ESTHETIC EVOLUTION IN MAN. 351 



pictorial art up to the Renaissance was entirely ecclesiastical and de- 

 votional. We have fed and nursed our taste upon Madonnas and 

 Holy Families, upon Crucifixions and Assumptions, upon St. Sebas- 

 tians, St. Johns, and St. Cecilias. Our architecture is based upon the 

 Romanesque Christian church, whose rounded forms melt into the 

 pointed arches of the Gothic cathedral. It finds its noblest expression 

 in Pisa and Poitiers, Milan and Venice, Cologne and Chartres, Lincoln 

 and Salisbury. And, when the classical revival comes to restore the 

 older schools, it produces the masterpiece of its newer style in the vast 

 dome of St. Peter's, where the four chief arts, architecture and sculp- 

 ture, painting and music, all alike find their chosen home in the cen- 

 tral point and focus of Catholic Christendom. 



Nor is it only in these more notable forms that royalty and religion 

 influence aesthetic taste. The purple and fine linen of kings' palaces ; 

 the inlaid cabinets and parquetry floors ; the jade vases and painted 

 porcelain ; the Dresden statuettes and bronze candelabra ; the frescoed 

 ceiling, tapestry wall-covers, and carved wood-work all these belong 

 to the royal home. Even in poetry, the Queen still keeps her lau- 

 reate ; and the drama, originally a sort of royal specialty, is still per- 

 formed at Drury Lane by " her Majesty's servants." Similarly with 

 religion : the stained-glass window and the marble or mosaic altar ; 

 the costly vestments and sweet-perfumed incense ; the fretted roof 

 and the sculptured reredos these in their turn belong to the worship 

 of God. Such royal decorations and sacred ornaments react again 

 upon the popular taste, both actively and passively. As an active 

 effect, they give rise to and foster artistic workmanship : as a passive 

 effect, they educate and strengthen the aesthetic faculties of the mass. 

 Among the lower races, the aesthetic feelings have been closely linked 

 with the sense of proprietorship : among the higher races, they gain 

 more and more with every step in abstractness and remoteness from 

 the personality of the individual. It was in the vast cathedrals of 

 mediaeval Europe that modern esthetic feeling received its early edu- 

 cation. 



So far we have treated little of beauty in nature : beauty in art has 

 occupied almost our whole attention. The latter prepared the human 

 mind for the appreciation of the former. Of the manner in which the 

 love for art passes into the love for smaller natural objects, which ex- 

 hibit minute beauty of workmanship, I have already treated elsewhere : 

 but the taste for scenery demands a few words here. Children and 

 early races care little for nature : it is only among the most cultivated 

 classes of the most advanced types that the aesthetic faculty reaches 

 this its highest and most disinterested stage. All art is at first frankly 

 anthropinistic. Early painting, such as that of the Egyptians and As- 

 syrians, dealt only with human and animal figures : it represented men 

 and women, kings and queens, gods and goddesses, hunters and lions, 

 herdsmen and cattle : but it never attempted landscape or scenery. 



