks, dances, voluptuous caprices, and the prodigality of the newly enriched. The Burgundian and French chevaliers who go to contend with Bagazet at Nicopolis equip themselves as if for a party of pleasure; their baa IN THE NETHERLANDS. 217 ners and the trappings of their horses are loaded with gold and silver, their dishes are all of silver plate and their tents are of green satin ; exquisite wines follow them in boats on the Danube, and t'.eir camps are filled with courtesans. This excess of animal spirits, which, in France, is mingled with morbid curiosity and lugubrious fancies, breaks out in Burgundy into a grand and jolly kermesse. Philip the Good has three legitimate wives, twenty-four mistresses, and sixteen bastards ; he attends to all, feasting, making merry and admitting the towns- women to his court ; seeming at the outset to be one of Jordaens' characters. A Count of Cleves has sixty-three bastards ; the chroniclers in their narra tion of ceremonies constantly and gravely mention those of both sexes; the institution appears to be official : seeing them swarming in this manner, we are reminded of the buxom nurses of Rubens and the Gangamelles of Rabelais. " It was," says a con temporary, " a great pity, this sin of luxury which prevailed far and wide, and especially amongst prin ces and the wedded. . . He was the gentlest com panion who was able to deceive and possess at ths 248 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART same time more than one woman ... and even there prevailed likewise the sin of luxury among the prel ates of the Church and among aU Church people."* Jacques de Croy, archbishop of Cambray, officiated pontifically with his thirty-six bastards and bas tards' sons, and kept in reserve a sum of money for those to come. At the third marriage of Philip the Good the gala seems to be a Gamache's wedding commanded by Gargantua ; the streets of Bruges were hung with tapestry ; for eight days and eight nights a stone lion spurted Rhine wine, while a stone stag discharged Beaune Burgundy; at meal times an unicorn poured forth rosewater or malvoisie. On the entry of the Dauphin into the city, eight hun dred merchants of divers nations advanced to meet him, all in garments of silk and velvet. At another ceremonial the duke appears with a saddle and bri dle covered with precious stones ; " nine pages cov ered with plumes of jewels " followed behind him, * "C'e'tait grand' pitie que le peche" de luxare qui regnait moult ct fort, et par especial esprinces 6t gens mariee. Et fitait le plus gentil compagnon qui plus d'une femme savait tromper et avoir au moment . . . et memo regnait icelui pechfi de luxure es prelate de l'Eglise et en tons gens d'Eglise." IN THE NETHERLANDS. 249 and " one of the said pages bore a salad wThich was stated to be of the value of one hundred thousand gold crowns." Another time the jewels worn by the duke are estimated at a million. I wish to describe one of these f§tes to you; like those of Florence at the same epoch they bear witness to tha picturesque and decorative tastes which here as in Florence produced pictorial art. One of them took place at Lille under Philip the Good, the Festival of the Pheasant, which may be compared with the tri umph of Lorenzo de Medici ; you will observe here in a hundred naive details the resemblances and the differences of the two societies, and accordingly of their culture, their taste and their art. The Duke of Cleves had given a " superb banquet" at Lille, at which were present " Monseigneur," (of Burgundy) " together with the lords, ladies and dam sels of his house." At this banquet there was seen on the table an " entremets," that is to say, a decora tion representing " a ship with lifted sails, in which was a knight erect and armed .... and before it a silver swan, bearing on his neck a gold collar, to which hung a long chain, with which the said swan 11* 250 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART appeared to draw the vessel, and on the back of the said vessel stood a castle most skilfully contrived." On this allegorical machine the Duke of Cleves, Knight of the Swan, and " slave of the fair," caused proclamation to be made that he might be encoun tered in the lists, "armed in jousting harness and in war saddle, and that he who should do the best would gain a rich golden swan, chained with a chain of gold, and on the end of this chain a magnificent ruby." Ten days after this the Count d'Etampes gave the second act of the fairy spectacle. Bear in mind that the second as well as the first act with all the others began with a feast. In this court life is gross, and people never tire of bumpers. " When the ' entre mets' were removed there issued from an apartment a multitude of torches, and after these there appeared an armed attendant clad in his coat of mail, and after him two knights clad in long velvet robes furred with sable, with no covering to the head, each one bearing in his hand a gay hood of flowers ; " after them, on a palfrey caparisoned in blue silk, " a most beautiful lady appeared, young, of the age of twelve years, attired in a robe of violet silk, richly embroi IN THE NETHERLANDS. 251 dered and padded with gold," she is " the princess of joy." Three squires clothed in vermilion silk lead her up to the duke, singing a song as they intro duce her. She descends, and kneeling on the tablo she places on his brow a crown of flowers. At this moment the joust is proclaimed, the drums beat, a pursuivant-at-arms appears in a mailed suit covered with swans, and then enters the Duke of Cl&ves, Knight of the Swan, richly armed, seated on a horse caparisoned in white damask and fringed with gold ; he leads by a gold chain a large swan accompanied by two mounted archers ; behind him march children on horseback, grooms, knights armed with lances, all, like himself, in white damask fringed with gold. Toison d'Or, the herald, presents them to the duch ess. The other knights then defile before her on their horses, decked with gray and crimson cloth of gold, cloth decked with small golden bells, crimson velvet trimmed with sable, violet velvet fringed with gold and silk, and black velvet studded with golden tear-drops. Suppose that the great personages of state of the present day should amuse themselves with dressing up like actors at the opera and in 252 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART making passes like circus-riders ! The oddity of such a supposition enables you to appreciate the liveliness of the picturesque instinct at that day, as well as the taste for outward display and the feeble ness of both at present. These, however, were only preludes. Eight days after the tourney the Duke of Burgundy gave his fes tival, which surpassed all the others. A vast haU, hung with tapestry representing the career of Her cules, had five doors, guarded by archers dressed in robes of gray and black cloth. Around the sides extended five platforms or galleries, occupied by for eign spectators, noble personages and ladies, most of these being disguised. In their midst arose "a lofty buffet, loaded with vessels of gold and silver, and crystal vases garnished with gold and precious stones." And erect, in the centre of the hall, stood a great pillar, bearing " a female image with hair falling to her loins, her head covered with a very rich hat, and her breast spouting hypocras so long as the supper lasted." Three gigantic tables were arranged, each one being adorned with several " entremets," so many huge machines reminding one, on a grand IN THE NETHERLANDS. 253 scale, of the toy presents given nowadays to the children of the wealthy. The men of this time, in deed, in curiosity and in flights of the imagination re nothing but children; their strongest desire is to amuse the eye ; they sport with life as with a magic lantern. The two principal "entremets" con sist of a monstrous pie, containing twenty-eight per sons, " alive," playing on musical instruments, also a " church with windows and glass, provided with four choristers and a ringing bell." Besides these there were twenty more, — a great castle, its fosses filled with orange-water, and on a tower the fairy Melu- sina ; a windmill with archers and cross-bowmen fir ing at mark ; a cask in a vineyard with two fluids, one bitter and the other sweet ; a vast desert with a lion and serpent contending ; a savage on a camel ; a clown prancing on a bear amidst rocks and glaciers; a lake surrounded by cities and castles ; a carrack at anchor, bearing rigging, masts and seamen ; a beau* tiful fountain of earth and lead, with small trees of glass in leaf and blooming, and a St. Andrew with his cross; a fountain of rose-water, representing a naked infant in the attitude of the " Mannekenpiss " 254 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART of Brussels. You would imagine yourself in a var iety store at New Year time. This pele-mele of mo tionless decoration did not suffice ; over and above this an active parade was necessary ; we see defiling in turn a dozen of interludes, and in the intervals the church and the pie keep busy the ears at the same time as the eyes of the guests ; the beU rings with all its might ; a shepherd plays on a bag-pipe ; Uttle children sing a song ; organs, German cornets, trum pets, glees, flutes, a lute with voices, drums, hunting horns and the yelping of hounds succeed each other. Meanwhile a rearing horse appears, richly covered with vermilion silk, mounted by two trumpeters " seated backward and without saddle," led by six teen knights in long robes ; then a hobgoblin, half man, half griffon, who, mounted on a boar and car rying a man, advances with a target and two darts ; then a large white mechanical stag, harnessed in silk, with golden horns, and bearing on his back a child in a short dress of crimson velvet, who sings while the stag performs the bass. All these figures make the circuit of the table, while the last invention sspecially delights the company. A flying dragon IN THE NETHERLANDS. 255 passes through the air, his fiery scales lighting up the recesses of the gothic ceiling. A heron and two falcons are loosed, and the vanquished bird is presented to the Duke. Trumpets sound a blast behind a curtain, which curtain being withdrawn discloses Jason reading a letter from Medea, then combating the bulls, then killing the serpent, then ploughing the ground and sowing the monster's teeth from which arises a crop of armed men. At this point the interest of the f§t6 deepens. It becomes a romance of chivalry, a scene from Amadis, or one of Don Quixote's dreams in action. A giant arrives bearing a pike and turban and leading an elephant caparisoned in silk with a castle on his back, and in this castle a lady attired as a nun and repre senting the Holy Church; she orders a halt, pro claims her name, and summons the company to the crusade. Thereupon Toison d'Or, wLh his officers of arms, fetches a live pheasant wearing a golden collar decked with precious stones; the Duke swears upon the pheasant to succor Christendom against the Turk, and all the knights do likewise, each ir a document of the style of Galaor, and this is the 256 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART pheasant's vow. The fete terminates with a mystic and moral ball. At the sound of instruments and by the light of torches a lady in white, bearing the name of the " Grace of God " on her shoulder, ap proaches the Duke, recites a stanza and, on .retir ing, leaves with him the twelve virtues — Faith, Charity, Justice, Reason, Temperance, Strength, Truth, Liberality, Diligence, Hope and Valor — each led by a knight in a crimson pourpoint, the sleeves of which are of satin embroidered with foliage and jewelry. They betake themselves to dancing with their knights, crowning the Count of Charolais the victor in the lists, and, upon the announcement of a new tourney, the ball ends at three o'clock in the morning. Really there is too much of it; the mind and the senses both flag ; these people in the way of diversions are gluttons and not epicureans. This uproar and this profusion of quaint conceits shows us a rude society, a race of the North, an incipient civilization still infantile and barbarous ; the grandeur and simpUcity of Italian taste i» wanting in these contemporaries of the Medicis, And yet the groundwork of their habits and imag IN THE NETHERLANDS. 251 mation is the same ; here, as with the chariots and pomp of the Florentine carnival, the legends, his tory and philosophy of the middle ages take shape moral abstractions assume visible form ; the vir tues become actual women; they are accordingly tempted to paint and sculpture them ; all decoration, in effect, consists of reliefs and paintings. The symbolic age gives way to the picturesque age ; the intellect is no longer content with a scholastic entity ; it seeks to contemplate a living form, the human mind finding it necessary for its complete ness to be translated to the eye by a work of art. But this work of art bears no resemblance to that of Italy for the reason that the culture and direction of the intellect are different ; this is evident in read ing the simple and dull verses recited by the " Holy Church " and the " Virtues," an empty, senile poetry, the worn-out babble of the trouveres, a rattle of rhymed phrases in which the rythm is as flimsy as the idea. The Netherlands never had a Dante, a Petrarch, a Boccaccio, a Villain. The mind, less precocious and further removed from Latin tradi tions, remained a longer time subject to mediaeval 258 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART discipline and inertia. There were no sceptical Averrhoeists and physicians like those described by Petrarch; there were no humanist restorers of ancient literature, almost pagans, like those who sur rounded Lorenzo de Medici. Christian faith and sentiment are much more active and tenacious here than in Venice or in Florence. They continue to subsist under the sensual pomp of the Burgundian court. If there are epicureans in social matters there are none in theory ; the most gallant serve religion, as the ladies, through a principle of honor. In 1396 seven hundred seigniors of Burgundy and France enlist in the crusade ; all, save twenty-seven die at Nicopolis, and Boucicaut calls them " blessed and happy martyrs." You have just witnessed the buf foonery of Lille which ended in a solemn vow to war with the infidels. Here and there scattered traits show the persistency of the primitive devotion. In 1477, in the neighboring town of Nuremburg, Mar tin Kcetzel, a pilgrim in Palestine, counts the steps between Golgotha and the house of Pilate, that he may, on his return, build seven stations and a cal vary between his own house and the cemetery of his 22V THE NETHERLANDS. 250 native town ; losing his measure he repeats the jour ney, and this time has the work executed by the sculptor, Adam Kraft. In the Low Countries, as in Germany, the middle class, a sedate and somewhat dull people, restricted to their own narrow circle and attached to ancient usages, preserve much better than court-seigniors the faith and the fervor of the middle ages. Their literature bears witness to this. The moment it takes an original turn, that is to say from the end of the thirteenth century, it furnishes ample testimony to the practical, civic and bourgeois spirit, with abundant evidences of pious fervor ; on the one hand appear moral maxims, pictures of do mestic life, and historic and political poems relating to recent and true occurences ; on the other, lyric laudation of the Virgin, and mystic and tender poetic effusions.* In fine, the national genius, which is Germanic, incUnes much more to faith than to incre dulity. Through the Lollards and the mystics of the middle ages, also through the iconoclasts and the innumerable martyrs of the sixteenth century, it turns in the direction of Protestant ideas. Left to * Hone Belgicae. 200 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART itself it would have developed not, as in Italy, into a pagan renaissance, but, as in Germany, into a recrudescence ol Christianity. The art, moreover, which, of all the others, best reveals the cravings of the popular imagination, architecture, remains gothic and Christian up to the end of the sixteenth century; Italian and classic importations do not affect it ; the style gets to be complicated and effem inate, but the art does not change. It prevails not only in the churches but in laic edifices ; the town- halls of Bruges, Louvain, Brussels, Liege and Au denarde show to what extent it was cherished not only by the priesthood but by the nation; the people remained faithful to it to the end : the town- hall of Audenarde was begun seven years after the death of Raphael. In 1536, in the hands of a Flem ish woman, Margaret of Austria, the church of Brou, the latest and prettiest flower of gothic art, bloomed out in its perfection. Sum up all these indications and consider, in the protraiture of the day, the personages themselves,* the donors, abb6s> *See in the Mus6es of Antwerp, Brussels and Bruges, the triptych* whose doors present entire families of the period. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 2G1 burgomasters, townspeople and matrons, so grave and so simple in their Sunday clothes and spotless Unen, with their rigid air and their expression of deep and settled faith, and you will recognize that here the sixteenth century renaissance took place within religious limits, that man in making the pres ent life more attractive never lost sight of that to come, and that his picturesque invention is the man ifestation of a vivacious Christianity instead of ex pressing, as in Italy, a restored paganism. A Flemish renaissance underneath Christian ideas, such, in effect, is the two-fold nature of art under Hubert and John Van Eyck, Roger Van der Weyde, Hemling and Quintin Matsys ; and from these two characteristics proceed all the others. On the one hand, artists take interest in actual life ; their figures are no longer . symbols like the illuminations of ancient missals, nor purified spirits like the Madon nas of the school of Cologne, but living beings and bodies. They attend to anatomy, the perspective is exact, the minutest details are rendered of stuffs, of architecture, of accessories and of landscape; the relief is strong, and the entire scene stamps itself on 262 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART the eye and on the mind with extraordinary force and sense of stability ; the greatest masters of com- ing times are not to surpass them in all this, nor even go so far. Nature evidently is now discovered by them. The scales fall from their eyes ; they have just mastered, almost in a flash, the proportions, the structure and the coloring of visible realities ; and moreover, they delight in them. Consider the superb copes wrought in gold and decked with diamonds, the embroidered silks, the flowered and dazzling diadems with which they ornament their saints and divine personages,* all of which represents the pomp of the Burgundian court. Look at the calm and transparent water, the bright meadows, the red and white flowers, the blooming trees, the sunny distan ces of their admirable landscapes.f Observe their coloring — the strongest and richest ever seen, the pure and full tones side by side as in a Persian car pet, and united solely through their harmony, the * " God the Father, and the Virgin," by Hubert van Eyck. " The Vir gin, St. Barbara and St. Catherine," by Memling, and "The Entomb. ment," by Quintin Matsys. t " St. Christopher," "The Baptism of Jesus," by Memling and his school. " The Adoration of tlie Lamb," by the Van fiycks. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 263 superb breaks in the folds of purple mantles, the azure recesses of long falling robes, the green dra peries like a summer field permeated with sunshine, the display of gold skirts trimmed with black, the strong light which warms and enlivens the whole scene ; yju have a concert in which each instrument sounds its proper note, and the more true because the more sonorous. They see the world on the bright side and make a hoUday of it, a genuine f&te, similar to those of this day, glowing under a more bounteous sunlight and not a heavenly Jerusalem suffused with supernatural radiance such as Fra Angelico painted. They are Flemings, and they stick to the earth. They copy the real with scrupu lous accuracy, and all that is real — the ornaments of armor, the polished glass of a window, the scrolls of a carpet, the hairs of fur,* the undraped body of an Adam and an Eve, a canon's massive, wrinkled and obese features, a burgomaster's or soldier's broad shoulders, projecting chin and prominent nose, the * See " The Madonna and St. George," by Jan Van Eyck, the An twerp triptych of Qui ntin Matsys, etc. The " Adam and Evo," of IIu ber*, Van Eyck at Brussels, and " The Adoration of the Lamb." 264 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART spindling shanks of a hangman, the over large head and diminutive limbs of a child, the costumes and furniture of the age ; their entire work being a glori fication of this present life. But, on the other hand, it is a glorification of Christian belief. Not only are their subjects almost all of a religious order, but again they are imbued with a religious sentiment which, in the following age, is not to be found in the same scenes. Their best pictures represent no actual event in sacred history but a verity of faith, a sum mary of doctrine. Hubert Van Eyck regards paint ing in the same light as Simone Memmi, or Taddeo Gaddi, that is to say, as an exposition of higher the ology ; his figures and his accessories may be realis tic, but they are likewise symbolic. The cathedral in which Roger Van der Weyde portrays the seven sacraments is at once a material church and a spir itual church ; Christ appears bleeding on his cross, while at the same time the priest is performing mass at the altar. The chamber or portico in which John Van Eyck and Memling place their kneeling saints is an illusion in its detail and finish, but the Virgin on her throne and the angels who crown her show IN THE NETHERLANDS 265 the believer that he is in a superior realm. A hie rarchical symmetry groups personages and stiffens attitudes. With Hubert Van Eyck the eye is fixed and the face impassible ; it is the eternal immobility of divine life ; in heaven all is fulfilled and time is no more. In other instances, as with Memling, there is the quietude of absolute faith, the peace of mind preserved in the cloister as in a sleeping forest, the immaculate purity, mournful sweetness, the infinite trust of the truly pious nun absorbed with her own reveries, and whose large open eyes look out upon vacancy. These paintings, in turn, are subjects for the altar or private chapel ; they do not appeal like those of later ages to grand seigniors whose church- going consists of mere routine, and who crave, even in religious history, pagan pomp and the torsos of wrestlers ; they appeal to the faithful, in order to suggest to them the form of the supernatural world or the emotions of fervid piety, to show them the im mutable serenity of beatified saints and the tender humility of the elect ; Ruysbroeck, Eckart, Tauler and Henry de Suzo, the theological mystics of Ger many antecedent to Luther, might here resort. It ie 12 266 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART a strange sight, and one which does not seem to accord with the sensuous parade of the court and the sumptuous entries of the cities. We find a similar contrast between the profound religious sentiment of the Madonnas of Albert Diirer and the worldly splendor of his " House of Maximilian." The reason is, we are in a Germanic country ; the renaissance of general prosperity and the emancipation of the intellect which results from it here revive Christian ity instead of destroying it as in a Latin country. IN THE NETHERLANDS 267 II. When a great change is effected in human affairs it brings on by degrees a corresponding change in human conceptions. After the discovery of the In dies and of America, after the invention of printing and the multiplication of books, after the restoration of classic antiquity and the Reformation of Luther. any conception of the world then formed could no longer remain monastic and mystic. The tender and melancholy aspiration of a soul sighing for the celes tial kingdom and humbly subjecting its conduct to the authority of an undisputed Church gave way to free inquiry nourished on so many fresh conceptions, and disappeared at the admirable spectacle of this real world which man now began to comprehend and to conquer. The rhetorical academies -which, at first, were composed of a clerical body passed into the hands of the laity ; they had preached the payment of tithes and submission to the Church ; they now ridi culed the clergy and combated ecclesiastical abuses, 268 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART In 1533 nine citizens of Amsterdam were condemned to a pilgrimage to Rome for having represented one of these satirical pieces. In 1539, at Ghent, the question having been proposed of : Who are the greatest fools in the world ? eleven out of nineteen academies reply : The monks. " A few poor monks and nuns," says a contemporary, " always appear in the comedies ; it seems as if people could not enjoy themselves without making sport of God and the Church." Philip II. had decreed the punishment of death against authors and actors whose pieces were not authorized or were impious. But they were per formed, nevertheless, even in the villages. " The word of God," says the same author, " first found its way into these countries through plays, and for this reason they are forbidden much more rigidly than the writings of Martin Luther." * It is evident that the mind had become emancipated from ancient tutelage, and that people and burghers, artizans and * In 1539 Louvain proposes this question : "What is thc greatest con solation to a dying man?" Thc responses all have a Lutheran cast. Tho Academy or St. Wynockbcrge, bearing off the second prize, answers, according to the doctrine of pine grace : " The faith that Christ and hli Spirit have been givi-n to 11*." IN THE NETHERLANDS. 269 merchants began to think for themselves on matters of salvation and morality. The extraordinary wealth and prosperity of the country lead to picturesque and sensuous customs ; here, as in England at the same epoch, a renais sance pomp overlays a silent Protestant fermenta tion. When Charles V., in 1520, made his entry into the city of Antwerp, Albert Dtlrer saw four hundred triumphal arches, two stories high and forty feet long, decorated with paintings on which alle gorical representations were given. The performers consisted of young girls belonging to the best bour geois class, clothed simply in thin gauze, " almost naked," says the honest German artist, — "I have rarely seen inore beautiful. I gazed at them very attentively, and even passionately, inasmuch as I am a painter." The festivals of the belle-lettre acade mies become magnificent ; cities and communities rival each other in luxurious allegorical creations. At the invitation of the violinists of Antwerp fourteen academies, in 1562, send their " triumphs," and the academy called the Guirlande de Marie, at Brussels, obtains the prize. " For," says Van Meteren, " there 270 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART were full three hundred and forty men on horseback, all dressed in velvet and in dark purple silk, with long Polish cassocks embroidered with silver lace, and wearing red hats fashioned like antique hel mets; their pourpoints, plumes and bootees were white. They wore belts of silver tocque, very in geniously woven with yellow, red, blue and white. They had seven chariots made after the antique pattern, with divers personages borne thereon. They had, beside, seventy-eight ordinary chariots with torches ; the said chariots were covered with red cloth bordered with white. The charioteers all wore red mantles, and on these chariots were divers personages representing a number of beautiful an tique figures, all of which goes to show how people will assemble in friendship to share in amity." La Pwne de Malines provides a parade almost equal to this consisting of three hundred and twenty men on horseback, attired in a flesh-colored material em broidered with gold, seven antique chariots embla zoned and flaming with all sorts of lights. Add to this the entry of twelve other processions, and then enumerate the plays, pantomines, fireworks and ban- IN THE NETHERLANDS. 271 quets which follow after. " There were several simi lar games given during the peace in other cities. I have deemed it proper to narrate all this," says Van Meteren, "for the purpose of showing the happy union and prosperity of those countries in those days." After the departure of Philip II., " instead of one court there seemed to be a hundred and fifty." The nobles vied with each other in magnificence, maintaining free tables and spending without stint. On one occasion the Prince of Orange, washing to diminish his train, discharged in a body twenty- eight head cooks. Lordly mansions swarmed with pages and gentlemen and superb liveries; the full tide of the renaissance overflowed in folly and extravagance, as under Elizabeth in England, in pompous array, cavalcades, games and good cheer. The Count of Brederode drank so much at one of St. Martin's feasts that he came near dying ; the rhinegrave's brother did actually die at the table through too great fondness of Malvoisie wine. Never did life seem more bright or beautiful. Like Flor ence under the Medicis in the preceding century, it ceased to be tragic ; man had expanded ; murderous 272 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART revolts and sanguinary wars between city and city and corporation and corporation quietly subsided- only one sedition takes place in Ghent in 1536 which is easily quelled without much bloodshed, the last and a feeble convulsion, not to be compared with the formidable insurrections of the fifteenth century. Margaret of Austria, Mary of Hungary, and Mar garet of Parma, the three rulers, are popular; Charles V. is a national prince, speaking Flemish, boasting of his nativity in Ghent, and protecting, by treaties, the manufactures and trade of the country. He fosters and nourishes it; Flanders, in return, supplies him with the half of his entire revenue;* in his herd of states she is the fat milch cow which is milked constantly without being dried up. Thus, while the mind is expanding, the temperature around it becomes modified and establishes the conditions of a new growth ; we see the dawn of it in the festi vals of the belle-lettre academies, which are classic representations precisely like those of the Florence carnival and quite different from the quaint conceits accumulated at the banquets of the Dukes of Bur * Two million of crowns of gold out of five million. IN THE NETHERLANDS. iTA gundy. "The 'Violet,' 'Olive' and 'Thought' academies of Antwerp," says Guiccardini, "give public performances of comedies, tragedies and othe> histories in imitation of the Greeks and Romans.' Society, ideas and tastes have undergone a transfor mation, and there is room for a new art. Already in the preceding epoch we see premon itory symptoms of the comifig change. From Hubert Van Eyck to Quintin Matsys the grandeur and gravity of religious conceptions have dimin ished. Nobody now dreams of portraying the whole of Christian faith and doctrine in a single picture ; scenes are selected from the Gospel and from history — annunciations, shepherd adorations, last judgments, martyrdoms and moral legends. Painting, which is epic in the hands of Hubert Van Eyck, becomes idyllic in those of Hemling and almost Worldly in those of Quintin Matsys. It gets to be pathetic, interesting and pleasing. The charming saints, the beautiful Herodias and the athe Salome of Quintin Matsys are richly attired noble dames and already laic ; the artist loves the world as it is and for itself, and does not subordinate 12* 874 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART it to the representation of the supernatural world he does not employ it as a means but as an end. Scenes of profane life multiply; he paints towns people in their shops; money-changers, amorous couples, and the attenuated features and stealthy smiles of a miser. Lucas of Leyden, his contempo rary, is an ancestor of the painters whom we call the lesser Flemings; his "Presentation of Christ" and "The Magdalen's Dance" have nothing relig ious about them but their titles; the evangelical subject is lost in the accessories; that which the picture truly presents is a rural Flemish festival, or a gathering of Flemings on an open field. Jerome Bosch, of the same period, paints grotesque, infernal scenes. Art, it is clear, falls from heaven to earth, and is no longer to treat divine but human incidents. Artists, in other respects, lack no process and no preparation ; they understand perspective, they know the use of oil, and are masters of modelling and relief; they have studied actual types; they know how to paint dresses, accessories, architecture and landscape with wonderful accuracy and finish ; their manipulative skill is admirable. One defect IN THE NETHERLANDS. 275 only still chains them to hieratic art, which is the immobility of their faces and the rigid folds of theii stuffs. They have but to observe the rapid play of physiognomies and the easy movement of loose dra pery, and the renaissance is complete ; the breeze of the age is behind them and already fills their, sails. On looking at their portraits, their interiors, and even their sacred personages, as in the " En tombment " of Quintin Matsys, one is tempted to address them thus : " You are alive — one effort more ! Come, bestir yourselves 1 Shake off the middle age entirely ! Depict the modern man for us as you find him within you and outside of you. Paint him vigorous, healthy and content with exis tence. Forget the meagre, ascetic and pensive spirit, dreaming in the chapels of Hemling. If you choose a religious scene for the motive of your pic ture, compose it, like the Italians, of active and healthy figures, only let these figures proceed from your national and personal taste. You have a soul of your own, which is Flemish and not Italian ; let the flower bloom ; judging by the bud it wUl be a beautiful one." And, indeed, when we regard the 276 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART sculptures of the time, such as the chimney of tha Palais de Justice and the tomb of Charles the Bold at Bruges, the church and monuments of Brou, we see the promise of an original and complete art, less sculptural and less refined than the ItaUan, but more varied, more expressive and closer to nature, less subject to rule but nearer to the real, more capable of manifesting spirit and personality, the impulses, the unpremeditated, the diversities, the lights and darks of education, temperament and age of the individual ; in short, a Germanic art which indicates remote successors to the Van Eycks and remote predecessors of Rubens. They never appeared, or at all events, they imper fectly fulfilled their task. No nation, it must be noted, lives alone in the world; alongside of the Flemish renaissance there existed the ItaUan renais sance, and the large tree stifled the small plant. It flourished and grew for a century; the literature, the ideas and the masterpieces of precocious Italy imposed themselves on sluggish Europe, and the Flemish cities, through their commerce, and the Aus trian dynasty, through its possessions and its Italian IN THE NETHERLANDS. 