“THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN ART”

1. Progression by Antagonism: a Theory, involving Considerations touching the Present Position, Duties, and Destiny of Great Britain. By Lord Lindsay. London, 1846.

2. Sketches of the History of Christian Art. By Lord Lindsay.

3 vols. 8vo. London, 1847.

1. THERE is, perhaps, no phenomenon connected with the history of the first half of the nineteenth century, which will become a subject of more curious investigation in after ages, than the coincident development of the Critical faculty, and extinction of the Arts of Design. Our mechanical energies, vast though they be, are not singular nor characteristic; such, and so great, have before been manifested-and it may perhaps be recorded of us with wonder rather than respect, that we pierced mountains and excavated valleys, only to emulate the activity of the gnat and the swiftness of the swallow. Our discoveries in science, however accelerated or comprehensive, are but the necessary development of the more wonderful reachings into vacancy of past centuries; and they who struck the piles of the bridge of Chaos will arrest the eyes of Futurity rather than we builders of its towers and gates-theirs the authority of Light, ours but the ordering of courses to the Sun and Moon.

2. But the Negative character of the age is distinctive. There has not before appeared a race like that of civilized Europe at this day, thoughtfully unproductive of all art-ambitious-industrious-investigative-reflective, and incapable. Disdained by the savage, or scattered by the soldier, dishonoured by the voluptuary, or forbidden by the fanatic, the arts have not, till now, been extinguished by analysis and paralyzed by protection. Our lecturers, learned in

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