16. There is, perhaps, no phenomenon connected with the history of the first half of the nineteenth century, which will become a subject of more curious investigation in after ages, than the coincident development of the Critical faculty, and extinction of the Arts of Design. Our mechanical energies, vast though they be, are not singular nor characteristic; such, and so great, have before been manifested—and it may perhaps be recorded of us with wonder rather than respect, that we pierced mountains and excavated valleys, only to emulate the activity of the gnat and the swiftness of the swallow. Our discoveries in science, however accelerated or comprehensive, are but the necessary development of the more wonderful reachings into vacancy of past centuries; and they who struck the piles of the bridge of Chaos will arrest the eyes of Futurity rather than we builders of its towers and gates—theirs the authority of 17. But the Negative character of the age is distinctive. There has not before appeared a race like that of civilized Europe at this day, thoughtfully unproductive of all art—ambitious—industrious—investigative—reflective, and incapable. Disdained by the savage, or scattered by the soldier, dishonored by the voluptuary, or forbidden by the fanatic, the arts have not, till now, been extinguished by analysis and paralyzed by protection. Our lecturers, learned in history, exhibit the descents of excellence from school to school, and clear from doubt the pedigrees of powers which they cannot re-establish, and of virtues no more to be revived: the scholar is early acquainted with every department of the Impossible, and expresses in proper terms his sense of the deficiencies of Titian and the errors of Michael Angelo: the metaphysician weaves from field to field his analogies of gossamer, which shake and glitter fairly in the sun, but must be torn asunder by the first plow that passes: geometry measures out, by line and rule, the light which is to illustrate heroism, and the shadow which should veil distress; and anatomy counts muscles, and systematizes motion, in the wrestling of Genius with its angel. Nor is ingenuity wanting—nor patience; apprehension was never more ready, nor execution more exact—yet nothing is of us, or in us, accomplished;—the treasures of our wealth and will are spent in vain—our cares are as clouds without water—our creations fruitless and perishable; the succeeding Age will trample "sopra lor vanita che par persona," and point wonderingly back to the strange colorless tessera in the mosaic of human mind. 18. No previous example can be shown, in the career of nations not altogether nomad or barbarous, of so total an absence of invention,—of any material representation of the mind's inward yearning and desire, seen, as soon as shaped, to be, though imperfect, in its essence good, and worthy to be rested in with contentment, and consisting self-approval—the 19. It is easier to conceive than to enumerate the many circumstances which are herein against us, necessarily, and exclusive of all that wisdom might avoid, or resolution vanquish. First, the weight of mere numbers, among whom ease of communication rather renders opposition of judgment fatal, than agreement probable; looking from England to Attica, or from Germany to Tuscany, we may remember to what good purpose it was said that the magnetism of iron was found not in bars, but in needles. Together with this adversity of number comes the likelihood of many among the more available intellects being held back and belated in the crowd, or else prematurely outwearied; for it now needs both curious fortune and vigorous effort to give to any, even the greatest, such early positions of eminence and audience as may feed their force with advantage; so that men spend their strength in opening circles, and crying for place, and only come to speech of us with broken voices and shortened time. Then follows the diminution of importance in peculiar places and public edifices, as they engage national affection or vanity; no single city can now take such queenly lead as that the pride of the whole body of the people shall be involved in adorning her; the buildings of London or Munich are not charged with the fullness of the national heart as 20. In proportion to the increasing spirituality of religion, the conception of worthiness in material offering ceases, and with it the sense of beauty in the evidence of votive labor; machine-work is substituted for handwork, as if the value of ornament consisted in the mere multiplication of agreeable forms, instead of in the evidence of human care and thought and love about the separate stones; and—machine-work once tolerated—the eye itself soon loses its sense of this very evidence, and no more perceives the difference between the blind accuracy of the engine, and the bright, strange play of the living stroke—a difference as great as between the form of a stone pillar and a springing fountain. And on this blindness follow all errors and abuses—hollowness and slightness of framework, speciousness of surface ornament, concealed structure, imitated materials, and types of form borrowed from things noble for things base; and all these abuses must be resisted with the more caution, and less success, because in many ways they are signs or consequences of improvement, and are associated both with purer forms of religious feeling and with more general diffusion of refinements and comforts; and especially because we are critically aware of all our deficiencies, too cognizant of all that is greatest to pass willingly and humbly through the stages that rise to it, and oppressed in every honest effort by the bitter sense of inferiority. In every previous development the power has been in advance of the consciousness, the resources more abundant than the knowledge—the energy irresistible, the discipline imperfect. The light that led was narrow 21. The frequent and firm, yet modest expression of this hope, gives peculiar value to Lord Lindsay's book on Christian Art; for it is seldom that a grasp of antiquity so comprehensive, and a regard for it so affectionate, have consisted with aught but gloomy foreboding with respect to our own times. As a contribution to the History of Art, his work is unquestionably the most valuable which has yet appeared in England. His research has been unwearied; he has availed himself of the best results of German investigation—his own acuteness of discernment in cases of approximating or derivative style is considerable—and he has set before the English reader an outline of the relations of the primitive schools of Sacred art which we think so thoroughly verified in all its more important ramifications, that, with whatever richness of detail the labor of succeeding writers may illustrate them, the leading lines of Lord Lindsay's chart will always henceforth be followed. The feeling which pervades the whole book is chastened, serious, and full of reverence for the strength ordained out of the lips of infant Art—accepting on its own terms its simplest teaching, sympathizing with all kindness in its unreasoning faith; the writer evidently looking back with most joy and thankfulness to hours passed in gazing upon the faded and faint touches of feeble hands, and listening through the stillness of uninvaded cloisters for fall of voices now almost spent; yet he is never contracted into the bigot, nor inflamed into the enthusiast; he never loses his memory of the outside world, never quits nor compromises his severe and reflective Protestantism, never gives "will dedicate his talents, as the bondsman of love, to his Redeemer's glory and the good of mankind, may become the priest and interpreter, by adopting in the first instance, and re-issuing with that outward investiture which the assiduous study of all that is beautiful, either in Grecian sculpture, or the later but less spiritual schools of painting, has enabled him to supply, such of its bright ideas as he finds imprisoned in the early and imperfect efforts of art—and secondly, by exploring further on his own account in the untrodden realms of feeling that lie before him, and calling into palpable existence visions as bright, as pure, and as immortal as those that have already, in the golden days of Raphael and Perugino, obeyed their creative mandate, Live!" (Vol. iii., p. 422). 22. But while we thus defer to the discrimination, respect the feeling, and join in the hope of the author, we earnestly deprecate the frequent assertion, as we entirely deny the accuracy or propriety, of the metaphysical analogies, in accordance with which his work has unhappily been arranged. Though these had been as carefully, as they are crudely, considered, it had still been no light error of judgment to thrust them with dogmatism so abrupt into the forefront of a work whose purpose is assuredly as much to win to the truth as to demonstrate it. The writer has apparently forgotten that of the men to whom he must primarily look for 23. It is generally easier to plan what is beyond the reach of others than to execute what is within our own; and it had been well if the range of this introductory essay had been something less extensive, and its reasoning more careful. Its search after truth is honest and impetuous, and its results would have appeared as interesting as they are indeed valuable, had they but been arranged with ordinary perspicuity, and represented in simple terms. But the writer's evil genius pursues him; the demand for exertion of thought is remorseless, and continuous throughout, and the statements of theoretical principle as short, scattered, and obscure, as they are bold. We question whether many readers may not be utterly appalled by the aspect of an "Analysis of Human Nature"—the first task proposed to them by our intellectual Eurystheus—to be accomplished in the space of six semi-pages, followed in the seventh by the "Development of the Individual Man," and applied in the eighth to a "General Classification of Individuals": and we infinitely marvel that our author should have thought it unnecessary to support or explain a division of the mental attributes on which the treatment of his entire subject afterwards depends, and whose terms are repeated in every following page to the very dazzling of eye and deadening of ear (a division, we regret to say, as illogical as it is purposeless), otherwise than by a laconic reference to the assumptions of Phrenology. "The Individual Man, or Man considered by himself as an unit in creation, is compounded of three distinct primary elements. 1. Sense, or the animal frame, with its passions or affections; 2. Mind or Intellect;—of which the distinguishing faculties—rarely, if ever, equally balanced, and by their respective predominance determinative of his whole character, conduct, and views of life—are, i. Imagination, the discerner of Beauty,— ii. Reason, the discerner of Truth,— the former animating and informing the world of Sense or Matter, the latter finding her proper home in the world of abstract or immaterial existences —the former receiving the impress of things Objectively, or ab externo, the latter impressing its own ideas on them Subjectively, or ab interno—the former a feminine or passive, the latter a masculine or active principle; and iii. Spirit—the Moral or Immortal principle, ruling through the Will, and breathed into Man by the Breath of God."—"Progression by Antagonism," pp. 2, 3. 