“THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN ART” 247

go back to those hours of infancy and be born again.* About the faith, the questioning and the teaching of childhood there is a joy and grace, which we may often envy, but can no more assume:-the voice and the gesture must not be imitated when the innocence is lost. Incapability and ignorance in the act of being struggled against and cast away are often endowed with a peculiar charm-but both are only contemptible when they are pretended. Whatever we have now to do, we may be sure, first, that its strength and life must be drawn from the real nature with us and about us always, and secondly, that, if worth doing, it will be something altogether different from what has ever been done before. The visions of the cloister must depart with its superstitious peace-the quick, apprehensive symbolism of early Faith must yield to the abstract teaching of disciplined Reason. Whatever else we may deem of the Progress of Nations, one character of that progress is determined and discernible. As in the encroaching of the land upon the sea, the strength of the sandy bastions is raised out of the sifted ruin of ancient inland hills-for every tongue of level land that stretches into the deep, the fall of Alps has been heard among the clouds, and as the fields of industry enlarge, the intercourse with Heaven is shortened. Let it not be doubted that as this change is inevitable, so it is expedient, though the form of teaching adopted and of duty prescribed be less mythic and contemplative, more active and unassisted: for the light of Transfiguration on the Mountain is substituted the Fire of Coals upon the Shore, and on the charge to hear the

* We do not perhaps enough estimate the assistance which was once given both to purpose and perception, by the feeling of wonder which with us is destroyed partly by the ceaseless calls upon it, partly by our habit of either discovering or anticipating a reason for everything. Of the simplicity and ready surprise of heart which supported the spirit of the older painters, an interesting example is seen in the diary of Albert Dürer, lately published in a work every way valuable, but especially so in the carefulness and richness of its illustrations, Divers Works of Early Masters in Christian Decoration, edited by John Weale, London, 2 vols. folio, 1846.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]