Men strove, in deadening their bodies, to seek the salvation of their souls. The realistic tendency of the degenerated ancient times gave way to blind faith, which by degrees obtained an exclusive hold on the ideal in man, ignoring his reflective and reasoning nature, working only on the emotional, and burying antiquity under the gloomy ruins of the Middle Ages. For more than 1000 years beauty had to yield to mystic symbolism, truth to superstitious prejudice, and ethics to a morbid sentimentality and a cruel hierarchical despotism. Dogmatic scholasticism sought to foster elegance of forms; to create artistic enthusiasm; but this attempt was vain. When, however, the dogmatic ice began to melt in the burning rays of the rising sun of a freer inquiry; when the Romish Church, anxious for some powerful helpmate to check the rays of this sun, and work on the gloomy, stupified emotions of the masses, called in to aid her the spirit of the Greeks in art, she prepared a bright and happy future for humanity. The reformation in art-forms, and the revival of the antique spirit in poetry, was soon followed by a revival in science and ethics. Philosophy began to unravel the mysteries of nature, and to make natural forces subservient to man’s wants and happiness. Ethics, based on freedom of thought, grew day by day more powerful, and Greek forms were used in the purified spirit of Christ, divested of strange and unintelligible dogmas. Having secured the right freely to store up the results of our intellectual investigations, we must devote our artistic energies, through an assiduous study of the historical development of art, to a corresponding culture of our sense of beauty. This is essential, if we hope to stand as high artistically, as we do technically and mechanically. Without culture we cannot hope to vie with other nations in high art, in historical paintings, frescoes, sculpture, and architecture. A thorough knowledge of art-history will destroy tasteless prejudices, and enable us progressively to develop the past without becoming guilty of anachronisms. Inspired by the firm conviction that the culture of taste leads to the very highest development of ethics, and that art can only flourish in strict harmony with truth and goodness, we can progress, but not otherwise. In this volume we have brought the reader down to the art of the Mahomedans, and trust in a future work to trace the historical development of art to our own times. What we have said in praise of Greek art, must not be misunderstood to imply that, since it flourished, we have not made gigantic progressive strides in sculpture, architecture, and painting; but we have done so only when we have worked in the Greek spirit, that is, on the principles which stamped their works of art with perfection. _BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR THE STUDY OF THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ART._ Agincourt, ‘Histoire de l’Art par les Monuments’. 6 vols. Fol. Paris, 1823. Asiatic Researches.