24. On what authority does the writer assume that the moral is alone the Immortal principle—or the only part of the human nature bestowed by the breath of God? Are imagination, then, and reason perishable? Is the Body itself? Are not all alike immortal; and when distinction is to be made among them, is not the first great division between their active and passive immortality, between the supported body and supporting spirit; that spirit itself afterwards rather conveniently to be considered as either exercising intellectual function, or receiving moral influence, and, both in power and passiveness, deriving its energy and sensibility alike from the sustaining breath of God—than actually 25. The fact is, that it is not in intellect added to the bodily sense, nor in moral sentiment superadded to the intellect, that the essential difference between brute and man consists: but in the elevation of all three to that point at which each becomes capable of communion with the Deity, and worthy therefore of eternal life;—the body more universal as an instrument—more exquisite in its sense—this last character carried out in the eye and ear to the perception of Beauty, in form, sound, and color—and herein distinctively raised above the brutal sense; intellect, as we have said, peculiarly separating and vast; the moral sentiments like in essence, but boundlessly expanded, as attached to an infinite object, and laboring in an infinite field: each part mortal 26. We should not have been thus strict in our examination of these preliminary statements, if the question had been one of terms merely, or if the inaccuracy of thought had been confined to the Essay on Antagonism. If upon receiving a writer's terms of argument in the sense—however unusual or mistaken—which he chooses they should bear, we may without further error follow his course of thought, it is as unkind as unprofitable to lose the use of his result in quarrel with its algebraic expression; and if the reader will understand by Lord Lindsay's general term "Spirit" the susceptibility of right moral emotion, and the entire subjection of the Will to Reason; and receive his term "Sense" as not including the perception of Beauty either in sight or sound, but expressive of animal sensation only, he may follow without embarrassment to its close, his magnificently comprehensive statement of the forms of probation which the heart and faculties of man have undergone from the beginning of time. But it is far otherwise when the theory is to be applied, in all its pseudo-organization, to the separate departments of a particular art, and analogies the most subtle and speculative traced between the mental character and artistical choice or attainment of different races of men. Such analogies are always treacherous, for the 27. His theory is first clearly stated in the following passage:— "Man is, in the strictest sense of the word, a progressive being, and with many periods of inaction and retrogression, 28. The reader must, we think, at once perceive the bold fallacy of this forced analogy—the comparison of the architecture of one nation with the sculpture of another, and the painting of a third, and the assumption as a proof of difference in moral character, of changes necessarily wrought, always in the same order, by the advance of mere mechanical experience. Architecture must precede sculpture, not because sense precedes intellect, but because men must build houses before they adorn chambers, and raise shrines before they inaugurate idols; and sculpture must precede painting, because men must learn forms in the solid before they can project them on a flat surface, and must learn to conceive designs in light and shade before they can conceive them in color, and must learn to treat subjects under positive color and in narrow groups, before they can treat them under 29. Yet let us not be misunderstood:—the great gulf between Christian and Pagan art we cannot bridge—nor do we We shall therefore, as fully as our space admits, examine the application of our author's theory to Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, successively, setting before the reader some of the more interesting passages which respect each art, while we at the same time mark with what degree of caution their conclusions are, in our judgment, to be received. 30. Accepting Lord Lindsay's first reference to Egypt, let us glance at a few of the physical accidents which influenced its types of architecture. The first of these is evidently the capability of carriage of large blocks of stone over perfectly level land. It was possible to roll to their destination along that uninterrupted plain, blocks which could neither by the Greek have been shipped in seaworthy vessels, nor carried over mountain-passes, nor raised except by extraordinary effort to the height of the rock-built fortress or seaward promontory. A small undulation of surface, or embarrassment of road, makes large difference in the portability of masses, and of consequence, in the breadth of the possible intercolumniation, the solidity of the column, and the whole scale of the building. Again, in a hill-country, architecture can be important only by position, in a level country only by bulk. Under the overwhelming mass of mountain-form it is vain to attempt the expression of majesty by size of edifice—the humblest architecture may become important by availing 31. The derivation of the Greek types of form from the forest-hut is too direct to escape observation; but sufficient attention has not been paid to the similar petrifaction, by other nations, of the rude forms and materials adopted in the haste of early settlement, or consecrated by the purity of rural life. The whole system of Swiss and German Gothic has thus been most characteristically affected by the structure of the intersecting timbers at the angles of the chalet. This was in some cases directly and without variation imitated in stone, as in the piers of the old bridge at Aarburg; and the practice obtained—partially in the German after-Gothic—universally, or nearly so, in Switzerland—of causing moldings which met at an angle to appear to interpenetrate each other, both being truncated immediately beyond the point of intersection. The painfulness of this ill-judged adaptation was conquered by association—the eye became familiarized to uncouth forms of tracery—and a stiffness and meagerness, as of cast-iron, resulted in the moldings of much of the ecclesiastical, and all the domestic Gothic of central Europe; the moldings of casements intersecting so as to form a small hollow square at the angles, and the practice being further carried out into all modes of 32. In the chapter on the "Influence of Habit and Religion," of Mr. Hope's Historical Essay, As by the constant reminiscence of the natural proportions of his first forest-dwelling, the Greek would be restrained from all inordinate exaggeration of size—the Egyptian was from the first left without hint of any system of proportion, whether constructive, or of visible parts. The cavern—its level roof supported by amorphous piers—might be extended indefinitely into the interior of the hills, and its outer faÇade continued almost without term along their flanks—the solid mass of cliff above forming one gigantic entablature, poised upon props instead of columns. Hence the predisposition to attempt in the built temple the 33. The less direct influences of external nature in the two countries were still more opposed. The sense of beauty, which among the Greek peninsulas was fostered by beating of sea and rush of river, by waving of forest and passing of cloud, by undulation of hill and poise of precipice, lay dormant beneath the shadowless sky and on the objectless plain of the Egyptians; no singing winds nor shaking leaves nor gliding shadows gave life to the line of their barren mountains—no Goddess of Beauty rose from the pacing of their silent and foamless Nile. One continual perception of stability, or changeless revolution, weighed upon their hearts—their life depended on no casual alternation of cold and heat—of drought and shower; their gift-Gods were the risen River and the eternal Sun, and the types of these were forever consecrated in the lotus decoration of the temple and the wedge of the enduring Pyramid. Add to these influences, purely physical, those dependent on the superstitions and political constitution; of the overflowing multitude of "populous No"; on their condition of prolonged peace—their simple habits of life—their respect for the dead—their separation by incommunicable privilege and inherited occupation—and it will be evident to the reader that Lord Lindsay's broad assertion of the expression of "the Ideal of Sense or Matter" by their universal style, must be received with severe modification, and is indeed thus far only true, that the mass of Life supported upon that fruitful plain could, when swayed by a despotic ruler in any given direction, accomplish by mere weight and number what to other nations had been impossible, and bestow a pre-eminence, owed to mere bulk and evidence of labor, upon public works which among the Greek republics could be rendered admirable only by the intelligence of their design. 34. Let us, for the present omitting consideration of the debasement of the Greek types which took place when their cycle of achievement had been fulfilled, pass to the germination The principal characteristics of the new architecture, as exhibited in the Lombard cathedral, are well sketched by Lord Lindsay:— "The three most prominent features, the eastern aspect of the sanctuary, the cruciform plan, and the soaring octagonal cupola, are borrowed from Byzantium—the latter in an improved form—the cross with a difference—the nave, or arm opposite the sanctuary, being lengthened so as to resemble the supposed shape of the actual instrument of suffering, and form what is now distinctively called the Latin Cross. The crypt and absis, or tribune, are retained from the Romish basilica, but the absis is generally pierced with windows, and the crypt is much loftier and more spacious, assuming almost the appearance of a subterranean church. The columns of the nave, no longer isolated, are clustered so as to form compound piers, massive and heavy—their capitals either a rude imitation of the Corinthian, or, especially in the earlier structures, sculptured with grotesque imagery. Triforia, or galleries for women, frequently line the nave and transepts. The roof is of stone, and vaulted. The narthex, or portico, for excluded penitents, common alike to the Greek and Roman churches, and in them continued along the whole faÇade of entrance, is dispensed with altogether in the oldest Lombard ones, and when afterwards resumed, in the eleventh century, was restricted to what we should now call Porches, over each door, consisting generally of little more than a canopy open at the sides, and supported by slender pillars, resting on sculptured monsters. Three doors admit from the western front; these are generally covered with sculpture, which frequently extends in belts across the faÇade, and even along the sides of the building. Above the central door is usually seen, in the later Lombard churches, a "The Baptistery and the Campanile, or bell-tower, are in theory invariable adjuncts to the Lombard cathedral, although detached from it. The Lombards seem to have built them with peculiar zest, and to have had a keen eye for the picturesque in grouping them with the churches they belong to. "I need scarcely add that the round arch is exclusively employed in pure Lombard architecture. "To translate this new style into its symbolical language is a pleasurable task. The three doors and three gable ends signify the Trinity, the Catherine-wheel window (if I mistake not) the Unity, as concentrated in Christ, the Light of the Church, from whose Greek monogram its shape was probably adopted. The monsters that support the pillars of the porch stand there as talismans to frighten away evil spirits. The crypt (as in older buildings) signifies the moral death of man, the cross, the atonement, the cupola heaven; 35. We have by-and-bye an equally comprehensive sketch of the essential characters of the Gothic cathedral; but this we need not quote, as it probably contains little that would be new to the reader. It is succeeded by the following interpretation of the spirit of the two styles:— "Comparing, apart from enthusiasm, the two styles of Lombard and Pointed Architecture, they will strike you, I think, as the expression, respectively, of that alternate repose and activity which characterize the Christian