Art Author:John Ruskin 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: their sense of beauty;—the fooling that a child has in : dark room, or a .sick person in seeing ugly dreams. But the Greeks never have ugly dreams. They cannot d... more »raw anything ugly when they try. Sometimes they put themselves to their wits'-end to draw an ugly thing—the Medusa's head, for instance-—but they can't do it — not they — because nothing frightens them. They widen the mouth, and grind the teeth, and puff the checks, and set the eyes a-goggling; and the thing is only ridiculous after all, not the least dreadful, for there is no dread in their hearts. Pen- siveness; amazement; often deepest grief and deso- lateness. All these; but terror never. Everlasting calm in the presence of all fate; and joy such as they could win, not indeed in a perfect beauty, but beauty at perfect rest.—AtJiena, pp. 124-128. The Greek, Or Classic, And The Romantic Styles. —Without entering into any of the fine distinctions between these two sects, this broad one is to be observed as constant: that the writers and painters of the Classic school set down nothing but what is known to be true, and set it down in the perfectest manner possible in their way, and are thenceforward authorities from whom there is no appeal. Romantic writers and painters, on the contrary, express themselves under the impulse of passions which may indeed lead them to the discovery of new truths, or to the more delightful arrangement or presentment of things already known: but their work, however brilliant or lovely, remains imperfect, and without authority.— Val D'Arno, p. '.). ART AND MAN IN THE MIDDLE AGES. A degree of personal beauty, both male and female, was attained in the Middle Ages, with which classical periods could show nothing for a moment comparable; and this beauty was set forth by the most perfect sple...« less