They give distinct form to moods of feeling as yet undetermined; or, as the Italians put it, _la musica e il lamento dell' amore o la preghiera a gli dei_.

This, combined with its independence of all corporeal conditions, fenders music the true exponent of the spirit in its freedom, and therefore the essentially modern art.
For Painting, after the great work accomplished during the Renaissance, when the painters ran through the whole domain of thought within the scope of that age, there only remained portraiture, history, dramatic incident, landscape, _genre_, still life, and animals.

In these spheres the art is still exercised, and much good work, undoubtedly, is annually produced by European painters.

But painting has lost its hold upon the centre of our intellectual activity.

It can no longer give form to the ideas that at the present epoch rule the modern world.