life, exhibited in perfect harmony in Christ alone, who, on earth, spent His night in prayer to God, His day in doing good to man—in heaven, as we know by His own testimony, 'worketh hitherto,' conjointly with the Father—forever, at the same time, reposing on the infinity of His wisdom and of His power. Each, then, of these styles has its peculiar significance, each is perfect in its way. The Lombard Architecture, with its horizontal lines, its circular arches and expanding cupola, soothes and calms one; the Gothic, with its pointed arches, aspiring vaults and intricate tracery, rouses and excites—and why? Because the one symbolizes an infinity of Rest, the other of Action, in the adoration and service of God. And this consideration will enable us to advance a step farther:—The aim of the one style is definite, of the other indefinite; we look up to the dome of heaven and calmly acquiesce in the abstract idea of infinity; but we only realize the impossibility of conceiving it by the flight of imagination from star to star, from firmament to firmament. Even so Lombard Architecture attained perfection, expressed 36. This idea occurs not only in this passage:—it is carried out through the following chapters;—at page 38, the pointed arch associated with the cupola is spoken of as a "fop interrupting the meditations of a philosopher"; at page 65, the "earlier contemplative style of the Lombards" is spoken of; at page 114, Giottesque art is "the expression of that Activity of the Imagination which produced Gothic Architecture"; and, throughout, the analogy is prettily expressed, and ably supported; yet it is one of those against which we must warn the reader: it is altogether superficial, and extends not to the minds of those whose works it accidentally, and we think disputably, characterizes. The transition from Romanesque (we prefer using the generic term) to Gothic is natural and straightforward, in many points traceable to mechanical and local necessities (of which one, the dangerous weight of snow on flat roofs, has been candidly acknowledged by our author), and directed by the tendency, common to humanity in all ages, to push every newly-discovered means of delight to its most fantastic extreme, to exhibit every newly-felt power in its most admirable achievement, and to load with intrinsic decoration forms whose essential varieties have been exhausted. The arch, carelessly struck out by the Etruscan, forced by mechanical expediencies on the unwilling, uninventive Roman, remained unfelt by either. The noble form of the apparent Vault of Heaven—the line which every star follows in its journeying, extricated by the Christian architect from the fosse, the aqueduct, and the sudarium—grew into long succession of proportioned colonnade, and swelled into the white domes that glitter above the plain of Pisa, and fretted channels of Venice, like foam globes at rest. 37. But the spirit that was in these Aphrodites of the earth was not then, nor in them, to be restrained. Colonnade rose over colonnade; the pediment of the western front 38. Here, then, arose one great distinction between 39. The process of change was thus consistent throughout, though at intervals accelerated by the sudden discovery of resource, or invention of design; nor, had the steps been less traceable, do we think the suggestiveness of Repose, in the earlier style, or of Imaginative Activity in the latter, definite or trustworthy. We much question whether the Duomo of Verona, with its advanced guard of haughty gryphons—the mailed peers of Charlemagne frowning from its vaulted gate,—that vault itself ribbed with variegated marbles, and peopled by a crowd of monsters—-the Evangelical types not the least stern or strange; its stringcourses replaced by flat cut friezes, combats between gryphons and chain-clad paladins, 40. And with respect to the more fitful and fantastic expression of the "Italian Gothic," our author is again to be blamed for his loose assumption, from the least reflecting of preceding writers, of this general term, as if the pointed buildings of Italy could in any wise be arranged in one class, or criticised in general terms. It is true that so far as the church interiors are concerned, the system is nearly universal, and always bad; its characteristic features being arches of enormous span, and banded foliage capitals divided into three fillets, rude in design, unsuggestive of any structural connection with the column, and looking consequently as if they might be slipped up or down, and had been only fastened in their places for the temporary purposes of a festa. But the exteriors of Italian pointed buildings display variations of principle and transitions of type quite as bold as either the advance from the Romanesque to the earliest of their forms, or the recoil from their latest to the cinque-cento. 41. The first and grandest style resulted merely from the application of the pointed arch to the frequent Romanesque window, the large semicircular arch divided by three small ones. Pointing both the superior and inferior arches, and adding to the grace of the larger one by striking another 42. Thus it is in the promontories of serpentine which meet with their polished and gloomy green the sweep of the Gulf of Genoa, that we find the first cause of the peculiar spirit of the Tuscan and Ligurian Gothic—carried out in the Florentine duomo to the highest pitch of colored finish—adorned in the upper story of the Campanile by a transformation, peculiarly rich and exquisite, of the narrowly-pierced 43. All these groups are separated by distinctions clear and bold—and many of them by that broadest of all distinctions which lies between disorganization and consistency—accumulation and adaptation, experiment and design;—yet to all one or two principles are common, which again divide the whole series from that of the Transalpine Gothic—and whose importance Lord Lindsay too lightly passes over in the general description, couched in somewhat ungraceful terms, "the vertical principle snubbed, as it were, by the horizontal." We have already alluded to the great school of color which arose in the immediate neighborhood of the Genoa serpentine. The accessibility of marble throughout North 44. All these influences working together, and with them that of classical example and tradition, induced a delicacy of expression, a slightness of salience, a carefulness of touch, and refinement of invention, in all, even the rudest, Italian decorations, utterly unrecognized in those of Northern Gothic: which, however picturesquely adapted to their place and purpose, depend for most of their effect upon bold undercutting, accomplish little beyond graceful embarrassment of the eye, and cannot for an instant be separately regarded as works of accomplished art. Even the later and more imitative examples profess little more than picturesque vigor or ingenious intricacy. The oak leaves and acorns of 45. One other distinction we must notice, in the treatment of the Niche and its accessories. In Northern Gothic the niche frequently consists only of a bracket and canopy—the latter attached to the wall, independent of columnar support, pierced into openwork profusely rich, and often prolonged upwards into a crocketed pinnacle of indefinite height. But in the niche of pure Italian Gothic the classic principle of columnar support is never lost sight of. Even when its canopy is actually supported by the wall behind, it is apparently supported by two columns in front, perfectly formed with bases and capitals:—(the support of the Northern niche—if it have any—commonly takes the form of a buttress):—when it appears as a detached pinnacle, it is supported on four columns, the canopy trefoliated with very obtuse cusps, richly charged with foliage in the foliating space, but undecorated at the cusp points, and terminating above in a smooth pyramid, void of all ornament, and never very acute. This form, modified only by various grouping, is that of the noble sepulchral monuments of Verona, Lucca, Pisa, and Bologna; on a small scale it is at Venice associated with the cupola, in 46. In passing to the examination of our Author's theory as tested by the progress of Sculpture, we are still struck by his utter want of attention to physical advantages or difficulties. He seems to have forgotten from the first, that the mountains of Syene are not the rocks of Paros. Neither the social habits nor intellectual powers of the Greek had so much share in inducing his advance in Sculpture beyond the Egyptian, as the difference between marble and syenite, porphyry or alabaster. Marble not only gave the power, it actually introduced the thought of representation or realization of form, as opposed to the mere suggestive abstraction: its translucency, tenderness of surface, and equality of tint tempting by utmost reward to the finish which of all substances it alone admits:—even ivory receiving not so delicately, as alabaster endures not so firmly, the lightest, latest touches of the completing chisel. The finer feeling of the hand cannot be put upon a hard rock like syenite—the blow must be firm and fearless—the traceless, tremulous difference between common and immortal sculpture cannot be set upon it—it cannot receive the enchanted strokes which, like Aaron's incense, separate the Living and the Dead. Were it otherwise, were finish possible, the variegated and lustrous surface would not exhibit it to the eye. The imagination itself is blunted by the resistance of the material, and by the necessity of absolute predetermination of all it would achieve. Retraction of all thought into determined and 47. His account of Niccola Pisano, the founder of the first great school of middle age sculpture, is thus introduced:— "Niccola's peculiar praise is this,—that, in practice at least, if not in theory, he first established the principle that the study of nature, corrected by the ideal of the antique, and animated by the spirit of Christianity, personal and social, can alone lead to excellence in art:—each of the three elements of human nature—Matter, Mind, and Spirit—being thus brought into union and co-operation in the service of God, in due relative harmony and subordination. I cannot over-estimate the importance of this principle; it was on this that, consciously or unconsciously, Niccola himself worked—it has been by following it that Donatello and Ghiberti, 48. This is mere Bolognese eclecticism in other terms, and those terms incorrect. We are amazed to find a writer usually thoughtful, if not accurate, thus indolently adopting the worn-out falsities of our weakest writers on Taste. Does he—can he for an instant suppose that the ruffian Caravaggio, distinguished only by his preference of candlelight and black shadows for the illustration and re-enforcement of villainy, painted nature—mere nature—exclusive nature, more painfully or heartily than John Bellini or Raphael? Does he not see that whatever men imitate must be nature of some kind, material nature or spiritual, lovely or foul, brutal or human, but nature still? Does he himself see in mere, external, copyable nature, no more than Caravaggio saw, or in the Antique no more than has been comprehended by David? The fact is, that all artists are primarily divided into the two great groups of Imitators and Suggesters—their falling into one or other being dependent partly on disposition, and partly on the matter they have to subdue—(thus Perugino imitates 49. And that is God's doing and distributing; and none is rashly to be thought inferior to another, as if by his own fault; nor any of them stimulated to emulation, and changing places with others, although their allotted tasks be of different dignities, and their granted instruments of different keenness; for in none of them can there be a perfection or balance of all human attributes;—the great colorist becomes gradually insensible to the refinements of form which he at first intentionally omitted; the master of line is inevitably dead to many of the delights of color; the study of the