It is, above all, the expression of the city’s “visage” that has a history. The play of this facial expression, indeed, is almost the spiritual history of the Culture itself. First we have the little proto-cities of the Gothic and other Early Cultures, which almost efface themselves in the landscape, which are still genuine peasant-houses crowded under the shadow of a stronghold or a sanctuary, and without inward change become town-houses merely in the sense that they have neighbour-houses instead of fields and meadows around them. The peoples of the Early Culture gradually became town-peoples, and accordingly there are not only specifically Chinese, Indian, Apollinian, and Faustian town-forms, but, moreover, Armenian and Syrian, Ionian and Etruscan, German and French and English town-physiognomies. There is a city of Phidias, a city of Rembrandt, a city of Luther. These designations, and the mere names of Granada, Venice, and Nürnberg conjure up at once quite definite images, for all that the Culture produces in religion, art, and knowledge has been produced in such cities. While it was still the spirit of knights’ castles and rural monasteries that evoked the Crusades, the Reformation is urban and belongs to narrow streets and steep-gabled houses. The great Epic, which speaks and sings of the blood, belongs to _Pfalz_ and _Burg_, but the Drama, in which _awakened_ life tests itself, is city-poetry, and the great Novel, the survey of all things human by the _emancipated_ intellect, presupposes the world-city. Apart from really genuine folk-song, the only lyrism is of the city. Apart from the “eternal” peasant-art, there is only urban painting and architecture, with a swift and soon-ended history.