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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Val d'Arno, by John Ruskin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Val d'Arno
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+
+Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8523]
+This file was first posted on July 19, 2003
+Last Updated: May 17, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VAL D'ARNO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Tiffany Vergon, ckirschner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                VAL D'ARNO
+
+
+                  BY
+
+
+               JOHN RUSKIN, M.A.
+
+
+
+
+   LECTURE I. NICHOLAS THE PISAN
+  LECTURE II. JOHN THE PISAN
+ LECTURE III. SHIELD AND APRON
+  LECTURE IV. PARTED PER PALE
+   LECTURE V. PAX VOBISCUM
+  LECTURE VI. MARBLE COUCHANT
+ LECTURE VII. MARBLE RAMPANT
+LECTURE VIII. FRANCHISE  LECTURE IX. THE TYRRHENE SEA
+   LECTURE X. FLEUR DE LYS
+              APPENDIX
+
+
+
+
+               LIST OF PLATES.
+
+
+    THE ANCIENT SHORES OF ARNO
+
+
+    I. THE PISAN LATONA
+   II. NICCOLA PISANO'S PULPIT
+  III. THE FOUNTAIN OF PERUGIA
+   IV. NORMAN IMAGERY
+    V. DOOR OF THE BAPTISTERY. PISA
+   VI. THE STORY OF ST. JOHN. ADVENT
+  VII.  "    "   "   "    "   DEPARTURE
+ VIII. "THE CHARGE TO ADAM" GIOVANNI PISANO
+   IX.   "     "    "   "   MODERN ITALIAN
+    X. THE NATIVITY. GIOVANNI PISANO
+   XI.  "     "      MODERN ITALIAN
+  XII. THE ANNUNCIATION AND VISITATION
+
+
+
+
+                VAL D'ARNO
+
+               TEN LECTURES
+
+                   ON
+
+THE TUSCAN ART DIRECTLY ANTECEDENT TO THE FLORENTINE
+            YEAR OF VICTORIES
+
+
+GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD IN MICHAELMAS
+               TERM, 1873
+
+
+
+
+                 LECTURE I.
+
+              NICHOLAS THE PISAN.
+
+1. On this day, of this month, the 20th of October, six hundred and
+twenty-three years ago, the merchants and tradesmen of Florence met
+before the church of Santa Croce; marched through the city to the palace
+of their Podesta; deposed their Podesta; set over themselves, in his
+place, a knight belonging to an inferior city; called him "Captain of
+the People;" appointed under him a Signory of twelve Ancients chosen
+from among themselves; hung a bell for him on the tower of the Lion,
+that he might ring it at need, and gave him the flag of Florence to
+bear, half white, and half red.
+
+The first blow struck upon the bell in that tower of the Lion began
+the tolling for the passing away of the feudal system, and began the
+joy-peal, or carillon, for whatever deserves joy, in that of our modern
+liberties, whether of action or of trade.
+
+2. Within the space of our Oxford term from that day, namely, on the
+13th of December in the same year, 1250, died, at Ferentino, in Apulia,
+the second Frederick, Emperor of Germany; the second also of the two
+great lights which in his lifetime, according to Dante's astronomy,
+ruled the world,--whose light being quenched, "the land which was once
+the residence of courtesy and valour, became the haunt of all men who
+are ashamed to be near the good, or to speak to them."
+
+          "In sul paese chadice e po riga
+           solea valore e cortesia trovar si
+           prima che federigo Bavessi briga,
+           or puo sicuramente indi passarsi
+           per qualuuche lasciassi per vergogna
+           di ragionar co buoni, e appressarsi."
+                           PURO., Cant. 16.
+
+
+3. The "Paese che Adice e Po riga" is of course Lombardy; and might have
+been enough distinguished by the name of its principal river. But Dante
+has an especial reason for naming the Adige. It is always by the valley
+of the Adige that the power of the German Caesars descends on Italy; and
+that battlemented bridge, which doubtless many of you remember, thrown
+over the Adige at Verona, was so built that the German riders might have
+secure and constant access to the city. In which city they had their
+first stronghold in Italy, aided therein by the great family of the
+Montecchi, Montacutes, Mont-aigu-s, or Montagues; lords, so called, of
+the mountain peaks; in feud with the family of the Cappelletti,--hatted,
+or, more properly, scarlet-hatted, persons. And this accident of
+nomenclature, assisted by your present familiar knowledge of the real
+contests of the sharp mountains with the flat caps, or petasoi, of
+cloud, (locally giving Mont Pilate its title, "Pileatus,") may in many
+points curiously illustrate for you that contest of Frederick the Second
+with Innocent the Fourth, which in the good of it and the evil alike,
+represents to all time the war of the solid, rational, and earthly
+authority of the King, and State, with the more or less spectral,
+hooded, imaginative, and nubiform authority of the Pope, and Church.
+
+4. It will be desirable also that you clearly learn the material
+relations, governing spiritual ones,--as of the Alps to their clouds,
+so of the plains to their rivers. And of these rivers, chiefly note the
+relation to each other, first, of the Adige and Po; then of the Arno
+and Tiber. For the Adige, representing among the rivers and fountains of
+waters the channel of Imperial, as the Tiber of the Papal power, and the
+strength of the Coronet being founded on the white peaks that look down
+upon Hapsburg and Hohenzollern, as that of the Scarlet Cap in the marsh
+of the Campagna, "quo tenuis in sicco aqua destituisset," the study of
+the policies and arts of the cities founded in the two great valleys of
+Lombardy and Tuscany, so far as they were affected by their bias to the
+Emperor, or the Church, will arrange itself in your minds at once in
+a symmetry as clear as it will be, in our future work, secure and
+suggestive.
+
+5. "Tenuis, in sicco." How literally the words apply, as to the native
+streams, so to the early states or establishings of the great cities of
+the world. And you will find that the policy of the Coronet, with its
+tower-building; the policy of the Hood, with its dome-building; and
+the policy of the bare brow, with its cot-building,--the three main
+associations of human energy to which we owe the architecture of
+our earth, (in contradistinction to the dens and caves of it,)--are
+curiously and eternally governed by mental laws, corresponding to the
+physical ones which are ordained for the rocks, the clouds, and the
+streams.
+
+The tower, which many of you so well remember the daily sight of, in
+your youth, above the "winding shore" of Thames,--the tower upon
+the hill of London; the dome which still rises above its foul and
+terrestrial clouds; and the walls of this city itself, which has been
+"alma," nourishing in gentleness, to the youth of England, because
+defended from external hostility by the difficultly fordable streams of
+its plain, may perhaps, in a few years more, be swept away as heaps of
+useless stone; but the rocks, and clouds, and rivers of our country will
+yet, one day, restore to it the glory of law, of religion, and of life.
+
+6. I am about to ask you to read the hieroglyphs upon the architecture
+of a dead nation, in character greatly resembling our own,--in laws
+and in commerce greatly influencing our own;--in arts, still, from her
+grave, tutress of the present world. I know that it will be expected of
+me to explain the merits of her arts, without reference to the wisdom of
+her laws; and to describe the results of both, without investigating the
+feelings which regulated either. I cannot do this; but I will at once
+end these necessarily vague, and perhaps premature, generalizations;
+and only ask you to study some portions of the life and work of two men,
+father and son, citizens of the city in which the energies of this great
+people were at first concentrated; and to deduce from that study
+the conclusions, or follow out the inquiries, which it may naturally
+suggest.
+
+7. It is the modern fashion to despise Vasari. He is indeed despicable,
+whether as historian or critic,--not least in his admiration of Michael
+Angelo; nevertheless, he records the traditions and opinions of his day;
+and these you must accurately know, before you can wisely correct. I
+will take leave, therefore, to begin to-day with a sentence from Vasari,
+which many of you have often heard quoted, but of which, perhaps, few
+have enough observed the value.
+
+"Niccola Pisano finding himself under certain Greek sculptors who were
+carving the figures and other intaglio ornaments of the cathedral of
+Pisa, and of the temple of St. John, and there being, among many spoils
+of marbles, brought by the Pisan fleet, [1] some ancient tombs, there
+was one among the others most fair, on which was sculptured the hunting
+of Meleager." [2]
+
+[Footnote 1: "Armata." The proper word for a land army is "esercito."]
+
+[Footnote 2: Vol. i., p. 60, of Mrs. Foster's English translation, to
+which I shall always refer, in order that English students may compare
+the context if they wish. But the pieces of English which I give are
+my own direct translation, varying, it will be found, often, from Mrs.
+Foster's, in minute, but not unimportant, particulars.]
+
+Get the meaning and contents of this passage well into your minds. In
+the gist of it, it is true, and very notable.
+
+8. You are in mid thirteenth century; 1200-1300. The Greek nation has
+been dead in heart upwards of a thousand years; its religion dead, for
+six hundred. But through the wreck of its faith, and death in its heart,
+the skill of its hands, and the cunning of its design, instinctively
+linger. In the centuries of Christian power, the Christians are still
+unable to build but under Greek masters, and by pillage of Greek
+shrines; and their best workman is only an apprentice to the 'Graeculi
+esurientes' who are carving the temple of St. John.
+
+9. Think of it. Here has the New Testament been declared for 1200 years.
+No spirit of wisdom, as yet, has been given to its workmen, except
+that which has descended from the Mars Hill on which St. Paul stood
+contemptuous in pity. No Bezaleel arises, to build new tabernacles,
+unless he has been taught by Daedalus.
+
+10. It is necessary, therefore, for you first to know precisely the
+manner of these Greek masters in their decayed power; the manner
+which Vasari calls, only a sentence before, "That old Greek manner,
+blundering, disproportioned,"--Goffa, e sproporzionata.
+
+"Goffa," the very word which Michael Angelo uses of Perugino. Behold,
+the Christians despising the Dunce Greeks, as the Infidel modernists
+despise the Dunce Christians. [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Compare "Ariadne Floreutina," § 46.]
+
+11. I sketched for you, when I was last at Pisa, a few arches of the
+apse of the duomo, and a small portion of the sculpture of the font of
+the Temple of St. John. I have placed them in your rudimentary series,
+as examples of "quella vecchia maniera Greca, goffa e sproporzionata."
+My own judgment respecting them is,--and it is a judgment founded on
+knowledge which you may, if you choose, share with me, after working
+with me,--that no architecture on this grand scale, so delicately
+skilful in execution, or so daintily disposed in proportion, exists
+elsewhere in the world.
+
+12. Is Vasari entirely wrong then?
+
+No, only half wrong, but very fatally half wrong. There are Greeks, and
+Greeks.
+
+This head with the inlaid dark iris in its eyes, from the font of St.
+John, is as pure as the sculpture of early Greece, a hundred years
+before Phidias; and it is so delicate, that having drawn with equal care
+this and the best work of the Lombardi at Venice (in the church of the
+Miracoli), I found this to possess the more subtle qualities of design.
+And yet, in the cloisters of St. John Lateran at Rome, you have Greek
+work, if not contemporary with this at Pisa, yet occupying a parallel
+place in the history of architecture, which is abortive, and monstrous
+beyond the power of any words to describe. Vasari knew no difference
+between these two kinds of Greek work. Nor do your modern architects.
+To discern the difference between the sculpture of the font of Pisa, and
+the spandrils of the Lateran cloister, requires thorough training of the
+hand in the finest methods of draughtsmanship; and, secondly, trained
+habit of reading the mythology and ethics of design. I simply assure you
+of the fact at present; and if you work, you may have sight and sense of
+it.
+
+13. There are Greeks, and Greeks, then, in the twelfth century,
+differing as much from each other as vice, in all ages, must differ from
+virtue. But in Vasari's sight they are alike; in ours, they must be so,
+as far as regards our present purpose. As men of a school, they are to
+be summed under the general name of 'Byzantines;' their work all alike
+showing specific characters of attenuate, rigid, and in many respects
+offensively unbeautiful, design, to which Vasari's epithets of "goffa,
+e sproporzionata" are naturally applied by all persons trained only in
+modern principles. Under masters, then, of this Byzantine race, Niccola
+is working at Pisa.
+
+14. Among the spoils brought by her fleets from Greece, is a
+sarcophagus, with Meleager's hunt on it, wrought "con bellissima
+maniera," says Vasari.
+
+You may see that sarcophagus--any of you who go to Pisa;--touch it, for
+it is on a level with your hand; study it, as Niccola studied it, to
+your mind's content. Within ten yards of it, stand equally accessible
+pieces of Niccola's own work and of his son's. Within fifty yards of it,
+stands the Byzantine font of the chapel of St. John. Spend but the good
+hours of a single day quietly by these three pieces of marble, and you
+may learn more than in general any of you bring home from an entire
+tour in Italy. But how many of you ever yet went into that temple of St.
+John, knowing what to look for; or spent as much time in the Campo Santo
+of Pisa, as you do in Mr. Ryman's shop on a rainy day?
+
+15. The sarcophagus is not, however, (with Vasari's pardon) in
+'bellissima maniera' by any means. But it is in the classical Greek
+manner instead of the Byzantine Greek manner. You have to learn the
+difference between these.
+
+Now I have explained to you sufficiently, in "Aratra Pentelici," what
+the classical Greek manner is. The manner and matter of it being easily
+summed--as those of natural and unaffected life;--nude life when nudity
+is right and pure; not otherwise. To Niccola, the difference between
+this natural Greek school, and the Byzantine, was as the difference
+between the bull of Thurium and of Delhi, (see Plate 19 of "Aratra
+Pentelici").
+
+Instantly he followed the natural fact, and became the Father of
+Sculpture to Italy.
+
+16. Are we, then, also to be strong by following the natural fact?
+
+Yes, assuredly. That is the beginning and end of all my teaching to you.
+But the noble natural fact, not the ignoble. You are to study men; not
+lice nor entozoa. And you are to study the souls of men in their bodies,
+not their bodies only. Mulready's drawings from the nude are more
+degraded and bestial than the worst grotesques of the Byzantine or even
+the Indian image makers. And your modern mob of English and American
+tourists, following a lamplighter through the Vatican to have pink light
+thrown for them on the Apollo Belvidere, are farther from capacity of
+understanding Greek art, than the parish charity boy, making a ghost out
+of a turnip, with a candle inside.
+
+17. Niccola followed the facts, then. He is the Master of Naturalism
+in Italy. And I have drawn for you his lioness and cubs, to fix that in
+your minds. And beside it, I put the Lion of St. Mark's, that you may
+see exactly the kind of change he made. The Lion of St. Mark's (all
+but his wings, which have been made and fastened on in the fifteenth
+century), is in the central Byzantine manner; a fine decorative piece
+of work, descending in true genealogy from the Lion of Nemea, and the
+crested skin of him that clothes the head of the Heracles of Camarina.
+It has all the richness of Greek Daedal work,--nay, it has fire and
+life beyond much Greek Daedal work; but in so far as it is non-natural,
+symbolic, decorative, and not like an actual lion, it would be felt
+by Niccola Pisano to be imperfect. And instead of this decorative
+evangelical preacher of a lion, with staring eyes, and its paw on
+a gospel, he carves you a quite brutal and maternal lioness, with
+affectionate eyes, and paw set on her cub.
+
+18. Fix that in your minds, then. Niccola Pisano is the Master of
+Naturalism in Italy,--therefore elsewhere; of Naturalism, and all that
+follows. Generally of truth, common-sense, simplicity, vitality,--and of
+all these, with consummate power. A man to be enquired about, is not
+he? and will it not make a difference to you whether you look, when you
+travel in Italy, in his rough early marbles for this fountain of life,
+or only glance at them because your Murray's Guide tells you,--and think
+them "odd old things"?
+
+19. We must look for a moment more at one odd old thing--the sarcophagus
+which was his tutor. Upon it is carved the hunting of Meleager; and it
+was made, or by tradition received as, the tomb of the mother of the
+Countess Matilda. I must not let you pass by it without noticing two
+curious coincidences in these particulars. First, in the Greek subject
+which is given Niccola to read.
+
+The boar, remember, is Diana's enemy. It is sent upon the fields of
+Calydon in punishment of the refusal of the Calydonians to sacrifice
+to her. 'You have refused _me_,' she said; 'you will not have Artemis
+Laphria, Forager Diana, to range in your fields. You shall have the
+Forager Swine, instead.'
+
+Meleager and Atalanta are Diana's servants,--servants of all order,
+purity, due sequence of season, and time. The orbed architecture of
+Tuscany, with its sculptures of the succession of the labouring months,
+as compared with the rude vaults and monstrous imaginations of the past,
+was again the victory of Meleager.
+
+20. Secondly, take what value there is in the tradition that this
+sarcophagus was made the tomb of the mother of the
+
+ [Illustration: PLATE I:--THE PISAN LATONA. Angle of Panel of the
+Adoration, in Niccola's Pulpit.]
+
+Countess Matilda. If you look to the fourteenth chapter of the third
+volume of "Modern Painters," you will find the mythic character of the
+Countess Matilda, as Dante employed it explained at some length. She is
+the representative of Natural Science as opposed to Theological.
+
+21. Chance coincidences merely, these; but full of teaching for us,
+looking back upon the past. To Niccola, the piece of marble was,
+primarily, and perhaps exclusively, an example of free chiselling, and
+humanity of treatment. What else it was to him,--what the spirits
+of Atalanta and Matilda could bestow on him, depended on what he was
+himself. Of which Vasari tells you nothing. Not whether he was gentleman
+or clown--rich or poor--soldier or sailor. Was he never, then, in those
+fleets that brought the marbles back from the ravaged Isles of Greece?
+was he at first only a labourer's boy among the scaffoldings of the
+Pisan apse,--his apron loaded with dust--and no man praising him for his
+speech? Rough he was, assuredly; probably poor; fierce and energetic,
+beyond even the strain of Pisa,--just and kind, beyond the custom of his
+age, knowing the Judgment and Love of God: and a workman, with all his
+soul and strength, all his days.
+
+22. You hear the fame of him as of a sculptor only. It is right that you
+should; for every great architect must be a sculptor, and be renowned,
+as such, more than by his building. But Niccola Pisano had even more
+influence on Italy as a builder than as a carver.
+
+For Italy, at this moment, wanted builders more than carvers; and a
+change was passing through her life, of which external edifice was a
+necessary sign. I complained of you just now that you never looked at
+the Byzantine font in the temple of St. John. The sacristan generally
+will not let you. He takes you to a particular spot on the floor, and
+sings a musical chord. The chord returns in prolonged echo from the
+chapel roof, as if the building were all one sonorous marble bell.
+
+Which indeed it is; and travellers are always greatly amused at being
+allowed to ring this bell; but it never occurs to them to ask how it
+came to be ringable:--how that tintinnabulate roof differs from the dome
+of the Pantheon, expands into the dome of Florence, or declines into the
+whispering gallery of St. Paul's.
+
+23. When you have had full satisfaction of the tintinnabulate roof, you
+are led by the sacristan and Murray to Niccola Pisano's pulpit; which,
+if you have spare time to examine it, you find to have six sides, to be
+decorated with tablets of sculpture, like the sides of the sarcophagus,
+and to be sustained on seven pillars, three of which are themselves
+carried on the backs of as many animals.
+
+All this arrangement had been contrived before Niccola's time, and
+executed again and again. But behold! between the capitals of the
+pillars and the sculptured tablets there are interposed five cusped
+arches, the hollow beneath the pulpit showing dark through their foils.
+You have seen such cusped arches before, you think?
+
+Yes, gentlemen, _you_ have; but the Pisans had _not_. And that
+intermediate layer of the pulpit means--the change, in a word, for all
+Europe, from the Parthenon to Amiens Cathedral. For Italy it means the
+rise of her Gothic dynasty; it means the duomo of Milan instead of the
+temple of Paestum.
+
+24. I say the duomo of Milan, only to put the change well before your
+eyes, because you all know that building so well. The duomo of Milan is
+of entirely bad and barbarous Gothic, but the passion of pinnacle and
+fret is in it, visibly to you, more than in other buildings. It will
+therefore serve to show best what fulness of change this pulpit of
+Niccola Pisano signifies.
+
+In it there is no passion of pinnacle nor of fret. You see the edges of
+it, instead of being bossed, or knopped, or crocketed, are mouldings
+of severest line. No vaulting, no clustered shafts, no traceries, no
+fantasies, no perpendicular flights of aspiration. Steady pillars, each
+of one polished block; useful capitals, one trefoiled arch between them;
+your panel above it; thereon your story of the founder of Christianity.
+The whole standing upon beasts, they being indeed the foundation of us,
+(which Niccola knew far better than Mr. Darwin); Eagle to carry your
+Gospel message--Dove you think it ought to be?
+
+[Illustration: PLATE II.--NICCOLA PISANO'S PULPIT.]
+
+Eagle, says Niccola, and not as symbol of St. John Evangelist only, but
+behold! with prey between its claws. For the Gospel, it is Niccola's
+opinion, is not altogether a message that you may do whatever you like,
+and go straight to heaven. Finally, a slab of marble, cut hollow
+a little to bear your book; space enough for you to speak from at
+ease,--and here is your first architecture of Gothic Christianity!
+
+25. Indignant thunder of dissent from German doctors,--clamour from
+French savants. 'What! and our Treves, and our Strasburg, and our
+Poictiers, and our Chartres! And you call _this_ thing the first
+architecture of Christianity!' Yes, my French and German friends, very
+fine the buildings you have mentioned are; and I am bold to say I love
+them far better than you do, for you will run a railroad through any of
+them any day that you can turn a penny by it. I thank you also, Germans,
+in the name of our Lady of Strasburg, for your bullets and fire; and
+I thank you, Frenchmen, in the name of our Lady of Rouen, for your new
+haberdashers' shops in the Gothic town;--meanwhile have patience with me
+a little, and let me go on.
+
+26. No passion of fretwork, or pinnacle whatever, I said, is in this
+Pisan pulpit. The trefoiled arch itself, pleasant as it is, seems
+forced a little; out of perfect harmony with the rest (see Plate II.).
+Unnatural, perhaps, to Niccola?
+
+Altogether unnatural to him, it is; such a thing never would have come
+into his head, unless some one had shown it him. Once got into his head,
+he puts it to good use; perhaps even he will let this somebody else put
+pinnacles and crockets into his head, or at least, into his son's, in
+a little while. Pinnacles,--crockets,--it may be, even traceries. The
+ground-tier of the baptistery is round-arched, and has no pinnacles;
+but look at its first story. The clerestory of the Duomo of Pisa has no
+traceries, but look at the cloister of its Campo Santo.
+
+27. I pause at the words;--for they introduce a new group of thoughts,
+which presently we must trace farther.
+
+The Holy Field;--field of burial. The "cave of Machpelah which is before
+Mamre," of the Pisans. "There they buried Abraham, and Sarah his wife;
+there they buried Isaac, and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah."
+
+How do you think such a field becomes holy,--how separated, as the
+resting-place of loving kindred, from that other field of blood, bought
+to bury strangers in?
+
+When you have finally succeeded, by your gospel of mammon, in making
+all the men of your own nation not only strangers to each other, but
+enemies; and when your every churchyard becomes therefore a field of the
+stranger, the kneeling hamlet will vainly drink the chalice of God
+in the midst of them. The field will be unholy. No cloisters of noble
+history can ever be built round such an one.
+
+28. But the very earth of this at Pisa was holy, as you know. That
+"armata" of the Tuscan city brought home not only marble and ivory, for
+treasure; but earth,--a fleet's burden,--from the place where there was
+healing of soul's leprosy: and their field became a place of holy tombs,
+prepared for its office with earth from the land made holy by one tomb;
+which all the knighthood of Christendom had been pouring out its life to
+win.
+
+29. I told you just now that this sculpture of Niccola's was the
+beginning of Christian architecture. How do you judge that Christian
+architecture in the deepest meaning of it to differ from all other?
+
+All other noble architecture is for the glory of living gods and men;
+but this is for the glory of death, in God and man. Cathedral, cloister,
+or tomb,--shrine for the body of Christ, or for the bodies of the
+saints. All alike signifying death to this world;--life, other than of
+this world.
+
+Observe, I am not saying how far this feeling, be it faith, or be it
+imagination, is true or false;--I only desire you to note that the power
+of all Christian work begins in the niche of the catacomb and depth
+of the sarcophagus, and is to the end definable as architecture of the
+tomb.
+
+30. Not altogether, and under every condition, sanctioned in doing
+such honour to the dead by the Master of it. Not every grave is by His
+command to be worshipped. Graves there may be--too little guarded, yet
+dishonourable;--"ye are as graves that appear not, and the men that
+walk over them are not aware of them." And graves too much guarded, yet
+dishonourable, "which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but are within
+full of all uncleanness." Or graves, themselves honourable, yet which
+it may be, in us, a crime to adorn. "For they indeed killed them, and ye
+build their sepulchres."
+
+Questions, these, collateral; or to be examined in due time; for the
+present it is enough for us to know that all Christian architecture, as
+such, has been hitherto essentially of tombs.
+
+It has been thought, gentlemen, that there is a fine Gothic revival in
+your streets of Oxford, because you have a Gothic door to your County
+Bank:
+
+Remember, at all events, it was other kind of buried treasure, and
+bearing other interest, which Niccola Pisano's Gothic was set to guard.
+
+
+
+
+                LECTURE II.
+
+               JOHN THE PISAN.
+
+31. I closed my last lecture with the statement, on which I desired to
+give you time for reflection, that Christian architecture was, in its
+chief energy, the adornment of tombs,--having the passionate function of
+doing honour to the dead.
+
+But there is an ethic, or simply didactic and instructive architecture,
+the decoration of which you will find to be normally representative of
+the virtues which are common alike to Christian and Greek. And there
+is a natural tendency to adopt such decoration, and the modes of design
+fitted for it, in civil buildings. [1]
+
+[Footnote: "These several rooms were indicated by symbol and device:
+Victory for the soldier, Hope for the exile, the Muses for the poets,
+Mercury for the artists, Paradise for the preacher."--(Sagacius Gazata,
+of the Palace of Can Grande. I translate only Sismondi's quotation.)]
+
+32. _Civil_, or _civic_, I say, as opposed to military. But again
+observe, there are two kinds of military building. One, the robber's
+castle, or stronghold, out of which he issues to pillage; the other, the
+honest man's castle, or stronghold, into which he retreats from pillage.
+They are much like each other in external forms;--but Injustice,
+or Unrighteousness, sits in the gate of the one, veiled with forest
+branches, (see Giotto's painting of him); and Justice or Righteousness
+_enters_ by the gate of the other, over strewn forest branches. Now, for
+example of this second kind of military architecture, look at Carlyle's
+account of Henry the Fowler, [1] and of his building military towns, or
+burgs, to protect his peasantry. In such function you have the first and
+proper idea of a walled town,--a place into which the pacific country
+people can retire for safety, as the Athenians in the Spartan war.
+Your fortress of this kind is a religious and civil fortress, or burg,
+defended by burgers, trained to defensive war. Keep always this idea of
+the proper nature of a fortified city:--Its walls mean protection,--its
+gates hospitality and triumph. In the language familiar to you, spoken
+of the chief of cities: "Its walls are to be Salvation, and its gates to
+be Praise." And recollect always the inscription over the north gate of
+Siena: "Cor magis tibi Sena pandit."--"More than her gates, Siena opens
+her heart to you."
+
+[Footnote 1: "Frederick," vol. i.]
+
+33. When next you enter London by any of the great lines, I should like
+you to consider, as you approach the city, what the feelings of the
+heart of London are likely to be on your approach, and at what part of
+the railroad station an inscription, explaining such state of her heart,
+might be most fitly inscribed. Or you would still better understand
+the difference between ancient and modern principles of architecture by
+taking a cab to the Elephant and Castle, and thence walking to London
+Bridge by what is in fact the great southern entrance of London. The
+only gate receiving you is, however, the arch thrown over the road to
+carry the South-Eastern Railway itself; and the only exhibition either
+of Salvation or Praise is in the cheap clothes' shops on each side; and
+especially in one colossal haberdasher's shop, over which you may see
+the British flag waving (in imitation of Windsor Castle) when the master
+of the shop is at home. 34. Next to protection from external hostility,
+the two necessities in a city are of food and water supply;--the latter
+essentially constant. You can store food and forage, but water must flow
+freely. Hence the Fountain and the Mercato become the centres of civil
+architecture.
+
+Premising thus much, I will ask you to look once more at this cloister
+of the Campo Santo of Pisa.
+
+35. On first entering the place, its quiet, its solemnity, the
+perspective of its aisles, and the conspicuous grace and precision of
+its traceries, combine to give you the sensation of having entered a
+true Gothic cloister. And if you walk round it hastily, and, glancing
+only at a fresco or two, and the confused tombs erected against them,
+return to the uncloistered sunlight of the piazza, you may quite easily
+carry away with you, and ever afterwards retain, the notion that
+the Campo Santo of Pisa is the same kind of thing as the cloister of
+Westminster Abbey.
+
+36. I will beg you to look at the building, thus photographed, more
+attentively. The "long-drawn aisle" is here, indeed,--but where is the
+"fretted vault"?
+
+A timber roof, simple as that of a country barn, and of which only the
+horizontal beams catch the eye, connects an entirely plain outside wall
+with an interior one, pierced by round-headed openings; in which are
+inserted pieces of complex tracery, as foreign in conception to the rest
+of the work as if the Pisan armata had gone up the Rhine instead of to
+Crete, pillaged South Germany, and cut these pieces of tracery out of
+the windows of some church in an advanced stage of fantastic design at
+Nuremberg or Frankfort.
+
+37. If you begin to question, hereupon, who was the Italian robber,
+whether of marble or thought, and look to your Vasari, you find the
+building attributed to John the Pisan; [1]--and you suppose the son to
+have been so pleased by his father's adoption of Gothic forms that he
+must needs borrow them, in this manner, ready made, from the Germans,
+and thrust them into his round arches, or wherever else they would go.
+
+[Footnote 1: The present traceries are of fifteenth century work,
+founded on Giovanni's design.]
+
+We will look at something more of his work, however, before drawing such
+conclusion.
+
+38. In the centres of the great squares of Siena and Perugia, rose,
+obedient to engineers' art, two perennial fountains Without engineers'
+art, the glens which cleave the sand-rock of Siena flow with living
+water; and still, if there be a hell for the forger in Italy, he
+remembers therein the sweet grotto and green wave of Fonte Branda.
+But on the very summit of the two hills, crested by their great civic
+fortresses, and in the centres of their circuit of walls, rose the two
+guided wells; each in basin of goodly marble, sculptured--at Perugia, by
+John of Pisa, at Siena, by James of Quercia.
+
+39. It is one of the bitterest regrets of my life (and I have many which
+some men would find difficult to bear,) that I never saw, except when I
+was a youth, and then with sealed eyes, Jacopo della Quercia's fountain.
+[1] The Sienese, a little while since, tore it down, and put up a model
+of it by a modern carver. In like manner, perhaps, you will some day
+knock the Elgin marbles to pieces, and commission an Academician to put
+up new ones,--the Sienese doing worse than that (as if the Athenians
+were _themselves_ to break their Phidias' work).
+
+[Footnote 1: I observe that Charles Dickens had the fortune denied to
+me. "The market-place, or great Piazza, is a large square, with a great
+broken-nosed fountain in it." ("Pictures from Italy.")]
+
+But the fountain of John of Pisa, though much injured, and glued
+together with asphalt, is still in its place.
+
+40. I will now read to you what Vasari first says of him, and it. (I.
+67.) "Nicholas had, among other sons, one called John, who, because he
+always followed his father, and, under his discipline, intended (bent
+himself to, with a will,) sculpture and architecture, in a few years
+became not only equal to his father, but in some things superior to him;
+wherefore Nicholas, being now old, retired himself into Pisa, and
+living quietly there, left the government of everything to his son.
+Accordingly, when Pope Urban IV. died in Perugia, sending was made for
+John, who, going there, made the tomb of that Pope of marble, the which,
+together with that of Pope Martin IV., was afterwards thrown down, when
+the Perugians
+
+[Illustration: PLATE III.--THE FOUNTAIN OF PERUGIA.]
+
+enlarged their vescovado; so that only a few relics are seen sprinkled
+about the church. And the Perugians, having at the same time brought
+from the mountain of Pacciano, two miles distant from the city, through
+canals of lead, a most abundant water, by means of the invention and
+industry of a friar of the order of St. Silvester, it was given to John
+the Pisan to make all the ornaments of this fountain, as well of bronze
+as of marble. On which he set hand to it, and made there three orders
+of vases, two of marble and one of bronze. The first is put upon twelve
+degrees of twelve-faced steps; the second is upon some columns which
+put it upon a level with the first one;" (that is, in the middle of it,)
+"and the third, which is of bronze, rests upon three figures which have
+in the middle of them some griffins, of bronze too, which pour water out
+on every side."
+
+41. Many things we have to note in this passage, but first I will show
+you the best picture I can of the thing itself.
+
+The best I can; the thing itself being half destroyed, and what remains
+so beautiful that no one can now quite rightly draw it; but Mr. Arthur
+Severn, (the son of Keats's Mr. Severn,) was with me, looking reverently
+at those remains, last summer, and has made, with help from the sun,
+this sketch for you (Plate III.); entirely true and effective as far as
+his time allowed.
+
+Half destroyed, or more, I said it was,--Time doing grievous work on it,
+and men worse. You heard Vasari saying of it, that it stood on twelve
+degrees of twelve-faced steps. These--worn, doubtless, into little
+more than a rugged slope--have been replaced by the moderns with four
+circular steps, and an iron railing; [1] the bas-reliefs have been
+carried off from the panels of the second vase, and its fair marble lips
+choked with asphalt:--of what remains, you have here a rough but true
+image.
+
+[Footnote 1: In Mr. Severn's sketch, the form of the original foundation
+is approximately restored.]
+
+In which you see there is not a trace of Gothic feeling or design of any
+sort. No crockets, no pinnacles, no foils, no vaultings, no grotesques
+in sculpture. Panels between pillars, panels carried on pillars,
+sculptures in those panels like the Metopes of the Parthenon; a Greek
+vase in the middle, and griffins in the middle of that. Here is your
+font, not at all of Saint John, but of profane and civil-engineering
+John. This is _his_ manner of baptism of the town of Perugia.
+
+42. Thus early, it seems, the antagonism of profane Greek to
+ecclesiastical Gothic declares itself. It seems as if in Perugia, as in
+London, you had the fountains in Trafalgar Square against Queen Elinor's
+Cross; or the viaduct and railway station contending with the Gothic
+chapel, which the master of the large manufactory close by has erected,
+because he thinks pinnacles and crockets have a pious influence; and
+will prevent his workmen from asking for shorter hours, or more wages.
+
+43. It _seems_ only; the antagonism is quite of another kind,--or,
+rather, of many other kinds. But note at once how complete it is--how
+utterly this Greek fountain of Perugia, and the round arches of Pisa,
+are opposed to the school of design which gave the trefoils to Niccola's
+pulpit, and the traceries to Giovanni's Campo Santo.
+
+The antagonism, I say, is of another kind than ours; but deep and wide;
+and to explain it, I must pass for a time to apparently irrelevant
+topics.
+
+You were surprised, I hope, (if you were attentive enough to catch the
+points in what I just now read from Vasari,) at my venturing to bring
+before you, just after I had been using violent language against the
+Sienese for breaking up the work of Quercia, that incidental sentence
+giving account of the much more disrespectful destruction, by the
+Perugians, of the tombs of Pope Urban IV., and Martin IV.
+
+Sending was made for John, you see, first, when Pope Urban IV. died in
+Perugia--whose tomb was to be carved by John; the Greek fountain being a
+secondary business. But the tomb was so well destroyed, afterwards, that
+only a few relics remained scattered here and there.
+
+The tomb, I have not the least doubt, was Gothic;--and the breaking of
+it to pieces was not in order to restore it afterwards, that a living
+architect might get the job of restoration. Here is a stone out of one
+of Giovanni Pisano's loveliest Gothic buildings, which I myself saw with
+my own eyes dashed out, that a modern builder might be paid for putting
+in another. But Pope Urban's tomb was not destroyed to such end. There
+was no qualm of the belly, driving the hammer,--qualm of the conscience
+probably; at all events, a deeper or loftier antagonism than one on
+points of taste, or economy.
+
+44. You observed that I described this Greek profane manner of design
+as properly belonging to _civil_ buildings, as opposed not only
+to ecclesiastical buildings, but to military ones. Justice, or
+Righteousness, and Veracity, are the characters of Greek art. These
+_may_ be opposed to religion, when religion becomes fantastic; but they
+_must_ be opposed to war, when war becomes unjust. And if, perchance,
+fantastic religion and unjust war happen to go hand in hand, your Greek
+artist is likely to use his hammer against them spitefully enough.
+
+45. His hammer, or his Greek fire. Hear now this example of the
+engineering ingenuities of our Pisan papa, in his younger days.
+
+"The Florentines having begun, in Niccola's time, to throw down many
+towers, which had been built in a barbarous manner through the whole
+city; either that the people might be less hurt, by their means, in the
+fights that often took place between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, or
+else that there might be greater security for the State, it appeared
+to them that it would be very difficult to ruin the Tower of the
+Death-watch, which was in the place of St. John, because it had its
+walls built with such a grip in them that the stones could not be
+stirred with the pickaxe, and also because it was of the loftiest;
+whereupon Nicholas, causing the tower to be cut, at the foot of it, all
+the length of one of its sides; and closing up the cut, as he made it,
+with short (wooden) under-props, about a yard long, and setting fire
+to them, when the props were burned, the tower fell, and broke itself
+nearly all to pieces: which was held a thing so ingenious and so useful
+for such affairs, that it has since passed into a custom, so that when
+it is needful, in this easiest manner, any edifice may be thrown down."
+
+46. 'When it is needful.' Yes; but when is that? If instead of the
+towers of the Death-watch in the city, one could ruin the towers of the
+Death-watch of evil pride and evil treasure in men's hearts, there would
+be need enough for such work both in Florence and London. But the walls
+of those spiritual towers have still stronger 'grip' in them, and are
+fireproof with a vengeance.
+
+        "Le mure me parean die ferro fosse,
+         . . . e el mi dixe, il fuoco eterno
+         Chentro laffoca, le dimostra rosse."
+
+
+But the towers in Florence, shattered to fragments by this ingenious
+engineer, and the tombs in Perugia, which his son will carve, only
+that they also may be so well destroyed that only a few relics remain,
+scattered up and down the church,--are these, also, only the iron
+towers, and the red-hot tombs, of the city of Dis?
+
+Let us see.
+
+47. In order to understand the relation of the tradesmen and working
+men, including eminently the artist, to the general life of the
+thirteenth century, I must lay before you the clearest elementary charts
+I can of the course which the fates of Italy were now appointing for
+her.
+
+My first chart must be geographical. I want you to have a clearly
+dissected and closely fitted notion of the natural boundaries of her
+states, and their relations to surrounding ones. Lay hold first, firmly,
+of your conception of the valleys of the Po and the Arno, running
+counter to each other--opening east and opening west,--Venice at the end
+of the one, Pisa at the end of the other.
+
+48. These two valleys--the hearts of Lombardy and Etruria--virtually
+contain the life of Italy. They are entirely different in character:
+Lombardy, essentially luxurious and worldly, at this time rude in art,
+but active; Etruria, religious, intensely imaginative, and inheriting
+refined forms of art from before the days of Porsenna.
+
+49. South of these, in mid-Italy, you have Romagna,--the valley of
+the Tiber. In that valley, decayed Rome, with her lust of empire
+inextinguishable;--no inheritance of imaginative art, nor power of it;
+dragging her own ruins hourly into more fantastic ruin, and defiling her
+faith hourly with more fantastic guilt.
+
+South of Romagna, you have the kingdoms of Calabria and Sicily,---Magna
+Graecia, and Syracuse, in decay;----strange spiritual fire from the
+Saracenic east still lighting the volcanic land, itself laid all in
+ashes.
+
+50. Conceive Italy then always in these four masses: Lombardy, Etruria,
+Romagna, Calabria.
+
+Now she has three great external powers to deal with: the western,
+France--the northern, Germany--the eastern, Arabia. On her right the
+Frank; on her left the Saracen; above her, the Teuton. And roughly, the
+French are a religious chivalry; the Germans a profane chivalry; the
+Saracens an infidel chivalry. What is best of each is benefiting Italy;
+what is worst, afflicting her. And in the time we are occupied with, all
+are afflicting her.
+
+What Charlemagne, Barbarossa, or Saladin did to teach her, you can trace
+only by carefullest thought. But in this thirteenth century all these
+three powers are adverse to her, as to each other. Map the methods of
+their adversity thus:---
+
+51. Germany, (profane chivalry,) is vitally adverse to the Popes;
+endeavouring to establish imperial and knightly power against theirs. It
+is fiercely, but frankly, covetous of Italian territory, seizes all it
+can of Lombardy and Calabria, and with any help procurable either from
+robber Christians or robber Saracens, strives, in an awkward manner, and
+by open force, to make itself master of Rome, and all Italy.
+
+52. France, all surge and foam of pious chivalry, lifts herself in
+fitful rage of devotion, of avarice, and of pride. She is the natural
+ally of the church; makes her own monks the proudest of the Popes;
+raises Avignon into another Rome; prays and pillages insatiably; pipes
+pastoral songs of innocence, and invents grotesque variations of crime;
+gives grace to the rudeness of England, and venom to the cunning of
+Italy. She is a chimera among nations, and one knows not whether to
+admire most the valour of Guiscard, the virtue of St. Louis or the
+villany of his brother.
+
+53. The Eastern powers--Greek, Israelite, Saracen--are at once the
+enemies of the Western, their prey, and their tutors.
+
+They bring them methods of ornament and of merchandise, and stimulate in
+them the worst conditions of pugnacity, bigotry, and rapine. That is
+the broad geographical and political relation of races. Next, you must
+consider the conditions of their time.
+
+54. I told you, in my second lecture on Engraving, that before the
+twelfth century the nations were too savage to be Christian, and after
+the fifteenth too carnal to be Christian.
+
+The delicacy of sensation and refinements of imagination necessary to
+understand Christianity belong to the mid period when men risen from a
+life of brutal hardship are not yet fallen to one of brutal luxury. You
+can neither comprehend the character of Christ while you are chopping
+flints for tools, and gnawing raw bones for food; nor when you have
+ceased to do anything with either tools or hands, and dine on gilded
+capons. In Dante's lines, beginning
+
+     "I saw Bellincion Berti walk abroad
+      In leathern girdle, with a clasp of bone,"
+
+
+you have the expression of his sense of the increasing luxury of the
+age, already sapping its faith. But when Bellincion Berti walked abroad
+in skins not yet made into leather, and with the bones of his dinner in
+a heap at his door, instead of being cut into girdle clasps, he was just
+as far from capacity of being a Christian.
+
+55. The following passage, from Carlyle's "Chartism," expresses better
+than any one else has done, or is likely to do it, the nature of this
+Christian era, (extending from the twelfth to the sixteenth century,) in
+England,--the like being entirely true of it elsewhere:--
+
+"In those past silent centuries, among those silent classes, much had
+been going on. Not only had red deer in the New and other forests been
+got preserved and shot; and treacheries [1] of Simon de Montfort, wars
+of Red and White Roses, battles of Crecy, battles of Bosworth, and many
+other battles, been got transacted and adjusted; but England wholly,
+not without sore toil and aching bones to the millions of sires and
+the millions of sons of eighteen generations, had been got drained and
+tilled, covered with yellow harvests, beautiful and rich in possessions.
+The mud-wooden Caesters and Chesters had become steepled, tile-roofed,
+compact towns. Sheffield had taken to the manufacture of Sheffield
+whittles. Worstead could from wool spin yarn, and knit or weave the same
+into stockings or breeches for men. England had property valuable to the
+auctioneer; but the accumulate manufacturing, commercial, economic
+skill which lay impalpably warehoused in English hands and heads, what
+auctioneer could estimate?
+
+[Footnote 1: Perhaps not altogether so, any more than Oliver's dear
+papa Carlyle. We may have to read _him_ also, otherwise than the British
+populace have yet read, some day.]
