Page:Joseph Drew - Art Treasures and their Preservation scan.pdf/2

90 articles at the cheapest possible rate. The decadence, however, to which we more particularly allude, is especially apparent in the absence of durability amongst the paintings produced within the last century, for whilst the transcripts from nature are quite as faithful, and the ideal conceptions frequently more elevated in character than many of the early schools, still we regret to say, the works of our modern painters are, for the most art, doomed to a very limited existence—premature decay has ready set in amongst them—and many of the noblest efforts of modern art are even now passed into a state of dilapidation beyond the restorer's art to repair. We know we have men who assert that art itself—taking the word in its most comprehensive sense—has degenerated, and that the art workers of the early ages possessed a more elevated conception of the beautiful than the designers of the present day, but we see no reason why we should endorse this opinion. We have no standard whereby to measure perfection, consequently our judgment can only be comparative. One country may decline in art, but the great wave of intelligence and genius will be found surging on other shores, and unlocked for examples of excellence have been and will again be the result. To a certain extent, however, we have come to recognise an idea of perfection, and to believe that each particular department in the art world culminates at its own specific time. Sculpture is said by some to have reached its meridian of glory and perfection several centuries before Christ, when Phidias—the chief of the early Attic school—produced his Olympian Jupiter, and Praxitelles—the head of the latter school—his group of Niobe; but may there not be in this idea an excess of veneration for early art? Modern times have given to the world marvels of beauty; the works of Bailey, Pradier, and Canova will go down to posterity as glorious specimens of art creation wrought by men whom England, France, and Italy love to claim as their children, and although the ideal in some opinions may not reach so high a standard as ancient Greek, still these works have become art treasures, beyond price to their possessors, and are as imperishable and as valuable for the purposes of education and archæology as those relics of the Athenian schools, the remains of which are so much prized at the present day. Without, however, presuming to be an art critic, and without being so enthusiastic as some in favour of ancient art, we cannot pass through the courts of the British Museum without being struck with the massive grandeur and classic beauty of some of the ideal creations of those men who have left us such a comprehensive syllabus, as it were, of primeval civilization. Some of the sculptures in the Egyptian sanctuary, although upwards of 4,000 years old, stand before us as perfect in preservation as if the last touch of the