true or ideal human form is inconsistent with the love of its most spiritual expressions. To one it is intrusted to record the historical realities of his age; in him the perception of character is subtle, and that of abstract beauty in measure diminished; to another, removed to the desert, or inclosed in the cloister, is given, not the noting of things transient, but the revealing of things eternal. Ghirlandajo and Titian painted men, but could not angels; Duccio and Angelico painted Saints, but could not senators. One is ordered to copy material form lovingly and slowly—his the fine finger and patient will: to another are sent visions and dreams upon the bed—his the hand fearful and swift, and impulse of passion irregular and wild. We may have occasion further to insist upon this great principle of the incommunicableness and singleness of all the highest powers; but we assert it here especially, in opposition to the idea, already so fatal to art, that either the aim of the antique may take place together 50. Lord Lindsay's statement, as far as it regards Niccola himself, is true. "His improvement in Sculpture is attributable, in the first instance, to the study of an ancient sarcophagus, brought from Greece by the ships of Pisa in the eleventh century, and which, after having stood beside the door of the Duomo for many centuries as the tomb of the Countess Beatrice, mother of the celebrated Matilda, has been recently removed to the Campo Santo. The front is sculptured in bas-relief, in two compartments, the one representing Hippolytus rejecting the suit of PhÆdra, the other his departure for the chase:—such at least is the most plausible interpretation. The sculpture, if not super-excellent, is substantially good, and the benefit derived from it by Niccola is perceptible on the slightest examination of his works. Other remains of antiquity are preserved at Pisa, which he may have also studied, but this was the classic well from which he drew those waters which became wine when poured into the hallowing chalice of Christianity. I need scarcely add that the mere presence of such models would have availed little, had not nature endowed him with the quick eye and the intuitive apprehension of genius, together with a purity of taste which taught him how to select, how to modify and how to reinspire the germs of excellence thus presented to him."—Vol. ii., pp. 104, 105. 51. But whatever characters peculiarly classical were impressed upon Niccola by this study, died out gradually among his scholars; and in Orcagna the Byzantine manner finally triumphed, leading the way to the purely Christian sculpture of the school of Fiesole, in its turn swept away by the returning wave of classicalism. The sculpture of Orcagna, 52. "Andrea's merit was indeed very great; his works, compared with those of Giovanni and Niccola Pisano, exhibit a progress in design, grace, composition and mechanical execution, at first sight unaccountable—a chasm yawns between them, deep and broad, over which the younger artist seems to have leapt at a bound,—the stream that sank into the earth at Pisa emerges a river at Florence. The solution of the mystery lies in the peculiar plasticity of Andrea's genius, and the ascendency acquired over it by Giotto, although a younger man, from the first moment they came into contact. Giotto had learnt from the works of Niccola the grand principle of Christian art, imperfectly apprehended by Giovanni and his other pupils, and by following up which he had in the natural course of things improved upon his prototype. He now repaid to Sculpture, in the person of Andrea, the sum of improvement in which he stood her debtor in that of Niccola:—so far, that is to say, as the treasury of Andrea's mind was capable of taking it in, for it would be an error to suppose that Andrea profited by Giotto in the same independent manner or degree that Giotto profited by Niccola. Andrea's was not a mind of strong individuality; he became completely Giottesque in thought and style, and as Giotto and he continued intimate friends through life, the impression never wore off:—most fortunate, indeed, that it was so, for the welfare of Sculpture in general, and for that "Happily, Andrea's most important work, the bronze door of the Baptistery, still exists, and with every prospect of preservation. It is adorned with bas-reliefs from the history of S. John, with allegorical figures of virtues and heads of prophets, all most beautiful,—the historical compositions distinguished by simplicity and purity of feeling and design, the allegorical virtues perhaps still more expressive, and full of poetry in their symbols and attitudes; the whole series is executed with a delicacy of workmanship till then unknown in bronze, a precision yet softness of touch resembling that of a skillful performer on the pianoforte. Andrea was occupied upon it for nine years, from 1330 to 1339, and when finished, fixed in its place, and exposed to view, the public enthusiasm exceeded all bounds; the Signoria, with unexampled condescension, visited it in state, accompanied by the ambassadors of Naples and Sicily, and bestowed on the fortunate artist the honor and privilege of citizenship, seldom accorded to foreigners unless of lofty rank or exalted merit. The door remained in its original position—facing the Cathedral—till superseded in that post of honor by the 'Gate of Paradise,' cast by Ghiberti. It was then transferred to the Southern entrance of the Baptistery, facing the Misericordia."—Vol. ii., pp. 125-128. 53. A few pages farther on, the question of Giotto's claim to the authorship of the designs for this door is discussed at length, and, to the annihilation of the honor here attributed to Andrea, determined affirmatively, partly on the testimony of Vasari, partly on internal evidence—these designs being asserted by our author to be "thoroughly Giottesque." But, not to dwell on Lord Lindsay's inconsistency, in the ultimate decision his discrimination seems to us utterly at fault. Giotto has, we conceive, suffered quite enough in the abduction of the work in the Campo Santo, which was worthy of him, without being made answerable for these designs of 54. We have not space to follow our author through his very interesting investigation of the comparatively unknown schools of Teutonic sculpture. With one beautiful anecdote, breathing the whole spirit of the time—the mingling of deep piety with the modest, manly pride of art—our readers must be indulged:— "The Florentine Ghiberti gives a most interesting account of a sculptor of Cologne in the employment of Charles of Anjou, King of Naples, whose skill he parallels with that of the statuaries of ancient Greece; his heads, he says, and his design of the naked, were 'maravigliosamente bene,' his style full of grace, his sole defect the somewhat curtailed stature of his figures. He was no less excellent in minuter works as a goldsmith, and in that capacity had worked for his patron a 'tavola d'oro,' a tablet or screen (apparently) of gold, with his utmost care and skill; it was a work of exceeding beauty—but in some political exigency his patron wanted money, and it was broken up before his eyes. Seeing his labor vain and the pride of his heart rebuked, he threw himself on the ground, and uplifting his eyes and hands to heaven, prayed in contrition, 'Lord God Almighty, Governor and disposer of heaven and earth! Thou hast opened mine eyes that I follow from henceforth none other than Thee—Have mercy upon me!'—He forthwith gave all he had to the poor for the love of God, and went up into a mountain where there was a great hermitage, and dwelt 55. We could have wished that Lord Lindsay had further insisted on what will be found to be a characteristic of all the truly Christian or spiritual, as opposed to classical, schools of sculpture—the scenic or painter-like management of effect. The marble is not cut into the actual form of the thing imaged, but oftener into a perspective suggestion of it—the bas-reliefs sometimes almost entirely under cut, and sharpedged, so as to come clear off a dark ground of shadow; even heads the size of life being in this way rather shadowed out than carved out, as the Madonna of Benedetto de Majano in Santa Maria Novella, one of the cheeks being advanced half an inch out of its proper place—and often the most audacious violations of proportion admitted, as in the limbs of Michael Angelo's sitting Madonna in the Uffizii; all artifices, also, of deep and sharp cutting being allowed, to gain the shadowy and spectral expressions about the brow and lip which the mere actualities of form could not have conveyed;—the sculptor never following a material model, but feeling after the most momentary and subtle aspects of the countenance—striking these out sometimes suddenly, by rude chiseling, and stopping the instant they are attained—never risking the loss of thought by the finishing of flesh surface. The heads of the Medici sacristy we believe to have been 56. It is time for us to pass to the subject which occupies the largest portion of the work—-the History "of Painting, as developed contemporaneously with her sister, Sculpture, and (like her) under the shadow of the Gothic Architecture, by Giotto and his successors throughout Italy, by Mino, Duccio, and their scholars at Siena, by Orcagna and Fra Angelico da Fiesole at Florence, and by the obscure but 57. To the thousand islands, or how many soever they may be, we shall allow ourselves to be wafted with all willingness, but not in Lord Lindsay's three-masted vessel, with its balancing topmasts of Sense, Intellect, and Spirit. We are utterly tired of the triplicity; and we are mistaken if its application here be not as inconsistent as it is arbitrary. Turning back to the introduction, which we have quoted, the reader will find that while Architecture is there taken for the exponent of Sense, Painting is chosen as the peculiar expression of Spirit. "The painting of Christendom is that of an immortal spirit conversing with its God." But in a note to the first chapter of the second volume, he will be surprised to find painting become a "twin of intellect," and architecture "Sculpture and Painting, twins of Intellect, rejoice and breathe freest in the pure ether of Architecture, or Spirit, like Castor or Pollux under the breezy heaven of their father Jupiter."—Vol. ii., p. 14. 