The history of art is everywhere among civilized peoples a record of the influence of a succession of ideas, each in turn dominating for a longer or a shorter period the character of what is produced. When an idea has sufficient vitality to constitute the germ of a specific type of art, and artists of creative genius are inspired by it, the votaries working under the stimulus of a common ideal form what we designate as a school. “When left to pursue its course of development unchecked,” each marked type of art, as John Addington Symonds pointed out in one of his essays, “passes through stages corresponding to the embryonic, the adolescent, the matured, the decadent, and the exhausted,” This sequence, he showed, was clearly marked in the evolution of Italian painting, the Attic and the Elizabethan drama. Any of the classic schools of Japanese painting, the Kosé, the Yamato, the Sesshu, or the Kano, would furnish an excellent illustration, though in studying these movements it would be necessary to follow them back to their Chinese antecedents. The Ukiyoé school affords a particularly striking example. In the works of the earlier artists—Moronobu, Kiyonobu, Kiyomasu, and the KwaigetsudoÌ group—we find superabundant vigour, swift inspiration, and splendid though sometimes brutal force. The note of prophecy that these works contain is found also in those of the next generation of artists, foremost among whom was Okumura Masanobu. The fire of enthusiasm still glows brightly, but more attention is paid to subtleties of style, to beauty of detail, and to the development of technical processes. Hand-coloured prints are superseded by those in which the colour as well as the black outline is printed. Ukiyoé has become an art of the printed pictures which in large measure have taken the place of paintings. Then, after a brief interval of eager experiment and rapid changes, comes the flowering-time, when a group of great artists turn out by the thousand works in which spiritual intensity is combined with grace, beauty, refinement of composition, and technical perfection. This is the epoch of Harunobu, ShunshoÌ, Shigemasa, Koryusai, Kiyonaga, and ShunchoÌ. The decline of the initial impetus that brought the school into being is plainly apparent in the works of the next generation. Utamaro was an artist of the very first rank, whose genius cannot be gainsaid; Eishi and Toyokuni were only a little less brilliant; but it was their misfortune to come upon the scene when the cycle of animating ideas had been exhausted. Too virile to be content merely to echo the performances of their predecessors, they spent their energy in inventing variations upon the perfected type. It was the only course open to them, but it led steadily and swiftly downward, though neither the artists nor the people who gleefully applauded each successive innovation were conscious of the decadence.