Note 64 — Chapter XXIII

[*64] The secret is not far to seek, but it was inexplicably hidden from men in Dennistoun's day. The continuity of life and of art the most sensitive expression of life, is understood and acknowledged by too few among us; but that there is an historical continuity in art as in life would be easy to prove, since no part can be adequately grasped or explained save in relation to the whole. Of course, as Renan admitted, history has its sad days, but all are, as it were, a part of the year which would be incomplete and inexplicable without them. Thus there is no gulf fixed between the art of Greece and the art of the Middle Age or the Renaissance; each is an inevitable part of the whole, and the later was what it was because of the old. Burckhardt, one of the greatest students of our time, seems to have understood this also with his usual happiness. M. Auguste Gerard tells us in his notice of the life of its author, which serves as a Preface to the French edition of Le Cicerone, that "Burckhardt en vrai disciple de la Renaissance considérait l'Italie comme un tout continu; et dans l'histoire de l'art de même que dans l'énumération des œuvres, il ne séparait pas l'Italie antique de l'Italie moderne. La section du Cicerone qui était dédiée à l'architecture commençait aux temples de Paestum pour finir aux villas Napolitaines et Génoises des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles." In that idea lies the future of all criticism.