It is not, however, exclusively antique Art which exercises this power of elevation.  Ancient Art may be a better term; as all great Art bears a like relation to the student.  In Florence the mediaeval influences predominate.  Rome exercises its power through the medium of the antique.

There is much Christian Art in Rome.  Yet its effect is insignificant, compared with that of the vast collection of Greek sculptures to be found within its walls.  Instinctively, as the vague yearnings and prophecies of youth lift him in whom they quicken away from youth’s ordinary purposes and associations, his thought turns to that far city where are gathered the achievements of those who were indeed the gods of Hellas.  To be there, and to demand from those eloquent lips the secret of the golden age, is his dream and aim, and there shall be solved the problem of his life.

But antique Art, waiting so patiently twenty centuries to afford aid to the artist, waits also to sit in judgment upon his worth and acts.  Woe to him who cannot pass the ordeal of its power, and explain the enigma of its speech!

Nothing can be more pitiful and sad than the condition of one who, having been subjected to the influence of ancient Art, has not had the ability to recognize or the earnestness of purpose essential to the apprehension of the truths which it has for his soul instead of his hands.  But if, through truthfulness of aim, and a sense of the divine nature of the errand to which he seems appointed, he reach the law of Art, then henceforth its pursuit becomes the sign of life; if the impulse bear him no farther than rules, then all he produces goes forth as a proclamation of death.  There is no middle path.  Art is high or low:  high, if it be the profoundest life of an earnest man, uttering itself in the real, even though it be awkwardly, and in violation of all accepted methods of expression; low, if it be not such utterance, even though consummate in obedience to the finest rules of all Art-science.  There can be no other way.  The life is in the man, and not in the stone; and no affectation of vitality can atone for the absence of that soul which should have been breathed into existence from his own divine life.

As was said, possession of self is the only condition under which the quantity and quality of the Art-impulse may be determined.  It is only when a man stands face to face with himself, in the stillness of his own inner world, that his possibilities become apparent; and it is only when conscious of these, and inspired by a just sense of their dignity, that he can achieve that which shall be genuine success. Once he must be lifted away and isolated from worldly surroundings, relieved from all objective influences, from the pressure of all human relations; once the very memory of all these must be blotted out; once he must be alone.  This is possible to a Mendelssohn in the awful solitude of Beethoven’s “Sonate Pathetique,” to a painter in the presence of Leonardo’s “Last Supper,” and to a sculptor in the hushed halls of the Vatican.