277 affairs, introduced into the North the tastes and mod els of the new civilization. Towards 1520 the Flem ish painters began to borrow from the artists of Florence and Rome. John of Mabuse is the first one who, in 1513, on returning from Italy, introduced the Italian into the old style, and the rest followed. It is so natural in advancing into an unexplored country to take the path already marked out ! This path, however, is not made for those who follow it; the long line of Flemish carts is to be delayed and stuck fast in the disproportionate ruts which another set of wheels have 'worn. There are two traits char acteristic of Italian art, both of which run counter to the Flemish imagination. On the one hand Italian art centres on the natural body, healthy, active and vigorous, endowed with every athletic aptitude, that is to say, naked or semi-draped, frankly pagan, en joying freely and nobly in full sunshine every littib, instinct and animal faculty, the same as an ancient Greek in his city or palestrum, or, as at this very epoch, a Cellini on the Italian streets and highways. Now a Fleming does not easily enter into this con ception. He belongs to a cold and humid climate ; a 278 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART man there in a state of nudity shivers. The human form here does not display the fine proportions not the easy attitudes required by classic art ; it is often dumpy or too gross ; the white, soft, yielding flesh, easily flushed, requires to be clothed. When the painter returns from Rome and strives to pursue Ital ian art, his surroundings oppose his education ; his sentiment being no longer renewed through his con tact with living nature, he is reduced to his souvenirs. Moreover, he is of Germanic race ; in other terms he is organically a morally good-natured man, and even modest ; he has difficulty in appreciating the pagan idea of nudity, and still greater difficulty in compre hending the fatal and magnificent idea * which gov erns civilization and stimulates the arts beyond the Alps, namely, that of the complete and sovereign individual, emancipated from every law, subordina ting the rest, men and things, to the development of his own nature and the growth of his own faculties. Our painter is related, although distantly, to Martin * Burckhardt's " Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien," an admirable work, the most complete and most philosophic yet writ ten on the Italian Renaissance. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 279 Schoen and Albert Dtlrer; he is a bourgeois, almost docile and staid, a lover of the comfortable and the decent, and adapted to family and domestic life. His biographer, Karl Van Mander, at the beginning of his book, furnishes him with moral precepts. Read this patriarchal treatise, and imagine the distance between a Rosso, a Giulio Romano, a Titian and a Giorgione, and their pupils of Leyden or Antwerp. " All vices," says the good Fleming, " bring their own punishment. Distrust the maxim that the best painter is he who is the most dissipated. Unworthy of the name of artist is he who leads an evil Ufe. Painters should never dispute or enter into strife with each other. To squander one's property is not a mer itorious art. Avoid paying court to women in your youthful days. Shun the society of frivolous women, who corrupt so many painters. Reflect before you depart for Rome, for the opportunities to spend money there are great, and none are there for earn ing it. Ever be thankful to God for His bounties." Special recommendations follow concerning ItaUan inns, bed linen and fleas. It is evident that pupils of this class, even with great labor, will produce bu< 280 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART Uttle more than academic figures ; man, according to their conceptions, is a draped body; when, fol lowing the example of the Italian masters, they at tempt the nude, they render it without freedom, without spirit, without vivacity of invention ; theii pictures, in fact, are simply cold and meagre imita tion ; their motive is pedantic ; they execute ser vilely and badly that which, in Italy, is done nat urally and well. On the other hand, Italian art, like Greek art, and, in general, aU classic art, simplifies in order to embellish ; it eliminates, effaces, and re duces detail ; by this means it gives greater value to grander features. Michael Angelo and the admira ble Florentine school subordinate or suppress acces sories, landscape, fabrics and costume ; with them the essential consists of the noble and the grandiose type, the anatomical and muscular structure, the nude or lightly draped form taken by itself, ab stractly, through the retrenchment of particulars con stituting the individual and denoting his profession, education and condition ; you have man in general represented, and not a special man. Their person ages are in a superior world, because they are of a IN THE NETHERLANDS. 281 ¦Id which is not ; the peculiar feature of the scene y depict is the nullity of time and space. Noth- is more opposed to Germanic and Flemish genius, ch sees things as they are in their entirety and iplexity ; which, in man, takes in, besides man in eral, the contemporary, the citizen, the peasant, laborer, this citizen, that laborer, that peasant ; ch attaches as much importance to the accesso- of a man as to the man himself; which loves merely human nature but all nature, animate and limate — cattle, horses, plants, landscape, sky, and n the atmosphere — its broader sympathies fore- ling any neglect of objects, and its more minute ervation requiring the fullest expression. You can iprehend how, in subjecting itself to a discipline •.ontrary, it loses the qualities it had without ac- ring those it had not ; how, in order that it may igate the ideal, it reduces color, loses the senti- lt of light and atmosphere, obliterates the true ails of costume and of interiors, deprives figures iriginal diversities peculiar to portrait and person, . is led to moderate the suddenness of motion stituting the impulsiveness of nature's activity, 282 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART and thereby impairing ideal symmetry. It finds difficulty, however, in making all these sacrifices its instinct only partially yields to its education. Flemish reminiscences may be traced underneath Italian velleity; both in turn predominate in the same picture ; each prevents the other from having their full effect ; their painting, consequently, uncer tain, imperfect and diverted by two tendencies, fur nishing us with historical documents and not beauti ful works of art. Such is the spectacle presented in Flanders dur ing the last three quarters of the sixteenth century. Like a small river receiving a large stream, the min gled waters of which are disturbed until the foreign affluent imposes its more powerful tint on the entire current, so do we find the national style, invaded by the Italian, dappled irregularly and in places, gradu ally disappearing, only rarely rising to the surface, and at last sinking into obscure depths, whilst the other displays itself in the light and attracts univer sal attention. It is interesting to trace in the public galleries this conflict of the two currents and the peculiar effects of their commingling. The first Ital IN THE NETHERLANDS. 283 ian influx takes place with John de Mabuse, Ber nard Van Orley, Lambert Lombard, John Mostaert John Schorel, and Launcelot Blondel. They import in their pictures classic architecture, veined marble pilasters, medallions, shell niches, sometimes trium phal arches and cariatides, sometimes also noble and vigorous female figures in antique drapery, a sound nude form, well proportioned and vitalized, of the fine pagan stock, and healthy ; their imitation re duces itself to this, while in other respects they follow national traditions. They still paint small pictures, suitable for genre subjects ; they almost always pre serve the strong and rich coloring of the preceding age, the mountains and blue distances of John Van Eyck, the clear skies vaguely tinged with emerald on the horizon, the magnificent stuffs covered with gold and jewels, the powerful relief, the minute pre cision of detail, and the solid honest heads of the bourgeoisie. But as they are no longer restrained by hieratic gravity they fall, in attempting to emanci pate themselves, into simple awkwardness and ridic ulous inconsistencies. The children of Job, crushed by their falling palace, sprawl about grimacing and 284 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART writhing as if possessed ; on the other panel of the triptych is the devil in the air mounting upward like a bat towards the petty Christ of a missal. Long feet and lean ascetic hands form the odd appurte nances of a shapely body. A "Last Supper" by Lambert Lombard mingles together Flemish clumsi ness and vulgarity with the composition of Da Vinci. A " Last Judgment " by Bernard Van Orley intro duces demons by Martin Schoen amidst the academic figures of Raphael. In the next generation the ris ing flood begins to engulph all ; Michael Van Cox- cyen, Heemskerk, Franz Floris, Martin de Vos, the Franckens, Van Mander, Spranger, Pourbus the elder, and later, Goltzius, besides many others, resemble people ambitious of speaking Italian but who do so laboriously, with an accent and some barbarisms. The canvas is enlarged and approaches the usual dimensions of an historical subject; the manner of painting is less simple ; Karl Van Mander reproaches his contemporaries with " overloading their brushes," which was not formerly done, and with carrying im- pasto to excess. Coloring dies out ; it becomes more and more white, chalky and pallid. Painters enter IN THE NETHERLANDS. 283 passionately into the study of anatomy, foreshorten- ings and muscular development ; their drawing be- •omes dry and hard, reminding one at once of the goldsmiths contemporary with Pollaiolo and the ex aggerating disciples of Michael Angelo; they lay great or violent stress on their science, they insist on proving their ability to manipulate the skeleton ano produce action; you will find Adams and Eves, Saint Sebastians, Massacres of the Innocents, and Horatii resembling grotesque forms of living and bare muscles; their personages look as if casting their skins. When they show more moderation, and the painter, like Franz Floris in his " Fall of the An gels," discreetly copies good classic models, his nudi ties are scarcely any better ; realistic sentiment and the quaint Germanic imagination peer out among ideal forms; demons with the heads of cats, fishes and swine, and with horns, claws and humps, and blowing fire from their jaws, introduce bestial com edy and a fantastic sabbat into the midst of the noble Olympus ; we have one of Teniers' buffooneries in serted in a poem by Raphael. Others, like Martin Vos, strain themselves to produce the great sacred 286 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART picture, figures imitated from the antique, cuirasses, draperies and tunics, studied correctness in composi tion, gestures indicative of noble action and stage heads and head gear, while they are substantially genre painters and lovers of reality and accessories. They constantly fall back to their Flemish types and their domestic details ; their pictures seem to be enlarged colored engravings ; they would be much better were they of small size. We feel in the artist a perverted talent, a natural disposition thwarted, an instinct working against the grain, a prose-writer born for narrating social incidents of whom the pub lic commands epics in sounding Alexandrines.* Still another wave, and the remains of national genius seem wholly submerged. A painter of noble family, well brought up, instructed by an erudite, a man of the world and a courtier, a favorite of the great Italian and Spanish leaders who manage matters in the Netherlands, Otto Venius, after passing seven years in Italy, brings from that country noble and pure * This period of Flemish art is analogous to that of English literature after the Restoration. In both cases a Germanic art attempts to be clas sic; in both cases the contrast, between education and nature produces hybrid works and multiplied failures. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 281 antique types, beautiful Venetian color, melting and subtly graduated tones, shadows permeated with light, and the vague purples of flesh and of ruddy foliage. Excepting his native stimulus he is Italian, and no longer belongs to his race; scarcely more than a fragment of costume or the simple attitude of a stooping old man connects him with his country. Nothing remains to the painter but to abandon it entirely. Denis Calvaert establishes himself at Bo logna, enters into competition with the Caraccis, and is the master of Guido. Flemish art accordingly seems, through its own course, to suppress itself for the advantage of another. And yet it still subsists underneath the other. In vain does the genius of a people yield to foreign in fluences. It always recovers. These are temporary, while that is eternal ; it belongs to the flesh and the blood, the atmosphere and the soil, the structure and degree of activity of brain and senses ; all are ani mating forces incessantly renewed and everywhere present, and which the transient applause of a supo rior civilization neither undermines nor destroys. This is apparent in the preservation of two styles 288 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART which continue pure amidst the growing transforma tion of the others. Mabuse, Morstaert, Van Orley, the two Pourbus, John Van Cleve, Antonis Moor, the two Mierevelts and Paul Moreelze produce exceUent portraits ; often, in the triptychs, the faces of the donataires, arranged in rows on the shutters, form a contrast in their homely sincerity, calm gravity and profound simplicity of expression with the frigidity and artificial composition of the principal subject ; the spectator feels himself quite re-animated ; instead of manikins he finds men. On the other hand there arises the painting of genre subjects, landscapes and interiors. After Quintin Matsys, and Lucas of Ley- den, we see it developing with John Matsys, Van Hemessen, the Breughels, Vinckenbooms, the three Valkenburgs, Peter Neefs and Paul Bril, and espe cially in the multitude of engravers and illustrators who reproduce, on scattered sheets or in books, the moralities, social incidents, professions, conditions and events of the day. They are, undoubtedly, to remain for a long time fantastic and humorous. This art mixes up nature promiscuously, according to its own disordered fancies; it is unconscious of the IN THE NETHERLANDS. 289 true forms and the true tint of trees and mountains ; it makes its figures howling, and introduces amidst the costumes of the period grotesque monsters sim ilar to those promenading through the Tcermesses. But all these intermediary objects are natural, and insensibly lead on to its final state, which is the knowledge and love of actual life, as the eye con templates it. Here, as in the painting of portraits, the chain is complete ; the metal of all its links is national ; through Breughel, Paul Bril and Peter Neefs, through Antonis Moor, the Pourbus and the Mierevelts, it joins on to the Flemish and Dutch masters of the seventeenth century. The rigidity of ancient figures is relaxed; a mystic landscape be comes real; the transition from the divine to the human age is accomplished. This spontaneous and regular development shows that national instincts are maintained under the empire of foreign fashions; let a crisis intervene to arouse them, and they re cover their ascendancy, while art is transformed ac cording to the public taste. This crisis is the great revolution commencing in 1572, the long and terrible War of Independence, as grand in its events and as 13 290 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART fecund of results as our French Revolution. Here, as with us, the renewal of the moral world is the renewal of the ideal world ; the Flemish and Dutcn art of the seventeenth century, like the French art and literature of the nineteenth century, is the reac tion of a vast tragedy performed for thirty years at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. Here, however, the scaffolds and battles, having divided the nation, form two peoples; one Catholic and legiti mist in Belgium, and the other Protestant and repub lican in Holland. While both were combined there was but one spirit ; divided and opposed there were two. Antwerp and Amsterdam held different con ceptions of life, and, accordingly, display different schools of painting ; the same political crisis which divided their country divided their art ffl THE NETHERLANDS. 291 in. We must look closely into the formation of Bel gium * in order to comprehend the rise of the school which bears the name of Rubens. Previous to the War of Independence the Southern provinces seemed to tend to the Reformation as well as the provinces of the North. In 1566 bands of iconoclasts had devastated the cathedrals of Antwerp, Ghent and Tournay, and broken everywhere, in the churches and the abbeys, all images and ornaments deemed idolatrous. In the environs of Ghent thousands of armed Calvinists flocked to the preachings of Her mann Strieker. Crowds gathered around the stake, sang psalms, sometimes stoned the executioners and set the condemned free. Death penalties had to be enacted in order to suppress the satires of the belle- lettre academies, and when the Duke of Alba began * All are aware that this name dates from the French Revolution. I employ it here as the most convenient term. The historic designation of Belgium is " The Spanish Low Countries," aDd of Holland " Th« United Provinces." 292 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART his massacres the whole country rushed to arms. The resistance, however, was not the same in the South as in the North ; in the South the Germanic race, the independent and Protestant race, was not pure ; the Walloons, a mixed population speaking French, constituted one half of the inhabitants. The soil, moreover, being richer, and living easier, there was less energy and greater sensuality ; man was less resolved to suffer and more inclined to enjoy. Finally, almost all the Walloons, besides the families of the great, being attached to court senti ment through a court life, were Catholic. Hence it is that the Southern provinces did not contend with the indomitable stubbornness of the Northern prov inces. There is nothing in them like the sieges of Maestricht, Harlem, Alkmaar and Leyden, where women enlisted, fought, and were slaughtered in the breach. After the taking of Antwerp by the Duke of Parma the ten provinces returned to their allegiance, and began apart a new existence. The most spirited citizens and the most fervent Calvir. ists had perished in battle and on the scaffold, or had fled to the North in the seven free provinces. The IN THE NETHERLANDS. 893 belle-lettre academies exiled themselves there in a body. On the termination of the Duke of Alva's administration it was estimated that sixty thousand families had emigrated ; after the capture of Ghent eleven thousand more departed, and after the capit ulation of Antwerp four thousand weavers betook themselves to London. Antwerp lost the half of its inhabitants, and Ghent and Bruges two-thirds ; whole streets were empty ; in the principal street of Ghent a couple of horses cropped the grass. A mighty surgical operation had relieved the nation of what the Spaniards called its bad blood ; at all events that which remained was the most quiescent. There is a great substratum of dociUty in the Germanic races ; think of the German regiments exported to America and sold there to die by their petty absolute princes : the sovereign once accepted, they are faithful to him; with guaranteed rights he seems legitimate; they are inclined to respect the estabUshed order of things. The continued con straint, moreover, of irremediable necessity produces its effect ; man accommodates himself to things when he is satisfied that he cannot change them 294 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART certain portions of his character which cannot be developed languish, and others expand the more. There are moments in the history of a nation when it bears some resemblance to Christ taken to the top of a high mountain by Satan, and there bid to choose between a heroic and a common Ufe; here the tempter is Philip II. , with his armies and executioners ; the people of the North and the South, both subject to the same trial, decide dif ferently according to the petty diversities of their composition and character. The choice made these diversities grow, and are exaggerated by the effects of the situation they themselves have produced. Both people being two almost indeterminate varie ties of one species become two distinct species. It is with moral types as with organic types; they issue at the beginning from a common origin, but as they complete their development they grow wider apart and are thus formed through their divergen cies. The Southern provinces henceforth become Belgium. The dominant trait is the craving for peace and comfort, the disposition to take life on the jovial and pleasant side, in brief, the sentiment of IN THE NETHERLANDS. 295 Teniers. In fact, even in a dilapidated cabin or in a bare tavern on a wooden bench a man may laugh, sing, smoke a good pipe and swallow deep draughts of beer; it is not disagreeable to attend mass as a fine ceremony, nor to recount one's sins to an accommodating Jesuit. After the capture of An twerp, Philip II. is delighted to hear that commu nions have become more and more frequent. Con vents are founded twenty at a time. " It is a mat ter worthy of remark," says a contemporary, " that since the happy advent of the archdukes more new establishments have arisen than in two hundred years and before that " — Franciscans, reformed Car melites, friars of St. Francis de Paule, Carmelites, annunciada, and especially the Jesuits ; the latter in fact bring with them a new Christianity, the most appropriate to the state of the country, and which seems manufactured purposely to contrast with that of the Protestants. Be docile in mind and in heart, and all the rest is tolerance and indulgence ; in this connection see the portraits of the day, and among others, the gay fellow who was confessor to Rubens. Casuistry is shaped to and serves for difficult cases . 296 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART under its empire there is scope enough for all cur rent peccadilloes. Worship, moreover, is exempt from prudery, and winds up by being amusing. Te this epoch belongs the worldly and sensualistio internal decoration of the grave and venerable cathedral, the multiplied and contorted ornaments- flames, lyres, trinkets and scrolls, the veneerings of veined marbles, altars resembling theatre facades, and the quaint diverting pulpits overlaid with a men agerie of carved birds and brutes. As respects the new churches, the outside suits the inside. That of the Jesuits, built in Antwerp at the beginning of the seventeenth century, is instructive, it being a saloon filled with Uageres. Its thirty-six ceilings were executed by Rubens, and it is curious to see here as elsewhere an ascetic and mystic faith accept as edifying subjects the most blooming and the most exposed nudities, buxom Magdalens, plump St. Sebastians and Madonnas whom the negro magi are devouring with all the lust of their eyes, a display of flesh and fabrics unequalled by the Florentine carnival in luxurious temptation and in triumphant sensuality. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 297 Meanwhile the altered political situation contrib utes to the transformation of the intellectual world. The old despotism becomes relaxed ; to the rigors of the Duke of Alva succeeds the liberal policy of the Duke of Parma. After an amputation, a man who has bled profusely must be restored by soothing and strengthening treatment ; hence it is that, after the pacification of Ghent, the Spaniards let their ter rible edicts against heresy Ue dormant. Executions are at an end. The latest martyr is a poor sewing woman, buried alive in 1597. In the following cen tury Jordaens, with his wife and her family, become Protestants without being annoyed, and even with out losing any of his commissions. The archdukes permit towns and corporations to govern themselves according to ancient usages, to collect imposts and attend to their own business; when they desire to have Breughel de Velours relieved of military duty or of exactions, they make their appeal to the commune. The government becomes regular, semi- liberal, and almost national ; Spanish extortions, raz zias, and brutalities disappear. At length, in order to keep possession of the country, Philip IL is com 13* 298 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART pelled to let it remain Flemish, and exist as a separate state. In 1599 he detaches it from Spain, and cedes it in full possession to Albert and Isabella. " The Spaniards never did a better, thing," writes the French ambassador; " it would be impossible to keep the country writhout giving it this new system, as it was ripe for revolution." The States-General meet in 1600, and decide for reforms. We see in Guic cardini, and other travellers, that the old constitu tion arises almost intact out of the rubbish under which it had been buried by military violence. "At Bruges," M. de Monconys writes in 1653, "each trade nas a house in common, where those of the profes sion meet to transact the business of the community, or for recreation ; and all the trades are distributed into four divisions, under the control of four burgo masters, who have charge of the keys of the city, the Governor exercising no jurisdiction or power over any but the military force." The archdukes are wise and solicitous of the public welfare. In 1609 they make peace with Holland; in 1611 their perpetual edict completes the restoration of the coun try. They either are or render themselves power IN THE NETHERLANDS. 299 ful ; Isabella, with her own hand, strikes down, on the Place de Sablon, the bird which sanctifies the cross-bowman's pledge; Albert attends at Louvain the lectures of Justus Lepsius. They love, cherish, and attach themselves to famous artists — Otto Ve- nius, Rubens, Teniers, and Breughel de Velours. The belle-lettre institutions flourish again, and the universities are favored ; in the Catholic world, un der the Jesuits and often by their side, is a kind of intellectual renaissance ; a number of theologians, controversialists, casuists, erudites, geographers, phy sicians, and even historians, arise — Mercator, Orte- lius, Van Helmont, Jansenius, Lepsius, all of whom are Flemings of this epoch. The " Description of Flanders," by Sander, a vast work completed after so many trials, is a monument of national zeal and patriotic pride. If, in turn, we wish to form an idea of the state of the country, take one of the tranquil and fallen cities to-day like Bruges. Sir Dudley Carleton, passing through Antwerp in 1616, finds it a handsome place, although nearly empty ; he may have seen no more than " forty persons in the entire street," not a carriage, not a horseman, not a ous 300 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART tomer in the shops ; but the houses are well main tained, everything being clean and cared for : the peasant has rebuilt his burnt cabin and is at work in the field ; the housewife is attending to her duties ; security has returned, and is about to be followed by plenty ; there are shooting matches, processions, fairs and magnificent entries of princes ; people are getting back to old comforts beyond which they do not aspire ; religion is left to the Church, and gov ernment to the princes: here, as at Venice, the course of events has brought man down to the quest of enjoyment — the effort to obtain it being the more strenuous in proportion to the strong contrast with their previous misery. And, in truth, what a contrast ! It is necessary to have read the details of the war in order to ap preciate it. Fifty thousand martys had perished under Charles V., eighteen thousand persons had been executed by the Duke of Alva, and the re volted country had maintained the war for thirteen years. The Spaniards had reconquered the large cities only by famine after protracted sieges. In the beginning Antwerp was sacked for three days IN THE NETHERLANDS. 301 seven thousand of her citizens were slain, and five hundred houses were burnt. The soldier lived on the country, and we see him in the engravings of the day plundering and robbing dwellings, torturing the husband, violating the wife, and bearing away chests and furniture in carts. When his pay was withheld too long he took up his quarters in a town, and this led to a republic of brigands; under an eletto of their own choice they ravaged the environs at their convenience. Karl Van Mander, the his torian of the painters, on returning one day to his village, found his house pillaged along with the rest ; the soldiers had even taken the bed and bed clothes of his old sick father. Karl was driven out naked, and they were already fixing a rope to his neck to hang him when he was saved by a cavalier whom he had known in Italy. Another time, as he was on the road with his wife and an infant child, they took his money, baggage and clothes, his wife's and those of the infant ; the mother could only secure a small petticoat, the infant a tattered net, and Karl an old worn-out piece of cloth in which he wrapped himself up, and in whicn guise he 302 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART reached Bruges. Under this regime a country ceases to exist; soldiers themselves finally die of starvation ; the Duke of Parma writes to Philip LL that if he fails to send relief the army is lost, " for nobody can live without eating." On emerging from such calamities, peace seems a paradise ; it is not merely the good at which man rejoices, but the better, and here the better is stupendous. A man can now sleep in his own bed, store up provisions, enjoy the fruits of his labor, travel about and as semble and converse with his fellows without fear ; he has a home, a country and a future. All the ordinary occurrences of life get to be interesting and attractive; he revives, and for the first time seems to live. It is circumstances like these out of which always springs a spontaneous literature and an original art. The great crisis through which the nation has passed serves to remove the monotonous varnish with which tradition and custom have over spread things. We find out what man is ; we seize on the fundamental points of his renewed and trans formed nature ; we see its depth, its secret instincts, the master forces which denote his race and ar* IN THE NETHERLANDS. 803 about to control his history; half a century later and we see them no more, because during a half century they have been constantly visible. In the meantime, however, the new order of things be comes complete; the mind confronts it like Adam on his first awakening; it is only later that con ceptions get to be over-refined and weakened ; they are now broad and simple. Man is qualified for this through his birth in a crumbling society and an education in the midst of veritable tragedies; like Victor Hugo and George Sand, the child Rubens, in exile, alongside of his imprisoned father, hears, in his home and all around him, the roar of tempest and of wreck. After an active generation which has suffered and created, comes the poetic gener ation which writes, paints or models. It expresses and amplifies the energies and desires of a society founded by its fathers. Hence it is that Flemish art proceeds to glorify in heroic types the sensual instincts, the grand and gross joyousness, the rude energy of surrounding mortals, and to find in the alehouse of Teniers the Olympus of Rubens. Among these painters there is one who seems to 304 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART efface the rest ; indeed no name in the history of arl is greater, and there are only three or four as great. But Rubens is not an isolated genius, the number as well as the resemblance of surrounding talents showing that the efflorescence of which he is the most beautiful emanation is the product of his time and people. Before him there was Adam Van Noort, his master,* and the master of Jordaens ; around him are his contemporaries, educated in other studios, and whose invention is as spontaneous as his own — Jordaens, Crayer, Gerard Zeghers, Rombouts, Abraham Janssens, and Van Roose ; after him come his pupils — Van Thulden, Diepenbecke, Van den Hoeck, Corneille Schut, Boyermans, Van Dyck, the greatest of all, and Van Oost of Bruges ; alongside of him are the great animal, flower and still-life painters — Snyders, John Fyt, the Jesuit Seghers, and an entire school of famous engravers — Soutman, Vor- sterman, Bolswert, Pontius and Vischer; the same sap fructifies all these branches, the lesser as well as the greater, while we must add, again, the perva- • See the admirable " Miraculous Draft," by Van Noort, In St Jamet at Antwerp. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 305 ding sympathies and the national admiration. It is plain that an art Uke this is not the effect of one acci dental cause but of a general development, and of this we have full assurance when, considering the work itself, we remark the concordances which assimilate it with its milieu. On the one side it resumes or follows the tradi tions of Italy, and is seen at a glance to be pagan and Catholic. It is supported by churches and con vents ; it represents Biblical and evangelical scenes ; she subject is edifying ; and the engraver deliber ately places at the bottom of his engravings pious maxims and moral problems. And yet, in fact, there is nothing Christian about it but its name ; all mystic or ascetic sentiment is banished ; its Madon nas, martyrs and confessors, its Christs and apostles are superb florid bodies restricted to the life of the flesh ; its paradise is an Olympus of well-fed Flemish deities revelling in muscular activity ; they are large, vigorous, plump and content, and make a jovial and magnificent display as in a national festi val or at a princely entry. The Church, it is true, Daptizes this last flower of the old id rthology with 306 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART becoming forms, but it is only baptism, and this is frequently wanting. Apollos, Jupiters, Castors, Polh'^; and Venus, all the ancient divinities, revive under their veritable names in the palaces of the kings and the great which they decorate. This is owing to religion, here as in Italy, consisting of rites. Rubens goes to mass every morning, and pre sents a picture in order to obtain indulgences ; after which he falls back upon his own poetic feeUng for natural life and, in the same style, paints a lusty Magdalen and a plump Siren ; under the Catholic varnish the heart and the intellect, all social ways and observances are pagan. On the other side, this art is truly Flemish ; everything issues from and centres on a mother idea which is new and national ; it is harmonious, spontaneous and original ; in this respect it contrasts with the foregoing which is only a discordant imitation. From Greece to Florence from Florence to Venice, from Venice to Antwerp, every step of the passage can be traced. The con ception of man and of life goes on decreasing in nobleness and increasing in breadth. Rubens is to Titian what Titian was to Raphael, and Raphael to IN THE NETHERLANDS. 