58. Prepared by this passage to consider painting either as spiritual or intellectual, his patience may pardonably give way on finding in the sixth letter—(what he might, however, have conjectured from the heading of the third period in the chart of the schools)—that the peculiar prerogative of painting—color, is to be considered as a sensual element, and the exponent of sense, in accordance with a new analogy, here for the first time proposed, between spirit, intellect, and sense, and expression, form, and color. Lord Lindsay is peculiarly unfortunate in his adoptions from previous writers. He has taken this division of art from Fuseli and Reynolds, without perceiving that in those writers it is one of convenience merely, and, even so considered, is as injudicious as illogical. In what does expression consist but in form and color? It is one of the ends which these accomplish, and may be itself an attribute of both. Color may be expressive or inexpressive, like music; form expressive or inexpressive, like words; but expression by itself cannot exist; so that to divide painting into color, form, and expression, is precisely as rational as to divide music into notes, words, and expression. Color may be pensive, severe, exciting, appalling, gay, glowing, or sensual; in all these modes it is expressive: form may be tender or abrupt, mean or majestic, attractive or overwhelming, discomfortable or delightsome; in all these modes, and many more, it is expressive; and if Lord Lindsay's analogy be in anywise applicable to either form or color, we should have color sensual (Correggio), color intellectual (Tintoret), color spiritual (Angelico)—form sensual (French sculpture), form intellectual 59. Lord Lindsay says, in a passage which we shall presently quote, that the most sensual as well as the most religious painters have always loved the brightest colors. Not so; no painters ever were more sensual than the modern French, who are alike insensible to, and incapable of color—depending altogether on morbid gradation, waxy smoothness of surface, and lusciousness of line, the real elements of sensuality wherever it eminently exists. So far from good color being sensual, it saves, glorifies, and guards from all evil: it is with Titian, as with all great masters of flesh-painting, the redeeming and protecting element; and with the religious painters, it is a baptism with fire, an under-song of holy Litanies. Is it in sensuality that the fair flush opens upon the cheek of Francia's chanting angel, 60. We deprecate this rash assumption, however, with more regard to the forthcoming portion of the history, in which we fear it may seriously diminish the value of the author's account of the school of Venice, than to the part at present executed. This is written in a spirit rather sympathetic than critical, and rightly illustrates the feeling of early art, even where it mistakes, or leaves unanalyzed, the technical modes of its expression. It will be better, perhaps, that we confine our attention to the accounts of the three men who may be considered as sufficient representatives not only of the art of their time, but of all subsequent; Giotto, the first of the great line of dramatists, terminating in Raffaelle; Orcagna, the head of that branch of the contemplative school which leans towards sadness or terror, terminating in Michael Angelo; and Angelico, the head of the contemplatives concerned with the heavenly ideal, around whom may be grouped first Duccio, and the Sienese, who preceded him, and afterwards Pinturiccio, Perugino, and Leonardo da Vinci. 61. The fourth letter opens in the fields of Vespignano. The circumstances of the finding of Giotto by Cimabue are well known. Vasari's anecdote of the fly painted upon the nose of one of Cimabue's figures might, we think, have been spared, or at least not instanced as proof of study from nature "nobly rewarded." Giotto certainly never either attempted or accomplished any small imitation of this kind; the story has all the look of one of the common inventions of the ignorant for the ignorant; nor, if true, would Cimabue's careless mistake of a black spot in the shape of a fly for one of the living annoyances of which there might probably be some dozen or more upon his panel at any moment, have been a matter of much credit to his young pupil. The first point of any real interest is Lord Lindsay's confirmation 62. We should have been glad if Lord Lindsay had given us some clearer idea of the internal evidence on which he founds his determination of the order or date of the works of Giotto. When no trustworthy records exist, we conceive this task to be of singular difficulty, owing to the differences of execution universally existing between the large and small 63. But passing from these frescoes, which are nearly the size of life, to those of the Arena chapel at Padua, erected in 1303, decorated in 1306, which are much smaller, we find the execution proportionably less dexterous. Of this famous chapel Lord Lindsay says— "nowhere (save in the Duomo of Orvieto) is the legendary history of the Virgin told with such minuteness. "The heart must indeed be cold to the charms of youthful art that can enter this little sanctuary without a glow of delight. From the roof, with its sky of ultramarine, powdered with stars and interspersed with medallions containing the heads of our Saviour, the Virgin and the Apostles, to the mock paneling of the nave, below the windows, the whole is completely covered with frescoes, in excellent preservation, and all more or less painted by Giotto's own hand, except six in the tribune, which however have apparently been executed from his cartoons.... "These frescoes form a most important document in the history of Giotto's mind, exhibiting all his peculiar merits, 64. This last characteristic is especially to be noticed. It is a touching proof of the influence of early years. Giotto was only ten years old when he was taken from following the sheep. For the rest, as we have above stated, the manipulation of these frescoes is just as far inferior to that of the PodestÀ chapel as their dimensions are less; and we think it will be found generally that the smaller the work the more rude is Giotto's hand. In this respect he seems to differ from all other masters. "It is not difficult, gazing on these silent but eloquent walls, to repeople them with the group once, as we know-five hundred years ago—assembled within them,—Giotto intent upon his work, his wife Ciuta admiring his progress, and Dante, with abstracted eye, alternately conversing with his friend and watching the gambols of the children playing on the grass before the door. It is generally affirmed that Dante, during this visit, inspired Giotto with his taste for allegory, and that the Virtues and Vices of the Arena were the first fruits of their intercourse; it is possible, certainly, but I doubt it,—allegory was the universal language of the time, as we have seen in the history of the Pisan school."—Vol. ii., pp. 199, 200. It ought to have been further mentioned, that the representation of the Virtues and Vices under these Giottesque figures continued long afterwards. We find them copied, for instance, on the capitals of the Ducal Palace at Venice, with an amusing variation on the "Stultitia," who has neither Indian dress nor club, as with Giotto, but is to the Venetians sufficiently distinguished by riding a horse. 65. The notice of the frescoes at Assisi consists of little more than an enumeration of the subjects, accompanied by agreeable translations of the traditions respecting St. Francis, embodied by St. Buonaventura. Nor have we space to follow the author through his examination of Giotto's "Giotto was chosen to erect it, on the ground avowedly of the universality of his talents, with the appointment of Capomaestro, or chief architect of the Cathedral and its dependencies, a yearly salary of one hundred gold florins, and the privilege of citizenship, and under the special understanding that he was not to quit Florence. His designs being approved of, the republic passed a decree in the spring of 1334, that 'the Campanile should be built so as to exceed in magnificence, height and excellence of workmanship whatever in that kind had been achieved of old by the Greeks and Romans in the time of their utmost power and greatness—"della loro piÙ florida potenza."' The first stone was laid accordingly, with great pomp, on the 18th of July following, and the work prosecuted with such vigor and with such costliness and utter disregard of expense, that a citizen of Verona, looking on, exclaimed that the republic was taxing her strength too far,—that the united resources of two great monarchs would be insufficient to complete it; a criticism which the Signoria resented by confining him for two months in prison, and afterwards conducting him through the public treasury, to teach him that the Florentines could build their whole city of marble, and not one poor steeple only, were they so inclined. "Giotto made a model of his proposed structure, on which every stone was marked, and the successive courses painted red and white, according to his design, so as to match with the Cathedral and Baptistery; this model was of course adhered to strictly during the short remnant of his life, and the work was completed in strict conformity to it after his death, with the exception of the spire, which, the taste having changed, was never added. He had intended it to be one hundred braccia, or one hundred and fifty feet high."—Vol. ii., pp. 247-249. The deficiency of the spire Lord Lindsay does not regret:— "Let the reader stand before the Campanile, and ask himself whether, with Michael Scott at his elbow, or Aladdin's lamp in his hand, he would supply the deficiency? I think not."—p. 38. We have more faith in Giotto than our author—and we will reply to his question by two others—whether, looking down upon Florence from the hill of San Miniato, his eye rested oftener and more affectionately on the Campanile of Giotto, or on the simple tower and spire of Santa Maria Novella?—and whether, in the backgrounds of Perugino, he would willingly substitute for the church spires invariably introduced, flat-topped campaniles like the unfinished tower of Florence? 66. Giotto sculptured with his own hand two of the bas-reliefs of this campanile, and probably might have executed them all. But the purposes of his life had been accomplished; he died at Florence on the 8th of January, 1337. The concluding notice of his character and achievement is highly valuable. 67. "Painting indeed stands indebted to Giotto beyond any of her children. His history is a most instructive one. Endowed with the liveliest fancy, and with that facility which so often betrays genius, and achieving in youth a reputation which the age of Methuselah could not have added to, he had yet the discernment to perceive how much still remained to be done, and the resolution to bind himself (as it were) to Nature's chariot wheel, confident that she would erelong emancipate and own him as her son. Calm and unimpassioned, he seems to have commenced his career with a deliberate survey of the difficulties he had to encounter and of his resources for the conflict, and then to have worked upon a system steadily and perseveringly, prophetically sure of victory. His life was indeed one continued triumph,—and "Finally, throughout his works, we are conscious of an earnest, a lofty, a religious aim and purpose, as of one who felt himself a pioneer of civilization in a newly-discovered world, the Adam of a new Eden freshly planted in the earth's wilderness, a mouthpiece of God and a preacher of righteousness to mankind.—And here we must establish a distinction very necessary to be recognized before we can duly appreciate the relative merits of the elder painters in this, the most important point in which we can view their character. Giotto's genius, however universal, was still (as I have repeatedly observed) Dramatic rather than Contemplative,—a tendency in which his scholars and successors almost to a man resembled him. Now, just as in actual life—where, with a few rare exceptions, all men rank under two great categories according as Imagination or Reason predominates 68. This is all as admirably felt as expressed, and to those acquainted with and accustomed to love the works of the painter, it leaves nothing to be asked for; but we must again remind Lord Lindsay, that he has throughout left the artistical orbit of Giotto undefined, and the offense of his manner unremoved, as far as regards the uninitiated spectator. We question whether from all that he has written, the untraveled reader could form any distinct idea of the painter's peculiar merits or methods, or that the estimate, if formed, might not afterwards expose him to severe disappointment. It ought especially to have been stated, that the Giottesque system of chiaroscuro is one of pure, quiet, pervading daylight. No cast shadows ever occur, and this remains a marked characteristic of all the works of the Giotteschi. Of course, all subtleties of reflected light or raised color are unthought of. Shade is only given as far as it is necessary to the articulation of simple forms, nor even then is it rightly adapted to the color of the light; the folds of the draperies are well drawn, but the entire rounding of them always missed—the general forms appearing flat, and terminated by equal and severe outlines, while the masses of ungradated color often seem to divide the figure into fragments. Thus, the Madonna in the small tempera series of the Academy of Florence, is usually divided exactly in half by the dark mass of her blue robe, falling in a vertical line. 69. Finally, and on this we would especially insist, Giotto's genius is not to be considered as struggling with difficulty and repressed by ignorance, but as appointed, for the good of men, to come into the world exactly at the time when its rapidity of invention was not likely to be hampered by demands for imitative dexterity or neatness of finish; and when, owing to the very ignorance which has been unwisely regretted, the simplicity of his thoughts might be uttered with a "Sport upon the shore We believe Giotto himself felt this—unquestionably he could have carried many of his works much farther in finish, had he so willed it; but he chose rather to multiply motives than to complete details. Thus we recur to our great principle of Separate gift. The man who spends his life in toning colors must leave the treasures of his invention untold—let each have his perfect work; and while we thank Bellini and Leonardo for their deeply wrought dyes, and life-labored utterance of passionate thought; let us remember also what cause, but for the remorseless destruction of myriads of his works, we should have had to thank Giotto, in that, abandoning all proud effort, he chose rather to make the stones of Italy cry out with one voice of pauseless praise, and to fill with perpetual remembrance of the Saints he loved, and perpetual honor of the God he worshiped, palace chamber and convent cloister, lifted tower and lengthened wall, from the utmost blue of the plain of Padua to the Southern wildernesses of the hermit-haunted Apennine. 