+
+"Hardly an Englishman to be met with but could do something; some
+cunninger thing than break his fellow-creature's head with battle-axes.
+The seven incorporated trades, with their million guild-brethren, with
+their hammers, their shuttles, and tools, what an army,--fit to conquer
+that land of England, as we say, and hold it conquered! Nay, strangest
+of all, the English people had acquired the faculty and habit of
+thinking,--even of believing; individual conscience had unfolded itself
+among them;--Conscience, and Intelligence its handmaid. [1] Ideas
+of innumerable kinds were circulating among these men; witness one
+Shakspeare, a wool-comber, poacher or whatever else, at Stratford, in
+Warwickshire, who happened to write books!--the finest human figure,
+as I apprehend, that Nature has hitherto seen fit to make of our widely
+Teutonic clay. Saxon, Norman, Celt, or Sarmat, I find no human soul
+so beautiful, these fifteen hundred known years;--our supreme modern
+European man. Him England had contrived to realize: were there not
+ideas?
+
+[Footnote 1: Observe Carlyle's order of sequence. Perceptive Reason is
+the Handmaid of Conscience, not Conscience hers. If you resolve to do
+right, you will soon do wisely; but resolve only to do wisely, and you
+will never do right.]
+
+"Ideas poetic and also Puritanic, that had to seek utterance in the
+notablest way! England had got her Shakspeare, but was now about to get
+her Milton and Oliver Cromwell. This, too, we will call a new expansion,
+hard as it might be to articulate and adjust; this, that a man could
+actually have a conscience for his own behoof, and not for his priest's
+only; that his priest, be he who he might, would henceforth have to take
+that fact along with him."
+
+56. You observe, in this passage, account is given you of two
+things--(A) of the development of a powerful class of tradesmen and
+artists; and, (B) of the development of an individual conscience.
+
+In the savage times you had simply the hunter, digger, and robber; now
+you have also the manufacturer and salesman. The ideas of ingenuity
+with the hand, of fairness in exchange, have occurred to us. We can do
+something now with our fingers, as well as with our fists; and if we
+want our neighbours' goods, we will not simply carry them off, as of
+old, but offer him some of ours in exchange.
+
+57. Again; whereas before we were content to let our priests do for us
+all they could, by gesticulating, dressing, sacrificing, or beating of
+drums and blowing of trumpets; and also direct our steps in the way of
+life, without any doubt on our part of their own perfect acquaintance
+with it,--we have now got to do something for ourselves--to think
+something for ourselves; and thus have arrived in straits of conscience
+which, so long as we endeavour to steer through them honestly, will be
+to us indeed a quite secure way of life, and of all living wisdom.
+
+58. Now the centre of this new freedom of thought is in Germany; and the
+power of it is shown first, as I told you in my opening lecture, in the
+great struggle of Frederick II. with Rome. And German freedom of thought
+had certainly made some progress, when it had managed to reduce the Pope
+to disguise himself as a soldier, ride out of Rome by moonlight, and
+gallop his thirty-four miles to the seaside before
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IV.--NORMAN IMAGERY.]
+
+summer dawn. Here, clearly, is quite a new state of things for the Holy
+Father of Christendom to consider, during such wholesome horse-exercise.
+
+59. Again; the refinements of new art are represented by
+France--centrally by St. Louis with his Sainte Chapelle. Happily, I am
+able to lay on your table to-day--having placed it three years ago in
+your educational series--a leaf of a Psalter, executed for St. Louis
+himself. He and his artists are scarcely out of their savage life yet,
+and have no notion of adorning the Psalms better than by pictures of
+long-necked cranes, long-eared rabbits, long-tailed lions, and red and
+white goblins putting their tongues out. [1] But in refinement of touch,
+in beauty of colour, in the human faculties of order and grace, they are
+long since, evidently, past the flint and bone stage,--refined enough,
+now,--subtle enough, now, to learn anything that is pretty and fine,
+whether in theology or any other matter.
+
+[Footnote 1: I cannot go to the expense of engraving this most subtle
+example; but Plate IV. shows the average conditions of temper and
+imagination in religious ornamental work of the time.]
+
+60. Lastly, the new principle of Exchange is represented by Lombardy and
+Venice, to such purpose that your Merchant and Jew of Venice, and your
+Lombard of Lombard Street, retain some considerable influence on your
+minds, even to this day.
+
+And in the exact midst of all such transition, behold, Etruria with her
+Pisans--her Florentines,--receiving, resisting, and reigning over all:
+pillaging the Saracens of their marbles--binding the French bishops
+in silver chains;--shattering the towers of German tyranny into
+small pieces,--building with strange jewellery the belfry tower for
+newly-conceived Christianity;--and, in sacred picture, and sacred song,
+reaching the height, among nations, most passionate, and most pure.
+
+I must close my lecture without indulging myself yet, by addition
+of detail; requesting you, before we next meet, to fix these general
+outlines in your minds, so that, without disturbing their distinctness,
+I may trace in the sequel the relations of Italian Art to these
+political and religious powers; and determine with what force of
+passionate sympathy, or fidelity of resigned obedience, the Pisan
+artists, father and son, executed the indignation of Florence and
+fulfilled the piety of Orvieto.
+
+
+
+
+
+               LECTURE III.
+
+              SHIELD AND APRON.
+
+61. I laid before you, in my last lecture, first lines of the chart of
+Italian history in the thirteenth century, which I hope gradually to
+fill with colour, and enrich, to such degree as may be sufficient for
+all comfortable use. But I indicated, as the more special subject of our
+immediate study, the nascent power of liberal thought, and liberal art,
+over dead tradition and rude workmanship.
+
+To-day I must ask you to examine in greater detail the exact relation of
+this liberal art to the illiberal elements which surrounded it.
+
+62. You do not often hear me use that word "Liberal" in any favourable
+sense. I do so now, because I use it also in a very narrow and exact
+sense. I mean that the thirteenth century is, in Italy's year of life,
+her 17th of March. In the light of it, she assumes her toga virilis; and
+it is sacred to her god Liber.
+
+63. To her god _Liber_,--observe: not Dionusos, still less Bacchus, but
+her own ancient and simple deity. And if you have read with some care
+the statement I gave you, with Carlyle's help, of the moment and
+manner of her change from savageness to dexterity, and from rudeness to
+refinement of life, you will hear, familiar as the lines are to you, the
+invocation in the first Georgic with a new sense of its meaning:--
+
+        "Vos, O clarissima mundi
+    Lumina, labentem coelo quae ducitis annum,
+    Liber, et alma Ceres; vestro si munere tellus
+    Chaoniam pingui glandem mutavit arista,
+    Poculaqu' inventis Acheloia miscuit uvis,
+    Munera vestra cano."
+
+
+These gifts, innocent, rich, full of life, exquisitely beautiful in
+order and grace of growth, I have thought best to symbolize to you,
+in the series of types of the power of the Greek gods, placed in your
+educational series, by the blossom of the wild strawberry; which in
+rising from its trine cluster of trine leaves,--itself as beautiful as
+a white rose, and always single on its stalk, like an ear of corn, yet
+with a succeeding blossom at its side, and bearing a fruit which is as
+distinctly a group of seeds as an ear of corn itself, and yet is the
+pleasantest to taste of all the pleasant things prepared by nature
+for the food of men, [1]--may accurately symbolize, and help you to
+remember, the conditions of this liberal and delightful, yet entirely
+modest and orderly, art, and thought.
+
+[Footnote 1: I am sorry to pack my sentences together in this confused
+way. But I have much to say; and cannot always stop to polish or adjust
+it as I used to do.]
+
+64. You will find in the fourth of my inaugural lectures, at the 98th
+paragraph, this statement,--much denied by modern artists and authors,
+but nevertheless quite unexceptionally true,--that the entire vitality
+of art depends upon its having for object either to _state a true
+thing_, or _adorn a serviceable one_. The two functions of art in Italy,
+in this entirely liberal and virescent phase of it,--virgin art, we
+may call it, retaining the most literal sense of the words virga and
+virgo,--are to manifest the doctrines of a religion which now, for the
+first time, men had soul enough to understand; and to adorn edifices
+or dress, with which the completed politeness of daily life might be
+invested, its convenience completed, and its decorous and honourable
+pride satisfied.
+
+65. That pride was, among the men who gave its character to the century,
+in honourableness of private conduct, and useful magnificence of public
+art. Not of private or domestic art: observe this very particularly.
+
+"Such was the simplicity of private manners,"--(I am now quoting
+Sismondi, but with the fullest ratification that my knowledge enables
+me to give,)--"and the economy of the richest citizens, that if a city
+enjoyed repose only for a few years, it doubled its revenues, and found
+itself, in a sort, encumbered with its riches. The Pisans knew neither
+of the luxury of the table, nor that of furniture, nor that of a number
+of servants; yet they were sovereigns of the whole of Sardinia, Corsica,
+and Elba, had colonies at St. Jean d'Acre and Constantinople, and their
+merchants in those cities carried on the most extended commerce with the
+Saracens and Greeks." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Sismondi; French translation, Brussels, 1838; vol. ii., p.
+275.]
+
+66. "And in that time," (I now give you my own translation of Giovanni
+Villani,) "the citizens of Florence lived sober, and on coarse meats,
+and at little cost; and had many customs and playfulnesses which were
+blunt and rude; and they dressed themselves and their wives with coarse
+cloth; many wore merely skins, with no lining, and _all_ had only
+leathern buskins; [1] and the Florentine ladies, plain shoes and
+stockings with no ornaments; and the best of them were content with
+a close gown of coarse scarlet of Cyprus, or camlet girded with an
+old-fashioned clasp-girdle; and a mantle over all, lined with vaire,
+with a hood above; and that, they threw over their heads. The women of
+lower rank were dressed in the same manner, with coarse green Cambray
+cloth; fifty pounds was the ordinary bride's dowry, and a hundred or
+a hundred and fifty would in those times have been held brilliant,
+('isfolgorata,' dazzling, with sense of dissipation or extravagance;)
+and most maidens were twenty or more before they married. Of such gross
+customs were then the Florentines; but of good faith, and loyal among
+themselves and in their state; and in their coarse life, and poverty,
+did more and braver things than are done in our days with more
+refinement and riches."
+
+[Footnote 1: I find this note for expansion on the margin of my lecture,
+but had no time to work it out:--'This lower class should be either
+barefoot, or have strong shoes--wooden clogs good. Pretty Boulogne
+sabot with purple stockings. Waterloo Road--little girl with her hair
+in curlpapers,--a coral necklace round her neck--the neck bare--and her
+boots of thin stuff, worn out, with her toes coming through, and rags
+hanging from her heels,--a profoundly accurate type of English national
+and political life. Your hair in curlpapers--borrowing tongs from every
+foreign nation, to pinch you into manners. The rich ostentatiously
+wearing coral about the bare neck; and the poor--cold as the stones and
+indecent.']
+
+67. I detain you a moment at the words "scarlet of Cyprus, or camlet."
+
+Observe that camelot (camelet) from _kamaelotae_, camel's skin, is a
+stuff made of silk and camel's hair originally, afterwards of silk and
+wool. At Florence, the camel's hair would always have reference to the
+Baptist, who, as you know, in Lippi's picture, wears the camel's
+skin itself, made into a Florentine dress, such as Villani has just
+described, "col tassello sopra," with the hood above. Do you see how
+important the word "Capulet" is becoming to us, in its main idea?
+
+68. Not in private nor domestic art, therefore, I repeat to you, but
+in useful magnificence of public art, these citizens expressed their
+pride:--and that public art divided itself into two branches--civil,
+occupied upon ethic subjects of sculpture and painting; and religious,
+occupied upon scriptural or traditional histories, in treatment of
+which, nevertheless, the nascent power and liberality of thought were
+apparent, not only in continual amplification and illustration of
+scriptural story by the artist's own invention, but in the acceptance
+of profane mythology, as part of the Scripture, or tradition, given by
+Divine inspiration.
+
+69. Nevertheless, for the provision of things necessary in domestic
+life, there developed itself, together with the group of inventive
+artists exercising these nobler functions, a vast body of craftsmen,
+and, literally, _man_ufacturers, workers by hand, who associated
+themselves, as chance, tradition, or the accessibility of material
+directed, in towns which thenceforward occupied a leading position in
+commerce, as producers of a staple of excellent, or perhaps inimitable,
+quality; and the linen or cambric of Cambray, the lace of Mechlin,
+the wool of Worstead, and the steel of Milan, implied the tranquil and
+hereditary skill of multitudes, living in wealthy industry, and humble
+honour.
+
+70. Among these artisans, the weaver, the ironsmith, the goldsmith, the
+carpenter, and the mason necessarily took the principal rank, and on
+their occupations the more refined arts were wholesomely based, so that
+the five businesses may be more completely expressed thus:
+
+        The weaver and embroiderer,
+        The ironsmith and armourer,
+        The goldsmith and jeweller,
+        The carpenter and engineer,
+        The stonecutter and painter.
+
+
+You have only once to turn over the leaves of Lionardo's sketch book,
+in the Ambrosian Library, to see how carpentry is connected with
+engineering,--the architect was always a stonecutter, and the
+stonecutter not often practically separate, as yet, from the painter,
+and never so in general conception of function. You recollect, at a much
+later period, Kent's description of Cornwall's steward:
+
+"KENT. You cowardly rascal!--nature disclaims in thee, a tailor made
+thee!
+
+CORNWALL. Thou art a strange fellow--a tailor make a man?
+
+KENT. Ay, sir; a stonecutter, or a painter, could not have made him so
+ill; though they had been but two hours at the trade."
+
+71. You may consider then this group of artizans with the merchants, as
+now forming in each town an important Tiers Etat, or Third State of
+the people, occupied in service, first, of the ecclesiastics, who
+in monastic bodies inhabited the cloisters round each church; and,
+secondly, of the knights, who, with their retainers, occupied, each
+family their own fort, in allied defence of their appertaining streets.
+
+72. A Third Estate, indeed; but adverse alike to both the others, to
+Montague as to Capulet, when they become disturbers of the public peace;
+and having a pride of its own,--hereditary still, but consisting in
+the inheritance of skill and knowledge rather than of blood,--which
+expressed the sense of such inheritance by taking its name habitually
+from the master rather than the sire; and which, in its natural
+antagonism to dignities won only by violence, or recorded only by
+heraldry, you may think of generally as the race whose bearing is the
+Apron, instead of the shield.
+
+73. When, however, these two, or in perfect subdivision three, bodies
+of men, lived in harmony,--the knights remaining true to the State, the
+clergy to their faith, and the workmen to their craft,--conditions of
+national force were arrived at, under which all the great art of the
+middle ages was accomplished. The pride of the knights, the avarice of
+the priests, and the gradual abasement of character in the craftsman,
+changing him from a citizen able to wield either tools in peace or
+weapons in war, to a dull tradesman, forced to pay mercenary troops to
+defend his shop door, are the direct causes of common ruin towards the
+close of the sixteenth century.
+
+74. But the deep underlying cause of the decline in national character
+itself, was the exhaustion of the Christian faith. None of its practical
+claims were avouched either by reason or experience; and the imagination
+grew weary of sustaining them in despite of both. Men could not, as
+their powers of reflection became developed, steadily conceive that the
+sins of a life might be done away with, by finishing it with Mary's name
+on the lips; nor could tradition of miracle for ever resist the personal
+discovery, made by each rude disciple by himself, that he might pray to
+all the saints for a twelvemonth together, and yet not get what he asked
+for.
+
+75. The Reformation succeeded in proclaiming that existing Christianity
+was a lie; but substituted no theory of it which could be more
+rationally or credibly sustained; and ever since, the religion of
+educated persons throughout Europe has been dishonest or ineffectual;
+it is only among the labouring peasantry that the grace of a pure
+Catholicism, and the patient simplicities of the Puritan, maintain their
+imaginative dignity, or assert their practical use.
+
+76. The existence of the nobler arts, however, involves the
+harmonious life and vital faith of the three classes whom we have
+just distinguished; and that condition exists, more or less disturbed,
+indeed, by the vices inherent in each class, yet, on the whole,
+energetically and productively, during the twelfth, thirteenth,
+fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. But our present subject being
+Architecture only, I will limit your attention altogether to the state
+of society in the great age of architecture, the thirteenth century.
+A great age in all ways; but most notably so in the correspondence
+it presented, up to a just and honourable point, with the utilitarian
+energy of our own days.
+
+77. The increase of wealth, the safety of industry, and the conception
+of more convenient furniture of life, to which we must attribute the
+rise of the entire artist class, were accompanied, in that century, by
+much enlargement in the conception of useful public works: and--not by
+_private_ enterprise,--that idle persons might get dividends out of the
+public pocket,--but by _public_ enterprise,--each citizen paying down
+at once his share of what was necessary to accomplish the benefit to the
+State,--great architectural and engineering efforts were made for
+the common service. Common, observe; but not, in our present sense,
+republican. One of the most ludicrous sentences ever written in the
+blindness of party spirit is that of Sismondi, in which he declares,
+thinking of these public works only, that 'the architecture of the
+thirteenth century is entirely republican.' The architecture of
+the thirteenth century is, in the mass of it, simply baronial or
+ecclesiastical; it is of castles, palaces, or churches; but it is true
+that splendid civic works were also accomplished by the vigour of the
+newly risen popular power.
+
+"The canal named Naviglio Graude, which brings the waters of the Ticino
+to Milan, traversing a distance of thirty miles, was undertaken in 1179,
+recommended in 1257, and, soon after, happily terminated; in it still
+consists the wealth of a vast extent of Lombardy. At the same time the
+town of Milan rebuilt its walls, which were three miles round, and
+had sixteen marble gates, of magnificence which might have graced the
+capital of all Italy. The Genovese, in 1276 and 1283, built their two
+splendid docks, and the great wall of their quay; and in 1295 finished
+the noble aqueduct which brings pure and abundant waters to their city
+from a great distance among their mountains. There is not a single town
+in Italy which at the same time did not undertake works of this kind;
+and while these larger undertakings were in progress, stone bridges were
+built across the rivers, the streets and piazzas were paved with
+large slabs of stone, and every free government recognized the duty of
+providing for the convenience of the citizens." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Simondi, vol ii. chap. 10.]
+
+78. The necessary consequence of this enthusiasm in useful building, was
+the formation of a vast body of craftsmen and architects; corresponding
+in importance to that which the railway, with its associated industry,
+has developed in modern times, but entirely different in personal
+character, and relation to the body politic.
+
+Their personal character was founded on the accurate knowledge of their
+business in all respects; the ease and pleasure of unaffected invention;
+and the true sense of power to do everything better than it had ever
+been yet done, coupled with general contentment in life, and in its
+vigour and skill.
+
+It is impossible to overrate the difference between such a condition
+of mind, and that of the modern artist, who either does not know his
+business at all, or knows it only to recognize his own inferiority to
+every former workman of distinction.
+
+79. Again: the political relation of these artificers to the State was
+that of a caste entirely separate from the noblesse; [1] paid for their
+daily work what was just, and competing with each other to supply the
+best article they could for the money. And it is, again, impossible to
+overrate the difference between such a social condition, and that of the
+artists of to-day, struggling to occupy a position of equality in wealth
+with the noblesse,--paid irregular and monstrous prices by an entirely
+ignorant and selfish public; and competing with each other to supply the
+worst article they can for the money.
+
+[Footnote 1: The giving of knighthood to Jacopo della Quercia for his
+lifelong service to Siena was not the elevation of a dexterous workman,
+but grace to a faithful citizen.]
+
+I never saw anything so impudent on the walls of any exhibition, in
+any country, as last year in London. It was a daub professing to be a
+"harmony in pink and white" (or some such nonsense;) absolute rubbish,
+and which had taken about a quarter of an hour to scrawl or daub--it
+had no pretence to be called painting. The price asked for it was two
+hundred and fifty guineas.
+
+80. In order to complete your broad view of the elements of social
+power in the thirteenth century, you have now farther to understand the
+position of the country people, who maintained by their labour these
+three classes, whose action you can discern, and whose history you can
+read; while, of those who maintained them, there is no history,
+except of the annual ravage of their fields by contending cities or
+nobles;--and, finally, that of the higher body of merchants, whose
+influence was already beginning to counterpoise the prestige of noblesse
+in Florence, and who themselves constituted no small portion of the
+noblesse of Venice.
+
+The food-producing country was for the most part still possessed by
+the nobles; some by the ecclesiastics; but a portion, I do not know how
+large, was in the hands of peasant proprietors, of whom Sismondi gives
+this, to my mind, completely pleasant and satisfactory, though, to his,
+very painful, account:--
+
+"They took no interest in public affairs; they had assemblies of their
+commune at the village in which the church of their parish was situated,
+and to which they retreated to defend themselves in case of war; they
+had also magistrates of their own choice; but all their interests
+appeared to them enclosed in the circle of their own commonality; they
+did not meddle with general politics, and held it for their point of
+honour to remain faithful, through all revolutions, to the State of
+which they formed a part, obeying, without hesitation, its chiefs,
+whoever they were, and by whatever title they occupied their places."
+
+81. Of the inferior agricultural labourers, employed on the farms of the
+nobles and richer ecclesiastics, I find nowhere due notice, nor does any
+historian seriously examine their manner of life. Liable to every form
+of robbery and oppression, I yet regard their state as not only morally
+but physically happier than that of riotous soldiery, or the lower class
+of artizans, and as the safeguard of every civilized nation, through
+all its worst vicissitudes of folly and crime. Nature has mercifully
+appointed that seed must be sown, and sheep folded, whatever lances
+break, or religions fail; and at this hour, while the streets of
+Florence and Verona are full of idle politicians, loud of tongue,
+useless of hand and treacherous of heart, there still may be seen in
+their market-places, standing, each by his heap of pulse or maize, the
+grey-haired labourers, silent, serviceable, honourable, keeping faith,
+untouched by change, to their country and to Heaven. [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Compare "Sesame and Lilies," sec. 38, p. 58. (P. 86 of the
+small edition of 1882.)]
+
+82. It is extremely difficult to determine in what degree the feelings
+or intelligence of this class influenced the architectural design of the
+thirteenth century;--how far afield the cathedral tower was intended
+to give delight, and to what simplicity of rustic conception Quercia or
+Ghiberti appealed by the fascination of their Scripture history. You may
+at least conceive, at this date, a healthy animation in all men's minds,
+and the children of the vineyard and sheepcote crowding the city on its
+festa days, and receiving impulse to busier, if not nobler, education,
+in its splendour. [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Of detached abbeys, see note on Education of Joan of Arc,
+"Sesame and Lilies," sec. 82, p. 106. (P. 158 of the small edition of
+1882.)]
+
+83. The great class of the merchants is more difficult to define; but
+you may regard them generally as the examples of whatever modes of life
+might be consistent with peace and justice, in the economy of transfer,
+as opposed to the military license of pillage.
+
+They represent the gradual ascendancy of foresight, prudence, and order
+in society, and the first ideas of advantageous national intercourse.
+Their body is therefore composed of the most intelligent and temperate
+natures of the time,--uniting themselves, not directly for the purpose
+of making money, but to obtain stability for equal institutions,
+security of property, and pacific relations with neighbouring states.
+Their guilds form the only representatives of true national
+council, unaffected, as the landed proprietors were, by merely local
+circumstances and accidents.
+
+84. The strength of this order, when its own conduct was upright, and
+its opposition to the military body was not in avaricious cowardice,
+but in the resolve to compel justice and to secure peace, can only
+be understood by you after an examination of the great changes in the
+government of Florence during the thirteenth century, which, among other
+minor achievements interesting to us, led to that destruction of the
+Tower of the Death-watch, so ingeniously accomplished by Niccola Pisano.
+This change, and its results, will be the subject of my next lecture.
+I must to-day sum, and in some farther degree make clear, the facts
+already laid before you.
+
+85. We have seen that the inhabitants of every great Italian state may
+be divided, and that very stringently, into the five classes of knights,
+priests, merchants, artists, and peasants. No distinction exists between
+artist and artizan, except that of higher genius or better conduct; the
+best artist is assuredly also the best artizan; and the simplest workman
+uses his invention and emotion as well as his fingers. The entire body
+of artists is under the orders (as shopmen are under the orders of their
+customers), of the knights, priests, and merchants,--the knights for the
+most part demanding only fine goldsmiths' work, stout armour, and rude
+architecture; the priests commanding both the finest architecture
+and painting, and the richest kinds of decorative dress and
+jewellery,--while the merchants directed works of public use, and were
+the best judges of artistic skill. The competition for the Baptistery
+gates of Florence is before the guild of merchants; nor is their award
+disputed, even in thought, by any of the candidates.
+
+86. This is surely a fact to be taken much to heart by our present
+communities of Liverpool and Manchester. They probably suppose, in their
+modesty, that lords and clergymen are the proper judges of art, and
+merchants can only, in the modern phrase, 'know what they like,' or
+follow humbly the guidance of their golden-crested or flat-capped
+superiors. But in the great ages of art, neither knight nor pope shows
+signs of true power of criticism. The artists crouch before them, or
+quarrel with them, according to their own tempers. To the merchants they
+submit silently, as to just and capable judges. And look what men these
+are, who submit. Donatello, Ghiberti, Quercia, Luca! If men like these
+submit to the merchant, who shall rebel?
+
+87. But the still franker, and surer, judgment of innocent pleasure was
+awarded them by all classes alike: and the interest of the public was
+the _final _rule of right,--that public being always eager to see, and
+earnest to learn. For the stories told by their artists formed, they
+fully believed, a Book of Life; and every man of real genius took up his
+function of illustrating the scheme of human morality and salvation,
+as naturally, and faithfully, as an English mother of to-day giving her
+children their first lessons in the Bible. In this endeavour to teach
+they almost unawares taught themselves; the question "How shall I
+represent this most clearly?" became to themselves, presently, "How was
+this most likely to have happened?" and habits of fresh and accurate
+thought thus quickly enlivened the formalities of the Greek pictorial
+theology; formalities themselves beneficent, because restraining by
+their severity and mystery the wantonness of the newer life. Foolish
+modern critics have seen nothing in the Byzantine school but a
+barbarism to be conquered and forgotten. But that school brought to the
+art-scholars of the thirteenth century, laws which had been serviceable
+to Phidias, and symbols which had been beautiful to Homer: and methods
+and habits of pictorial scholarship which gave a refinement of manner
+to the work of the simplest craftsman, and became an education to
+the higher artists which no discipline of literature can now bestow,
+developed themselves in the effort to decipher, and the impulse to
+re-interpret, the Eleusinian divinity of Byzantine tradition.
+
+88. The words I have just used, "pictorial scholarship," and "pictorial
+theology," remind me how strange it must appear to you that in this
+sketch of the intellectual state of Italy in the thirteenth century I
+have taken no note of literature itself, nor of the fine art of Music
+with which it was associated in minstrelsy. The corruption of the
+meaning of the word "clerk," from "a chosen person" to "a learned one,"
+partly indicates the position of literature in the war between the
+golden crest and scarlet cap; but in the higher ranks, literature and
+music became the grace of the noble's life, or the occupation of the
+monk's, without forming any separate class, or exercising any
+materially visible political power. Masons or butchers might establish
+a government,--but never troubadours: and though a good knight held his
+education to be imperfect unless he could write a sonnet and sing it,
+he did not esteem his castle to be at the mercy of the "editor" of a
+manuscript. He might indeed owe his life to the fidelity of a minstrel,
+or be guided in his policy by the wit of a clown; but he was not the
+slave of sensual music, or vulgar literature, and never allowed his
+Saturday reviewer to appear at table without the cock's comb.
+
+89. On the other hand, what was noblest in thought or saying was in
+those times as little attended to as it is now. I do not feel sure that,
+even in after times, the poem of Dante has had any political effect
+on Italy; but at all events, in his life, even at Verona, where he was
+treated most kindly, he had not half so much influence with Can Grande
+as the rough Count of Castelbarco, not one of whose words was ever
+written, or now remains; and whose portrait, by no means that of a man
+of literary genius, almost disfigures, by its plainness, the otherwise
+grave and perfect beauty of his tomb.
+
+
+
+
+                LECTURE IV.
+
+              PARTED PER PALE.
+
+90. The chart of Italian intellect and policy which I have endeavoured
+to put into form in the last three lectures, may, I hope, have given you
+a clear idea of the subordinate, yet partly antagonistic, position
+which the artist, or merchant,--whom in my present lecture I shall class
+together,--occupied, with respect to the noble and priest. As an honest
+labourer, he was opposed to the violence of pillage, and to the folly
+of pride: as an honest thinker, he was likely to discover any
+latent absurdity in the stories he had to represent in their nearest
+likelihood; and to be himself moved strongly by the true meaning of
+events which he was striving to make ocularly manifest. The painter
+terrified himself with his own fiends, and reproved or comforted himself
+by the lips of his own saints, far more profoundly than any verbal
+preacher; and thus, whether as craftsman or inventor, was likely to
+be foremost in defending the laws of his city, or directing its
+reformation.
+
+91. The contest of the craftsman with the pillaging soldier is typically
+represented by the war of the Lombard League with Frederick II.; and
+that of the craftsman with the hypocritical priest, by the war of the
+Pisans with Gregory IX. (1241). But in the present lecture I wish only
+to fix your attention on the revolutions in Florence, which indicated,
+thus early, the already established ascendancy of the moral forces which
+were to put an end to open robber-soldiership; and at least to compel
+the assertion of some higher principle in war, if not, as in some
+distant day may be possible, the cessation of war itself.
+
+The most important of these revolutions was virtually that of which I
+before spoke to you, taking place in mid-thirteenth century, in the
+year l250,--a very memorable one for Christendom, and the very crisis of
+vital change in its methods of economy, and conceptions of art.
+
+92. Observe, first, the exact relations at that time of Christian and
+Profane Chivalry. St. Louis, in the winter of 1248-9, lay in the isle
+of Cyprus, with his crusading army. He had trusted to Providence for
+provisions; and his army was starving. The profane German emperor,
+Frederick II., was at war with Venice, but gave a safe-conduct to the
+Venetian ships, which enabled them to carry food to Cyprus, and to
+save St. Louis and his crusaders. Frederick had been for half his life
+excommunicate,--and the Pope (Innocent IV.) at deadly spiritual and
+temporal war with him;--spiritually, because he had brought Saracens
+into Apulia; temporally, because the Pope wanted Apulia for himself.
+St. Louis and his mother both wrote to Innocent, praying him to be
+reconciled to the kind heretic who had saved the whole crusading army.
+But the Pope remained implacably thundrous; and Frederick, weary of
+quarrel, stayed quiet in one of his Apulian castles for a year.
+The repose of infidelity is seldom cheerful, unless it be criminal.
+Frederick had much to repent of, much to regret, nothing to hope,
+and nothing to do. At the end of his year's quiet he was attacked by
+dysentery, and so made his final peace with the Pope, and heaven,--aged
+fifty-six.
+
+93. Meantime St. Louis had gone on into Egypt, had got his army
+defeated, his brother killed, and himself carried captive. You may be
+interested in seeing, in the leaf of his psalter which I have laid on
+the table, the death of that brother set down in golden letters, between
+the common letters of ultramarine, on the eighth of February.
+
+94. Providence, defied by Frederick, and trusted in by St. Louis, made
+such arrangements for them both; Providence not in anywise regarding the
+opinions of either king, but very much regarding the facts, that the one
+had no business in Egypt, nor the other in Apulia.
+
+No two kings, in the history of the world, could have been happier, or
+more useful, than these two might have been, if they only had had the
+sense to stay in their own capitals, and attend to their own affairs.
+But they seem only to have been born to show what grievous results,
+under the power of discontented imagination, a Christian could achieve
+by faith, and a philosopher by reason. [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: It must not be thought that this is said in disregard of
+the nobleness of either of these two glorious Kings. Among the many
+designs of past years, one of my favorites was to write a life of
+Frederick II. But I hope that both his, and that of Henry II. of
+England, will soon be written now, by a man who loves them as well as I
+do, and knows them far better.]
+
+95. The death of Frederick II. virtually ended the soldier power
+in Florence; and the mercantile power assumed the authority it
+thenceforward held, until, in the hands of the Medici, it destroyed the
+city.
+
+We will now trace the course and effects of the three revolutions which
+closed the reign of War, and crowned the power of Peace.
+
+96. In the year 1248, while St. Louis was in Cyprus, I told you
+Frederick was at war with Venice. He was so because she stood, if not
+as the leader, at least as the most important ally, of the great Lombard
+mercantile league against the German military power.
+
+That league consisted essentially of Venice, Milan, Bologna, and Genoa,
+in alliance with the Pope; the Imperial or Ghibelline towns were, Padua
+and Verona under Ezzelin; Mantua, Pisa, and Siena. I do not name the
+minor towns of north Italy which associated themselves with each party:
+get only the main localities of the contest well into your minds. It
+was all concentrated in the furious hostility of Genoa and Pisa; Genoa
+fighting really very piously for the Pope, as well as for herself; Pisa
+for her own hand, and for the Emperor as much as suited her. The mad
+little sea falcon never caught sight of another water-bird on the wing,
+but she must hawk at it; and as an ally of the Emperor, balanced Venice
+and Genoa with her single strength. And so it came to pass that the
+victory of either the Guelph or Ghibelline party depended on the final
+action of Florence.
+
+97. Florence meanwhile was fighting with herself, for her own amusement.
+She was nominally at the head of the Guelphic League in Tuscany; but
+this only meant that she hated Siena and Pisa, her southern and western
+neighbours. She had never declared openly against the Emperor. On the
+contrary, she always recognized his authority, in an imaginative manner,
+as representing that of the Caesars. She spent her own energy chiefly in
+street-fighting,--the death of Buondelmonti in 1215 having been the root
+of a series of quarrels among her nobles which gradually took the form
+of contests of honour; and were a kind of accidental tournaments, fought
+to the death, because they could not be exciting or dignified enough on
+any other condition. And thus the manner of life came to be customary,
+which you have accurately, with its consequences, pictured by
+Shakspeare. Samson bites his thumb at Abraham, and presently the streets
+are impassable in battle. The quarrel in the Canongate between the
+Leslies and Seytons, in Scott's 'Abbot,' represents the same temper; and
+marks also, what Shakspeare did not so distinctly, because it would have
+interfered with the domestic character of his play, the connection of
+these private quarrels with political divisions which paralyzed the
+entire body of the State.--Yet these political schisms, in the earlier
+days of Italy, never reached the bitterness of Scottish feud, [1]
+because they were never so sincere. Protestant and Catholic Scotsmen
+faithfully believed each other to be servants of the devil; but the
+Guelph and Ghibelline of Florence each respected, in the other, the
+fidelity to the Emperor, or piety towards the Pope, which he found it
+convenient, for the time, to dispense with in his own person. The street
+fighting was therefore more general, more chivalric, more good-humoured;
+a word of offence set all the noblesse of the town on fire; every one
+rallied to his post; fighting began at once in half a dozen places of
+recognized convenience, but ended in the evening; and, on the following
+day, the leaders determined in contended truce who had fought best,
+buried their dead triumphantly, and better fortified any weak points,
+which the events of the previous day had exposed at their palace
+corners. Florentine dispute was apt to centre itself about the gate of
+St. Peter, [2] the tower of the cathedral, or the fortress-palace of the
+Uberti, (the family of Dante's Bellincion Berti and of Farinata), which
+occupied the site of the present Palazzo Vecchio. But the streets of
+Siena seem to have afforded better barricade practice. They are as steep
+as they are narrow--extremely both; and the projecting stones on their
+palace fronts, which were left, in building, to sustain, on occasion,
+the barricade beams across the streets, are to this day important
+features in their architecture.
+
+[Footnote 1: Distinguish always the personal from the religious feud;
+personal feud is more treacherous and violent in Italy than in Scotland;
+but not the political or religious feud, unless involved with vast
+material interests.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Sismondi, vol. ii., chap. ii.; G. Villani, vi., 33.]
+
+98. Such being the general state of matters in Florence, in this year
+1248, Frederick writes to the Uberti, who headed the Ghibellines,
+to engage them in serious effort to bring the city distinctly to
+the Imperial side. He was besieging Parma; and sent his natural son,
+Frederick, king of Antioch, with sixteen hundred German knights, to give
+the Ghibellines assured preponderance in the next quarrel.
+
+The Uberti took arms before their arrival; rallied all their Ghibelline
+friends into a united body, and so attacked and carried the Guelph
+barricades, one by one, till their antagonists, driven together by local
+defeat, stood in consistency as complete as their own, by the gate
+of St. Peter, 'Scheraggio.' Young Frederick, with his German riders,
+arrived at this crisis; the Ghibellines opening the gates to him; the
+Guelphs, nevertheless, fought at their outmost barricade for four days
+more; but at last, tired, withdrew from the city, in a body, on the
+night of Candlemas, 2nd February, 1248; leaving the Ghibellines and
+their German friends to work their pleasure,--who immediately
+set themselves to throw down the Guelph palaces, and destroyed
+six-and-thirty of them, towers and all, with the good help of Niccola
+Pisano,--for this is the occasion of that beautiful piece of new
+engineering of his.
+
+99. It is the first interference of the Germans in Florentine affairs
+which belongs to the real cycle of modern history. Six hundred years
+later, a troop of German riders entered Florence again, to restore its
+Grand Duke; and our warmhearted and loving English poetess, looking on
+from Casa Guidi windows, gives the said Germans many hard words, and
+thinks her darling Florentines entirely innocent in the matter. But if
+she had had clear eyes, (yeux de lin [1] the Romance of the Rose calls
+them,) she would have seen that white-coated cavalry with its heavy guns
+to be nothing more than the rear-guard of young Frederick of Antioch;
+and that Florence's own Ghibellines had opened her gates to them.
+Destiny little regards cost of time; she does her justice at that
+telescopic distance just as easily and accurately as close at hand.
+
+[Footnote 1: Lynx.]
+
+100. "Frederick of _Antioch_." Note the titular coincidence. The
+disciples were called Christians first in Antioch; here we have our
+lieutenant of Antichrist also named from that town. The anti-Christian
+Germans got into Florence upon Sunday morning; the Guelphs fought on
+till Wednesday, which was Candlemas;--the Tower of the Death-watch was
+thrown down next day. It was so called because it stood on the Piazza of
+St John; and all dying people in Florence called on St. John for help;
+and looked, if it might be, to the top of this highest and best-built of
+towers. The wicked anti-Christian Ghibellines, Nicholas of Pisa helping,
+cut the side of it "so that the tower might fall on the Baptistery. But
+as it pleased God, for better reverencing of the blessed St. John, the
+tower, which was a hundred and eighty feet high, as it was coming down,
+plainly appeared to eschew the holy church, and turned aside, and fell
+right across the square; at which all the Florentines marvelled, (pious
+or impious,) and the _people_ (anti-Ghibelline) were greatly delighted."
+
+101. I have no doubt that this story is apocryphal, not only in its
+attribution of these religious scruples to the falling tower; but in
+its accusation of the Ghibellines as having definitely intended the
+destruction of the Baptistery. It is only modern reformers who feel the
+absolute need of enforcing their religious opinions in so practical a
+manner. Such a piece of sacrilege would have been revolting to Farinata;
+how much more to the group of Florentines whose temper is centrally
+represented by Dante's, to all of whom their "bel San Giovanni" was
+dear, at least for its beauty, if not for its sanctity. And Niccola
+himself was too good a workman to become the instrument of the
+destruction of so noble a work,--not to insist on the extreme
+probability that he was also too good an engineer to have had his
+purpose, if once fixed, thwarted by any tenderness in the conscience of
+the collapsing tower. The tradition itself probably arose after the
+rage of the exiled Ghibellines had half consented to the destruction,
+on political grounds, of Florence itself; but the form it took is of
+extreme historical value, indicating thus early at least the suspected
+existence of passions like those of the Cromwellian or Garibaldian
+soldiery in the Florentine noble; and the distinct character of the
+Ghibelline party as not only anti-Papal, but profane.
+
+102. Upon the castles, and the persons of their antagonists, however,
+the pride, or fear, of the Ghibellines had little mercy; and in their
+day of triumph they provoked against themselves nearly every rational as
+well as religious person in the commonwealth. They despised too much the
+force of the newly-risen popular power, founded on economy, sobriety,
+and common sense; and, alike by impertinence and pillage, increased the
+irritation of the civil body; until, as aforesaid, on the 20th October,
+1250, all the rich burgesses of Florence took arms; met in the square
+before the church of Santa Croce, ("where," says Sismondi, "the republic
+of the dead is still assembled today,") thence traversed the city to the
+palace of the Ghibelline podesta; forced him to resign; named Uberto of
+Lucca in his place, under the title of Captain of the People; divided
+themselves into twenty companies, each, in its own district of the city,
+having its captain [1] and standard; and elected a council of twelve
+ancients, constituting a seniory or signoria, to deliberate on and
+direct public affairs.
+
+[Footnote 1: 'Corporal,' literally'.]
+
+103. What a perfectly beautiful republican movement! thinks Sismondi,
+seeing, in all this, nothing but the energy of a multitude; and entirely
+ignoring the peculiar capacity of this Florentine mob,--capacity of two
+virtues, much forgotten by modern republicanism,--order, namely; and
+obedience; together with the peculiar instinct of this Florentine
+multitude, which not only felt itself to need captains, but knew where
+to find them.
+
+104. Hubert of Lucca--How came they, think you, to choose _him _out of
+a stranger city, and that a poorer one than their own? Was there no
+Florentine then, of all this rich and eager crowd, who was fit to govern
+Florence?
+
+I cannot find any account of this Hubert, Bright mind, of Ducca; Villani
+says simply of him, "Fu il primo capitano di Firenze."
+
+They hung a bell for him in the Campanile of the Lion, and gave him
+the flag of Florence to bear; and before the day was over, that 20th
+of October, he had given every one of the twenty companies their flags
+also. And the bearings of the said gonfalons were these. I will give you
+this heraldry as far as I can make it out from Villani; it will be very
+useful to us afterwards; I leave the Italian when I cannot translate
+it:--
+
+105. A. Sesto, (sixth part of the city,) of the other side of Arno.
+
+        Gonfalon 1. Gules; a ladder, argent.
+             2. Argent; a scourge, sable.
+             3. Azure; (una piazza bianca con
+               nicchi vermigli).
+             4. Gules; a dragon, vert.
+
+
+B. Sesto of St. Peter Scheraggio.
+
+             1. Azure; a chariot, or.
+             2. Or; a bull, sable.
+             3. Argent; a lion rampant, sable.
+             4. (A lively piece, "pezza gagliarda")
+                Barry of (how many?) pieces,
+                argent and sable.
+
+
+You may as well note at once of this kind of bearing, called 'gagliarda'
+by Villani, that these groups of piles, pales, bends, and bars, were
+called in English heraldry 'Restrial bearings,' "in respect of their
+strength and solid substance, which is able to abide the stresse and
+force of any triall they shall be put unto." [1] And also that, the
+number of bars being uncertain, I assume the bearing to be 'barry,' that
+is, having an even number of bars; had it been odd, as of seven bars, it
+should have been blazoned, argent; three bars, sable; or, if so divided,
+sable, three bars argent.
+
+[Footnote 1: Guillim, sect. ii., chap. 3.]
+
+This lively bearing was St. Pulinari's.
+
+C. Sesto of Borgo.
+
+             1. Or; a viper, vert.
+             2. Argent; a needle, (?) (aguglia)
+                sable.
+             3. Vert; a horse unbridled;
+                draped, argent, a cross,
+                gules.
+
+
+D. Sesto of St. Brancazio.
+
+             1. Vert; a lion rampant, proper.
+             2. Argent; a lion rampant, gules.
+             3. Azure; a lion rampant, argent.
+
+
+E. Sesto of the Cathedral gates.
+
+             1. Azure; a lion (passant?) or.
+             2. Or; a dragon, vert.
+             3. Argent; a lion rampant,
+                azure, crowned, or.
+
+
+F. Sesto of St. Peter's gates.
+
+             1. Or; two keys, gules.
