Excerpt from Gems From the Dusseldorf Gallery Under such circumstances, it was very natural that they should go from one extreme to the other - from the ultra: modern to the ultra-mediaeval - from the over-loaded ornaments and artificial redundancies of painting which were nearest to them in point of time, to the simplicity and sincerity which were farthest off - even beyond the period of highest excellence, quite back to the infancy of the revival of Art. Equally natural was it that they should have found in their new associations controlling motives of life higher than the standards of artistic taste. The old masters led them to-the old faith. They exchanged the cold formalities of German Lutheranism for the more vivid ritual of that Churchsuccess. Their extravagance was not of a kind to interfere with their progress; for it was the extravagance of simplicity and adherence to the real forms of nature. It was the imitation of a former style, it is true, but that was better, as a foundation, than conformity to any modern standard. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.