307 Phidias. Never did artistic sympathy clasp nature in such an open and universal embrace. Arcient boundaries, already often extended, seem removed purposely to expose an infinite career. There is no respect for historic proprieties ; he groups together allegoric with real figures, and cardinals with a naked Mercury. There is no deference to the moral order; he fills the ideal heaven of mythology and of the gospel with coarse or mischievous char acters ; a Magdalen resembling a nurse, and a Ceres whispering some pleasant gossip in her neighbor's ear. There is no dread of exciting physical sensi bility ; he pushes the horrible to extremes, athwart all the tortures for the punishment of the flesh and all the contortions of howling agony. There is no fear of offending moral delicacy ; his Minerva is a shrew who can fight, his Judith a butcher's wife familiar with blood, and his Paris a jocose expert and a dainty amateur. To translate into words the ideas vociferously proclaimed by his Suzannas, his Magdalens, his St. Sebastians, his Graces and his Sirens, in all his kermesses, divine and human, ideal or real, Christian or pagan, would require the terms 308 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART of Rabelais. Through him all the animal instincts of human nature appear on the stage ; those which had been excluded as gross he reproduces as true, and in him as in nature they encounter the others. Nothing is wanting but the pure and the noble ; the whole of human nature is in his grasp, save the loftiest heights. Hence it is that his creativeness is the vastest we have seen, comprehending as it does all types, Italian cardinals, Roman emperors, contemporary citizens, peasants and cowherds, along with the innumerable diversities stamped on human ity by the play of natural forces and which more than fifteen hundred pictures did not suffice to exhaust. For the same reason, in the representation of the body, he comprehended more profoundly than any one the essential characteristic of organic life ; he surpasses in this the Venetians, as they surpass the Florentines ; he feels still better than they that flesh is a changeable substance in a constant state of renewal; and such, more than any other, is the Flemish body, lympathic, sanguine and voracious, more fluid, more rapidly tending to accretion and IN THE NETHERLANDS. 309 waste than those whose dry fibre and radical temper ance preserve permanent tissues. Hence it is that nobody has depicted its contrasts in stronger relief, nor as visibly shown the decay and bloom of life — at one time the dull flabby corpse, a genuine clinical mass, empty of blood and substance, livid, blue and mottled through suffering, a clot of blood on the mouth, the eye glassy and the feet and hands clay- ish, swollen and deformed because death seized them irst ; at another the freshness of living carnations, 'A\e handsome, blooming and smiling athlete, the mellow suppleness of a yielding torso in the form of a well-fed adolescent, the soft rosy cheeks and placid candor of a girl whose blood was never quickened or eyes bedimmed by thought, flocks of dimpled cherubs and merry cupids, the delicacy, the folds, the exquisite melting rosiness of infantile skin, seem ingly the petal of a flower moistened with dew and impregnated with morning light. In like manner in the representation of soul and action he appreciated more keenly than any one the essential feature of animal and moral life, that is to say the instantaneous movement which it is the aim of the plastic arts tc 810 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART seize on the wing. In this again he surpasses the Vene tians as they surpassed the Florentines. Nobody has endowed figures with such spirit, with a gesture so impulsive, with an impetuosity so abandoned and furious, such an universal commotion and tempest of swollen and writhing muscles in one single effort. His personages speak ; their repose itself is suspen ded on the verge of action ; we feel what they have just accomplished and what they are about to do. The present with them is impregnated with the past and big with the future ; not only the whole face but the entire attitude conspires to manifest the flowing stream of their thought, feeling and complete being ; we hear the inward utterance of their emotion ; we might repeat the words to which they give expres sion. The most fleeting and most subtle shades of sentiment belong to Rubens ; in this respect he is a treasure for novelist and psychologist ; he took note of the passing refinements of moral expression as well as of the soft volume of sanguine flesh ; no one has gone beyond him in knowledge of the living organ ism and of the animal man. Endowed with this sen timent and skill he was capable, in conformity with IN THE NETHERLANDS. 311 thb aspirations and needs of his restored nation, of amplifying the forces he found around and within himself, all that underlie, preserve and manifest the overflow and triumph of existence ; on the one hand gigantic joints, herculean shapes and shoulders, red and colossal muscles, bearded and truculent heads, over-nourished bodies teeming with succulence, the luxurious display of white and rosy flesh ; on the other, the rude instincts which impel human nature to seek food, drink, strife and pleasure, the savage fury of the combatant, the enormity of the big-bel lied Silenus, the sensual joviality of the Faun, the abandonment of that lovely creature without con science and " fat with sin," the boldness, the energy, the broad joyousness, the native goodness, the or ganic serenity of the national type. He heightens these effects again through their composition and the accessories with which he surrounds them — mag nificence of lustrous silks, embroidered simarres and golden brocades, groups of naked figures, modern costumes and antique draperies, an inexhaustible accumulation of arms, standards, colonnades, Vene tian stairways, temples, canopies, ships, animals, and 312 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART ever novel and imposing scenery, as if outside of ordinary nature he possessed the key of a thousand times richer nature, whereon his magician's hand could forever draw without the freedom of his imag ination ending in confusion, but on the contrary with a jet so vigorous and a prodigality so national that his most complicated productions seem like the irresistible outflow of a surfeited brain. Like an Indian deity at leisure he relieves his fecundity by treating worlds, and from the matchless folds and jues of his tossed simarres to the snowy whites of his flesh, or the pale silkiness of his blonde tresses, there is no tone in any of his canvasses which does not appear there purposely to afford him delight. There is only one Rubens in Flanders, as there is only one Shakespeare in England. Great as the others are, they are deficient in some one element of his genius. Crayer has not his audacity nor his • excess ; he paints beauty calm,* sympathetic and content along with requisite effects of bright and mellow color. Jordaens has not his regal grandeur ?See at Ghent his "St. Rosalie," at Bruges his "Adoration of the Shepherds," and at Rennes his " Lazarus." IN THE NETHERLANDS. 313 and his heroic poetic feeling ; he paints with vinous color stunted colossi, crowded groups and turbulent plebeians. Van Dyck has not, like him, the love of power and of life for life itself; more refined, more chivalric, born with a sensitive and even melan choly nature, elegiac in his sacred subjects, aristo cratic in his portraits, he depicts with less glowing and more sympathetic color noble, tender and charming figures whose generous and delicate souls are filled with sweet and sad emotions unknown to nis master.* His works are the first indication of the coming change. After 1660 he is already prom inent. The generation whose energy and aspira tions had inspired the grand picturesque revery, faded away man by man ; Crayer and Jordaens alone, by merely living, kept art up for twenty years. The nation, reviving for a moment, falls backward ; its renaissance never perfects itself. The archducal sovereigns, through whom it had become an indepen dent state, ended in 1633 ; it reverts back to a Span ish province under a governor sent from Madrid. The treaty of 1648 closes the Scheldt to it, and completes * See, especially, his sacred works at Malines and Antwerp. 14 814 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART the ruin of her commerce. Louis XIV. dismembers her, and on three occasions deprives her of portions of her territory. Four successive wars trample over her for thirty years ; friends and enemies, Spaniards, French, English and Hollanders live upon her ; the treaties of 1715 convert the Dutch into her purvey ors and tax-gatherers. At this moment, become Aus trian, she refuses the subsidy ; but the elders of the states are imprisoned, and the chief one, Anneessens, dies on the scaffold ; this is the last and a feeble echo of the mighty voice of Van Artevelde. Hence forth the country subsides into a simple province in which people keep soul and body together and only care to live. At the same time, and through a reac tion, the national imagination declines. The school of Rubens degenerates ; with Beyermans, Van Herp, John Erasmus Quellin, the second Van Oost, Deys- ter and John Van Orley we see originality and energy disappearing ; coloring grows weak or be comes affected; attenuated types incline to pretti- ness; expression is either sentimental or mawkish; the personages occupying the great canvas, instead of filling it are dispersed, the intervals being supplied IN THE NETHERLANDS. 315 with architecture ; the vein is exhausted ; painting is mere routine or a mannered imitation of the Italian school. Many betake themselves to foreign countries. Philippe de Champagne is director of the Academy of the Fine Arts at Paris and becomes French in mind and country ; still more, a spiritualist and Jansenist, a conscientious and skilful painter of grave and thoughtful spirit. Gerard de Lairesse becomes a disciple of the Italians — a classic, aca demic and erudite painter of costume and historic and mythologic resemblances. The logical reason assumes empire in the arts, having already obtained it in social matters. Two pictures in the Musee of Ghent equally display the change in painting and the change in society. Both represent princely entrees, one in 1666 and the other in 1717. The first, of a beautiful ruddy tone, shows the last of the men of the grand epoch, their cavalier air, their powerful frame, their capacity for physical endeavor, their rich decorative costumes, their horses with with flowing manes — here nobles related to Van Dyck's seigniors, and there pikemen in buff and cuirass kindred to the soldiers of Wallestein — in 316 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART short, the last remains of the heroic and picturesque ao-e. The second, cold and pale in tone, shows highly refined, softened, Frenchified beings — gentle men clever at salutation, women of fashion con scious of their appearance, in brief, the imported drawing-room system and foreign modes of de meanor. During the fifty years separating the former from the latter both the national art and the national spirit vanished. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 317 IY. Whilst the Southern provinces, henceforth subject and Catholic, followed the Italian road in art, and represented on their canvasses the mythological epos of the grand and heroic nude figure, the provinces of the North, becoming free and Protestant, devel oped their life and art in another direction. The climate is more rainy and colder, and for this reason the presence of the nude is a rarer and less sym pathetic thing. The Germanic race is chaster, and through this quality the mind is less inclined to appreciate classic art, as it was conceived of by the Italian renaissance. Life is more difficult, more laborious, and more economic; man, therefore, ac customed to effort, to forethought and to a method ical self-government, has more trouble in compre hending the fascinating dream of a sensuous and full-blown existence. We can imagine the Dutch citizen in his home after the day's toil at his business. His dwelling consists of small apartments, some- 318 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART what resembling the state-rooms of a ship ; it would be a troublesome matter to suspend on the walls the laro-e pictures decorating the saloons of an Italian palace ; its owner's chief requirements are cleanliness and comfort ; with these he is content and does not insist on decoration. According to the Venetian ambassadors, " they are so moderate that, even with the richest, one sees no unusual pomp or luxury They make no use of retainers or silken habits, very little silver-ware, and no tapestry in their houses ; the household numbers a very few and is very limited. Outside and inside, in dress and in other matters, all maintain the true moderation of small fortunes, nothing superfluous being perceptible." * When the Earl of Leicester came to take command in Holland in the name of Elizabeth, and Spinola arrived to negotiate peace for the King of Spain, their regal magnificence formed a striking contrast and even provoked scandal. The head of the re public, William the Taciturn, the hero of the age, wore an old mantle which a student would have pro ?Motley's "United Netherlands," Vol. IV. p. 551. Report of Corr tarini, 1609. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 31t nounced threadbare, with a pourpoint like it, unbut toned, and a woollen waistcoat resembling that of a bargeman. In the next century the adversary of Louis XIV., the grand pensioner John de Witt kept only one domestic ; everybody could approach him ; he imitated his illustrious predecessor, who lived cheek-by-jowl with "brewers and bourgeois." We find yet at the present day, in their social ways, many an indication of ancient sobriety. It is clear that with such characters there is but little room for the decorative and voluptuous instincts which else where in Europe fashioned aristocratic show, and rendered comprehensible the pagan poesy of beauti ful bodies. The opposite instincts, in effect, predominate. Relieved of the drawback of the Southern provinces, Holland, at the end of the sixteenth century, sud denly and with extraordinary energy turns in the direction of its natural proclivities. Primitive incli nations and faculties appear with the most strik ing results; they are not a new birth, but simply a revelation. Good observers had detected them a hundred and fifty years before. " E iesland is 320 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART free," said Pope JSneas Sylvius * " lives in her own fashion, will not endure foreign empire, and has no desire to dominate over others. The Frieslander does not hesitate to face death in behalf of liberty. This spirited people, used to arms, of large and robust frames, calm and intrepid in disposition, glories in her freedom notwithstanding that Philip, Duke of Burgundy, proclaims himself lord of the country. They detest military and feudal arro gance, and tolerate no man who seeks to raise his head above his fellows. Their magistrates are elected annually by themselves, and are obliged to administer public matters with equity. . . . They severely punish licentiousness among women . . . They scarcely admit an unmarried priest lest he should corrupt the wife of another, regarding con tinence as a difficult thing and beyond the natural powers." Every Germanic conception of state, mar riage and religion are here visible in germ, and forecast the final flowering of the republic and of Protestantism. Subjected to trial by Philip IL they offer to sacrifice beforehand " their lives and ? Cosmographia, p. 421 IN THE NETHERLANDS. 321 their property." A small population of traders, lost on a mud-heap at the extremity of an empiro more vast and more feared than that of Napoleon resisted, subsisted and increased under the weight of the colossus who tried to crush her. Their sieges are all admirable; citizens and women, supported by a few hundreds of soldiers, arrest an entire army before ruined ramparts, the best troops in Europe, the greatest generals and the most skilful engin eers ; and this remnant of emaciated people, after feeding on rats, boiled leaves and leather for months, determine, rather than surrender, to place the infirm in the centre of a square and go forth to die in the intrenchments of the enemy. The details of this war must be read in order to realize the extent to which man's patience, coolness and energy may be carried.* On the sea a Dutch vessel is blown up rather than strike its flag, while their voy ages of discovery, colonization and conquest, in Nova Zembla, India and Brazil, by the way of the Straits of Magellan, are as magnificent as their ? Among others the capture of Bois-le-Duc by Hemugiere and sixty. nine volunteers. 14* 322 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART combats. The more we demand of human nature the more she gives; her faculties are exalted in their exercise, while the limits to her power of doing and suffering are no longer perceptible, Finally, in 1609, after thirty years warfare, the cause is won. Spain recognizes their independence, and during the whole of the seventeenth century they are to play a most prominent part in the affairs of Europe. No power can make them yield, neither Spain during a second war of twenty-seven years, nor Cromwell, nor Charles II., nor England com bined with France, nor the fresh and formidable power of Louis XIV. ; after three wars their am bassadors are all to be seen in humble and fruit less entreaty at Gertruydenberg, and the grand- pensioner Heinsius, is to become one of the three potentates to control the destinies of Europe. Internally their government is as good as their external position is exalted. For the first time in the world conscience is free and the rights of the cit izens are respected. Their state consists of a com munity of provinces voluntarily united, which, each within its own borders, maintains with a degree of 22V 2x32? NETHERLANDS. 32a perfection unknown till then the security of the pub lic and the liberty of the individual. " They all lova Uberty," says Parival in 1660 ; " no one among them is allowed to beat or abuse another, while the women servants have so many privileges their masters, even, dare not strike them." Full of his admiration he repeatedly insists on this wonderful respect for human personality. " There is not to-day a prov ince in the world which enjoys so much liberty as Holland, with so just a harmony that the little can not be imposed upon by the great, nor the poor by the rich and opulent . . . The moment a seignior brings into this country any serfs or slaves they are free; yes, and the money he laid out in their pur chase is lost . . . The inhabitants of a village having paid what they owe are as free as the inhabitants of a city . . . And above all each is king in his own house, it being a very serious crime to have done violence to a bourgeois in his own domicile." Every body can leave the country when he pleases, and take all the money he pleases with him. The roads are safe day and night even for a man traveling alone. The master is not allowed to retain a domestic 324 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART against his will. Nobody is troubled on account of his religion. One is free to say what he chooses, " even of the magistrates," and to denounce them. Equality is fundamental. "Those who hold office obtain consideration rather through fair dealing than advance themselves over others by a proud bearing." A nation like this cannot fail to be prosperous ; when man is both just and energetic the rest comes to him as surplus. At the beginning of the War of Inde pendence the population of Amsterdam was 70,000 ; in 1618 it was 300,000. The Venetian ambassadors reported that people swarmed in the streets every hour of the day as at a fair. The city increased two- thirds ; a surface equal to the size of a man's foot wras worth a gold ducat. The country is as good as the city. Nowhere is the peasant so rich and so able to derive advantage from the soil; one village possesses four thousand cows ; an ox weighs two thousand pounds. A farmer offers his daughter to Prince Maurice with a dowry of one hundred thou sand florins. Nowhere are industrial pursuits and manufactures so perfect; cloths, mirrors, sugar-refin eries, porcelain, pottery, rich stuffs of silk, satin and IN THE NETHERLANDS. 323 brocade, iron-ware and ship-rigging. They supply Europe with half of its luxuries and nearly all its transportation. A thousand vessels traverse the Baltic in quest of raw material. Eight hundred boats are engaged in the herring fishery. Vast com panies monopolize trade with India, China and Japan ; Batavia is the centre of a Dutch empire ; at this moment, 1609, Holland on the sea and in the world is what England was in the time of Napoleon. She has a marine of one hundred thousand sailors ; in war time she can man two thousand vessels; fifty years after she maintains herself against the com bined fleets of France and England ; year after year the great stream of her success and prosperity is seen to increase. But its source is yet more bounti ful than the stream itself; that which sustains her is an excess of courage, reason, abnegation, will and genius; "this people," say the Venetian ambassa dors, " are inclined to labor and industry to such a degree that no enterprise is too difficult for them to succeed in . . . They are born for work and for priva tion, and all are doing something, some one way and some another." Much production and light con- 320 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART sumption is the mode of growth of public prosperity The poorest, "in their small and humble habita tions," have all necessary things. The richest in their fine houses avoid the superfluous and ostenta tion ; nobody is in want, and nobody abuses ; every one is employed with his hands or his mind. " All things are made profitable," says Parival ; " there are none, even to those who gather ordure out of the canals who do not earn half-a-crown a day. Chil dren even who are learning their trades almost earn their bread at the start. They are so inimical to bad government and to indolence that they have places in which the magistrates imprison idlers and vaga bonds, also those who do not properly attend to their business — the complaints of wives or family relations being a sufficient warrant, and in these places they are obliged to work and earn their sub sistence whether they will or not." The convents ire transformed into- hospitals, asylums and homes for orphans, the former revenues of lazy monks sup porting invalids, the aged, and widows and children of soldiers and sailors lost in war. The army is so efficient that any of its soldiers might serve a! IN THE NETHERLANDS. 327 captain in an ItaUan army, whUe no Italian captain would be admitted in it as a common soldier. In Culture and instruction, as well as in the arts of or ganization and of government, the Dutch are two centuries ahead of the rest of Europe. Scarcely a man, woman or child can be found who does not know how to read and write (1609). Every village has a public school. In a bourgeois family all the boys read Latin and all the girls French. Many people write and converse in several foreign lan guages. It is not owing to simple precaution, to habits of laying up and calculations of utiUty, but they appreciate the dignity of science. Leyden, to which the States-General propose a recompense, after its heroic defense, demands a University; no pains are spared to attract to it the greatest" savans of Europe. The States themselves unite, and through Henry IV. cause letters to be sent to Scaliger, who is poor and a professor, begging him to honor the city with his presence ; no lessons will be required of him ; they merely wish him to come and converse with the eru dites, direct their efforts, and allow the nation tc participate1 in the fame of his writings. Under this 328 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART regime Leyden becomes the most renowned schoo in Europe ; she has two thousand students ; philoso phy hunted out of France finds refuge there ; during the seventeenth century Holland is the first of thoughtful countries. The positive sciences here find their native soil, or the land of their adoption. Scaliger, Justus Lepsius, Saumaisius, Meursius, the two Heinsius, the two Dousa, Marnix de Ste-Alde- gonde, Hugo Grotius and Snellius preside over learning, laws, physics and mathematics. The Elze virs carry on printing. Lindshoten and Mercator furnish instruction to travellers and develop geo graphical science. Hooft, Bor and Meteren write the history of the nation. Jacob Cats provides its poetry. Theology, which is the philosophy of the day, takes up, with Arminius and Gomar, the question of grace, and, even in the smallest villages, agitates the minds of peasants and bourgeois. The Synod of Dordrecht at length in 1609 constitutes the oecumenical council of the Reformation. To this primacy of speculative intellect add that of practical genius : from Barnevelt to De Witt, from William the Taciturn to William III., from Heems. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 329 kerck the admiral to Von Tromp and De Ruyter, a sequence of superior men are at the head of art and business matters. It is under these circum stances that the national art appears. All the great original painters are born in the first thirty years of the seventeenth century, after grave danger had passed away, when the final victory was assured, when man, sensible of great things accomplished, points out to his children the onward path which has been cleared by his vigorous arm and stout heart. Here, as elsewhere, the artist is the offspring of the hero. The faculties employed in the creation of a real world, now that the work is accomplished, reach beyond and are employed in the creation of an imaginary world. Man has done too much to go back to school ; the field spread out before him and around him has been peopled by his activity ; it is so glorious and so fecund he can long dwell upon and admire it ; he need no longer subdue his own thought to a foreign thought ; he seeks and dis covers his own peculiar sentiment ; he dares to con fide himself to it, to pursue it to the end, to imitate nobody, to derive all from himself, to invent with no 330 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART other guide but the voiceless preferences of his owr senses and his own affections. His inner forces, his fundamental aptitudes, his primitive and hereditary instincts drawn out and fortified by experience con tinue to operate after his experience, and, when they have formed a nation they form an art. Let us consider this art. It manifests through col ors and forms all the instincts that have just ap peared in actions and in works. So long as the seven provinces of the North and the ten provinces of the South formed but one nation they had but one school of art. Engelbrecht, Lucas of Leyden, John Schoreel, the elder Heemskerck, Corneille of Harlem, Bloemaert and Goltzius paint in the same style as their contemporaries of Bruges and Antwerp. There is not as yet a distinct Dutch school, because there is not as yet a distinct Belgian school. At the time when the War of Independence begins the painters of the North are laboring to convert themselves into Italians like the painters of the South. After the year 1600, however, there is a complete change in painting as in other things. The rising sap of the nation gives predominance to the national instincts. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 331 Nudities are no longer visible ; the ideal figure, the beautiful human animal living in full sunshine, the noble symmetry of limbs and attitude, the grand al legoric or mythological picture is no longer adapted to Germanic taste. Calvanism, moreover, which now rules, excludes it from its temples, and amidst this population of earnest and economic laborers there is no seigneurial display, no widespread and grandiose epicureanism which, elsewhere, in the palaces and in proximity to luxurious silver, liveries and furniture, demands the sensual and pagan canvas. When Amelia of Solm desires to raise a monument in this style to her husband, the stadtholder Frederic Henry, she is obliged to send to Orangesaal for the Flemish artists Van Thulden and Jordaens. To these real istic imaginations and amidst these republican cus toms, in this land where a shoemaking privateer can become vice-admiral, the most interesting figure is one of its own citizens, a man of flesh and blood, not draped or undraped like a Greek, but in his own cos tume and ordinary attitude, some good magistrate or valiant officer. The heroic style is suited to but one thing, the great portraits which decorate the 332 7x12? PHILOSOPHY OF ART town-halls and public institutions in commemoration of services rendered. We see, in fact, a new kind of picture make its appearance here, the vast canvas op which are displayed five, ten, twenty and thirty full length portraits as large as life, hospital directors, arquebusiers on target excursions, syndics assembled around a table, officers offering toasts at a banquet, professors giving clinical lectures, all grouped ac cording to their pursuits, and all presented to view with the costume, arms, banners, accessories and surroundings belonging to their actual life; it is a veritable historical picture, the most instructive and most impressive of all, where Franz Hals, Rembrandt, Govael-t Flinck, Ferdinand Bol, Theodore de Keyser and John Ravenstein depict the heroic age of their nation, where sensible, energetic and loyal heads possess the nobleness of power and of conscience, where the fine costnme of the renaissance, the scarfs, the buff vests, -the frills, the lace collars, the pour- points and the black mantles throw their gravity and brilliancy around the solid portliness of the stout forms and frank expressions of the faces, where the artist, now through the virile simplicity of his IN THE NETHERLANDS. 333 means, now through the strength of his convictions, becomes the equal of his heroes. Such is painting for the public; there now remains painting for private life, that which decorates the houses of individuals, and which, in its dimensions as well as subjects, conforms to the condition and character of its purchasers. " There is no bourgeois so poor," says Parival, " who does not liberally in dulge his taste this way." A baker pays six hun dred florins for a single figure by Van der Meer of Delft. This, along with a neat and agreeable inte rior, constitutes their luxury ; " they do not grudge money in this direction, which they rather save on their stomachs." The national instinct re-appears here the same as revealed in the first epoch with John Van Eyck, Quintin Matsys, and Lucas of Ley den ; and it is emphatically the national instinct, for it is so deep and so active that, even in Belgium, in close proximity to mythological and decorative art, it runs through the Breughels and Teniers like a small brook alongside of a broad river. It exacts and provokes the representation of man as he is and life as it is, both as the eye encounters them, citizens, 834 THE PHILOSOPHY OF AR1 peasants, cattle, shops, taverns, rooms, streets and landscapes. There is no need to transform them in order to ennoble them ; they are satisfied if they are worthy of interest. Nature, in herself, whatever she may be, whether human, animal, vegetable or inani mate, with all her irregularities, minutiae and omis sions, is inherently right, and, when comprehended, people love and delight to contemplate her. The object of art is not to change her, but to interpret her ; through sympathy it renders her beautiful. Thus understood, painting may represent the house keeper spinning in her rural cot, the carpenter plan ing on his work-bench, the surgeon dressing a rustic's arm, the cook spitting a chicken, the rich dame washing herself; all sorts of interiors, from the hovel to the drawing-room; all sorts of types, from the rubicund visage of the deep drinker to the placid smile of the well-bred damsel ; every scene of refined or rustic life — a card-party in a gilded saloon, a peas ant's carouse in a bare tavern, skaters on a frozen canal, cows drinking from a trough, vessels at sea, the entire and infinite diversities of sky, earth, water darkness and daylight. Terburg, Metzu, Gerard IN THE NETHERLANDS. 335 Dow, Van der Meer of Delft, Adrian Brouwer, Schalcken, Franz Mieris, Jan Steen, Wouverman, tho two Ostades, Wynants, Cuyp, Van der Neer, IJuysdael, Hobbema, Paul Potter, Backhuysen, the two Vanderveldes, Philip of Kcenig, Van der Heyden, and how many more ! There is no school in which artists of original talent are so numerous. When the domain of art consists, not of a small summit, but of the wide expanse of life, it offers to each mind a distinct field ; the ideal is narrow, and inhabited only by two or three geniuses ; the real is immense, and provides places for fifty men of talent. A tran quil and pleasing harmony emanates from all these performances. We ai 3 conscious of repose in look ing at them. The spirit of the artist, like that of his figures, is in equilibrium ; we should be quite content and comfortable in his picture. We realize that his imagination does not go beyond. It seems as if he, like his personages, were satisfied with mere living. Nature appears to him excellent ; all he cares for is to add some arrangement, some tone side by side with another, some effect of light, some choice of attitude. In her presence he is like a happy-wedded 336 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART Hollander in the presence of his spouse; he woub. not wish her otherwise ; he loves her through affec tionate routine and innate concordance ; at the ut most his chief requirement of her will be to wear at some festival her red frock instead of the blue one. He bears no resemblance to our painters, ex pert observers taught by aesthetic and philosophic books and journals, who depict the peasant and the laborer the same as the Turk and the Arab, that is to say, as curious animals and interesting specimens ; who charge their landscapes with the subtleties, re finements and emotions of poets and civilians in order to rid themselves of the mute and dreamy revery of life. He is of a more naive order ; he is not dis located or over-excited by excessive cerebral activ ity ; as compared to us he is an artizan ; when he takes up painting he has none other than picturesque intentions; he is less affected by unforeseen and striking detail than by simple and leading general traits. His work, on this account, healthier and less poignant, appeals to less cultivated natures, and pleases the greater number. Among all these paint ers, two only— Ruysdael, in spiritual fine&se and IN THE NETHERLANDS. 337 marked superiority of education, and Rembrandt especially, in a peculiar structure of the eye and a wonderfully wild genius — developed, beyond their age and nation, up to the common instincts which bind the Germanic nations together and pave the way for modern sentiments. The latter, constantly collecting his materials, living in solitude and borne along by the growth of an extraordinary faculty, lived, like our Balzac, a magician and a visionary in a world fashioned by his own hand and of which he alone possessed the key. Superior to all painters in the native deUcacy and keenness of his optical per ceptions, he comprehended this truth and adhered to it in all its consequences that, to the eye, the essence of a visible object consists of the spot (tache), that the simplest color is infinitely complex, that every visual sensation is the product of its elements coupled with its surroundings, that each object on the field of sight is but a single spot modified by others, and that, in this wise, the principal feature of a picture is the ever-present, tremulous, colored atmosphere into which figures are plunged like fishes in the sea. He rendered this atmosphere palpable, 15 338 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART and revealed to us its mysterious and thronging pop ulation ; he impregnated it with the light of his own country — a feeble, yellow illumination like that of a lamp in a cellar; he felt the mournful struggle between it and shadow, the weakness of vanishing rays dying away in gloom, the tremulousness of re flections vainly clinging to gleaming walls, the sum of that vague multitude of half-darks which, invisible to ordinary gaze, seem in his paintings and etchings to form a submarine world dimly visible through an abyss of waters. On emerging from this obscurity the full light, to his eyes, proved a dazzling shower ; he felt as if it were flashes of lightning, or some magical effulgence, or as myriads of beaming darts. He found accordingly, in the inanimate world the completest and most expressive drama, all contrasts and all conflicts, whatever is overwhelming and pain fully lugubrious in night, whatever is most fleeting and saddest in ambiguous shadow, whatever is most violent and most irresistible in the irruption of day light. This done, all that remained was to impose the human drama on the natural drama; a stage thus fashioned indicates of itself its own characters IN THE NETHERLANDS. 