LESSONS IN GREEK. 



midst of all this grout upheaval, this wi<l<-ning and 

 broadening of human thought and interests, art alono c< 

 remain stationary. It ceaaed to be local, and bogan to bo cos- 

 mopolitan, aa schools of painting sprung up in ovory part of 

 Kun.pl-. It was no longer iU'pi<iuli'iit upon th<- building of u 

 p iri i-MiI.ir fiiilu-'lral or palaco, upon the patronage of a ]>iirti- 

 cMilar pope or king: it had become u thing of jron<-r;il popular 

 t and ooncern. All over Europe tin- Mj,' medieval 

 with their gloomy courts and bare halls, wt-ro giving 

 place to the stately Italian style of maimionH, with terraced 

 -, noble porches, broad staircases, long airy galleries, 

 ami hirgo windows admitting abundance of light and sunsliitu-. 

 Tln-ir walls wore adorned with portraits of the noble families 

 mi'l their friends, while their ceilings were covered with I 

 of graceful and fanciful classical subjects. In such a world an 

 tliis, art began to assume a more popular form ; it gave up its 

 severity and austerity. At tho same time, it lost much of its 

 primitive sincerity ; it learned to appeal to more commonplace 

 and perhaps even vulgar IVi-lin^. No longer addressing itself 

 to tho taste of a few educated and cultivated connoisseurs alone, 

 it sought to catch the public eye by somewhat tricky sentiment 

 and meretricious beauty. It was from such causes that the 

 school of the eclectics took its rise. 



The most famous of the early eclectics were the family of 

 Caracoi at Bologna, of whom Ludovico Caracci (born 1555, died 

 1619) and his cousin Annibale (1560 1G09) are the best known. 

 Ludovico was a pupil of Tintoretto, and he followed his master 

 in the attempt to combine tho various good points of the pre- 

 ceding schools. Annibale studied under Ludovico, and was 

 afterwards employed upon the Farnese Palace at Rome. Both 

 painters had much beauty of technical workmanship, but their 

 works are marked by a certain false sentiment and theatrical 

 action which please inexperienced judges at first sight, but 

 which a critical eye recognises as inferior in tone to the closer 

 fidelity and simplicity of the early Renaissance artists. Tho 

 classical spirit is very strong in their works, most of which arc 

 drawn from the old mythology. They are treated, however, in 

 a rather meretricious manner, with much superficial grace, and 

 a good deal of posing and posturing. During the eighteenth 

 century, indeed, when artificiality was rather a recommendation 

 than otherwise, it was the fashion to talk of the Caracci and 

 the other eclectics as representing almost tho highest develop- 

 ment of modern painting. At tho present day, on the other 

 hand, when the prevalent taste runs rather in the direction 

 of a revived mediaavalism when the real beauties of the pre- 

 Raffaelite painters are fully recognised, and when their obvious 

 shortcomings are too readily overlooked or condoned it has 

 become the fashion to run down the eclectics to an unmerited 

 extent, as being mere pretenders or false sentimentalists of a 

 vulgar sort. It is probable that a just and true criticism would 

 steer somewhere between these two extremes. It would admit 

 that the Caracci and their school were wanting in tho highest 

 mental qualities of the true artist ; that they sacrificed too 

 much to theatrical effect, and lacked deep spiritual insight ; but 

 on tho other hand it would frankly recognise tho great merits of 

 their work in its technical aspect, and the beauty and tender- 

 ness of many of their pictures. 



No one of the eclectics has suffered more in reputation from 

 this marked revulsion of feeling in modern times than Guido 

 Reni, undoubtedly the greatest and truest of the eclectic school. 

 A century since, it was nsual to speak of Guido as occupying 

 the same rank as Raffael, Michel Angelo, Lionardo, and Titian ; 