70. From the head of the Dramatic branch of Art, we turn to the first of the great Contemplative Triad, associated, as it most singularly happens in name as well as in heart; Orcagna—Arcagnuolo; Fra Giovanni—detto Angelico; and Michael Angelo:—the first two names being bestowed by contemporary admiration. "Orcagna was born apparently about the middle of the (14th) century, and was christened Andrea, by which name, "The earliest works of Orcagna will be found in that sanctuary of Semi-Byzantine art, the Campo Santo of Pisa. He there painted three of the four 'Novissima,' Death, Judgment, Hell, and Paradise—the two former entirely himself, the third with the assistance of his brother Bernardo, who is said to have colored it after his designs. The first of the series, a most singular performance, had for centuries been popularly known as the 'Trionfo della Morte.' It is divided by an immense rock into two irregular portions. In that to the right, Death, personified as a female phantom, batwinged, claw-footed, her robe of linked mail [?] and her long hair streaming on the wind, swings back her scythe in order to cut down a company of the rich ones of the earth, Castruccio Castracani and his gay companions, seated under an orange-grove, and listening to the music of a troubadour and a female minstrel; little genii or Cupids, with reversed torches, float in the air above them; one young gallant caresses his hawk, a lady her lapdog,—Castruccio alone looks abstractedly away, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. But all are alike heedless and unconscious, though the sand is run out, the scythe falling and their doom sealed. Meanwhile the lame and the halt, the withered and the blind, to whom the heavens are brass and life a burthen, cry on Death with impassioned gestures, to release them from their misery,—but in vain; she sweeps past, and will not hear them. Between these two groups lie a heap of corpses, mown down already in her flight—kings, queens, bishops, cardinals, young men and maidens, secular and ecclesiastical—ensigned by their crowns, coronets, necklaces, miters and helmets—huddled together in hideous confusion; some are dead, others dying,—angels and devils draw the souls out of their mouths; that of a nun (in whose hand a purse, firmly clenched, betokens 71. We wish our author had been more specific in his account of this wonderful fresco. The portrait of Castruccio ought to have been signalized as a severe disappointment to the admirers of the heroic Lucchese: the face is flat, lifeless, and sensual, though fine in feature. The group of mendicants occupying the center are especially interesting, as being among the first existing examples of hard study from the model: all are evidently portraits—and the effect of deformity on the lines of the countenance rendered with appalling truth; the retractile muscles of the mouth wrinkled and fixed—the jaws projecting—the eyes hungry and glaring—the eyebrows grisly and stiff, the painter having drawn each hair separately: the two stroppiati with stumps instead of arms are especially characteristic, as the observer may at once determine by comparing them with the descendants of the originals, of whom he will at any time find two, or more, waiting to accompany his return across the meadow in front of the Duomo: the old woman also, nearest of the group, with gray disheveled hair and gray coat, with a brown girdle and gourd flask, is magnificent, and the archetype of all modern conceptions of witch. But the crowning stroke of feeling is dependent on a circumstance seldom observed. As Castruccio 72. We do not altogether agree with our author in thinking that the devils exhibit every variety of horror; we rather fear that the spectator might at first be reminded by them of what is commonly known as the Dragon pattern of Wedgwood ware. There is invention in them however—and energy; the eyes are always terrible, though simply drawn—a black ball set forward, and two-thirds surrounded by a narrow crescent of white, under a shaggy brow; the mouths are frequently magnificent; that of a demon accompanying a thrust of a spear with a growl, on the right of the picture, is interesting as an example of the development of the canine teeth noticed by Sir Charles Bell ("Essay on Expression," p. 138)—its capacity of laceration is unlimited: another, snarling like a tiger at an angel who has pulled a soul out of his claws, is equally well conceived; we know nothing like its ferocity except Rembrandt's sketches of wounded wild beasts. The angels we think generally disappointing; they are for the most part diminutive in size, and the crossing of the extremities of the two wings that cover the feet, gives them a coleopterous, cockchafer look, which is not a little undignified; the colors of their plumes are somewhat coarse and dark—one is covered with silky hair, instead of feathers. The souls they contend for are indeed of sweet expression; but exceedingly earthly in contour, the painter being unable to deal with the nude form. On the whole, he seems to have reserved his highest powers for the fresco which follows next in order, the scene of Resurrection and Judgment. "It is, in the main, the traditional Byzantine composition, even more rigidly symmetrical than usual, singularly contrasting in this respect with the rush and movement of the preceding compartment. Our Saviour and the Virgin, seated side by side, each on a rainbow and within a vesica piscis, appear 73. The positions of our Saviour and of the Virgin are not strictly co-equal; the glory in which the Madonna is seated is both lower and less; but the equality is more complete in the painting of the same subject in Santa M. Novella. We believe Lord Lindsay is correct in thinking Orcagna the only artist who has dared it. We question whether even wrath be intended in the countenance of the principal figure; on the contrary, we think it likely to disappoint at first, and appear lifeless in its exceeding tranquillity; the brow is indeed slightly knit, but the eyes have no local direction. They comprehend all things—are set upon all spirits alike, as in that word-fresco of our own, not unworthy to be set side by side with this, the Vision of the Trembling Man in the House of the Interpreter. The action is as majestic as the countenance—the right hand seems raised rather to show its wound (as the left points at the same instant to the wound in the side), than in condemnation, though its gesture has been adopted as one of threatening—first (and very nobly) by Benozzo Gozzoli, in the figure of the Angel departing, looking towards Sodom—and afterwards, with unfortunate exaggeration, by Michael Angelo. Orcagna's Madonna we think a failure, but his strength has been more happily displayed in the Apostolic circle. The head of St. John is peculiarly beautiful. The other Apostles look forward or down as in judgment—some in indignation, some in pity, some serene—but the eyes of St. John are fixed upon the Judge Himself with the stability of love—intercession and sorrow struggling for utterance with awe—and through both is seen a tremor of submissive astonishment, that the lips which had 74. "One feeling for the most part pervades this side of the composition,—there is far more variety in the other; agony is depicted with fearful intensity and in every degree and character; some clasp their hands, some hide their faces, some look up in despair, but none towards Christ; others seem to have grown idiots with horror:—a few gaze, as if fascinated, into the gulf of fire towards which the whole mass of misery are being urged by the ministers of doom—the flames bite them, the devils fish for and catch them with long grappling-hooks:—in sad contrast to the group on the opposite side, a queen, condemned herself but self-forgetful, vainly struggles to rescue her daughter from a demon who has caught her by the gown and is dragging her backwards into the abyss—her sister, wringing her hands, looks on in agony—it is a fearful scene. "A vast rib or arch in the walls of pandemonium admits one into the contiguous gulf of Hell, forming the third fresco, or rather a continuation of the second—in which Satan sits in the midst, in gigantic terror, cased in armor and crunching sinners—of whom Judas, especially, is eaten and ejected, re-eaten and re-ejected again and again forever. The punishments of the wicked are portrayed in circles numberless around him. But in everything save horror this compartment is inferior to the preceding, and it has been much injured and repainted."—Vol. iii., p. 138. 75. We might have been spared all notice of this last compartment. Throughout Italy, owing, it may be supposed, to the interested desire of the clergy to impress upon the populace as forcibly as possible the verity of purgatorial horrors, nearly every representation of the Inferno has been repainted, and vulgar butchery substituted for the expressions of punishment which were too chaste for monkish purposes. The infernos of Giotto at Padua, and of Orcagna at Florence, 76. Lord Lindsay's comparison of these frescoes of Orcagna with the great work in the Sistine, is, as a specimen of his writing, too good not to be quoted. "While Michael Angelo's leading idea seems to be the self-concentration and utter absorption of all feeling into the one predominant thought, Am I, individually, safe? resolving itself into two emotions only, doubt and despair—all diversities of character, all kindred sympathies annihilated under their pressure—those emotions uttering themselves, not through the face but the form, by bodily contortion, rendering the whole composition, with all its overwhelming merits, a mighty hubbub—Orcagna's on the contrary embraces the whole world of passions that make up the economy of man, and these not confused or crushed into each other, but expanded and enhanced in quality and intensity commensurably with the 'change' attendant upon the resurrection—variously expressed indeed, and in reference to the diversities of individual character, which will be nowise compromised by that change, yet from their very intensity suppressed and subdued, stilling the body and informing only the soul's index, the countenance. All therefore is calm; the saved have acquiesced in all things, they can mourn no more—the damned are to them as if they had never been;—among the lost, grief is too deep, too settled for caricature, and while every feeling of the spectator, every key of the soul's organ, is played upon by turns, tenderness and