338 The Greeks and Italians had known of man and of Ufe only the straightest and tallest stems, the healthy flower blooming in sunshine; he saw the root, everything which crawls and moulders in shadow, the stunted- and deformed sprouts, the obscure crowd of the poor, the Jewry of Amster dam, the slimy, suffering populace of a large city and unfavorable climate, the bandy-legged beggar the bloated idiot, the bald skull of an exhausted craftsman, the pallid features of the sick, the whole of that grovelling array of evil passions and hideous miseries which infest our various civilizations like worms in a rotten plank. Once on this road he could comprehend the religion of grief, the genuine Christianity ; he could interpret the Bible as if he were a Lollard; he could recognize the eternal Christ as present now as formerly, as living in a cellar or tavern of Holland as beneath a Jerusalem sun ; the healer and consoler of the miserable, alone capable of saving them because as poor and as miserable as themselves. He too, through a reaction, was con scious of pity ; by the side of others who seem painters of the aristocracy ne is of the people; he 340 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART is, at least, the most humane; his broader sympa thies embrace more of nature fundamentally ; no ugliness repels him, no craving for joyousness or nobleness hides from him the lowest depths of truth. Hence it is that, free of all trammels and guided by the keen sensibility of his organs, he has succeeded in portraying in man not merely the general struc ture and the abstract type which answers for classic art, but again that which is peculiar and profound in the individual, the infinite and indefinable com plications of the moral being, the whole of that changeable imprint which concentrates instantane ously on a face the entire history of a soul and which Shakespeare alone saw with an equally prodi gious lucidity. In this respect he is the most origi nal of modern artists, and forges one end of the chain of which the Greeks forged the other; the rest of the masters, Florentine, Venetian and Flem ish, stand between them; and when, nowadays, our over-excited sensibility, our extravagant curiosity in the pursuit of subtleties, our unsparing search of the true, our divination of the remote and the obscure in human nature, seeks for predecessors and IN THE NETHERLANDS. 341 masters, it is in him and in Shakespeare that Balzao and Delacroix are able to find them. A blooming period like this is transient for the reason that the sap which produces it is exhausted by its production. Towards 1667, after the naval defeats of England, slight indications show the growing change in the manners, customs and senti ments which had stimulated the national art. The prosperity is too great. Already, in 1660, Parival, speaking of this, grows ecstatic in every chapter ; the companies of the East and West Indies declare dividends to their stockholders of forty and fifty per cent. Heroes become citizens ; Parival notices the thirst for gain among those of the highest class. And more, " they detest duels, contentions and quar rels, and commonly assert that well-off people never fight." They want to enjoy themselves, and the houses of the great, which the Venetian ambassadors early in the century find so bare and so simple, be come luxurious ; among the leading citizens there are found tapestries, high-priced pictures and " gold and silver-plate." The rich interiors of Terburg and Metzu show us the new-found elegance — the light 342 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART silk dresses, velvet bodices, the gems, the pearlsj the hangings honey-combed with gold, and the lofty chimneys with marble columns. Ancient energy relaxes. When Louis XIV. invades the country in 1672 he finds no resistance. The army has been neglected ; their troops are disbanded ; their towns surrender at the first blow; four French cavaliers take Muyden which is the key to the floodgates ; the States-General implore peace on any terms. The national sentiment degenerates, at the same time, in the arts. Taste becomes transformed. Rembrandt in 1669 dies poor, almost without anybody's knowl edge ; the new-found luxury is satisfied with foreign models obtained from France and Italy. Already, during the most flourishing epoch, a number of paint ers had gone to Rome to paint small figures and landscapes ; Jan Both, Berghem, Karl Dujardin, and many others — Wouvermans himself— form a half-Ital ian school alongside of the national school. But this school was spontaneous and natural ; amid the mountains, ruins, structures and rags of the South the vapory whiteness of the atmosphere, the genial ity of the figures, the mellow carnations, the gayety IN THE NETHERLANDS. 34b and good humor of the painter denote the persist ency and freedom of the Dutch instinct. On the other hand, we see at this moment this instinct be coming enfeebled under the invasion of fashion. On the Kaisergracht and the Heeregracht rise grand hotels in the style of Louis XIV, whUe the Flemish painter who founded the academic school, Gerard de Lairesse, comes to decorate them with his learned allegories and hybrid mythologies. The national art, it is true, does not at once surrender ; it is pro longed by a succession of masterpieces up to the first years of the eighteenth century ; at the same time the national sentiment, aroused by humiliation and danger, excites a popular revolution, heroio sacrifices, the inundation of the country, and all the successes which afterwards ensue. But these very successes complete the ruin of the energy and enthu siasm which this temporary revival had stimulated. During the whole of the war of the Spanish succes sion, Holland, whose stadtholder became King of England, is sacrificed to its ally ; after the treaty of 1713 she loses her maritime supremacy, falls to the second rank of powers, and, finally, still lower 344 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART Frederic the Great is soon able to say that she is dragged in the wake of England like a sloop behind a man-of-war. France tramples on her during the war of the Austrian succession ; later, England im poses on her the right of search and deprives her of the coast of Coromandel. Finally, Prussia steps in, overwhelms the republican party and establishes the stadtholdership. Like all the weak she is hustled by the strong, and, after 1789, conquered and recon quered. What is worse she gives up and is content to remain a good commercial banking-house. Al ready in 1723 her historian, John Leclerc, a refugee, openly ridicules the valiant seamen who, during the War of Independence, blew themselves up rather than strike their flag.* In 1732, another historian de clares that " the Dutch think of nothing but the ac cumulation of riches." After 1748 both the army and the fleet are allowed to decline. In 1787 the Duke of Brunswick brings the country under subjec tion almost without striking a blow. What a dis tance between sentiments of this cast and those of ? " This good captain belonged to those who die for fear of dying. D God forgives such people it is because they are out of their mind." IN THE NETHERLANDS. 34J the companions of William the Taciturn, De Ruyter and Von Tromp ! Hence it is that, through an ad mirable concordance, we see picturesque invention terminating with practical energy. In ten years after the commencement of the eighteenth century all the great painters are dead. Already for a gen eration a decline is manifest in the impoverished style, in the more limited imagination and in more minute finish of Franz Mieris, Schalcken, and the rest. One of these, Adrian Van der Werf, in his cold and polished painting, his mythologies and nudities, his ivory carnations, his impotent return to the Italian style, bears witness to the Dutch oblivion of native tastes and its own peculiar genius. His successors resemble men who attempt to speak with nothing to say ; brought up by masters or famous parents, Peter Van der Werf, Henry Van Limborch, Philip Van Dyck, Mieris the younger, and another the grandson, Nicholas Verkolie, and Constantine Nets- cher repeat sentences they have heard, but like au tomatons. Talent survives only among painters of accessories and flowers — Jacques de Witt, Rachel Ruysch and Van Huysum — in a small way, which 15* 346 ART IN THE NETHERLANDS. requires less invention and which still lasts a few years, similar to a tenacious clump of bushes on a dry soil whereon all the great trees have died. This dies in its turn, and the ground remains vacant. It is the last evidence of the dependence which attaches individual originality to social life, and proportions the inventive faculties of the artist to the active energies of the nation. ART IN GREECE TO HENRI LEHMANN PAINTER. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. The translator has to express his grateful ao knowledgments to Mr. Bryant for translations of the several passages quoted by the author from the Odyssey, kindly furnished by him in advance of the pubUcation of liis version of that poem ; also for the translation of an Olympic chonis from the original Greek on page 497 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. Scclptube in Greece. — Its remains, their insufficiency. — Necessity of studying the milieu. 359 RACE. Influence of physical conditions on the early settlers of a country. — Relationship of the Greek and the Latin 362 § I. Circumstances causing the diversity of the two characters. — Climate. — Its mild effects. — The soil poor and mountainous. — Temperance of the inhabi tants. — Universal presence of the Sea. — Induce ments for the coasting trade. — The Greeks seamen and navigators. — Their natural finesse and precocious education . 364 § II. Evidences of this character in their history. — Ulysses. — The Grseculus. — Taste for mathematics and abstractions. — Invention in the sciences. — Phi losophic theories. — Sophists and Disputants. — The Attic taste . 376 § III. Lack of vastness in their landscape. — Mountains, rivers and sea. — Clearness of relief and transpar ency of the atmosphere. — Analogous effect in their political organization. — Small dimensions of the State in Greece. — The acquired aptitude of the Greek mind for positive and clear conceptions. — Evidences of this trait in their history. — Religion. — 354 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. The sentiment of the universal feeble.— Idea of the Cosmos. — Their gods human and limited. — The Greek finally sports with them. — Government. — Independence of the Colonies. — Cities unable to federate. — Limit and fragility of the Grecian State. Integrity and growth of human nature. — Concep tion, complete and circumscribed, of human nature and of its destiny . 385 § IV. Beauty of land and sky. — Natural gayety of the race. — Evidences of this trait in their history. — Aristophanes. — Their idea of the happiness of the Gods. — Religion a festivity. — Opposite purposes of the Greek and the Roman State. — Athenian expedi tions, democracy and amusements. — The State be comes a spectacular, enterprise. — Earnestness in sci ence and philosophy not perfect. — Adventurous taste in theories. — Dialectical subtleties. 401 § V. Consequences of these qualities and defects. — They are genuine artists. — Sensitiveness to delicate rela tionships, propriety and clearness of conception and love of beauty. — Evidences of this in their art. — The Temple. — Its position. — Its proportions. — Its construction. — Its refinements. — Its ornamenta tion. — Its paintings. — Its sculptures. — The impres sion it leaves on the mind 415 THE PERIOD. Difference between an ancient and a modern. — Life and intellect more simple among the ancients than among ourselves 427 § I. Influence of climate on modern civilizations. — Man has greater wants. — The Costume, Dwelling and Public Edifice of Greece and of our time. — Social organization, including public business, military art and navigation formerly and today 429 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. 355 § n. Influence of the past on modern civilization. — Dante and Homer. — The idea of death and futurity in Greece. — Difference of conception and sentiment in the modern. — Difference between modern lan guages and the ancient Greek. — Ancient culture and education compared with the modern. — Contrast between a fresh and precocious civilization and an elaborate and complicated civilization 440 § IIL Effects of these differences on the intellect and on art. — Mediaeval, Renaissance and contemporary sen timents, figures and characters. — Antique taste op posed to modern taste. — In Literature. — In Sculpture. — Inherent value of the body. — Love of gymnastic perfection. — The Head. — Slight importance of physi- ogonomy. — Interest in physical action and in inex pressive repose. — Suitableness of the moral condi tion to this form of art 45E INSTITUTIONS. § I The Orchestral system. — Simultaneous development of institutions which shape the Body and of the arts which shape the Statue. — Comparison of Greece in the Vllth century with the Greece of Homer. — Greek lyric poesy compared with the modern. — Mu sical pantomime and declamation. — Their universal application. — Their use in private as well as public education, and their use in public and political af fairs. — Their use in worship. — Pindar's odes. — Mod els furnished to sculpture by the orchestral system 471 § II. The Gymnastic system. — What it was in Homer's time. — Revised and changed by the Dorians. — Prin ciple of the State, of Education and of Gymnastics at Spaita. — Imitation or importation of Dorian cua toms by other Greek communities. — Revival and growth of the games. — Gymnasia. — Athletes. — Im- 856 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. portance of gymnastic education in Greece. — Its effect on the Body. — Perfection of forms and attitudes. — • Taste for physical beauty. — The statue follows the model 49 Jj HI. Religion. — Religious sentiment in the Vth cen tury. — Analogies between this and the epoch, of Lorenzo de Medici. — Influence of the early philoso phers and physicists. — Man is still sensible of the divine life of natural objects. — Man still distin guishes the natural source of divine personages. — Sentiments of an Athenian at the great Panathenaic festival. — Choruses and Games. — The Procession. — The Acropolis. — The Erectheum, and the legends of Erectheus, Cecrops and Triptolemus. — The Parthe- nons and the legends of Pallas and Poseidon. — The Pallas of Phidias. — Character of the statue, impres sion on the spectator, and idea of the sculptor 514 BACB. THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART IN GREECE. INTRODUCTION. Gentlemen: — In preceding years I have pre sented to you the history of the two great original schools which, in modern times, have treated the human form, those of Italy and the Netherlands. I have now to complete this study by famUiarizing you with the greatest and most original of all, the ancient Greek school. This time I shaU not dis course on painting. Excepting a few vases, some mosaics and the small mural decorations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, the antique monuments of painting have all perished; we cannot speak of them with certainty. Besides, in the display of the human form, there was in Greece a more national art, one better adapted to their social ways and public spirit, and probably more cultivated and more perfect, that 360 THE PHILOSOPHY OF of sculpture ; Greek sculpture, accordingly, will be the subject of this course. Unfortunately, in this, as in all other dUections, antiquity is simply a ruin. The remains that have come down to us of antique statuary are almost nothing alongside of what has perished. We are re duced to two heads,* by which to conjecture the colossal divinities in whom the great century had expressed its thought and whose majesty filled the temples. We have no authentic work by Phidias , we know nothing of Myron, Polycleitus, Praxitiles, Scopas and Lysippus except through copies and more or less remote and doubtful imitations. The beautiful statues of our museums belong, generally, to the Roman era, or, at most, date from the succes sors of Alexander. The best, moreover, are mutila ted. Your collection of casts,f composed of scatter ed torsos, heads and limbs, resembles that of a bat tle-field after a combat. Add to this, finally, the ab sence of any biography of the Greek masters. The * The head of Juno in the Villa Ludovisi and that of Jnpitfr of Otricole. t That of the Ecole des Beaux Arts studied by the students forming the author's audience. ART IN GREECE. 361 most ingenious and most patient researches of the erudites* have been required to discover in the half of one of PUny's chapters, in a few meagre descrip tions by Pausanias and some isolated phrases of Cic ero, Lucian and Quintillian, the chronology of artists, the affiliation of schools, the nature of talents and the gradual development and changes in art. We have but one way to supply these deficiencies; in default of a detailed history there is general history ; in order to comprehend this work we are more than ever obUged to consider the people who executed it, the social habits which stimulated it, and the milieu out of which it sprung. » Geschichte der griechischen Plastlk, von J. Oveibeck, and Kunstltt —Oesclilchte, von Bruno. 16 362 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RAOE. Let us first try to obtain a clear idea of the race, and to do this we will study the country. A people always receivss an impression from the coun try it occupies, but the impression is the stronger proportionately to the more uncivilized and infan tile condition of the people at the time of its estab lishment. When the French set out to colonize the Island of Bourbon or Martinique, and the English to settle North America and Australia, they carried along with them arms, implements, arts, manufac tures, institutions and ideas, in short, an old and complete civilization which served to maintain their acquired type and to resist the influence of their new surroundings. But when the fresh and de fenceless man abandons himself to nature, she devel- opes, shapes and moulds him, the moral clay, as yet quite soft and pliant, yielding to and being fash ioned by the physical pressure against which the past provides him with no support. Philologists show us a primitive epoch where Indians, Persians ART IN GREECE. 363 Germans, Celts, Latins and Greeks had a language in common and the same degree of culture ; another epoch, less ancient, when the Latins and the Greeks, already separated from their brethren, were still united,* acquainted wdth wine, Uving on tillage and grazing, possessing row-boats and having added to their old Vedic gods the new one of Hestia or Ves ta, the domestic fireside. These are but little more than the rudiments of progress ; if they are no long er savages they are still barbarians. From this time forth the two branches that have issued from the same stock, begin to diverge ; on encountering them later we find that their structure and fruit in stead of being alike are different, one, meanwhile, having grown up in Italy and the other in Greece, and we are led to regard the environment of the Greek plant in order to ascertain whether the soil and atmosphere which have nourished do not ex plain the peculiarities of its form and the directior of its development. . • Mommsen, Boemische Geschichte, Vol. I., p. 21. 364 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Let us examine a map. Greece is a peninsula in the shape of a triangle, with its base resting on Turkey in Europe, extending towards the south, burying itself in the sea and narrowing at the Isth mus of Corinth to form another peninsula beyond, the Peloponnesus, still more southern, and a sort of mulberry leaf attached by a slender stalk to the main land. Add to this a hundred islands with the Asiatic coast opposite ; a fringe of small countries stitched fast to the great barbaric continent and a sprinkling of scattered islands on the blue sea which the fringe surrounds — such is the land that has formed and maintained this highly intelligent and precocious people. It was singularly adapted to the work. To the north* of the yEgean Sea the cli mate is still severe, like that of the centre of Ger many ; southern fruits are not known in Roumel ia, and its coast produces no myrtles. Descending to wards the south, and on entering Greece, the con- * Curtius, Grieschesche Geschichte, Vol. I., p. 4 ART IN GREECE. 365 trast becomes striking. Forests always green be gin in Thessaly, at the 40th degree ; at the 39th, in Phthiotis, in the mild atmosphere of the sea and tho coast, rice, cotton and the olive grow. In Euboea and Attica the palm-tree appears, and almonds in the Cyclades ; on the eastern coast of Argolis wo find thick groves of the orange and the lemon ; the African date lives in one corner of Crete. At Ath ens, which is the centre of Greek civilization, the finest fruits of the South grow without cultivation. Frost is scarcely seen more than once in twenty years ; the extreme heats of the summer are modi fied by the sea-breeze, and, save a few gales in Thrace and the blasts of the sirocco, the tempera ture is delightful. Nowadays " the people are ac customed to sleeping in the streets from the middle of May to the end of September, while the women sleep on the roofs."* In suoh a country everybody lives out of doors. The ancients themselves regard ed their climate as a gift of the gods. " Mild and clement," said Euripides, " is our atmosphere ; the cold of winter is for us without rigor and the ar * About: La Grece amtempwaine, p. SM5. 366 THE PHILOSOPHY OF rows of Phoebus do not wound us." And elsewhers he adds: "The Athenians happy of old, and the de scendants of the blessed gods, feeding on the most exalted wisdom of a country sacred and uncon- quered, always tripping elegantly through the pur est atmosphere, where they say that of old the golden-haired Harmonia gave birth to the chaste nine Pierian muses. And they report also that Venus, drawing in her breath from the stream of the fair-flowing Cephisus, breathed over this country gentle, sweetly breathing gales of air ; and always entwining in her hair the fragrant wreath of roses, sends the loves as accessory to wisdom ; the assist ants to every virtue."* These are the fine expres sions of a poet, but through the ode we see the truth A people formed by such a climate develops faster and more harmoniously than any other ; man is neither prostrated nor enervated by excessive heat, nor chilled or indurated by severe cold. He is neither condemned to dreamy inactivity, nor to per petual labor ; he does not lag behind in mystic con- * Medea (Buckley's translation). See also the celebrated chorus in tho QMipits at Ookmus of Sophocles. ART IN GREECE. 36. templation nor in brutal barbarism. Compare a NeapoUtan or a Provencal with a man of Brittany a Hollander or a Hindoo, and you will recognize how the mUdness and moderation of physical nature en dow the soul with vivacity and so balance it as to lead the mind thus disposed and alert to thought and to action. Two characteristics of the soil operate alike in this sense. In the first place, Greece is a net-work of mountains. Pindus, its central summit, extend ing towards the south with Othrys, xEta, Parnassus, Helicon, Cithaeron and their bastions, form a chain the multiplied links of which cross the isthmus, rise up again and intermingle in the Peloponnesus ; be yond are the islands consisting of emergent spines and the tops of mountains. This territory, thus em bossed, has scarcely any plains ; rock abounds every where as in our Provence ; three-fifths of the surface of it is unfit for cultivation. " Look at the Views" and "Landscapes" by M. de Stackelberg, — every where barren stones, small rivers or mountain tor ¦ rents leaving between their half-dried beds and the sterile rock a narrow strip of productive ground ::r»8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Herodotus already contrasts Sicily and Southern Italy, those fat nurses, with meagre Greece, " which at its birth had poverty for its foster-sister." In At tica, especially, the soil is lighter and thinner than anywhere else ; the olive, the vine, barley and a little wheat are all that it provided man with. In these beautiful islands of marble, sparkling on the azure of the iEgean Sea, is found now and then a sacred grove, the cypress, the laurel and the palm, some bouquet of rich verdure, scattered vines on rocky slopes, fine fruits in the gardens and a few scanty crops in the hollows or on a declivity; but all this was more calculated for the eye and for a delicate sensibility than for the stomach and merely physical wants. Such a country forms lithe, active, sober mountaineers fed on the purity of its atmosphere. At the present day " the food of an English laborer would suffice in Greece for a family of six persons. The rich are quite content with a dish of vegetables for one of their repasts ; the poor with a handful of olives or a bit of salt fish. The people at large eat meat at Easter for the whole year."* It is interest- * Aboul : La Grice contemporalne, p. 41. ART IN GREECE. 369 ing in this respect to see them at Athens in summer- " Epicures in a group of seven or eight persons are dividing up a sheep's head which cost six cents. These temperate men buy a slice of water-melon or a big cucumber which they eat like an apple." There are no drunkards among them ; they are great drinkers but always of pure water. " If they enter a cabaret, it is to gossip." In a cafe " they call for a penny cup of coffee, a glass of water, a light for their cigarettes, a newspaper, and a set of dominoes." Such a regimen is not calculated to make the mind torpid ; in lessening the wants of the stomach it in creases those of the understanding. The ancients themselves noticed similar contrasts between Bosotia and Attica, and the Boeotian and the Athenian. One fed amidst fertile plains and in a dense atmosphere, accustomed to gross food and the eels of Lake Co- pais, was a great eater and drinker and of a sluggish intellect ; the other, born on the poorest soil in Greece, contented wdth the head of a fish, an onion and a few olives, growing up in a light transparent and lu minous atmosphere, displayed from his birth a sin gular keenness and vivacity of intellect, cease 16* 370 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Icssly inventive and enterprising, sensitive and ap preciative regardless of all other things, and " pos sessing, apparently, nothing peculiar to himself but thought."* In the second place, if Greece is a land of moun tains it is likewise a land of sea-coasts. Although smaller than Portugal it has more of these than all Spain. The sea penetrates the country through an infinity of gulfs, indentations, fissures and cavities ; m the various views brought back by travellers you will observe, every other one, even in the interior, some blue band, triangle, or luminous semi-circle on the horizon. Generally it is framed in by project ing rocks or by islands which approach each other and form a natural harbor. A situation like this fosters a maritime life, especially where a poor soil and a rocky shore do not suffice to support the in habitants. In primitive times there is but one spe cies of navigation, and that is coasting, and no sea is better adapted to invite a border trade. Every morning a north wind springs up to waft vessels from Athens to the Cyclades ; every evening a con- * Thucydides, Book I. Chap. LXX. ART IN GREECE. 371 trary breeze rises to carry them back. Between Greece and Asia Minor, islands occur like the stones of a ford ; in clear weather a ship on this track ifi always in sight of land. From Corcyra Italy is visible, from Cape Malea the peaks of Crete, from Crete the mountains of Rhodes, from Rhodes, Asia Minor; two days' sail suffice to carry one from Crete to Cyrene, and only three are required to go from Crete to Egypt. StUl to-day "there is the stuff of a saUor in every Greek you meet."* In this * About: La Grece amtemporaine, p. 146. Two islanders chance to meet in the port of Syra, and the following dialogue ensues : "Good-day, brother, how are you?" "Very well, thank you ; what is the news !" "Demitri, the son of Nicholas, has got back from Marseilles." " Did he make any money ?" " Twenty-three thousand drachmae, they say. That's a good deal." " I made up my mind long ago that I onght to go to Marseilles. But I have no boat." " We two will make one if yon say so. Have you any timber f" "A little." "Everybody has enough for a boat. I have some canvas and my tcnsin John has enough rigging; we will put all this .ogethcr.' "Who will be captain f" "John, for he has already sailed there." "We must have a boy to help us." " There is my little godson, Basil." "A child only eight years old 1 He's too small." "Anybody is big enough to go to sea." 373 THE PHILOSOPHY OF country, with a population of only 900,000, there were, in 1840, 30,000 sailors and 4,000 vessels; thoy do nearly the whole of the coasting business of the Mediterranean. We find the same ways and habits in the time of Homer ; they are constantly launch ing a ship on the sea ; Ulysses builds one with his own hands ; they cruise all over, trading and pil laging the surrounding coasts. The Greeks were merchants, travellers, pirates, courtiers, and adven turers at the start and throughout their history ; employing skill or force they set out to drain the great Oriental kingdoms or the barbaric populations of the west, bringing back gold, silver, ivory, slaves, ship-timber, all kinds of precious merchandise bought above and below the market, other people's ideas and inventions, those of Egypt, of Phoenicia, "But what cargo shall we take?" "Our neighbor Petros has some bark (for tanning) ; daddy has got a few casks of wine, and I know a man in Tinos who has some cotton. We wiL stop at Smyrna, if you say so, for a freight of silk.11 The vessel is built well or ill as it happens ; the crew is obtained in one or two families, and, from friends and neighbors, whatever merchan- dise they may choose to offer. They set out for Marseilles by (he way of Smyrna or even Alexandria, sell the cargo and take another ; on re turning to Syra, the freight is found to pay for the vessel and the part ners divide thc profits out of a few drachma? left over. ART IN GREECE. 373 of Chaldea, of Persia,* and of Etruria. A regime of this kind quickens and sharpens the intellect to a remarkable degree. Proof of it lies in the fact that the most precocious, the most civilized and most ingenious people of ancient Greece were mariners ; the lonians of Asia Minor, the Colonists of Magna Gra?cia, the Corinthians, xEginetans, Sicyonians and Athenians. The Arcadians, confined to their moun tains, remained rural and simple ; and likewise the Acarnanians, the Epirots and the Locrians who, with their outlet on a less favorable sea, and not being sea-faring, remain semi-barbarous to the last ; their neighbors, the Etolians, at the time of the Roman conquest possessed bourgs only, without walls, and were simply rude pillagers. The spur which stimu lated the others did not reach them. Such are the physical circumstances which, from the first, served to arouse the Greek intellect. This people may be compared to a swarm of bees born under a mild sky but on a meagre soil, turning to account the routes open to it through the air, foraging everywhere, * AlcseuB extols his brother for having fought in Babylon and for oringing therefrom an ivory-handled sword. 574 THE PHILOSOPHY OF gathering supplies, swarming, relying on its owe stings and dexterity for protection, building deli cate edifices, compounding delicious honey, excited and humming amidst the huge creatures surrounding it, clashing haphazard and knowing but one master under whom to support itself. Even in our days, fallen as they are, " they have as much mind as any people in the world ; there is no intellectual effort of which they are not capable. They comprehend well and quickly ; they acquire with wonderful facility every thing they wish to learn. Young merchants soon qualify themselves to speak five or six languages."* Mechanics are able in a few months to work at a somewhat diffi cult trade. A whole village, with its chief at the head of it, will interrogate and attentively listen to travellers. " A most remarkable thing is the inde fatigable application of school-children," little and big ; hired persons find time while fulfilling their engagements to pass examinations as lawyers or physicians. " Tou meet at Athens every kind of student except the student who don't study." In * About : La Grece cmtemporaine. ART IN GREECE 375 this respect no race has been so weU endowed by nature, aU circumstances apparently having con curred to unfetter the mind and sharpen the facul ties. 376 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 11. Let us follow out this feature in their history Whether we consider it practically or speculatively, it is always keenness of mind, adroitness and ingenuity, which manifest themselves. It is a strange thing, at the dawn of civilization, when man elsewhere is excit able, rude and childish, to see one of their two heroes, the wise Ulysses, cautious, prudent and crafty, fer tile in expedients, inexhaustible in falsehood, the able navigator, always attentive to his own interests. Returning home in disguise, he counsels his wife to get from her suitors presents of necklaces and brace lets, and he does not slay them until they have en riched his mansion. When Circe surrenders herself to him, or when Calypso proposes his departure, he takes the precaution of binding them by an oath. Ask him his name and he has always ready some fresh and appropriate story and genealogy. Pallas herself, to whom, without knowing her, he relates his stories, praises and admires him : Full shrewd were he and practised in deceit, Who should surpass thee in tho ways of craft, ART IN GREECE!. 377 Even though he were a god,— thou nnabasl.ed And prompt with shifts, and measureless in wiles.* And the sons are worthy of their sire. At the snd, as at the beginning of civilization, the intellect predominates ; it was always the stamp of the char acter, and now it survives them. Greece once subju gated, we see the Greek a paid dilettant, sophist, rhe torician, scribe, critic and philosopher; then the Grseculus of the Roman dominion, the parasite, buf foon and pander, ever alert, sprightly and useful ; the complacent Protean who, good in every line, adapts himself to all characters, and gets out of all scrapes ; infinite in dexterity, the first ancestor of the Scapins Mascarilles and other clever rogues, who, with no other heritage but their art, live upon it at other peo ple's expense. Let us return to their most brilliant era and con sider their master work, science, that which best commends them to the admiration of humanity and which, if founded by them, is owing to the same in stinct and the same necessities. The Phenician, who is a merchant, employs arithmetical rules in adjust- * The Odyssey, translated by W. C. Bryant. 