But when the turning point of national progress is once reached, and art is regarded as the laborious incitement to pleasure,--no longer the spontaneous blossom and fruit of it,--the decay sets in for art as for morality.

Art, in short, is created _by_ pleasure, not _for_ pleasure.

The standard of thought, the attitude of mind, of the Waldensians, he now perceived to be quite impossible for himself.

He could not look upon every one outside their fold as heathens and publicans; he could not believe that the pictures of Paul Veronese were works of iniquity, nor that the motives of great deeds in earlier ages were lying superstitions.

He took courage to own to himself and others that it was no longer any use trying to identify his point of view with that of Protestantism.