+             2. An Italian (or more definitely
+               a Greek and Etruscan bearing;
+               I do not know how to
+               blazon it;) concentric bands,
+               argent and sable. This is
+               one of the remains of the
+               Greek expressions of storm;
+               hail, or the Trinacrian limbs,
+               being put on the giant's
+               shields also. It is connected
+               besides with the Cretan
+               labyrinth, and the circles of
+               the Inferno.
+             3. Parted per fesse, gules and
+               vai (I don't know if vai
+               means grey--not a proper
+               heraldic colour--or vaire).
+
+
+106. Of course Hubert of Lucca did not determine these bearings, but
+took them as he found them, and appointed them for standards; [1] he did
+the same for all the country parishes, and ordered them to come into
+the city at need. "And in this manner the old people of Florence ordered
+itself; and for more strength of the people, they ordered and began to
+build the palace which is behind the Badia,--that is to say, the one
+which is of dressed stone, with the tower; for before there was no
+palace of the commune in Florence, but the signory abode sometimes in
+one part of the town, sometimes in another.
+
+[Footnote 1: We will examine afterwards the heraldry of the trades,
+chap, xi., Villani.]
+
+107. "And as the people had now taken state and signory on themselves,
+they ordered, for greater strength of the people, that all the towers of
+Florence--and there were many 180 feet high [1]--should be cut down to
+75 feet, and no more; and so it was done, and with the stones of them
+they walled the city on the other side Arno."
+
+[Footnote: 120 braccia.]
+
+108. That last sentence is a significant one. Here is the central
+expression of the true burgess or townsman temper,--resolute maintenance
+of fortified peace. These are the walls which modern republicanism
+throws down, to make boulevards over their ruins.
+
+109. Such new order being taken, Florence remained quiet for full two
+months. On the 13th of December, in the same year, died the Emperor
+Frederick II.; news of his death did not reach Florence till the 7th
+January, 1251. It had chanced, according to Villani, that on the actual
+day of his death, his Florentine vice-regent, Rinieri of Montemerlo, was
+killed by a piece of the vaulting [1] of his room falling on him as he
+slept. And when the people heard of the Emperor's death, "which was most
+useful and needful for Holy Church, and for our commune," they took
+the fall of the roof on his lieutenant as an omen of the extinction
+of Imperial authority, and resolved to bring home all their Guelphic
+exiles, and that the Ghibellines should be forced to make peace with
+them. Which was done, and the peace really lasted for full six months;
+when, a quarrel chancing with Ghibelline Pistoja, the Florentines, under
+a Milanese podesta, fought their first properly communal and commercial
+battle, with great slaughter of Pistojese. Naturally enough, but very
+unwisely, the Florentine Ghibellines declined to take part in this
+battle; whereupon the people, returning flushed with victory, drove them
+all out, and established pure Guelph government in Florence, changing at
+the same time the flag of the city from gules, a lily argent, to argent,
+a lily gules; but the most ancient bearing of all, simply parted
+per pale, argent and gules, remained always on their carroccio of
+battle,--"Non si muto mai."
+
+[Footnote 1: "Una volta ch' era sopra la camera."]
+
+110. "Non si muto mai." Villani did not know how true his words were.
+That old shield of Florence, parted per pale, argent and gules, (or
+our own Saxon Oswald's, parted per pale, or and purpure,) are heraldry
+changeless in sign; declaring the necessary balance, in ruling men, of
+the Rational and Imaginative powers; pure Alp, and glowing cloud.
+
+Church and State--Pope and Emperor--Clergy and Laity,--all these are
+partial, accidental--too often, criminal--oppositions; but the bodily
+and spiritual elements, seemingly adverse, remain in everlasting
+harmony,
+
+Not less the new bearing of the shield, the red fleur-de-lys, has
+another meaning. It is red, not as ecclesiastical, but as free. Not of
+Guelph against Ghibelline, but of Labourer against Knight. No more his
+serf, but his minister. His duty no more 'servitium,' but 'ministerium,'
+'mestier.' We learn the power of word after word, as of sign after sign,
+as we follow the traces of this nascent art. I have sketched for you
+this lily from the base of the tower of Giotto. You may judge by the
+subjects of the sculpture beside it that it was built just in this fit
+of commercial triumph; for all the outer bas-reliefs are of trades.
+
+111. Draw that red lily then, and fix it in your minds as the sign
+of the great change in the temper of Florence, and in her laws, in
+mid-thirteenth century; and remember also, when you go to Florence and
+see that mighty tower of the Palazzo Vecchio (noble still, in spite of
+the calamitous and accursed restorations which have smoothed its
+rugged outline, and effaced with modern vulgarisms its lovely
+sculpture)--terminating the shadowy perspectives of the Uffizii, or
+dominant over the city seen from Fésole or Bellosguardo,--that, as the
+tower of Giotto is the notablest monument in the world of the Religion
+of Europe, so, on this tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, first shook
+itself to the winds the Lily standard of her liberal,--because
+honest,--commerce.
+
+
+
+
+                LECTURE V.
+
+               PAX VOBISCUM.
+
+112. My last lecture ended with a sentence which I thought, myself,
+rather pretty, and quite fit for a popular newspaper, about the 'lily
+standard of liberal commerce.' But it might occur, and I hope did occur,
+to some of you, that it would have been more appropriate if the lily had
+changed colour the other way, from red to white, (instead of white to
+red,) as a sign of a pacific constitution and kindly national purpose.
+
+113. I believe otherwise, however; and although the change itself was
+for the sake of change merely, you may see in it, I think, one of the
+historical coincidences which contain true instruction for us.
+
+Quite one of the chiefest art-mistakes and stupidities of men has been
+their tendency to dress soldiers in red clothes, and monks, or pacific
+persons, in black, white, or grey ones. At least half of that mental
+bias of young people, which sustains the wickedness of war among us
+at this day, is owing to the prettiness of uniforms. Make all Hussars
+black, all Guards black, all troops of the line black; dress officers
+and men, alike, as you would public executioners; and the number of
+candidates for commissions will be greatly diminished. Habitually, on
+the contrary, you dress these destructive rustics and their officers in
+scarlet and gold, but give your productive rustics no costume of honour
+or beauty; you give your peaceful student a costume which he tucks up
+to his waist, because he is ashamed of it; and dress your pious rectors,
+and your sisters of charity, in black, as if it were _their_ trade
+instead of the soldier's to send people to hell, and their own destiny
+to arrive there.
+
+114. But the investiture of the lily of Florence with scarlet is a
+symbol,--unintentional, observe, but not the less notable,--of the
+recovery of human sense and intelligence in this matter. The reign of
+war was past; this was the sign of it;--the red glow, not now of the
+Towers of Dis, but of the Carita, "che appena fora dentro al fuoco
+nota." And a day is coming, be assured, when the kings of Europe will
+dress their peaceful troops beautifully; will clothe their peasant girls
+"in scarlet, with other delights," and "put on ornaments of gold upon
+_their_ apparel;" when the crocus and the lily will not be the only
+living things dressed daintily in our land, and the glory of the wisest
+monarchs be indeed, in that their people, like themselves, shall be, at
+least in some dim likeness, "arrayed like one of these."
+
+115. But as for the immediate behaviour of Florence herself, with her
+new standard, its colour was quite sufficiently significant in that old
+symbolism, when the first restrial bearing was drawn by dying fingers
+dipped in blood. The Guelphic revolution had put her into definite
+political opposition with her nearest, and therefore,--according to
+the custom and Christianity of the time,--her hatefullest,
+neighbours,--Pistoja, Pisa, Siena, and Volterra. What glory might not
+be acquired, what kind purposes answered, by making pacific mercantile
+states also of those benighted towns! Besides, the death of the Emperor
+had thrown his party everywhere into discouragement; and what was the
+use of a flag which flew no farther than over the new palazzo?
+
+116. Accordingly, in the next year, the pacific Florentines began
+by ravaging the territory of Pistoja; then attacked the Pisans at
+Pontadera, and took 3000 prisoners; and finished by traversing, and
+eating up all that could be ate in, the country of Siena; besides
+beating the Sienese under the castle of Montalcino. Returning in triumph
+after these benevolent operations, they resolved to strike a new piece
+of money in memory of them,--the golden Florin!
+
+117. This coin I have placed in your room of study, to be the first
+of the series of coins which I hope to arrange for you, not
+chronologically, but for the various interest, whether as regards art or
+history, which they should possess in your general studies. "The Florin
+of Florence," (says Sismondi), "through all the monetary revolutions
+of all neighbouring countries, and while the bad faith of governments
+adulterated their coin from one end of Europe to the other, has always
+remained the same; it is, to-day," (I don't know when, exactly, he wrote
+this,--but it doesn't matter), "of the same weight, and bears the same
+name and the same stamp, which it did when it was struck in 1252."
+It was gold of the purest title (24 carats), weighed the eighth of
+an ounce, and carried, as you see, on one side the image of St. John
+Baptist, on the other the Fleur-de-lys. It is the coin which Chaucer
+takes for the best representation of beautiful money in the Pardoner's
+Tale: this, in his judgment, is the fairest mask of Death. Villani's
+relation of its moral and commercial effect at Tunis is worth
+translating, being in the substance of it, I doubt not, true.
+
+118. "And these new florins beginning to scatter through the world,
+some of them got to Tunis, in Barbary; and the King of Tunis, who was
+a worthy and wise lord, was greatly pleased with them, and had them
+tested; and finding them of fine gold, he praised them much, and had
+the legend on them interpreted to him,--to wit, on one side 'St. John
+Baptist,' on the other 'Florentia.' So seeing they were pieces of
+Christian money, he sent for the Pisan merchants, who were free of his
+port, and much before the King (and also the Florentines traded in Tunis
+through Pisan agents),--[see these hot little Pisans, how they are first
+everywhere,]--and asked of them what city it was among the Christians
+which made the said florins. And the Pisans answered in spite and envy,
+'They are our land Arabs.' The King answered wisely, "It does not appear
+to me Arab's money; you Pisans, what golden money have _you_ got?" Then
+they were confused, and knew not what to answer. So he asked if there
+was any Florentine among them. And there was found a merchant from the
+other-side-Arno, by name Peter Balducci, discreet and wise. The King
+asked him of the state and being of Florence, of which the Pisans
+made their Arabs,--who answered him wisely, showing the power and
+magnificence of Florence; and how Pisa, in comparison, was not, either
+in land or people, the half of Florence; and that they had no golden
+money; and that the gold of which those florins had been made was gained
+by the Florentines above and beyond them, by many victories. Wherefore
+the said Pisans were put to shame, and the King, both by reason of the
+florin, and for the words of our wise citizen, made the Florentines
+free, and appointed for them their own Fondaco, and church, in Tunis,
+and gave them privileges like the Pisans. And this we know for a truth
+from the same Peter, having been in company with him at the office of
+the Priors."
+
+119. I cannot tell you what the value of the piece was at this time:
+the sentence with which Sismondi concludes his account of it being only
+useful as an example of the total ignorance of the laws of currency in
+which many even of the best educated persons at the present day remain.
+
+"Its value," he says always the same, "answers to eleven francs forty
+centimes of France."
+
+But all that can be scientifically said of any piece of money is that
+it contains a given weight of a given metal. Its value in other coins,
+other metals, or other general produce, varies not only from day to day,
+but from instant to instant.
+
+120. With this coin of Florence ought in justice to be ranked the
+Venetian zecchin; [1] but of it I can only thus give you account in
+another place,--for I must at once go on now to tell you the first use I
+find recorded, as being made by the Florentines of their new money.
+
+[Footnote 1: In connection with the Pisans' insulting intention by their
+term of Arabs, remember that the Venetian 'zecca,' (mint) came from the
+Arabic 'sehk,' the steel die used in coinage.]
+
+They pursued in the years 1253 and 1254 their energetic promulgation of
+peace. They ravaged the lands of Pistoja so often, that the Pistojese
+submitted themselves, on condition of receiving back their Guelph
+exiles, and admitting a Florentine garrison into Pistoja. Next they
+attacked Monte Reggione, the March-fortress of the Sienese; and pressed
+it so vigorously that Siena was fain to make peace too, on condition
+of ceasing her alliance with the Ghibellines. Next they ravaged the
+territory of Volterra: the townspeople, confident in the strength of
+their rock fortress, came out to give battle; the Florentines beat them
+up the hill, and entered the town gates with the fugitives.
+
+121. And, for note to this sentence, in my long-since-read volume of
+Sismondi, I find a cross-fleury at the bottom of the page, with the
+date 1254 underneath it; meaning that I was to remember that year as
+the beginning of Christian warfare. For little as you may think it, and
+grotesquely opposed as this ravaging of their neighbours' territories
+may seem to their pacific mission, this Florentine army is fighting
+in absolute good faith. Partly self-deceived, indeed, by their own
+ambition, and by their fiery natures, rejoicing in the excitement of
+battle, they have nevertheless, in this their "year of victories,"--so
+they ever afterwards called it,--no occult or malignant purpose. At
+least, whatever is occult or malignant is also unconscious; not now in
+cruel, but in kindly jealousy of their neighbours, and in a true desire
+to communicate and extend to them the privileges of their own new
+artizan government, the Trades of Florence have taken arms. They are
+justly proud of themselves; rightly assured of the wisdom of the change
+they have made; true to each other for the time, and confident in the
+future. No army ever fought in better cause, or with more united heart.
+And accordingly they meet with no check, and commit no error; from
+tower to tower of the field fortresses,--from gate to gate of the great
+cities,--they march in one continuous and daily more splendid triumph,
+yet in gentle and perfect discipline; and now, when they have entered
+Volterra with her fugitives, after stress of battle, not a drop of blood
+is shed, nor a single house pillaged, nor is any other condition
+of peace required than the exile of the Ghibelline nobles. You may
+remember, as a symbol of the influence of Christianity in this result,
+that the Bishop of Volterra, with his clergy, came out in procession to
+meet them as they began to run [1] the streets, and obtained this mercy;
+else the old habits of pillage would have prevailed.
+
+[Footnote 1: Corsona la citta senza contesto niuno."--_Villani._]
+
+122. And from Volterra, the Florentine army entered on the territory
+of Pisa; and now with so high prestige, that the Pisans at once sent
+ambassadors to them with keys in their hands, in token of submission.
+And the Florentines made peace with them, on condition that the
+Pisans should let the Florentine merchandize pass in and out without
+tax;--should use the same weights as Florence,--the same cloth
+measure,--and the same alloy of money.
+
+123. You see that Mr. Adam Smith was not altogether the originator
+of the idea of free trade; and six hundred years have passed without
+bringing Europe generally to the degree of mercantile intelligence, as
+to weights and currency, which Florence had in her year of victories.
+
+The Pisans broke this peace two years afterwards, to help the Emperor
+Manfred; whereupon the Florentines attacked them instantly again;
+defeated them on the Serchio, near Lucca; entered the Pisan territory
+by the Val di Serchio; and there, cutting down a great pine tree, struck
+their florins on the stump of it, putting, for memory, under the feet of
+the St. John, a trefoil "in guise of a little tree." And note here the
+difference between artistic and mechanical coinage. The Florentines,
+using pure gold, and thin, can strike their coin anywhere, with only a
+wooden anvil, and their engraver is ready on the instant to make such
+change in the stamp as may record any new triumph. Consider the vigour,
+popularity, pleasantness of an art of coinage thus ductile to events,
+and easy in manipulution.
+
+124. It is to be observed also that a thin gold coinage like that of the
+English angel, and these Italian zecchins, is both more convenient and
+prettier than the massive gold of the Greeks, often so small that it
+drops through the fingers, and, if of any size, inconveniently large in
+value.
+
+125. It was in the following year, 1255, that the Florentines made
+the noblest use of their newly struck florins, so far as I know, ever
+recorded in any history; and a Florentine citizen made as noble refusal
+of them. You will find the two stories in Giovanni Villani, Book 6th,
+chapters 61, 62. One or two important facts are added by Sismondi, but
+without references. I take his statement as on the whole trustworthy,
+using Villani's authority wherever it reaches; one or two points I have
+farther to explain to you myself as I go on.
+
+126. The first tale shows very curiously the mercenary and independent
+character of warfare, as it now was carried on by the great chiefs,
+whether Guelph or Ghibelline. The Florentines wanted to send a troop
+of five hundred horse to assist Orvieto, a Guelph town, isolated on its
+rock, and at present harrassed upon it. They gave command of this troop
+to the Knight Guido Guerra de' Conti Guidi, and he and his riders set
+out for Orvieto by the Umbrian road, through Arezzo, which was at peace
+with Florence, though a Ghibelline town. The Guelph party within the
+town asked help from the passing Florentine battalion; and Guido Guerra,
+without any authority for such action, used the troop of which he was
+in command in their favour, and drove out the Ghibellines. Sismondi does
+not notice what is quite one of the main points in the matter, that
+this troop of horse must have been mainly composed of Count Guido's own
+retainers, and not of Florentine citizens, who would not have cared to
+leave their business on such a far-off quest as this help to Orvieto.
+However, Arezzo is thus brought over to the Florentine interest; and
+any other Italian state would have been sure, while it disclaimed
+the Count's independent action, to keep the advantage of it. Not so
+Florence. She is entirely resolved, in these years of victory, to do
+justice to all men so far she understands it; and in this case it will
+give her some trouble to do it, and worse,--cost her some of her fine
+new florins. For her counter-mandate is quite powerless with Guido
+Guerra. He has taken Arezzo mainly with his own men, and means to stay
+there, thinking that the Florentines, if even they do not abet him, will
+take no practical steps against him. But he does not know this newly
+risen clan of military merchants, who quite clearly understand what
+honesty means, and will put themselves out of their way to keep their
+faith. Florence calls out her trades instantly, and with gules, a dragon
+vert, and or, a bull sable, they march, themselves, angrily up the Val
+d'Arno, replace the adverse Ghibellines in Arezzo, and send Master Guido
+de' Conti Guido about his business. But the prettiest and most curious
+part of the whole story is their equity even to him, after he had given
+them all this trouble. They entirely recognize the need he is under of
+getting meat, somehow, for the mouths of these five hundred riders of
+his; also they hold him still their friend, though an unmanageable
+one; and admit with praise what of more or less patriotic and Guelphic
+principle may be at the root of his disobedience. So when he claims
+twelve thousand lire,--roughly, some two thousand pounds of money at
+present value,--from the Guelphs of Arezzo for his service, and
+the Guelphs, having got no good of it, owing to this Florentine
+interference, object to paying him, the Florentines themselves lend them
+the money,--and are never paid a farthing of it back.
+
+127. There is a beautiful "investment of capital" for your modern
+merchant to study! No interest thought of, and little hope of ever
+getting back the principal. And yet you will find that there were no
+mercantile "panics," in Florence in those days, nor failing bankers,
+[1] nor "clearings out of this establishment--any reasonable offer
+accepted."
+
+[Footnote: Some account of the state of modern British business in this
+kind will be given, I hope, in some number of "Fors Clavigera" for this
+year, 1874.]
+
+128. But the second story, of a private Florentine citizen, is better
+still.
+
+In that campaign against Pisa in which the florins were struck on the
+root of pine, the conditions of peace had been ratified by the surrender
+to Florence of the Pisan fortress of Mutrona, which commanded a tract
+of seaboard below Pisa, of great importance for the Tuscan trade. The
+Florentines had stipulated for the right not only of holding, but of
+destroying it, if they chose; and in their Council of Ancients, after
+long debate, it was determined to raze it, the cost of its garrison
+being troublesome, and the freedom of seaboard all that the city wanted.
+But the Pisans feeling the power that the fortress had against them in
+case of future war, and doubtful of the issue of council at Florence,
+sent a private negotiator to the member of the Council of Ancients who
+was known to have most influence, though one of the poorest of them,
+Aldobrandino Ottobuoni; and offered him four thousand golden florins if
+he would get the vote passed to raze Mutrona. The vote _had_ passed the
+evening before. Aldobrandino dismissed the Pisan ambassador in silence,
+returned instantly into the council, and without saying anything of the
+offer that had been made to him, got them to reconsider their vote, and
+showed them such reason for keeping Mutrona in its strength, that the
+vote for its destruction was rescinded. "And note thou, oh reader,"
+says Villani, "the virtue of such a citizen, who, not being rich in
+substance, had yet such continence and loyalty for his state."
+
+129. You might, perhaps, once, have thought me detaining you needlessly
+with these historical details, little bearing, it is commonly supposed,
+on the subject of art. But you are, I trust, now in some degree
+persuaded that no art, Florentine or any other, can be understood
+without knowing these sculptures and mouldings of the national soul. You
+remember I first begun this large digression when it became a question
+with us why some of Giovanni Pisano's sepulchral work had been destroyed
+at Perugia. And now we shall get our first gleam of light on the matter,
+finding similar operations carried on in Florence. For a little while
+after this speech in the Council of Ancients, Aldobrandino died, and
+the people, at public cost, built him a tomb of marble, "higher than any
+other" in the church of Santa Reparata, engraving on it these verses,
+which I leave you to construe, for I cannot:--
+
+       Fons est supremus Aldobrandino amoenus.
+        Ottoboni natus, a bono civita datus.
+
+
+Only I suppose the pretty word 'amoenus' may be taken as marking the
+delightfulness and sweetness of character which had won all men's love,
+more, even, than their gratitude.
+
+130. It failed of its effect, however, on the Tuscan aristocratic mind.
+For, when, after the battle of the Arbia, the Ghibellines had again
+their own way in Florence, though Ottobuoni had been then dead three
+years, they beat down his tomb, pulled the dead body out of it, dragged
+it--by such tenure as it might still possess--through the city, and
+threw the fragments of it into ditches. It is a memorable parallel to
+the treatment of the body of Cromwell by our own Cavaliers; and indeed
+it seems to me one of the highest forms of laudatory epitaph upon a man,
+that his body should be thus torn from its rest. For he can hardly have
+spent his life better than in drawing on himself the kind of enmity
+which can so be gratified; and for the most loving of lawgivers, as of
+princes, the most enviable and honourable epitaph has always been
+
+      [Greek: "_oide plitai anton emisoun anton_."
+
+
+131. Not but that pacific Florence, in her pride of victory, was
+beginning to show unamiableness of temper also, on her so equitable
+side. It is perhaps worth noticing, for the sake of the name of
+Correggio, that in 1257, when Matthew Correggio, of Parma, was the
+Podesta of Florence, the Florentines determined to destroy the castle
+and walls of Poggibonzi, suspected of Ghibelline tendency, though the
+Poggibonzi people came with "coregge in collo," leathern straps
+round their necks, to ask that their cattle might be spared. And the
+heartburnings between the two parties went on, smouldering hotter
+and hotter, till July, 1258, when the people having discovered secret
+dealings between the Uberti and the Emperor Manfred, and the Uberti
+refusing to obey citation to the popular tribunals, the trades ran to
+arms, attacked the Uberti palace, killed a number of their people, took
+prisoner, Uberto of the Uberti, Hubert of the Huberts, or Bright-mind
+of the Bright-minds, with 'Mangia degl' Infangati, ('Gobbler [1] of
+the dirty ones' this knight's name sounds like,)--and after they had
+confessed their guilt, beheaded them in St. Michael's corn-market; and
+all the rest of the Uberti and Ghibelline families were driven out of
+Florence, and their palaces pulled down, and the walls towards Siena
+built with the stones of them; and two months afterwards, the people
+suspecting the Abbot of Vallombrosa of treating with the Ghibellines,
+took him, and tortured him; and he confessing under torture, "at the cry
+of the people, they beheaded him in the square of St. Apollinare."
+For which unexpected piece of clangorous impiety the Florentines were
+excommunicated, besides drawing upon themselves the steady enmity of
+Pavia, the Abbot's native town; "and indeed people say the Abbot was
+innocent, though he belonged to a great Ghibelline house. And for this
+sin, and for many others done by the wicked people, many wise persons
+say that God, for Divine judgment, permitted upon the said people the
+revenge and slaughter of Monteaperti."
+
+[Footnote: At least, the compound 'Mangia-pane,' 'munch-bread,' stands
+still for a good-for-nothing fellow.]
+
+132. The sentence which I have last read introduces, as you must at once
+have felt, a new condition of things. Generally, I have spoken of
+the Ghibellines as infidel, or impious; and for the most part they
+represent, indeed, the resistance of kingly to priestly power. But, in
+this action of Florence, we have the rise of another force against
+the Church, in the end to be much more fatal to it, that of popular
+intelligence and popular passion. I must for the present, however,
+return to our immediate business; and ask you to take note of the
+effect, on actually existing Florentine architecture, of the political
+movements of the ten years we have been studying.
+
+133. In the revolution of Candlemas, 1248, the successful Ghibellines
+throw down thirty-six of the Guelph palaces.
+
+And in the revolution of July, 1258, the successful Guelphs throw down
+_all_ the Ghibelline palaces.
+
+Meantime the trades, as against the Knights Castellans, have thrown down
+the tops of all the towers above seventy-five feet high.
+
+And we shall presently have a proposal, after the battle of the Arbia,
+to throw down Florence altogether.
+
+134. You think at first that this is remarkably like the course
+of republican reformations in the present day? But there is a wide
+difference. In the first place, the palaces and towers are not
+thrown down in mere spite or desire of ruin, but after quite definite
+experience of their danger to the State, and positive dejection of
+boiling lead and wooden logs from their machicolations upon the heads
+below. In the second place, nothing is thrown down without complete
+certainty on the part of the overthrowers that they are able, and
+willing, to build as good or better things instead; which, if any
+like conviction exist in the minds of modern republicans, is a wofully
+ill-founded one: and lastly, these abolitions of private wealth were
+coincident with a widely spreading disposition to undertake, as I have
+above noticed, works of public utility, _from which no dividends were to
+be received by any of the shareholders_; and for the execution of which
+the _builders received no commission on the cost_, but payment at the
+rate of so much a day, carefully adjusted to the exertion of real power
+and intelligence.
+
+135. We must not, therefore, without qualification blame, though we may
+profoundly regret, the destructive passions of the thirteenth century.
+The architecture of the palaces thus destroyed in Florence contained
+examples of the most beautiful round-arched work that had been developed
+by the Norman schools; and was in some cases adorned with a barbaric
+splendour, and fitted into a majesty of strength which, so far as I can
+conjecture the effect of it from the few now existing traces, must have
+presented some of the most impressive aspects of street edifice ever
+existent among civil societies.
+
+136. It may be a temporary relief for you from the confusion of
+following the giddy successions of Florentine temper, if I interrupt, in
+this place, my history of the city by some inquiry into technical points
+relating to the architecture of these destroyed palaces. Their style
+is familiar to us, indeed, in a building of which it is difficult to
+believe the early date,--the leaning tower of Pisa. The lower stories of
+it are of the twelfth century, and the open arcades of the cathedrals of
+Pisa and Lucca, as well as the lighter construction of the spire of St.
+Niccol, at Pisa, (though this was built in continuation of the older
+style by Niccola himself,) all represent to you, though in enriched
+condition, the general manner of buidling in palaces of the Norman
+period in Val d'Arno. That of the Tosinghi, above the old market in
+Florence, is especially mentioned by Villani, as more than a hundred
+feet in height, entirely built with little pillars, (colonnelli,) of
+marble. On their splendid masonry was founded the exquisiteness of that
+which immediately succeeded them, of which the date is fixed by definite
+examples both in Verona and Florence, and which still exists in noble
+masses in the retired streets and courts of either city; too soon
+superseded, in the great thoroughfares, by the effeminate and monotonous
+luxury of Venetian renaissance, or by the heaps of quarried stone
+which rise into the ruggedness of their native cliffs, in the Pitti and
+Strozzi palaces.
+
+
+
+
+
+                LECTURE VI.
+
+              MARBLE COUCHANT.
+
+137. I told you in my last lecture that the exquisiteness of Florentine
+thirteenth century masonry was founded on the strength and splendour of
+that which preceded it.
+
+I use the word 'founded' in a literal as well as figurative sense. While
+the merchants, in their year of victories, threw down the walls of the
+war-towers, they as eagerly and diligently set their best craftsmen to
+lift higher the walls of their churches. For the most part, the Early
+Norman or Basilican forms were too low to please them in their present
+enthusiasm. Their pride, as well as their piety, desired that these
+stones of their temples might be goodly; and all kinds of junctions,
+insertions, refittings, and elevations were undertaken; which, the
+genius of the people being always for mosaic, are so perfectly executed,
+and mix up twelfth and thirteenth century work in such intricate
+harlequinade, that it is enough to drive a poor antiquary wild.
+
+138. I have here in my hand, however, a photograph of a small church,
+which shows you the change at a glance, and attests it in a notable
+manner.
+
+You know Hubert of Lucca was the first captain of the Florentine people,
+and the march in which they struck their florin on the pine trunk was
+through Lucca, on Pisa.
+
+Now here is a little church in Lucca, of which the lower half of the
+façade is of the twelfth century, and the top, built by the Florentines,
+in the thirteenth, and sealed for their own by two fleur-de-lys, let
+into its masonry. The most important difference, marking the date, is
+in the sculpture of the heads which carry the archivolts. But the most
+palpable difference is in the Cyclopean simplicity of irregular bedding
+in the lower story; and the delicate bands of alternate serpentine and
+marble, which follow the horizontal or couchant placing of the stones
+above.
+
+139. Those of you who, interested in English Gothic, have visited
+Tuscany, are, I think, always offended at first, if not in permanence,
+by these horizontal stripes of her marble walls. Twenty-two years ago
+I quoted, in vol. i. of the "Stones of Venice," Professor Willis's
+statement that "a practice more destructive of architectural grandeur
+could hardly be conceived;" and I defended my favourite buildings
+against that judgement, first by actual comparison in the plate opposite
+the page, of a piece of them with an example of our modern grandeur;
+secondly, (vol. i., chap. v.,) by a comparison of their aspect with
+that of the building of the grandest piece of wall in the Alps,--that
+Matterhorn in which you all have now learned to take some gymnastic
+interest; and thirdly, (vol. i., chap. xxvi.,) by reference to the
+use of barred colours, with delight, by Giotto and all subsequent
+colourists.
+
+140. But it did not then occur to me to ask, much as I always disliked
+the English Perpendicular, what would have been the effect on the
+spectator's mind, had the buildings been striped vertically instead of
+horizontally; nor did I then know, or in the least imagine, how much
+_practical_ need there was for reference from the structure of the
+edifice to that of the cliff; and how much the permanence, as well as
+propriety, of structure depended on the stones being _couchant_ in the
+wall, as they had been in the quarry: to which subject I wish to-day to
+direct your attention.
+
+141. You will find stated with as much clearness as I am able, in
+the first and fifth lectures in "Aratra Pentelíci," the principles of
+architectural design to which, in all my future teaching, I shall have
+constantly to appeal; namely, that architecture consists distinctively
+in the adaptation of form to resist force;--that, practically, it may be
+always thought of as doing this by the ingenious adjustment of various
+pieces of solid material; that the perception of this ingenious
+adjustment, or structure, is to be always joined with our admiration
+of the superadded ornament; and that all delightful ornament is the
+honouring of such useful structures; but that the beauty of the ornament
+itself is independent of the structure, and arrived at by powers of mind
+of a very different class from those which are necessary to give skill
+in architecture proper.
+
+142. During the course of this last summer I have been myself very
+directly interested in some of the quite elementary processes of true
+architecture. I have been building a little pier into Coniston Lake, and
+various walls and terraces in a steeply sloping garden, all which had to
+be constructed of such rough stones as lay nearest. Under the dextrous
+hands of a neighbour farmer's son, the pier projected, and the walls
+rose, as if enchanted; every stone taking its proper place, and the
+loose dyke holding itself as firmly upright as if the gripping cement of
+the Florentine towers had fastened it. My own better acquaintance with
+the laws of gravity and of statics did not enable me, myself, to build
+six inches of dyke that would stand; and all the decoration possible
+under the circumstances consisted in turning the lichened sides of the
+stones outwards. And yet the noblest conditions of building in the world
+are nothing more than the gradual adornment, by play of the imagination,
+of materials first arranged by this natural instinct of adjustment. You
+must not lose sight of the instinct of building, but you must not think
+the play of the imagination depends upon it. Intelligent laying of
+stones is always delightful; but the fancy must not be limited to its
+contemplation.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE V.--DOOR OF THE BAPTISTERY. PISA.]
+
+143. In the more elaborate architecture of my neighbourhood, I have
+taken pleasure these many years; one of the first papers I ever wrote
+on architecture was a study of the Westmoreland cottage;--properly,
+observe, the cottage of West-mereland, of the land of western lakes.
+Its principal feature is the projecting porch at its door, formed by two
+rough slabs of Coniston slate, set in a blunt gable; supported, if far
+projecting, by two larger masses for uprights. A disciple of Mr. Pugin
+would delightedly observe that the porch of St. Zeno at Verona was
+nothing more than the decoration of this construction; but you do not
+suppose that the first idea of putting two stones together to keep off
+rain was all on which the sculptor of St. Zeno wished to depend for your
+entertainment.
+
+144. Perhaps you may most clearly understand the real connection between
+structure and decoration by considering all architecture as a kind of
+book, which must be properly bound indeed, and in which the illumination
+of the pages has distinct reference in all its forms to the breadth of
+the margins and length of the sentences; but is itself free to follow
+its own quite separate and higher objects of design.
+
+145. Thus, for instance, in the architecture which Niccola was occupied
+upon, when a boy, under his Byzantine master. Here is the door of the
+Baptistery at Pisa, again by Mr. Severn delightfully enlarged for us
+from a photograph. [1] The general idea of it is a square-headed opening
+in a solid wall, faced by an arch carried on shafts. And the ornament
+does indeed follow this construction so that the eye catches it
+with ease,--but under what arbitrary conditions! In the square door,
+certainly the side-posts of it are as important members as the lintel
+they carry; but the lintel is carved elaborately, and the side-posts
+left blank. Of the facing arch and shaft, it would be similarly
+difficult to say whether the sustaining vertical, or sustained curve,
+were the more important member of the construction; but the decorator
+now reverses the distribution of his care, adorns the vertical member
+with passionate elaboration, and runs a narrow band, of comparatively
+uninteresting work, round the arch. Between this outer shaft and inner
+door is a square pilaster, of which the architect carves one side, and
+lets the other alone. It is followed by a smaller shaft and arch, in
+which he reverses his treatment of the outer order by cutting the shaft
+delicately and the arch deeply. Again, whereas in what is called the
+decorated construction of English Gothic, the pillars would have
+been left plain and the spandrils deep cut,--here, are we to call it
+decoration of the construction, when the pillars are carved and the
+spandrils left plain? Or when, finally, either these spandril spaces
+on each side of the arch, or the corresponding slopes of the gable, are
+loaded with recumbent figures by the sculptors of the renaissance, are
+we to call, for instance, Michael Angelo's Dawn and Twilight, only the
+decorations of the sloping plinths of a tomb, or trace to a geometrical
+propriety the subsequent rule in Italy that no window could be properly
+complete for living people to look out of, without having two stone
+people sitting on the corners of it above? I have heard of charming
+young ladies occasionally, at very crowded balls, sitting on the
+stairs,--would you call them, in that case, only decorations of the
+construction of the staircase?
+
+[Footnote 1: Plate 5 is from the photograph itself; the enlarged drawing
+showed the arrangement of parts more clearly, but necessarily omitted
+detail which it is better here to retain.]
+
+146. You will find, on consideration, the ultimate fact to be that to
+which I have just referred you;--my statement in "Aratra," that the idea
+of a construction originally useful is retained in good architecture,
+through all the amusement of its ornamentation; as the idea of the
+proper function of any piece of dress ought to be retained through its
+changes in form or embroidery. A good spire or porch retains the first
+idea of a roof usefully covering a space, as a Norman high cap or
+elongated Quaker's bonnet retains the original idea of a simple covering
+for the head; and any extravagance of subsequent fancy may be permitted,
+so long as the notion of use is not altogether lost. A girl begins by
+wearing a plain round hat to shade her from the sun; she ties it down
+over her ears on a windy day; presently she decorates the edge of it, so
+bent, with flowers in front, or the riband that ties it with a bouquet
+at the side, and it becomes a bonnet. This decorated construction may be
+discreetly changed, by endless fashion, so long as it does not become
+a clearly useless riband round the middle of the head, or a clearly
+useless saucer on the top of it.
+
+147. Again, a Norman peasant may throw up the top of her cap into a
+peak, or a Bernese one put gauze wings at the side of it, and still be
+dressed with propriety, so long as her hair is modestly confined, and
+her ears healthily protected, by the matronly safeguard of the real
+construction. She ceases to be decorously dressed only when the material
+becomes too flimsy to answer such essential purpose, and the flaunting
+pendants or ribands can only answer the ends of coquetry or
+ostentation. Similarly, an architect may deepen or enlarge, in fantastic
+exaggeration, his original Westmoreland gable into Rouen porch, and his
+original square roof into Coventry spire; but he must not put within his
+splendid porch, a little door where two persons cannot together get
+in, nor cut his spire away into hollow filigree, and mere ornamental
+perviousness to wind and rain.
+
+148. Returning to our door at Pisa, we shall find these general
+questions as to the distribution of ornament much confused with others
+as to its time and style. We are at once, for instance, brought to a
+pause as to the degree in which the ornamentation was once carried out
+in the doors themselves. Their surfaces were, however, I doubt not,
+once recipients of the most elaborate ornament, as in the Baptistery of
+Florence; and in later bronze, by John of Bologna, in the door of the
+Pisan cathedral opposite this one. And when we examine the sculpture and
+placing of the lintel, which at first appeared the most completely Greek
+piece of construction of the whole, we find it so far advanced in many
+Gothic characters, that I once thought it a later interpolation cutting
+the inner pilasters underneath their capitals, while the three statues
+set on it are certainly, by several tens of years, later still.
+
+149. How much ten years did at this time, one is apt to forget; and
+how irregularly the slower minds of the older men would surrender
+themselves, sadly, or awkwardly, to the vivacities of their pupils. The
+only wonder is that it should be usually so easy to assign conjectural
+dates within twenty or thirty years; but, at Pisa, the currents of
+tradition and invention run with such cross eddies, that I often find
+myself utterly at fault. In this lintel, for instance, there are
+two pieces separated by a narrower one, on which there has been an
+inscription, of which in my enlarged plate you may trace, though, I
+fear, not decipher, the few letters that remain. The uppermost of
+these stones is nearly pure in its Byzantine style; the lower, already
+semi-Gothic. Both are exquisite of their kind, and we will examine them
+closely; but first note these points about the stones of them. We are
+discussing work at latest of the thirteenth century. Our loss of the
+inscription is evidently owing to the action of the iron rivets which
+have been causelessly used at the two horizontal joints. There was
+nothing whatever in the construction to make these essential, and,
+but for this error, the entire piece of work, as delicate as an ivory
+tablet, would be as intelligible to-day as when it was laid in its
+place. [1]
+
+[Footnote: Plates 6 and 7 give, in greater clearness, the sculpture of
+this lintel, for notes on which see Appendix.]
+
+150. _Laid_. I pause upon this word, for it is an important one. And
+I must devote the rest of this lecture to consideration merely of what
+follows from the difference between laying a stone and setting it up,
+whether we regard sculpture or construction. The subject is so wide, I
+scarcely know how to approach it. Perhaps it will be the pleasantest
+way to begin if I read you a letter from one of yourselves to me. A
+very favourite pupil, who travels third class always, for sake of better
+company, wrote to me the other day: "One of my fellow-travellers, who
+was a builder, or else a master mason, told me that the way in which red
+sandstone buildings last depends entirely on the way in which the stone
+is laid. It must lie as it does in the quarry; but he said that very few
+workmen could always tell the difference between the joints of planes
+of cleavage and the--something else which I couldn't catch,--by which he
+meant, I suppose planes of stratification. He said too that some people,
+though they were very particular
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VI.--THE STORY OF ST. JOHN. ADVENT.]
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VII.--THE STORY OF ST. JOHN. DEPARTURE.]
+
+about having the stone laid well, allowed blocks to stand in the rain
+the wrong way up, and that they never recovered one wetting. The
+stone of the same quarry varies much, and he said that moss will grow
+immediately on good stone, but not on bad. How curious,--nature helping
+the best workman!" Thus far my favourite pupil.
+
+151. 'Moss will grow on the best stone.' The first thing your modern
+restorer would do is to scrape it off; and with it, whatever knitted
+surface, half moss root, protects the interior stone. Have you ever
+considered the infinite functions of protection to mountain form
+exercised by the mosses and lichens? It will perhaps be refreshing to
+you after our work among the Pisan marbles and legends, if we have a
+lecture or two on moss. Meantime I need not tell you that it would not
+be a satisfactory natural arrangement if moss grew on marble, and that
+all fine workmanship in marble implies equal exquisiteness of surface
+and edge.
+
+152. You will observe also that the importance of laying the stone in
+the building as it lay in its bed was from the first recognised by all
+good northern architects, to such extent that to lay stones 'en delit,'
+or in a position out of their bedding, is a recognized architectural
+term in France, where all structural building takes its rise; and in
+that form of 'delit' the word gets most curiously involved with the
+Latin delictum and deliquium. It would occupy the time of a whole
+lecture if I entered into the confused relations of the words derived
+from lectus, liquidus, delinquo, diliquo, and deliquesco; and of
+the still more confused, but beautifully confused, (and enriched by
+confusion,) forms of idea, whether respecting morality or marble,
+arising out of the meanings of these words: the notions of a bed
+gathered or strewn for the rest, whether of rocks or men; of the various
+states of solidity and liquidity connected with strength, or with
+repose; and of the duty of staying quiet in a place, or under a law,
+and the mischief of leaving it, being all fastened in the minds of early
+builders, and of the generations of men for whom they built, by the
+unescapable bearing of geological laws on their life; by the ease
+or difficulty of splitting rocks, by the variable consistency of the
+fragments split, by the innumerable questions occurring practically as
+to bedding and cleavage in every kind of stone, from tufo to granite,
+and by the unseemly, or beautiful, destructive, or protective, effects
+of decomposition. [1] The same processes of time which cause your Oxford
+oolite to flake away like the leaves of a mouldering book, only warm
+with a glow of perpetually deepening gold the marbles of Athens and
+Verona; and the same laws of chemical change which reduce the granites
+of Dartmoor to porcelain clay, bind the sands of Coventry into stones
+which can be built up halfway to the sky.
+
+[Footnote 1: This passage cannot but seem to the reader loose and
+fantastic. I have elaborate notes, and many an unwritten thought, on
+these matters, but no time or strength to develop them. The passage is
+not fantastic, but the rapid index of what I know to be true in all the
+named particulars. But compare, for mere rough illustration of what I
+mean, the moral ideas relating to the stone of Jacob's pillow, or the
+tradition of it, with those to which French Flamboyant Gothic owes its
+character.]
+
+153. But now, as to the matter immediately before us, observe what a
+double question arises about laying stones as they lie in the quarry.
+First, how _do_ they lie in the quarry? Secondly, how can we lay them so
+in every part of our building?
+
+A. How do they lie in the quarry? Level, perhaps, at Stonesfield and
+Coventry; but at an angle of 45° at Carrara; and for aught I know, of
+90° in Paros or Pentelicus. Also, the _bedding_ is of prime importance
+at Coventry, but the _cleavage_ at Coniston. [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: There are at least four definite cleavages at Coniston,
+besides joints. One of these cleavages furnishes the Coniston slate
+of commerce; another forms the ranges of Wetherlam and Yewdale crag;
+a third cuts these ranges to pieces, striking from north-west to
+south-east; and a fourth into other pieces, from north-east to
+south-west.]
+
+B. And then, even if we know what the quarry bedding is, how are we
+to keep it always in our building? You may lay the stones of a wall
+carefully level, but how will you lay those of an arch? You think these,
+perhaps, trivial, or merely curious questions. So far from it, the fact
+that while the bedding in Normandy is level, that at Carrara is steep,
+and that the forces which raised the beds of Carrara crystallized them
+also, so that the cleavage which is all-important in the stones of my
+garden wall is of none in the duomo of Pisa,--simply determined the
+possibility of the existence of Pisan sculpture at all, and regulated
+the whole life and genius of Nicholas the Pisan and of Christian art.
