Though the Gothic sculptor cannot be denied his meed of praise, an equal candour compels us to admit that these are not the virtues of a great artist. They are too utilitarian. Art lends its aid to make religious ideas more persuasive, but it is, properly, neither religious nor ethical. We realize this at once when we compare the Gothic ideal with that which actuated the Greek in the days of Phidias. How altered are the circumstances under which the two schools worked. Let us catalogue them for the last time. The balance which the Greek preserved between emotion and intellect was no longer regarded as desirable. It was not even considered. Men had ceased to believe that a right judgment accepted the limitations to human endeavour set by the threescore years and ten of human life. Instead, there was an overmastering passion to enter into conscious relation with a mysterious power endowed with the faculty of controlling human destiny. In place of the sunny myths of ancient Hellas, the Gothic sculptor drew upon the superstitious perversions of Scripture which his age accepted. The Church loved to dwell upon the wrath of God. The sculptor could only follow. Whereas the Greek had realized to the full the beauty of the human body, and its possibilities as an emotional agent, the Gothic artist appealed to men who had no reverence for the human form, rather to those who despised it. Asceticism was rampant. Drapery was used, not to display the beauties of the human figure, but to hide them. The art of sculpture, which depends upon the perfectly developed human body and the balanced human mind and heart for all the more impressive notes in its song, could not flourish in such an atmosphere. The differences between Northern France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries A.D. and Greece in the fifth century B.C. at once show why we must look elsewhere for a social state in which the art of the sculptor could find sustenance. As we should expect we find this in a country where Gothic architecture never achieved the brilliant success that attended it in France and England. We mean, of course, Italy. The culture of Gothic architecture never bore transplanting from French to Italian soil satisfactorily. Many so-called Gothic cathedrals were erected. But the Italian architects always leant towards the Roman simplicity, and never multiplied the niches and columns in the way the French architect did. As a consequence the opportunities for marble and bronze decorations were greater than in the north, and the art of sculpture at once took a firmer position.