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easily be overpassed. The best writing is not necessarily the most elaborate and finished writing; poetry may be killed by the excess of its workmanship, just as it may be spoilt by the defects of it.

A great deal of our contemporary art, especially of our contemporary poetry, tempts one to suspect that the future may regard our time as a time of artistic decadence. If our poetry is finally judged to have failed, it will be for reasons similar to those which lead us to condemn a great deal of the poetry of the later Renaissance. Our poetry will fail through a bad choice of subjects, and through a florid and unrestrained treatment of them; it will fail because of the vagueness and obscurity of its thought, and through the still more obscure expression of it. All these defects are present, too, in a great deal of our contemporary prose. In poetry and prose alike, there is a want not only of directness and simplicity, but even a greater want of seriousness and virility. In these days of over-ornamented literature writers cannot repeat too often: Le beau en tout est toujours sévère. If it is true, as I said just now, that Architecture is the most faithful record of a nation's spirit, we may reasonably be alarmed about our century, when we consider the revelation of our spirit as the architects display it to us. Whatever may be the fate of the bulk of our poetry, of the larger proportion of our painting, the future must assuredly condemn our building; for that shows an entire absence of any art whatever.

A careful reader of Mr. Symonds' volumes cannot fail to notice the numerous resemblances between our time, and the closing years of the Renaissance. We find then, as we find now, a Painting ruined by academical methods; a Poetry flowery, diffuse, obscure in expression, tasteless in form, and trivial in spirit; an Architecture mean, ignoble, often of sham materials and of slovenly finish: an Architec

ture not of artists but of tradesmen. We find a great deal of frivolous talk about criticism, a great deal of fuss about literature, and a widely prevalent use of artistic and academic jargon. Of real care for art we find very little, and even less understanding of it. So far, then, for Mr. Symonds' work as it concerns ourselves.

As regards Italy, it is impossible to read these volumes without being filled with admiration for her genius, with gratitude for her immortal services to art, with pity for her unmerited and abounding sufferings, and with a lively belief in her immense future.

The story of the Italian Renaissance reminds us that not only individuals, but nations, have their times of strength and inspiration, as well as their times of desolation and sterility.

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