Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. England’s School Of Art. Having traced the fine arts, not from their source but from the most remote period that is at present known to us in the world’s history, where they are found not in a primitive or archaic state but in one of realistic perfection?having followed them from over forty centuries before Christ through their decay in that of the Roman empire and down to their death in what is to them and to us the dark ages?having seen their new birth in the dawn of the period called the Renaissance, and traced them in and through the different sources and channels in the European countries in which they rose, and through which they flowed down to the period of the eighteenth century?we come at last to England’s school of art, which, so far as painting and sculpture are concerned, was born in that century. Macaulay, in commenting on this state of things, tells us: ? ‘ There was not at the close of the reign of Charles II. a single English painter or statuary whose name is now remembered. This sterility is somewhat mysterious, for painters and statuaries were by no means a despised or an ill-paid class. Their social position was at least as high as at present. Their gains, when compared with the wealth of the nation and with the remunerationIntroductory 25 of other descriptions of intellectual labour, were even larger some fifty years ago than at present. Indeed, the munificent patronage which was extended to artists drew them to our shores in multitudes. Lely?who has preserved to us the rich curls, the full lips, the languishing eyes of the frail beauties celebrated by Hamilton ? was a Westphalian. He died in 1680, having long lived splendidly, having received the honour of knighthood, and having accumulated a good estate out of the fruits of his skill. His …