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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: by the foreshortening of time; while they wanted strength or faith
to reproduce it. At last they became so accustomed to the rags and
ruins, that they looked on them as the normal condition of humanity,
as the normal field for painters.
Only now and then, and especially toward the latter half of the
eighteenth century, when thought began to revive, and men dreamed of
putting the world to rights once more, there rose before them
glimpses of an Arcadian ideal. Country life--the primaeval calling
of men--how graceful and pure it might be! How graceful--if not
pure--it once had been! The boors of Teniers and the beggars of
Murillo might be true to present fact; but there was a fairer ideal,
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