A brief sketch of the development of sculpture will illustrate this principle. In the first place you must hold fast to the truth, not frequently enough insisted upon, that sculpture among the Greeks developed with extraordinary quickness after a long infancy into its perfect manhood. The work of 550 B.C., in the full brilliancy of the courts of Polycrates and Periander was still rude and helpless, wanting altogether the beauty which we desiderate in that art. As soon as we turn 500 B.C. we have such things as the _Charioteer_ of Delphi, figures which are on the very threshold of perfection, and indeed in some respects, such as the modelling and texture of the arms and feet, quite perfect. In another fifty years we have the splendours of Phidias. Not less remarkable than this rapid growth is the very gradual decay of the art. The age of animals, as is well known, is in proportion to the period of gestation. It was not so with Greek sculpture. Coming to perfection in a couple of generations, it lasted all through the greatness of Greek history into Macedonian times, when it produced such wonders as the _Nike_ of Samothrace, down to the Roman conquest, when it gave us the _Aphrodite_ of Melos, and even still later, when empresses borrowed from it those splendid portrait figures which we admire in the Vatican and the Lateran museums at Rome. And it is not only the Golden Age but the Silver Age of this sculpture which is the eternal model for modern artists. The next feature of great importance which concerns us is that this branch of art began (as did mediæval art) in the service of religion. It was to represent the figure of the god, it was to decorate his temple, that the sculptor made his great efforts. And I hasten to add that the art was never dissociated from its sister art of painting, for the Greeks always called in the help of colour; not only in architecture, but even in representing single human figures. They felt the utter coldness of Parian or Pentelican marble and they were not afraid to use rich colours and even kindred materials to increase the majesty of their representations of the Divine.