In such analysis they seemed to touch the primal sources of life.

They desired to dig about the tree of humanity and to describe all the windings of its roots and fibres--not much caring whether they withered the tree for a time--rather than to describe and sing its outward beauty, its varied foliage, and its ruddy fruit.

And this liking to investigate the hidden inwardness of motives--which many persons, weary of self-contemplation, wisely prefer to keep hidden--ran through the practice of all the arts.

They became, on the whole, less emotional, more intellectual.

The close marriage between passion and thought, without whose cohabitation no work of genius is born in the arts, was dissolved; and the intellect of the artist often worked by itself, and his emotion by itself.