And then it will be apparent that the art of the nineteenth century as well as that of every earlier period had its peculiar garment, even if for official occasions it preferred to unpack from its wardrobe the state costumes of earlier ages. It is only because this distinction between the eclectic and the personal, the derived and the independent, has not yet been carried out with sufficient strictness, that it has hitherto, in my opinion, been found so difficult to discover the distinctive _style_ of modern art, and to make clear the logic and sequence of its evolution. BOOK I THE LEGACY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHAPTER I COMMENCEMENT OF MODERN ART IN ENGLAND If the question arises, why modern art has been compelled to find expression for itself in a form different from that of the art of the earlier centuries, we must first call attention to the change that has taken place in the fundamental conditions of society. Formerly, the chief supporters of art were the two leading powers of Church and King. The most noted works of Raphael and Michael Angelo, of Velasquez and Murillo, of Rubens and Van Dyck, were executed either for the churches or for the reigning princes of their country. The patron of modern art is the citizen. The old culture of the clerics and aristocrats has been superseded by that of the middle classes, and the beginnings of modern art must therefore be sought in the country in which this class first developed its distinctive character--in England. England, as early as the eighteenth century, was already a land of citizens. At a time when there was to be found on the Continent acute mockery of what was old and outworn, conjoined with the most enthusiastic and joyous faith in the future, the great and wealthy England had established herself in the van of the new age. Here Voltaire saw with astonishment for the first time, when he arrived in London as an exile at the age of thirty-two, the free, open life of a great people; here he learnt to know a country where there is "much difference of rank, but none that is not based on merit; where one could think freely without being restrained by slavish terror." Here was the idea of a modern free state already accomplished at a time when, upon the Continent, the thunderclouds of the impending storm hardly cast their first shadow. Here the notion of a united family life had first developed, upon the foundation of a civil order and security. Here, therefore, were first broken down those barriers around the territory of literature and art within which the spirit of the Renaissance had raised its wonderful flowers, and the road was begun along which the nineteenth century should advance.