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swamped in the turbid deluge of French realism; though in regard 
to French impressionism, which is the tendency of modern art, 
when not carried to an absurd extreme, I have a good word, as in- 
fusing new life into painting, catching the light and atmosphere of 
heaven, and promising a true advance in landscape art. But it is 
well to remember, in this realistic age, that art has a spiritual side 
allying it with poetry and with the loftiest achievements of the 
mind, in which the beauty that lives in the idea and in the univer- 
sal and spiritual is expressed. All true art in every age catches a 
spark of this unfading glory of the beautiful ; and yet I do not say 
that there is no true art which does not aim-so high as this, as wit- 
nessed in the hundred forms of unambitious art, the crude but honest 
efforts of beginners, the drawing which aims only at correct imitation, 
the pictures of many realistic artists painting nature as it isand not 
so much in minute detail as in whole true impressions, the graphic 
illustrations of literature carried to such excellence at the present 
time, the rich field of decorative design which is mainly scientific— 
all this is pleasing and laudable and having its genuine place in art, 
but I speak now of art in its enduring forms, which, like the best 
poetry, is of ‘‘imagination all compact,’’ and must spring from 
the love and idea of beauty. This innate sensitiveness of the Greek 
mind to Jeauzy made it to differ from Egyptian, Roman, and almost 
every other national art, and constituted it the standard of art for 
all time. But the Greek sense of beauty was a thoughtful quality 
of a thoughtful people; since the sensual, strong in the Greek, was 
subordinated to the intellectual and moral in this finely attempered 
race. Its line of beauty was a line of strength. Beauty was 
another word for perfection. ‘‘ Beauty with the Greek,’’ says 
an English writer, ‘‘ was neither little nor voluptuous; the soul’s 
energies were not relaxed but exalted by its contemplation. The 
service of beauty was a service comprehending all idealisms in one, 
demanding the self-effacement of a laborious preparation, the self- 
restraint of a gradual achievement. They who pitched the goal of 
their aspiration so high knew that the paths leading up to it were 
rough, steep and long; they felt that perfect workmanship and 
perfect taste, being supremely precious, must be supremely difficult 
as well; yadsexdy té zadov, they said, the beautiful is hard to win 
and hard to keep.’’* Thus beauty, with the Greeks, was the mani- 
festation of their ideal self-development, the working out of a pro- 
* Westminster Review. 
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