Fra Bartolommeo

feel ourselves of his nature. But the incarnation of religion in art defeated its own ends; sensuousness was introduced in place of the calm, unearthly spirituality of the earlier masters. Compare the cartoon of S. Paul preaching at Athens, in which he has all the majesty of a Cæsar in the Forum, with the lowly spirit of the Apostle's life! In truth, Raphael failed to approach nearer to sublimity than Fra Angelico, with all his faulty drawing but pure spirit.

After him, artists loved form and colour for themselves rather than for the spiritual meaning. Miss Owen [Footnote: _Art Schools of Medieval Christendom_, edited by Ruskin.] accuses Raphael of having rendered Art pagan, but this seems blaming him for the weakness of his followers, who took for their type his works rather than his ideal. The causes of the decline were many, and are not centred in one man. As long as Religion slumbered in monasticism and dogma, Art seizing on the human parts, such as the maternity of the Madonna, the personifications o