[356] K.O. Müller, History of Greek Literature, 1847, pp. 208, 210.
[357] Schömann, Griechische Alterthümer, ii, 362.
[358] The questions of the previous expansion under Richelieu and Mazarin, and of the decay in the latter part of Louis's reign, are discussed, àpropos of the laissez-faire argument of Buckle, in the author's Buckle and his Critics, pp. 324-39.
[359] An interesting corroboration of the above general view was presented in an article on the state of German art in the Century Magazine for July, 1898. The writer thus described the position of German art under the Kaiser's patronage: "Moved by the best of intentions, the Emperor is not very successful in his efforts to encourage art. They smack too much of personal tastes and one-man power. Menzel is perhaps a favourite, not because of his great Meissonnier-like skill in illustrations, but because he is the draftsman and painter of the period of Frederick the Great. The Emperor is really honouring his own line rather than the artist when he covers him with rewards.... It is not by making sketches for the Knackfusses to carry out that the Emperor will raise art in Prussia from its present stagnation, but by allowing the dangerous breath of liberty to blow through the art world. The fine arts are under the drill-sergeant, and produce recruits who have everything except art in them. It is too much to say that this is the Emperor's fault; but it is true that so long as he insists upon running things artistic, no one else can, or will—and the artists themselves least of all."
[360] Cp. Mill, Liberty, ch. iii, People's ed. p. 38.
[361] Cp. J.S. Mill's analysis of "benevolent despotism" in ch. iii of his Representative Government.
[362] Prof. Mahaffy (Greek Life and Thought, p. 112) attributes the same sense of superiority to the men of the period of the earlier successors of Alexander. This could well be, and such a feeling would serve to inspire the great art works of the period in question. Cp. Thirlwall (vii, 120) as to the sense of new growth set up by the commercial developments of the Alexandrian world.
[363] Finlay. History of Greece, i. 186. Cp. p. 185.
[364] D. Bikélas. Seven Essays on Christian Greece, translated by the Marquess of Bute, 1890.
[365] Work cited, p. 103.