thinking that they were necessary lords of the world. Turn then to
the lands they governed, and read and forget a long string of the
causeless murders of Northern and Saracen pirates and robbers. That
is pretty much the sum of what so-called history has left us of the
tale of those days--the stupid languor and the evil deeds of kings
and scoundrels. Must we turn away then, and say that all was evil?
How then did men live from day to day? How then did Europe grow
into intelligence and freedom? It seems there were others than
those of whom history (so called) has left us the names and the
deeds. These, the raw material for the treasury and the slave-
market, we now call 'the people,' and we know that they were working
all that while. Yes, and that their work was not merely slaves'
work, the meal-trough before them and the whip behind them; for
though history (so called) has forgotten them, yet their work has
not been forgotten, but has made another history--the history of
Art. There is not an ancient city in the East or the West that does
not bear some token of their grief, and joy, and hope. From Ispahan
to Northumberland, there is no building built between the seventh
and seventeenth centuries that does not show the influence of the
labour of that oppressed and neglected herd of men. No one of them,
indeed, rose high above his fellows. There was no Plato, or
Shakespeare, or Michael Angelo amongst them. Yet scattered as it
was among many men, how strong their thought was, how long it
abided, how far it travelled!

And so it was ever through all those days when Art was so vigorous
and progressive. Who can say how little we should know of many
periods, but for their art? History (so called) has remembered the
kings and warriors, because they destroyed; Art has remembered the
people, because they created.