378 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ing his accounts. The Egyptian, surveyor and stone-cutter, has geometrical processes by which to pile up his blocks, and estimate the area of his field annually inundated by the Nile. The Greek re ceives from them these technical systems, but they do not suffice him ; he is not content with applying them commercially and industrially ; he is investiga tive and speculative; he wants to know the why, the cause of things ;* he seeks abstract proof and fol lows the delicate thread of ideas which leads from one theorem to another. Thales, more than six hundred years before Christ, devotes himself to the demon stration of the equality of the angles of the isosceles triangle. The ancients relate that Pythagoras, trans ported with joy on solving the problem of the square of the hypotenuse, promised the gods a hecatomb. They are interested in abstract truth. Plato, on see- * Plato's "Thestetus." Take the whole of the part of Theestetus and the comparison he makes between figures and numbers. — See likewise the openingof the " Rivals." Herodotus (Book It., 29) is very instructive in this connection. Among the Egyptians no one could reply to him when He demanded the cause of the periodical rise of the Nile. Neither the priests nor the laymen hadmade this matter, which affected them so close ly, a subject of inquiry or of hypothesis.— The Greeks, on the contrary, had already suggested three explanations of the phenomenon. Herodotus discusses these and suggests a fourth. ART IN GREECE. 379 ing the Sicilian mathematicians apply their discover ies to machinery, reproaches them with degrading science; in his view of it they ought tc confine them selves to the study of ideal lines. In fact they al ways promoted it without concerning themselves about its utility. For example, their researches on the properties of conic sections found no application until seventeen centuries later, when Kepler discov ered the laws which control the movements of the planets. In this work, which constitutes the basis of all our exact sciences, their analysis is so rigid that in England Euclid's geometry still serves as the student's text-book. To decompose ideas and note their dependencies ; to form a chain of them in such a way as to leave no link missing, the whole chain being fastened on to some incontestable axiom or group of famUiar experiences ; to delight in forging, attaching, multiplying and testing aU these chains with no motive but that of a desire to find them al ways more numerous and more certain, is the especial endowment of the Greek mind. The Greeks think for the purpose of thinking, and hence their organiza tion of the sciences. We do not establish one to-day 3S0 THE PHILOSOPHY OF which does not rest on the foundations they laid ; we are frequently indebted to them for its first story and sometimes an entire wing ;* a series of inventors suc ceed each other in mathematics from Pythagoras to Archimedes ; in astronomy from Thales and Pythag oras to Hipparchus and Ptolemy; in the natural sciences from Hippocrates to Aristotle and the Alex andrian anatomists; in history from Herodotus to Thucydides and Polybius ; in logic, politics, morality and aesthetics from Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle to the Stoics and neo-platonicians. — Men so thorough ly absorbed by ideas could not fail to admire the most beautiful of all, the university of ideas. For eleven centuries, from Thales to Justinian, their phi losophy never ceased to grow ; always some new sys tem arose blooming above or alongside of the old systems; even when speculation is imprisoned by Christian orthodoxy it makes its way and presses through the crevices ; " the Greek language," says one of the Fathers of the Church, "is the mother of heresies." We of to-day still find in this vast storo- * Euclid, Aristotle's theory of the Syllogism and the Morality of Um Stoics. ART IN GREECE. 381 house our most fecund hypotheses;* thinking so much and with such a sound mind their conjectures are frequently found in accordance with the truth. In this respect their performance has only been surpassed by their zeal. Two occupations, in their eyes, distinguished man from the brute and the Greek from the barbarian — a devotion to public af fairs and the study of philosophy. We have only to read Plato's Theages and Protagoras to see the steady enthusiasm with which the youngest pursued ideas through the briars and brambles of dialectics Their taste for dialectics itself is still more striking they never weary in its circuitous course ; they are as fond of the chase as the game ; they enjoy the journey as much as the journey's end. The Greek is much more a reasoner than a metaphysician or sa vant ; he delights xi. delicate distinctions and subtle analysis ; he revels in the weaving and s iper-refine- ment of spiders' webs.f His dexterity in this re- * Plato's ideal types, Aristotle'B Final causes, the Atomic theory of Epionrns and the classifications of the Stoics. t See, in Aristotle, "Theory of Model Syllogisms," and in Plato, the "Parmenides " and " Sophistes." There is nothing more ingenious and more fragile than the whole of Aristot.o's Physics and Physiology 382 THE PHILOSOPHY OF spect is unequalled ; it is of little consequence to him whether this over-complicated and attenuated web is of any use in theory or in practice ; it satisfies him to see the threads spun out and crossing each other in imperceptible and symmetrical meshes. Herein does the national weakness manifest the na tional talent. Greece is the mother of disputants, rhetoricians and sophists. Nowhere else has a group of eminent and popular men been seen teach ing with the same success and fame as Gorgias, Protagoras and Polus, the art of making the worse appear the better cause, and of plausibly maintain ing a foolish proposition however absurd.* It is Greek rhetoricians who are the eulogists of pesti lence, fever, bugs, Polyphemus and Thersites; a Greek philosopher asserted that a wise man could be happy in the brazen bull of Phalaris. Schools existed, like that of Carneades, in which pleadings could be made on both sides ; others, like that of elf-transforming. At a later period the Stoics compare it to a vast city governed by the best lawa * See Tournier's "Nemesis ou la Jalousie des Dieux." ART IN GREECE. 393 There is no place here for mystic and incomprehen sible gods, nor for destructive and despotic gods. The reUgious vertigo did not enter into the sound and well-balanced minds which conceived a world like this. Their divinities soon become human be ings ; they have parents, children, a genealogy, a history, drapery, palaces and a physical frame like ours ; they are wounded and suffer ; the greatest, Zeus himself, beheld their advent and some day per haps will see the end of their reign.* On the shield of Achilles, which represents an army, " men marched led by Ares and Athera, both in gold, in golden vestments, tall and beautiful, as is proper for gods, for men were much smaller." There is indeed but little difference besides this between them and ourselves. Often, in the Odys sey, when Ulysses or Telemachus encounter una wares any tall or fine-looking personage, they ask if he is a god. Human divinities of this stamp do not disturb the minds which conceive them ; Homer manages them his own way ; ho is constantly bring ing in Athena for slight offices, such as indicating * The Prometheus of xEschylus. 17* S94 THE PHILOSOPHY OF to Ulysses the dwelling of Alcinous and marking spot where his discus fell. The theological poet moves about in his divine world with the freedom and serenity of a playful child. We see him there laughing and enjoying himself; on exhibiting to uh Ares surprised in the arms of Aphrodite Apollo in dulges his merriment and asks Hermes if he woub' not like to be in Ares' place : I would that it were so, Oh archer-king Apollo ; I could bear Chains thrice as many and of infinite strength, And all the gods and all the goddesses Might come to look upon me ; I would keep My place with golden Venus at my 6ide.* Read the hymn in which Aphrodite offers herself to Anchises, and especially the hymn to Hermes, who, the \ ery day of his birth, shows himself a contriving robbing, mendacious Greek, but with so much grace that th i poet's narrative seems to be the badinage of a sculptor. In the hands of Aristophanes, in the " Frogs" and the " Clouds," Hercules and Bacchus are treated with still greater freedom. All this smooths the way for the decorative gods of Pompeii, * The Odyssey, translated by W. C. Bryant. ART IN GREECE. 395 the pretty and sinister pleasantries of Lucian, And tho entire Olympic circle of the agreeable the social and the dramatic Gods so closely resembling man soon become his companions, and later his sport. The clear mind which, to bring them within its reach, de prives them of mystery and infinity, regards them as its own creations and delights in the myths of its own formation. Let us now glance at their ordinary life. Here, again, they are wanting in veneration. The Greek cannot subordinate himself, like the Roman, to one grand unity, a vast conceivable but invisible patri mony. He has not progressed beyond that form of association in which the State consists of the City. His colonies are their own masters ; they receive a pontiff from the metropolis and regard him with sen timents of fiUal affection ; but there their dependence rests. They are emancipated children, similar to the young Athenian who, on reaching manhood, is dependent on nobody and is his own master ; whilst the Roman colonies are only mUitary posts, similar to the young Roman who, though married, a magis trate and even consul, always feels on his shoulder 396 THE PHILOSOPHY OF the weight of a father's hand, a despotic authorit) from which nothing, save a triple sale can set him free. To forego self-control ; to submit to distant ru lers, never seen by them ; to consider themselves part of a vast whole ; to lose sight of themselves for a great national benefit, is what the Greeks never could do with any persistency. They shut themselves up and indulged in mutual jealousies ; even when Darius and Xerxes invaded their country they could scarce ly unite ; Syracuse refuses assistance because she is not given the command; Thebes sides with the Medes. When Alexander combines the Greek forces to conquer Asia, the Lacedemonians do not respond to the summons. No city succeeds in forming a confederation of the others under its lead; Sparta, Athens, Thebes, all in turn faU ; rather than yield to their compatriots the vanquished apply for money to Persia and make concessions to the Great King. Factions in each city exile each other, and the ban ished, as in the Italian Republics, attempt to return through violence with the aid of the foreigner. Thus divided, Greece is conquered by a semi-barbar ous but disciplined people, the independence of sep ART IN GREECE. S07 arate cities ending in the servitude of the nation. This downfall is not accidental, but fatal. The State as the Greeks conceived it, was too small ; it was incapable of resisting the shock of heavy external masses ; it is an ingenious and perfect work of art, but fragUe. Their greatest thinkers, Plato and Aristotle, limit the city to a community of five or ten thousand free men. Athens had twenty thou sand, beyond which, according to them, it was sim ply a mob. They cannot conceive of the good or ganization of a larger community. An acropolis covered with temples, hallowed by the bones of the heroes who founded it and by the images of nation al gods, an agora, a theatre, a gymnasium, a few thousands of temperate, brave, free and handsome men, devoted to "philosophy or public business," served by slave cultivators of the soil and slave arti sans, is the city which they conceive, an admirable work of art, daily established and perfected under their own eyes, in Thrace, on the shores of the Eux- ine, of Italy and of Sicily, outside of which every form of society seems to them confusion and barbar ism, but whose perfection, nevertheless, denotes lit 398 THE PHILOSOPHY OF tleness, and which, amidst the rude shocks of human encounter, lasts only for a day. These drawbacks are accompanied by corre sponding advantages. If their religious conceptions are wanting in gravity and in grandeur ; if their po litical organization lacks stability and endurance, they are exempt from the moral deformities which the greatness of a religion or of a State imposes on humanity. Civilization, everywhere else, has dis turbed the natural equilibrium of the faculties ; it has diminished some to exaggerate the others ; it has sacrificed the present to the future life, man to the Divinity, the individual to the State ; it has pro duced the Indian fakir, the Egyptian and Chinese functionary, the Roman legist and official, the medi aeval monk, the subject, administri and bourgeois of modern times. Man, under this pressure, has in turn simultaneously exalted and debased himself; he becomes a wheel in a vast machine, or con siders himself naught before the infinite. In Greece he subjected his institutions to himself instead of subjecting himself to them ; he made of them a means and not an end. He used them for a com ART IN GREECE. 399 plete and harmonious self-development ; he culd be at once poet, phnosopher, critic, magistrate, pontiff, judge, citizen, and athlete; exercise his limbs, his taste and his intellect ; combine in himself twenty 6orts of talent without one impairing the other ; he could be a soldier without being an automaton, a dancer and singer without becoming a dramatic buf foon, a thoughtful and cultivated man without find ing him? elf a book-worm; he could decide on publio matters without delegating his authority to others, honor his gods without the restrictions of dogmatic formulas, without bowing to the tyranny of a super human might, without losing himself in the contem plation of a vague and universal being. It seems that, having designated the visible and accurate con tour of man and of life, they omitted the rest and thus expressed themselves : " Behold the true man, an active and sensitive body, possessing mind and will, the true life of sixty or seventy years between the whining infant and the silent tomb ! Let us strive to render this body as agile, strong, healthy, and beautiful as possible ; to display this mind and will in every circle of virile activity ; to deck this life 400 THE PHILOSOPHY OF with every Deauty which delicate senses, quick com prehension and a proud and animated consciousness can create and appreciate." Beyond this they see nothing ; or, if there is a " beyond," it is for them like that Cimmerian land of which Homer speaks, the dim and sunless region of the dead, enshrouded with mournful vapors where, Uke winged bats, flock helpless phantoms with bitter cries to fill and refresh their veins from its channels, drinking the red gore of victims. The constitution of their mind limited their desires and efforts to a circumscribed sphere, Ut up in the full blaze of sunshine, and to this arena, as glowing and as restricted as their stadium, we must resort to see them exercise. ART IN GREECE. 401 IY. To do this we have to look at the country once more and draw together our impression of the whole. It is a beautiful land, inspiring one with a joyous sentiment and tending to make man re gard life as a holiday. Scarcely more than its skeleton exists to-day. Like our Provence, and still more than it, it has been shorn and despoiled, scraped, so to say ; the ground has sunk away and vegetation is rare ; bare, rugged rock, here and there spotted with meagre bushes, absorbs the expanse and occu pies three-fourths of the horizon. You may, never theless, form an idea of what it was by following the still intact coasts of the Mediterranean from Toulon to Hyeres and from Naples to Sorrento and Amalfi, except that you must imagine a bluer sky, a more transparent atmosphere and more clearly de fined and more harmonious mountain forms. It seems as if there was no winter in this country. Evergreen oaks, the olive, the orange, the lemon, and the cypress form, in the valleys and on the sides of 402 THE PHILOSOPHY OF the gorges, an eternal summer landscape; they even extend down to the margin of the sea ; in February, at certain places, oranges drop from their stems and fall into the water. There is no haze and but little rain ; the atmosphere is balmy and the sun mild and beneficent. Man here is not obliged, as in our northern climates, to protect himself against inclemencies by compUcated contrivances, and to employ gas, stoves, double, triple and quad ruple garments, sidewalks, street-sweepers and the rest to render habitable the muddy and cold sewer through which, without his police and his energy, he would have to paddle. He has no need to invent spectacular halls and operatic scenery ; he has only to look around him and find that nature furnishes more beautiful ones than any which his art could devise. At Hyeres, in January, I saw the sun rise behind an island ; the light increased and filled the atmosphere ; suddenly, at the top of a rock, a flame burst forth; the vast crystal sky expanded its arch over the immense watery plain while the in numerable crests of the waves and the deep blue of the uniform surface were traversed with ripples ART IN GREECE, 403 of gold ; at evening the distant mountains assumed the deUcate hues of the rose and the lilac. In sum mer this sunny illumination diffuses through the at mosphere and ever the sea such splendor that the surcharged senses and imagination seem to be car ried away in triumph and glory ; every wave sparkles ; the water takes the hues of precious stones, turquoises, amethysts, sapphires, lapis-lazuli, all in motion and undulating beneath the universal and immaculate celestial brightness. It is in this in undation of luminousness that we have to imagine the coasts of Greece like so many marble ewers and fountains scattered here and there through the field of azure. We need not be surprised if we find in the Greek character that fund of gayety and vivacity, that need of vital and conscious energy which we meet even now among the Provencals, the Neapolitans, and, generally, in southern populations.* Man ever * "These races are lively, quiet and gay. The fifinn man there is not cast down; he calmly awaits the approach of d ath; every thing smiles around him. Here is the secret of that divine complacency of the Homeric poems and of Plato ; the narrative of the death of Soc rates in the "Phsedon" scarcely shows a tinge of sadness. To live ii 404 THE PHILOSOPHY IF continues to move as nature first directs him, for tin aptitudes and tendencies which she firmly implants in him are precisely the aptitudes and tenden cies which she daily satisfies. A few lines from to flower and then t« give fruit — could it be moie? If, as seme may contend, the pre-occupation with death is the distinguishing trait of Christianity and of the modern religious sentiment, the Greek race is the least religious of all It is a superficial race, regarding life as a thing void of the supernatural or a hereafter. Such simplicity of conception belongs, in great part, to the climate and to the purity of tho atmosphere, to the wonderful joyousness which one experiences there, but much more to the instincts of the Hellenic race so adorably idealis tic. Any trifle — a tree, a flower, a lizzard, or a tortoise — brings to mind thousands of metamorphoses, sung by the pools; a stream of water, a little crevice in a rock are designated as the abode of nymphs ; a well with a cup on its margin, an inlet of the sea so narrow that the butter flies cross it and yet navigable for the largest vessels as at Paros ; orange and cypress trees extending their shadows over tho water, a small pine grove amid the rocks suffice, in Greece, to produce that contentment which awakens beauty. To stroll in the gardens at night listening to the cicada, and to sit in the moonlight playing the flute; to go and imbibe water from the mountain source, with a piece of bread, a fish and a flask of wine to be drank while singing; to suspend, at family festivals, a crown of leaves over the portal, and to go with chaplcts of flowers ; to carry to public festivities a thyrsus decked with verdure ; to pass whole days in dancing and to play with tame goats, are Greek enjoyments— the enjoyments of a poor, economical, eternally youthful race, inhabiting a charming country, finding its well-being in itself and in the gifts which the gods have bestowed upon it. The pastoral model of Theocritus was a truth in Hellenic countries; G.-eecc always delighted in this minor kind of refined and pleasing poetry, one of the most characteristic of Its literature, a mirror of its own life almost everywhere else silly and af- f scted. The pleasure of living and sprightliness of humor are pre-emj ART IN GREECE. 405 Aristophanes will portray to you this frank, spright ly and radiant sensuousness. Some Athenian peas ants are celebrating the return of peace. " I am delighted ! I am delighted at being rid of helmet, and cheese, and onions ; for I find no pleasure in battles, but to continue drinking beside the fire with my dear companions, having kindled whatever is the driest of firewood which has been sawn up in summer, and roasting some chick-peas, and putting on the fire the esculent acorn, and at the same time kissing my Thracian maid while my wife is washing herself. For there is not any thing nently Grecian traits. The foliage of youth was always peculiar to that race ; for it indtdgere gemo is not the stolid intoxication of the English nor the vulgar pastime of the French ; it is rather simply to think that nature is gracious and that one may and ought to yield to her. To the Greek, in fine, nature is the Buggestor of elegance, a mistress of recti tude and virtue. ' Concupiscence,' the idea that nature incites us to do evil, has no meaning for him. The taste for ornamentation which dis tinguishes the Greek palikary and shows itself so innocently in the Greek maiden, is not the pompous vanity of the city damsel inflated with the ridiculous conceit of a parvenuc ; it is the pure and simple sentiment of unaffected youth conscious of being the legitimate offspring of the true parents of beauty." [" Saint Paul," by E. Eenau, p. 802.] A friend who has travelled some time in Greece tells me that the horse-drivers and guides will of l,en pluck some attractive shrub and carry it carefully in their hand during the day, put it safely by in the evening on going ta bed and resume it in the morning for farther pleasure in it. 406 THE PHILOSOPHY OF more agreeable than for the seed to be alreadj sown, and the god to rain upon it, and some neigh bor to say : ' Tell me, O Comarchides, what shall we do at this time of day ?' I've a mind to drink, since the god acts so favorably. Come, wife, wash three chenixes of kidney-beans and mix some wheat with them, and bring out some figs, for it is in no wise possible to strip off the vine leaves to-day, or to grub round the roots, since the ground is so wet. And let some one bring forth from my house the thrush and the two finches. And there were also within some beestings and four pieces of hare. * * * Bring in three pieces, boy, and give one to my father, and beg some fruit-bearing myrtles from JEschineades, and at the same time let some one call on Charniades that he may drink with us, since the god benefits and aids our crops. * * * Most august goddess queen, venerable Peace, mistress of choral dances, mistress of nuptials, receive our sacri fice ! * * * Grant that our market be filled with multifarious good things ; with garlic, early cucum bers, apples and pomegranates ; * * * and that we tnay see people bringing from the Boeotians geese, ART IN GREECE. 407 ducks, wood-pigeons and sand-pipers, and that bas kets of Copaic eels come, and that we, collected hi crowds around them, buying fish, may jostle with Morychus and Teleas and other gourmands. * * * Come quick, Dicasopolis, for the priest of Bacchus sends for you. Make haste, all things are in readiness — couches, tables, cushions for the head, chaplets, ointments, sweetmeats; the courtesans are there, cakes of fine flour, honey-cakes, lovely danc ing girls, Harmodius' delights." I stop the quota tion which becomes too free ; antique sensuality and southern sensuality make use of bold gestures and very precise language. Such a cast of mind leads man to regard life as a continuous holiday. The most serious ideas and insti tutions in the hands of the Greek become gay ; his divinities are " the happy gods that never die." They dwell on the summits of Olympus, " which the winds do not shake ; which are never wet by rain or visited by snow ; where the cloudless ether is disclosed and where the bright light nimbly dances." Here in a glittering palace, seated on golden thrones, they drink nectar and eat ambrosia while the muses 403 THE PHILOSOPHY OF " sing with their beautiful voices, Heaven to the Greek, is eternal festivity in brc id daylight, and consequently the most beautiful life is that which most resembles the life of the gods. With Homei the happy man is he who can " revel in the bloom of his youth and reach the threshold of old age." Re ligious ceremonies are joyous banquets at which the gods are content because they obtain their share of wine and meat. The most imposing festivals are operatic representations. Tragedy, comedy, dancing choruses and gymnastic games form a part of theil worship. In honoring the gods it never occurs to them that it is necessary to fast, mortify the flesh, pray in fear and trembling, and prostrate one's self de ploring one's sins ; but on the contrary, to take part in their enjoyments, to display before them the most beautiful nude forms, to deck the city in their behalf, and, abstracting man for a moment from his mortal condition, elevate him to theirs by every magnifi cence which art and poesy can furnish. This "en thusiasm" to them is piety ; and, after giving vent in tragedy to their grand and solemn t notions, they again seek in comedy an outlet for the.;v extra vaganl ART IN GREECE 409 buffooneries and their voluptuous license. One must have read Aristophanes' " Lysistrata" and " Thesmo- phoriazusae" to imagine these transports of animal life, to comprehend a pubUc celebration of the Dio- nysia and the dramatic dance of the cordax, to com prehend that, at Corinth, a thousand courtesans per formed the service of the temple of Aphrodite, and that reUgion consecrated all the scandal and infatu ation of a kermess and a carnival. The Greeks partook of social life as thoughtless ly as the religious life. The conquest of the Roman is for acquisition ; he utilizes vanquished nations as he would so many farms, methodically and continu ously, with the spirit of an administrator and busi ness man ; the Athenian explores the sea, disembarks and fights without establishing any thing, at irregu lar times, according to the impulse of the hour, the necessity of action and to gratify a freak of the im agination ; through a spirit of enterprise, a love of glory and for the satisfaction of being first among the Greeks. The people, with the funds of their al lies, adorn their eity and, commanding their artists to produce temples, theatres, statues, decorations 18 410 THE PHILOSOPHY OF and processions, avail themselves daily, and in every sense, of the public wealth. Aristophanes amuses them with caricatures of their magistrates and politicians. The theatres are open free of ex pense; at the end of the Dionysia the money on hand in the treasury, contributed by their allies, is distributed. They soon demand pay for their ser vices as dicasts and in the public assemblies. Every thing is for the people. They oblige the rich to de fray the expense of choruses, actors, the representa tions and all the finest spectacles. However poor they may be, they have baths and gymnasia, sup ported by the treasury, as pleasant as those of the knights.* Towards the last they give themselves no further care ; they hire mercenaries to carry on their wars ; if they concern themselves with politics, it is simply for discussion ; they listen to their orators as dilettanti and attend to their debates, recriminations and eloquent assaults as they would a performance in a cock-pit. They sit in judgment upon talent and applaud judiciously. The main thing with them is to ensure perfect festivals ; they decree the penally * Xenophon : " The Athenian Republic. " ART IN GREECE. 411 of death against whosoever shall propose to divert any portion of the money set aside for them to war purposes. Their generals bear witness to this: " Except one alone whom you send to battle," says Demosthenes, " the others follow the sacrifices in the adornment of your festivals." In the equipment and despatch of a fleet they do not act, or else act too late; while, on the contrary, for processions and public performances, every thing is foreseen , arranged, and exactly fulfilled as it ought to be and at the ap pointed hour. Little by little, under the dominion of primitive sensuality, the State becomes reduced to a spectacular enterprise, whose business it is to pro vide poetic enjoyment for people of taste. Likewise, finally, in philosophy and in science, they aimed only to cull the flower of things ; they possessed none of the abnegation of the modern sa vant, who devotes his genius to the elucidation of an obscure point ; who gives up years of observation to some species of animal ; who incessantly multiplies and verifies his experiments ; who, abandoning him- Belf voluntarily to thankless labor, passes his life in patiently hewing two or three stones for a n immense 412 THE PHILOSOPHY OF edifice wliich he cannot see completed, but which is to be of vast service to generations to come. Phi losophy, here, is talk; it is born in the gymnasia, un der porticoes, and in groves of sycamore the master converses as he walks, and his pupils follow him. All, at the outset, rush on to lofty conclusions ; to generalize is their pleasure; they delight in it and care but little for constructing a good, solid founda tion ; their proofs dwindle down most frequently to the mere resemblance of truths. They are, in short, speculators, fond of flying over the summit of things, of traversing in three paces, like Homer's gods, a vast new realm, of embracing the entire universe in a single glance. A system is a sort of sublime opera, the opera of comprehensive and inquisitive minds. Their philosophy, from Thales to Proclus, has, like their tragedy, entwined itself around thirty or forty principal themes, and with a multitude of varia tions, amplification and admixtures. The philo sophic imagination manipulated ideas and hypothe ses, just as the mythologic imagination manipulated legend and divinity. Passing from their works to their methods we see ART IN GREECE. 413 the same inteUectual efforts. They are as much sophists as they are philosophers ; they exercise thc mind for the mind's sake. A subtle distinction, a long and refined analysis, a captious argument of difficult elaboration, attracts and absorbs them. They amuse themselves with and linger over dialec tics, quibbles and paradoxes;* they are not suffi ciently in earnest ; if they undertake any research it is not with a view to obtain a fixed and definite acquisition ; they do not love truth wholly and ab solutely, forgetful of and indifferent to the rest. She is game which they often run down, but, to see their reasoning, we soon recognize that, without acknowl edging it to themselves, they prefer the chase, the chase with its manoeuvrings, its artifices, its cir cuits, its inspiration and that sentiment of free dis cursive and victorious action with which it stimulates the nerves and imagination of the hunter. " O * See logical methods in Plato and Aristotle, uid especially tho proofs of the immortality of the soul in the "Phsedon." In all this philosophy the faculties are superior to the work in hand. Aristotle wrote a treatise on Homeric problems following the example of the rhetoricians who sought to ascertain whether, when Aphrodite wag wounded by Diomed, the wound was in the right hand or in the left. 414 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Greeks ! Greeks !" said an Egyptian priest to Solon, "what chUdren ye are!" They played, in fact, with life, and all life's gravest things, with religion and the gods, with government and law, with phi losophy and truth. ART IN GREECE. 415 Y. Hence their position as the greatest artists of th« world. They possessed the charming freedom of mind, the superabundance of inventive gayety, the gracious intoxication of invention which leads the child to constantly form and arrange little poems with no object but that of giving full play to new and over lively faculties suddenly awakened. The three leading traits that we have distinguished in their character are just those which constitute the artistic soul and intellect. Delicacy of perception, an aptitude at seizing nice relationships, the sense of gradation, is what allows the artist to construct a totality of forms, colors, sounds and incidents, in short, elements and details, so closely united among themselves by inward dependencies, that their or ganization constitutes a living thing, surpassing in the imaginary world the profound harmony of the actual world. The necessity of clearness, a feeling for proportion, dislike of the vague and the ab stract, contempt for the monstrouf and exaggerated, 416 THE PHILOSOPHY OF and a taste for accurate and defined contours, is what leads him to give his conceptions a shape which the imagination and senses can easily grasp, and, consequently, to execute works comprehensible to every race and all ages, and which, being human, are eternal. The love and worship of this life, the sen timent of human energy and the necessity of calm ness and gayety, is what leads him to avoid depicting physical infirmity and moral ills, to represent the jealth of the spirit and perfection of the body, and to complete the acquired beauty of expression by the fundamental beauty of the subject. These are the distinct traits of their entire art. A glance at their literature compared with that of the Orient, of the middle ages and of modern times ; a perusal of Homer compared with that of the Divine Com edy, of Faust or of the Indian epics ; a study of their prose compared with the prose of every other ago and country, will soon furnish convincing proof of it. Every literary style relatively to theirs is pompous, heavy, forced and obscure ; every moral type rela tively to theirs is overstrained, mournful and mor- nid ; every oratorical and poetic model, every model ART IN GREECE. 417 in fact which has not been borrowed from them, is disproportioned, distorted and badly put togethei by the work which it contains. Our space is limited, and among a hundiod ex amples we can choose but one. Let us take an ob ject exposed to the eye, and that which first attracts attention on entering the city. I refer to the temple. It stands usually on a height called the Acropolis, on a substructure of rocks, as at Syracuse, or on a small eminence which, as at Athens, was the first place of refuge and the original site of the city. It is visible from every point on the plain and from the neighboring hiUs ; vessels greet it at a distance on approaching the port. It stands out in clear and bold relief in the limpid atmosphere.* It is not, like our mediaeval cathedrals, crowded and smoth ered by rows of houses, secreted, half-concealed, in accessible to the eye save in its details and its up per section. Its base, sides, entire mass and full proportions appear at a glance. You are not obliged to divine the whole from a part ; its situa- * See the restorations, accompanied with memoirs, by Tetez, Pac- card Boitte and Gamier. 