pity 77. We think it somewhat strange that the object of teaching by terror should be attributed to M. Angelo more than to Orcagna, seeing that the former, with his usual dignity, has refused all representation of infernal punishment—except in the figure dragged down with the hand over the face, the serpent biting the thigh, and in the fiends of the extreme angle; while Orcagna, whose intention may be conjectured even from Solazzino's restoration, exhausted himself in detailing Dante's distribution of torture, and brings into successive prominence every expedient of pain; the prong, the spit, the rack, the chain, venomous fang and rending beak, harrowing point and dividing edge, biting fiend and calcining fire. The objects of the two great painters were indeed opposed, but not in this respect. Orcagna's, like that of every great painter of his day, was to write upon the wall, as in a book, the greatest possible number of those religious facts or doctrines which the Church desired should be known to the people. This he did in the simplest and most straightforward way, regardless of artistical reputation, and desiring only to be read and understood. But Michael Angelo's object was from the beginning that of an artist. He addresses not the sympathies of his day, but the understanding of all time, and he treats the subject in the mode best adapted to bring every one of his own powers into full play. As 78. Greater differences still result from the opposed powers and idiosyncrasies of the two men. Orcagna was unable to draw the nude—on this inability followed a coldness to the value of flowing lines, and to the power of unity in composition—neither could he indicate motion or buoyancy in flying or floating figures, nor express violence of action in the limbs—he cannot even show the difference between pulling and pushing in the muscles of the arm. In M. Angelo these conditions were directly reversed. Intense sensibility to the majesty of writhing, flowing, and connected lines, was in him associated with a power, unequaled except by Angelico, of suggesting aËrial motion—motion deliberate or disturbed, inherent or impressed, impotent or inspired—gathering into glory, or gravitating to death. Orcagna was therefore compelled to range his figures symmetrically in ordered lines, while Michael Angelo bound them into chains, or hurled them into heaps, or scattered them before him as the wind does leaves. Orcagna trusted for all his expression to the countenance, or to rudely explained gesture aided by grand fall of draperies, though in all these points he was still immeasurably inferior to his colossal rival. As for his "embracing the whole world of passions which make up the economy of man," he had no such power of delineation—nor, we believe, of conception. The expressions on the inferno side are all of them varieties of grief and fear, differing merely in degree, not in character or operation: there is something dramatic in the raised hand of a man wearing a green bonnet with a white plume—but the only really far-carried effort in the group is the head of a Dominican monk (just above the queen in green), who, in the midst of the close crowd, struggling, shuddering, and howling on 79. What Michael Angelo could do by expression of countenance alone, let the PietÀ of Genoa tell, or the Lorenzo, or the parallel to this very head of Orcagna's, the face of the man borne down in the Last Judgment with the hand clenched over one of the eyes. Neither in that fresco is he wanting in dramatic episode; the adaptation of the Niobe on the spectator's left hand is far finer than Orcagna's condemned queen and princess; the groups rising below, side by side, supporting each other, are full of tenderness, and reciprocal devotion; the contest in the center for the body which a demon drags down by the hair is another kind of quarrel from that of Orcagna between a feathered angel and bristly fiend for a diminutive soul—reminding us, as it forcibly did at first, of a vociferous difference in opinion between a cat and a cockatoo. But Buonaroti knew that it was useless to concentrate interest in the countenances, in a picture of enormous size, ill lighted; and he preferred giving full play to the powers of line-grouping, for which he could have found no nobler field. Let us not by unwise comparison mingle with our admiration of these two sublime works any sense of weakness in the naÏvetÉ of the one, or of coldness in the science of the other. Each painter has his own sufficient dominion, and he who complains of the want of knowledge in Orcagna, or of the display of it in Michael Angelo, has probably brought little to his judgment of either. 80. One passage more we must quote, well worthy of remark in these days of hollowness and haste, though we question the truth of the particular fact stated in the second volume respecting the shrine of Or San Michele. Cement is now visible enough in all the joints, but whether from recent repairs we cannot say: "There is indeed another, a technical merit, due to Orcagna, which I would have mentioned earlier, did it not partake so strongly of a moral virtue. Whatever he undertook to do, he did well—by which I mean, better than anybody else. His Loggia, in its general structure and its provisions against injury from wet and decay, is a model of strength no less than symmetry and elegance; the junction of the marbles in the tabernacle of Or San Michele, and the exquisite manual workmanship of the bas-reliefs, have been the theme of praise for five centuries; his colors in the Campo Santo have maintained a freshness unrivaled by those of any of his successors there;—nay, even had his mosaics been preserved at Orvieto, I am confident the commettitura would be found more compact and polished than any previous to the sixteenth century. The secret of all this was that he made himself thoroughly an adept in the mechanism of the respective arts, and therefore his works have stood. Genius is too apt to think herself independent of form and matter—never was there such a mistake; she cannot slight either without hamstringing herself. But the rule is of universal application; without this thorough mastery of their respective tools, this determination honestly to make the best use of them, the divine, the soldier, the statesman, the philosopher, the poet—however genuine their enthusiasm, however lofty their genius—are mere empirics, pretenders to crowns they will not run for, children not men—sporters with Imagination, triflers with Reason, with the prospects of humanity, with Time, and with God."—Vol. iii., pp. 148, 149. A noble passage this, and most true, provided we distinguish always between mastery of tool together with thorough strength of workmanship, and mere neatness of outside polish or fitting of measurement, of which ancient masters are daringly scornful. 81. None of Orcagna's pupils, except Francisco Traini, attained celebrity "nothing in fact is known of them except their names. Had their works, however inferior, been preserved, we might have had less difficulty in establishing the links between himself and his successor in the supremacy of the Semi-Byzantine school at Florence, the Beato Fra Angelico da Fiesole.... He was born at Vicchio, near Florence, it is said in 1387, and was baptized by the name of Guido. Of a gentle nature, averse to the turmoil of the world, and pious to enthusiasm, though as free from fanaticism as his youth was innocent of vice, he determined, at the age of twenty, though well provided for in a worldly point of view, to retire to the cloister; he professed himself accordingly a brother of the monastery of S. Domenico at Fiesole in 1407, assuming his monastic name from the Apostle of love, S. John. He acquired from his residence there the distinguishing surname 'da Fiesole;' and a calmer retreat for one weary of earth and desirous of commerce with heaven would in vain be sought for;—the purity of the atmosphere, the freshness of the morning breeze, the starry clearness and delicious fragrance of the nights, the loveliness of the valley at one's feet, lengthening out, like a life of happiness, between the Apennine and the sea—with the intermingling sounds that ascend perpetually from below, softened by distance into music, and by an agreeable compromise at once giving a zest to solitude and cheating it of its loneliness—rendering Fiesole a spot which angels might alight upon by mistake in quest of paradise, a spot where it would be at once sweet to live and sweet to die."—Vol. iii., pp. 151-153. 82. Our readers must recollect that the convent where Fra Giovanni first resided is not that whose belfry tower and cypress grove crown the "top of FÉsole." The Dominican convent is situated at the bottom of the slope of olives, distinguished only by its narrow and low spire; a cypress avenue recedes from it towards Florence—a stony path, leading to the ancient Badia of Fiesole, descends in front of the three-arched loggia which protects the entrance to the church. "It is by no means an easy task to adjust the chronology of Fra Angelico's works; he has affixed no dates to them, and consequently, when external evidence is wanting, we are thrown upon internal, which in his case is unusually fallacious. It is satisfactory therefore to possess a fixed date in 1433, the year in which he painted the great tabernacle for the Company of Flax-merchants, now removed to the gallery of the Uffizii. It represents the Virgin and child, with attendant Saints, on a gold ground—very dignified and noble, although the Madonna has not attained the exquisite spirituality of his later efforts. Round this tabernacle as a nucleus, may be classed a number of paintings, all of similar excellence—admirable that is to say, but not of his very best, and in which, if I mistake not, the type of the Virgin bears throughout a strong family resemblance."—Vol. iii., pp. 160, 161. 83. If the painter ever increased in power after this period (he was then forty-three), we have been unable to systematize the improvement. We much doubt whether, in his modes of execution, advance were possible. Men whose merit lies in record of natural facts, increase in knowledge; and men whose merit is in dexterity of hand increase in facility; but we much doubt whether the faculty of design, or force of feeling, increase after the age of twenty-five. By Fra Angelico, who drew always in fear and trembling, dexterous execution had been from the first repudiated; he neither needed nor sought technical knowledge of the form, and the inspiration, to which his power was owing, was not less glowing in youth than in age. The inferiority traceable 84. Further, in this particular instance, the ear has by accident been set too far back—(Fra Angelico, drawing only from feeling, was liable to gross errors of this kind,—often, however, more beautiful than other men's truths)—and the hair removed in consequence too far off the brow; in other respects the face is very noble—still more so that of the Christ. The child stands upon the Virgin's knees, 85. An approach to an exception in treatment is found in the Annunciation of the upper corridor of St. Mark's, most unkindly treated by our author:— "Probably the earliest of the series—full of faults, but imbued with the sweetest feeling; there is a look of naÏve curiosity, mingling with the modest and meek humility of the Virgin, which almost provokes a smile."