308 The Evolution of Art. 



pediment or arch in architecture, meter or rhythm in poetry, 

 or harmony in music. 



All the noteworthy products of Gothic architecture date 

 their origin less^ than five _ centuries ago, and found their 

 opportunity and inspiration in the great established churches 

 of their periods. Indeed, we have the best of authority for 

 asserting that secular art was comparatively unknown until 

 the seventeenth century. 



This brings us to notice the second element of art 

 environment namely, government. An absolute form of 

 government deputed the power to fix authoritatively the 

 fashion of the time to the monarch. It likewise furnished 

 him exclusively the revenues of the realm to execute such 

 conceptions of art as his fancy chose to promote. Thus it 

 was that art was degraded by the selfish vanity of Eomish 

 popes, and the artist was only permitted to survive upon a 

 slavish complaisance with the caprices of power. 



The vacillating Dryden, tuning the lyre of his melliflu- 

 ous poetry to the changing dynasties of Puritan Cromwell 

 and Episcopal Charles, is an instance among poets of this 

 controlling power ; and wherever the people have been free 

 to choose, with the added capacity of knowing how to choose, 

 there the artistic sense has reached its highest development. 



There can be little doubt that the objects to which the 

 creative and executive powers of man are devoted have in- 

 creased in diversity and importance with the growth of 

 civilization, and, upon familiar rules of evolution, this should 

 have resulted in an increase in the complexity of the art 

 product. And a modern writer of standing has declared 

 that " the further research is pursued, alike into the habits 

 of living races of savages and into the characteristics of the 

 oldest traces of primitive art, the more clearly becomes 

 manifest a process of development from the first rude work- 

 ing in stone to the highest art of the skilled metallurgist." 



Clearly, also, art is dignified or disgraced by the objects 

 which it seeks to accomplish, and what these shall be are al- 

 most altogether determined by the average good taste or 

 judgment of the special time. Modified in large part by 

 these considerations, the knowledge of the classic arts bor- 

 rowed from older Egypt increased and throve in Greece 

 and Eome. Sometimes it followed in the wake of victories, 

 as when the Romans invaded the British Islands, and again 

 it survived the defeat of cultured people, as when Rome, 

 conquering the Athenian cities, discovered her imperishable 



