“The fact of the highest artistic genius having manifested itself in a polytheistic age, and among a people whose moral views were essentially degraded, has, we think, fostered the erroneous notion that the sphere of art has no connection with that of morality. The Greeks, with penetrative insight, dilated the essential characteristics of man’s organism as a vehicle of superior intelligence, while their intense sympathy with physical beauty made them alive to its most subtle manifestations; and reproducing their impressions through the medium of art, they have given birth to models of the human form, which reveal its highest possibilities, and the excellence of which depends upon their being individual expressions of ideal truth. Thus, too, in their descriptions of nature, instead of multiplying insignificant details, they seized instinctively upon the characteristic features of her varying aspects, and not unfrequently embodied a finished picture in one comprehensive and harmonious word. In association with their marvellous genius, however, we find a cruelty, a treachery, and a licence which would be revolting if it were not for the historical interest which attaches to every genuine record of a bygone age. Their low moral standard cannot excite surprise when we consider the debasing tendency of their worship, the objects of their adoration being nothing more than their own degraded passions invested with some of the attributes of deity. Now, among the modifications of thought introduced by Christianity, there is perhaps none more pregnant with important results than the harmony which it has established between religion and morality. The great law of right and wrong has acquired a sacred character, when viewed as an expression of the divine will; it takes its rank among the eternal verities, and to ignore it in our delineations of life, or to represent sin otherwise than as treason against the supreme ruler, is to retain in modern civilisation one of the degrading elements of heathenism. Conscience is as great a fact of our inner life as the sense of beauty, and the harmonious action of both these instinctive principles is essential to the highest enjoyment of art, for any internal dissonance disturbs the repose of the mind, and thereby shatters the image mirrored in its depths.”—_A. S._ [Illustration] 105. “Mais vous autres artistes, vous ne considerez pour la plupart dans les œuvres que la beauté ou la singularité de l’exécution, sans vous pénétrer de l’idée dont cet œuvre est la forme; ainsi votre intelligence adore souvent l’expression d’un sentiment que votre cœur repousserait s’il en avait la conscience.”—_George Sand._ [Illustration] 106.