Our hope with regard to the unity of taste in the future then is, that, all sentimental or academical seekings after the ideal having been abandoned, momentary theories founded upon idiosyncratic or temporary partialities exploded, and nothing accepted but what is solid and positive, the scientific spirit shall make men progressively more and more conscious of those bleibende Verhaeltnisse, more and more capable of living in the whole; also that, in proportion as we gain a firmer hold upon our own place in the world, we shall come to comprehend with more instinctive certitude what is simple, natural, and honest, welcoming with gladness all artistic products that exhibit these qualities.  The perception of the enlightened man will then be the taste of a healthy person who has made himself acquainted with the laws of evolution in art and in society, and is able to test the excellence of work in any stage, from immaturity to decadence, by discerning what there is of truth, sincerity, and natural vigor in it.

This digression was forced upon me by the difficulty of properly appreciating the Bolognese Eclectics now.  What would be the amused astonishment of Sir Joshua Reynolds, if he returned to London at the present moment, and beheld the Dagon of his esteemed Caracci dashed to pieces by the ark of Botticelli—­Carpaccio enthroned—­Raffaello stigmatized as the stone of stumbling and the origin of evil?  Yet Reynolds had as good a right to his opinion as any living master of the brush, or any living masters of language.  There is no doubt that the Bolognese painters sufficed for the eighteenth century, whose taste indeed they had created.[236] There is equally no doubt that for the nineteenth they are insufficient.[237] The main business of a critic is to try to answer two questions:  first why did the epoch produce such art, and why did it rejoice in it?—­secondly, has this art any real worth beyond a documentary value for the students of one defined historical period; has it enduring qualities of originality, strength, beauty, and inspiration?  To the first of these questions I have already given some answer by showing under what conditions the Caracci reacted against mannerism.  In the due consideration of the second we are hampered by the culture of our period, which has strongly prejudiced all minds against the results of that reaction.

[Footnote 236:  The passage from Lodovico Caracci through Poussin to Reynolds is direct and unbroken.  ‘Poussin,’ says Lanzi, ’ranked Domenichino directly next to Raffaello.’ History of Painting in Italy, Engl.  Tr. vol. iii. p. 84.]

[Footnote 237:  Perhaps a generation will yet arise which shall take the Caracci and their scholars into favor, even as people of refinement in our own days find a charm in patches, powder, perukes, sedan-chairs, patchouli, and other lumber from the age despised by Keats.  I remember visiting a noble English lady at her country seat.  We drank tea in her room, decorated by a fashionable ‘Queen Anne’ artist.  She told us that the quaintly pretty furniture of the last century which adorned it had recently been brought down from the attic, whither her fore bears had consigned it as tasteless—­Gillow in their minds superseding Chippendale.]