of the state, the period in which any given people reach their highest
power in art is precisely that in which they appear to sign the warrant
of their own ruin; and that, from the moment in which a perfect statue
appears in Florence, a perfect picture in Venice, or a perfect fresco
in Rome, from that hour forward, probity, industry, and courage seem to
be exiled from their walls, and they perish in a sculpturesque
paralysis, or a many-coloured corruption.

But even this is not all. As art seems thus, in its delicate form, to
be one of the chief promoters of indolence and sensuality,--so, I need
hardly remind you, it hitherto has appeared only in energetic
manifestation when it was in the service of superstition. The four
greatest manifestations of human intellect which founded the four
principal kingdoms of art, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, and Italian,
were developed by the strong excitement of active superstition in the
worship of Osiris, Belus, Minerva, and the Queen of Heaven. Therefore,
to speak briefly, it may appear very difficult to show that art has
ever yet existed in a consistent and thoroughly energetic school,
unless it was engaged in the propagation of falsehood, or the
encouragement of vice.

And finally, while art has thus shown itself always active in the
service of luxury and idolatry, it has also been strongly directed to
the exaltation of cruelty. A nation which lives a pastoral and innocent
life never decorates the shepherd's staff or the plough-handle, but
races who live by depredation and slaughter nearly always bestow
exquisite ornaments on the quiver, the helmet, and the spear.

Does it not seem to you, then, on all these three counts, more than
questionable whether we are assembled here in Kensington Museum to any