OR MEASURE OF ALL ART? 343 



influence upon the mind is feebler. As a compensation, it 

 possesses the privilege of permanence, of solidity of impressive 

 magnitude, of undefinable but wonder-waking symbolism. 

 Sculpture owes its power to the complete and concrete pre- 

 sentation of human form, to the perfect incarnation of ideas 

 in substantial shapes of bronze or stone, on which light and 

 shadows from the skies can fall : this it alone of all the arts 

 displays. It has affinities with architecture ,on the one hand, 

 owing to the material it uses, and to poetry on the other, 

 owing to the intelligibility of its motives. Painting is remote 

 from architecture ; but it holds a place where sculpture, poetry, 

 and music let their powers be felt. Though dependent on 

 design, it can tell a story better than sculpture ; and in this 

 respect painting more nearly approaches poetry. It can 

 communicate a mood without relying upon definite or strictly 

 intelligible motives ; in this respect it borders upon music. 

 Of all the arts, painting is the most flexible, the most mimetic, 

 the most illusory. It cannot satisfy our understanding like 

 poetry ; it cannot flood our souls with the same noble 

 sensuous joy as music; it cannot present such perfect and 

 full shapes as sculpture ; it cannot affect us with the sense of 

 stability or with the mysterious suggestions which belong to 

 architecture. But it partakes of all the other arts through its 

 speciality of surface-delineation, and adds its own delightful 

 gift of colour, second in sensuous potency only to sound. 



Such is the prism of the arts ; each distinct, but homo- 

 geneous, and tinctured at their edges with hues borrowed from 

 the sister-arts. Their differences derive from the several 

 vehicles they are bound to employ. Their unity is the 

 spiritual substance which they express in common. Abstract 

 beauty, the tSeo, TOV KaXov, is one and indivisible. But the 

 concrete shapes which manifest this beauty, decompose it, 

 just as the prism analyses white light into colours. ' Multae 

 terricolis linguae coelestibus una.' 



It is by virtue of this separateness and by virtue of these 

 sympathies that we are justified in calling the poetry of 

 Sophocles or Landor, the painting of Michel Angelo or Man- 

 tegna, the music of Gluck or Cherubini, sculpturesque ; Loren- 



