As the world grew older art was used to celebrate the greatness and achievements of kings and rulers as well as gods, and their tombs were ornamented with such decorations as these early ages could create; and yet all literature and art were only for the gods and the rulers of the world. Then, even more than now, wealth and power brought intellect to do its will, and all its force was spent to sing the praises of the rulers of the earth and air. The basis of all this art of pen and brush was the reality of the world, but this was so magnified and distorted for the base use of kings and priests that realism, in the true sense, could not exist. It would not do to paint a picture of a king resembling a man of flesh and blood, and of course a god must be far greater than a king. It would not do to write a tale in which kings and princes, lords and ladies, should act like men and women, else what difference between the ruler and the ruled? The marvelous powers that romance and myth had given to gods and angels were transferred to those of royal blood. The wonderful achievements of these kings and princes could be equaled only by the gods, and the poor dependents of the world, who lived for the glory of the great, were fed with legends and with tales that sung the praises of the strong. Literature, sculpture, painting, music, and architecture, indeed all forms of art, were the exclusive property of the great, and the artist then, like most of those to-day, was retained to serve the strong and maintain the status of the weak. No one dreamed that there was any beauty in a common human life or any romance in a fact. The greatest of the earth had not yet learned to know that every life is a mystery and every death a tragedy; that the spark of the infinite, which alone transforms clay to life, animates alike the breast of the peasant and the soul of the prince. The world had not yet learned that the ant-hill is as great as Mont Blanc, and the blade of grass as mysterious as the oak. It is only now that the world is growing so delicate and refined that it can see the beauty of a fact; that it is developing a taste so rare as to distinguish between the false and true; that it can be moved by the gentle breeze as well as by the winter’s gale; that it can see greater beauty in a statement true to life, than in the inflated tales, which children read.