276 LANDSCAPE 



is no less charming than their rhythm is melodiously melan- 

 choly. We are transferred to some quiet Umbrian or Tuscan 

 valley after sunset, when the waning pallor of the west 

 slumbers in pools of scarcely flowing water. 





 II 



The nascent feeling for landscape which we see unfoldii 

 in the latest period of Greek and Roman art, had no oppor- 

 tunity of attaining to independence during the first eight 

 centuries which succeeded to the downfall of the Empi: 

 Such sentiments as had existed in the classical age were con- 

 nected immediately or remotely with polytheism. Christianity 

 introduced a vehemently hostile spirit, which in its reactionary 

 fervour opposed God to nature. The whole fabric of mytho- 

 logical religion was suppressed, and nothing appeared to take 

 its place. 



Under the then prevalent conceptions of the universe, nc 

 intelligent being could take either scientific or artistic interest 

 in a world considered radically evil and doomed to wrathful 

 overthrow. Man's one business was to work out his salvatioi 

 to disengage himself from the earth on which his first parenl 

 had yielded to sin, and to wean his heart from the enjoymenl 

 of terrestrial delights. Whether he succeeded or not mattei 

 little to our argument. In either case the theoretical attitude 

 of mind implied in mediaeval Christianity was inimical 

 knowledge and to art. Beauty came to be regarded as 

 snare. The phenomena of nature were vilipended as not 

 worth a thought ; or if any attention was paid to them ii 

 lapidaries, bestiaries, and the like, the childish monastic 

 intellect whimsically subjected them to a system of allegori< 

 interpretation. 



Under these influences both literature and the plastic art 

 decayed. Architecture, the most abstract and utilitarian 

 the fine arts, bridged over the long tract of sesthetical vacuit 

 between the death of Claudian and the re-birth of poetry ii 

 Provence. It owed this continued existence to its disconnec- 

 tion from ideas, and to its ecclesiastical service. Architecture 



