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184 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART
14. Yet let us not be misunderstood:-the great gulf between Christian and Pagan art we cannot bridge-nor do we wish to weaken one single sentence wherein its breadth or depth is asserted by our author.1 The separation is not gradual, but instant and final-the difference not of degree, but of condition; it is the difference between the dead vapours rising from a stagnant pool, and the same vapours touched by a torch. But we would brace the weakness which Lord Lindsay has admitted, in his own assertion of this great inflaming instant, by confusing its fire with the mere phosphorescence of the marsh, and explaining, as a successive development of the several human faculties, what was indeed the bearing of them all at once over a threshold strewed with the fragments of their idols, into the temple of the One God.
We shall therefore, as fully as our space admits, examine the application of our author’s theory to Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, successively, setting before the reader some of the more interesting passages which respect each art, while we at the same time mark with what degree of caution their conclusions are, in our judgment, to be received.
15. Accepting Lord Lindsay’s first reference to Egypt, let us glance at a few of the physical accidents which influenced its types of architecture. The first of these is evidently the capability of carriage of large blocks of stone over perfectly level land. It was possible to roll to their destination along that uninterrupted plain, blocks which could neither by the Greek have been shipped in sea-worthy vessels, nor carried over mountain-passes, nor raised except by extraordinary effort to the height of the rock-built fortress or seaward promontory. A small undulation of surface, or embarrassment of road, makes large difference in the portability of masses, and of consequence, in the breadth of the possible intercolumniation, the solidity
1 [Compare Modern Painters, vol. ii. ad fin. (Vol. IV. p. 331): “It is vain to attempt to pursue the comparison,” etc.]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