18* 418 THE PHILOSOPHY OF tion renders it proportionate to man's senses. It order that there may be no lack of distinctness of impression, they give it medium or small dimensions. There are only two or three of the Grecian temples as large as the Madeleine. They bear no resem blance to the vast monuments of India, Babylon and Egypt, the storied and crowded palaces, the mazes of avenues, enclosures, halls and colossi, so numer ous that the mind at last becomes disturbed and be- wUdered. They do not resemble the gigantic cathe> drals whose naves contain the entire population of a city ; which the eye, even if they were placed on a height, could not wholly embrace; whose profiles are lost and the total harmony of which cannot be appreciated except on a perspective plan. The Greek temple is not a place of assembly but the special habitation of a god, a shrine for his effigy, a marble monstrance enclosing an unique statue. At a hundred paces off from the sacred precincts you can seize the direction and harmony of the principal lines. They are, moreover, so simple that a glance suffices to comprehend the whole. This edifice has nothing complicated, quaint or elaborate about it ART IN GREECE. 418 it is a rectangle bordered by a peristyle of columns ; three or four of the elementary forms of geometry suffice for the whole, the symmetry of their ar rangement setting them forth through their repeti tions and contrasts. The crowning of the pediment, the fluting of the pUlars, the abacus of the capital. all the accessories and all details contribute yet more to show in stronger relief the special charaoter of each member, while the diversity of polychromy serves to mark and define their respective values. You have recognized in these different character istics the fundamental need of pure and fixed forms. A series of other characters shows the subtlety of their tact and the exquisite delicacy of their percep tions. There is a close tie between all the forms and dimensions of a temple as there is between all the organs of a living organism, and this tie they discovered ; they established the architectural module which according to the diameter of a column, deter mines its height, next its shape, next its base and capital, and next the distance between the columna and the general economy of the edifice. They in tentionally modified the clumsy strictness of math 420 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ematical forms ; they adapted them to the secret exigencies of the eye ; they gave a swell to the col umn by a skilful curve two-thirds its height ; they gave convexity to all the horizontal, and incUned to tne centre all the vertical lines of the Parthenon ; they discarded all the fetters of mechanical sym metry ; they gave unequal wings to their Propylsea and different levels to the two sanctuaries of their Ereotheum ; they intersected, varied and inflected their plans and angles in such a manner as to endow architectural geometry with the grace, the diversity, the unforeseen, the fleeting suppleness of a living thing, without diminishing the effect of the masses ; and they decked its surface with the most elegant series of painted and sculptured ornaments. Nothing in all this equals the originality of their taste un less it be its correctness ; they combined two quali ties apparently excluding each other, extreme rich ness and extreme gravity. Our modern perceptions do not reach this point ; we only half succeed, and by degrees, in divining the perfection of their inven tion. The exhuming of Pompeii was necessary to enable us to conjecture the charming vivacity and ART IN GREECE. 421 harmony of decoration with which they clothed their walls ; and in our own day, an English archi- itect has measured the imperceptible inflexion of the swollen horizontal lines and the convergent perpen dicular lines which give to their most beautiful tem ple its supreme beauty. We, in their presence, are like an ordinary listener to a musician born and brought up to music ; there are in his performance delicacies of execution, purity of tone, fulness of chords and achievements of expression which the listener, partially endowed and badly prepared for it, only seizes in gross and from time to time. We retain only the total impression, and this impres sion, conformable to the genius of the race, is that of a gay and -avigorating fete. The architectural structure is of itself healthy and viable ; it does not require, like the Gothic cathedral, a colony of masons at its feet to keep restoring its constant decay ; it does not borrow support for its arches from out ward buttresses ; it needs no iron frame to sustain a prodigious scaffolding of fretted and elaborated pin nacles, to fasten to its walls its marve' lously intricate lacework and its fragile stone filagree. It is not the 422 THE PHILOSOPHY OF product of an exalted imagination but of a lucid reason. It is so made as to endure by itself and without' help. Almost every temple in Greece would be still intact if the brutality or fanaticism of man had not supervened to destroy them. Those of Psestum remain erect after twenty-three centu ries ; it is the explosion of a powder magazine which cut the Parthenon in two. Left to itself the Greek temple stands and continues to stand; we realize this in its great solidity ; its mass is consolidated in stead of being weighed down. We are sensible of the stable equiUbrium of its diverse members ; for the architect reveals the inner through the outer structure, the lines which flatter the eye with their harmonious proportions being just the lines which satisfy the understanding with assurances of eter nity.* Add to this appearance of power an air of ease and elegance ; mere endurance is not the aim of the Greek edifice as with the Egyptian edifice. It is not crushed down by a weight of matter like our obstinate and ungainly Atlas; it unfolds, ex * In this connection the reader is referred to " La PhUoscphie dt r architecture en Grice,'" by M. E. Boutmy, a work of avery accurate and delicate spirit. ART IN GREECE. 423 pands, and rises up like the beautiful figuie of an athlete in whom vigor accords with deUcacy and re pose. Consider again its adornment, the golden bucklers starring its architrave, its golden acro- teria, the Uons' heads gleaming in sunshme, the threads of gold and sometimes of enamel which en twine the capitals, the covering of vermilion min ium, blue, light ochre and green, every bright or quiet tone, which, united and opposed as at Pom peii, affords the eye a sensation of healthy and hearty southern joyousness. Finally, take into ac count the bas-reUefs, the statues of the pediments, metopes and frise, especially the colossal effigy of the inner ceU, the sculptures of ivory, marble and gold, those heroic or divine bodies which place be fore men's eyes perfect images of manly force, of athletic perfection, of militant virtue, of unaffected nobility, of unalterable serenity and you wiU arrive at the first conception of theii genius and their art. THE PERIOD. ART IN GREECE. 427 THE PEKIOD. We have now to take another step and consider a new characteristic of Greek civilization. The Greek of ancient Greece is not only Greek but again he is antique ; he does not differ from the English man or Spaniard, because, being of another race, he has other aptitudes and inclinations ; he differs from the Englishman, the Spaniard and the modern Greek in this, that, placed at an anterior epoch of history, he entertains other ideas and other sentiments. He precedes us and we follow him. He did not build his civilization on ours ; we built our civilization on his, and on many others. He is on the lower floor while we are on the second or third story. Hence certain results which are infinite in number and im portance. What can differ more than two lives, one on a level with the ground with all the doors open ing on the country, and the other perched aloft and confined to the small compartments of a modern dwelling-houso ? The contrast may be expressed in d28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF two words : their life, mental and physical, is simple ours is complicated. Their art, therefore, is simplei than ours, and the conception they form of man's body and soul provides material for works which our civilization no longer warrants. ART IN GREECE. 439 A glance at the outward features of their life suf fices to show how simple it is. Civilization, in mi grating towards the north, had to provide for aL sorts of wants which it was not obliged to satisfy in its early condition at the south. In a moist or cold climate, like that of Gaul, Germany, England and North America, man consumes more; he requires closer and more substantial houses, thicker and warmer clothes, a greater amount of fire and light, more shelter and food, more implements and occupa tions. He necessarily becomes manufacturing, and, as his demands grow with their gratification, he de votes three quarters of his energy to the accumula tion of comforts. The conveniences he provides for himself, however, are so many restraints and embar rassments to him, the machinery of his self-gratifica tion keeping him in bondage. How many things are essential nowadays in the dress of an ordinary man ! How many more in the toilette of a woman even of 430 THE PHILOSOPHY OF an average station ! Two or three wardrobes are no1 sufficient. You are aware that to-day the women of Naples and Athens borrow our fashions. The ac coutrement of a pallikare is as ample as our own. Our northern civilizations, in flowing back upon the unpiogressive people of the south, bear to them a foreign costume unnecessarily complicated ; we have to go to remote districts, or descend to the poorest class, to find, as at Naples, lazzaroni clad in a kilt, and women, as in Arcadia, wearing but one garment, in short, people who reduce and adapt their dress to their slight climatic exigencies. In ancient Greece a short tunic, without sleeves, for the male, and, for the female, a long tunic, reaching to the feet and brought upward over the shoulders, falling down to the waist, constituted all that was essential in their costume ; add to this a large square mantle, and for the woman a veil when she went out, together with sandals, which were often worn, — Socrates only put them on on festival occasions, people frequently going barefoot and likewise bareheaded. All these habiliments could be removed with a turn of the hand; there is no restraint upon the figure ; its forms ART IN GREECE. 431 are indicated and the nude is apparent throagh their openings and in the movements of the body. They were wholly taken off in the gymnasia, in the stadi um and in many of the religious dances ; " It is i Greek peculiarity," says Pliny, " to conceal nothing." Dress, with them, is simply a loose accessory which leaves full play to the body, and which can be thrown aside in a moment. There is the same simplicity in man's second envelop, that is to say, his dwelling. Compare a house of St. Germain or Fontainebleau with a house in Pompeii or Herculaneum, two hand some provincial cities which, in relation to Rome, stand in the same position as St. Germain or Fon tainebleau do to Paris ; sum up all that composes a passable dwelling of the present time, a tall struct ure of hewn stone two or three stories high, glazed windows, wall-paper, hangings, blinds, double and triple curtains, stoves, chimneys, carpets, beds, chairs, all kinds of furniture, innumerable luxurious trifles and household implements, and contemplate these alongside of the frail walls of a Pompeian house, with its ten or twelve closets ranged around a small court in which bubbles a stream of water, its 432 THE PHILOSOPHY OF delicate painting and its small bronzes ; it is a slight shelter to sleep under at night, and for a siesta during 1 he day; in which to enjoy the fresh air and contem- 2>lale delicate arabesques and beautiful harmonies of color. The climate requires nothing more.* White washed walls which a robber could enter and stUl barren of paintings in the time of Pericles ; a bed with a few coverings, a chest, some beautiful paint ed vases, weapons hung up and a lamp of a primi tive shape ; a house of very small dimensions, some times only one story high, sufficed for a noble Athenian. He lived out of doors, in the open air, under porticoes, in the Agora, in the gymnasia, while the public edifices which protect him in public life are as indifferently furnished as his own home. In stead of a palace like that of the Corps Legislatif or the Houses of Parliament in London, with its internal arrangement, seats, lights, Ubrary and refreshment hall, every kind of apartment and service provided for, he possesses an empty space, the Pnyx, and a few steps of stone serving the speaker as a tribune. * See for the details of private life the ' Charicles" of Becker, aid especially the Excursus. ART IN GREECE. 433 We are now erecting an opera-house, and we demand a spacious front, four or five vast pavilions, recep tion-rooms, saloons and passages of every descrip tion, a wide circle for the attendants, an enormous stage, a gigantic receptacle overhead for scenery and an infinity of boxes and rooms for actors and mana gers ; we expend forty millions, and the house is to hold two thousand spectators. In Greece a theatre contained from thirty to forty thousand spectators, and cost twenty times less than with us ; the means are furnished by nature ; a hillside in which circular rows of benches are cut, an altar at the foot, and in the centre, a high sculptured wall like that at Orange, to give a reverberation to the actor's voice, the sun for a chandelier, and, for distant scenery, sometimes the sparkling sea and, again, groups of mountains softened in light. They obtain magnificence through economy, their amusements as well as public busi ness being provided for with a degree of perfection unattainable through our profuse expenditure. Let us pass to moral organizations. A State of the present day comprises thirty or forty million men snread over a territory consisting of thousands of 19 434 THE PHILOSOPHY OF square miles. It is for this reason more stable than an antique city. On the other hand, however, it is much more compUcated, and for a man to perform any duty in it he must be a specialist. Public func tions consequently are specific like the rest. The mass take part in general matters only from time to time and through elections ; it lives, or contrives to live, in the provinces, unable to form any personal or precise opinions, reduced to vague impressions and blind emotions, compelled to entrust itself to better informed persons whom it despatches to the capital and who act for it in making war and peace and in imposing taxes. The same substitution takes place in relation to religion, justice, the army and the navy. In each of these services we have a body of special agents; a long apprenticeship is necessary to do duty in them ; they are beyond the reach of a ma jority of the citizens. We have nothing to- do with them ; we have delegates who, appointed by each other or chosen by the State, combat, navigste, j-udge or pray for us. We cannot do otherwise ; the duty is too complicated to De performed hap-bazard by the first comer ; the priest must have passM through ART IN GREECE. 435 a seminary, the magistrate through a law school, the officer through the preparatory schools of the bar racks and the navy, and the civU admimstrator through examinations and clerkships. In a small State, on the contrary, like the Greek city, the com mon man is on a level with every pubUc requirement ; society is not divided up into governed and govern ors ; there is no retired class, everybody being an act ive citizen. The Athenian decides for himself on common interests ; five or six thousand citizens lis ten to orators and vote on the public square ; it is the market-place ; people resort to it to pass laws and decrees as wrell as to sell their wine and olives ; the national territory being simply a suburb, the rustic travels but a short distance farther than the citizen. The business that brings him, moreover, is within his capacity, for it is no more than parish in terests, inasmuch as the city is merely a township. He has no difficulty in knowing what course to pur sue with Megara or Corinth ; his personal experience and daily impressions are adequate to this end ; he has no need to be a. professional politician, versed in geography, history, statistics and the like. In a sim 436 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ilar manner, he is priest in his own house, and from time to time the pontiff of his phratry or tribe ; for his faith is a beautiful fairy tale, the ceremony he performs consisting of a dance or chant familiar to him from his infancy, and of a banquet at which he presides in a certain garment. — Again, he is judge in the civil, criminal, and religious dicasterion, an advo cate, and obliged to plead in his own suit. A man of the South, a Greek, is naturally of a vivacious in tellect and a fluent and fine speaker ; laws are not yet multiplied and jumbled together in a code and in confusion ; he knows them in a mass ; pleaders cite them to him, and, moreover, custom allows him Ut consult his instincts, his common sense, his feeling, his passions, to as great an extent, at least, as the strict letter and legal arguments. — If he is rich he is an impresario. You are aware of their theatre being less complicated than ours, and that a Greek, an Athenian, always has a taste for seeing dancers, sing ers, and actors. — Rich or poor he is a soldier; miU tary art being still primitive and the machinery of war unknown, the national militia forms tho army. There was no better one up to the appearance of the ART IN GREECE. 43? Romans. In order to organize it and form the per fect soldier, two conditions are requisite, and these two conditions are provided by the common educa tion, without special instruction, drill, discipline or exercise in the barracks. They require, on the one hand, that each soldier shall be as good a gladiator as possible, with the most robust, supple and agile body, the best calculated to strike, ward off blows and run ; the gymnasia suffice for this purpose ; they are the youths' colleges ; whole clays and long years are devoted to teaching them wrestling, jumping, running, and throwing the discus, and, methodical ly, every limb and every muscle is exercised and for tified. On the other hand, they require the soldiery to march, run and perform their evolutions in regu lar order ; the orchestra suffices for this purpose ; all their national and religious festivals teach children and young people the art of forming and separating groups; at Sparta, the chorus of the public dance and of the military company* are arranged on the same plan. Thus prepared for it by their social arrange ments, we can comprehend how the citizen becomes * Cluoros and Lochos. 438 THE PHILOSOPHY OF a soldier without an effort and from the very begin ning. — He gets to be a mariner without much great er apprenticeship. A ship of war in those days was only a coasting vessel, and contained, at most, two hundred men, and never lost sight of land. In a city with a port, and which is supported by a maritime trade, there is no one who cannot manoeuvre a ves sel of this description, and who cannot judge of, or soon learn, the signs of the weather, the chances of the wind, positions and distances, the technics in full, and every accessory, which our sailors and marine officers acquire only after ten years' study and prac tice. All these peculiarities of antique life proceed from the same cause, which is the simplicity of a civilization without any precedent ; and all end in the same effect, which is the simplicity of a well-bal anced mind, no group of aptitudes and inclinations being developed at the expense of others, free of any exclusive direction, and not deformed by any special function. We have at the present day the cultivated and the uncultivated man, the citizen and the peasant, the provincial and the Parisian, besides as many distinct species as there are classes, profes- ART IN GREECE. 439 sions and trades ; the individual everywhere penned up in compartments of his own making and fettered with innumerable self-assigned necessities. Less ar tificial, less special, less remote from the primitive condition of things, the Greek acted in a political cir cle better proportioned to human faculties, amidst social ways more favorable to the maintenance of the animal faculties. Nearer to a natural life and less bound down by a superadded civilization he was more emphatically man. 440 THE PHILOSOPHY OF II. These are but the surroundings and the exterior moulds which shape the individual. Let us look into the individual himself, his sentiments and his ideas ; we shall be yet more impressed with the distance between these and our own. Two kinds of culture fashion them in every age and in every land, relig ious culture and secular culture, both operating in the same sense, formerly to maintain them simple, now to render them complex. Modern people are Christian, and Christianity is a religion of second growth which opposes natural instinct. We may liken it to a violent contraction which has inflected the primitive attitude of the human mind. It proclaims, in effect, that the world is sinful, and that man is de praved — which certainly is indisputable in the cen tury in which it was born. According to it, man must change his ways. Life here below is simply an exile ; let us turn our eyes upward to our celestial ART IN GREECE. 441 home. Our natural character is vicious ; let us stifle natural desires and mortify the flesh. The experi ence of our senses and the knowledge of the wise are inadequate and delusive ; let us accept the light of revelation, faith and divine illumination. Through penitence, renunciation and meditation let us devel op within ourselves the spiritual man ; let our life be an ardent awaiting of deliverance, a constant sacri fice of will, an undying yearning for God, a revery of sublime love, occasionally rewarded with ecstasy and a vision of the infinite. For fourteen centuries :he ideal of this life was the anchorite or monk. If you would estimate the power of such a conception and the grandeur of the transformation it imposes on human faculties and habits, read, in turn, the great Christian poem and the great pagan poem, one the Divine Comedy and the other the Odyssey and the Biad. Dante has a vision and is transported out of our little ephemeral sphere into eternal regions ; he be holds its tortures, its expiations and its felicities ; he is affected by superhuman anguish and horror ; all that the infuriate and subtle imagination of the lover of justice and the executioner can concei -e of he sees, 19* 442 THE PHILOSOPHY OF suffers and sinks under. He then ascends into light , his body loses its gravity; he floats involuntarily, led by the smile of a radiant woman ; he listens to souls in the shape of voices and to passing melodies ; ha 6ees choirs of angels, a vast rose of living brightness representing the virtues and the oelestial powers sacred utterances and the dogmas of truth reverber ate in ethereal space. At this fervid height, where reason melts like wax, both symbol and apparition, one effacing the other, merge into mystic bewilder ment, the entire poem, infernal or divine, being a dream which begins with horrors and ends in ravish ment. How much more natural and healthy is the spectacle which Homer presents ! We have the Troad, the isle of Ithaca and the coasts of Greece ; still at the present day we follow in his track ; we rec ognize the forms of mountains, the color of the sea, the jutting fountains, the cypress and the alders in which the sea-birds perched ; he copied a steadfast and persistent nature ; with him throughout we plant our feet on the firm ground of truth. His book is a historical document ; the manners and customs of his contemporaries were such as he describes ; his 01 ym. ART IN GREECE. 443 pus itseii is a Greek famUy. We are not obliged to strain and exalt ourselves to ascertain if we possess the sentiments he utters, nor to imagine the world he paints — the combats, voyages, banquets, public discourses, and private conversations, the various scenes of real life, of friendships, of paternal and con jugal affection, the craving for fame and action, the quarrels and reconciliations, the love of festivals, the relish of existence, every emotion and every passion of the natural man. He confines himself to the visi ble circle realized by every generation of human ex perience ; he does not travel out of it ; this world suf fices for him ; it alone is important, the beyond b eing simply the vague habitation of dissatisfied spec tres when Ulysses encounters Achilles in Hades and con gratulates him on being first among the dead the latter replies : Noble Ulysses, speak not thus of death As if thou could'st console me. I would be A laborer on earth and serve for hire Some man of mean estate who makes scant cheer. Bather than reign o'er all who have gone down To death. Speak rather of my noble son ; Whether or not be joined the war to take A place among the foremost in the fight. 444 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Thus beyond the grave he is still most concerned h'ith this present life. Then, the soul of swift xEacidcs Over the meadows thick with asphodel Departed with long strides, well-pleased to hear Prom me the story of his son's renown.* Different shades of the same sentiment reappear at every epoch of Greek civilization ; theirs is the world lit up by sunshine ; the hope and consolation of the dying parent is the survival in bright day of his son, his glory, his tomb, and his patrimony. " The happiest man I have seen," said Solon to Croe sus, " is Tellus of Athens ; for his country was flour ishing in his day, and he himself had sons both beautiful and good, and he Uved to see children born to each of them, and these chUdren all grow up ; and farther, because after a Ufe spent in what our people look upon as comfort, his end was surpassingly glo rious. In a battle between the Athenians and their neighbors, near Eleusis, he came to the assistance of his countrymen, routed the foe, and died upon the field most gallantly. The Athenians gave him a * The Odyssey, translated by W. C. Bryant. ART IN GREECE. 445 public funeral on the spot where he fell, and paid him the highest honors."* When philosophical reflection comes to dwell up on it the beyond does not appear terrible, infinite, dis- proportioned to this present life, as certain as it, ex- haustless in torments and delights, and like a fright ful gulf or an angelic elysium.— " One of two things," said Socrates to his judges, " either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, will not find many such days or - nights, when compared with the others. Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain ; for eternity is then only a single night. But if di ath * Eawlinson's Herodotus. 146 THE PHILOSOPHY OF is the journey to another place, and there, as men say all the dead are, what good, oh my friends and judges, can be greater than this ? If, indeed, when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is deUvered from tho professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and xEacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musseus and Hesiod and Homer ? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again."* In both cases, then, we " should nourish good hope on the subject of death." Twenty centuries later, Pas cal, taking up the same question and the same doubt, could see for the incredulous no other hope but " the horrible alternative of utter annihilation or eternal misery." A contrast like this shows the turmoil which for eighteen hundred years has disordered the human mind. The prospect of a happy or miserable eterni ty destroyed its balance ; up to the close of the mid dle ages, with this incalculable weight upon it, it wag * The Dialogues of Plato, translated by Jowrtt. ART LN GREECE. 447 like uncertain and disjointed scales, now up to the highest point, now down to the lowest, and always in extremes. When, toward the Renaissance, man's oppressed nature recovered itself and assumed tho ascendant, the old ascetic and monastic doctrine stood there to confront and to beat it back, not only with its traditions and institutions, maintained or revived, but again with the enduring unrest with which it had infected dolorous souls and over-excited imaginations. This discord subsists at the present day ; there are in us and about us two moral theories, two ideas of nature and of life, whose constant antagonism makes us feel the harmonious ease of a young society where natural instincts displayed themselves intact and loyal under a religion that favored instead of repressed their outgrowth. If religious culture, with us, has grafted incon gruous sentiments on spontaneous tendencies, secular culture has confused our mind with a maze of elab orated and foreign notions. Compare the first and most powerful of educations, that which language gives, in Greece and among ourselves. Our modern tongues, Italian, Spanish, French, and English are 448 THE PHILOSOPHY OF dialects, the shapeless remains of a beautiful idiom impaired by a long decadence and which importa tions and intermixtures have still further tended to change and obscure. They resemble those edifices built with the ruins of an ancient temple and with other materials picked up at random ; the result of which is that, with Latin stones, mutilated and com bined in another style, along with pebbles gathered in the street and other rubbish, we have constructed the building in which we live, once a gothic castle and nowadays the modern mansion. Our mind dwells in it because it has become domiciliated ; but how much more freely did that of the Greeks move in theirs ! We do not readily comprehend our some what generalized terms; they are not transparent; they do not expose their root, the evident fact from which they are derived ; words have to be explained to us which formerly man understood without an ef fort through the sole virtue of analogy, — genus, spe cies, grammar, calculus, economy, law, thought, con ception, and the rest. Even in German, where this obstacle is slighter, the conducting thread is want ing. Almost the whole of our philosophic and scier ART IN GREECE. 449 tific vocabulary is foreign ; we are obliged to know Greek and Latin to make use of it properly, and, most frequently, employ it badly. Innumerable terms find their way out of this technical vocabulary into common conversation and literary style, and hence it is that we now speak and think with woids cumbersome and difficult to manage. We adopt them ready made and conjoined, we repeat them ac cording to routine ; we make use of them without considering their scope and without a nice apprecia tion of their sense ; we only approximate to that which we would like to express. Fifteen years are necessary for an author to learn to write, not with ge nius, for that is not to be acquired, but with clearness, sequence, propriety and precision. He finds himself obUged to weigh and investigate ten or twelve thou sand words and diverse expressions, to note their ori gin, filiation and relationships, to rebuild on an orig inal plan, his ideas and his whole intellect. If he has not done it, and he wishes to reason on rights, duties, the beautiful, the State or any other of man's important interests, he gropes about and stumbles; he gets entangled in long, vague phrases, in sonorous 450 THE PHILOSOPHY OF commonplaces, in crabbed and abstract formulas. Look at the newspapers and the speeches of our pop ular orators. It is especially the case with workmen who are intelligent but who have had no classical education ; they are not masters of words and, con sequently, of ideas; they use a refined language which is not natural to them ; it is a perplexity to them and consequently confuses their minds; they have had no time to filter it drop by drop. This is an enormous disadvantage, from which the Greeks were exempt. There was no break with them between the language of concrete facts and that of abstract reasoning, between the language spoken by the peo ple and that of the learned ; the one was a counter part of the other; there was no term in any of Plato's dialogues which a youth, leaving his gymnasia, could not comprehend; there i3 not a phrase in any of De mosthenes' harangues which did not readily find a lodging-place in the brain of an Athenian vjeasant oi blacksmith. Attempt to translate into Greek one of Pitt's or Mirabeau's discourses, or an extract frorrj Addison or Nicole, and you wUl be obliged to recast and transpose the thought ; you will be led to find ART IN GREECE. 451 for the same thoughts expressions more akin to facts and to concrete experience;* a flood of Ught will heighten the prominence of all the truths and of all the errors ; that which you were wont to call natural and clear will seem to you affected and semi-obscure, and you wUl perceive by force of contrast why, among the Greeks, the instrument of thought being more simple, it did its office better and with less effort. On the other hand, the work with the instru ment, has become complicated, and out of all pro portion. Besides Greek ideas, we have all that have accumulated for the past eighteen centuries. We have been overburdened, from the first, with our ac quisitions. On issuing from a brutal barbarism at the dawn of the middle age, a simple intellect, which could scarcely do more than stammer, had to be en- * I would refer the reader to the writings of Paul-Louis Courier, who formed his style on the Greek. Compare his translation of the first chapters of Herodotus with those of Larcher. In "Frangois le Champi," the " Maitres Sonneurs" and in the "Mare au Diable," George Sand at tains in a great degree to the simplicity, naturalness and admirable di rectness of the Greek style. The contrast is singular between this and the modern style which she employs when she speaks in her own ,am« or when she gives the conversation of cultivated characters. 452 THE PHILOSOPHY OF cumbered with the remains of classic antiquity and an ancient ecclesiastical literature, with a cavilling Byzantine theology, and the vast and subtle Aristo telian encyclopedia rendered still more obscure and subtle by his Arabian commentators. Then, after the Renaissance, came a revived antiquity to super add its conceptions to ours, frequently to confuse our ideas and wrongfully impose on us its authority,doc- trines and examples ; to make us Latin and Greek in mind and language Uke the Italian men of letters of the fifteenth century; to prescribe to us its dramatic forms and the style of the seventeenth cen tury ; to suggest to us its political maxims and Uto pias as in the time of Rousseau and during the Rev olution. The stream, nevertheless, greatly enlarged, grew with the immense influx ; with the daily increas ing volume of experimental science and human in vention ; with the separate contributions of growing civilizations, all of them spread over five or six grand territories. Add, after another century, the knowl edge diffused among modern languages and litera tures, the discovery of Oriental and remote civiliza tions, the extraordinary progress of history, reviving ART IN GREECE. 453 Defore our eyes the habits and sentiments of so many races and so many ages ; the current has become a river as variegated as it is enormous ; all this is what a human mind is obliged to absorb, and it demands the genius, long life and patience of a Goethe to moderately appreciate it. How much more simple and limpid was the primitive source ! In the best days of Greece a youth " learned to read, write, and cipher,* play the lyre, wrestle and to perform all other bodily exercises."f Education was reduced to this " for the chUdren of the best families." Let us add, however, that in the house of the music-master he was taught how to sing a few national and relig ious odes, how to repeat passages from Homer, He- siod and the lyric poets, the pseau to be sung in war and the song of Harmodius to be recited at the table. When he got to be older he listened in the Agora to the discourses of orators, to the decrees and the pro mulgation of the laws. In the time of Socrates, if inquisitive, he attended the disputes and dissertations of the sophists ; he tried to procure a book by Anax- * Grammata. As letters served as ciphers, this term includes all three t The "Thenges" of Plato. 