Kalon. But, Christian, another artist with equal justness might use Hellenic art as a means toward making happy discoveries; formatively, there is nothing in it that is not both beautiful and perfect; and beautiful things, rainbow-like, are once and for ever beautiful; and the contemplation and study of its dignified, graceful, and truthful embodiments—­which, by common consent, it only is allowed to possess in an eminent and universal degree—­is full as likely to awaken in the mind of its student as high revelations of wisdom, and cause him to bear to earth as many perfections for man, as ever the study of pre-Raffaelle art can reveal or give, through its votary.

Christian. But beautiful things, to be beautiful in the highest degree, like the rainbow, must have a spiritual as well as a physical voice.  Lovely as it is, it is not the arch of colours that glows in the heavens of our hearts; what does, is the inner and invisible sense for which it was set up of old by God, and of which its many-hued form is only the outward and visible sign.  Thus, beautiful things alone, of themselves, are not sufficient for this task; to be sufficient they must be as vital with soul as they are with shape.  To be formatively perfect is not enough; they must also be spiritually perfect, and this not locally but universally.  The art of the Greeks was a local art; and hence, now, it has no spiritual.  Their gods speak to us no longer as gods, or teach us divinely:  they have become mere images of stone—­profane embodiments.  False to our spiritual, Hellenic art wants every thing that Christian art is full of.  Sacred and universal, this clasps us, as Abraham’s bosom did Lazarus, within its infinite embraces, causing every fibre of our being to quicken under its heavenly truths.  Ithuriel’s golden spear was not more antagonistic to Satan’s loathly transformation—­than is Christian opposed to pagan art.  The wide, the awful gulf, separating one from the other, will be felt instantly in its true force by first thinking ZEUS, and then thinking CHRIST. How pale, shadowy, and shapeless the vision of lust, revenge, and impotence, that rises at the thought of Zeus; but at the thought of Christ, how overwhelming the inrush of sublime and touching realities; what height and depth of love and power; what humility, and beauty, and immaculate purity are made ours at the mention of his name; the Saviour, the Intercessor, the Judge, the Resurrection and the Life.  These—­these are the divinely awful truths taught by our faith; and which should also be taught by our art.  Hellenic art, like the fig tree that only bore leaves, withered at Christ’s coming; and thus no “happy discoveries” can flow thence, or “revelations of wisdom,” or other perfections be borne to earth for man.