+And, again, the fact that you can put stones in true bedding in a
+wall, but cannot in an arch, determines the structural transition from
+classical to Gothic architecture.
+
+154. The _structural_ transition, observe; only a part, and that not
+altogether a coincident part, of the _moral_ transition. Read carefully,
+if you have time, the articles 'Pierre' and 'Meneau' in M. Violet le
+Duc's Dictionary of Architecture, and you will know everything that
+is of importance in the changes dependent on the mere qualities of
+_matter_. I must, however, try to set in your view also the relative
+acting qualities of _mind_.
+
+You will find that M. Violet le Duc traces all the forms of Gothic
+tracery to the geometrical and practically serviceable development of
+the stone 'chassis,' chasing, or frame, for the glass. For instance, he
+attributes the use of the cusp or 'redent' in its more complex forms, to
+the necessity, or convenience, of diminishing the space of glass which
+the tracery grasps; and he attributes the reductions of the mouldings in
+the tracery bar under portions of one section, to the greater facility
+thus obtained by the architect in directing his workmen. The plan of
+a window once given, and the moulding-section,--all is said, thinks M.
+Violet le Duc. Very convenient indeed, for modern architects who have
+commission on the cost. But certainly not necessary, and perhaps even
+inconvenient, to Niccola Pisano, who is himself his workman, and cuts
+his own traceries, with his apron loaded with dust.
+
+155. Again, the _re_dent--the 'tooth within tooth' of a French
+tracery--may be necessary, to bite its glass. But the cusp, cuspis,
+spiny or spearlike point of a thirteenth century illumination, is not in
+the least necessary to transfix the parchment. Yet do you suppose that
+the structural convenience of the redent entirely effaces from the mind
+of the designer the aesthetic characters which he seeks in the cusp?
+If you could for an instant imagine this, you would be undeceived by a
+glance either at the early redents of Amiens, fringing hollow vaults,
+or the late redents of Rouen, acting as crockets on the _outer_ edges
+of pediments. 156. Again: if you think of the tracery in its _bars_, you
+call the cusp a redent; but if you think of it in the _openings_, you
+call the apertures of it foils. Do you suppose that the thirteenth
+century builder thought only of the strength of the bars of his
+enclosure, and never of the beauty of the form he enclosed? You will
+find in my chapter on the Aperture, in the "Stones of Venice," full
+development of the aesthetic laws relating to both these forms, while
+you may see, in Professor Willis's 'Architecture of the Middle Ages,' a
+beautiful analysis of the development of tracery from the juxtaposition
+of aperture; and in the article 'Meneau,' just quoted of M. Violet le
+Duc, an equally beautiful analysis of its development from the masonry
+of the chassis. You may at first think that Professor Willis's
+analysis is inconsistent with M. Violet le Duc's. But they are no more
+inconsistent than the accounts of the growth of a human being would be,
+if given by two anatomists, of whom one had examined only the skeleton
+and the other only the respiratory system; and who, therefore,
+supposed--the first, that the animal had been made only to leap, and the
+other only to sing. I don't mean that either of the writers I name
+are absolutely thus narrow in their own views, but that, so far as
+inconsistency appears to exist between them, it is of that partial kind
+only.
+
+157. And for the understanding of our Pisan traceries we must introduce
+a third element of similarly distinctive nature. We must, to press our
+simile a little farther, examine the growth of the animal as if it
+had been made neither to leap, nor to sing, but only to think. We must
+observe the transitional states of its nerve power; that is to say, in
+our window tracery we must consider not merely how its ribs are built,
+(or how it stands,) nor merely how its openings are shaped, or how it
+breathes; but also what its openings are made to light, or its shafts
+to receive, of picture or image. As the limbs of the building, it may
+be much; as the lungs of the building, more. As the _eyes_ [1] of the
+building, what?
+
+[Footnote 1: I am ashamed to italicize so many words; but these
+passages, written for oral delivery, can only be understood if read with
+oral emphasis. This is the first aeries of lectures which I have printed
+as they were to be spoken; and it is a great mistake.]
+
+158. Thus you probably have a distinct idea--those of you at least
+who are interested in architecture--of the shape of the windows in
+Westminster Abbey, in the Cathedral of Chartres, or in the Duomo of
+Milan. Can any of you, I should like to know, make a guess at the shape
+of the windows in the Sistine Chapel, the Stanze of the Vatican, the
+Scuola di San Rocco, or the lower church of Assisi? The soul or anima of
+the first three buildings is in their windows; but of the last three, in
+their walls.
+
+All these points I may for the present leave you to think over for
+yourselves, except one, to which I must ask yet for a few moments your
+further attention.
+
+159. The trefoils to which I have called your attention in Niccola's
+pulpit are as absolutely without structural office in the circles as in
+the panels of the font beside it. But the circles are drawn with evident
+delight in the lovely circular line, while the trefoil is struck out by
+Niccola so roughly that there is not a true compass curve or section in
+any part of it.
+
+Roughly, I say. Do you suppose I ought to have said carelessly? So
+far from it, that if one sharper line or more geometric curve had been
+given, it would have caught the eye too strongly, and drawn away the
+attention from the sculpture. But imagine the feeling with which a
+French master workman would first see these clumsy intersections
+of curves. It would be exactly the sensation with which a practical
+botanical draughtsman would look at a foliage background of Sir Joshua
+Reynolds.
+
+But Sir Joshua's sketched leaves would indeed imply some unworkmanlike
+haste. We must not yet assume the Pisan master to have allowed himself
+in any such. His mouldings may be hastily cut, for they are, as I have
+just said, unnecessary to his structure, and disadvantageous to his
+decoration; but he is not likely to be careless about arrangements
+necessary for strength. His mouldings may be cut hastily, but do you
+think his _joints_ will be?
+
+160. What subject of extended inquiry have we in this word, ranging from
+the cementless clefts between the couchant stones of the walls of the
+kings of Rome, whose iron rivets you had but the other day placed in
+your hands by their discoverer, through the grip of the stones of the
+Tower of the Death-watch, to the subtle joints in the marble armour of
+the Florentine Baptistery!
+
+Our own work must certainly be left with a rough surface at this place,
+and we will fit the edges of it to our next piece of study as closely as
+we may.
+
+
+
+
+                LECTURE VII.
+
+              MARBLE RAMPANT.
+
+161. I closed my last lecture at the question respecting Nicholas's
+masonry. His mouldings may be careless, but do you think his joints will
+be?
+
+I must remind you now of the expression as to the building of the
+communal palace--"of _dressed_ stones" [1]--as opposed to the Tower
+of the Death-watch, in which the grip of cement had been so good.
+Virtually, you will find that the schools of structural architecture are
+those which use cement to bind
+
+[Footnote 1: "Pietre conce." The portion of the has-reliefs of Orvieto,
+given in the opposite plate, will show the importance of the jointing.
+Observe the way in which the piece of stone with the three principal
+figures is dovetailed above the extended band, and again in the rise
+above the joint of the next stone on the right, the sculpture of the
+wings being carried across the junction. I have chosen this piece on
+purpose, because the loss of the broken fragment, probably broken
+by violence, and the only serious injury which the sculptures have
+received, serves to show the perfection of the uninjured surface, as
+compared with northern sculpture of the same date. I have thought
+it well to show at the same time the modern German engraving of the
+subject, respecting which see Appendix.]
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--"THE CHARGE TO ADAM." GIOVANNI PISANO.]
+
+their materials together, and in which, therefore, balance of _weight_
+becomes a continual and inevitable question. But the schools of
+sculptural architecture are those in which stones are fitted without
+cement, in which, therefore, the question of _fitting_ or adjustment
+is continual and inevitable, but the sustainable weight practically
+unlimited.
+
+162. You may consider the Tower of the Death-watch as having been knit
+together like the mass of a Roman brick wall.
+
+But the dressed stone work of the thirteenth century is the hereditary
+completion of such block-laying, as the Parthenon in marble; or, in
+tufo, as that which was shown you so lately in the walls of Romulus; and
+the decoration of that system of couchant stone is by the finished grace
+of mosaic or sculpture.
+
+163. It was also pointed out to you by Mr. Parker that there were two
+forms of Cyclopean architecture; one of level blocks, the other of
+polygonal,--contemporary, but in localities affording different material
+of stone.
+
+I have placed in this frame examples of the Cyclopean horizontal, and
+the Cyclopean polygonal, architecture of the thirteenth century. And as
+Hubert of Lucca was the master of the new buildings at Florence, I have
+chosen the Cyclopean horizontal from his native city of Lucca; and as
+our Nicholas and John brought their new Gothic style into practice at
+Orvieto, I have chosen the Cyclopean polygonal from their adopted city
+of Orvieto.
+
+Both these examples of architecture are early thirteenth century work,
+the beginnings of its new and Christian style, but beginnings with which
+Nicholas and John had nothing to do; they were part of the national work
+going on round them.
+
+164. And this example from Lucca is of a very important class indeed.
+It is from above the east entrance gate of Lucca, which bears the cross
+above it, as the doors of a Christian city should. Such a city is, or
+ought to be, a place of peace, as much as any monastery.
+
+This custom of placing the cross above the gate is Byzantine-Christian;
+and here are parallel instances of its treatment from Assisi. The lamb
+with the cross is given in the more elaborate arch of Verona.
+
+165. But farther. The mosaic of this cross is so exquisitely fitted that
+no injury has been received by it to this day from wind or weather. And
+the horizontal dressed stones are laid so daintily that not an edge of
+them has stirred; and, both to draw your attention to their beautiful
+fitting, and as a substitute for cement, the architect cuts his
+uppermost block so as to dovetail into the course below.
+
+Dovetail, I say deliberately. This is stone carpentry, in which the
+carpenter despises glue. I don't say he won't use glue, and glue of the
+best, but he feels it to be a nasty thing, and that it spoils his wood
+or marble. None, at least, he determines shall be seen outside, and his
+laying of stones shall be so solid and so adjusted that, take all the
+cement away, his wall shall yet stand.
+
+Stonehenge, the Parthenon, the walls of the Kings, this gate of Lucca,
+this window of Orvieto, and this tomb at Verona, are all built on the
+Cyclopean principle. They will stand without cement, and no cement shall
+be seen outside. Mr. Burgess and I actually tried the experiment on this
+tomb. Mr. Burgess modelled every stone of it in clay, put them together,
+and it stood.
+
+166. Now there are two most notable characteristics about this Cyclopean
+architecture to which I beg your close attention.
+
+The first: that as the laying of stones is so beautiful, their joints
+become a subject of admiration, and great part of the architectural
+ornamentation is in the beauty of lines of separation, drawn as finely
+as possible. Thus the separating lines of the bricks at Siena, of this
+gate at Lucca, of the vault at Verona, of this window at Orvieto, and
+of the contemporary refectory at Furness Abbey, are a main source of the
+pleasure you have in the building. Nay, they are not merely engravers'
+lines, but, in finest practice, they are mathematical lines--length
+without breadth. Here in my hand is a little shaft of Florentine mosaic
+executed at the present day. The separations between the stones are,
+in dimension, mathematical lines. And the two sides of the thirteenth
+century porch of St. Anastasia at Verona are built in this manner,--so
+exquisitely, that for some time, my mind not having been set at it, I
+passed them by as painted!
+
+167. That is the first character of the Florentine Cyclopean But
+secondly; as the joints are so firm, and as the building must never
+stir or settle after it is built, the sculptor may trust his work to two
+stones set side by side, or one above another, and carve continuously
+over the whole surface, disregarding the joints, if he so chooses.
+
+Of the degree of precision with which Nicholas of Pisa and his son
+adjusted their stones, you may judge by this rough sketch of a piece of
+St. Mary's of the Thorn, in which the design is of panels enclosing very
+delicately sculptured heads; and one would naturally suppose that the
+enclosing panels would be made of jointed pieces, and the heads carved
+separately and inserted. But the Pisans would have considered that
+unsafe masonry,--liable to the accident of the heads being dropped out,
+or taken away. John of Pisa did indeed use such masonry, of necessity,
+in his fountain; and the bas-reliefs _have_ been taken away. But here
+one great block of marble forms part of two panels, and the mouldings
+and head are both carved in the solid, the joint running just behind the
+neck.
+
+168. Such masonry is, indeed, supposing there were no fear of thieves,
+gratuitously precise in a case of this kind, in which the ornamentation
+is in separate masses, and might be separately carved. But when the
+ornamentation is current, and flows or climbs along the stone in the
+manner of waves or plants, the concealment of the joints of the pieces
+of marble becomes altogether essential. And here we enter upon a most
+curious group of associated characters in Gothic as opposed to Greek
+architecture.
+
+169. If you have been able to read the article to which I referred you,
+'Meneau,' in M. Violet le Duc's dictionary, you know that one great
+condition of the perfect Gothic structure is that the stones shall be
+'en de-lit,' set up on end. The ornament then, which on the reposing or
+couchant stone was current only, on the erected stone begins to climb
+also, and becomes, in the most heraldic sense of the term, rampant.
+
+In the heraldic sense, I say, as distinguished from the still wider
+original sense of advancing with a stealthy, creeping, or clinging
+motion, as a serpent on the ground, and a cat, or a vine, up a
+tree-stem. And there is one of these reptile, creeping, or rampant
+things, which is the first whose action was translated into marble, and
+otherwise is of boundless importance in the arts and labours of man.
+
+170. You recollect Kingsley's expression,--now hackneyed, because
+admired for its precision,--the '_crawling foam_,' of waves advancing
+on sand. Tennyson has somewhere also used, with equal truth, the epithet
+'climbing' of the spray of breakers against vertical rock. [1] In either
+instance, the sea action is literally 'rampant'; and the course of a
+great breaker, whether in its first proud likeness to a rearing horse,
+or in the humble and subdued gaining of the outmost verge of its foam on
+the sand, or the intermediate spiral whorl which gathers into a lustrous
+precision, like that of a polished shell, the grasping force of a
+giant, you have the most vivid sight and embodiment of literally rampant
+energy; which the Greeks expressed in their symbolic Poseidon, Scylla,
+and sea-horse, by the head and crest of the man, dog, or horse, with
+the body of the serpent; and of which you will find the slower image, in
+vegetation, rendered both by the spiral tendrils of grasping or climbing
+plants, and the perennial gaining of the foam or the lichen upon barren
+shores of stone.
+
+[Footnote: Perhaps I am thinking of Lowell, not Tennyson; I have not
+time to look.]
+
+171. If you will look to the thirtieth chapter of vol. i. in the new
+edition of the "Stones of Venice," which, by the gift of its publishers,
+I am enabled to lay on your table to be placed in your library, you
+will find one of my first and most eager statements of the necessity of
+inequality or change in form, made against the common misunderstanding
+of Greek symmetry, and illustrated by a woodcut of the spiral ornament
+on the treasury of Atreus at Mycenae. All that is said in that chapter
+respecting nature and the ideal, I now beg most earnestly to recommend
+and ratify to you; but although, even at that time, I knew more of Greek
+art than my antagonists, my broken reading has given me no conception
+of the range of its symbolic power, nor of the function of that more
+or less formal spiral line, as expressive, not only of the waves of the
+sea, but of the zones of the whirlpool, the return of the tempest, and
+the involution of the labyrinth. And although my readers say that I
+wrote then better than I write now, I cannot refer you to the passage
+without asking you to pardon in it what I now hold to be the petulance
+and vulgarity of expression, disgracing the importance of the truth it
+contains. A little while ago, without displeasure, you permitted me to
+delay you by the account of a dispute on a matter of taste between my
+father and me, in which he was quietly and unavailingly right. It seems
+to me scarcely a day, since, with boyish conceit, I resisted his wise
+entreaties that I would re-word this clause; and especially take out of
+it the description of a sea-wave as "laying a great white tablecloth of
+foam" all the way to the shore. Now, after an interval of twenty years,
+I refer you to the passage, repentant and humble as far as regards its
+style, which people sometimes praised, but with absolue re-assertion
+of the truth and value of its contents, which people always denied. As
+natural form is varied, so must beautiful ornament be varied. You
+are not an artist by reproving nature into deathful sameness, but by
+animating your copy of her into vital variation. But I thought at that
+time that only Goths were rightly changeful. I never thought Greeks
+were. Their reserved variation escaped me, or I thought it accidental.
+Here, however, is a coin of the finest Greek workmanship, which shows
+you their mind in this matter unmistakably. Here are the waves of the
+Adriatic round a knight of Tarentum, and there is no doubt of their
+variableness.
+
+172. This pattern of sea-wave, or river whirlpool, entirely sacred in
+the Greek mind, and the [Greek: *bostruchos*] or similarly curling wave
+in flowing hair, are the two main sources of the spiral form in lambent
+or rampant decoration. Of such lambent ornament, the most important
+piece is the crocket, of which I rapidly set before you the origin.
+
+173. Here is a drawing of the gable of the bishop's throne in the upper
+church at Assisi, of the exact period when the mosaic workers of the
+thirteenth century at Rome adopted rudely the masonry of the north.
+Briefly, this is a Greek temple pediment, in which, doubtful of their
+power to carve figures beautiful enough, they cut a trefoiled hold for
+ornament, and bordered the edges with harlequinade of mosaic. They then
+call to their help the Greek sea-waves, and let the surf of the Ægean
+climb along the slopes, and toss itself at the top into a fleur-de-lys.
+Every wave is varied in outline and proportionate distance, though cut
+with a precision of curve like that of the sea itself. From this root
+we are able--but it must be in a lecture on crockets only--to trace the
+succeeding changes through the curl of Richard II.'s hair, and the
+crisp leaves of the forests of Picardy, to the knobbed extravagances of
+expiring Gothic. But I must to-day let you compare one piece of perfect
+Gothic work with the perfect Greek.
+
+174. There is no question in my own mind, and, I believe, none in
+that of any other long-practised student of mediæval art, that in pure
+structural Gothic the church of St. Urbain at Troyes is without rival in
+Europe. Here is a rude sketch of its use of the crocket in the spandrils
+of its external tracery, and here are the waves of the Greek sea round
+the son of Poseidon. Seventeen hundred years are between them, but the
+same mind is in both. I wonder how many times seventeen hundred years
+Mr. Darwin will ask, to retrace the Greek designer of this into his
+primitive ape; or how many times six hundred years of such improvements
+as we have made on the church of St. Urbain, will be needed in order
+to enable our descendants to regard the designers of that, as only
+primitive apes.
+
+175. I return for a moment to my gable at Assisi. You see that the crest
+of the waves at the top form a rude likeness of a fleur-de-lys. There
+is, however, in this form no real intention of imitating a flower, any
+more than in the meeting of the tails of these two Etruscan griffins.
+The notable circumstance in this piece of Gothic is its advanced form
+of crocket, and its prominent foliation, with nothing in the least
+approaching to floral ornament.
+
+176. And now, observe this very curious fact in the personal character
+of two contemporary artists. See the use of my manually graspable flag.
+Here is John of Pisa,--here Giotto. They are contemporary for twenty
+years;--but these are the prime of Giotto's life, and the last of John's
+life: virtually, Giotto is the later workman by full twenty years.
+
+But Giotto always uses severe geometrical mouldings, and disdains all
+luxuriance of leafage to set off interior sculpture.
+
+John of Pisa not only adopts Gothic tracery, but first allows himself
+enthusiastic use of rampant vegetation;--and here in the façade of
+Orvieto, you have not only perfect Gothic in the sentiment of Scripture
+history, but such luxurious ivy ornamentation as you cannot afterwards
+match for two hundred years. Nay, you can scarcely match it then--for
+grace of line, only in the richest flamboyant of France.
+
+177. Now this fact would set you, if you looked at art from its
+aesthetic side only, at once to find out what German artists had taught
+Giovanni Pisano. There _were_ Germans teaching him,--some teaching
+him many things; and the intense conceit of the modern German artist
+imagines them to have taught him all things.
+
+But he learnt his luxuriance, and Giotto his severity, in another
+school. The quality in both is Greek; and altogether moral. The grace
+and the redundance of Giovanui are the first strong manifestation of
+those characters in the Italian mind which culminate in the Madonnas of
+Luini and the arabesques of Raphael. The severity of Giotto belongs to
+him, on the contrary, not only as one of the strongest practical men who
+ever lived on this solid earth, but as the purest and firmest reformer
+of the discipline of the Christian Church, of whose writings any remains
+exist.
+
+178. Of whose writings, I say; and you look up, as doubtful that he has
+left any. Hieroglyphics, then, let me say instead; or, more accurately
+still, hierographics. St. Francis, in what he wrote and said, taught
+much that was false. But Giotto, his true disciple, nothing but what
+was true. And where _he_ uses an arabesque of foliage, depend upon it it
+will be to purpose--not redundant. I return for the time to our soft and
+luxuriant John of Pisa.
+
+179. Soft, but with no unmanly softness; luxuriant, but with no
+unmannered luxury. To him you owe as to their first sire in art, the
+grace of Ghiberti, the tenderness of Raphael, the awe of Michael Angelo.
+Second-rate qualities in all the three, but precious in their kind, and
+learned, as you shall see, essentially from this man. Second-rate he
+also, but with most notable gifts of this inferior kind. He is the
+Canova of the thirteenth century; but the Canova of the thirteenth,
+remember, was necessarily a very different person from the Canova of the
+eighteenth.
+
+The Cauova of the eighteenth century mimicked Greek grace for the
+delight of modern revolutionary sensualists. The Canova of the
+thirteenth century brought living Gothic truth into the living faith of
+his own time.
+
+Greek truth, and Gothic 'liberty,'--in that noble sense of the word,
+derived from the Latin 'liber,' of which I have already spoken, and
+which in my next lecture I will endeavour completely to develope.
+Meanwhile let me show you, as far as I can, the architecture itself
+about which these subtle questions arise.
+
+180. Here are five frames, containing the best representations I can get
+for you of the façade of the cathedral of Orvieto. I must remind you,
+before I let you look at them, of the reason why that cathedral was
+built; for I have at last got to the end of the parenthesis which began
+in my second lecture, on the occasion of our hearing that John of Pisa
+was sent for to Perugia, to carve the tomb of Pope Urban IV.; and we
+must now know who this Pope was.
+
+181. He was a Frenchman, born at that Troyes, in Champagne, which I gave
+you as the centre of French architectural skill, and Royalist character.
+He was born in the lowest class of the people, rose like Wolsey; became
+Bishop of Verdun; then, Patriarch of Jerusalem; returned in the year
+1261, from his Patriarchate, to solicit the aid of the then Pope,
+Alexander IV., against the Saracen. I do not know on what day he arrived
+in Rome; but on the 25th of May, Alexander died, and the Cardinals,
+after three months' disputing, elected the suppliant Patriarch to be
+Pope himself.
+
+182. A man with all the fire of France in him, all the faith, and all
+the insolence; incapable of doubting a single article of his creed, or
+relaxing one tittle of his authority; destitute alike of reason and of
+pity; and absolutely merciless either to an infidel, or an enemy. The
+young Prince Manfred, bastard son of Frederick II., now representing
+the main power of the German empire, was both; and against him the Pope
+brought into Italy a religious French knight, of character absolutely
+like his own, Charles of Anjou.
+
+183. The young Manfred, now about twenty years old, was as good a
+soldier as he was a bad Christian; and there was no safety for Urban
+at Rome. The Pope seated himself on a worthy throne for a
+thirteenth-century St. Peter. Fancy the rock of Edinburgh Castle, as
+steep on all sides as it is to the west; and as long as the Old Town;
+and you have the rock of Orvieto.
+
+184. Here, enthroned against the gates of hell, in unassailable
+fortitude, and unfaltering faith, sat Urban; the righteousness of his
+cause presently to be avouched by miracle, notablest among those of the
+Roman Church. Twelve miles east of his rock, beyond the range of low
+Apennine, shone the quiet lake, the Loch Leven of Italy, from whose
+island the daughter of Theodoric needed not to escape--Fate seeking her
+there; and in a little chapel on its shore a Bohemian priest, infected
+with Northern infidelity, was brought back to his allegiance by seeing
+the blood drop from the wafer in his hand. And the Catholic Church
+recorded this heavenly testimony to her chief mystery, in the Festa of
+the Corpus Domini, and the Fabric of Orvieto.
+
+185. And sending was made for John, and for all good labourers in
+marble; but Urban never saw a stone of the great cathedral laid. His
+citation of Manfred to appear in his presence to answer for his heresy,
+was fixed against the posts of the doors of the old Duomo. But Urban had
+dug the foundation of the pile to purpose, and when he died at Perugia,
+still breathed, from his grave, calamity to Manfred, and made from it
+glory to the Church. He had secured the election of a French successor;
+from the rock of Orvieto the spirit of Urban led the French chivalry,
+when Charles of Anjou saw the day of battle come, so long desired.
+Manfred's Saracens, with their arrows, broke his first line; the Pope's
+legate blessed the second, and gave them absolution of all their sins,
+for their service to the Church. They charged for Orvieto with their
+old cry of 'Mont-Joie, Chevaliers!' and before night, while Urban lay
+sleeping in his carved tomb at Perugia, the body of Manfred lay only
+recognizable by those who loved him, naked among the slain.
+
+186. Time wore on and on. The Suabian power ceased in Italy; between
+white and red there was now no more contest;--the matron of the Church,
+scarlet-robed, reigned, ruthless, on her seven hills. Time wore on; and,
+a hundred years later, now no more the power of the kings, but the power
+of the people,--rose against her. St. Michael, from the corn market,--Or
+San Michele,--the commercial strength of Florence, on a question of free
+trade in corn. And note, for a little bye piece of botany, that in
+Val d'Arno lilies grow among the corn instead of poppies. The purple
+gladiolus glows through all its green fields in early spring.
+
+187. A question of free trade in corn, then, arose between Florence and
+Rome. The Pope's legate in Bologna stopped the supply of polenta, the
+Florentines depending on that to eat with their own oil. Very wicked,
+you think, of the Pope's legate, acting thus against quasi-Protestant
+Florence? Yes; just as wicked as the--not quasi-Protestants--but
+intensely positive Protestants, of Zurich, who tried to convert the
+Catholic forest-cantons by refusing them salt. Christendom has been
+greatly troubled about bread and salt: the then Protestant Pope,
+Zuinglius, was killed at the battle of Keppel, and the Catholic cantons
+therefore remain Catholic to this day; while the consequences of this
+piece of protectionist economy at Bologna are equally interesting and
+direct.
+
+188. The legate of Bologna, not content with stopping the supplies of
+maize to Florence, sent our own John Hawkwood, on the 24th June, 1375,
+to burn all the maize the Florentines had got growing; and the abbot
+of Montemaggiore sent a troop of Perugian religious gentlemen-riders
+to ravage similarly the territory of Siena. Whereupon, at Florence, the
+Gonfalonier of Justice, Aloesio Aldobrandini, rose in the Council of
+Ancients and proposed, as an enterprise worthy of Florentine generosity,
+the freedom of all the peoples who groaned under the tyranny of the
+Church. And Florence, Siena, Pisa, Lucca, and Arezzo,--all the great
+cities of Etruria, the root of religion in Italy,--joined against the
+tyranny of religion. Strangely, this Etrurian league is not now to
+restore Tarquin to Rome, but to drive the Roman Tarquin into exile. The
+story of Lucretia had been repeated in Perugia; but the Umbrian Lucretia
+had died, not by suicide, but by falling on the pavement from the window
+through which she tried to escape. And the Umbrian Sextus was the Abbot
+of Montemaggiore's nephew.
+
+189. Florence raised her fleur-de-lys standard: and, in ten days, eighty
+cities of Romagua were free, out of the number of whose names I
+will read you only these--Urbino, Foligno, Spoleto, Narni, Camerino,
+Toscanella, Perugia, Orvieto.
+
+And while the wind and the rain still beat the body of Manfred, by the
+shores of the Rio Verde, the body of Pope Urban was torn from its tomb,
+and not one stone of the carved work thereof left upon another. 190. I
+will only ask you to-day to notice farther that the Captain of Florence,
+in this war, was a 'Conrad of Suabia,' and that she gave him, beside her
+own flag, one with only the word 'Libertas' inscribed on it.
+
+I told you that the first stroke of the bell on the Tower of the
+Lion began the carillon for European civil and religious liberty. But
+perhaps, even in the fourteenth century, Florence did not understand, by
+that word, altogether the same policy which is now preached in France,
+Italy, and England.
+
+What she did understand by it, we will try to ascertain in the course of
+next lecture.
+
+
+
+
+                LECTURE VIII.
+
+                FRANCHISE.
+
+ 191. In my first lecture of this course, you remember that I showed
+you the Lion of St. Mark's with Niccola Pisano's, calling the one
+an evangelical-preacher lion, and the other a real, and naturally
+affectionate, lioness.
+
+And the one I showed you as Byzantine, the other as Gothic.
+
+So that I thus called the Greek art pious, and the Gothic profane.
+
+Whereas in nearly all our ordinary modes of thought, and in all my own
+general references to either art, we assume Greek or classic work to be
+profane, and Gothic, pious, or religious.
+
+192. Very short reflection, if steady and clear, will both show you how
+confused our ideas are usually on this subject, and how definite they
+may within certain limits become.
+
+First of all, don't confuse piety with Christianity. There are pious
+Greeks and impious Greeks; pious Turks and impious Turks; pious
+Christians and impious Christians; pious modern infidels and impious
+modern infidels. In case you do not quite know what piety really means,
+we will try to know better in next lecture; for the present, understand
+that I mean distinctly to call Greek art, in the true sense of the word,
+pious, and Gothic, as opposed to it, profane.
+
+193. But when I oppose these two words, Gothic and Greek, don't run away
+with the notion that I necessarily mean to oppose _Christian_ and Greek.
+You must not confuse Gothic blood in a man's veins, with Christian
+feeling in a man's breast. There are unconverted and converted Goths;
+unconverted and converted Greeks. The Greek and Gothic temper is equally
+opposed, where the name of Christ has never been uttered by either, or
+when every other name is equally detested by both.
+
+I want you to-day to examine with me that essential difference between
+Greek and Gothic temper, irrespective of creed, to which I have referred
+in my preface to the last edition of the "Stones of Venice," saying that
+the Byzantines gave law to Norman license. And I must therefore ask your
+patience while I clear your minds from some too prevalent errors as to
+the meaning of those two words, law and license.
+
+194. There is perhaps no more curious proof of the disorder which
+impatient and impertinent science is introducing into classical thought
+and language, than the title chosen by the Duke of Argyll for his
+interesting study of Natural History--'The Reign of Law.' Law cannot
+reign. If a natural law, it admits no disobedience, and has nothing to
+put right. If a human one, it can compel no obedience, and has no power
+to prevent wrong. A king only can reign;--a person, that is to say, who,
+conscious of natural law, enforces human law so far as it is just.
+
+195. Kinghood is equally necessary in Greek dynasty, and in Gothic.
+Theseus is every inch a king, as well as Edward III. But the laws which
+they have to enforce on their own and their companions' humanity are
+opposed to each other as much as their dispositions are.
+
+The function of a Greek king was to enforce labour.
+
+That of a Gothic king, to restrain rage.
+
+The laws of Greece determine the wise methods of labour; and the laws of
+France determine the wise restraints of passion.
+
+For the sins of Greece are in Indolence, and its pleasures; and the sins
+of France are in fury, and its pleasures.
+
+196. You are now again surprised, probably, at hearing me oppose France
+typically to Greece. More strictly, I might oppose only a part of
+France,--Normandy. But it is better to say, France, [1] as embracing the
+seat of the established Norman power in the Island of our Lady; and the
+province in which it was crowned,--Champagne.
+
+[Footnote 1: "Normandie, la franche." "France, la solue;" (chanson de
+Roland). One of my good pupils referred me to this ancient and glorious
+French song.]
+
+France is everlastingly, by birth, name, and nature, the country of the
+Franks, or free persons; and the first source of European frankness,
+or franchise. The Latin for franchise is libertas. But the modern or
+Cockney-English word liberty,--Mr. John Stuart Mill's,--is not
+the equivalent of libertas; and the modern or Cockney-French word
+liberté,--M. Victor Hugo's,--is not the equivalent of franchise.
+
+197. The Latin for franchise, I have said, is libertas; the Greek is
+[Greek: *eleupheria*]. In the thoughts of all three nations, the idea
+is precisely the same, and the word used for the idea by each nation
+therefore accurately translates the word of the other: [Greek:
+*eleupheria*]--libertas--franchise--reciprocally translate each other.
+Leonidas is characteristically [Greek: *eleupheros*] among Greeks;
+Publicola, characteristically liber, among Romans; Edward III. and the
+Black Prince, characteristically frank among French. And that common
+idea, which the words express, as all the careful scholars among you
+will know, is, with all the three nations, mainly of deliverance from
+the slavery of passion. To be [Greek: *eleupheros*], liber, or franc,
+is first to have learned how to rule our own passions; and then, certain
+that our own conduct is right, to persist in that conduct against
+all resistance, whether of counter-opinion, counter pain, or
+counter-pleasure. To be defiant alike of the mob's thought, of the
+adversary's threat, and the harlot's temptation,--this is in the meaning
+of every great nation to be free; and the one condition upon which that
+freedom can be obtained is pronounced to you in a single verse of the
+119th Psalm, "I will walk at liberty, for I seek Thy precepts."
+
+198. Thy precepts:--Law, observe, being dominant over the Gothic as over
+the Greek king, but a quite different law. Edward III. feeling no anger
+against the Sieur de Ribaumont, and crowning him with his own pearl
+chaplet, is obeying the law of love, _restraining_ anger; but Theseus,
+slaying the Minotaur, is obeying the law of justice, and _enforcing_
+anger.
+
+The one is acting under the law of the charity, [Greek: *charis*] or
+grace of God; the other under the law of His judgment. The two together
+fulfil His [Greek: *krisis*] and [Greek: *agapae*].
+
+199. Therefore the Greek dynasties are finally expressed in the
+kinghoods of Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, who judge infallibly, and
+divide arithmetically. But the dynasty of the Gothic king is in equity
+and compassion, and his arithmetic is in largesse,
+
+        "Whose moste joy was, I wis,
+     When that she gave, and said, Have this."
+
+
+So that, to put it in shortest terms of all, Greek law is of Stasy, and
+Gothic of Ecstasy; there is no limit to the freedom of the Gothic hand
+or heart, and the children are most in the delight and the glory of
+liberty when they most seek their Father's precepts.
+
+200. The two lines I have just quoted are, as you probably remember,
+from Chaucer's translation of the French Romance of the Rose, out
+of which I before quoted to you the description of the virtue
+of Debonnaireté. Now that Debonnaireté of the Painted Chamber of
+Westminster is the typical figure used by the French sculptors and
+painters for 'franchise,' frankness, or Frenchness; but in the Painted
+Chamber, Debonnaireté, high breeding, 'out of goodnestedness,' or
+gentleness, is used, as an English king's English, of the Norman
+franchise. Here, then, is our own royalty,--let us call it Englishness,
+the grace of our proper kinghood;--and here is French royalty, the grace
+of French kinghood--Frenchness, rudely but sufficiently drawn by M.
+Didron from the porch of Chartres. She has the crown of fleur-de-lys,
+and William the Norman's shield.
+
+201. Now this grace of high birth, the grace of his or her Most Gracious
+Majesty, has her name at Chartres written beside her, in Latin. Had it
+been in Greek, it would have been [Greek: *elevtheria*]. Being in Latin,
+what do you think it must be necessarily?--Of course, Libertas. Now M.
+Didron is quite the best writer on art that I know,--full of sense and
+intelligence; but of course, as a modern Frenchman,--one of a nation for
+whom the Latin and Gothic ideas of libertas have entirely vanished,--he
+is not on his guard against the trap here laid for him. He looks at
+the word libertas through his spectacles;--can't understand, being a
+thoroughly good antiquary, [1] how such a virtue, or privilege, could
+honestly be carved with approval in the twelfth century;--rubs his
+spectacles; rubs the inscription, to make sure of its every letter;
+stamps it, to make surer still;--and at last, though in a greatly
+bewildered state of mind, remains convinced that here is a sculpture of
+'La Liberte' in the twelfth century. "C'est bien la liberte!" "On lit
+parfaitement libertas."
+
+[Footnote 1: Historical antiquary; not art-antiquary I must limitedly
+say, however. He has made a grotesque mess of his account of the Ducal
+Palace of Venice, through his ignorance of the technical characters of
+sculpture.]
+
+202. Not so, my good M. Didron!--a very different personage, this;
+of whom more, presently, though the letters of her name are indeed so
+plainly, 'Libertas, at non liberalitas,' liberalitas being the Latin for
+largesse, not for franchise.
+
+This, then, is the opposition between the Greek and Gothic dynasties, in
+their passionate or vital nature; in the _animal_ and _inbred_ part
+of them;--Classic and romantic, Static and exstatic. But now, what
+opposition is there between their divine natures? Between Theseus
+and Edward III., as warriors, we now know the difference; but between
+Theseus and Edward III, as theologians; as dreaming and discerning
+creatures, as didactic kings,--engraving letters with the point of the
+sword, instead of thrusting men through with it,--changing the club into
+the ferula, and becoming schoolmasters as well as kings; what is, thus,
+the difference between them?
+
+Theologians I called them. Philologians would be a better word,--lovers
+of the [Greek: *Logos*], or Word, by which the heavens and earth were
+made. What logos, _about_ this Logos, have they learned, or can they
+teach?
+
+203. I showed you, in my first lecture, the Byzantine Greek lion, as
+descended by true unblemished line from the Nemean Greek; but with this
+difference: Heracles kills the beast, and makes a helmet and cloak of
+his skin; the Greek St. Mark converts the beast, and makes an evangelist
+of him.
+
+Is not that a greater difference, think you, than one of mere decadence?
+
+This 'maniera goffa e sproporzionata' of Vasari is not, then, merely the
+wasting away of former leonine strength into thin rigidities of death?
+There is another change going on at the same time,--body perhaps
+subjecting itself to spirit.
+
+I will not teaze you with farther questions. The facts are simple
+enough. Theseus and Heracles have their religion, sincere and
+sufficient,--a religion of lion-killers, minotaur-killers, very
+curious and rude; Eleusinian mystery mingled in it, inscrutable to us
+now,--partly always so, even to them.
+
+204. Well; the Greek nation, in process of time, loses its
+manliness,--becomes Graeculus instead of Greek. But though effeminate
+and feeble, it inherits all the subtlety of its art, all the cunning of
+its mystery; and it is converted to a more spiritual religion. Nor is
+it altogether degraded, even by the diminution of its animal energy.
+Certain spiritual phenomena are possible to the weak, which are hidden
+from the strong;--nay, the monk may, in his order of being, possess
+strength denied to the warrior. Is it altogether, think you, by
+blundering, or by disproportion in intellect or in body, that Theseus
+becomes St. Athanase? For that is the kind of change which takes place,
+from the days of the great King of Athens, to those of the great Bishop
+of Alexandria, in the thought and theology, or, summarily, in the spirit
+of the Greek.
+
+Now we have learned indeed the difference between the Gothic knight and
+the Greek knight; but what will be the difference between the Gothic
+saint and Greek saint?
+
+Franchise of body against constancy of body.
+
+Franchise of thought, then, against constancy of thought.
+
+Edward III. against Theseus.
+
+And the Frank of Assisi against St. Athanase.
+
+205. Utter franchise, utter gentleness in theological thought. Instead
+of, 'This is the faith, which except a man believe faithfully, he
+cannot be saved,' 'This is the love, which if a bird or an insect keep
+faithfully, _it_ shall be saved.'
+
+Gentlemen, you have at present arrived at a phase of natural science in
+which, rejecting alike the theology of the Byzantine, and the affection
+of the Frank, you can only contemplate a bird as flying under the reign
+of law, and a cricket as singing under the compulsion of caloric.
+
+I do not know whether you yet feel that the position of your boat on
+the river also depends entirely on the reign of law, or whether, as your
+churches and concert-rooms are privileged in the possession of organs
+blown by steam, you are learning yourselves to sing by gas, and expect
+the Dies Irae to the announced by a steam-trumpet. But I can very
+positively assure you that, in my poor domain of imitative art, not all
+the mechanical or gaseous forces of the world, nor all the laws of
+the universe, will enable you either to see a colour, or draw a line,
+without that singular force anciently called the soul, which it was the
+function of the Greek to discipline in the duty of the servants of God,
+and of the Goth to lead into the liberty of His children.
+
+206. But in one respect I wish you were more conscious of the existence
+of law than you appear to be. The difference which I have pointed out
+to you as existing between these great nations, exists also between two
+orders of intelligence among men, of which the one is usually called
+Classic, the other Romantic. Without entering into any of the fine
+distinctions between these two sects, this broad one is to be observed
+as constant: that the writers and painters of the Classic school set
+down nothing but what is known to be true, and set it down in the
+perfectest manner possible in their way, and are thenceforward
+authorities from whom there is no appeal. Romantic writers and painters,
+on the contrary, express themselves under the impulse of passions which
+may indeed lead them to the discovery of new truths, or to the more
+delightful arrangement or presentment of things already known: but
+their work, however brilliant or lovely, remains imperfect, and without
+authority. It is not possible, of course, to separate these two orders
+of men trenchantly: a classic writer may sometimes, whatever his
+care, admit an error, and a romantic one may reach perfection through
+enthusiasm. But, practically, you may separate the two for your study
+and your education; and, during your youth, the business of us your
+masters is to enforce on you the reading, for school work, only of
+classical books: and to see that your minds are both informed of
+the indisputable facts they contain, and accustomed to act with the
+infallible accuracy of which they set the example.
+
+207. I have not time to make the calculation, but I suppose that the
+daily literature by which we now are principally nourished, is so large
+in issue that though St. John's "even the world itself could not
+contain the books which should be written" may be still hyperbole, it
+is nevertheless literally true that the world might be _wrapped_ in the
+books which are written; and that the sheets of paper covered with type
+on any given subject, interesting to the modern mind, (say the prospects
+of the Claimant,) issued in the form of English morning papers during a
+single year, would be enough literally to pack the world in.
+
+208. Now I will read you fifty-two lines of a classical author, which,
+once well read and understood, contain more truth than has been told you
+all this year by this whole globe's compass of print.
+
+Fifty-two lines, of which you will recognize some as hackneyed, and see
+little to admire in others. But it is not possible to put the statements
+they contain into better English, nor to invalidate one syllable of the
+statements they contain. [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: 'The Deserted Village,' line 251 to 302.]
+
+209. Even those, and there may be many here, who would dispute the truth
+of the passage, will admit its exquisite distinctness and construction.
+If it be untrue, that is merely because I have not been taught by
+my modern education to recognize a classical author; but whatever my
+mistakes, or yours, may be, there _are_ certain truths long known to
+all rational men, and indisputable. You may add to them, but you cannot
+diminish them. And it is the business of a University to determine what
+books of this kind exist, and to enforce the understanding of them.
+
+210. The classical and romantic arts which we have now under examination
+therefore consist,--the first, in that which represented, under whatever
+symbols, truths respecting the history of men, which it is proper
+that all should know; while the second owes its interest to passionate
+impulse or incident. This distinction holds in all ages, but the
+distinction between the franchise of Northern, and the constancy of
+Byzantine, art, depends partly on the unsystematic play of emotion in
+the one, and the appointed sequence of known fact or determined judgment
+in the other.
+
+You will find in the beginning of M. Didron's book, already quoted,
+an admirable analysis of what may be called the classic sequence of
+Christian theology, as written in the sculpture of the Cathedral of
+Chartres. You will find in the treatment of the façade of Orvieto the
+beginning of the development of passionate romance,--the one being grave
+sermon writing; the other, cheerful romance or novel writing: so that
+the one requires you to think, the other only to feel or perceive; the
+one is always a parable with a meaning, the other only a story with an
+impression.