454 THE PHILOSOPHY OF agoras, or by Zeno of Elea ; a few interested them selves in geometrical problems ; but, as a whole, ed ucation was entirely gymnastic and musical, whUe the few hours that were devoted to a phUosophical discussion, between two spells of bodily exercise, can no more be compared to our fifteen or twenty years of study, than their twenty or thirty rolls of papyrus manuscript to our libraries of three mUlion volumes. All these opposing conditions may be reduced to one, that which separates a fresh and impulsive civiliza tion from an elaborate and complex civilization. Fewer means and tools, fewer industrial implements and social wheels, fewer words learnt and ideas ac quired ; a smaller heritage and lighter baggage and thus more easily managed; a single, straightfor ward growth without moral crisis or disparity, and consequently a freer play of the faculties, a healthier conception of life, a less disturbed, less jaded, less deformed spirit and intellect ; this is the capital trait of their existence and it wiU be found in their art. ART IN GREECE. 455 III. The ideal work, indeed, has ever been the summa ry of real life. Examine the modern spirit and you will find modifications, inequalities, maladies, hyper trophies, so to say, of sentiments and faculties of which its art is the verification. — In the middle ages the exaggerated development of the inner and spirit ual man, the pursuit of tender and sublime revery, the worship of sorrow and the contempt of the flesh, lead the excited feelings and imagination on to vis ions and seraphic adoration. You are familiar with those of the "Imitation" and the " Fioretti" those of Dante and Petrarch, and with the subtle refinements and extravagant follies of chivalry and the courts of love. In painting and sculpture, consequently, the figures are ugly or lacking in beauty, often out of proportion and not viable, almost always meagre, at tenuated, wasted and suffering ; overcome and ab sorbed by some conception which t jirns their thoughts 456 THE PHILOSOPHY OF away from this nether world ; transfixed in anticipa tion or in ravishment ; displaying the meek sadness of the cloister or the radiance of ecstasy, too frail or toe impassioned to live and already belonging to par adise. — At the time of the Renaissance the universal amelioration of the human condition, the example of antiquity revived and understood, the transports of the mind liberated and ennobled by its grand dis coveries, renew pagan sentiments and art. Media> val institutions and rites however still subsist ; in It aly as in Flanders, you see in the finest works the disagreeable incongruity of figures and subjects; there are martyrs who seem to have issued from an antique gymnasium ; Christs consisting of destroying Jupiters or tranquil Apollos ; Virgins worthy of pro fane love ; angels with the archness of Cupids ; Mag dalens often the most blooming of sirens, and St. Se bastians only so many hale Hercules; in short, an as sembly of male and female saints who, amidst the implements of penance and passion, retain the vigor ous health, the lively carnations and the spirited at titudes common to the joyous fetes of perfect athletes and noble young Athenian virgins. — At the present ART IN GREECE. 457 day, the accumulations 01 the human brain, the mul- tipUcity and discord of doctrines, the excesses of cer ebral application, sedentary habits, an artificial re gime and the feverish excitement of capitals have aug mented nervous agitation, extended the craving for new and strong sensations, and developed morbid melancholy, vague aspirations and illimitable lusts. Man is no longer what he was, and what, perhaps, he would have done well to remain, an animal of su perior grade, happy in thinking and acting on tht earth which nourishes him and beneath the sun whick gives him light. On the contrary, he is a prodigious brain, an infinite spirit of which his members are only appendages and of which his senses are simply servants; insatiable in his curiosity and ambition, ever in quest and on conquest, with tremors and out bursts which rack his animal organization and ruin his corporeal strength ; led hither and thither within the confines of the actual world and even into the depths of the imaginary world ; now exalted and now overwhelmed with the immensity of his acquisitions and of his performances ; raging after the impossible or buried in occupation ; grand and intense like Beet 20 458 THE PHILOSOPHY OF hoven, Heine and tfte Faust of Goethe, or restrained by the pressure within his social cell, or warped all on one side by a specialty and monomania like the characters of Balzac. For this spirit plastic art no longer suffices ; its interest in a figure centres not in the members, the trunk and the entire animated frame work, but in the expressive head, the mobile physi ognomy, the transparent soul declared in gesture, passion or incorporeal thought pulsating and over flowing through form and externalities; if it loves the beautiful sculptural form that is owing to educa tion, after long preparatory culture, and through the disciplined taste of the dilettant. Multiple and cos mopolite as it is it finds interest in all phases of art, in every period of the past, in every grade of society, and in all the situations of life ; it can appreciate the resurrections of foreign and ancient styles, incidents of rustic, popular or barbarous customs, foreign and remote landscapes, all that affords aliment for curi osity, documents for history and subjects for emo tion or instruction. Satiated and dissipated as it is it demands of art powerful and strange sensations new effects of color, physiognomy and site, stimulants ART IN GREECE. 45S which, at any cost, disturb, provoke, or amuse it, in short, a style which depends on manner, theory, and exaggeration. In Greece, on the contrary, the sentiments are simple, and, consequently, taste. Consider Greek dramatic works ; there are no profound and compli cated characters in them like those of Shakspeare ; no intrigue cleverly contrived and unravelled, no surprises. The piece turns upon a heroic legend with which people are familiar from their infancy ; they know beforehand its incidents and catastrophe. The action can be described in a few words. Ajax, seized with delirium, massacres the cattle of the camp, thinking he is slaying his enemies ; chagrined at his folly, he bewails it and kills himself. Philoctetes, wounded, is abandoned on an island with his weapons ; he is sought for and found because his arrows are needed ; he becomes exasperated, refuses, and, at the command of Hercules, yields. The comedies of Me- nander, which we know through those of Terence, are made, so to say, out of nothing; it takes two of them to make one Roman piece ; the richest scarcely con tains the matter of one scene in our comedies. Read 460 THE PHILOSOPHY OF the opening of the " Republic," in Plato, thc " Syra cuse Women" of Theocritus, the " Dialogues" of Lu- cian, the last Attic poet, or again, the " Cyropedia" and " Glconomicus" of Xenophon ; there is no aim at ef feet, every thing being uniform ; they are common, every-day scenes, the merit of which lies in their charming naturalness; there is no strong emphasis, no vehement, piquant trait ; you scarcely smile, and yet are pleased just as when you stop before a wild flower or a limpid brook The characters sit down and get up, look at each other and say the simplest things with no more effort than the painted figures on the walls of PompeU. With our forced and paralyzed taste, accustomed to strong drink, we are inclined, at first, to pronounce this an insipid beverage ; but, after moistening our lips with it for a few months, we are unwUling to imbibe any but this pure water, and find other literature spice, ra gout or poison. — Trace this disposition in their art, and especially in that we are now studying, sculpture. It is owing to this turn of mind that they have brought it to perfection, and that it is truly their na tional art, for there is nc art which more demands a ART IN GREECE 461 simplicity of mind, sentiment and taste. A statue is a large piece of marble or bronze, and a large statue generally stands isolated upon a pedestal ; it could not express too vehement action nor a too impassion ed air, such as painting admits of, and which is al lowable in abas-relief, for this reason, that the figure would seem affected, got up for effect, running the risk of falling into the style of Bernini. A statue, moreover, is soUd ; its limbs and torso are weighty ; the spectator moves around it and realizes its mate rial mass ; it is, besides, generally nude, or almost nude ; the statuary, accordingly, is obliged to give the trunk and members equal importance with the head, and to appreciate animal life to as great an ex tent as moral life. Greek civilization is the only one which has conformed to these two conditions. At this stage of things, and in this form of culture, the body is an interesting object; the spirit has not sub ordinated it and cast it in the background ; it has its own importance. The spectator attaches equal val ue to its different parts, noble or ignoble, to the breast which breathes so freely, to the strong and flexible neck, to the muscles rising and falling around 462 THE PHILOSOPHY OF the spine, to the arms which project the discus, to the legs and feet whose energetic spring impel the man ahead in racing and jumping. A youth in Plato reproaches his rival for having a stiff body and a slender neck. Aristophanes promises the young man who wUl follow his advice the best of health and gymnastic beauty : " You will ever have a stout chest, a clear complexion, broad shoulders, large hips. . .You shall spend your time in the gymnastic schools sleek and blooming; you shall descend to the Academy and run races beneath the sacred olives along with some modest compeer, crowned with white reeds, redolent of yew and careless ease, and of leaf-shed ding white poplar, rejoicing in the season of spring, when the plane-tree whispers to the elm."* These are the pleasures and perfections of a blood horse, and Plato somewhere compares young men to fine coursers dedicated to the gods, and which are allow ed to stray at will in their pasture-grounds with a view to see if they will not through instinct obtain wisdom and virtue. Such men have no need of study to enable them to contemplate understandingly and * Aristophanes, translated by Hickic ; Bohn's Classical Library. ART LN GREECE 463 with pleasure a form like the " Theseus" of the Par thenon or the " Achilles" of the Louvre, the easy position of the body on the pelvis, the suppleness of the joints and limbs, the clean curve of the heel, the network of moving and flowing muscles under neath the firm and transparent skin. They appre ciate its beauty the same as an English gentleman fond of hunting appreciates the breed, structure and fine points of the dogs and horses he raises. They are not surprised to see it naked. Modesty has not yet become prudery ; the spirit, with them, does not sit by itself enthroned at sublime heights to obscure and degrade organs which fulfil less noble functions ; it does not blush at and does not hide them ; they excite no shame and provoke no smUe. The terms which designate them are neither offensive, provoca tive nor scientific ; Homer's mention of them is the same in tone as that of other portions of the body. The thoughts they awaken are, in Aristophanes, joy ous without being filthy as in Rabelais. There is no secret literature devoted to them which austere peo ple and delicate minds avoid. The idea occurs over and over again, on the stage, before full audiences, at 164 THE PHILOSOPHY OF the festivals in honor of the gods, in the presence ol magistrates, in the phaUus borne by young virgins and which of itself is invoked as a divinity.* In Greece all the great natural forces are divine, the divorce between the animal and the spirit not yet having taken place. Here, then, we have the Uving body, complete and without a veU, adnured and glorified, standing on its pedestal without scandal and exposed to all eyes. What is its purpose and what idea, through sympathy, is the statue to convey to spectators ? i\n idea which, to us, is almost without meaning because it belongs to another age and another epoch of the human mind. The head is without significance ; un like ours it is not a world of graduated conceptions, excited passions and a medley of sentiments ; the face is not sunken, sharp and disturbed ; it has not many characteristics, scarcely any expression, and is gener ally in repose. Hence its suitableness for the statu ary ; fashioned as it is to-day and as we now see it, its importance would be c ut of proportion to and a sacrifice of the rest ; we would cease to look at the * Aristophanes, in the "Acharnians. ART IN GREECE. 46£ trunk and limbs or would be tempted to clothe them On the contrary, in the Greek statue, the head ex cites no more interest than the trunk and other por tions of the figure ; its lines and its planes are simply continuations of other lines and other planes; its physiognomy is not meditative, but calm and almost dull ; you detect no habitude, no aspiration, no ambi tion transcending present physical existence, the gen eral attitude, like the entire action, conspiring in tho same sense. When a figure displays energetic acti m for a given purpose, like the " Discobulus" at Rorae, the "Fighting Gladiator" in the Louvre, or !he "Dancing Fawn" of Pompeu, the effect, entii >ly physical, exhausts every idea and every desire wi( 'tin its capacity ; so long as the discus is well launcl ;d, the blow well bestowed or parried, the dance ani ra ted and in good tune, it is satisfied, the mind mal ng no further effort. Generally speaking, however 'he attitude is a tranquil one ; the figure does notl . ng, and says nothing ; it is not fixed, wholly concenti .ted in a profound or eager expression ; it is at red- , re laxed, without weariness; now standing, sli; htly leaning on one or the other foot now hal f tui i ing, 20* 466 THE PHILOSOPHY OF now half reclining ; a moment ago it was running like the young Lacedemonian girl;* now, Uke the Flora, it holds a crown ; its action, almost always, it one of indifference ; the idea which animates it is so indefinite and, for us, so far removed that we still, after a dozen hypotheses, cannot precisely determine what the Venus of Milo is doing. It lives, and that suffices, and it sufficed for the spectator of antiquity. The contemporaries of Pericles and Plato did not re quire violent and surprising effects to stimulate wea ry attention or to irritate an uneasy sensibUity. A blooming and healthy body, capable of all virile and gymnastic actions, a man or woman of fine growth and noble race, a serene form in full light, a simple and natural harmony of lines happdy commingled, was the most animated spectacle they could dwell on. They desfred to contemplate man proportioned to his organs and to his condition and endowed with every perfection within these limits ; they demanded nothing more and nothing less ; any thing besides would have struck them as extravagance, deformity • See the collection of caste by M. Eavaissoninthe Ecole des Beaui Arte. ART IN GREECE: 467 or disease. Such is the circle within which the sim pUcity of their culture kept them, and beyond which the complexity of our culture has impelled us ; here in they encountered the art, statuary, which is ap propriate to it ; hence it is that we have left this art behind us, we of to-day having to resort to them for our models. INSTITUTIONS ART IN GREECE. 471 If ever the correspondence of art with life dis closed itself through visible traits, it is in the history of Greek statuary. To produce man in marble or bronze, the Greek first formed the Uving man, per fect sculpture with them being developed at the same moment as the institution through which was produced the perfect body. One accompanies the other, like the Dioscuri, and, through a fortunate con junction, the doubtful dawn of distant history is at once Ut up by their two growing rays. The two appear together in the first half of the seventh century (B. C). At this epoch occur the great technical discoveries of art. About 689 Buta- des of Sicyon undertakes to model and bake figures of clay, which leads him to decorate the tops of roofs with masks. At the same time Rhoikos and Theo- doros of Samos discover the process of casting bronze in a mould. Towards 650 Malas of Chios executes the first statues in marble, and, in successive olympi 472 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ads, during the latter part of that century, and the whole of the following century, we see statuary blocked out to become finished and perfect after tho glorious Median wars. This is the period at which orchestral and gymnastic institutions become regular and fully developed. A social cycle terminates, that of Homer and the epos, while another begins, that of ArchUochus, Callinus, Terpander and Olympus and of lyric poesy. Between Homer and his followers, who belong to the ninth and eighth centuries, and the inventors of new metres and new music who be long to the next century, there occurs a vast trans formation of social habits and organization. Man's horizon becomes more and more extend ed every day. The Mediterranean is thoroughly ex plored; Sicily and Egypt, which Homer only knew through storied reports, become well known. In 632 the Samians were the first to sail as far as Tartessus, and, out of the tithes of their profits, they consecrated to their goddess Hera a huge bronze cup decorated with griffons and supported by three kneeling fig ures, eleven cubits high. Multiplied colonies arise to people and cultivate the coasts of Magna Grsecia, ART IN GREECE. 473 Sicily, Asia Minor and the Euxine. Industrial pur suits of all kinds flourish ; the fifty-oared boats of an cient poems become gaUeys with two hundred rowers. A native of Chios discovers the art of softening, tem pering and welding Uon. The Dorian temple is erect ed. Money, figures and writing, of which Homer was ignorant, are known. There is a change in tactics ; men fight on foot and in line instead of combating in chariots and without discipline. Human society, so scattered in the Iliad and Odyssey, becomes more closely united. Instead of an Ithaca where each lamUy lives apart under its independent head, where there is no public authority, where twenty years could pass without convoking a public assembly, walled and guarded cities, provided with magistrates and sub ject to a police, are founded and beoome repubUcs of equal citizens under elected chiefs. At the same time, and in consequence of this, in- teUectual culture is diversified, diffused and re-invig orated. It unquestionably remains poetic as prose does not appear untU later, but the monotonous mei- opoeia which the epic hexameter sustains gives way to a multitude of varied songs and different metres 474 THE PHILOSOPHY OF The pentameter is added to the hexameter ; the tro chee, iambic and anapest are invented ; new and old metrical measures are combined in the distich, the strophe and others of all descriptions. The cithern which had but four strings receives seven ; Terpander establishes his modes and gives the nomes of music;* Olympus, and, next, Thales succeed in adapting the rhythms of the cithern, flute and voice to the various shades of poetic diction which they accompany. Let us attempt to picture to ourselves this world, so re mote, and whose fragments are almost all lost ; there is none which differs so much from our own and which, to be comprehended, demands so great an ef fort of the imagination. It is nevertheless the prim itive and enduring mould from which the Greek world issued. When we form a conception of lyric poetry we recur at once to the odes of Victor Hugo or the stanzas of Lamartine, a poesy which is read silently or in a low voice, alongside of a friend in some quiet and secluded spot ; our civilization renders po- * These nomes were simple tnnes from which others could be de rived bj slight variations. Smith's Dictionary. ART LN GREECE. 475 esy the confidential intercourse of two kindred spir its. That of the Greeks was uttered not only in a loud tone but it was declaimed and chanted to the sound of instruments and, again, accompanied with pantomime and dance. Suppose Delsarte or Mad ame Viardot singing a recitative from "Iphigenia" or " Orpheus," Rouget de ITsle or Rachel declaim ing the "MarseUlaise" or a chorus from Gluck's " Alceste," such as we see on the stage, with a cor- ypheus, orchestra and groups moving about before the steps of a temple, not as nowadays before the foot- Ughts and surrounded by painted scenery, but on a pubUc square and beneath the splendor of sunshine, and you will have the least imperfect idea of Gre cian fetes and customs. The entire man, body and soul, is in commotion ; the verses that remain to us are simply the detached leaves of an opera libretto. At a funeral in a Corsican vUlage the " voc6ratrice" improvises and declaims songs of vengeance over the corpse of a murdered man ; also waiUng-songs over the coffin of a young girl who has died before her maturity. In the Calabrian mountains and in SicUy the young people, on days given up to dancing, rep 476 THE PHILOSOPHY OF resent in their postures and gestures petty dramas and amatory scenes. Imagine, in a simUar climate, under a still finer sky, in small cities where every body is well acquainted with each other, equally gesticulative and imaginative men, as quick in emo tion and expression, with a still more animated and fresher impulse, more creative and ingenious mental ly, and much more inclined to embellish every ac tion and moment of human existence. This musical pantomime, which we only encounter in isolated fragments and in out-of-the-way places, is that which is to develope and branch out in a hundred different dhections and furnish the matter for a complete lit erature ; there is no sentiment that it will not ex press, no scene of public or private life which it will not adorn, no motive or situation to which it will not suffice. It becomes the natural language, as uni versal and of as common usage as our written or printed prose ; the latter is a sort of dry notation by which nowadays one pure intellect communicates with another pure intellect ; when compared with the wholly imitative and material language of the for mer it is nothing more than algebra and a residue. ART IN GREECE. 477 The accent of the French language is uniform; it has no rhythmical modulation ; its long and short syUables are slightly marked and scarcely distin guishable. One must have heard a musical tongue, the prolonged melody of a beautiful voice reciting one of Tasso's stanzas, to appreciate the effect or au ricular sensation on inward emotion ; to know what power sound and rhythm exercise over the entire being ; how contagious their influence is throughout our nervous machinery. Such was that Greek lan guage of which we have simply the skeleton. We see by the commentators and scholiasts that sound and measure were of equal importance with idea and image. The poet inventor of a species of metre in vented a species of sensation. This or that group of long and short syllables is necessarily an allegro, another a largo, another a scherzo, and not only af fects the thought, but likewise the action and music, its inflections and character. Thus did the age which produced a vast system of lyric poesy produce at the same stroke the no less vast orchestral system. We are familiar with the names of two hundred Greek dances. Up to sixteen years of age, at Athens, edu- 478 THE PHILOSOPHY OF cation was entirely orchestral. "In those dajs,'" says Aristophanes, "the youth of the same quarter of the town marched together through the streets to the school of the Harp-master, in good order and with bare feet, even if it were to snow as thick as meal. There they had their places without sitting cross-legged, and were taught the hymn ' Mighty Pallas, devastator of cities,' or 'The shout heard afar,' raising their voices to a higher pitch with the strong and rugged harmony transmitted by their fathers." A young man named Hippocleides, belonging to one of the first families, came to Sicyon to the court of the tyrant Cleisthenes and, being skilled in all phys ical exercises, was desirous of exhibiting his good ed ucation.* Ordering a flute-player to play an appro priate air, he danced it accordingly, and, soon after, causing a table to be brought, he got upon it and danced the Lacedemonian and Athenian figures. — Thus disciplined, they were both " singers and dancers,"t all furnishing all with noble, picturesque and poetic spectacles, and which at a later period * Herodotus, VI. ch. cxix. f Luclan. ART IN GREECE. 479 were obtained for hire. In the banquets of the clubs,* after the repast, they made libations and sang the paeon in honor of Apollo ; and then came the fete properly so called (Komos), the pantomimic decla mation, the lyric recitation to the sound of the cith ern or flute, a solo followed by a refrain, as subse quently the song of Harmodius and Aristogiton, or a duett sung and danced, like, at a later period, in the banquet of Xenophon, the meeting of Bacchus and Ariadne. When a citizen constituted himself a tyrant, and wished to enjoy his position, he extend ed festivities of this kind around him and perma nently established them. Polycrates of Samos had two poets, Ibycos and Anacreon, to superintend their arrangement and to compose for them music and verses. The actors of these poetic compositions consisted of the handsomest youths that could be found; Bathyll who played the flute and sang in the Ionian manner, Cleobulus with the beautiful vir gin eyes, Simalos who wielded the pectis in the cho rus, and Smerdis with the flowing locks whom they went hi quest of among the Cicones of Thrace. It * Philitles, societies of friends. 480 THE PHILOSOPHY OF was an operatic entertainment in private. The lyric poets of this epoch are, in a similar manner, chorus, masters; their dwelling is a species of conservatory,* a "House of the Muses:" there were several of them at Lesbos, besides that of Sappho, and which were conducted by women; they had pupils from the neighboring islands and coasts, from Miletus Colophon, Salamis and Pamphylia; here, during long years were taught music, recitation and the art of beautiful posture; they ridiculed the ignorant " peasant girls who did not know how to raise their dress above the ankle ;" a corypheus was furnished by these establishments and choruses drilled for fu neral lamentations and wedding pomps. Thus did private life throughout, in its ceremonies as well as amusements, contribute to make of man — in the best sense of the term, however, and with perfect dignity — what we designate as a singer, a figurant, a model and an actor. PubUc life contributed to the same end. In Greece the orchestral system enters into religion and • Simonides of Ceos usually occupied the " choregion" near the tern pie of Apollo ART IN GREECE. 481 politics, during peace and during war, in honor of the dead and to glorify victors. At the Ionian fete of ThargeUa Mimnermus the poet and his mistress Nanno led the procession playing the flute. Calli- nos, Alcseus and Theognis exhorted their fellow-citi zens or their party, in verses which they themselves sung. When the Athenians, repeatedly vanquished, had decreed the penalty of death against whoever should propose to recover Salamis, Solon, in a her ald's costume, with Mercury's cap on his head, ap peared suddenly in the assembly, mounted the her ald's stone, and recited an elegy with so much power that the young men set out immediately " to deliver the lovely island and reUeve Athens of shame and dishonor." The Spartans, on a campaign, recited songs in their tents. At evening, after their repast, each in turn arose to repeat and gesticulate the ele gy, whUe the polemarchus gave to the one who bore away the prize a larger ration of meat. It was cer tainly a fine spectacle to see these tall young men, the strongest and best formed in Greece, with their long hair carefully fastened at the top of the head, and in a red tunic, broad polished bucklers and with 21 482 THE PHILOSOPHY OF an air of hero and athlete, arise and sing an ode like this : — " With spirit let us fight for this land, and foi our children die, being no longer chary of our lives. Fight, then, young men, standing fast one by anoth er, nor be beginners of cowardly flight or fear. But rouse a great and valiant spirit in your breasts, and love not life, when ye contend with men. And the elders, whose limbs are no longer active, the old de sert not or forsake. For surely this were shameful, that fallen amid the foremost champions, in front of the youths, an older man should lie low, having his head now white and his beard hoary, breathing out a valiant spirit in the dust ; whilst he covers with his hands his gory loins. — Yet all this befits the young whilst he enjoys the brilliant bloom of youth. To mortal men and women he is lovely to look upon, whUst he lives ; and noble when he has fallen in the foremost ranks. — Shameful too is a corpse' lying low in the dust, wounded behind in the back by the point of a spear. Rather let every one with firm stride await the enemy, having both feet fixed on thc ground biting his lip with his teeth, and having cov ered with the hollow of his broad shield thighs and ART IN GREECE. 485 shms below and breast and shoulders. Then let him learn war by doing bold deeds, nor let him stand with his shield out of the range of weapons. But let each drawing nigh in close fray, hit his foe, wound ing him with long lance and sword. Having set foot beside foot, and having fixed shield against shield and crest on crest, and helmet on helmet, and breast against breast struggle in fight with his man."* There were similar songs for every circumstance of miUtary life, and, among others, anapests for at tacks to the sound of flutes. A spectacle of this kind occurred during the early enthusiasm of our Revolu tion, the day when Dumouriez, placing his hat on the end of his sword, and, scaling the parapet of Jem- mapes, burst forth with the " Chant du Depart," the soldiers, on a run, singing it with him. In this great discordant clamor we can imagine a regular battle- chorus, an antique musical march. There was one of these after the victory of Salamis, when Sophocles, fifteen years old, and the handsomest youth in Athens, stripped himself as the ceremony prescribed Tyrtaeus. Bohn's classical library. 484 THE PHILOSOPHY OF and danced a pseon in honor of Apollo in the midst of the military parade and before the trophy. Worship, however, furnished a much larger contri bution to the orchestral system than war or politics. According to the Greeks, the most gratifying spec tacle to the gods was that afforded by fine, blooming, fully developed bodies in every attitude that could display health and strength. Hence it is that their most sacred festivals were operatic processions and grave ballets. Chosen citizens, and sometimes as at Sparta, the whole city* formed choruses in honor of the gods ; each important town had its poets who composed music and verse, arranged the groups and evolutions, taught postures, drilled the actors a long time and regulated the costumes ; we have but one instance of the kind at the jiresent day to suggest the ceremony, that of the series of performances still given, every ten years, at Ober-Ammergau in Bava ria, where, since the middle ages, the inhabitants of the village, some five or six hundred persons, educa ted for it from infancy, solemnly perform Christ's Passion. In these f6tes, Alcman and Stesichorus, * The Gymnopaedia. ART IN GREECE. 485 were at the same time poets, cnapel-masters, and bal let directors ; sometimes officiating themselves and aa leaders in the great compositions wherein choruses of young men and women publicly appeared in hero ic or divine legends. One of these sacred ballets, the dithyrambus, became, at a later period, Greek tragedy. This in itself, is at first simply a religious festival, reduced and perfected, and transported from the public square to the enclosure of a theatre ; a succession of choruses broken by recitation and by the melopceia of a principal personage analogous to an "Evangile" by Sebastian Bach, the "Seven Works" of Haydn, an oratorio, or a Sixtine-chapel mass in which the same personages would sing tho parts and constitute the groups. Among all these poetic works, the most popular and the best adapted to making us comprehend these remote customs, are the cantatas which honor tho victors in the four great games. I'eople came to Pindar for these from all parts of Greece, Sicily and the islands. He went or sent his friend, iEneas :if Stymphalus, to teach to the chorus the dance, the music, and the verses of his song. The festival began 486 THE PHILOSOPHY OF with a procession and a sacrifice; afterwards the friends of the athlete, with his relatives and the principal men of the city, took their places at a ban quet. Sometimes the cantata was sung during the procession and the line halted to recite the epode ; again, after the feast, in a grand hall decked with cuirasses, lances, and swords.* The actors were companions of the athlete and performed their part with that southern energy which we encounter in Italy in the " Comedia dell 'Arte." They did not play, however, a comedy ; their part was a serious one, or rather it was not a part ; their pleasure was the noblest and deepest which it is given to man to experience, that of feeling himself beautiful and ex alted, raised above vulgar existence, borne aloft to Olympic heights and radiance by remembrance of national heroes, by the invocation of mighty divini ties, by the commemoration of ancestors, and by the applause of the country. For the victory of the ath lete was a public triumph, and the poet's verses a* sociated with it the city and all its divine protectors. Surrounded by these grand images, and exalted by * See the verses of Alcsens on his own dwelling. ART IN GREECE. 487 their own action, they attained to that supreme state which they called enthusiasm, indicating by this term that the god was in them ; and, in effect, he was, for he enters into man when man feels his force and no bleness grow beyond all bounds through the cor.cord- ant energy and sympathetic joyousness of the group with which he acts. We of to-day no longer comprehend the poesy of Pindar ; it is too local and too special ; too full of occult meaning, too desultory, too closely adapted tc Greek athletes of the sixth century ; the verses thai have come down to us are simply fragments ; the ac cent, the pantomime, the chant, the sounds of instru ments, the stage, the dance, and the procession, and other accessories which equal these in importance, have perished. It is only with extreme difficulty that we can figure to ourselves fresh minds that nev er read any thing, entertaining no abstract ideas, thinking only with imagery, in which every word aroused colored forms, souvenirs of stadium and gym nasia, temples, landscape, lustrous seacoasts, a popu lation of figures animated and divine as in the days of Homer, and, perhaps still more divine. And yet 488 THE PHILOSOPHY OF we catch from time to time an accent of these vibra ting tones ; we see as in a flash the grandiose atti tude of the crowned youth, advancing out of the chorus to utter the wordB of Jason or the vow of Hercules; we divine the quick gesticulation, the outstretched arms, the large muscles swelling his breast ; we encounter here and there a fragment of the poetic hue as brilUant as a lately disinterred painting in Pompeii. Now it is the corypheus who advances: "As when a man takes and gives out of his wealthy hand a drinking-cup, frothing within with the dew of the grape, presenting it to a youthful son-in-law on his passing from one house to another, * * * so I now in sending liquid nectar, the gift of the Muses and the sweet fruit of my mind, to men who have carried off prizes from the contest, compliment them as victors at Olympia and Pytho."