 at tho present day it is usual to speak of him with a mixture of 

 contempt and dislike, which have in them something almost of 

 personal bitterness. Yet Guido, with many faults of sentiment 

 and taste, is certainly one of the painters whose works have 

 most deeply touched the hearts of thousands upon thousands of 

 men ; and the exquisite tenderness and grace of some of his 

 works ought easily to redeem the occasional trickinoss and false 

 romance of his less pleasing pieces. Guido was a native of 

 tho Bologna district, and a friend of the Caracci family. His 

 style has an extraordinary softness and grace of its own, a 

 delicacy of touch and melting tone of colouring which are to be 

 found in no other painter. The faces of his women and children 

 in particular are full of a child-like simplicity and beanty which 

 are very touching. He loved best to paint female faces, and 

 those of tho softest and most lovable kind. The Magdalen 

 was his favourite subject, and perhaps the one in which he 



succeeded moat fully. Ho also took many beautiful heads of 

 women from hia own Human peasantry . In men's figure* he 

 choao rather auch subjects aa the dead Christ, or other touching 

 thomea on which he might diaplay hia peculiar tendrne*a ; and 

 it i* this love for pathetic diaplay which baa raiaed against him 

 the charge of sentimentality. Hia " Ecce Homo," in the 

 Dresden Gallery, i familiar to every one in numerous engrav- 

 ings, while the exquiaite female portrait which bears (errone- 

 ously) the common title of tho " Beatrice C'enci " in almost 

 equally well known. The English National Gallery contains a 

 large number of his works. Oar illustration represents his 

 " Aurora and Phoebus, with tho Hours," preserved in the 

 Rospigliosi Palaco, which is generally considered aa hia master- 

 piece, but which perhaps represents hia peculiar characteristic* 

 far less strikingly than most of hia other works. 



With the eclectic school the peculiar greatness of Italy in 

 art began to decay. Painting and its sister arts now migrated 

 westward, as did also trade, manufactures, science, and the 

 political centre. The discovery of America and of the new 

 route to India turned away the current of the world from Italy 

 and the Mediterranean to England, France, Holland, and the 

 Atlantic. The wealth which used to flow into Venice, Florence, 

 Genoa, Rome, and the Tuscan cities began to flow into London, 

 Paris, Antwerp, and Amsterdam. All that was living in 

 politics, in philosophy, in literature, in thought, followed in the 

 westward stream. The minds of men took a new direction. 

 Spain was the first of the nations on the Atlantic sea-board to 

 feel the change, and to blossom into a abort-lived greatness ; 

 but the effects of the movement extended rapidly to France, 

 England, and the Low Countries as well. Hence it is in these 

 countries that wo must henceforth look for the chief develop- 

 ment of art. With the great age el Raffael and Michel Angelo, 

 Italy had reached her culminating point ; with the Caracci and 

 Guido the deaay had begun to set in ; and from that time 

 forward the artistic supremacy rapidly deserted Italian soil, 

 and began to fix itself further to the west. 



It is always so in art. Artistic greatness can never live on 

 without the other kinds of greatness npon which it bases itself. 

 The painter, the sculptor, and the architect are all products of 

 their age : they are acted npon by all its thought, all its science, 

 all its industry, all its wealth. It would be absurd to expect 

 great painters or great sculptors to arise in the Greece of tho 

 present day. There is none of the active environment by which 

 such greatness is begotten. On the other hand, in the Greece 

 of the age of Pericles, in the Italy of the ago of Raffael, there 

 were all the necessary elements in abundance. Minor arts were 

 being carried on everywhere ; churches or temples were being 

 built ; palaces were being decorated ; wealth was being spent in 

 encouraging hundreds of the smaller artistic handicrafts. By 

 such pursuits, men were trained to the kind of occupations from 

 which families of painters or sculptors arise. For all these 

 tastes and talents are hereditary, the long result of many ages 

 of previous culture. With the beginning of the seventeenth 

 century the scene of civilisation had shifted, and Italy began to 

 fall behind in the race. Since that time, she has been the great 

 school for artists, because she still possesses all the greatest 

 artistic achievements of her best age ; but she has seldom or 

 never herself again produced an artistic genius of the first order. 



LESSONS IN GREEK. XIV. 



EEVIEW OF THE THREE DECLENSIONS. 



WITH the nouns of the first and second declension, the student, 

 if he has thoroughly mastered the foregoing lessons, will find no 

 difficulty in any attempt he may make to construe classical 

 Greek. It is somewhat different with nouns of the third de- 

 clension, the discovery of the nominative of which is necessary 

 in order to consult a Greek lexicon with ease and effect. I 

 therefore subjoin the following, which will enable him from the 

 genitive case to find the nominative ; in which form substan- 

 tives and adjectives appear in dictionaries. I give the genitive, 

 because the genitive is, as it were, the key to the remaining 

 oblique cases. Thus, if you meet with avtipa, yon know the 

 genitive must have two of these letters, namely, tip ; if you meet 

 with x'M wl/f *> y<> u know the genitive will have the letters 

 XM a "'>' if y a meet with /j.t\avts, yon know the genitive will 

 have the letters ne\av. Now, from the genitive yon may get 