—iii., 176. Many a Sabbath evening of bright summer have we passed in that lonely corridor—but not to the finding of faults, nor the provoking of smiles. The angel is perhaps something less majestic than is usual with the painter; but the Virgin is only the more to be worshiped, because here, for once, set before us in the verity of life. No gorgeous robe is upon her; no lifted throne set for her; the golden border gleams faintly on the dark blue dress; the seat is drawn into the shadow of a lowly loggia. The face is of no strange, far-sought loveliness; the features might even be thought hard, and they are worn with watching, and severe, though innocent. She stoops forward with her arms folded on her bosom: no casting down of eye nor shrinking of the frame in fear; she is too earnest, too self-forgetful for either: "Virginis intactae cum veneris ante figuram We in general allow the inferiority of Angelico's fresco to his tempera works; yet even that which of all these latter we think the most radiant, the Annunciation on the reliquary of Santa Maria Novella, would, we believe, if repeatedly compared with this of St. Mark's, in the end have the disadvantage. The eminent value of the tempera paintings results partly from their delicacy of line, and partly from the purity of color and force of decoration of which the material is capable. 86. The passage, to which we have before alluded, respecting Fra Angelico's color in general, is one of the most curious and fanciful in the work:— "His coloring, on the other hand, is far more beautiful, although of questionable brilliancy. This will be found invariably the case in minds constituted like his. Spirit and Sense act on each other with livelier reciprocity the closer their approximation, the less intervention there is of Intellect. Hence the most religious and the most sensual painters have always loved the brightest colors—Spiritual Expression and a clearly defined (however inaccurate) outline forming the distinction of the former class; Animal Expression and a confused and uncertain outline (reflecting that lax morality which confounds the limits of light and darkness, right and 87. There is much ingenuity, and some truth, here, but the reader, as in other of Lord Lindsay's speculations, must receive his conclusions with qualification. It is the natural character of strong effects of color, as of high light, to confuse outlines; and it is a necessity in all fine harmonies of color that many tints should merge imperceptibly into their following or succeeding ones:—we believe Lord Lindsay himself would hardly wish to mark the hues of the rainbow into divided zones, or to show its edge, as of an iron arch, against the sky, in order that it might no longer reflect (a reflection of which we profess ourselves up to this moment altogether unconscious) "that lax morality which confounds the limits of right and wrong." Again, there is a character of energy in all warm colors, as of repose in cold, which necessarily causes the former to be preferred by painters of savage subject—that 88. We are sorry that our author "cannot unreservedly praise the coloring of Angelico;" but he is again curbed by his unhappy system of balanced perfectibility, and must quarrel with the gentle monk because he finds not in him the flames of Giorgione, nor the tempering of Titian, nor the melody of Cagliari. This curb of perfection we took between our teeth from the first, and we will give up our hearts to Angelico without drawback or reservation. His color is, in its sphere and to its purpose, as perfect as human work may be: wrought to radiance beyond that of the ruby and opal, its inartificialness prevents it from arresting the attention it is intended only to direct; were it composed with more science it would become vulgar from the loss of its unconsciousness; if richer, it must have parted with its purity, if deeper, with its joyfulness, if more subdued, with its sincerity. Passages are, indeed, sometimes unsuccessful; but it is to be judged in its rapture, and forgiven in its fall: he who works by law and system may be blamed when he sinks below the line above which he proposes no elevation, but to him 89. The concluding notice of Angelico is true and interesting, though rendered obscure by useless recurrence to the favorite theory. "Such are the surviving works of a painter, who has recently been as unduly extolled as he had for three centuries past been unduly depreciated,—depreciated, through the amalgamation during those centuries of the principle of which he was the representative with baser, or at least less precious matter—extolled, through the recurrence to that principle, in its pure, unsophisticated essence, in the present —in a word, to the simple Imaginative Christianity of the middle ages, as opposed to the complex Reasoning Christianity of recent times. Creeds therefore are at issue, and no exclusive partisan, neither Catholic nor Protestant in the absolute sense of the terms, can fairly appreciate Fra Angelico. Nevertheless, to those who regard society as progressive through the gradual development of the component elements of human nature, and who believe that Providence has accommodated the mind of man, individually, to the perception of half-truths only, in order to create that antagonism from which Truth is generated in the abstract, and by which the progression is effected, his rank and position in art are clear and definite. All that Spirit could achieve by herself, anterior to that struggle with Intellect and Sense which she must in all cases pass through in order to work out her destiny, was accomplished by him. Last and most gifted of a long and imaginative race—the heir of their experience, with collateral advantages which they possessed not—and flourishing at the moment when the transition was actually taking place from the youth to the early manhood of Europe; he gave full, unreserved, and enthusiastic expression to that Love and Hope which had winged the Faith 90. We must again repeat that if our author wishes to be truly serviceable to the schools of England, he must express himself in terms requiring less laborious translation. Clearing the above statement of its mysticism and metaphor, it amounts only to this,—that Fra Angelico was a man of (humanly speaking) perfect piety—humility, charity, and faith—that he never employed his art but as a means of expressing his love to God and man, and with the view, single, simple, and straightforward, of glory to the Creator, and good to the Creature. Every quality or subject of art by which these ends were not to be attained, or to be attained secondarily only, he rejected; from all study of art, as such, he withdrew; whatever might merely please the eye, or interest the intellect, he despised, and refused; he used his colors and lines, as David his harp, after a kingly fashion, for purposes of praise and not of science. To this grace and gift of holiness were added, those of a fervent imagination, vivid invention, keen sense of loveliness in lines and colors, unwearied energy, and to all these gifts the crowning one of quietness of life and mind, while yet his convent-cell was at first within view, and afterwards in the center, of a city which had lead of all the world in Intellect, and in whose streets he might see daily and hourly the noblest setting of manly features. It would perhaps be well to wait until we find another man thus actuated, thus endowed, and thus circumstanced, before we speak of "unduly extolling" the works of Fra Angelico. 91. His artistical attainments, as might be conjectured, are nothing more than the development, through practice, of his natural powers in accordance with his sacred instincts. His power of expression by bodily gesture is greater even 92. But it is difficult by words to convey to the reader unacquainted with Angelico's works, any idea of the thoughtful variety of his rendering of movement—Earnest haste of girded faith in the Flight into Egypt, the haste of obedience, not of fear; and unweariedness, but through spiritual support, and not in human strength—Swift obedience of passive 93. And yet all this is but the lowest part and narrowest reach of Angelico's conceptions. Joy and gentleness, patience and power, he could indicate by gesture—but Devotion could be told by the countenance only. There seems to have been always a stern limit by which the thoughts of other men were stayed; the religion that was painted even by Perugino, Francia, and Bellini, was finite in its spirit—the religion of earthly beings, checked, not indeed by the corruption, but by the veil and the sorrow of clay. But with Fra Angelico the glory of the countenance reaches to actual transfiguration; eyes that see no more darkly, incapable of all tears, foreheads flaming, like Belshazzar's marble wall, with the writing of the Father's name upon them, lips tremulous with love, and crimson with the light of the coals of the altar—and all this loveliness, thus enthusiastic and ineffable, yet sealed with the stability which the coming and going of ages as countless as sea-sand cannot dim nor weary, and bathed by an ever flowing river of holy thought, with God for its source, God for its shore, and God for its ocean. 94. We speak in no inconsiderate enthusiasm. We feel assured that to any person of just feeling who devotes sufficient time to the examination of these works, all terms of description must seem derogatory. Where such ends as these have been reached, it ill becomes us to speak of minor 95. With this final warning against our author's hesitating approbation of what is greatest and best, we must close our specific examination of the mode in which his design has been worked out. We have done enough to set the reader upon his guard against whatever appears slight or inconsiderate in his theory or statements, and with the more severity, because this was alone wanting to render the book one of the most valuable gifts which Art has ever received. Of the translations from the lives of the saints we have hardly spoken; they are gracefully rendered, and all of them highly interesting—but we could wish to see these, and the enumerations of fresco subjects 96. "What a scene of beauty, what a flower-garden of art—how bright and how varied—must Italy have presented at the commencement of the sixteenth century, at the death of Raphael! The sacrileges we lament took place for the most part after that period; hundreds of frescoes, not merely of Giotto and those other elders of Christian Art, but of Gentile da Fabriano, Pietro della Francesca, Perugino and their compeers, were still existing, charming the eye, elevating the mind, and warming the heart. Now alas! few comparatively and fading are the relics of those great and good men. While Dante's voice rings as clear as ever, communing with us as friend with friend, theirs is dying gradually away, fainter and fainter, like the farewell of a spirit. Flaking off the walls, uncared for and neglected save in a few rare instances, scarce one of their frescoes will survive the century, and the labors of the next may not improbably be directed to the recovery and restoration of such as may still slumber beneath the whitewash and the daubs with which the Bronzinos and Zuccheros 'et id genus omne' have unconsciously sealed them up for posterity—their best title to our gratitude.—But why not begin at once? at all events in the instances numberless, where merely whitewash interposes between us and them. "It is easy to reply—what need of this? They—the artists—have Moses and the prophets, the frescoes of Raphael and Michael Angelo—let them study them. Doubtless,—but we still reply, and with no impiety—they will not repent, they will not forsake their idols and their evil ways—they will not abandon Sense for Spirit, oils for fresco—unless these great ones of the past, these Sleepers of "I would not be a blind partisan, but, with all their faults, the old masters I plead for knew how to touch the heart. It may be difficult at first to believe this; like children, they are shy with us—like strangers, they bear an uncouth mien and aspect—like ghosts from the other world, they have an awkward habit of shocking our conventionalities with home truths. But with the dead as with the living all depends on the frankness with which we greet them, the sincerity with which we credit their kindly qualities; sympathy is the key to truth—we must love, in order to appreciate."—iii., p. 418. 97. These are beautiful sentences; yet this let the young painter of these days remember always, that whomsoever he may love, or from whomsoever learn, he can now no more go back to those hours of infancy and be born again. |