+
+211. And here I get at a result concerning Greek art, which is very
+sweeping and wide indeed. That it is all parable, but Gothic, as
+distinct from it, literal. So absolutely does this hold, that it reaches
+down to our modern school of landscape. You know I have always told you
+Turner belonged to the Greek school. Precisely as the stream of blood
+coming from under the throne of judgment in the Byzantine mosaic of
+Torcello is a sign of condemnation, his scarlet clouds are used by
+Turner as a sign of death; and just as on an Egyptian tomb the genius
+of death lays the sun down behind the horizon, so in his Cephalus and
+Procris, the last rays of the sun withdraw from the forest as the nymph
+expires.
+
+And yet, observe, both the classic and romantic teaching may be equally
+earnest, only different in manner. But from classic art, unless you
+understand it, you may get nothing; from romantic art, even if you don't
+understand it, you get at least delight.
+
+212. I cannot show the difference more completely or fortunately than
+by comparing Sir Walter Scott's type of libertas, with the franchise of
+Chartres Cathedral, or Debonnaireté of the Painted Chamber.
+
+At Chartres, and Westminster, the high birth is shown by the crown; the
+strong bright life by the flowing hair; the fortitude by the conqueror's
+shield; and the truth by the bright openness of the face:
+
+       "She was not brown, nor dull of hue,
+        But white as snowe, fallen newe."
+
+
+All these are symbols, which, if you cannot read, the image is to you
+only an uninteresting stiff figure. But Sir Walter's Franchise, Diana
+Vernon, interests you at once in personal aspect and character. She is
+no symbol to you; but if you acquaint yourself with her perfectly,
+you find her utter frankness, governed by a superb self-command; her
+spotless truth, refined by tenderness; her fiery enthusiasm, subdued by
+dignity; and her fearless liberty, incapable of doing wrong, joining to
+fulfil to you, in sight and presence, what the Greek could only teach by
+signs.
+
+213. I have before noticed--though I am not sure that you have yet
+believed my statement of it--the significance of Sir Walter's as
+of Shakspeare's names; Diana 'Vernon, semper viret,' gives you the
+conditions of purity and youthful strength or spring which imply the
+highest state of libertas. By corruption of the idea of purity, you get
+the modern heroines of London Journal--or perhaps we may more fitly call
+it 'Cockney-daily'--literature. You have one of them in perfection, for
+instance, in Mr. Charles Reade's 'Griffith Gaunt'--"Lithe, and vigorous,
+and one with her great white gelding;" and liable to be entirely changed
+in her mind about the destinies of her life by a quarter of an hour's
+conversation with a gentleman unexpectedly handsome; the hero also being
+a person who looks at people whom he dislikes, with eyes "like a dog's
+in the dark;" and both hero and heroine having souls and intellects also
+precisely corresponding to those of a dog's in the dark, which is indeed
+the essential picture of the practical English national mind at this
+moment,--happy if it remains doggish,--Circe not usually being content
+with changing people into dogs only. For the Diana Vernon of the Greek
+is Artemis Laphria, who is friendly to the dog; not to the swine. Do you
+see, by the way, how perfectly the image is carried out by Sir Walter
+in putting his Diana on the border country? "Yonder blue hill is in
+Scotland," she says to her cousin,--not in the least thinking less of
+him for having been concerned, it may be, in one of Bob Roy's forays.
+And so gradually you get the idea of Norman franchise carried out in the
+free-rider or free-booter; not safe from degradation on that side
+also; but by no means of swinish temper, or foraging, as at present the
+British speculative public, only with the snout.
+
+214. Finally, in the most soft and domestic form of virtue, you have
+Wordsworth's ideal:
+
+      "Her household motions light and free,
+       And steps of virgin liberty."
+
+
+The distinction between these northern types of feminine virtue, and the
+figures of Alcestis, Antigone, or Iphigenia, lies deep in the spirit of
+the art of either country, and is carried out into its most unimportant
+details. We shall find in the central art of Florence at once the
+thoughtfulness of Greece and the gladness of England, associated under
+images of monastic severity peculiar to herself.
+
+And what Diana Vernon is to a French ballerine dancing the Cancan, the
+'libertas' of Chartres and Westminster is to the 'liberty' of M. Victor
+Hugo and Mr. John Stuart Mill.
+
+
+
+
+                LECTURE IX.
+
+              THE TYRRHENE SEA.
+
+215. We may now return to the points of necessary history, having
+our ideas fixed within accurate limits as to the meaning of the word
+Liberty; and as to the relation of the passions which separated the
+Guelph and Ghibelline to those of our own days.
+
+The Lombard or Guelph league consisted, after the accession of Florence,
+essentially of the three great cities--Milan, Bologna, and Florence; the
+Imperial or Ghibelline league, of Verona, Pisa, and Siena. Venice and
+Genoa, both nominally Guelph, are in furious contention always for sea
+empire while Pisa and Genoa are in contention, not so much for empire,
+as honour. Whether the trade of the East was to go up the Adriatic, or
+round by the Gulf of Genoa, was essentially a mercantile question; but
+whether, of the two ports in sight of each other, Pisa or Genoa was to
+be the Queen of the Tyrrhene Sea, was no less distinctly a personal one
+than which of two rival beauties shall preside at a tournament.
+
+216. This personal rivalry, so far as it was separated from their
+commercial interests, was indeed mortal, but not malignant. The quarrel
+was to be decided to the death, but decided with honour; and each city
+had four observers permittedly resident in the other, to give account of
+all that was done there in naval invention and armament.
+
+217. Observe, also, in the year 1251, when we quitted our history, we
+left Florence not only Guelph, as against the Imperial power, (that is
+to say, the body of her knights who favoured the Pope and Italians, in
+dominion over those who favoured Manfred and the Germans), but we left
+her also definitely with her apron thrown over her shield; and the
+tradesmen and craftsmen in authority over the knight, whether German or
+Italian, Papal or Imperial.
+
+That is in 1251. Now in these last two lectures I must try to mark the
+gist of the history of the next thirty years. The Thirty Years' War,
+this, of the middle ages, infinitely important to all ages; first
+observe, between Guelph and Ghibelline, ending in the humiliation of
+the Ghibelline; and, secondly, between Shield and Apron, or, if you like
+better, between Spear and Hammer, ending in the breaking of the Spear.
+
+218. The first decision of battle, I say, is that between Guelph and
+Ghibelline, headed by two men of precisely oppposite characters,
+Charles of Anjou and Manfred of Suabia. That I may be able to define
+the opposition of their characters intelligibly, I must first ask your
+attention to some points of general scholarship. I said in my last
+lecture that, in this one, it would be needful for us to consider what
+piety was, if we happened not to know; or worse than that, it may be,
+not instinctively to feel. Such want of feeling is indeed not likely in
+you, being English-bred; yet as it is the modern cant to consider all
+such sentiment as useless, or even shameful, we shall be in several ways
+advantaged by some examination of its nature. Of all classical writers,
+Horace is the one with whom English gentlemen have on the average most
+sympathy; and I believe, therefore, we shall most simply and easily get
+at our point by examining the piety of Horace.
+
+219. You are perhaps, for the moment, surprised, whatever might have
+been admitted of Æneas, to hear Horace spoken of as a pious person. But
+of course when your attention is turned to the matter you will recollect
+many lines in which the word 'pietas' occurs, of which you have only
+hitherto failed to allow the force because you supposed Horace did not
+mean what he said.
+
+220. But Horace always and altogether means what he says. It is just
+because--whatever his faults may have been--he was not a hypocrite, that
+English gentlemen are so fond of him. "Here is a frank fellow, anyhow,"
+they say, "and a witty one." Wise men know that he is also wise. True
+men know that he is also true. But pious men, for want of attention, do
+not always know that he is pious.
+
+One great obstacle to your understanding of him is your having been
+forced to construct Latin verses, with introduction of the word
+'Jupiter' always, at need, when you were at a loss for a dactyl. You
+always feel as if Horace only used it also when he wanted a dactyl.
+
+221. Get quit of that notion wholly. All immortal writers speak out of
+their hearts. Horace spoke out of the abundance of his heart, and tells
+you precisely what he is, as frankly as Montaigne. Note then, first,
+how modest he is: "Ne parva Tyrrhenum per aequor, vela darem;--Operosa
+parvus, carmina fingo." Trust him in such words; he absolutely means
+them; knows thoroughly that he cannot sail the Tyrrhene Sea,--knows that
+he cannot float on the winds of Matinum,--can only murmur in the sunny
+hollows of it among the heath.
+
+But note, secondly, his pride: "Exegi monumentum sere perennius." He is
+not the least afraid to say that. He did it; knew he had done it; said
+he had done it; and feared no charge of arrogance.
+
+222. Note thirdly, then, his piety, and accept his assured speech of it:
+"Dis pietas mea, et Musa, cordi est." He is perfectly certain of that
+also; serenely tells you so; and you had better believe him. Well for
+you, if you can believe him; for to believe him, you must understand
+him first; and I can tell you, you won't arrive at that understanding
+by looking out the word 'pietas' in your White-and-Riddle. If you do
+you will find those tiresome contractions, Etym. Dub., stop your inquiry
+very briefly, as you go back; if you go forward, through the Italian
+pieta, you will arrive presently in another group of ideas, and end in
+misericordia, mercy, and pity. You must not depend on the form of the
+word; you must find out what it stands for in Horace's mind, and in
+Virgil's. More than race to the Roman; more than power to the statesman;
+yet helpless beside the grave,--"Non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia,
+non te, Restitvet pietas."
+
+Nay, also what it stands for as an attribute, not only of men, but of
+gods; nor of those only as merciful, but also as avenging. Against Æneas
+himself, Dido invokes the waves of the Tyrrhene Sea, "si quid pia numina
+possunt." Be assured there is no getting at the matter by dictionary
+or context. To know what love means, you must love; to know what piety
+means, you must be pious.
+
+223. Perhaps you dislike the word, now, from its vulgar use. You may
+have another if you choose, a metaphorical one,--close enough it seems
+to Christianity, and yet still absolutely distinct from it,--[Greek:
+*christos*]. Suppose, as you watch the white bloom of the olives of Val
+d'Arno and Val di Nievole, which modern piety and economy suppose
+were grown by God only to supply you with fine Lucca oil, you were to
+consider, instead, what answer you could make to the Socratio question,
+[Greek: *pothen un tis tovto to chrisma labot*]. [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Xem. Conviv., ii.]
+
+224. I spoke to you first of Horace's modesty. All piety begins in
+modesty. You must feel that you are a very little creature, and that you
+had better do as you are bid. You will then begin to think what you
+are bid to do, and who bids it. And you will find, unless you are very
+unhappy indeed, that there is always a quite clear notion of right
+and wrong in your minds, which you can either obey or disobey, at your
+pleasure. Obey it simply and resolutely; it will become clearer to you
+every day: and in obedience to it, you will find a sense of being in
+harmony with nature, and at peace with God, and all His creatures. You
+will not understand how the peace comes, nor even in what it consists.
+It is the peace that passes understanding;--it is just as visionary and
+imaginative as love is, and just as real, and just as necessary to the
+life of man. It is the only source of true cheerfulness, and of true
+common sense; and whether you believe the Bible, or don't,--or believe
+the Koran, or don't--or believe the Vedas, or don't--it will enable you
+to believe in God, and please Him, and be such a part of the [Greek:
+*eudokia*] of the universe as your nature fits you to be, in His sight,
+faithful in awe to the powers that are above you, and gracious in regard
+to the creatures that are around.
+
+225. I will take leave on this head to read one more piece of Carlyle,
+bearing much on present matters. "I hope also they will attack
+earnestly, and at length extinguish and eradicate, this idle habit of
+'accounting for the moral sense,' as they phrase it. A most singular
+problem;--instead of bending every thought to have more, and ever more,
+of 'moral sense,' and therewith to irradiate your own poor soul, and all
+its work, into something of divineness, as the one thing needful to you
+in this world! A very futile problem that other, my friends; futile,
+idle, and far worse; leading to what moral ruin, you little dream of!
+The moral sense, thank God, is a thing you never will 'account for;'
+that, if you could think of it, is the perennial miracle of man; in all
+times, visibly connecting poor transitory man, here on this bewildered
+earth, with his Maker who is eternal in the heavens. By no greatest
+happiness principle, greatest nobleness principle, or any principle
+whatever, will you make that in the least clearer than it already
+is;--forbear, I say, or you may darken it away from you altogether!
+'Two things,' says the memorable Kant, deepest and most logical of
+metaphysical thinkers, 'two things strike me dumb: the infinite starry
+heavens; and the sense of right and wrong in man.' Visible infinites,
+both; say nothing of them; don't try to 'account for them;' for you can
+say nothing wise."
+
+226. Very briefly, I must touch one or two further relative conditions
+in this natural history of the soul. I have asked you to take the
+metaphorical, but distinct, word '[Greek: *chrisma*]' rather than
+the direct but obscure one 'piety'; mainly because the Master of your
+religion chose the metaphorical epithet for the perpetual one of His own
+life and person.
+
+But if you will spend a thoughtful hour or two in reading the scripture,
+which pious Greeks read, not indeed on daintily printed paper, but
+on daintily painted clay,--if you will examine, that is to say, the
+scriptures of the Athenian religion, on their Pan-Athenaic vases, in
+their faithful days, you will find that the gift of the literal [Greek:
+*chrisma*], or anointing oil, to the victor in the kingly and visible
+contest of life, is signed always with the image of that spirit or
+goddess of the air who was the source of their invisible life. And let
+me, before quitting this part of my subject, give you one piece of what
+you will find useful counsel. If ever from the right apothecary, or
+[Greek: muropolaes]', you get any of that [Greek: *chrisma*],--don't be
+careful, when you set it by, of looking for dead dragons or dead dogs in
+it. But look out for the dead flies.
+
+227. Again; remember, I only quote St. Paul as I quote Xenophon to you;
+but I expect you to get some good from both. As I want you to think what
+Xenophon means by '[Greek: *manteia*],' so I want you to consider also
+what St. Paul means by '[Greek: *prophetia*].' He tells you to prove all
+things,--to hold fast what is good, and not to despise 'prophesyings.'
+
+228. Now it is quite literally probable, that this world, having now for
+some five hundred years absolutely refused to do as it is plainly bid by
+every prophet that ever spoke in any nation, and having reduced itself
+therefore to Saul's condition, when he was answered neither by Urim
+nor by prophets, may be now, while you sit there, receiving necromantic
+answers from the witch of Endor. But with that possibility you have no
+concern. There is a prophetic power in your own hearts, known to the
+Greeks, known to the Jews, known to the Apostles, and knowable by you.
+If it is now silent to you, do not despise it by tranquillity under that
+privation; if it speaks to you, do not despise it by disobedience.
+
+229. Now in this broad definition of Pietas, as reverence to sentimental
+law, you will find I am supported by all classical authority and use of
+this word. For the particular meaning of which I am next about to use
+the word Religion, there is no such general authority, nor can there be,
+for any limited or accurate meaning of it. The best authors use the
+word in various senses; and you must interpret each writer by his
+own context. I have myself continually used the term vaguely. I shall
+endeavour, henceforward, to use it under limitations which, willing
+always to accept, I shall only transgress by carelessness, or compliance
+with some particular use of the word by others. The power in the word,
+then, which I wish you now to notice, is in its employment with respect
+to doctrinal divisions. You do not say that one man is of one piety,
+and another of another; but you do, that one man is of one religion, and
+another of another.
+
+230. The religion of any man is thus properly to be interpreted, as the
+feeling which binds him, irrationally, to the fulfilment of duties, or
+acceptance of beliefs, peculiar to a certain company of which he forms
+a member, as distinct from the rest of the world. 'Which binds him
+_irrationally_,' I say;--by a feeling, at all events, apart from reason,
+and often superior to it; such as that which brings back the bee to its
+hive, and the bird to her nest.
+
+A man's religion is the form of mental rest, or dwelling-place, which,
+partly, his fathers have gained or built for him, and partly, by due
+reverence to former custom, he has built for himself; consisting of
+whatever imperfect knowledge may have been granted, up to that time, in
+the land of his birth, of the Divine character, presence, and dealings;
+modified by the circumstances of surrounding life.
+
+It may be, that sudden accession of new knowledge may compel him to cast
+his former idols to the moles and to the bats. But it must be some very
+miraculous interposition indeed which can justify him in quitting
+the religion of his forefathers; and, assuredly, it must be an unwise
+interposition which provokes him to insult it.
+
+231. On the other hand, the value of religious ceremonial, and the
+virtue of religious truth, consist in the meek fulfilment of the one as
+the fond habit of a family; and the meek acceptance of the other, as
+the narrow knowledge of a child. And both are destroyed at once, and the
+ceremonial or doctrinal prejudice becomes only an occasion of sin, if
+they make us either wise in our own conceit, or violent in our methods
+of proselytism. Of those who will compass sea and land to make one
+proselyte, it is too generally true that they are themselves the
+children of hell, and make their proselytes twofold more so.
+
+232. And now I am able to state to you, in terms so accurately defined
+that you cannot misunderstand them, that we are about to study the
+results in Italy of the victory of an impious Christian over a pious
+Infidel, in a contest which, if indeed principalities of evil spirit are
+ever permitted to rule over the darkness of this world, was assuredly
+by them wholly provoked, and by them finally decided. The war was not
+actually ended until the battle of Tagliacozzo, fought in August, 1268;
+but you need not recollect that irregular date, or remember it only as
+three years after the great battle of Welcome, Benevento; which was the
+decisive one. Recollect, therefore, securely:
+
+     1250. The First Trades Revolt in Florence.
+      1260. Battle of the Arbia.
+      1265. Battle of Welcome.
+
+
+Then between the battle of Welcome and of Tagliacozzo, (which you might
+almost English in the real meaning of it as the battle of Hart's Death:
+'cozzo' is a butt or thrust with the horn, and you may well think of the
+young Conradin as a wild hart or stag of the hills)--between those two
+battles, in 1266, comes the second and central revolt of the trades in
+Florence, of which I have to speak in next lecture.
+
+233. The two German princes who perished in these two battles--Manfred
+of Tarentum, and his nephew and ward Conradin--are the natural son,
+and the legitimate grandson of Frederick II.: they are also the last
+assertors of the infidel German power in south Italy against the Church;
+and in alliance with the Saracens; such alliance having been maintained
+faithfully ever since Frederick II.'s triumphal entry into Jerusalem,
+and cornation as its king. Not only a great number of Manfred's forts
+were commanded by Saracen governors, but he had them also appointed over
+civil tribunals. My own impression is that he found the Saracens more
+just and trustworthy than the Christians; but it is proper to remember
+the allegations of the Church against the whole Suabian family; namely,
+that Manfred had smothered his father Frederick under cushions at
+Ferentino; and that, of Frederick's sons, Conrad had poisoned Henry,
+and Manfred had poisoned Conrad. You will, however, I believe, find the
+Prince Manfred one of the purest representatives of northern chivalry.
+Against his nephew, educated in all knightly accomplishment by his
+mother, Elizabeth of Bavaria, nothing could be alleged by his enemies,
+even when resolved on his death, but the splendour of his spirit and the
+brightness of his youth.
+
+234. Of the character of their enemy, Charles of Anjou, there will
+remain on your minds, after careful examination of his conduct, only
+the doubt whether I am justified in speaking of him as Christian against
+Infidel. But you will cease to doubt this when you have entirely entered
+into the conditions of this nascent Christianity of the thirteenth
+century. You will find that while men who desire to be virtuous receive
+it as the mother of virtues, men who desire to be criminal receive it
+as the forgiver of crimes; and that therefore, between Ghibelline or
+Infidel cruelty, and Guelph or Christian cruelty, there is always this
+difference,--that the Infidel cruelty is done in hot blood, and the
+Christian's in cold. I hope (in future lectures on the architecture of
+Pisa) to illustrate to you the opposition between the Ghibelline Conti,
+counts, and the Guelphic Visconti, viscounts or "against counts," which
+issues, for one thing, in that, by all men blamed as too deliberate,
+death of the Count Ugolino della Gherardesca. The Count Ugolino was
+a traitor, who entirely deserved death; but another Count of Pisa,
+entirely faithful to the Ghibelline cause, was put to death by Charles
+of Anjou, not only in cold blood, but with resolute infliction of
+Ugolino's utmost grief;--not in the dungeon, but in the full light of
+day--his son being first put to death before his eyes. And among the
+pieces of heraldry most significant in the middle ages, the asp on the
+shield of the Guelphic viscounts is to be much remembered by you as a
+sign of this merciless cruelty of mistaken religion; mistaken, but not
+in the least hypocritical. It has perfect confidence in itself, and
+can answer with serenity for all its deeds. The serenity of heart never
+appears in the guilty Infidels; they die in despair or gloom, greatly
+satisfactory to adverse religious minds.
+
+235. The French Pope, then, Urban of Troyes, had sent for Charles of
+Anjou; who would not have answered his call, even with all the strength
+of Anjou and Provence, had not Scylla of the Tyrrhene Sea been on his
+side. Pisa, with eighty galleys (the Sicilian fleet added to her own),
+watched and defended the coasts of Rome. An irresistible storm drove her
+fleet to shelter; and Charles, in a single ship, reached the mouth of
+the Tiber, and found lodgings at Rome in the convent of St. Paul. His
+wife meanwhile spent her dowry in increasing his land army, and led it
+across the Alps. How he had got his wife, and her dowry, we must hear in
+Villani's words, as nearly as I can give their force in English, only,
+instead of the English word pilgrim, I shall use the Italian 'romeo' for
+the sake both of all English Juliets, and that you may better understand
+the close of the sixth canto of the Paradise.
+
+236. "Now the Count Raymond Berenger had for his inheritance all
+Provence on this side Rhone; and he was a wise and courteous signor,
+and of noble state, and virtuous; and in his time they did honourable
+things; and to his court came by custom all the gentlemen of Provence,
+and France, and Catalonia, for his courtesy and noble state; and there
+they made many cobbled verses, and Provençal songs of great sentences."
+
+237. I must stop to tell you that 'cobbled' or 'coupled' verses mean
+rhymes, as opposed to the dull method of Latin verse; for we have now
+got an ear for jingle, and know that dove rhymes to love. Also, "songs
+of great sentences" mean didactic songs, containing much in little,
+(like the new didactic Christian painting,) of which an example (though
+of a later time) will give you a better idea than any description.
+
+        "Vraye foy de necessité,
+         Non tant seulement d'equité,
+         Nous fait de Dieu sept choses croire:
+         C'est sa doulce nativité,
+         Son baptesme d'humilité,
+         Et sa mort, digne de mémoire:
+         Son descens en la chartre noire,
+         Et sa resurrection, voire;
+         S'ascencion d'auctorité,
+         La venue judicatoire,
+         Ou ly bons seront mis en gloire,
+         Et ly mals en adversité."
+
+
+238. "And while they were making these cobbled verses and harmonious
+creeds, there came a romeo to court, returning from the shrine of St.
+James." I must stop again just to say that he ought to have been
+called a pellegrino, not a romeo, for the three kinds of wanderers
+are,--Palmer, one who goes to the Holy Land; Pilgrim, one who goes to
+Spain; and Romeo, one who goes to Rome. Probably this romeo had been to
+both. "He stopped at Count Raymond's court, and was so wise and worthy
+(valoroso), and so won the Count's grace, that he made him his master
+and guide in all things. Who also, maintaining himself in honest and
+religious customs of life, in a little time, by his industry and good
+sense, doubled the Count's revenues three times over, maintaining always
+a great and honoured court. Now the Count had four daughters, and no
+son; and by the sense and provision of the good romeo--(I can do no
+better than translate 'procaccio' provision, but it is only a makeshift
+for the word derived from procax, meaning the general talent of prudent
+impudence, in getting forward; 'forwardness,' has a good deal of the
+true sense, only diluted;)--well, by the sense and--progressive
+faculty, shall we say?--of the good pilgrim, he first married the eldest
+daughter, by means of money, to the good King Louis of France, saying to
+the Count, 'Let me alone,--Lascia-mi-fare--and never mind the expense,
+for if you marry the first one well, I'll marry you all the others
+cheaper, for her relationship."
+
+239. "And so it fell out, sure enough; for incontinently the King of
+England (Henry III.) because he was the King of France's relation, took
+the next daughter, Eleanor, for very little money indeed; next, his
+natural brother, elect King of the Romans, took the third; and, the
+youngest still remaining unmarried,--says the good romeo, 'Now for this
+one, I will you to have a strong man for son-in-law, who shall be thy
+heir;'--and so he brought it to pass. For finding Charles, Count of
+Anjou, brother of the King Louis, he said to Raymond, "'Give her now to
+him, for his fate is to be the best man in the world,'--prophesying of
+him. And so it was done. And after all this it came to pass, by envy
+which ruins all good, that the barons of Provence became jealous of the
+good romeo, and accused him to the Count of having ill-guided his goods,
+and made Raymond demand account of them. Then the good romeo said,
+'Count, I have served thee long, and have put thee from little state
+into mighty, and for this, by false counsel of thy people, thou art
+little grateful. I came into thy court a poor romeo; I have lived
+honestly on thy means; now, make to be given to me my little mule and
+my staff and my wallet, as I came, and I will make thee quit of all my
+service.' The Count would not he should go; but for nothing would he
+stay; and so he came, and so he departed, that no one ever knew whence
+he had come, nor whither he went. It was the thought of many that he was
+indeed a sacred spirit."
+
+240. This pilgrim, you are to notice, is put by Dante in the orb of
+justice, as a just servant; the Emperor Justinian being the image of a
+just ruler. Justinian's law-making turned out well for England; but the
+good romeo's match-making ended ill for it; and for Borne, and Naples
+also. For Beatrice of Provence resolved to be a queen like her three
+sisters, and was the prompting spirit of Charles's expedition to Italy.
+She was crowned with him, Queen of Apulia and Sicily, on the day of the
+Epiphany, 1265; she and her husband bringing gifts that day of magical
+power enough; and Charles, as soon as the feast of coronation was over,
+set out to give battle to Manfred and his Saracens. "And this Charles,"
+says Villani, "was wise, and of sane counsel; and of prowess in arms,
+and fierce, and much feared and redoubted by all the kings in the
+world;--magnanimous and of high purposes; fearless in the carrying forth
+of every great enterprise; firm in every adversity; a verifier of his
+every word; speaking little,--doing much; and scarcely ever laughed,
+and then but a little; sincere, and without flaw, as a religious and
+catholic person; stern in justice, and fierce in look; tall and nervous
+in person, olive coloured, and with a large nose, and well he appeared a
+royal majesty more than other men. Much he watched, and little he slept;
+and used to say that so much time as one slept, one lost; generous to
+his men-at-arms, but covetous to acquire land, signory, and coin,
+come how it would, to furnish his enterprises and wars: in courtiers,
+servants of pleasure, or jocular persons, he delighted never."
+
+241. To this newly crowned and resolute king, riding south from Rome,
+Manfred, from his vale of Nocera under Mount St. Augelo, sends to offer
+conditions of peace. Jehu the son of Nimshi is not swifter of answer
+to Ahaziah's messenger than the fiery Christian king, in his 'What hast
+thou to do with peace?' Charles answers the messengers with his own
+lips: "Tell the Sultan of Nocera, this day I will put him in hell, or he
+shall put me in paradise."
+
+242. Do not think it the speech of a hypocrite. Charles was as fully
+prepared for death that day as ever Scotch Covenanter fighting for his
+Holy League; and as sure that death would find him, if it found, only
+to glorify and bless. Balfour of Burley against Claverhouse is not more
+convinced in heart that he draws the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.
+But all the knightly pride of Claverhouse himself is knit together, in
+Charles, with fearless faith, and religious wrath. "This Saracen scum,
+led by a bastard German,--traitor to his creed, usurper among his
+race,--dares it look me, a Christian knight, a prince of the house of
+France, in the eyes? Tell the Sultan of Nocera, to-day I put him in
+hell, or he puts me in paradise."
+
+They are not passionate words neither; any more than hypocritical ones.
+They are measured, resolute, and the fewest possible. He never wasted
+words, nor showed his mind, but when he meant it should be known.
+
+243. The messenger returned, thus answered; and the French king rode
+on with his host. Manfred met him in the plain of Grandella, before
+Benevento. I have translated the name of the fortress 'Welcome.' It was
+altered, as you may remember, from Maleventum, for better omen;
+perhaps, originally, only [Greek: *maloeis*]--a rock full of wild
+goats?--associating it thus with the meaning of Tagliacozzo.
+
+244. Charles divided his army into four companies. The captain of his
+own was our English Guy de Montfort, on whom rested the power and the
+fate of his grandfather, the pursuer of the Waldensian shepherds among
+the rocks of the wild goats. The last, and it is said the goodliest,
+troop was of the exiled Guelphs of Florence, under Guido Guerra, whose
+name you already know. "These," said Manfred, as he watched them ride
+into their ranks, "cannot lose to-day." He meant that if he himself was
+the victor, he would restore these exiles to their city. The event
+of the battle was decided by the treachery of the Count of Caserta,
+Manfred's brother-in-law. At the end of the day only a few knights
+remained with him, whom he led in the last charge. As he helmed himself,
+the crest fell from his helmet. "Hoc est signum Dei," he said,--so
+accepting what he saw to be the purpose of the Ruler of all things;
+not claiming God as his friend. not asking anything of Him, as if His
+purpose could be changed; not fearing Him as an enemy; but accepting
+simply His sign that the appointed day of death was come. He rode into
+the battle armed like a nameless soldier, and lay unknown among the
+dead.
+
+245. And in him died all southern Italy. Never, after that day's
+treachery, did her nobles rise, or her people prosper.
+
+Of the finding of the body of Manfred, and its casting forth, accursed,
+you may read, if you will, the story in Dante. I trace for you
+to-day rapidly only the acts of Charles after this victory, and its
+consummation, three years later, by the defeat of Conradin.
+
+The town of Benevento had offered no resistance to Charles, but he
+gave it up to pillage, and massacred its inhabitants. The slaughter,
+indiscriminate, continued for eight days; the women and children were
+slain with the men, being of Saracen blood. Manfred's wife, Sybil of
+Epirus, his children, and all his barons, died, or were put to death,
+in the prisons of Provence. With the young Conrad, all the faithful
+Ghibel-line knights of Pisa were put to death. The son of Frederick of
+Antioch, who drove the Guelphs from Florence, had his eyes torn out, and
+was hanged, he being the last child of the house of Suabia. Twenty-four
+of the barons of Calabria were executed at Gallipoli, and at
+Home. Charles cut off the feet of those who had fought for Conrad;
+then--fearful lest they should be pitied--shut them into a house
+of wood, and burned them. His lieutenant in Sicily, William of the
+Standard, besieged the town of Augusta, which defended itself with some
+fortitude, but was betrayed, and all its inhabitants, (who must have
+been more than three thousand, for there were a thousand able to bear
+arms,) massacred in cold blood; the last of them searched for in their
+hiding-places, when the streets were empty, dragged to the sea-shore,
+then beheaded, and their bodies thrown into the sea. Throughout Calabria
+the Christian judges of Charles thus forgave his enemies. And the
+Mohammedan power and heresy ended in Italy, and she became secure in her
+Catholic creed.
+
+246. Not altogether secure under French dominion. After fourteen years
+of misery, Sicily sang her angry vespers, and a Calabrian admiral burnt
+the fleet of Charles before his eyes, where Scylla rules her barking
+Salamis. But the French king died in prayerful peace, receiving the
+sacrament with these words of perfectly honest faith, as he reviewed his
+past life: "Lord God, as I truly believe that you are my Saviour, so I
+pray you to have mercy on my soul; and as I truly made the conquest of
+Sicily more to serve the Holy Church than for my own covetousness, so I
+pray you to pardon my sins."
+
+247. You are to note the two clauses of this prayer. He prays absolute
+mercy, on account of his faith in Christ; but remission of purgatory, in
+proportion to the quantity of good work he has done, or meant to do,
+as against evil. You are so much wiser in these days, you think, not
+believing in purgatory; and so much more benevolent,--not massacring
+women and children. But we must not be too proud of not believing in
+purgatory, unless we are quite sure of our real desire to be purified:
+and as to our not massacring children, it is true that an English
+gentleman will not now himself willingly put a knife into the throat
+either of a child or a lamb; but he will kill any quantity of children
+by disease in order to increase his rents, as unconcernedly as he
+will eat any quantity of mutton. And as to absolute massacre, I do not
+suppose a child feels so much pain in being killed as a full-grown man,
+and its life is of less value to it. No pain either of body or thought
+through which you could put an infant, would be comparable to that of
+a good son, or a faithful lover, dying slowly of a painful wound at a
+distance from a family dependent upon him, or a mistress devoted to him.
+But the victories of Charles, and the massacres, taken in sum, would not
+give a muster-roll of more than twenty thousand dead; men, women, and
+children counted all together. On the plains of France, since I first
+began to speak to you on the subject of the arts of peace, at least five
+hundred thousand men, in the prime of life, have been massacred by
+the folly of one Christian emperor, the insolence of another, and the
+mingling of mean rapacity with meaner vanity, which Christian nations
+now call 'patriotism.'
+
+248. But that the Crusaders, (whether led by St. Louis or by his
+brother,) who habitually lived by robbery, and might be swiftly enraged
+to murder, were still too savage to conceive the spirit or the character
+of this Christ whose cross they wear, I have again and again alleged to
+you; not, I imagine, without question from many who have been accustomed
+to look to these earlier ages as authoritative in doctrine, if not in
+example. We alike err in supposing them more spiritual or more dark,
+than our own. They had not yet attained to the knowledge which we have
+despised, nor dispersed from their faith the shadows with which we have
+again overclouded ours.
+
+Their passions, tumultuous and merciless as the Tyrrhene Sea, raged
+indeed with the danger, but also with the uses, of naturally appointed
+storm; while ours, pacific in corruption, languish in vague maremma of
+misguided pools; and are pestilential most surely as they retire.
+
+
+
+
+                LECTURE X.
+
+               FLEUR DE LYS.
+
+ 249. Through all the tempestuous winter which during the period of
+history we have been reviewing, weakened, in their war with the opposed
+rocks of religious or knightly pride, the waves of the Tuscan Sea,
+there has been slow increase of the Favonian power which is to bring
+fruitfulness to the rock, peace to the wave. The new element which is
+introduced in the thirteenth century, and perfects for a little time the
+work of Christianity, at least in some few chosen souls, is the law of
+Order and Charity, of intellectual and moral virtue, which it now became
+the function of every great artist to teach, and of every true citizen
+to maintain.
+
+250. I have placed on your table one of the earliest existing engravings
+by a Florentine hand, representing the conception which the national
+mind formed of this spirit of order and tranquillity, "Cosmico," or the
+Equity of Kosmos, not by senseless attraction, but by spiritual thought
+and law. He stands pointing with his left hand to the earth, set only
+with tufts of grass; in his right hand he holds the ordered system of
+the universe--heaven and earth in one orb;--the heaven made cosmic by
+the courses of its stars; the earth cosmic by
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IX.--THE CHARGE TO ADAM. MODERN ITALIAN. ]
+
+the seats of authority and fellowship,--castles on the hills and cities
+in the plain.
+
+251. The tufts of grass under the feet of this figure will appear
+to you, at first, grotesquely formal. But they are only the simplest
+expression, in such herbage, of the subjection of all vegetative force
+to this law of order, equity, or symmetry, which, made by the Greek the
+principal method of his current vegetative sculpture, subdues it, in the
+hand of Cora or Triptolemus, into the merely triple sceptre, or animates
+it, in Florence, to the likeness of the Fleur-de-lys.
+
+252. I have already stated to you that if any definite flower is meant
+by these triple groups of leaves, which take their authoritatively
+typical form in the crowns of the Cretan and Laciuian Hera, it is
+not the violet, but the purple iris; or sometimes, as in Pindar's
+description of the birth of Ismus, the yellow water-flag, which you
+know so well in spring, by the banks of your Oxford streams. [1] But,
+in general, it means simply the springing of beautiful and orderly
+vegetation in fields upon which the dew falls pure. It is the
+expression, therefore, of peace on the redeemed and cultivated earth,
+and of the pleasure of heaven in the uncareful happiness of men clothed
+without labour, and fed without fear.
+
+[Footnote 1: In the catalogues of the collection of drawings in this
+room, and in my "Queen of the Air" you will find all that I would ask
+you to notice about the various names and kinds of the flower, and their
+symbolic use.--Note only, with respect to our present purpose, that
+while the true white lily is placed in the hands of the Angel of the
+Annunciation even by Florentine artists, in their general design,
+the fleur-de-lys is given to him by Giovaiini Pisano on the façade of
+Orvieto; and that the flower in the crown-circlets of European kings
+answers, as I stated to you in my lecture on the Corona, to the
+Narcissus fillet of early Greece; the crown of abundance and rejoicing.]
+
+253. In the passage, so often read by us, which announces the advent of
+Christianity as the dawn of peace on earth, we habitually neglect great
+part of the promise, owing to the false translation of the second clause
+of the sentence. I cannot understand how it should be still needful to
+point out to you here in Oxford that neither the Greek words [Greek:
+*"en anthriopois evdokia,"*] nor those of the vulgate, "in terra pax
+hominibus bonæ voluntatis," in the slightest degree justify our English
+words, "goodwill to men."
+
+Of God's goodwill to men, and to all creatures, for ever, there needed
+no proclamation by angels. But that men should be able to please
+_Him_,--that their wills should be made holy, and they should not only
+possess peace in themselves, but be able to give joy to their God,
+in the sense in which He afterwards is pleased with His own baptized
+Son;--this was a new thing for Angels to declare, and for shepherds to
+believe.
+
+254. And the error was made yet more fatal by its repetition in a
+passage of parallel importance,--the thanksgiving, namely, offered by
+Christ, that His Father, while He had hidden what it was best to know,
+not from the wise and prudent, but from some among the wise and prudent,
+and had revealed it unto babes; not 'for so it seemed good' in His
+sight, but 'that there might be well pleasing in His sight,'--namely,
+that the wise and simple might equally live in the necessary knowledge,
+and enjoyed presence, of God. And if, having accurately read these vital
+passages, you then as carefully consider the tenour of the two songs of
+human joy in the birth of Christ, the Magnificat, and the Nunc dimittis,
+you will find the theme of both to be, not the newness of blessing, but
+the equity which disappoints the cruelty and humbles the strength of
+men; which scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts; which
+fills the hungry with good things; and is not only the glory of Israel,
+but the light of the Gentiles.
+
+255. As I have been writing these paragraphs, I have been checking
+myself almost at every word,--wondering, Will they be restless on their
+seats at this, and thinking all the while that they did not come here
+to be lectured on Divinity? You may have been a little impatient,--how
+could it well be otherwise? Had I been explaining points of anatomy,
+and showing you how you bent your necks and straightened your legs, you
+would have thought me quite in my proper function; because then, when
+you went with a party of connoisseurs through the Vatican, you could
+point out to them the insertion of the clavicle in the Apollo Belvidere;
+and in the Sistine Chapel the perfectly accurate delineation of the
+tibia in the legs of Christ. Doubtless; but you know I am lecturing at
+present on the goffi, and not on Michael Angelo; and the goffi are
+very careless about clavicles and shin-bones; so that if, after being
+lectured on anatomy, you went into the Campo Santo of Pisa, you would
+simply find nothing to look at, except three tolerably well-drawn
+skeletons. But if after being lectured on theology, you go into the
+Campo Santo of Pisa, you will find not a little to look at, and to
+remember.
+
+256. For a single instance, you know Michael Angelo is admitted to have
+been so far indebted to these goffi as to borrow from the one to whose
+study of mortality I have just referred, Orcagna, the gesture of his
+Christ in the Judgment, He borrowed, however, accurately speaking,
+the position only, not the gesture; nor the meaning of it. [1] You all
+remember the action of Michael Angelo's Christ,--the right hand raised
+as if in violence of reprobation; and the left closed across His breast,
+as refusing all mercy. The action is one which appeals to persons
+of very ordinary sensations, and is very naturally adopted by the
+Renaissance painter, both for its popular effect, and its
+capabilities for the exhibition of his surgical science. But the old
+painter-theologian, though indeed he showed the right hand of Christ
+lifted, and the left hand laid across His breast, had another meaning
+in the actions. The fingers of the left hand are folded, in both the
+figures; but in Michael Angelo's as if putting aside an appeal; in
+Orcagna's, the fingers are bent to draw back the drapery from the
+right side. The right hand is raised by Michael Angelo as in anger;
+by Orcagna, only to show the wounded palm. And as, to the believing
+disciples, He showed them His hands and His side, so that they were
+glad,--so, to the unbelievers, at their judgment, He shows the wounds in
+hand and side. They shall look on Him whom they pierced.
+
+[Footnote: I found all this in M. Didron's Iconographie, above quoted; I
+had never noticed the difference between the two figures myself.]
+
+257. And thus, as we follow our proposed examination of the arts of the
+Christian centuries, our understanding of their work will be absolutely
+limited by the degree of our sympathy with the religion which our
+fathers have bequeathed to us. You cannot interpret classic marbles
+without knowing and loving your Pindar and Æschylus, neither can you
+interpret Christian pictures without knowing and loving your Isaiah and
+Matthew. And I shall have continually to examine texts of the one as
+I would verses of the other; nor must you retract yourselves from
+the labour in suspicion that I desire to betray your scepticism, or
+undermine your positivism, because I recommend to you the accurate study
+of books which have hitherto been the light of the world.
+
+258. The change, then, in the minds of their readers at this date,
+which rendered it possible for them to comprehend the full purport of
+Christianity, was in the rise of the new desire for equity and rest,
+amidst what had hitherto been mere lust for spoil, and joy in battle.
+The necessity for justice was felt in the now extending commerce; the
+desire of rest in the now pleasant and fitly furnished habitation; and
+the energy which formerly could only be satisfied in strife, now found
+enough both of provocation and antagonism in the invention of art, and
+the forces of nature. I have in this course of lectures endeavoured to
+fasten your attention on the Florentine Revolution of 1250, because its
+date is so easily memorable, and it involves the principles of every
+subsequent one, so as to lay at once the foundations of whatever
+greatness Florence afterwards achieved by her mercantile and civic
+power. But I must not close even this slight sketch of the central
+history of Val d'Aruo without requesting you, as you find time, to
+associate in your minds, with this first revolution, the effects of two
+which followed it, being indeed necessary parts of it, in the latter
+half of the century.
+
+259. Remember then that the first, in 1250, is embryonic; and the
+significance of it is simply the establishment of order, and justice
+against violence and iniquity. It is equally against the power of
+knights and priests, so far as either are unjust,--not otherwise.
+
+When Manfred fell at Benevento, his lieutenant, the Count Guido Novello,
+was in command of Florence. He was just, but weak; and endeavoured
+to temporize with the Guelphs. His effort ought to be notable to you,
+because it was one of the wisest and most far-sighted ever made in
+Italy; but it failed for want of resolution, as the gentlest and best
+men are too apt to fail. He brought from Bologna two knights of the
+order--then recently established--of joyful brethren; afterwards too
+fatally corrupted, but at this time pure in purpose. They constituted
+an order of chivalry which was to maintain peace, obey the Church, and
+succour widows and orphans; but to be bound by no monastic vows. Of
+these two knights, he chose one Guelph, the other Ghibelline; and under
+their balanced power Gruido hoped to rank the forces of the civil,
+manufacturing, and trading classes, divided into twelve corporations of
+higher and lower arts. [1] But the moment this beautiful arrangement was
+made, all parties--Guelph, Ghibelline, and popular,--turned unanimously
+against Count Guido Novello. The benevolent but irresolute captain
+indeed gathered his men into the square of the Trinity; but the people
+barricaded the streets issuing from it; and Guido, heartless, and
+unwilling for civil warfare, left the city with his Germans in good
+order. And so ended the incursion of the infidel Tedeschi for this time.
+The Florentines then dismissed the merry brothers whom the Tedeschi had
+set over them, and besought help from Orvieto and Charles of Anjou; who
+sent them Guy de Montfort and eight hundred French riders; the blessing
+of whose presence thus, at their own request, was granted them on Easter
+Day, 1267.
