There is no probability that the last ideal will be more permanent than the last but one; it will presently be replaced by some other model. This, however, will have been gained,--that our ordinary lay public will have been trained to understand and appreciate not only the great Gothic works of the early, but the great Renaissance works of the late Middle Ages. We can now even tolerate those curious vampings, so common in Holland and Germany, where one style has been laid upon the other or added to it[211:1]. [Sidenote: Probability of Hellenic revival.] It is more than likely that the next revival will be a Hellenic revival. Renaissance architecture, as is well known, is the imitation of Roman or late Hellenistic art, with certain peculiarities and modifications forced upon the builders by their education and surroundings. But many of them thought they were reproducing pure Greek style, concerning which they were really in total darkness. The few earlier attempts in this century to imitate Greek buildings show a similar ignorance. Thus the builders of the Madeleine in Paris thought, I suppose, they were copying the Parthenon, whereas they knew nothing whatever about the art of Ictinus. How far this inability to understand the art of a distant century may go, is curiously exemplified in the drawings taken (in 1676) from the yet un-ruined Parthenon by Jacques Carrey, by the order of the Marquis of Nointel. These drawings are positively ludicrous travesties of the sculpture of Phidias in seventeenth-century style[211:2]. [Sidenote: Greek art only recently understood. Winckelmann, Penrose, Dörpfeld.] Not until a long series of great students, beginning with Winckelmann, had studied with real care the secrets of Greek art, till Mr. Penrose had disclosed the marvellous subtlety in the curves of the Parthenon, till Dr. Dörpfeld had analyzed the plan and materials and execution of the Olympian treasure-houses and temples, could we say that we were beginning to have a clear perception of the qualities which made Greek sculpture and architecture so superior to all imitations which have since been attempted. [Sidenote: Its effect upon modern art when properly appreciated,] § 94. It is high time that all this profound research, this recondite learning, these laborious excavations, should be made known in their results, and brought home to the larger public. Then when the day comes that we undertake to carry out a Hellenic Renascence, we shall know what we are about; we shall abandon the superstition of white marble worship, and adopt colours; we shall learn to combine chastity of design with richness of ornamentation; we shall revert to that harmony of all the arts which has been lost since the days of Michael Angelo. [Sidenote: and upon every detail of our life.]