* Now the chorus ceases and then the alternating half-chorus developes in crescendo the superb sonor ousness of the rolling and triumphant ode. " What ever Zeus loveth not flies in alarm on hearing the * The Odes of Pindar, translated by Paley. ART IN GREECE. 489 loud call of the Pierides both on earth and in the raging sea ; and he who lies in the awful hell, that enemy of the gods, Typhoeus with his hundred heads, whom erst the CUician cave of many names did rear, but now the sea-enclosing cliffs beyond Cunree (do hold), while Sicily presses down his shaggy breast, and that pillar of heaven keeps him fast, the snowy jEtna, all the year through the nurse of bright daz zling snow. From it are belched forth out of its in most depths the purest jets of unapproachable fire. In the daytime the streams (of lava) pour forth a lurid torrent of smoke, but in the dark ruddy flame rolling in volumes carries rocks into the deep level sea with a horrible clatter. 'Tis that snake-formed monster that sends up from beneath these most dread ful founts of fire, — a prodigy marvellous to behold, and a wonder even to hear of from passers-by, how that he lies imprisoned between the dark-leaved heights of JEtna and the plain below, and his rocky bed, furrowing all his back, galls him as he lies upon it.* The bubbling flow of images increases broken at * The Odes of Pindar, translated by Paley. 21* 490 THE PHILOSOPHY OF each step by sudden jets, refluxes and leaps whose boldness and enormity permit no translation. It is plain that these Greeks, so lucid and calm in their prose, become intoxicated and are thrown off their balance by lyric inspiration and madness. These aro excesses out of all harmony with our blunted organs and our circumspect civilization. Nevertheless we can divine enough of them to comprehend what such a culture contributes to the arts which represent the human form. It shapes man through the chorus ; it teaches him attitudes and gestures, the sculptural action ; it places him in a group which is a moving bas-relief; it is wholly directed to making him a spontaneous actor, one who performs fervidly and for his own pleasure, who sets himself up as a spec tacle to himself, who carries the gravity, freedom dignity and spirit of a citizen into the evolutions of the figurant and the mimicry of the dancer. The or chestral system provided sculpture with its postures, action, draperies, and groupings; the motive of tie Parthenon frieze is the Panathenaic procession, while thePyrrhica suggests the sculptures ofPhigalia and of Budrum. ART IN GREECE. 491 II. Alongside of the orchestra there was, in Greece, an institution still more national and which formed the second half of education, the gymnasium. We already meet with it in Homer; his heroes wrestle, launch the discus, and hold foot and chariot races ; he who is not skilled in bodUy exercises passes for a man of a low class ; .... A mere trader, looking out For freight and watching o'er the wares that form The cargo.* The institution, however, is not yet either regular, pure or complete. There are no fixed localities or epochs for the games. They are celebrated as the opportunity offers, on the death of a hero or in honor of a stranger. Many of the exercises which serve to increase vigor and agUity are unknown in them; on the other hand, they add exercises with weapons, * The Odyssey, translated by W. C. Bryant 492 THE PHILOSOPHY OF the duel even to blood, and practise with the bow and pike. It is only in the foUowing period, as with the orchestral system and lyric poesy, that we seo them develope, take root and assume the final shapo and importance with which we are famiUar. The signal was given by the Dorians, a new population of pure Greek race, who, issuing from the mountains, invaded the Peloponnesus, and, like the Neustrian Franks, introduced their tactics, imposed their ride and renewed the national Ufe with their intact spirit. They were rude and energetic men bearing some re semblance to the mediaeval Swiss; not so lively as and much less brUliant than the lonians ; possessing a fondness for tradition, a sentiment of reverence, the instinct of discipline, a calm, virile, and elevated spirit, and whose genius showed its imprint in the rigid severity of their worship, as in the heroic and! moral character of their gods. The principal section, that of the Spartans, estabUshed itself in Laconia amidst the ancient inhabitants either subdued or un der servile dominion ; nine thousand families of pi oud and hard masters in a city without walls, to keep obedient one hundred and twenty thousand fanners ART IN GREECE. 493 and two hundred thousand slaves, constituted an army immovably encamped amidst enemies ten times more numerous. On this leading trait all the others depend. The regime, prescribed by the situation, gradually be came fixed, and, towards the epoch of the restora tion of the Olympic games, it was complete. Indi vidual interests and caprices had disappeared before the idea of public safety. The discipline is that of a regiment threatened with constant danger. The Spartan is forbidden to trade, to follow any pursuit, to alienate his land, and to increase its rent ; he is to think of nothing but of being a soldier. If he trav els, he may use the horse, slave and provisions of his neighbor; service among comrades is a matter of right, whUe proprietorship is not strict. The new born child is brought before a councU of elders, and if it is too feeble or deformed, it is put to death ; none but sound men are admitted into the army, in which all, from the cradle, are conscripts. An old man past begetting children selects a young man whom he takes to his home, because each household must furnish recruits. Perfect men interchange 494 THE PHILOSOPHY OF wives in order to be better friends ; in a camp ther« is no scrupulousness about famUy matters, many things being held in common. People eat together in squads, like a mess which has its own regulations and in which each furnishes a part in money or its equivalent. MUitary duty takes precedence of ev ery thing. It is a reproach to linger at home ; bar rack life is superior to domestic life. A young bridegroom seeks his wife in secret and passes the day as usual in the drilling-school or on the parade- ground. ChUdren, for the same reason, are mUitary pupils (agelai), brought up in common, and, after sev en years of age, distributed into companies. In re lation to them every perfected adult is an elder, an officer (Paidonomos), and can punish them without paternal interference. Barefoot, clothed with a sin gle garment, and with the same dress in winter as in summer, they march through the streets, sUently and with downcast eyes, like so many youthful con scripts to the recruiting-station. Costume is a uni form, and habits, like the gait, are prescribed. The young sleep on a heap of rushes, bathe daily in the cool waters of the Eurotas. eat little and fast, and ART IN GREECE. 495 live worse in the city than in the camp, because the future soldier must be hardened. Divided into troops of a hundred, each under a young chief, they fight together with fists and feet, which is the ap prenticeship for war. If they wish to add any thing to their ordinarily meagre diet, they must steal it from the dwellings or the farms : a soldier must know how to keep himself alive by marauding. Now and then they are let loose in ambush on the highways, and, at evening, they kill belated Helots: a sight of blood is a good thing, and it is well to get the hand in early. As to the arts, these consist of those suitable for an army. The Dorians brought along with them a special type of music, the Dorian mode, the only one, perhaps, whose origin is purely Grecian.* It is of a grave, manly, elevated character, very simple and even harsh, admirable for inspiring patience and en ergy. It is not left to individual caprice ; the law prohibits the introduction of the variations, enerva tions and fancies of the foreign style ; it is a public * Plato, in the "Theages." says, speaking of the good man who dis courses on virtue, "In the wonderful harmony of aetion and speech ws recognize the Dorian mode the only one which is truly Greek." 496 THE PHILOSOPHY OF and moral mstitution; as with the drum and the bu gle-call in our regiments, it regulates marches and parades; there are hereditary flute-play ers similar to the bagpipers of the Scottish clans.* The dance it self is a drill or a procession. Boys, after five years of age, are instructed in the Pyrrhica, a pantomime of armed combatants, who imitate manoeuvres of de fense and attack, every attitude taken and every move ment made with a view to strike, ward off, draw back, spring forward, stoop, bend the bow and launch the pike. There is another named " anapale," in which young boys simulate wrestling and the pancratium. There are others for young men ; others for young girls, in which there is violent jumping, "leaps of the stag," and headlong races where, " like colts and with streaming hair, they make the dust fly."f The prin cipal ones, however, are the gymnopsedia, grand re views, in which the whole nation figures distributed in choruses. That of the old men sang, " Once were we Young men filled with strength ;" that of the young men responded, " We of to-day are thus endowed ; * See the " Pair Maid of Perth," by Walter Scott ; and the combat o> the Clan Clhele and Clan Chattan t Aristophanes. ART LN GREECE. 497 let him who is so disposed make trial of us ;" that of the cluldren added ; " And we, at some future day, wUl be still more vaUant."* All, from infancy, had learnt and rehearsed the step, the evolutions, the tone and the action ; nowhere did choral poesy form Vast er and better regulated ensembles. If nowadays we would find a spectacle very remotely resembling this, but stUl analogous, St. Cyr, with its parades and drills and, stUl better, the mUitary gymnastic school, where soldiers learn to sing in chorus, might perhaps, suffice. There is nothing surprising in a city of this kind * CHORDS OF OLD MEN. We are old and feeble now; Feeble hands to age belong ; But when o'er our youthful brow Fell the dark hair, we were strong. CHOKUS OF TOTJNG MEN. Though your youthful strength depart! With yonr children it endures ; In our arms and in our hearts Lives the valor that was yours. CHORUS OF BOYS. We shall soon that strength attain; Deeds like yours shall make us known. And the glory we shall gain Haply may surpass your own. Bryant : translated from the Greek. 498 THE PHILOSOPHY OF organizing and perfecting gymnastics. At the cosv of his Ufe a Spartan had to be equal to ten Helots as he was hoplite and foot-soldier and had to fight man to man, in line and resolutely, a perfect educa tion consisted of that which formed the most agUe and most robust gladiator. In order to obtain this it began previous to birth ; quite the opposite of other Greeks the Spartans not only prepared the male but likewise the female, in order that the child which in herited both bloods should receive courage and vig or from his mother as well as from his father.* Girls have their gymnasia and are exercised like boys, nude or in a short tunic, in running, leaping, and throwing the discus and lance ; they have their own choruses ; they figure in the gymnopsedia along with the men. Aristophanes, with a tinge of Athenian raillery, adrmres their fresh carnation, their blooming health and their somewhat brutal vigor, f The law, moreover, fixes the age of marriages, and allots the most favorable time and cfrcumstances for generating good progeny. There is some chance for parents of * Xenophon, The Lacedemonian Republic. t The part of Lampito in the "Lysistrata." ART LN GREECE. 499 this description producing strong and handsome chUdren ; it is the system of horse-trainers, and is ful ly carried out, since all defective products are reject ed. — As soon as the infant begins to walk they not- only harden and train it, but again they methodical ly render it supple and powerful ; Xenophon says that they alone among the Greeks exercised equally all parts of the body, the neck, the arms, the shoul ders, the legs and, not merely in youth but through out life and every day, and in camp twice a day. The effect of this discipline is soon apparent. " The Spartans," says Xenophon, " are the healthiest of all the Greeks, and among them are found the finest men and the handsomest women in Greece." They overcame the Messenians who fought with the disor der and impetuosity of Homeric times ; they became the moderators and chiefs of Greece, and at the time of the Median wars their ascendancy was so well es tabUshed that, not only on land but at sea, when they had scarcely any vessels, all the Greeks, and even the Athenians, received generals from them without a murmur. When a people becomes first in statesmanship 500 THE PHILOSOPHY OF and in war ts neighbors closely or remotely imitate the institutions that have given it the supremacy. TLe Greeks gradually borrow from the Spartans, and, in general, from the Dorians, the important char acteristics of their habits, regime and art ; the Dori an harmony, the exalted choral poesy, many of the ceremonies of the dance, the style of architecture, the simpler and more manly dress, the more rigid mUitary discipline, the complete nudity of the ath lete, gymnastics worked up into a system. Many of the terms of military art, of music and of the pa lestra, are of Doric origin or belong to the Dorian dialect. Already in the ninth century (B.C.) the growing importance of gymnastics had shown itself in the restoration of games, which had been inter rupted, while innumerable facts show, evidently, that they annually became more popular. Those of Olympia in 776 serve as an era and a chronological starting-point for a series of years. During the two subsequent centuries those of Pytho, of the Corin thian Isthmus and of Nemea are established. They are at first confined to the simple race of the stadi um ; to this is added in succession the double race of ART IN GREECE. 501 the stadium, wrestling, the pentathlon, pugilism, the chariot race, the pancratium and the horse race ; and next, for children, the foot race, wrestling, the pancratium, boxing, and other games, in all twenty- four exercises. Lacedemonian customs overcome Homeric traditions; the victor no longer obtains some prized object but a simple crown of leaves; he ceases to wear the ancient girdle, and, at the four teenth Olympiad, strips himself entirely. The names of the victors show that they come from, all parts of Greece, from Magna Grsecia, the islands and the most distant colonies. Henceforth there is no city without its gymnasium ; it is one of the signs by which we recognize a Grecian town.* The first one at Athens dates from about the year 700. Un der Solon there were already three large public gymnasia and a number of smaller ones. The youth of sixteen or eighteen years passed his hours there as in a lycee of day-scholars arranged, not for the culture of the mind, but for the perfect development of the body. The study of grammar and music seems indeed to have ceased in order that the young * An expression by PausaniaB, 503 THE PHILOSOPHY OF man might enter a higher and more special class The gymnasium consisted of a great square with porticoes and avenues of plane-trees, generally near a fountain or a stream, and decorated with numerous statues of gods and crowned athletes. It had its master, its monitors, its special tutors and its fete in honor of Hermes ; the pupils had a playspell in the intervals between the exercises ; citizens visited it when they pleased; there were numerous seats around the race course ; people came there to prom enade and to look at the young folks ; it was a place for gossip ; philosophy was born there at a later pe riod. In this school, which resulted in a steady com petition, emulation led to excesses and prodigies; men were seen exercising there theU whole Ufe. The laws of the Games requhed those who entered the arena to swear that they had exercised at least ten consecutive months without interruption and with the greatest care. But the men do much more than this; the impulse lasts for entire years and even into maturity; they follow a regimen; they eat a great deal and at certain hours ; they harden their muscles by using the strigil and cold water ; they ART LN GREECE. 503 abstain from pleasures and excitements ; they con demn themselves to continence. Some among them renew the exploits of fabulous heroes. Milo, it is Slid, bore a bull on his shoulders, and seizing the rear of a harnessed chariot, stopped its advance. An inscription placed beneath the statue of Phayllos, the Ci otonian, stated that he leaped across a space fifty-five feet in width and cast the discus, weighing eight pounds, ninety-five feet. Among Pindar's ath letes there are some who are giants. You will observe that, in the Greek civilization, these adrmrable bodies are not rarities, so many products of luxury, and, as nowadays, useless pop pies in a field of gram; on the contrary, we must liken them to the tallest stems of a magnificent harvest. They are a necessity of the State and a demand of society. The Hercules I have cited were not merely for parade purposes. Milo led his fellow-citizens to combat, and Phayllos was the chief of the Crotonians who came to aid tho Greeks against the Medes. A general of those days was not a strategist with a map and spy-glass occupy ing an elevation; he fought, pike in hand, at the 504 THE PHILOSOPHY OF head of hii forces, body to body, and as a soldier MUtiades, Aristides, Pericles, and at a much later period, even Agesilaus, Pelopidas and Pyrrhus use theU arms, and not merely their intellect, to strike, parry and assault, on foot and on horseback, in the thickest of the fight; Epaminondas, a statesman and philosopher, being mortally wounded, consoles him self like a simple hoplite for having saved his shield A victor at the penthalon, Aratus, and the last Gre cian leader, found his advantage in his agility and strength on scaling walls and in surprises. Alexan der, at the Granicus, charged like a hussar and was the first to spring, like a tumbler, into a city of the Oxydracae. A bodily and personal mode of warfare like this requfres the first citizens, and even princes, to be complete athletes. Add to the exigencies of danger the stimulants of festivals. Ceremonies, like battles, demanded trained bodies ; no one could figure in the choruses without having passed through the gymnasia. I have stated how the poet Sophocles danced the paean naked after the victory of Salamis ; at the end of the fourth century the same customs still subsisted. Alexander, on ART IN GREECE. 50a reaching the Troad, threw aside his clothes that he and his companions might honor Achilles by racing around the pUlar which marked the hero's grave. A little farther on, at Phasedis, on seeing a statue of the phUosopher Theodectes in the pubUc square, he returned after his repast to dance around it and cover it with crowns. To provide for tastes and necessities of this sort, the gymnasium was the only school. It resembles the academies of our later cen turies, to which all young nobles resorted to learn fencing, dancing and riding. Free citizens were the nobles of antiquity ; there was, consequently, no free citizen who had not frequented the gymnasium ; on this condition only could a man be well educated ; otherwise he sank to the class of tradesmen and peo ple of a low origin. Plato, Chrysippus and the poet Timocreon were at one time athletes; Pythagoras passed for having taken the prize for boxing ; Eurip ides was crowned as an athlete at the Eleusinian games. Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, entertaining the suitors of his daughter, provided them with an exercising ground, " in order that," says Herodotus, u he might test their race and education." The body, 22 508 THE PHILOSOPHY OF in fine, preserved to the end the traces of its gym. nastic or servile education ; it could be appreciated at a glance, through its bearing, gait, action and mode of dress, the same as, formerly, the gentleman, polish ed and ennobled by the academies, could be distin guished from the rustic clown or the impoverished laborer. Even when nude and motionless, the body testi fied to its exercise by the beauty of its forms. The skin, embrowned and rendered firm by the sun, oU, dust, the strigil and cold baths, did not seem uncov ered ; it was accustomed to the air ; one felt on look ing at it that it was in its element ; it certainly did not shiver or present a mottled or goose-skin aspect ; it was a healthy tissue, of a beautiful tone, indicative of a free and vigorous existence. AgesUaus, to en courage his soldiers, one day caused his Persian pris oners to be stripped ; at the sight of their soft white skin the Greeks broke into a laugh and marched on ward, full of contempt for their enemies. The mus cles were rendered strong and supple ; nothing was neglected; the diverse parts of the body balanced each other ; the upper section of the arm, which is ART IN GREECE. 501 now so meagre, and the stiff and poorly-furnished omoplates were filled out and formed a pendant in proportion with the hips and thighs; the masters, like veritable artists, exercised the body so that it might not only possess vigor, resistance and speed, but likewise symmetry and elegance. The " Dying Gaul,"* which belongs to the Pergamenian school, shows, on comparing it with the statues of athletes, the distance which separates a rude from a cultivated body ; on the one hand, there is the hair scattered in coarse meshes like a mane, a peasant's feet and hands, a thick skin, inflexible muscles, sharp elbows, swollen veins, angular contours, and harsh lines — nothing but the animal body of a robust savage; on the other hand, all the forms ennobled ; at first the heel flabby and weak,f now enclosed in a clean oval ; at first the foot too much displayed and betraying its simian origin, now arched and more elastic for the leap; at first the knee-pan articulations and entire skeleton prominent, now half effaced and simply in- * The author thus designates the statue commonly known under thi title of ;he " Dying Gladiator." Tr. t See the small bronze archaic Apollo ii> the Louvre, also the 2Egin» tan statues. 508 THE PHILOSOPHY OF diccted ; at first the line of thc shoulders horizonta. and hard, now inclining and softened — everywhere the harmony of parts which continue and flow into each other, the youth and freshness of a fluid exist ence as natural and as simple as that of a tree or a flower. Numerous passages could be pointed out in " Menexenus," the " Rivals" and the " Charmides" of Plato, which seize some one of these postures on the wing ; a young man thus reared uses his limbs well and naturally; he knows how to bend his body, stand erect, rest with his shoulder against a column, and, in all these attitudes, remain as beautiful as a statue ; the same as a gentleman, before the Revolu tion, had, when bowing, taking snuff or listening, the cavalier grace and ease observable in old portraits and in engravings. It was not the courtier, however, that was apparent in the ways, action and pose of the Greek, but the man of the palaestra. Plato depicts him as hereditary gymnastics fashioned him among a se lect race : " Charmides, I think that you ought to excel others in all good qualities ; for, if I am not mis taken, there is no one present who could easily point out ten Athenian houses the alliance of which was ART IN GREECE. 50/ likely to produce a better or nobler son than the two, from which you are sprung. There is your father'* house, which is descended from Critias, the son oi Dropidas, whose family has been commemorated in the panegyrical verses of Anacreon, Solon, an<3 many other poets as famous for beauty and virtuu and all other high fortune : and your mother's housi is equaUy distinguished; for your maternal unch* Pyrilampes, never met with his equal in Persia at thw court of the great king or on the whole continent in all the places to which he went as ambassador, for stature and beauty ; that whole family is not a whit inferior to the other. Having such ancestry you ought to be first in all things, and as far as I can see, sweet son of Glaucon, your outward form is no dis honor to them."* In this scene, which takes us back much farther tnan its date, even to the best period ol the nude form, all is precious and significant. Ws find in t the traditions of the blood, the result of education, the popular and universal taste for beauty, all the original sources of perfect sculpture. Homer had * The Dialogues of Plato, "Charmides," translated by Jowett. 510 THE PHILOSOPHY OF mentioned AchUles and Nereus as the most beaiiti ful among the Greeks assembled against Troy ; He rodotus named Callicrates, the Spartan, as the hand somest of the Greeks in arms against Mardonius. All the fe'tes of the gods and all great ceremonies brought together competitors in beauty. The finest old men of Athens were selected to carry branches in the Panathenaic procession, and the handsomest men at Elis to bear the offerings to the goddess. At Sparta, in the gymnopaedia, the generals and prominent men whose figure and external nobUity were not sufficiently marked were oonsigned to the lower ranks in the choral defile. The Lacedemoni ans, according to Theophrastus, imposed a fine on their king, Archidamus, because he married a woman of short stature, pretending that she would give them kinglets and not kings. Pausanias found competi tions of beauty in Arcadia m which women were ri vals, and which had lasted for nine centuries. A Persian, related to Xerxes, and a grandee of his army, dying at Achantus, the inhabitants sacrificed to him as a hero. The Segestans had erected a email temple over the grave of Philip, a Crotoniau ART IN GREECE. 511 refugee among them and a victor in the Olympic games, the most beautiful Greek of his day, and tc whom during the lifetime of Herodotus, sacrifices were stUl offered. Such is the sentiment which edu cation had nourished and which in its turn, reacting thereon, made the formation of beauty its end. Thc race, certainly, was a fine one, but it was rendered stUl finer through system ; wUl had improved nature, and the statuary set about finishing what nature, even cultivated, only half completed. We have thus seen during two centuries the two institutions which form the human body, the orches tral and gymnastic systems, born, developed, and diffused around the centres of their origin; spreading throughout thc Greek' world, furnishing the instru ments of war, the decorations of worship, the era of chronology; presenting corporeal perfection as tho principal aim of human life and pushing admiration of completed form even to vice.* Slowly, by de grees and at intervals, the art which fashions tho statue of metal, wood, ivory or marble, accompanies * Grecian vice, unknown in the time of Homer, begins, according to all appearances, with the institution of gymnasia. See Becker, " Chan el es" (Excursus). 512 THE PHILOSOPHY OF the education which fashions the living statue. It does not progress at the same pace ; although con temporary, it remains for these two centuries inferior and simply imitative. The Greeks were concerned about truth before they were concerned about copy ing it ; they were interested in veritable bodies be fore being interested in simulated bodies ; they de voted themselves to forming a chorus before at tempting to sculpture a chorister. The physical or moral model always precedes the work which repre sents it ; but it is only slightly in advance ; it is ne cessary that it be still present in all memories the mo ment that the work is done. Art is an expanded and harmonious echo; it acquires its fulness and completeness when the life, of which it is the echo, begins to decline. Such is the case with Greek stat uary ; it becomes adult just at the moment the lyric age ends — in the period of fifty years following the battle of Salamis, when, along with prose, the dra ma and the first researches in phUosophy, a new cul ture begins. We see art suddenly passing from ex act imitation to beautiful invention. . Aristocles, the xEginetan sculptors, Onatas, Canachus, Pythagoras ART IN GREECE. 513 of Rhegium, Calamis and Ageladas still closely copied the real form as Verocchio, Pollaiolo, Ghir landaijo, Fra FUippo and Perugino himself; but ir the hands of their pupUs, Myro, Polycleitus and Phidias the ideal form is set free as in the hands oi Leonardo, Michael Angelo and Raphael. 22* 514 THE PHILOSOPHY OF nx It is not merely men, the most beautiful of all, that Greek statuary has produced; it has likewise produced gods, and, in the united judgment of an tiquity, its gods were its masterpieces. To the pro found sentiment of corporeal and athletic perfection was added, with the pubUc and with the masters, an original religious sentiment, a conception of the world now lost, a peculiar mode of apprehending, venerating and adoring natural and divine powers. One must figure to himself this particular class of emotions and kind of faith if one would penetrate a little deeper into the soul and genius of Polycleitus, Agoracritus or of Phidias. It is sufficient to read Herodotus* to see how Uvely faith stUl was in the first half of the fifth centu ry. Not only is Herodotus pious, so devout even as * Herodotus was still living at the epoch of the Peloponnesian war. He alludes to it in Book VTI. 137, and in Book IX. 78. ART IN GREECE. 51'' not to presume to give utterance to certain sacred names, or reveal certain legends, but again the entire nation brings to its worship the impassioned and grandiose seriousness simultaneously expressed in the poetry of JEschylus and Pindar. The gods are living and present ; they speak ; they have been seen like the Virgin and the saints in the thirteenth cen tury. — The heralds of Xerxes having been slain by the Spartans, the entrails of the victims become un favorable, because the murder offended the dead Talthybios, Agamemnon's glorious herald, whom the Spartans worshipped. In order to appease him two rich and noble citizens go to Asia and offer them selves to Xerxes. — On the arrival of the Persians the cities consult the oracle ; the Athenians are ordered to summon their son-in-law to their aid ; they remem ber that Boreas carried off Orythia, the daughter of Erectheus, their first ancestor, and they erect a chap el to him near the Byssus. At Delphi the god de clares that he will defend himself; thunder-bolts faU on the barbarians, rocks fall and crush them, whUst from the temple of Pallas Pronea issue voices and war-cries, and two heroes of the country of superhu 516 THE PHILOSOPHY OF man stature, Phylacos and Autonoos, succeed in put ting the terrified Persians to flight. — Before the bat tle of Salamis the Athenians import from xEgeria the statues of the iEacides to combat with them. During the fight some travellers near Eleusis see a great cloud of dust and hear the voice of the mysti cal lacchus approaching to aid the Grecians. After the battle they offer the gods, as first-fruits, three captive ships ; one of them is for Ajax, while they de duct from the booty the money required for a statue of him twelve cubits high at Delphi — I should never stop if I were to enumerate all the evidences of pub lic piety ; it was still fervid among the people fifty years later. " Diopeithes," says Plutarch, " passed a law du-ecting those who did not recognize the exist ence of the gods or who put forth new doctrines on celestial phenomena to be denounced." Aspasia, Anaxagoras, and Euripides were annoyed or accused, Alcibiades condemned to death, and Socrates put to death for the assumed or established crime of impi ety; popular indignation proved terrible against those who had counterfeited or violated the mysteries of Hermes. We see unquestionably in these details, ART LN GREECE. 517 along with the persistency of the antique faith, the advent of free thought ; there was around Pericles, as around Lorenzo de Medici, a small cluster of phi losophers and dialecticians; Phidias, like Michael Angelo at a later period, was admitted among them. But in both epochs, legend and tradition filled and had supreme control of the imagination and conduct. When the echo of philosophic discourse reached the soul filled with picturesque forms and made it vibrate, it was to aggrandize and purify divine forms. The new wisdom did not destroy religion ; she interpret ed it, she brought it back to its foundation, to the poetic sentiment of natural forces. The grandiose conceptions of early physicists left the world as ani mated and rendered it more august. It is owing, perhaps, to Phidias having heard Anaxagoras dis course on the voC« that he conceived his Jupiter, his Pallas, his heavenly Venus, and comr eted, as the Greeks said, the majesty of the gods. In order to possess the sentiment of the divine it is necessary to be capable of distinguishing, through the precise form of the legendary god, the great, per manent and general forces of which it is the issue. 618 THE PHILOSOPHY OF One remains a cold and prejudiced idolater if, be yond the personal form, he does not detect, in a sort of half-light, the physical or moral power of which the figure is the symbol. This was still perceptible in the time of Cimon and Pericles. Studies in compar ative mythology have recently shown that Grecian myths, related to Sanscrit myths, originally express ed the play of natural forces only, and that lan guage had gradually formed divinities from the diver sity, fecundity and beauty of physical elements and phenomena. Polytheism, fundamentally, is the senti ment of animated, immortal and creative nature, and this sentiment lasts for eternity. The divine im pregnated all things : these were invoked ; often in xEschylus and Sophocles do we see man addressing the elements as if they were sacred beings with whom he is associated to conduct the great chorus of life. Philoctetes, on his departure, salutes " ye watery nymphs of the meadows, and thou manlv roar of ocean dashing onwards. Farewell, thou sea girt plain of Lemnos, and waft me safely with fa: voyage thither, whither mighty fate conveys me.' * The Tragedies of Sophocles ¦ Oxford translation. ART LN GREECE. 519 Prometheus, bound to his crag, calls on all the mighty beings who people space: — " 0 divine aether and ye swift-wingec breezes, and ye fountains of riv ers, and countless dimpling of the waves of the deep; and thou Earth, mother of all, — and to the all-seeing orb of the Sun, I appeal! Look upon me what treatment I, a God, am enduring at the hand of the Gods!"* The spectators simply let lyric emotion lead them on in order to obtain primitive metaphors, which, without being conscious of it, were the germs of their faith. "The serene sky," says Aphrodite, in one of the lost pieces of xEschylus, " delights to embrace the Earth, and Love espouses her ; the rain which falls from the life-giving Sky fecundates the Earth who then brings forth for mortals pastur age for cattle and the corn of Demeter." To com prebend this language we have only to leave behind us our artificial towns and formal culture. The soli tary wanderer among mountains or by the seaside who surrenders himself wholly to the aspects of an intact nature soon holds communion with her ; she * /Eschylus : translated by Bnckley. Bonn's Classical Library.