+
+[Footnote: The seven higher arts were, Lawyers, Physicians, Bankers,
+Merchants of Foreign Goods, Wool Manufacturers, Silk Manufacturers,
+Furriers. The five lower arts were, Retail Sellers of Cloth, Butchers,
+Shoemakers, Masons and Carpenters, Smiths.]
+
+On Candlemas, if you recollect, 1251, they open their gates to the
+Germans; and on Easter, 1267, to the French.
+
+260. Remember, then, this revolution, as coming between the battles of
+Welcome and Tagliacozzo; and that it expresses the lower revolutionary
+temper of the trades, with English and French assistance. Its
+immediate result was the appointment of five hundred and sixty
+lawyers, woolcombers, and butchers, to deliberate upon all State
+questions,--under which happy ordinances you will do well, in your own
+reading, to leave Florence, that you may watch, for a while, darling
+little Pisa, all on fire for the young Conradin. She sent ten vessels
+across the Gulf of Genoa to fetch him; received his cavalry in her
+plain of Sarzana; and putting five thousand of her own best sailors into
+thirty ships, sent them to do what they could, all down the coast of
+Italy. Down they went; startling Gaeta with an attack as they passed;
+found Charles of Anjou's French and Sicilian fleet at Messina, fought
+it, beat it, and burned twenty-seven of its ships.
+
+261. Meantime, the Florentines prospered as they might with their
+religious-democratic constitution,--until the death, in the odour of
+sanctity, of Charles of Anjou, and of that Pope Martin IV. whose tomb
+was destroyed with Urban's at Perugia. Martin died, as you may remember,
+of eating Bolsena eels,--that being his share in the miracles of the
+lake; and you will do well to remember at the same time, that the price
+of the lake eels was three soldi a pound; and that Niccola of Pisa
+worked at Siena for six soldi a day, and his son Giovanni for four.
+
+262. And as I must in this place bid farewell, for a time, to Niccola
+and to his son, let me remind you of the large commission which the
+former received on the occasion of the battle of Tagliacozzo, and
+its subsequent massacres, when the victor, Charles, having to his own
+satisfaction exterminated the seed of infidelity, resolves, both in
+thanksgiving, and for the sake of the souls of the slain knights for
+whom some hope might yet be religiously entertained, to found an abbey
+on the battle-field. In which purpose he sent for Niccola to Naples, and
+made him build on the field of Tagliacozzo, a church and abbey of the
+richest; and caused to be buried therein the infinite number of the
+bodies of those who died in that battle day; ordering farther, that,
+by many monks, prayer should be made for their souls, night and day.
+In which fabric the king was so pleased with Niccola's work that he
+rewarded and honoured him highly.
+
+263. Do you not begin to wonder a little more what manner of man this
+Nicholas was, who so obediently throws down the towers which offend the
+Ghibelliues, and so skilfully puts up the pinnacles which please the
+Guelphs? A passive power, seemingly, he;--plastic in the hands of any
+one who will employ him to build, or to throw down. On what exists of
+evidence, demonstrably in these years here is the strongest brain of
+Italy, thus for six shilling a day doing what it is bid.
+
+264. I take farewell of him then, for a little time, ratifying to you,
+as far as my knowledge permits, the words of my first master in Italian
+art, Lord Lindsay.
+
+"In comparing the advent of Niccola Pisano to that of the sun at his
+rising, I am conscious of no exaggeration; on the contrary, it is the
+only simile by which I can hope to give you an adequate impression of
+his brilliancy and power relatively to the age in which he flourished.
+Those sons of Erebus, the American Indians, fresh from their traditional
+subterranean world, and gazing for the first time on the gradual
+dawning of the day in the East, could not have been more dazzled, more
+astounded, when the sun actually appeared, than the popes and podestas,
+friars and freemasons must have been in the thirteenth century, when
+from among the Biduinos, Bonannos, and Antealmis of the twelfth, Niccola
+emerged in his glory, sovereign and supreme, a fount of light, diffusing
+warmth and radiance over Christendom. It might be too much to parallel
+him in actual genius with Dante and Shakspeare; they stand alone and
+unapproachable, each on his distinct pinnacle of the temple of Christian
+song; and yet neither of them can boast such extent and durability
+of influence, for whatever of highest excellence has been achieved in
+sculpture and painting, not in Italy only, but throughout Europe, has
+been in obedience to the impulse he primarily gave, and in following up
+the principle which he first struck out.
+
+"His latter days were spent in repose at Pisa, but the precise year of
+his death is uncertain; Vasari fixes it in 1275; it could not have been
+much later. He was buried in the Campo Santo. Of his personal character
+we, alas! know nothing; even Shakspeare is less a stranger to us. But
+that it was noble, simple, and consistent, and free from the petty
+foibles that too frequently beset genius, may be fairly presumed from
+the works he has left behind him, and from the eloquent silence of
+tradition."
+
+265. Of the circumstances of Niccola Pisano's death, or the ceremonials
+practised at it, we are thus left in ignorance.
+
+The more exemplary death of Charles of Aujou took place on the 7th of
+January, then, 1285; leaving the throne of Naples to a boy of twelve;
+and that of Sicily, to a Prince of Spain. Various discord, between
+French, Spanish, and Calabrese vices, thenceforward paralyzes South
+Italy, and Florence becomes the leading power of the Guelph faction.
+She had been inflamed and pacified through continual paroxysms of civil
+quarrel during the decline of Charles's power; but, throughout, the
+influence of the nobles declines, by reason of their own folly and
+insolence; while the people, though with no small degree of folly and
+insolence on their own side, keep hold of their main idea of justice.
+In the meantime, similar assertions of law against violence, and the
+nobility of useful occupation, as compared with that of idle rapine,
+take place in Bologna, Siena, and even at Rome, where Bologna sends her
+senator, Branca Leone, (short for Branca-di-Leone, Lion's Grip,) whose
+inflexible and rightly guarded reign of terror to all evil and thievish
+persons, noble or other, is one of the few passages of history during
+the middle ages, in which the real power of civic virtue may be seen
+exercised without warping by party spirit, or weakness of vanity or
+fear.
+
+266. And at last, led by a noble, Giano della Bella, the people of
+Florence write and establish their final condemnation of noblesse
+living by rapine, those 'Ordinamenti della Giustizia,' which practically
+excluded all idle persons from government, and determined that the
+priors, or leaders of the State, should be priors, or leaders of its
+arts and productive labour; that its head 'podesta' or 'power' should be
+the standard-bearer of justice; and its council or parliament composed
+of charitable men, or good men: "boni viri," in the sense from which the
+French formed their noun 'bonte.'
+
+The entire governing body was thus composed, first, of the Podestas,
+standard-bearer of justice; then of his military captain; then of
+his lictor, or executor; then of the twelve priors of arts and
+liberties--properly, deliberators on the daily occupations, interests,
+and pleasures of the body politic;--and, finally, of the parliament of
+"kind men," whose business was to determine what kindness could be shown
+to other states, by way of foreign policy.
+
+267. So perfect a type of national government has only once been reached
+in the history of the human race. And in spite of the seeds of evil in
+its own impatience, and in the gradually increasing worldliness of the
+mercantile body; in spite of the hostility of the angry soldier, and
+the malignity of the sensual priest, this government gave to Europe the
+entire cycle of Christian art, properly so called, and every highest
+Master of labour, architectural, scriptural, or pictorial, practised
+in true understanding of the faith of Christ;--Orcagna, Giotto,
+Brunelleschi, Lionardo, Luini as his pupil, Lippi, Luca, Angelico,
+Botticelli, and Michael Angelo.
+
+268. I have named two men, in this group, whose names are more familiar
+to your ears than any others, Angelico and Michael Angelo;--who yet are
+absent from my list of those whose works I wish you to study, being
+both extravagant in their enthusiasm,--the one for the nobleness of the
+spirit, and the other for that of the flesh. I name them now, because
+the gifts each had were exclusively Florentine; in whatever they have
+become to the mind of Europe since, they are utterly children of the Val
+d'Arno.
+
+269. You are accustomed, too carelessly, to think of Angelico as a
+child of the Church, rather than of Florence. He was born in l387,--just
+eleven years, that is to say, after the revolt of Florence _against_ the
+Church, and ten after the endeavour of the Church to recover her power
+by the massacres of Faenza and Cesena. A French and English army of
+pillaging riders were on the other side of the Alps,--six thousand
+strong; the Pope sent for it; Robert Cardinal of Geneva brought it into
+Italy. The Florentines fortified their Apennines against it; but it took
+winter quarters at Cesena, where the Cardinal of Geneva massacred five
+thousand persons in a day, and the children and sucklings were literally
+dashed against the stones.
+
+270. That was the school which the Christian Church had prepared for
+their brother Angelica. But Fèsole, secluding him in the shade of her
+mount of Olives, and Florence revealing to him the true voice of his
+Master, in the temple of St. Mary of the Flower, taught him his lesson
+of peace on earth, and permitted him his visions of rapture in heaven.
+And when the massacre of Cesena was found to have been in vain, and the
+Church was compelled to treat with the revolted cities who had united to
+mourn for her victories, Florence sent her a living saint, Catherine of
+Siena, for her political Ambassador.
+
+271. Of Michael Angelo I need not tell you: of the others, we will read
+the lives, and think over them one by one; the great fact which I
+have written this course of lectures to enforce upon your minds is the
+dependence of all the arts on the virtue of the State, and its kindly
+order.
+
+The absolute mind and state of Florence, for the seventy years of her
+glory, from 1280 to 1350, you find quite simply and literally described
+in the ll2th Psalm, of which I read you the descriptive verses, in the
+words in which they sang it, from this typically perfect manuscript of
+the time:--
+
+ Gloria et divitie in domo ejus, justitia ejus manet in seculum seculi.
+  Exortum est in tenebris lumen reotis, misericors, et miserator, et
+Justus.  Jocundus homo, qui miseretur, et commodat: disponet sermones suos  in
+judicio.  Dispersit, dedit pauperibus; justitia ejus manet in seculum seculi;
+  cornu ejus exaltabitur in gloria.
+
+
+I translate simply, praying you to note as the true one, the _literal_
+meaning of every word:--
+
+ Glory and riches are in his house. His justice remains for ever.
+  Light is risen in darkness for the straightforward people.
+  He is merciful in heart, merciful in deed, and just.
+  A jocund man; who is merciful, and lends.
+  He will dispose his words in judgment.
+  He hath dispersed. He hath given to the poor. His justice remain!
+    for ever. His horn shall be exalted in glory.
+
+
+272. With vacillating, but steadily prevailing effort, the Florentines
+maintained this life and character for full half a century.
+
+You will please now look at my staff of the year 1300, [Footnote: Page
+33 in my second lecture on Engraving.] adding the names of Dante and
+Orcagna, having each their separate masterful or prophetic function.
+
+That is Florence's contribution to the intellectual work of the world
+during these years of justice. Now, the promise of Christianity is given
+with lesson from the fleur-de-lys: Seek ye first the royalty of God, and
+His justice, "and all these things," material wealth, "shall be added
+unto you." It is a perfectly clear, perfectly literal,--never failing
+and never unfulfilled promise. There is no instance in the whole cycle
+of history of its not being accomplished,--fulfilled to the uttermost,
+with full measure, pressed down, and running over.
+
+273. Now hear what Florence was, and what wealth she had got by her
+justice. In the year 1330, before she fell, she had within her walls
+a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, of whom all the
+men--(laity)--between the ages of fifteen and seventy, were ready at
+an instant to go out to war, under their banners, in number twenty-four
+thousand. The army of her entire territory was eighty thousand; and
+within it she counted fifteen hundred noble, families, every one
+absolutely submissive to her gonfalier of justice. She had within her
+walls a hundred and ten churches, seven priories, and thirty hospitals
+for the sick and poor; of foreign guests, on the average, fifteen
+hundred, constantly. From eight to ten thousand children were taught to
+read in her schools. The town was surrounded by some fifty square miles
+of uninterrupted garden, of olive, corn, vine, lily, and rose.
+
+And the monetary existence of England and France depended upon her
+wealth. Two of her bankers alone had lent Edward III. of England five
+millions of money (in sterling value of this present hour).
+
+274. On the 10th of March, 1337, she was first accused, with truth, of
+selfish breach of treaties. On the l0th of April, all her merchants in
+France were imprisoned by Philip Valois; and presently afterwards Edward
+of England failed, quite in your modern style, for his five millions.
+These money losses would have been nothing to her; but on the 7th
+of August, the captain of her army, Pietro de' Rossi of Parma, the
+unquestioned best knight in Italy, received a chance spear-stroke before
+Monselice, and died next day. He was the Bayard of Italy; and greater
+than Bayard, because living in a nobler time. He never had failed in
+any military enterprise, nor ever stained success with cruelty or
+shame. Even the German troops under him loved him without bounds. To his
+companions he gave gifts with such largesse, that his horse and armour
+were all that at any time he called his own. Beautiful and pure as Sir
+Galahad, all that was brightest in womanhood watched and honoured him.
+
+And thus, 8th August, 1337, he went to his own place.--To-day I trace
+the fall of Florence no more.
+
+I will review the points I wish you to remember; and briefly meet, so
+far as I can, the questions which I think should occur to you.
+
+275. I have named Edward III. as our heroic type of Franchise. And yet
+I have but a minute ago spoken of him as 'failing' in quite your modern
+manner. I must correct my expression:--he had no intent of failing when
+he borrowed; and did not spend his money on himself. Nevertheless, I
+gave him as an example of frankness; but by no means of honesty. He is
+simply the boldest and royalest of Free Riders; the campaign of Crecy
+is, throughout, a mere pillaging foray. And the first point I wish
+you to notice is the difference in the pecuniary results of living by
+robbery, like Edward III., or by agriculture and just commerce, like the
+town of Florence. That Florence can lend five millions to the King of
+England, and loose them with little care, is the result of her olive
+gardens and her honesty. Now hear the financial phenomena attending
+military exploits, and a life of pillage.
+
+276. I give you them in this precise year, 1338, in which the King of
+England failed to the Florentines.
+
+"He obtained from the prelates, barons, and knights of the
+
+[Illustration: PLATE X.--THE NATIVITY. GIOVANNI PISANO. ]
+
+shires, one half of their wool for this year--a very valuable and
+extraordinary grant. He seized all the tin "(above-ground, you mean Mr.
+Henry!)" in Cornwall and Devonshire, took possession of the lands of all
+priories alien, and of the money, jewels, and valuable effects of the
+Lombard merchants. He demanded certain quantities of bread, corn, oats,
+and bacon, from each county; borrowed their silver plate from many
+abbeys, as well as great sums of money both abroad and at home; and
+pawned his crown for fifty thousand florins." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Henry's "History of England," book iv., chap. i.]
+
+He pawns his queen's jewels next year; and finally summons all the
+gentlemen of England who had forty pounds a year, to come and receive
+the honour of knighthood, or pay to be excused!
+
+277. II. The failures of Edward, or of twenty Edwards, would have
+done Florence no harm, had she remained true to herself, and to her
+neighbouring states. Her merchants only fall by their own increasing
+avarice; and above all by the mercantile form of pillage, usury. The
+idea that money could beget money, though more absurd than alchemy, had
+yet an apparently practical and irresistibly tempting confirmation in
+the wealth of villains, and the success of fools. Alchemy, in its
+day, led to pure chemistry; and calmly yielded to the science it had
+fostered. But all wholesome indignation against usurers was prevented,
+in the Christian mind, by wicked and cruel religious hatred of the race
+of Christ. In the end, Shakspeare himself, in his fierce effort against
+the madness, suffered himself to miss his mark by making his usurer a
+Jew: the Franciscan institution of the Mount of Pity failed before
+the lust of Lombardy, and the logic of Augsburg; and, to this day, the
+worship of the Immaculate Virginity of Money, mother of the Omnipotence
+of Money, is the Protestant form of Madonna worship.
+
+278. III. The usurer's fang, and the debtor's shame, might both have
+been trodden down under the feet of Italy, had her knights and her
+workmen remained true to each other. But the brotherhoods of Italy were
+not of Cain to Abel--but of Cain to Cain. Every man's sword was against
+his fellow. Pisa sank before Genoa at Meloria, the Italian Ægos-Potamos;
+Genoa before Venice in the war of Chiozza, the Italian siege of
+Syracuse. Florence sent her Brunelleschi to divert the waves of
+Serchio against the walls of Lucca; Lucca her Castruccio, to hold mock
+tournaments before the gates of vanquished Florence. The weak modern
+Italian reviles or bewails the acts of foreign races, as if his destiny
+had depended upon these; let him at least assume the pride, and bear the
+grief, of remembering that, among all the virgin cities of his country,
+there has not been one which would not ally herself with a stranger, to
+effect a sister's ruin.
+
+279. Lastly. The impartiality with which I have stated the acts, so
+far as known to me, and impulses, so far as discernible by me, of
+the contending Church and Empire, cannot but give offence, or provoke
+suspicion, in the minds of those among you who are accustomed to hear
+the cause of Religion supported by eager disciples, or attacked by
+confessed enemies. My confession of hostility would be open, if I were
+an enemy indeed; but I have never possessed the knowledge, and have long
+ago been cured of the pride, which makes men fervent in witness for the
+Church's virtue, or insolent in declamation against her errors. The
+will of Heaven, which grants the grace and ordains the diversities of
+Religion, needs no defence, and sustains no defeat, by the humours of
+men; and our first business in relation to it is to silence our wishes,
+and to calm our fears. If, in such modest and disciplined temper, you
+arrange your increasing knowledge of the history of mankind, you will
+have no final difficulty in distinguishing the operation of the Master's
+law from the consequences of the disobedience to it which He permits;
+nor will you respect the law less, because, accepting only the obedience
+of love, it neither hastily punishes, nor pompously rewards, with what
+men think reward or chastisement. Not always under the feet of Korah the
+earth is rent; not always at the call of Elijah the clouds gather; but
+the guarding mountains for ever stand round about Jerusalem; and the
+rain, miraculous evermore, makes green the fields for the evil and the
+good.
+
+280. And if you will fix your minds only on the conditions of human
+life which the Giver of it demands, "He hath shown thee, oh man, what is
+good, and what doth thy Lord require of thee, but to do justice, and to
+love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God," you will find that such
+obedience is always acknowledged by temporal blessing. If, turning from
+the manifest miseries of cruel ambition, and manifest wanderings
+of insolent belief, you summon to your thoughts rather the state of
+unrecorded multitudes, who laboured in silence, and adored in humility,
+widely as the snows of Christendom brought memory of the Birth of
+Christ, or her spring sunshine, of His Resurrection, you may know that
+the promise of the Bethlehem angels has been literally fulfilled; and
+will pray that your English fields, joyfully as the banks of Arno, may
+still dedicate their pure lilies to St. Mary of the Flower.
+
+
+
+
+                 APPENDIX.
+
+       (NOTES ON THE PLATES ILLUSTRATING THIS VOLUME.)
+
+In the delivery of the preceding Lectures, some account was given of the
+theologic design of the sculptures by Giovanni Pisano at Orvieto, which
+I intended to have printed separately, and in more complete form, in
+this Appendix. But my strength does not now admit of my fulfilling the
+half of my intentions, and I find myself, at present, tired, and so
+dead in feeling, that I have no quickness in interpretation, or skill in
+description of emotional work. I must content myself, therefore, for the
+time, with a short statement of the points which I wish the reader to
+observe in the Plates, and which were left unnoticed in the text.
+
+The frontispiece is the best copy I can get, in permanent materials,
+of a photograph of the course of the Arno, through Pisa, before the old
+banks were destroyed. Two arches of the Ponte-a-Mare which was carried
+away in the inundation of 1870, are seen in the distance; the church
+of La Spina, in its original position overhanging the river; and the
+buttressed and rugged walls of the mediaeval shore. Never more, any of
+these, to be seen in reality, by living eyes.
+
+PLATE I.--A small portion of a photograph of Nicolo Pisano's Adoration
+of the Magi, on the pulpit of the Pisan Baptistery. The intensely Greek
+character of the heads, and the severely impetuous chiselling (learned
+from Late Roman rapid work), which drives the lines of the drapery
+nearly straight, may be seen better in a fragment of this limited
+measure than in the crowded massing of the entire subject. But it may
+be observed also that there is both a thoughtfulness and a tenderness
+in the features, whether of the Virgin or the attendant angel, which
+already indicate an aim beyond that of Greek art.
+
+PLATE II--The Pulpit of the Baptistery (of which the preceding
+plate represents a portion). I have only given this general view for
+convenience of reference. Beautiful photographs of the subject on a
+large scale are easily attainable.
+
+PLATE III.--The Fountain of Perugia. Executed from a sketch by Mr.
+Arthur Severn. The perspective of the steps is not quite true; we both
+tried to get it right, but found that it would be a day or two's work,
+to little purpose, and so let them go at hazard. The inlaid pattern
+behind is part of the older wall of the cathedral; the late door is of
+course inserted.
+
+PLATE IV., LETTER E.--From Norman Bible in the British Museum; showing
+the moral temper which regulated common ornamentation in the twelfth
+century.
+
+PLATE V.--Door of the Baptistery at Pisa. The reader must note that,
+although these plates are necessarily, in fineness of detail, inferior
+to the photographs from which they are taken, they have the inestimable
+advantage of permanence, and will not fade away into spectres when
+the book is old. I am greatly puzzled by the richness of the current
+ornamentation on the main pillars, as opposed to the general severity of
+design. I never can understand how the men who indulged in this flowing
+luxury of foliage were so stern in their masonry and figure-draperies.
+
+PLATE VI.--Part of the lintel of the door represented on Plate V.,
+enlarged. I intended, in the Lecture on Marble Couchant, to have
+insisted, at some length, on the decoration of the lintel and
+side-posts, as one of the most important phases of mystic ecclesiastical
+sculpture. But I find the materials furnished by Lucca, Pisa, and
+Florence, for such an essay are far too rich to be examined cursorily;
+the treatment even of this single lintel could scarcely be enough
+explained in the close of the Lecture. I must dwell on some points of it
+now.
+
+Look back to Section 175 in "Aratra Pentelici," giving statement of the
+four kinds of relief in sculpture. The uppermost of these plinths is
+of the kind I have called 'round relief'; you might strike it out on a
+coin. The lower is 'foliate relief'; it looks almost as if the figures
+had been cut out of one layer of marble, and laid against another behind
+it.
+
+The uppermost, at the distance of my diagram, or in nature itself, would
+scarcely be distinguished at a careless glance from an egg-and-arrow
+moulding. You could not have a more simple or forcible illustration
+of my statement in the first chapter of "Aratra," that the essential
+business of sculpture is to produce a series of agreeable bosses or
+rounded surfaces; to which, if possible, some meaning may afterwards
+be attached. In the present instance, every egg becomes an angel, or
+evangelist, and every arrow a lily, or a wing. [1] The whole is in the
+most exquisitely finished Byzantine style.
+
+[Footnote: In the contemporary south door of the Duomo of Genoa, the
+Greek moulding is used without any such transformation.]
+
+I am not sure of being right in my interpretation of the meaning of
+these figures; but I think there can be little question about it. There
+are eleven altogether; the three central, Christ with His mother and St.
+Joseph; then, two evangelists, with two alternate angels, on each side.
+Each of these angels carries a rod, with a fleur-de-lys termination;
+their wings decorate the intermediate ridges (formed, in a pure Greek
+moulding, by the arrows); and, behind the heads of all the figures,
+there is now a circular recess; once filled, I doubt not, by a plate of
+gold. The Christ, and the Evangelists, all carry books, of which each
+has a mosaic, or intaglio ornament, in the shape of a cross. I could
+not show you a more severe or perfectly representative piece of
+_architectural_ sculpture.
+
+The heads of the eleven figures are as simply decorative as the ball
+flowers are in our English Gothic tracery; the slight irregularity
+produced by different gesture and character giving precisely the sort of
+change which a good designer wishes to see in the parts of a consecutive
+ornament.
+
+The moulding closes at each extremity with a palm-tree, correspondent in
+execution with those on coins of Syracuse; for the rest, the interest
+of it consists only in these slight variations of attitude by which
+the figures express wonder or concern at some event going on in their
+presence. They are looking down; and I do not doubt, are intended to be
+the heavenly witnesses of the story engraved on the stone below,--The
+Life and Death of the Baptist.
+
+The lower stone on which this is related, is a model of skill in
+Fiction, properly so called. In Fictile art, in Fictile history, it is
+equally exemplary. 'Feigning' or 'affecting' in the most exquisite way
+by fastening intensely on the principal points.
+
+Ask yourselves what are the principal points to be insisted on, in the
+story of the Baptist.
+
+He came, "preaching the Baptism of Repentance for the remission of
+sins." That is his Advice, or Order-preaching.
+
+And he came, "to bear witness of the Light." "Behold the Lamb of God,
+which taketh away the sins of the world." That is his declaration, or
+revelation-preaching.
+
+And the end of his own life is in the practice of this preaching--if you
+will think of it--under curious difficulties in both kinds. Difficulties
+in putting away sin--difficulties in obtaining sight. The first half of
+the stone begins with the apocalyptic preaching. Christ, represented
+as in youth, is set under two trees, in the wilderness. St. John is
+scarcely at first seen; he is only the guide, scarcely the teacher, of
+the crowd of peoples, nations, and languages, whom he leads, pointing
+them to the Christ. Without doubt, all these figures have separate
+meaning. I am too ignorant to interpret it; but observe generally, they
+are the thoughtful and wise of the earth, not its ruffians or rogues.
+This is not, by any means, a general amnesty to blackguards, and an
+apocalypse to brutes, which St. John is preaching. These are quite the
+best people he can find to call, or advise. You see many of them carry
+rolls of paper in their hands, as he does himself. In comparison
+with the books of the upper cornice, these have special meaning, as
+throughout Byzantine design.
+
+ "Adverte quod patriarchæ et prophetse pinguntur cum rotulis
+  in manibus; quidam vero apostoli cum libris, et quidam
+  cum rotulis. Nempe quia ante Christi adventum fides figurative
+  ostendebatur, et quoad multa, in se implicita erat. Ad
+  quod ostendendum patriarchse et prophetæ pinguntur cum rotulis,
+  per quos quasi qusedam imperfecta cognitio design atur;
+  quia vero apostoli a Christo perfecte edocti suut, ideo libris,
+  per quos designatur perfecta cognitio, uti possunt."
+
+
+        WILLIAM DURANDUS, quoted by Didron, p. 305.
+
+
+PLATE VII.--Next to this subject of the preaching comes the Baptism: and
+then, the circumstances of St. John's death. First, his declaration to
+Herod, "It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife:" on
+which he is seized and carried to prison:--next, Herod's feast,--the
+consultation between daughter and mother, "What shall I ask?"--the
+martyrdom, and burial by the disciples. The notable point in the
+treatment of all these subjects is the quiet and mystic Byzantine
+dwelling on thought rather than action. In a northern sculpture of this
+subject, the daughter of Herodias would have been assuredly dancing; and
+most probably, casting a somersault. With the Byzantine, the debate in
+her mind is the only subject of interest, and he carves above, the evil
+angels, laying their hands on the heads, first of Herod and Herodias,
+and then of Herodias and her daughter.
+
+PLATE VIII.--The issuing of commandment not to eat of the tree of
+knowledge. (Orvieto Cathedral.)
+
+This, with Plates X. and XII., will give a sufficiently clear conception
+to any reader who has a knowledge of sculpture, of the principles of
+Giovanni Pisano's design. I have thought it well worth while to publish
+opposite two of them, facsimiles of the engravings which profess to
+represent them in Gruiier's monograph [1] of the Orvieto sculptures; for
+these outlines will, once for all, and better than any words, show my
+pupils what is the real virue of mediaeval work,--the power which we
+medievalists rejoice in it for. Precisely the qualities which are
+_not_ in the modern drawings, are the essential virtues of the early
+sculpture. If you like the Gruner outlines best, you need not trouble
+yourself to go to Orvieto, or anywhere else in Italy. Sculpture, such as
+those outlines represent, can be supplied to you by the acre, to order,
+in any modern academician's atelier. But if you like the strange, rude,
+quaint, Gothic realities (for these photographs are, up to a certain
+point, a vision of the reality) best; then, don't study mediaeval art
+under the direction of modern illustrators. Look at it--for however
+short a time, where you can find it--veritable and untouched, however
+mouldered or shattered. And abhor, as you would the mimicry of your best
+friend's manners by a fool, all restorations and improving copies. For
+remember, none but fools think they can restore--none, but worse fools,
+that they can improve.
+
+[Footnote: The drawings are by some Italian draughtsman, whose name it
+is no business of mine to notice.]
+
+Examine these outlines, then, with extreme care, and point by point. The
+things which they have refused or lost, are the things you have to love,
+in Giovanni Pisano.
+
+I will merely begin the task of examination, to show you how to set
+about it. Take the head of the commanding Christ. Although inclined
+forward from the shoulders in the advancing motion of the whole body,
+the head itself is not stooped; but held entirely upright, the line of
+forehead sloping backwards. The command is given in calm authority;
+not in mean anxiety. But this was not expressive enough for the
+copyist,--"How much better _I_ can show what is meant!" thinks he. So he
+puts the line of forehead and nose upright; projects the brow out of its
+straight line; and the expression then becomes,--"Now, be very careful,
+and mind what I say." Perhaps you like this 'improved' action better?
+Be it so; only, it is not Giovanni Pisano's design; but the modern
+Italian's.
+
+Next, take the head of Eve. It is much missed in the photograph--nearly
+all the finest lines lost--but enough is got to show Giovanni's mind.
+
+It appears, he liked long-headed people, with sharp chins and straight
+noses. It might be very wrong of him; but that was his taste. So much
+so, indeed, that Adam and Eve have,
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XI.--THE NATIVITY. MODERN ITALIAN.]
+
+both of them, heads not much shorter than one-sixth of their entire
+height.
+
+Your modern Academy pupil, of course, cannot tolerate this monstrosity.
+He indulgently corrects Giovanni, and Adam and Eve have entirely
+orthodox one-eighth heads, by rule of schools.
+
+But how of Eve's sharp-cut nose and pointed chin, thin lips, and look
+of quiet but rather surprised attention--not specially reverent, but
+looking keenly out from under her eyelids, like a careful servant
+receiving an order?
+
+Well--those are all Giovanni's own notions;--not the least classical,
+nor scientific, nor even like a pretty, sentimental modern woman. Like
+a Florentine woman--in Giovanni's time--it may be; at all events, very
+certainly, what Giovanni thought proper to carve.
+
+Now examine your modern edition. An entirely proper Greco-Roman academy
+plaster bust, with a proper nose, and proper mouth, and a round chin,
+and an expression of the most solemn reverence; always, of course, of a
+classical description. Very fine, perhaps. But not Giovanni.
+
+After Eve's head, let us look at her feet. Giovanni has his own positive
+notions about those also. Thin and bony, to excess, the right, undercut
+all along, so that the profile looks as thin as the mere elongated
+line on an Etruscan vase; and the right showing the five toes all
+well separate, nearly straight, and the larger ones almost as long as
+fingers! the shin bone above carried up in as severe and sharp a curve
+as the edge of a sword.
+
+Now examine the modern copy. Beautiful little fleshy, Venus-de'-Medici
+feet and toes--no undercutting to the right foot,--the left having the
+great-toe properly laid over the second, according to the ordinances of
+schools and shoes, and a well-developed academic and operatic calf and
+leg. Again charming, of course. But only according to Mr. Gibson or Mr.
+Power--not according to Giovanni.
+
+Farther, and finally, note the delight with which Giovanni has dwelt,
+though without exaggeration, on the muscles of the breast and ribs in
+the Adam; while he has subdued all away into virginal severity in Eve.
+And then note, and with conclusive admiration, how in the exact and only
+place where the poor modern fool's anatomical knowledge should have been
+shown, the wretch loses his hold of it! How he has entirely missed and
+effaced the grand Greek pectoral muscles of Giovanni's Adam, but has
+studiously added what mean fleshliness he could to the Eve; and marked
+with black spots the nipple and navel, where Giovanni left only the
+severe marble in pure light.
+
+These instances are enough to enable you to detect the insolent changes
+in the design of Giovanni made by the modern Academy-student in so far
+as they relate to form absolute. I must farther, for a few moments,
+request your attention to the alterations made in the light and shade.
+
+You may perhaps remember some of the passages. They occur frequently,
+both in my inaugural lectures, and in "Aratra Pentelici," in which
+I have pointed out the essential connection between the schools of
+sculpture and those of chiaroscuro. I have always spoken of the Greek,
+or essentially sculpture-loving schools, as chiaroscurist; always of
+the Gothic, or colour-loving schools, as non-chiaroscurist. And in one
+place, (I have not my books here, and cannot refer to it,) I have even
+defined sculpture as light-and-shade drawing with the chisel. Therefore,
+the next point you have to look to, after the absolute characters of
+form, is the mode in which the sculptor has placed his shadows, both
+to express these, and to force the eye to the points of his composition
+which he wants looked at. You cannot possibly see a more instructive
+piece of work, in these respects, than Giovanni's design of the
+Nativity, Plate X. So far as I yet know Christian art, this is the
+central type of the treatment of the subject; it has all the intensity
+and passion of the earliest schools, together with a grace of repose
+which even in Ghiberti's beautiful Nativity, founded upon it, has
+scarcely been increased, but rather lost in languor. The motive of the
+design is the frequent one among all the early masters; the Madonna
+lifts the covering from the cradle to show the Child to one of the
+servants, who starts forward adoring. All the light and shade is
+disposed
+
+ [Illustration: PLATE XII.--THE ANNUNCIATION AND VISITATION.]
+
+to fix the eye on these main actions. First, one intense deeply-cut mass
+of shadow, under the pointed arch, to throw out the head and lifted hand
+of the Virgin. A vulgar sculptor would have cut all black behind the
+head; Giovanni begins with full shadow; then subdues it with drapery
+absolutely quiet in fall; then lays his fullest possible light on the
+head, the hand, and the edge of the lifted veil.
+
+He has undercut his Madonna's profile, being his main aim, too
+delicately for time to spare; happily the deep-cut brow is left, and the
+exquisitely refined line above, of the veil and hair. The rest of the
+work is uninjured, and the sharpest edges of light are still secure. You
+may note how the passionate action of the servant is given by the deep
+shadows under and above her arm, relieving its curves in all their
+length, and by the recess of shade under the cheek and chin, which lifts
+the face.
+
+Now take your modern student's copy, and look how _he_ has placed his
+lights and shades. You see, they go as nearly as possible exactly where
+Giovanni's _don't_. First, pure white under this Gothic arch, where
+Giovanni has put his fullest dark. Secondly, just where Giovanni has
+used his whole art of chiselling, to soften his stone away, and show
+the wreaths of the Madonna's hair lifting her veil behind, the accursed
+modern blockhead carves his shadow straight down, because he thinks that
+will be more in the style of Michael Angelo. Then he takes the shadows
+away from behind the profile, and from under the chin, and from under
+the arm, and puts in two grand square blocks of dark at the ends of
+the cradle, that you may be safe to look at that, instead of the Child.
+Next, he takes it all away from under the servant's arms, and lays it
+all behind above the calf of her leg. Then, not having wit enough to
+notice Giovanni's undulating surface beneath the drapery of the bed
+on the left, he limits it with a hard parallel-sided bar of shade, and
+insists on the vertical fold under the Madonna's arm, which Giovanni
+has purposely cut flat that it may not interfere with the arm above;
+finally, the modern animal has missed the only pieces of womanly form
+which Giovanni admitted, the rounded right arm and softly revealed
+breast; and absolutely removed, as if it were no part of the
+composition, the horizontal incision at the base of all--out of which
+the first folds of the drapery rise.
+
+I cannot give you any better example, than this modern Academy-work, of
+the total ignorance of the very first meaning of the word 'Sculpture'
+into which the popular schools of existing art are plunged. I will
+not insist, now, on the uselessness, or worse, of their endeavours to
+represent the older art, and of the necessary futility of their judgment
+of it. The conclusions to which I wish to lead you on these points will
+be the subject of future lectures, being of too great importance for
+examination here. But you cannot spend your time in more profitable
+study than by examining and comparing, touch for touch, the treatment
+of light and shadow in the figures of the Christ and sequent angels, in
+Plates VIII. and IX., as we have partly examined those of the subject
+before us; and in thus assuring yourself of the uselessness of trusting
+to any ordinary modern copyists, for anything more than the rudest chart
+or map--and even that inaccurately surveyed--of ancient design.
+
+The last plate given in this volume contains the two lovely subjects of
+the Annunciation and Visitation, which, being higher from the ground,
+are better preserved than the groups represented in the other plates.
+They will be found to justify, in subtlety of chiselling, the title I
+gave to Giovanni, of the Canova of the thirteenth century.
+
+I am obliged to leave without notice, at present, the branch of ivy,
+given in illustration of the term 'marble rampant,' at the base of Plate
+VIII. The foliage of Orvieto can only be rightly described in connection
+with the great scheme of leaf-ornamentation which ascended from the
+ivy of the Homeric period in the sculptures of Cyprus, to the roses of
+Botticelli, and laurels of Bellini and Titian.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Val d'Arno, by John Ruskin
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Val D'arno, by John Ruskin, M.a.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
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+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Val d'Arno, by John Ruskin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Val d'Arno
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+
+Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8523]
+This file was first posted on July 19, 2003
+Last Updated: May 17, 2013
+
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VAL D'ARNO ***
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+</pre>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      VAL D'ARNO
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By John Ruskin, M.A.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> VAL D'ARNO </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> LECTURE I. NICHOLAS THE PISAN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> LECTURE II. JOHN THE PISAN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> LECTURE III. SHIELD AND APRON. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> LECTURE IV. PARTED PER PALE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> LECTURE V. PAX VOBISCUM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> LECTURE VI. MARBLE COUCHANT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> LECTURE VII. MARBLE RAMPANT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> LECTURE VIII. FRANCHISE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> LECTURE IX. THE TYRRHENE SEA. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> LECTURE X. FLEUR DE LYS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_APPE"> APPENDIX. (NOTES ON THE PLATES ILLUSTRATING THIS
+      VOLUME.) </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_LIST" id="link2H_LIST"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LIST OF PLATES.
+    </h2>
+    <h5>
+      (There are no illustrations in this edition)
+    </h5>
+    <h3>
+      THE ANCIENT SHORES OF ARNO
+    </h3>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    I. THE PISAN LATONA
+   II. NICCOLA PISANO'S PULPIT
+  III. THE FOUNTAIN OF PERUGIA
+   IV. NORMAN IMAGERY
+    V. DOOR OF THE BAPTISTERY. PISA
+   VI. THE STORY OF ST. JOHN. ADVENT
+  VII.  "    "   "   "    "   DEPARTURE
+ VIII. "THE CHARGE TO ADAM" GIOVANNI PISANO
+   IX.   "     "    "   "   MODERN ITALIAN
+    X. THE NATIVITY. GIOVANNI PISANO
+   XI.  "     "      MODERN ITALIAN
+  XII. THE ANNUNCIATION AND VISITATION
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VAL D'ARNO
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TEN LECTURES
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      ON
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      THE TUSCAN ART DIRECTLY ANTECEDENT TO THE FLORENTINE YEAR OF VICTORIES
+      <br /> <br /> GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD IN MICHAELMAS TERM, 1873
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LECTURE I. NICHOLAS THE PISAN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      1. On this day, of this month, the 20th of October, six hundred and
+      twenty-three years ago, the merchants and tradesmen of Florence met before
+      the church of Santa Croce; marched through the city to the palace of their
+      Podesta; deposed their Podesta; set over themselves, in his place, a
+      knight belonging to an inferior city; called him "Captain of the People;"
+      appointed under him a Signory of twelve Ancients chosen from among
+      themselves; hung a bell for him on the tower of the Lion, that he might
+      ring it at need, and gave him the flag of Florence to bear, half white,
+      and half red.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first blow struck upon the bell in that tower of the Lion began the
+      tolling for the passing away of the feudal system, and began the joy-peal,
+      or carillon, for whatever deserves joy, in that of our modern liberties,
+      whether of action or of trade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. Within the space of our Oxford term from that day, namely, on the 13th
+      of December in the same year, 1250, died, at Ferentino, in Apulia, the
+      second Frederick, Emperor of Germany; the second also of the two great
+      lights which in his lifetime, according to Dante's astronomy, ruled the
+      world,&mdash;whose light being quenched, "the land which was once the
+      residence of courtesy and valour, became the haunt of all men who are
+      ashamed to be near the good, or to speak to them."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+          "In sul paese chadice e po riga
+           solea valore e cortesia trovar si
+           prima che federigo Bavessi briga,
+           or puo sicuramente indi passarsi
+           per qualuuche lasciassi per vergogna
+           di ragionar co buoni, e appressarsi."
+                           PURO., Cant. 16.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      3. The "Paese che Adice e Po riga" is of course Lombardy; and might have
+      been enough distinguished by the name of its principal river. But Dante
+      has an especial reason for naming the Adige. It is always by the valley of
+      the Adige that the power of the German Caesars descends on Italy; and that
+      battlemented bridge, which doubtless many of you remember, thrown over the
+      Adige at Verona, was so built that the German riders might have secure and
+      constant access to the city. In which city they had their first stronghold
+      in Italy, aided therein by the great family of the Montecchi, Montacutes,
+      Mont-aigu-s, or Montagues; lords, so called, of the mountain peaks; in
+      feud with the family of the Cappelletti,&mdash;hatted, or, more properly,
+      scarlet-hatted, persons. And this accident of nomenclature, assisted by
+      your present familiar knowledge of the real contests of the sharp
+      mountains with the flat caps, or petasoi, of cloud, (locally giving Mont
+      Pilate its title, "Pileatus,") may in many points curiously illustrate for
+      you that contest of Frederick the Second with Innocent the Fourth, which
+      in the good of it and the evil alike, represents to all time the war of
+      the solid, rational, and earthly authority of the King, and State, with
+      the more or less spectral, hooded, imaginative, and nubiform authority of
+      the Pope, and Church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. It will be desirable also that you clearly learn the material
+      relations, governing spiritual ones,&mdash;as of the Alps to their clouds,
+      so of the plains to their rivers. And of these rivers, chiefly note the
+      relation to each other, first, of the Adige and Po; then of the Arno and
+      Tiber. For the Adige, representing among the rivers and fountains of
+      waters the channel of Imperial, as the Tiber of the Papal power, and the
+      strength of the Coronet being founded on the white peaks that look down
+      upon Hapsburg and Hohenzollern, as that of the Scarlet Cap in the marsh of
+      the Campagna, "quo tenuis in sicco aqua destituisset," the study of the
+      policies and arts of the cities founded in the two great valleys of
+      Lombardy and Tuscany, so far as they were affected by their bias to the
+      Emperor, or the Church, will arrange itself in your minds at once in a
+      symmetry as clear as it will be, in our future work, secure and
+      suggestive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. "Tenuis, in sicco." How literally the words apply, as to the native
+      streams, so to the early states or establishings of the great cities of
+      the world. And you will find that the policy of the Coronet, with its
+      tower-building; the policy of the Hood, with its dome-building; and the
+      policy of the bare brow, with its cot-building,&mdash;the three main
+      associations of human energy to which we owe the architecture of our
+      earth, (in contradistinction to the dens and caves of it,)&mdash;are
+      curiously and eternally governed by mental laws, corresponding to the
+      physical ones which are ordained for the rocks, the clouds, and the
+      streams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tower, which many of you so well remember the daily sight of, in your
+      youth, above the "winding shore" of Thames,&mdash;the tower upon the hill
+      of London; the dome which still rises above its foul and terrestrial
+      clouds; and the walls of this city itself, which has been "alma,"
+      nourishing in gentleness, to the youth of England, because defended from
+      external hostility by the difficultly fordable streams of its plain, may
+      perhaps, in a few years more, be swept away as heaps of useless stone; but
+      the rocks, and clouds, and rivers of our country will yet, one day,
+      restore to it the glory of law, of religion, and of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      6. I am about to ask you to read the hieroglyphs upon the architecture of
+      a dead nation, in character greatly resembling our own,&mdash;in laws and
+      in commerce greatly influencing our own;&mdash;in arts, still, from her
+      grave, tutress of the present world. I know that it will be expected of me
+      to explain the merits of her arts, without reference to the wisdom of her
+      laws; and to describe the results of both, without investigating the
+      feelings which regulated either. I cannot do this; but I will at once end
+      these necessarily vague, and perhaps premature, generalizations; and only
+      ask you to study some portions of the life and work of two men, father and
+      son, citizens of the city in which the energies of this great people were
+      at first concentrated; and to deduce from that study the conclusions, or
+      follow out the inquiries, which it may naturally suggest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      7. It is the modern fashion to despise Vasari. He is indeed despicable,
+      whether as historian or critic,&mdash;not least in his admiration of
+      Michael Angelo; nevertheless, he records the traditions and opinions of
+      his day; and these you must accurately know, before you can wisely
+      correct. I will take leave, therefore, to begin to-day with a sentence
+      from Vasari, which many of you have often heard quoted, but of which,
+      perhaps, few have enough observed the value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Niccola Pisano finding himself under certain Greek sculptors who were
+      carving the figures and other intaglio ornaments of the cathedral of Pisa,
+      and of the temple of St. John, and there being, among many spoils of
+      marbles, brought by the Pisan fleet, {1} some ancient tombs, there was one
+      among the others most fair, on which was sculptured the hunting of
+      Meleager." {2}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: "Armata." The proper word for a land army is "esercito."}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 2: Vol. i., p. 60, of Mrs. Foster's English translation, to
+      which I shall always refer, in order that English students may compare the
+      context if they wish. But the pieces of English which I give are my own
+      direct translation, varying, it will be found, often, from Mrs. Foster's,
+      in minute, but not unimportant, particulars.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Get the meaning and contents of this passage well into your minds. In the
+      gist of it, it is true, and very notable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      8. You are in mid thirteenth century; 1200-1300. The Greek nation has been
+      dead in heart upwards of a thousand years; its religion dead, for six
+      hundred. But through the wreck of its faith, and death in its heart, the
+      skill of its hands, and the cunning of its design, instinctively linger.
