is derived from _romance_--the name originally given to the languages
which were formed from the mixture of the Latin and the old Teutonic
dialects, in the same manner as modern civilisation is the fruit of the
heterogeneous union of the peculiarities of the northern nations and the
fragments of antiquity; whereas the civilisation of the ancients was much
more of a piece.

The distinction which we have just stated can hardly fail to appear well
founded, if it can be shown, so far as our knowledge of antiquity extends,
that the same contrast in the labours of the ancients and moderns runs
symmetrically, I might almost say systematically, throughout every branch
of art--that it is as evident in music and the plastic arts as in poetry.
This is a problem which, in its full extent, still remains to be
demonstrated, though, on particular portions of it, many excellent
observations have been advanced already.

Among the foreign authors who wrote before this school can be said to have
been formed in Germany, we may mention Rousseau, who acknowledged the
contrast in music, and showed that rhythm and melody were the prevailing
principles of ancient, as harmony is that of modern music. In his
prejudices against harmony, however, we cannot at all concur. On the
subject of the arts of design an ingenious observation was made by
Hemsterhuys, that the ancient painters were perhaps too much of sculptors,
and the modern sculptors too much of painters. This is the exact point of
difference; for, as I shall distinctly show in the sequel, the spirit of
ancient art and poetry is _plastic_, but that of the moderns
_picturesque_.

By an example taken from another art, that of architecture, I shall
endeavour to illustrate what I mean by this contrast. Throughout the