“THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN ART” 183

bake bread. And that each following nation should take up either the same art at an advanced stage, or an art altogether more difficult, is nothing but the necessary consequence of its subsequent elevation and civilization. Whatever nation had succeeded Egypt in power and knowledge, after having had communication with her, must necessarily have taken up art at the point where Egypt left it-in its turn delivering the gathered globe of heavenly snow to the youthful energy of the nation next at hand, with an exhausted “à vous le dé!”¹ In order to arrive at any useful or true estimate of the respective rank of each people in the scale of mind, the architecture of each must be compared with the architecture of the other-sculpture with sculpture-line with line; and to have done this broadly and with a surface glance, would have set our author’s theory on firmer foundation, to outward aspect, than it now rests upon. Had he compared the accumulation of the pyramid with the proportion of the peristyle, and then with the aspiration of the spire; had he set the colossal horror of the Sphinx beside the Phidian Minerva, and this beside the Pietà of M. Angelo;² had he led us from beneath the iridescent capitals of Denderah, by the contested line of Apelles,³ to the hues and the heaven of Perugino or Bellini, we might have been tempted to assoilzie⁴ from all staying of question or stroke of partizan the invulnerable aspect of his ghostly theory; but, if, with even partial regard to some of the circumstances which physically limited the attainments of each race, we follow their individual career, we shall find the points of superiority less salient and the connexion between heart and hand more embarrassed.

¹ [A phrase from the passing of the dice: “It’s you to play.” Ruskin probably took it from Molière (Misanthrope, v. 4).]

² [In Modern Painters, vol. ii., Ruskin notices with admiration both the Pietà at Genoa (Vol. IV. pp. 138, 285 n.) and that at Florence (ibid., p. 281).]

³ [A reference to the story of the contest between Apelles and Protagenes-the rival painters alternately showing their skill by the drawing of a line of excessive fineness (Pliny, xxxv. 36, § 11). The Temple of Hathor at Dendera (the Tentyra of the Greeks) is among the best preserved specimens of Egyptian architecture.]

⁴ [“To assoilzie,” Scottish form of “assoil”; and in Scots law still the proper term for acquittal, or judgment for the defendant.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]