+      In the centuries of Christian power, the Christians are still unable to
+      build but under Greek masters, and by pillage of Greek shrines; and their
+      best workman is only an apprentice to the 'Graeculi esurientes' who are
+      carving the temple of St. John.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      9. Think of it. Here has the New Testament been declared for 1200 years.
+      No spirit of wisdom, as yet, has been given to its workmen, except that
+      which has descended from the Mars Hill on which St. Paul stood
+      contemptuous in pity. No Bezaleel arises, to build new tabernacles, unless
+      he has been taught by Daedalus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      10. It is necessary, therefore, for you first to know precisely the manner
+      of these Greek masters in their decayed power; the manner which Vasari
+      calls, only a sentence before, "That old Greek manner, blundering,
+      disproportioned,"&mdash;Goffa, e sproporzionata.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Goffa," the very word which Michael Angelo uses of Perugino. Behold, the
+      Christians despising the Dunce Greeks, as the Infidel modernists despise
+      the Dunce Christians. {1}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: Compare "Ariadne Floreutina," § 46.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      11. I sketched for you, when I was last at Pisa, a few arches of the apse
+      of the duomo, and a small portion of the sculpture of the font of the
+      Temple of St. John. I have placed them in your rudimentary series, as
+      examples of "quella vecchia maniera Greca, goffa e sproporzionata." My own
+      judgment respecting them is,&mdash;and it is a judgment founded on
+      knowledge which you may, if you choose, share with me, after working with
+      me,&mdash;that no architecture on this grand scale, so delicately skilful
+      in execution, or so daintily disposed in proportion, exists elsewhere in
+      the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      12. Is Vasari entirely wrong then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, only half wrong, but very fatally half wrong. There are Greeks, and
+      Greeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This head with the inlaid dark iris in its eyes, from the font of St.
+      John, is as pure as the sculpture of early Greece, a hundred years before
+      Phidias; and it is so delicate, that having drawn with equal care this and
+      the best work of the Lombardi at Venice (in the church of the Miracoli), I
+      found this to possess the more subtle qualities of design. And yet, in the
+      cloisters of St. John Lateran at Rome, you have Greek work, if not
+      contemporary with this at Pisa, yet occupying a parallel place in the
+      history of architecture, which is abortive, and monstrous beyond the power
+      of any words to describe. Vasari knew no difference between these two
+      kinds of Greek work. Nor do your modern architects. To discern the
+      difference between the sculpture of the font of Pisa, and the spandrils of
+      the Lateran cloister, requires thorough training of the hand in the finest
+      methods of draughtsmanship; and, secondly, trained habit of reading the
+      mythology and ethics of design. I simply assure you of the fact at
+      present; and if you work, you may have sight and sense of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      13. There are Greeks, and Greeks, then, in the twelfth century, differing
+      as much from each other as vice, in all ages, must differ from virtue. But
+      in Vasari's sight they are alike; in ours, they must be so, as far as
+      regards our present purpose. As men of a school, they are to be summed
+      under the general name of 'Byzantines;' their work all alike showing
+      specific characters of attenuate, rigid, and in many respects offensively
+      unbeautiful, design, to which Vasari's epithets of "goffa, e
+      sproporzionata" are naturally applied by all persons trained only in
+      modern principles. Under masters, then, of this Byzantine race, Niccola is
+      working at Pisa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      14. Among the spoils brought by her fleets from Greece, is a sarcophagus,
+      with Meleager's hunt on it, wrought "con bellissima maniera," says Vasari.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You may see that sarcophagus&mdash;any of you who go to Pisa;&mdash;touch
+      it, for it is on a level with your hand; study it, as Niccola studied it,
+      to your mind's content. Within ten yards of it, stand equally accessible
+      pieces of Niccola's own work and of his son's. Within fifty yards of it,
+      stands the Byzantine font of the chapel of St. John. Spend but the good
+      hours of a single day quietly by these three pieces of marble, and you may
+      learn more than in general any of you bring home from an entire tour in
+      Italy. But how many of you ever yet went into that temple of St. John,
+      knowing what to look for; or spent as much time in the Campo Santo of
+      Pisa, as you do in Mr. Ryman's shop on a rainy day?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      15. The sarcophagus is not, however, (with Vasari's pardon) in 'bellissima
+      maniera' by any means. But it is in the classical Greek manner instead of
+      the Byzantine Greek manner. You have to learn the difference between
+      these.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now I have explained to you sufficiently, in "Aratra Pentelici," what the
+      classical Greek manner is. The manner and matter of it being easily summed&mdash;as
+      those of natural and unaffected life;&mdash;nude life when nudity is right
+      and pure; not otherwise. To Niccola, the difference between this natural
+      Greek school, and the Byzantine, was as the difference between the bull of
+      Thurium and of Delhi, (see Plate 19 of "Aratra Pentelici").
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instantly he followed the natural fact, and became the Father of Sculpture
+      to Italy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      16. Are we, then, also to be strong by following the natural fact?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, assuredly. That is the beginning and end of all my teaching to you.
+      But the noble natural fact, not the ignoble. You are to study men; not
+      lice nor entozoa. And you are to study the souls of men in their bodies,
+      not their bodies only. Mulready's drawings from the nude are more degraded
+      and bestial than the worst grotesques of the Byzantine or even the Indian
+      image makers. And your modern mob of English and American tourists,
+      following a lamplighter through the Vatican to have pink light thrown for
+      them on the Apollo Belvidere, are farther from capacity of understanding
+      Greek art, than the parish charity boy, making a ghost out of a turnip,
+      with a candle inside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      17. Niccola followed the facts, then. He is the Master of Naturalism in
+      Italy. And I have drawn for you his lioness and cubs, to fix that in your
+      minds. And beside it, I put the Lion of St. Mark's, that you may see
+      exactly the kind of change he made. The Lion of St. Mark's (all but his
+      wings, which have been made and fastened on in the fifteenth century), is
+      in the central Byzantine manner; a fine decorative piece of work,
+      descending in true genealogy from the Lion of Nemea, and the crested skin
+      of him that clothes the head of the Heracles of Camarina. It has all the
+      richness of Greek Daedal work,&mdash;nay, it has fire and life beyond much
+      Greek Daedal work; but in so far as it is non-natural, symbolic,
+      decorative, and not like an actual lion, it would be felt by Niccola
+      Pisano to be imperfect. And instead of this decorative evangelical
+      preacher of a lion, with staring eyes, and its paw on a gospel, he carves
+      you a quite brutal and maternal lioness, with affectionate eyes, and paw
+      set on her cub.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      18. Fix that in your minds, then. Niccola Pisano is the Master of
+      Naturalism in Italy,&mdash;therefore elsewhere; of Naturalism, and all
+      that follows. Generally of truth, common-sense, simplicity, vitality,&mdash;and
+      of all these, with consummate power. A man to be enquired about, is not
+      he? and will it not make a difference to you whether you look, when you
+      travel in Italy, in his rough early marbles for this fountain of life, or
+      only glance at them because your Murray's Guide tells you,&mdash;and think
+      them "odd old things"?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      19. We must look for a moment more at one odd old thing&mdash;the
+      sarcophagus which was his tutor. Upon it is carved the hunting of
+      Meleager; and it was made, or by tradition received as, the tomb of the
+      mother of the Countess Matilda. I must not let you pass by it without
+      noticing two curious coincidences in these particulars. First, in the
+      Greek subject which is given Niccola to read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boar, remember, is Diana's enemy. It is sent upon the fields of
+      Calydon in punishment of the refusal of the Calydonians to sacrifice to
+      her. 'You have refused <i>me</i>,' she said; 'you will not have Artemis
+      Laphria, Forager Diana, to range in your fields. You shall have the
+      Forager Swine, instead.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meleager and Atalanta are Diana's servants,&mdash;servants of all order,
+      purity, due sequence of season, and time. The orbed architecture of
+      Tuscany, with its sculptures of the succession of the labouring months, as
+      compared with the rude vaults and monstrous imaginations of the past, was
+      again the victory of Meleager.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+20. Secondly, take what value there is in the tradition that this
+sarcophagus was made the tomb of the mother of the
+
+ {Illustration: PLATE I:&mdash;THE PISAN LATONA. Angle of Panel of the
+Adoration, in Niccola's Pulpit.}
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Countess Matilda. If you look to the fourteenth chapter of the third
+      volume of "Modern Painters," you will find the mythic character of the
+      Countess Matilda, as Dante employed it explained at some length. She is
+      the representative of Natural Science as opposed to Theological.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      21. Chance coincidences merely, these; but full of teaching for us,
+      looking back upon the past. To Niccola, the piece of marble was,
+      primarily, and perhaps exclusively, an example of free chiselling, and
+      humanity of treatment. What else it was to him,&mdash;what the spirits of
+      Atalanta and Matilda could bestow on him, depended on what he was himself.
+      Of which Vasari tells you nothing. Not whether he was gentleman or clown&mdash;rich
+      or poor&mdash;soldier or sailor. Was he never, then, in those fleets that
+      brought the marbles back from the ravaged Isles of Greece? was he at first
+      only a labourer's boy among the scaffoldings of the Pisan apse,&mdash;his
+      apron loaded with dust&mdash;and no man praising him for his speech? Rough
+      he was, assuredly; probably poor; fierce and energetic, beyond even the
+      strain of Pisa,&mdash;just and kind, beyond the custom of his age, knowing
+      the Judgment and Love of God: and a workman, with all his soul and
+      strength, all his days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      22. You hear the fame of him as of a sculptor only. It is right that you
+      should; for every great architect must be a sculptor, and be renowned, as
+      such, more than by his building. But Niccola Pisano had even more
+      influence on Italy as a builder than as a carver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Italy, at this moment, wanted builders more than carvers; and a change
+      was passing through her life, of which external edifice was a necessary
+      sign. I complained of you just now that you never looked at the Byzantine
+      font in the temple of St. John. The sacristan generally will not let you.
+      He takes you to a particular spot on the floor, and sings a musical chord.
+      The chord returns in prolonged echo from the chapel roof, as if the
+      building were all one sonorous marble bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which indeed it is; and travellers are always greatly amused at being
+      allowed to ring this bell; but it never occurs to them to ask how it came
+      to be ringable:&mdash;how that tintinnabulate roof differs from the dome
+      of the Pantheon, expands into the dome of Florence, or declines into the
+      whispering gallery of St. Paul's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      23. When you have had full satisfaction of the tintinnabulate roof, you
+      are led by the sacristan and Murray to Niccola Pisano's pulpit; which, if
+      you have spare time to examine it, you find to have six sides, to be
+      decorated with tablets of sculpture, like the sides of the sarcophagus,
+      and to be sustained on seven pillars, three of which are themselves
+      carried on the backs of as many animals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this arrangement had been contrived before Niccola's time, and
+      executed again and again. But behold! between the capitals of the pillars
+      and the sculptured tablets there are interposed five cusped arches, the
+      hollow beneath the pulpit showing dark through their foils. You have seen
+      such cusped arches before, you think?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, gentlemen, <i>you</i> have; but the Pisans had <i>not</i>. And that
+      intermediate layer of the pulpit means&mdash;the change, in a word, for
+      all Europe, from the Parthenon to Amiens Cathedral. For Italy it means the
+      rise of her Gothic dynasty; it means the duomo of Milan instead of the
+      temple of Paestum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      24. I say the duomo of Milan, only to put the change well before your
+      eyes, because you all know that building so well. The duomo of Milan is of
+      entirely bad and barbarous Gothic, but the passion of pinnacle and fret is
+      in it, visibly to you, more than in other buildings. It will therefore
+      serve to show best what fulness of change this pulpit of Niccola Pisano
+      signifies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In it there is no passion of pinnacle nor of fret. You see the edges of
+      it, instead of being bossed, or knopped, or crocketed, are mouldings of
+      severest line. No vaulting, no clustered shafts, no traceries, no
+      fantasies, no perpendicular flights of aspiration. Steady pillars, each of
+      one polished block; useful capitals, one trefoiled arch between them; your
+      panel above it; thereon your story of the founder of Christianity. The
+      whole standing upon beasts, they being indeed the foundation of us, (which
+      Niccola knew far better than Mr. Darwin); Eagle to carry your Gospel
+      message&mdash;Dove you think it ought to be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: PLATE II.&mdash;NICCOLA PISANO'S PULPIT.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eagle, says Niccola, and not as symbol of St. John Evangelist only, but
+      behold! with prey between its claws. For the Gospel, it is Niccola's
+      opinion, is not altogether a message that you may do whatever you like,
+      and go straight to heaven. Finally, a slab of marble, cut hollow a little
+      to bear your book; space enough for you to speak from at ease,&mdash;and
+      here is your first architecture of Gothic Christianity!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      25. Indignant thunder of dissent from German doctors,&mdash;clamour from
+      French savants. 'What! and our Treves, and our Strasburg, and our
+      Poictiers, and our Chartres! And you call <i>this</i> thing the first
+      architecture of Christianity!' Yes, my French and German friends, very
+      fine the buildings you have mentioned are; and I am bold to say I love
+      them far better than you do, for you will run a railroad through any of
+      them any day that you can turn a penny by it. I thank you also, Germans,
+      in the name of our Lady of Strasburg, for your bullets and fire; and I
+      thank you, Frenchmen, in the name of our Lady of Rouen, for your new
+      haberdashers' shops in the Gothic town;&mdash;meanwhile have patience with
+      me a little, and let me go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      26. No passion of fretwork, or pinnacle whatever, I said, is in this Pisan
+      pulpit. The trefoiled arch itself, pleasant as it is, seems forced a
+      little; out of perfect harmony with the rest (see Plate II.). Unnatural,
+      perhaps, to Niccola?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Altogether unnatural to him, it is; such a thing never would have come
+      into his head, unless some one had shown it him. Once got into his head,
+      he puts it to good use; perhaps even he will let this somebody else put
+      pinnacles and crockets into his head, or at least, into his son's, in a
+      little while. Pinnacles,&mdash;crockets,&mdash;it may be, even traceries.
+      The ground-tier of the baptistery is round-arched, and has no pinnacles;
+      but look at its first story. The clerestory of the Duomo of Pisa has no
+      traceries, but look at the cloister of its Campo Santo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      27. I pause at the words;&mdash;for they introduce a new group of
+      thoughts, which presently we must trace farther.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Holy Field;&mdash;field of burial. The "cave of Machpelah which is
+      before Mamre," of the Pisans. "There they buried Abraham, and Sarah his
+      wife; there they buried Isaac, and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried
+      Leah."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How do you think such a field becomes holy,&mdash;how separated, as the
+      resting-place of loving kindred, from that other field of blood, bought to
+      bury strangers in?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When you have finally succeeded, by your gospel of mammon, in making all
+      the men of your own nation not only strangers to each other, but enemies;
+      and when your every churchyard becomes therefore a field of the stranger,
+      the kneeling hamlet will vainly drink the chalice of God in the midst of
+      them. The field will be unholy. No cloisters of noble history can ever be
+      built round such an one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      28. But the very earth of this at Pisa was holy, as you know. That
+      "armata" of the Tuscan city brought home not only marble and ivory, for
+      treasure; but earth,&mdash;a fleet's burden,&mdash;from the place where
+      there was healing of soul's leprosy: and their field became a place of
+      holy tombs, prepared for its office with earth from the land made holy by
+      one tomb; which all the knighthood of Christendom had been pouring out its
+      life to win.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      29. I told you just now that this sculpture of Niccola's was the beginning
+      of Christian architecture. How do you judge that Christian architecture in
+      the deepest meaning of it to differ from all other?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All other noble architecture is for the glory of living gods and men; but
+      this is for the glory of death, in God and man. Cathedral, cloister, or
+      tomb,&mdash;shrine for the body of Christ, or for the bodies of the
+      saints. All alike signifying death to this world;&mdash;life, other than
+      of this world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Observe, I am not saying how far this feeling, be it faith, or be it
+      imagination, is true or false;&mdash;I only desire you to note that the
+      power of all Christian work begins in the niche of the catacomb and depth
+      of the sarcophagus, and is to the end definable as architecture of the
+      tomb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      30. Not altogether, and under every condition, sanctioned in doing such
+      honour to the dead by the Master of it. Not every grave is by His command
+      to be worshipped. Graves there may be&mdash;too little guarded, yet
+      dishonourable;&mdash;"ye are as graves that appear not, and the men that
+      walk over them are not aware of them." And graves too much guarded, yet
+      dishonourable, "which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but are within
+      full of all uncleanness." Or graves, themselves honourable, yet which it
+      may be, in us, a crime to adorn. "For they indeed killed them, and ye
+      build their sepulchres."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Questions, these, collateral; or to be examined in due time; for the
+      present it is enough for us to know that all Christian architecture, as
+      such, has been hitherto essentially of tombs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It has been thought, gentlemen, that there is a fine Gothic revival in
+      your streets of Oxford, because you have a Gothic door to your County
+      Bank:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Remember, at all events, it was other kind of buried treasure, and bearing
+      other interest, which Niccola Pisano's Gothic was set to guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LECTURE II. JOHN THE PISAN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      31. I closed my last lecture with the statement, on which I desired to
+      give you time for reflection, that Christian architecture was, in its
+      chief energy, the adornment of tombs,&mdash;having the passionate function
+      of doing honour to the dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there is an ethic, or simply didactic and instructive architecture,
+      the decoration of which you will find to be normally representative of the
+      virtues which are common alike to Christian and Greek. And there is a
+      natural tendency to adopt such decoration, and the modes of design fitted
+      for it, in civil buildings. {1}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote: "These several rooms were indicated by symbol and device:
+      Victory for the soldier, Hope for the exile, the Muses for the poets,
+      Mercury for the artists, Paradise for the preacher."&mdash;(Sagacius
+      Gazata, of the Palace of Can Grande. I translate only Sismondi's
+      quotation.)}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      32. <i>Civil</i>, or <i>civic</i>, I say, as opposed to military. But
+      again observe, there are two kinds of military building. One, the robber's
+      castle, or stronghold, out of which he issues to pillage; the other, the
+      honest man's castle, or stronghold, into which he retreats from pillage.
+      They are much like each other in external forms;&mdash;but Injustice, or
+      Unrighteousness, sits in the gate of the one, veiled with forest branches,
+      (see Giotto's painting of him); and Justice or Righteousness <i>enters</i>
+      by the gate of the other, over strewn forest branches. Now, for example of
+      this second kind of military architecture, look at Carlyle's account of
+      Henry the Fowler, {1} and of his building military towns, or burgs, to
+      protect his peasantry. In such function you have the first and proper idea
+      of a walled town,&mdash;a place into which the pacific country people can
+      retire for safety, as the Athenians in the Spartan war. Your fortress of
+      this kind is a religious and civil fortress, or burg, defended by burgers,
+      trained to defensive war. Keep always this idea of the proper nature of a
+      fortified city:&mdash;Its walls mean protection,&mdash;its gates
+      hospitality and triumph. In the language familiar to you, spoken of the
+      chief of cities: "Its walls are to be Salvation, and its gates to be
+      Praise." And recollect always the inscription over the north gate of
+      Siena: "Cor magis tibi Sena pandit."&mdash;"More than her gates, Siena
+      opens her heart to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: "Frederick," vol. i.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      33. When next you enter London by any of the great lines, I should like
+      you to consider, as you approach the city, what the feelings of the heart
+      of London are likely to be on your approach, and at what part of the
+      railroad station an inscription, explaining such state of her heart, might
+      be most fitly inscribed. Or you would still better understand the
+      difference between ancient and modern principles of architecture by taking
+      a cab to the Elephant and Castle, and thence walking to London Bridge by
+      what is in fact the great southern entrance of London. The only gate
+      receiving you is, however, the arch thrown over the road to carry the
+      South-Eastern Railway itself; and the only exhibition either of Salvation
+      or Praise is in the cheap clothes' shops on each side; and especially in
+      one colossal haberdasher's shop, over which you may see the British flag
+      waving (in imitation of Windsor Castle) when the master of the shop is at
+      home. 34. Next to protection from external hostility, the two necessities
+      in a city are of food and water supply;&mdash;the latter essentially
+      constant. You can store food and forage, but water must flow freely. Hence
+      the Fountain and the Mercato become the centres of civil architecture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Premising thus much, I will ask you to look once more at this cloister of
+      the Campo Santo of Pisa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      35. On first entering the place, its quiet, its solemnity, the perspective
+      of its aisles, and the conspicuous grace and precision of its traceries,
+      combine to give you the sensation of having entered a true Gothic
+      cloister. And if you walk round it hastily, and, glancing only at a fresco
+      or two, and the confused tombs erected against them, return to the
+      uncloistered sunlight of the piazza, you may quite easily carry away with
+      you, and ever afterwards retain, the notion that the Campo Santo of Pisa
+      is the same kind of thing as the cloister of Westminster Abbey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      36. I will beg you to look at the building, thus photographed, more
+      attentively. The "long-drawn aisle" is here, indeed,&mdash;but where is
+      the "fretted vault"?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A timber roof, simple as that of a country barn, and of which only the
+      horizontal beams catch the eye, connects an entirely plain outside wall
+      with an interior one, pierced by round-headed openings; in which are
+      inserted pieces of complex tracery, as foreign in conception to the rest
+      of the work as if the Pisan armata had gone up the Rhine instead of to
+      Crete, pillaged South Germany, and cut these pieces of tracery out of the
+      windows of some church in an advanced stage of fantastic design at
+      Nuremberg or Frankfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      37. If you begin to question, hereupon, who was the Italian robber,
+      whether of marble or thought, and look to your Vasari, you find the
+      building attributed to John the Pisan; {1}&mdash;and you suppose the son
+      to have been so pleased by his father's adoption of Gothic forms that he
+      must needs borrow them, in this manner, ready made, from the Germans, and
+      thrust them into his round arches, or wherever else they would go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: The present traceries are of fifteenth century work, founded
+      on Giovanni's design.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We will look at something more of his work, however, before drawing such
+      conclusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      38. In the centres of the great squares of Siena and Perugia, rose,
+      obedient to engineers' art, two perennial fountains Without engineers'
+      art, the glens which cleave the sand-rock of Siena flow with living water;
+      and still, if there be a hell for the forger in Italy, he remembers
+      therein the sweet grotto and green wave of Fonte Branda. But on the very
+      summit of the two hills, crested by their great civic fortresses, and in
+      the centres of their circuit of walls, rose the two guided wells; each in
+      basin of goodly marble, sculptured&mdash;at Perugia, by John of Pisa, at
+      Siena, by James of Quercia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      39. It is one of the bitterest regrets of my life (and I have many which
+      some men would find difficult to bear,) that I never saw, except when I
+      was a youth, and then with sealed eyes, Jacopo della Quercia's fountain.
+      {1} The Sienese, a little while since, tore it down, and put up a model of
+      it by a modern carver. In like manner, perhaps, you will some day knock
+      the Elgin marbles to pieces, and commission an Academician to put up new
+      ones,&mdash;the Sienese doing worse than that (as if the Athenians were <i>themselves</i>
+      to break their Phidias' work).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: I observe that Charles Dickens had the fortune denied to me.
+      "The market-place, or great Piazza, is a large square, with a great
+      broken-nosed fountain in it." ("Pictures from Italy.")}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the fountain of John of Pisa, though much injured, and glued together
+      with asphalt, is still in its place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      40. I will now read to you what Vasari first says of him, and it. (I. 67.)
+      "Nicholas had, among other sons, one called John, who, because he always
+      followed his father, and, under his discipline, intended (bent himself to,
+      with a will,) sculpture and architecture, in a few years became not only
+      equal to his father, but in some things superior to him; wherefore
+      Nicholas, being now old, retired himself into Pisa, and living quietly
+      there, left the government of everything to his son. Accordingly, when
+      Pope Urban IV. died in Perugia, sending was made for John, who, going
+      there, made the tomb of that Pope of marble, the which, together with that
+      of Pope Martin IV., was afterwards thrown down, when the Perugians
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: PLATE III.&mdash;THE FOUNTAIN OF PERUGIA.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      enlarged their vescovado; so that only a few relics are seen sprinkled
+      about the church. And the Perugians, having at the same time brought from
+      the mountain of Pacciano, two miles distant from the city, through canals
+      of lead, a most abundant water, by means of the invention and industry of
+      a friar of the order of St. Silvester, it was given to John the Pisan to
+      make all the ornaments of this fountain, as well of bronze as of marble.
+      On which he set hand to it, and made there three orders of vases, two of
+      marble and one of bronze. The first is put upon twelve degrees of
+      twelve-faced steps; the second is upon some columns which put it upon a
+      level with the first one;" (that is, in the middle of it,) "and the third,
+      which is of bronze, rests upon three figures which have in the middle of
+      them some griffins, of bronze too, which pour water out on every side."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      41. Many things we have to note in this passage, but first I will show you
+      the best picture I can of the thing itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The best I can; the thing itself being half destroyed, and what remains so
+      beautiful that no one can now quite rightly draw it; but Mr. Arthur
+      Severn, (the son of Keats's Mr. Severn,) was with me, looking reverently
+      at those remains, last summer, and has made, with help from the sun, this
+      sketch for you (Plate III.); entirely true and effective as far as his
+      time allowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half destroyed, or more, I said it was,&mdash;Time doing grievous work on
+      it, and men worse. You heard Vasari saying of it, that it stood on twelve
+      degrees of twelve-faced steps. These&mdash;worn, doubtless, into little
+      more than a rugged slope&mdash;have been replaced by the moderns with four
+      circular steps, and an iron railing; {1} the bas-reliefs have been carried
+      off from the panels of the second vase, and its fair marble lips choked
+      with asphalt:&mdash;of what remains, you have here a rough but true image.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: In Mr. Severn's sketch, the form of the original foundation
+      is approximately restored.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In which you see there is not a trace of Gothic feeling or design of any
+      sort. No crockets, no pinnacles, no foils, no vaultings, no grotesques in
+      sculpture. Panels between pillars, panels carried on pillars, sculptures
+      in those panels like the Metopes of the Parthenon; a Greek vase in the
+      middle, and griffins in the middle of that. Here is your font, not at all
+      of Saint John, but of profane and civil-engineering John. This is <i>his</i>
+      manner of baptism of the town of Perugia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      42. Thus early, it seems, the antagonism of profane Greek to
+      ecclesiastical Gothic declares itself. It seems as if in Perugia, as in
+      London, you had the fountains in Trafalgar Square against Queen Elinor's
+      Cross; or the viaduct and railway station contending with the Gothic
+      chapel, which the master of the large manufactory close by has erected,
+      because he thinks pinnacles and crockets have a pious influence; and will
+      prevent his workmen from asking for shorter hours, or more wages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      43. It <i>seems</i> only; the antagonism is quite of another kind,&mdash;or,
+      rather, of many other kinds. But note at once how complete it is&mdash;how
+      utterly this Greek fountain of Perugia, and the round arches of Pisa, are
+      opposed to the school of design which gave the trefoils to Niccola's
+      pulpit, and the traceries to Giovanni's Campo Santo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The antagonism, I say, is of another kind than ours; but deep and wide;
+      and to explain it, I must pass for a time to apparently irrelevant topics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You were surprised, I hope, (if you were attentive enough to catch the
+      points in what I just now read from Vasari,) at my venturing to bring
+      before you, just after I had been using violent language against the
+      Sienese for breaking up the work of Quercia, that incidental sentence
+      giving account of the much more disrespectful destruction, by the
+      Perugians, of the tombs of Pope Urban IV., and Martin IV. Sending was made
+      for John, you see, first, when Pope Urban IV. died in Perugia&mdash;whose
+      tomb was to be carved by John; the Greek fountain being a secondary
+      business. But the tomb was so well destroyed, afterwards, that only a few
+      relics remained scattered here and there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tomb, I have not the least doubt, was Gothic;&mdash;and the breaking
+      of it to pieces was not in order to restore it afterwards, that a living
+      architect might get the job of restoration. Here is a stone out of one of
+      Giovanni Pisano's loveliest Gothic buildings, which I myself saw with my
+      own eyes dashed out, that a modern builder might be paid for putting in
+      another. But Pope Urban's tomb was not destroyed to such end. There was no
+      qualm of the belly, driving the hammer,&mdash;qualm of the conscience
+      probably; at all events, a deeper or loftier antagonism than one on points
+      of taste, or economy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      44. You observed that I described this Greek profane manner of design as
+      properly belonging to <i>civil</i> buildings, as opposed not only to
+      ecclesiastical buildings, but to military ones. Justice, or Righteousness,
+      and Veracity, are the characters of Greek art. These <i>may</i> be opposed
+      to religion, when religion becomes fantastic; but they <i>must</i> be
+      opposed to war, when war becomes unjust. And if, perchance, fantastic
+      religion and unjust war happen to go hand in hand, your Greek artist is
+      likely to use his hammer against them spitefully enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      45. His hammer, or his Greek fire. Hear now this example of the
+      engineering ingenuities of our Pisan papa, in his younger days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Florentines having begun, in Niccola's time, to throw down many
+      towers, which had been built in a barbarous manner through the whole city;
+      either that the people might be less hurt, by their means, in the fights
+      that often took place between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, or else that
+      there might be greater security for the State, it appeared to them that it
+      would be very difficult to ruin the Tower of the Death-watch, which was in
+      the place of St. John, because it had its walls built with such a grip in
+      them that the stones could not be stirred with the pickaxe, and also
+      because it was of the loftiest; whereupon Nicholas, causing the tower to
+      be cut, at the foot of it, all the length of one of its sides; and closing
+      up the cut, as he made it, with short (wooden) under-props, about a yard
+      long, and setting fire to them, when the props were burned, the tower
+      fell, and broke itself nearly all to pieces: which was held a thing so
+      ingenious and so useful for such affairs, that it has since passed into a
+      custom, so that when it is needful, in this easiest manner, any edifice
+      may be thrown down."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      46. 'When it is needful.' Yes; but when is that? If instead of the towers
+      of the Death-watch in the city, one could ruin the towers of the
+      Death-watch of evil pride and evil treasure in men's hearts, there would
+      be need enough for such work both in Florence and London. But the walls of
+      those spiritual towers have still stronger 'grip' in them, and are
+      fireproof with a vengeance.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        "Le mure me parean die ferro fosse,
+         . . . e el mi dixe, il fuoco eterno
+         Chentro laffoca, le dimostra rosse."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But the towers in Florence, shattered to fragments by this ingenious
+      engineer, and the tombs in Perugia, which his son will carve, only that
+      they also may be so well destroyed that only a few relics remain,
+      scattered up and down the church,&mdash;are these, also, only the iron
+      towers, and the red-hot tombs, of the city of Dis?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      47. In order to understand the relation of the tradesmen and working men,
+      including eminently the artist, to the general life of the thirteenth
+      century, I must lay before you the clearest elementary charts I can of the
+      course which the fates of Italy were now appointing for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My first chart must be geographical. I want you to have a clearly
+      dissected and closely fitted notion of the natural boundaries of her
+      states, and their relations to surrounding ones. Lay hold first, firmly,
+      of your conception of the valleys of the Po and the Arno, running counter
+      to each other&mdash;opening east and opening west,&mdash;Venice at the end
+      of the one, Pisa at the end of the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      48. These two valleys&mdash;the hearts of Lombardy and Etruria&mdash;virtually
+      contain the life of Italy. They are entirely different in character:
+      Lombardy, essentially luxurious and worldly, at this time rude in art, but
+      active; Etruria, religious, intensely imaginative, and inheriting refined
+      forms of art from before the days of Porsenna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      49. South of these, in mid-Italy, you have Romagna,&mdash;the valley of
+      the Tiber. In that valley, decayed Rome, with her lust of empire
+      inextinguishable;&mdash;no inheritance of imaginative art, nor power of
+      it; dragging her own ruins hourly into more fantastic ruin, and defiling
+      her faith hourly with more fantastic guilt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      South of Romagna, you have the kingdoms of Calabria and Sicily,&mdash;-Magna
+      Graecia, and Syracuse, in decay;&mdash;&mdash;strange spiritual fire from
+      the Saracenic east still lighting the volcanic land, itself laid all in
+      ashes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      50. Conceive Italy then always in these four masses: Lombardy, Etruria,
+      Romagna, Calabria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now she has three great external powers to deal with: the western, France&mdash;the
+      northern, Germany&mdash;the eastern, Arabia. On her right the Frank; on
+      her left the Saracen; above her, the Teuton. And roughly, the French are a
+      religious chivalry; the Germans a profane chivalry; the Saracens an
+      infidel chivalry. What is best of each is benefiting Italy; what is worst,
+      afflicting her. And in the time we are occupied with, all are afflicting
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What Charlemagne, Barbarossa, or Saladin did to teach her, you can trace
+      only by carefullest thought. But in this thirteenth century all these
+      three powers are adverse to her, as to each other. Map the methods of
+      their adversity thus:&mdash;-
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      51. Germany, (profane chivalry,) is vitally adverse to the Popes;
+      endeavouring to establish imperial and knightly power against theirs. It
+      is fiercely, but frankly, covetous of Italian territory, seizes all it can
+      of Lombardy and Calabria, and with any help procurable either from robber
+      Christians or robber Saracens, strives, in an awkward manner, and by open
+      force, to make itself master of Rome, and all Italy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      52. France, all surge and foam of pious chivalry, lifts herself in fitful
+      rage of devotion, of avarice, and of pride. She is the natural ally of the
+      church; makes her own monks the proudest of the Popes; raises Avignon into
+      another Rome; prays and pillages insatiably; pipes pastoral songs of
+      innocence, and invents grotesque variations of crime; gives grace to the
+      rudeness of England, and venom to the cunning of Italy. She is a chimera
+      among nations, and one knows not whether to admire most the valour of
+      Guiscard, the virtue of St. Louis or the villany of his brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      53. The Eastern powers&mdash;Greek, Israelite, Saracen&mdash;are at once
+      the enemies of the Western, their prey, and their tutors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They bring them methods of ornament and of merchandise, and stimulate in
+      them the worst conditions of pugnacity, bigotry, and rapine. That is the
+      broad geographical and political relation of races. Next, you must
+      consider the conditions of their time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      54. I told you, in my second lecture on Engraving, that before the twelfth
+      century the nations were too savage to be Christian, and after the
+      fifteenth too carnal to be Christian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The delicacy of sensation and refinements of imagination necessary to
+      understand Christianity belong to the mid period when men risen from a
+      life of brutal hardship are not yet fallen to one of brutal luxury. You
+      can neither comprehend the character of Christ while you are chopping
+      flints for tools, and gnawing raw bones for food; nor when you have ceased
+      to do anything with either tools or hands, and dine on gilded capons. In
+      Dante's lines, beginning
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "I saw Bellincion Berti walk abroad
+      In leathern girdle, with a clasp of bone,"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      you have the expression of his sense of the increasing luxury of the age,
+      already sapping its faith. But when Bellincion Berti walked abroad in
+      skins not yet made into leather, and with the bones of his dinner in a
+      heap at his door, instead of being cut into girdle clasps, he was just as
+      far from capacity of being a Christian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      55. The following passage, from Carlyle's "Chartism," expresses better
+      than any one else has done, or is likely to do it, the nature of this
+      Christian era, (extending from the twelfth to the sixteenth century,) in
+      England,&mdash;the like being entirely true of it elsewhere:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In those past silent centuries, among those silent classes, much had been
+      going on. Not only had red deer in the New and other forests been got
+      preserved and shot; and treacheries {1} of Simon de Montfort, wars of Red
+      and White Roses, battles of Crecy, battles of Bosworth, and many other
+      battles, been got transacted and adjusted; but England wholly, not without
+      sore toil and aching bones to the millions of sires and the millions of
+      sons of eighteen generations, had been got drained and tilled, covered
+      with yellow harvests, beautiful and rich in possessions. The mud-wooden
+      Caesters and Chesters had become steepled, tile-roofed, compact towns.
+      Sheffield had taken to the manufacture of Sheffield whittles. Worstead
+      could from wool spin yarn, and knit or weave the same into stockings or
+      breeches for men. England had property valuable to the auctioneer; but the
+      accumulate manufacturing, commercial, economic skill which lay impalpably
+      warehoused in English hands and heads, what auctioneer could estimate?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: Perhaps not altogether so, any more than Oliver's dear papa
+      Carlyle. We may have to read <i>him</i> also, otherwise than the British
+      populace have yet read, some day.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hardly an Englishman to be met with but could do something; some
+      cunninger thing than break his fellow-creature's head with battle-axes.
+      The seven incorporated trades, with their million guild-brethren, with
+      their hammers, their shuttles, and tools, what an army,&mdash;fit to
+      conquer that land of England, as we say, and hold it conquered! Nay,
+      strangest of all, the English people had acquired the faculty and habit of
+      thinking,&mdash;even of believing; individual conscience had unfolded
+      itself among them;&mdash;Conscience, and Intelligence its handmaid. {1}
+      Ideas of innumerable kinds were circulating among these men; witness one
+      Shakspeare, a wool-comber, poacher or whatever else, at Stratford, in
+      Warwickshire, who happened to write books!&mdash;the finest human figure,
+      as I apprehend, that Nature has hitherto seen fit to make of our widely
+      Teutonic clay. Saxon, Norman, Celt, or Sarmat, I find no human soul so
+      beautiful, these fifteen hundred known years;&mdash;our supreme modern
+      European man. Him England had contrived to realize: were there not ideas?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: Observe Carlyle's order of sequence. Perceptive Reason is the
+      Handmaid of Conscience, not Conscience hers. If you resolve to do right,
+      you will soon do wisely; but resolve only to do wisely, and you will never
+      do right.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ideas poetic and also Puritanic, that had to seek utterance in the
+      notablest way! England had got her Shakspeare, but was now about to get
+      her Milton and Oliver Cromwell. This, too, we will call a new expansion,
+      hard as it might be to articulate and adjust; this, that a man could
+      actually have a conscience for his own behoof, and not for his priest's
+      only; that his priest, be he who he might, would henceforth have to take
+      that fact along with him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      56. You observe, in this passage, account is given you of two things&mdash;(A)
+      of the development of a powerful class of tradesmen and artists; and, (B)
+      of the development of an individual conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the savage times you had simply the hunter, digger, and robber; now you
+      have also the manufacturer and salesman. The ideas of ingenuity with the
+      hand, of fairness in exchange, have occurred to us. We can do something
+      now with our fingers, as well as with our fists; and if we want our
+      neighbours' goods, we will not simply carry them off, as of old, but offer
+      him some of ours in exchange.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      57. Again; whereas before we were content to let our priests do for us all
+      they could, by gesticulating, dressing, sacrificing, or beating of drums
+      and blowing of trumpets; and also direct our steps in the way of life,
+      without any doubt on our part of their own perfect acquaintance with it,&mdash;we
+      have now got to do something for ourselves&mdash;to think something for
+      ourselves; and thus have arrived in straits of conscience which, so long
+      as we endeavour to steer through them honestly, will be to us indeed a
+      quite secure way of life, and of all living wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      58. Now the centre of this new freedom of thought is in Germany; and the
+      power of it is shown first, as I told you in my opening lecture, in the
+      great struggle of Frederick II. with Rome. And German freedom of thought
+      had certainly made some progress, when it had managed to reduce the Pope
+      to disguise himself as a soldier, ride out of Rome by moonlight, and
+      gallop his thirty-four miles to the seaside before
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: PLATE IV.&mdash;NORMAN IMAGERY.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      summer dawn. Here, clearly, is quite a new state of things for the Holy
+      Father of Christendom to consider, during such wholesome horse-exercise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      59. Again; the refinements of new art are represented by France&mdash;centrally
+      by St. Louis with his Sainte Chapelle. Happily, I am able to lay on your
+      table to-day&mdash;having placed it three years ago in your educational
+      series&mdash;a leaf of a Psalter, executed for St. Louis himself. He and
+      his artists are scarcely out of their savage life yet, and have no notion
+      of adorning the Psalms better than by pictures of long-necked cranes,
+      long-eared rabbits, long-tailed lions, and red and white goblins putting
+      their tongues out. {1} But in refinement of touch, in beauty of colour, in
+      the human faculties of order and grace, they are long since, evidently,
+      past the flint and bone stage,&mdash;refined enough, now,&mdash;subtle
+      enough, now, to learn anything that is pretty and fine, whether in
+      theology or any other matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: I cannot go to the expense of engraving this most subtle
+      example; but Plate IV. shows the average conditions of temper and
+      imagination in religious ornamental work of the time.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      60. Lastly, the new principle of Exchange is represented by Lombardy and
+      Venice, to such purpose that your Merchant and Jew of Venice, and your
+      Lombard of Lombard Street, retain some considerable influence on your
+      minds, even to this day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in the exact midst of all such transition, behold, Etruria with her
+      Pisans&mdash;her Florentines,&mdash;receiving, resisting, and reigning
+      over all: pillaging the Saracens of their marbles&mdash;binding the French
+      bishops in silver chains;&mdash;shattering the towers of German tyranny
+      into small pieces,&mdash;building with strange jewellery the belfry tower
+      for newly-conceived Christianity;&mdash;and, in sacred picture, and sacred
+      song, reaching the height, among nations, most passionate, and most pure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I must close my lecture without indulging myself yet, by addition of
+      detail; requesting you, before we next meet, to fix these general outlines
+      in your minds, so that, without disturbing their distinctness, I may trace
+      in the sequel the relations of Italian Art to these political and
+      religious powers; and determine with what force of passionate sympathy, or
+      fidelity of resigned obedience, the Pisan artists, father and son,
+      executed the indignation of Florence and fulfilled the piety of Orvieto.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LECTURE III. SHIELD AND APRON.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      61. I laid before you, in my last lecture, first lines of the chart of
+      Italian history in the thirteenth century, which I hope gradually to fill
+      with colour, and enrich, to such degree as may be sufficient for all
+      comfortable use. But I indicated, as the more special subject of our
+      immediate study, the nascent power of liberal thought, and liberal art,
+      over dead tradition and rude workmanship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To-day I must ask you to examine in greater detail the exact relation of
+      this liberal art to the illiberal elements which surrounded it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      62. You do not often hear me use that word "Liberal" in any favourable
+      sense. I do so now, because I use it also in a very narrow and exact
+      sense. I mean that the thirteenth century is, in Italy's year of life, her
+      17th of March. In the light of it, she assumes her toga virilis; and it is
+      sacred to her god Liber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      63. To her god <i>Liber</i>,&mdash;observe: not Dionusos, still less
+      Bacchus, but her own ancient and simple deity. And if you have read with
+      some care the statement I gave you, with Carlyle's help, of the moment and
+      manner of her change from savageness to dexterity, and from rudeness to
+      refinement of life, you will hear, familiar as the lines are to you, the
+      invocation in the first Georgic with a new sense of its meaning:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        "Vos, O clarissima mundi
+    Lumina, labentem coelo quae ducitis annum,
+    Liber, et alma Ceres; vestro si munere tellus
+    Chaoniam pingui glandem mutavit arista,
+    Poculaqu' inventis Acheloia miscuit uvis,
+    Munera vestra cano."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      These gifts, innocent, rich, full of life, exquisitely beautiful in order
+      and grace of growth, I have thought best to symbolize to you, in the
+      series of types of the power of the Greek gods, placed in your educational
+      series, by the blossom of the wild strawberry; which in rising from its
+      trine cluster of trine leaves,&mdash;itself as beautiful as a white rose,
+      and always single on its stalk, like an ear of corn, yet with a succeeding
+      blossom at its side, and bearing a fruit which is as distinctly a group of
+      seeds as an ear of corn itself, and yet is the pleasantest to taste of all
+      the pleasant things prepared by nature for the food of men, {1}&mdash;may
+      accurately symbolize, and help you to remember, the conditions of this
+      liberal and delightful, yet entirely modest and orderly, art, and thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: I am sorry to pack my sentences together in this confused
+      way. But I have much to say; and cannot always stop to polish or adjust it
+      as I used to do.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      64. You will find in the fourth of my inaugural lectures, at the 98th
+      paragraph, this statement,&mdash;much denied by modern artists and
+      authors, but nevertheless quite unexceptionally true,&mdash;that the
+      entire vitality of art depends upon its having for object either to <i>state
+      a true thing</i>, or <i>adorn a serviceable one</i>. The two functions of
+      art in Italy, in this entirely liberal and virescent phase of it,&mdash;virgin
+      art, we may call it, retaining the most literal sense of the words virga
+      and virgo,&mdash;are to manifest the doctrines of a religion which now,
+      for the first time, men had soul enough to understand; and to adorn
+      edifices or dress, with which the completed politeness of daily life might
+      be invested, its convenience completed, and its decorous and honourable
+      pride satisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      65. That pride was, among the men who gave its character to the century,
+      in honourableness of private conduct, and useful magnificence of public
+      art. Not of private or domestic art: observe this very particularly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Such was the simplicity of private manners,"&mdash;(I am now quoting
+      Sismondi, but with the fullest ratification that my knowledge enables me
+      to give,)&mdash;"and the economy of the richest citizens, that if a city
+      enjoyed repose only for a few years, it doubled its revenues, and found
+      itself, in a sort, encumbered with its riches. The Pisans knew neither of
+      the luxury of the table, nor that of furniture, nor that of a number of
+      servants; yet they were sovereigns of the whole of Sardinia, Corsica, and
+      Elba, had colonies at St. Jean d'Acre and Constantinople, and their
+      merchants in those cities carried on the most extended commerce with the
+      Saracens and Greeks." {1}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: Sismondi; French translation, Brussels, 1838; vol. ii., p.
