Probably no
one will agree with all this for the next quarter of a century: but
after that I have hopes. The world will grow tired of pretending to
admire Manichaean pictures in an age of natural science; and Art will
let the dead bury their dead, and beginning again where Michael
Angelo and Rafaelle left off work forward into a nobler, truer,
freer, and more divine school than the world has yet seen--at least,
so I hope.
And all this has grown out of those foxhounds. Why not? Theirs is
the sort of form which expresses to me what I want Art to express--
Nature not limited, but developed, by high civilization. The old
savage ideal of beauty was the lion, type of mere massive force.
That was succeeded by an over-civilized ideal, say the fawn, type of
delicate grace. By cunning breeding and choosing, through long
centuries, man has combined both, and has created the foxhound, lion
and fawn in one; just as he might create noble human beings; did he
take half as much trouble about politics (in the true old sense of
the word) as he does about fowls.
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