Among other races where poetry attempted to display the infinite, and where monstrous fancies appeared, as, for instance, among the Scandinavians and Indians, we find poems which, being romantic, are given that classification.

We cannot say much as to the music of the Middle Ages, for original documents, which might have served for our guidance, are wanting.  It was not till late in the sixteenth century that the masterpieces of Catholic church music, which cannot be too highly praised, appeared.  These express in the most exquisite manner pure Christian spirituality.  The recitative arts, which are spiritual from their very nature, could indeed flourish fairly in Christianity, yet it was less favorable to those of design, for as these had to represent the victory of mind over matter, and yet must use matter as the means wherewith to work, they had to solve a problem against Nature.  Hence we find in sculpture and painting those revolting subjects—­martyrdoms, crucifixions, dying saints, and the flesh crushed in every form.  Such themes were martyrdom for sculpture; and when I contemplate those distorted images in which Christian asceticism and renunciation of the senses are expressed by distorted, pious heads, long thin arms, starveling legs, and awkwardly fitting garments, I feel an indescribable compassion for the artists of that time.  The painters were indeed more favored, for the material for their work, because of its susceptivity to varied play of color, did not antagonize spirituality so obstinately as the material of the sculptors, and yet they were obliged to load the sighing canvas with the most repulsive forms of suffering.  In truth, when we regard many galleries which contain nothing but scenes of bloodshed, scourging, and beheading, one might suppose that the old masters had painted for the collection of an executioner.

But human genius can transform and glorify even the unnatural; many painters solved this problem of making what was revolting beautiful and elevating—­the Italians, especially, succeeding in paying tribute to beauty at the expense of spirituality, and in rising to that ideality which attained perfection in so many pictures of the Madonna.  As regards this subject the Catholic clergy always made some concession to the physical.  This image of immaculate beauty which is glorified by maternal love and suffering had the privilege of being made famous by poets and painters, and adorned with all charms of the sense, for it was a magnet which could attract the multitude to the lap of Christianity.  Madonna Maria was the beautiful dame du comptoir of the Catholic Church, who, with her beautiful eyes, attracted and held fast its customers, especially the barbarians of the North.