+      275.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      66. "And in that time," (I now give you my own translation of Giovanni
+      Villani,) "the citizens of Florence lived sober, and on coarse meats, and
+      at little cost; and had many customs and playfulnesses which were blunt
+      and rude; and they dressed themselves and their wives with coarse cloth;
+      many wore merely skins, with no lining, and <i>all</i> had only leathern
+      buskins; {1} and the Florentine ladies, plain shoes and stockings with no
+      ornaments; and the best of them were content with a close gown of coarse
+      scarlet of Cyprus, or camlet girded with an old-fashioned clasp-girdle;
+      and a mantle over all, lined with vaire, with a hood above; and that, they
+      threw over their heads. The women of lower rank were dressed in the same
+      manner, with coarse green Cambray cloth; fifty pounds was the ordinary
+      bride's dowry, and a hundred or a hundred and fifty would in those times
+      have been held brilliant, ('isfolgorata,' dazzling, with sense of
+      dissipation or extravagance;) and most maidens were twenty or more before
+      they married. Of such gross customs were then the Florentines; but of good
+      faith, and loyal among themselves and in their state; and in their coarse
+      life, and poverty, did more and braver things than are done in our days
+      with more refinement and riches."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: I find this note for expansion on the margin of my lecture,
+      but had no time to work it out:&mdash;'This lower class should be either
+      barefoot, or have strong shoes&mdash;wooden clogs good. Pretty Boulogne
+      sabot with purple stockings. Waterloo Road&mdash;little girl with her hair
+      in curlpapers,&mdash;a coral necklace round her neck&mdash;the neck bare&mdash;and
+      her boots of thin stuff, worn out, with her toes coming through, and rags
+      hanging from her heels,&mdash;a profoundly accurate type of English
+      national and political life. Your hair in curlpapers&mdash;borrowing tongs
+      from every foreign nation, to pinch you into manners. The rich
+      ostentatiously wearing coral about the bare neck; and the poor&mdash;cold
+      as the stones and indecent.'}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      67. I detain you a moment at the words "scarlet of Cyprus, or camlet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Observe that camelot (camelet) from <i>kamaelotae</i>, camel's skin, is a
+      stuff made of silk and camel's hair originally, afterwards of silk and
+      wool. At Florence, the camel's hair would always have reference to the
+      Baptist, who, as you know, in Lippi's picture, wears the camel's skin
+      itself, made into a Florentine dress, such as Villani has just described,
+      "col tassello sopra," with the hood above. Do you see how important the
+      word "Capulet" is becoming to us, in its main idea?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      68. Not in private nor domestic art, therefore, I repeat to you, but in
+      useful magnificence of public art, these citizens expressed their pride:&mdash;and
+      that public art divided itself into two branches&mdash;civil, occupied
+      upon ethic subjects of sculpture and painting; and religious, occupied
+      upon scriptural or traditional histories, in treatment of which,
+      nevertheless, the nascent power and liberality of thought were apparent,
+      not only in continual amplification and illustration of scriptural story
+      by the artist's own invention, but in the acceptance of profane mythology,
+      as part of the Scripture, or tradition, given by Divine inspiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      69. Nevertheless, for the provision of things necessary in domestic life,
+      there developed itself, together with the group of inventive artists
+      exercising these nobler functions, a vast body of craftsmen, and,
+      literally, <i>man</i>ufacturers, workers by hand, who associated
+      themselves, as chance, tradition, or the accessibility of material
+      directed, in towns which thenceforward occupied a leading position in
+      commerce, as producers of a staple of excellent, or perhaps inimitable,
+      quality; and the linen or cambric of Cambray, the lace of Mechlin, the
+      wool of Worstead, and the steel of Milan, implied the tranquil and
+      hereditary skill of multitudes, living in wealthy industry, and humble
+      honour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      70. Among these artisans, the weaver, the ironsmith, the goldsmith, the
+      carpenter, and the mason necessarily took the principal rank, and on their
+      occupations the more refined arts were wholesomely based, so that the five
+      businesses may be more completely expressed thus:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        The weaver and embroiderer,
+        The ironsmith and armourer,
+        The goldsmith and jeweller,
+        The carpenter and engineer,
+        The stonecutter and painter.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      You have only once to turn over the leaves of Lionardo's sketch book, in
+      the Ambrosian Library, to see how carpentry is connected with engineering,&mdash;the
+      architect was always a stonecutter, and the stonecutter not often
+      practically separate, as yet, from the painter, and never so in general
+      conception of function. You recollect, at a much later period, Kent's
+      description of Cornwall's steward:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "KENT. You cowardly rascal!&mdash;nature disclaims in thee, a tailor made
+      thee!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CORNWALL. Thou art a strange fellow&mdash;a tailor make a man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      KENT. Ay, sir; a stonecutter, or a painter, could not have made him so
+      ill; though they had been but two hours at the trade."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      71. You may consider then this group of artizans with the merchants, as
+      now forming in each town an important Tiers Etat, or Third State of the
+      people, occupied in service, first, of the ecclesiastics, who in monastic
+      bodies inhabited the cloisters round each church; and, secondly, of the
+      knights, who, with their retainers, occupied, each family their own fort,
+      in allied defence of their appertaining streets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      72. A Third Estate, indeed; but adverse alike to both the others, to
+      Montague as to Capulet, when they become disturbers of the public peace;
+      and having a pride of its own,&mdash;hereditary still, but consisting in
+      the inheritance of skill and knowledge rather than of blood,&mdash;which
+      expressed the sense of such inheritance by taking its name habitually from
+      the master rather than the sire; and which, in its natural antagonism to
+      dignities won only by violence, or recorded only by heraldry, you may
+      think of generally as the race whose bearing is the Apron, instead of the
+      shield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      73. When, however, these two, or in perfect subdivision three, bodies of
+      men, lived in harmony,&mdash;the knights remaining true to the State, the
+      clergy to their faith, and the workmen to their craft,&mdash;conditions of
+      national force were arrived at, under which all the great art of the
+      middle ages was accomplished. The pride of the knights, the avarice of the
+      priests, and the gradual abasement of character in the craftsman, changing
+      him from a citizen able to wield either tools in peace or weapons in war,
+      to a dull tradesman, forced to pay mercenary troops to defend his shop
+      door, are the direct causes of common ruin towards the close of the
+      sixteenth century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      74. But the deep underlying cause of the decline in national character
+      itself, was the exhaustion of the Christian faith. None of its practical
+      claims were avouched either by reason or experience; and the imagination
+      grew weary of sustaining them in despite of both. Men could not, as their
+      powers of reflection became developed, steadily conceive that the sins of
+      a life might be done away with, by finishing it with Mary's name on the
+      lips; nor could tradition of miracle for ever resist the personal
+      discovery, made by each rude disciple by himself, that he might pray to
+      all the saints for a twelvemonth together, and yet not get what he asked
+      for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      75. The Reformation succeeded in proclaiming that existing Christianity
+      was a lie; but substituted no theory of it which could be more rationally
+      or credibly sustained; and ever since, the religion of educated persons
+      throughout Europe has been dishonest or ineffectual; it is only among the
+      labouring peasantry that the grace of a pure Catholicism, and the patient
+      simplicities of the Puritan, maintain their imaginative dignity, or assert
+      their practical use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      76. The existence of the nobler arts, however, involves the harmonious
+      life and vital faith of the three classes whom we have just distinguished;
+      and that condition exists, more or less disturbed, indeed, by the vices
+      inherent in each class, yet, on the whole, energetically and productively,
+      during the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. But
+      our present subject being Architecture only, I will limit your attention
+      altogether to the state of society in the great age of architecture, the
+      thirteenth century. A great age in all ways; but most notably so in the
+      correspondence it presented, up to a just and honourable point, with the
+      utilitarian energy of our own days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      77. The increase of wealth, the safety of industry, and the conception of
+      more convenient furniture of life, to which we must attribute the rise of
+      the entire artist class, were accompanied, in that century, by much
+      enlargement in the conception of useful public works: and&mdash;not by <i>private</i>
+      enterprise,&mdash;that idle persons might get dividends out of the public
+      pocket,&mdash;but by <i>public</i> enterprise,&mdash;each citizen paying
+      down at once his share of what was necessary to accomplish the benefit to
+      the State,&mdash;great architectural and engineering efforts were made for
+      the common service. Common, observe; but not, in our present sense,
+      republican. One of the most ludicrous sentences ever written in the
+      blindness of party spirit is that of Sismondi, in which he declares,
+      thinking of these public works only, that 'the architecture of the
+      thirteenth century is entirely republican.' The architecture of the
+      thirteenth century is, in the mass of it, simply baronial or
+      ecclesiastical; it is of castles, palaces, or churches; but it is true
+      that splendid civic works were also accomplished by the vigour of the
+      newly risen popular power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The canal named Naviglio Graude, which brings the waters of the Ticino to
+      Milan, traversing a distance of thirty miles, was undertaken in 1179,
+      recommended in 1257, and, soon after, happily terminated; in it still
+      consists the wealth of a vast extent of Lombardy. At the same time the
+      town of Milan rebuilt its walls, which were three miles round, and had
+      sixteen marble gates, of magnificence which might have graced the capital
+      of all Italy. The Genovese, in 1276 and 1283, built their two splendid
+      docks, and the great wall of their quay; and in 1295 finished the noble
+      aqueduct which brings pure and abundant waters to their city from a great
+      distance among their mountains. There is not a single town in Italy which
+      at the same time did not undertake works of this kind; and while these
+      larger undertakings were in progress, stone bridges were built across the
+      rivers, the streets and piazzas were paved with large slabs of stone, and
+      every free government recognized the duty of providing for the convenience
+      of the citizens." {1}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: Simondi, vol ii. chap. 10.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      78. The necessary consequence of this enthusiasm in useful building, was
+      the formation of a vast body of craftsmen and architects; corresponding in
+      importance to that which the railway, with its associated industry, has
+      developed in modern times, but entirely different in personal character,
+      and relation to the body politic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their personal character was founded on the accurate knowledge of their
+      business in all respects; the ease and pleasure of unaffected invention;
+      and the true sense of power to do everything better than it had ever been
+      yet done, coupled with general contentment in life, and in its vigour and
+      skill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is impossible to overrate the difference between such a condition of
+      mind, and that of the modern artist, who either does not know his business
+      at all, or knows it only to recognize his own inferiority to every former
+      workman of distinction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      79. Again: the political relation of these artificers to the State was
+      that of a caste entirely separate from the noblesse; {1} paid for their
+      daily work what was just, and competing with each other to supply the best
+      article they could for the money. And it is, again, impossible to overrate
+      the difference between such a social condition, and that of the artists of
+      to-day, struggling to occupy a position of equality in wealth with the
+      noblesse,&mdash;paid irregular and monstrous prices by an entirely
+      ignorant and selfish public; and competing with each other to supply the
+      worst article they can for the money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: The giving of knighthood to Jacopo della Quercia for his
+      lifelong service to Siena was not the elevation of a dexterous workman,
+      but grace to a faithful citizen.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I never saw anything so impudent on the walls of any exhibition, in any
+      country, as last year in London. It was a daub professing to be a "harmony
+      in pink and white" (or some such nonsense;) absolute rubbish, and which
+      had taken about a quarter of an hour to scrawl or daub&mdash;it had no
+      pretence to be called painting. The price asked for it was two hundred and
+      fifty guineas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      80. In order to complete your broad view of the elements of social power
+      in the thirteenth century, you have now farther to understand the position
+      of the country people, who maintained by their labour these three classes,
+      whose action you can discern, and whose history you can read; while, of
+      those who maintained them, there is no history, except of the annual
+      ravage of their fields by contending cities or nobles;&mdash;and, finally,
+      that of the higher body of merchants, whose influence was already
+      beginning to counterpoise the prestige of noblesse in Florence, and who
+      themselves constituted no small portion of the noblesse of Venice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The food-producing country was for the most part still possessed by the
+      nobles; some by the ecclesiastics; but a portion, I do not know how large,
+      was in the hands of peasant proprietors, of whom Sismondi gives this, to
+      my mind, completely pleasant and satisfactory, though, to his, very
+      painful, account:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They took no interest in public affairs; they had assemblies of their
+      commune at the village in which the church of their parish was situated,
+      and to which they retreated to defend themselves in case of war; they had
+      also magistrates of their own choice; but all their interests appeared to
+      them enclosed in the circle of their own commonality; they did not meddle
+      with general politics, and held it for their point of honour to remain
+      faithful, through all revolutions, to the State of which they formed a
+      part, obeying, without hesitation, its chiefs, whoever they were, and by
+      whatever title they occupied their places."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      81. Of the inferior agricultural labourers, employed on the farms of the
+      nobles and richer ecclesiastics, I find nowhere due notice, nor does any
+      historian seriously examine their manner of life. Liable to every form of
+      robbery and oppression, I yet regard their state as not only morally but
+      physically happier than that of riotous soldiery, or the lower class of
+      artizans, and as the safeguard of every civilized nation, through all its
+      worst vicissitudes of folly and crime. Nature has mercifully appointed
+      that seed must be sown, and sheep folded, whatever lances break, or
+      religions fail; and at this hour, while the streets of Florence and Verona
+      are full of idle politicians, loud of tongue, useless of hand and
+      treacherous of heart, there still may be seen in their market-places,
+      standing, each by his heap of pulse or maize, the grey-haired labourers,
+      silent, serviceable, honourable, keeping faith, untouched by change, to
+      their country and to Heaven. {1}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: Compare "Sesame and Lilies," sec. 38, p. 58. (P. 86 of the
+      small edition of 1882.)}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      82. It is extremely difficult to determine in what degree the feelings or
+      intelligence of this class influenced the architectural design of the
+      thirteenth century;&mdash;how far afield the cathedral tower was intended
+      to give delight, and to what simplicity of rustic conception Quercia or
+      Ghiberti appealed by the fascination of their Scripture history. You may
+      at least conceive, at this date, a healthy animation in all men's minds,
+      and the children of the vineyard and sheepcote crowding the city on its
+      festa days, and receiving impulse to busier, if not nobler, education, in
+      its splendour. {1}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: Of detached abbeys, see note on Education of Joan of Arc,
+      "Sesame and Lilies," sec. 82, p. 106. (P. 158 of the small edition of
+      1882.)}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      83. The great class of the merchants is more difficult to define; but you
+      may regard them generally as the examples of whatever modes of life might
+      be consistent with peace and justice, in the economy of transfer, as
+      opposed to the military license of pillage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They represent the gradual ascendancy of foresight, prudence, and order in
+      society, and the first ideas of advantageous national intercourse. Their
+      body is therefore composed of the most intelligent and temperate natures
+      of the time,&mdash;uniting themselves, not directly for the purpose of
+      making money, but to obtain stability for equal institutions, security of
+      property, and pacific relations with neighbouring states. Their guilds
+      form the only representatives of true national council, unaffected, as the
+      landed proprietors were, by merely local circumstances and accidents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      84. The strength of this order, when its own conduct was upright, and its
+      opposition to the military body was not in avaricious cowardice, but in
+      the resolve to compel justice and to secure peace, can only be understood
+      by you after an examination of the great changes in the government of
+      Florence during the thirteenth century, which, among other minor
+      achievements interesting to us, led to that destruction of the Tower of
+      the Death-watch, so ingeniously accomplished by Niccola Pisano. This
+      change, and its results, will be the subject of my next lecture. I must
+      to-day sum, and in some farther degree make clear, the facts already laid
+      before you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      85. We have seen that the inhabitants of every great Italian state may be
+      divided, and that very stringently, into the five classes of knights,
+      priests, merchants, artists, and peasants. No distinction exists between
+      artist and artizan, except that of higher genius or better conduct; the
+      best artist is assuredly also the best artizan; and the simplest workman
+      uses his invention and emotion as well as his fingers. The entire body of
+      artists is under the orders (as shopmen are under the orders of their
+      customers), of the knights, priests, and merchants,&mdash;the knights for
+      the most part demanding only fine goldsmiths' work, stout armour, and rude
+      architecture; the priests commanding both the finest architecture and
+      painting, and the richest kinds of decorative dress and jewellery,&mdash;while
+      the merchants directed works of public use, and were the best judges of
+      artistic skill. The competition for the Baptistery gates of Florence is
+      before the guild of merchants; nor is their award disputed, even in
+      thought, by any of the candidates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      86. This is surely a fact to be taken much to heart by our present
+      communities of Liverpool and Manchester. They probably suppose, in their
+      modesty, that lords and clergymen are the proper judges of art, and
+      merchants can only, in the modern phrase, 'know what they like,' or follow
+      humbly the guidance of their golden-crested or flat-capped superiors. But
+      in the great ages of art, neither knight nor pope shows signs of true
+      power of criticism. The artists crouch before them, or quarrel with them,
+      according to their own tempers. To the merchants they submit silently, as
+      to just and capable judges. And look what men these are, who submit.
+      Donatello, Ghiberti, Quercia, Luca! If men like these submit to the
+      merchant, who shall rebel?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      87. But the still franker, and surer, judgment of innocent pleasure was
+      awarded them by all classes alike: and the interest of the public was the
+      <i>final </i>rule of right,&mdash;that public being always eager to see,
+      and earnest to learn. For the stories told by their artists formed, they
+      fully believed, a Book of Life; and every man of real genius took up his
+      function of illustrating the scheme of human morality and salvation, as
+      naturally, and faithfully, as an English mother of to-day giving her
+      children their first lessons in the Bible. In this endeavour to teach they
+      almost unawares taught themselves; the question "How shall I represent
+      this most clearly?" became to themselves, presently, "How was this most
+      likely to have happened?" and habits of fresh and accurate thought thus
+      quickly enlivened the formalities of the Greek pictorial theology;
+      formalities themselves beneficent, because restraining by their severity
+      and mystery the wantonness of the newer life. Foolish modern critics have
+      seen nothing in the Byzantine school but a barbarism to be conquered and
+      forgotten. But that school brought to the art-scholars of the thirteenth
+      century, laws which had been serviceable to Phidias, and symbols which had
+      been beautiful to Homer: and methods and habits of pictorial scholarship
+      which gave a refinement of manner to the work of the simplest craftsman,
+      and became an education to the higher artists which no discipline of
+      literature can now bestow, developed themselves in the effort to decipher,
+      and the impulse to re-interpret, the Eleusinian divinity of Byzantine
+      tradition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      88. The words I have just used, "pictorial scholarship," and "pictorial
+      theology," remind me how strange it must appear to you that in this sketch
+      of the intellectual state of Italy in the thirteenth century I have taken
+      no note of literature itself, nor of the fine art of Music with which it
+      was associated in minstrelsy. The corruption of the meaning of the word
+      "clerk," from "a chosen person" to "a learned one," partly indicates the
+      position of literature in the war between the golden crest and scarlet
+      cap; but in the higher ranks, literature and music became the grace of the
+      noble's life, or the occupation of the monk's, without forming any
+      separate class, or exercising any materially visible political power.
+      Masons or butchers might establish a government,&mdash;but never
+      troubadours: and though a good knight held his education to be imperfect
+      unless he could write a sonnet and sing it, he did not esteem his castle
+      to be at the mercy of the "editor" of a manuscript. He might indeed owe
+      his life to the fidelity of a minstrel, or be guided in his policy by the
+      wit of a clown; but he was not the slave of sensual music, or vulgar
+      literature, and never allowed his Saturday reviewer to appear at table
+      without the cock's comb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      89. On the other hand, what was noblest in thought or saying was in those
+      times as little attended to as it is now. I do not feel sure that, even in
+      after times, the poem of Dante has had any political effect on Italy; but
+      at all events, in his life, even at Verona, where he was treated most
+      kindly, he had not half so much influence with Can Grande as the rough
+      Count of Castelbarco, not one of whose words was ever written, or now
+      remains; and whose portrait, by no means that of a man of literary genius,
+      almost disfigures, by its plainness, the otherwise grave and perfect
+      beauty of his tomb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LECTURE IV. PARTED PER PALE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      90. The chart of Italian intellect and policy which I have endeavoured to
+      put into form in the last three lectures, may, I hope, have given you a
+      clear idea of the subordinate, yet partly antagonistic, position which the
+      artist, or merchant,&mdash;whom in my present lecture I shall class
+      together,&mdash;occupied, with respect to the noble and priest. As an
+      honest labourer, he was opposed to the violence of pillage, and to the
+      folly of pride: as an honest thinker, he was likely to discover any latent
+      absurdity in the stories he had to represent in their nearest likelihood;
+      and to be himself moved strongly by the true meaning of events which he
+      was striving to make ocularly manifest. The painter terrified himself with
+      his own fiends, and reproved or comforted himself by the lips of his own
+      saints, far more profoundly than any verbal preacher; and thus, whether as
+      craftsman or inventor, was likely to be foremost in defending the laws of
+      his city, or directing its reformation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      91. The contest of the craftsman with the pillaging soldier is typically
+      represented by the war of the Lombard League with Frederick II.; and that
+      of the craftsman with the hypocritical priest, by the war of the Pisans
+      with Gregory IX. (1241). But in the present lecture I wish only to fix
+      your attention on the revolutions in Florence, which indicated, thus
+      early, the already established ascendancy of the moral forces which were
+      to put an end to open robber-soldiership; and at least to compel the
+      assertion of some higher principle in war, if not, as in some distant day
+      may be possible, the cessation of war itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The most important of these revolutions was virtually that of which I
+      before spoke to you, taking place in mid-thirteenth century, in the year
+      l250,&mdash;a very memorable one for Christendom, and the very crisis of
+      vital change in its methods of economy, and conceptions of art.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      92. Observe, first, the exact relations at that time of Christian and
+      Profane Chivalry. St. Louis, in the winter of 1248-9, lay in the isle of
+      Cyprus, with his crusading army. He had trusted to Providence for
+      provisions; and his army was starving. The profane German emperor,
+      Frederick II., was at war with Venice, but gave a safe-conduct to the
+      Venetian ships, which enabled them to carry food to Cyprus, and to save
+      St. Louis and his crusaders. Frederick had been for half his life
+      excommunicate,&mdash;and the Pope (Innocent IV.) at deadly spiritual and
+      temporal war with him;&mdash;spiritually, because he had brought Saracens
+      into Apulia; temporally, because the Pope wanted Apulia for himself. St.
+      Louis and his mother both wrote to Innocent, praying him to be reconciled
+      to the kind heretic who had saved the whole crusading army. But the Pope
+      remained implacably thundrous; and Frederick, weary of quarrel, stayed
+      quiet in one of his Apulian castles for a year. The repose of infidelity
+      is seldom cheerful, unless it be criminal. Frederick had much to repent
+      of, much to regret, nothing to hope, and nothing to do. At the end of his
+      year's quiet he was attacked by dysentery, and so made his final peace
+      with the Pope, and heaven,&mdash;aged fifty-six.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      93. Meantime St. Louis had gone on into Egypt, had got his army defeated,
+      his brother killed, and himself carried captive. You may be interested in
+      seeing, in the leaf of his psalter which I have laid on the table, the
+      death of that brother set down in golden letters, between the common
+      letters of ultramarine, on the eighth of February.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      94. Providence, defied by Frederick, and trusted in by St. Louis, made
+      such arrangements for them both; Providence not in anywise regarding the
+      opinions of either king, but very much regarding the facts, that the one
+      had no business in Egypt, nor the other in Apulia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No two kings, in the history of the world, could have been happier, or
+      more useful, than these two might have been, if they only had had the
+      sense to stay in their own capitals, and attend to their own affairs. But
+      they seem only to have been born to show what grievous results, under the
+      power of discontented imagination, a Christian could achieve by faith, and
+      a philosopher by reason. {1}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: It must not be thought that this is said in disregard of the
+      nobleness of either of these two glorious Kings. Among the many designs of
+      past years, one of my favorites was to write a life of Frederick II. But I
+      hope that both his, and that of Henry II. of England, will soon be written
+      now, by a man who loves them as well as I do, and knows them far better.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      95. The death of Frederick II. virtually ended the soldier power in
+      Florence; and the mercantile power assumed the authority it thenceforward
+      held, until, in the hands of the Medici, it destroyed the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We will now trace the course and effects of the three revolutions which
+      closed the reign of War, and crowned the power of Peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      96. In the year 1248, while St. Louis was in Cyprus, I told you Frederick
+      was at war with Venice. He was so because she stood, if not as the leader,
+      at least as the most important ally, of the great Lombard mercantile
+      league against the German military power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That league consisted essentially of Venice, Milan, Bologna, and Genoa, in
+      alliance with the Pope; the Imperial or Ghibelline towns were, Padua and
+      Verona under Ezzelin; Mantua, Pisa, and Siena. I do not name the minor
+      towns of north Italy which associated themselves with each party: get only
+      the main localities of the contest well into your minds. It was all
+      concentrated in the furious hostility of Genoa and Pisa; Genoa fighting
+      really very piously for the Pope, as well as for herself; Pisa for her own
+      hand, and for the Emperor as much as suited her. The mad little sea falcon
+      never caught sight of another water-bird on the wing, but she must hawk at
+      it; and as an ally of the Emperor, balanced Venice and Genoa with her
+      single strength. And so it came to pass that the victory of either the
+      Guelph or Ghibelline party depended on the final action of Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      97. Florence meanwhile was fighting with herself, for her own amusement.
+      She was nominally at the head of the Guelphic League in Tuscany; but this
+      only meant that she hated Siena and Pisa, her southern and western
+      neighbours. She had never declared openly against the Emperor. On the
+      contrary, she always recognized his authority, in an imaginative manner,
+      as representing that of the Caesars. She spent her own energy chiefly in
+      street-fighting,&mdash;the death of Buondelmonti in 1215 having been the
+      root of a series of quarrels among her nobles which gradually took the
+      form of contests of honour; and were a kind of accidental tournaments,
+      fought to the death, because they could not be exciting or dignified
+      enough on any other condition. And thus the manner of life came to be
+      customary, which you have accurately, with its consequences, pictured by
+      Shakspeare. Samson bites his thumb at Abraham, and presently the streets
+      are impassable in battle. The quarrel in the Canongate between the Leslies
+      and Seytons, in Scott's 'Abbot,' represents the same temper; and marks
+      also, what Shakspeare did not so distinctly, because it would have
+      interfered with the domestic character of his play, the connection of
+      these private quarrels with political divisions which paralyzed the entire
+      body of the State.&mdash;Yet these political schisms, in the earlier days
+      of Italy, never reached the bitterness of Scottish feud, {1} because they
+      were never so sincere. Protestant and Catholic Scotsmen faithfully
+      believed each other to be servants of the devil; but the Guelph and
+      Ghibelline of Florence each respected, in the other, the fidelity to the
+      Emperor, or piety towards the Pope, which he found it convenient, for the
+      time, to dispense with in his own person. The street fighting was
+      therefore more general, more chivalric, more good-humoured; a word of
+      offence set all the noblesse of the town on fire; every one rallied to his
+      post; fighting began at once in half a dozen places of recognized
+      convenience, but ended in the evening; and, on the following day, the
+      leaders determined in contended truce who had fought best, buried their
+      dead triumphantly, and better fortified any weak points, which the events
+      of the previous day had exposed at their palace corners. Florentine
+      dispute was apt to centre itself about the gate of St. Peter, {2} the
+      tower of the cathedral, or the fortress-palace of the Uberti, (the family
+      of Dante's Bellincion Berti and of Farinata), which occupied the site of
+      the present Palazzo Vecchio. But the streets of Siena seem to have
+      afforded better barricade practice. They are as steep as they are narrow&mdash;extremely
+      both; and the projecting stones on their palace fronts, which were left,
+      in building, to sustain, on occasion, the barricade beams across the
+      streets, are to this day important features in their architecture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: Distinguish always the personal from the religious feud;
+      personal feud is more treacherous and violent in Italy than in Scotland;
+      but not the political or religious feud, unless involved with vast
+      material interests.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 2: Sismondi, vol. ii., chap. ii.; G. Villani, vi., 33.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      98. Such being the general state of matters in Florence, in this year
+      1248, Frederick writes to the Uberti, who headed the Ghibellines, to
+      engage them in serious effort to bring the city distinctly to the Imperial
+      side. He was besieging Parma; and sent his natural son, Frederick, king of
+      Antioch, with sixteen hundred German knights, to give the Ghibellines
+      assured preponderance in the next quarrel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Uberti took arms before their arrival; rallied all their Ghibelline
+      friends into a united body, and so attacked and carried the Guelph
+      barricades, one by one, till their antagonists, driven together by local
+      defeat, stood in consistency as complete as their own, by the gate of St.
+      Peter, 'Scheraggio.' Young Frederick, with his German riders, arrived at
+      this crisis; the Ghibellines opening the gates to him; the Guelphs,
+      nevertheless, fought at their outmost barricade for four days more; but at
+      last, tired, withdrew from the city, in a body, on the night of Candlemas,
+      2nd February, 1248; leaving the Ghibellines and their German friends to
+      work their pleasure,&mdash;who immediately set themselves to throw down
+      the Guelph palaces, and destroyed six-and-thirty of them, towers and all,
+      with the good help of Niccola Pisano,&mdash;for this is the occasion of
+      that beautiful piece of new engineering of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      99. It is the first interference of the Germans in Florentine affairs
+      which belongs to the real cycle of modern history. Six hundred years
+      later, a troop of German riders entered Florence again, to restore its
+      Grand Duke; and our warmhearted and loving English poetess, looking on
+      from Casa Guidi windows, gives the said Germans many hard words, and
+      thinks her darling Florentines entirely innocent in the matter. But if she
+      had had clear eyes, (yeux de lin {1} the Romance of the Rose calls them,)
+      she would have seen that white-coated cavalry with its heavy guns to be
+      nothing more than the rear-guard of young Frederick of Antioch; and that
+      Florence's own Ghibellines had opened her gates to them. Destiny little
+      regards cost of time; she does her justice at that telescopic distance
+      just as easily and accurately as close at hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: Lynx.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      100. "Frederick of <i>Antioch</i>." Note the titular coincidence. The
+      disciples were called Christians first in Antioch; here we have our
+      lieutenant of Antichrist also named from that town. The anti-Christian
+      Germans got into Florence upon Sunday morning; the Guelphs fought on till
+      Wednesday, which was Candlemas;&mdash;the Tower of the Death-watch was
+      thrown down next day. It was so called because it stood on the Piazza of
+      St John; and all dying people in Florence called on St. John for help; and
+      looked, if it might be, to the top of this highest and best-built of
+      towers. The wicked anti-Christian Ghibellines, Nicholas of Pisa helping,
+      cut the side of it "so that the tower might fall on the Baptistery. But as
+      it pleased God, for better reverencing of the blessed St. John, the tower,
+      which was a hundred and eighty feet high, as it was coming down, plainly
+      appeared to eschew the holy church, and turned aside, and fell right
+      across the square; at which all the Florentines marvelled, (pious or
+      impious,) and the <i>people</i> (anti-Ghibelline) were greatly delighted."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      101. I have no doubt that this story is apocryphal, not only in its
+      attribution of these religious scruples to the falling tower; but in its
+      accusation of the Ghibellines as having definitely intended the
+      destruction of the Baptistery. It is only modern reformers who feel the
+      absolute need of enforcing their religious opinions in so practical a
+      manner. Such a piece of sacrilege would have been revolting to Farinata;
+      how much more to the group of Florentines whose temper is centrally
+      represented by Dante's, to all of whom their "bel San Giovanni" was dear,
+      at least for its beauty, if not for its sanctity. And Niccola himself was
+      too good a workman to become the instrument of the destruction of so noble
+      a work,&mdash;not to insist on the extreme probability that he was also
+      too good an engineer to have had his purpose, if once fixed, thwarted by
+      any tenderness in the conscience of the collapsing tower. The tradition
+      itself probably arose after the rage of the exiled Ghibellines had half
+      consented to the destruction, on political grounds, of Florence itself;
+      but the form it took is of extreme historical value, indicating thus early
+      at least the suspected existence of passions like those of the Cromwellian
+      or Garibaldian soldiery in the Florentine noble; and the distinct
+      character of the Ghibelline party as not only anti-Papal, but profane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      102. Upon the castles, and the persons of their antagonists, however, the
+      pride, or fear, of the Ghibellines had little mercy; and in their day of
+      triumph they provoked against themselves nearly every rational as well as
+      religious person in the commonwealth. They despised too much the force of
+      the newly-risen popular power, founded on economy, sobriety, and common
+      sense; and, alike by impertinence and pillage, increased the irritation of
+      the civil body; until, as aforesaid, on the 20th October, 1250, all the
+      rich burgesses of Florence took arms; met in the square before the church
+      of Santa Croce, ("where," says Sismondi, "the republic of the dead is
+      still assembled today,") thence traversed the city to the palace of the
+      Ghibelline podesta; forced him to resign; named Uberto of Lucca in his
+      place, under the title of Captain of the People; divided themselves into
+      twenty companies, each, in its own district of the city, having its
+      captain {1} and standard; and elected a council of twelve ancients,
+      constituting a seniory or signoria, to deliberate on and direct public
+      affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: 'Corporal,' literally'.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      103. What a perfectly beautiful republican movement! thinks Sismondi,
+      seeing, in all this, nothing but the energy of a multitude; and entirely
+      ignoring the peculiar capacity of this Florentine mob,&mdash;capacity of
+      two virtues, much forgotten by modern republicanism,&mdash;order, namely;
+      and obedience; together with the peculiar instinct of this Florentine
+      multitude, which not only felt itself to need captains, but knew where to
+      find them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      104. Hubert of Lucca&mdash;How came they, think you, to choose <i>him </i>out
+      of a stranger city, and that a poorer one than their own? Was there no
+      Florentine then, of all this rich and eager crowd, who was fit to govern
+      Florence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot find any account of this Hubert, Bright mind, of Ducca; Villani
+      says simply of him, "Fu il primo capitano di Firenze."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They hung a bell for him in the Campanile of the Lion, and gave him the
+      flag of Florence to bear; and before the day was over, that 20th of
+      October, he had given every one of the twenty companies their flags also.
+      And the bearings of the said gonfalons were these. I will give you this
+      heraldry as far as I can make it out from Villani; it will be very useful
+      to us afterwards; I leave the Italian when I cannot translate it:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      105. A. Sesto, (sixth part of the city,) of the other side of Arno.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        Gonfalon 1. Gules; a ladder, argent.
+             2. Argent; a scourge, sable.
+             3. Azure; (una piazza bianca con
+               nicchi vermigli).
+             4. Gules; a dragon, vert.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      B. Sesto of St. Peter Scheraggio.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+             1. Azure; a chariot, or.
+             2. Or; a bull, sable.
+             3. Argent; a lion rampant, sable.
+             4. (A lively piece, "pezza gagliarda")
+                Barry of (how many?) pieces,
+                argent and sable.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      You may as well note at once of this kind of bearing, called 'gagliarda'
+      by Villani, that these groups of piles, pales, bends, and bars, were
+      called in English heraldry 'Restrial bearings,' "in respect of their
+      strength and solid substance, which is able to abide the stresse and force
+      of any triall they shall be put unto." {1} And also that, the number of
+      bars being uncertain, I assume the bearing to be 'barry,' that is, having
+      an even number of bars; had it been odd, as of seven bars, it should have
+      been blazoned, argent; three bars, sable; or, if so divided, sable, three
+      bars argent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: Guillim, sect. ii., chap. 3.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This lively bearing was St. Pulinari's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      C. Sesto of Borgo.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+             1. Or; a viper, vert.
+             2. Argent; a needle, (?) (aguglia)
+                sable.
+             3. Vert; a horse unbridled;
+                draped, argent, a cross,
+                gules.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      D. Sesto of St. Brancazio.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+             1. Vert; a lion rampant, proper.
+             2. Argent; a lion rampant, gules.
+             3. Azure; a lion rampant, argent.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      E. Sesto of the Cathedral gates.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+             1. Azure; a lion (passant?) or.
+             2. Or; a dragon, vert.
+             3. Argent; a lion rampant,
+                azure, crowned, or.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      F. Sesto of St. Peter's gates.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+             1. Or; two keys, gules.
+             2. An Italian (or more definitely
+               a Greek and Etruscan bearing;
+               I do not know how to
+               blazon it;) concentric bands,
+               argent and sable. This is
+               one of the remains of the
+               Greek expressions of storm;
+               hail, or the Trinacrian limbs,
+               being put on the giant's
+               shields also. It is connected
+               besides with the Cretan
+               labyrinth, and the circles of
+               the Inferno.
+             3. Parted per fesse, gules and
+               vai (I don't know if vai
+               means grey&mdash;not a proper
+               heraldic colour&mdash;or vaire).
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      106. Of course Hubert of Lucca did not determine these bearings, but took
+      them as he found them, and appointed them for standards; {1} he did the
+      same for all the country parishes, and ordered them to come into the city
+      at need. "And in this manner the old people of Florence ordered itself;
+      and for more strength of the people, they ordered and began to build the
+      palace which is behind the Badia,&mdash;that is to say, the one which is
+      of dressed stone, with the tower; for before there was no palace of the
+      commune in Florence, but the signory abode sometimes in one part of the
+      town, sometimes in another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: We will examine afterwards the heraldry of the trades, chap,
+      xi., Villani.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      107. "And as the people had now taken state and signory on themselves,
+      they ordered, for greater strength of the people, that all the towers of
+      Florence&mdash;and there were many 180 feet high {1}&mdash;should be cut
+      down to 75 feet, and no more; and so it was done, and with the stones of
+      them they walled the city on the other side Arno."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote: 120 braccia.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      108. That last sentence is a significant one. Here is the central
+      expression of the true burgess or townsman temper,&mdash;resolute
+      maintenance of fortified peace. These are the walls which modern
+      republicanism throws down, to make boulevards over their ruins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      109. Such new order being taken, Florence remained quiet for full two
+      months. On the 13th of December, in the same year, died the Emperor
+      Frederick II.; news of his death did not reach Florence till the 7th
+      January, 1251. It had chanced, according to Villani, that on the actual
+      day of his death, his Florentine vice-regent, Rinieri of Montemerlo, was
+      killed by a piece of the vaulting {1} of his room falling on him as he
+      slept. And when the people heard of the Emperor's death, "which was most
+      useful and needful for Holy Church, and for our commune," they took the
+      fall of the roof on his lieutenant as an omen of the extinction of
+      Imperial authority, and resolved to bring home all their Guelphic exiles,
+      and that the Ghibellines should be forced to make peace with them. Which
+      was done, and the peace really lasted for full six months; when, a quarrel
+      chancing with Ghibelline Pistoja, the Florentines, under a Milanese
+      podesta, fought their first properly communal and commercial battle, with
+      great slaughter of Pistojese. Naturally enough, but very unwisely, the
+      Florentine Ghibellines declined to take part in this battle; whereupon the
+      people, returning flushed with victory, drove them all out, and
+      established pure Guelph government in Florence, changing at the same time
+      the flag of the city from gules, a lily argent, to argent, a lily gules;
+      but the most ancient bearing of all, simply parted per pale, argent and
+      gules, remained always on their carroccio of battle,&mdash;"Non si muto
+      mai."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: "Una volta ch' era sopra la camera."}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      110. "Non si muto mai." Villani did not know how true his words were. That
+      old shield of Florence, parted per pale, argent and gules, (or our own
+      Saxon Oswald's, parted per pale, or and purpure,) are heraldry changeless
+      in sign; declaring the necessary balance, in ruling men, of the Rational
+      and Imaginative powers; pure Alp, and glowing cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Church and State&mdash;Pope and Emperor&mdash;Clergy and Laity,&mdash;all
+      these are partial, accidental&mdash;too often, criminal&mdash;oppositions;
+      but the bodily and spiritual elements, seemingly adverse, remain in
+      everlasting harmony,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not less the new bearing of the shield, the red fleur-de-lys, has another
+      meaning. It is red, not as ecclesiastical, but as free. Not of Guelph
+      against Ghibelline, but of Labourer against Knight. No more his serf, but
+      his minister. His duty no more 'servitium,' but 'ministerium,' 'mestier.'
+      We learn the power of word after word, as of sign after sign, as we follow
+      the traces of this nascent art. I have sketched for you this lily from the
+      base of the tower of Giotto. You may judge by the subjects of the
+      sculpture beside it that it was built just in this fit of commercial
+      triumph; for all the outer bas-reliefs are of trades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      111. Draw that red lily then, and fix it in your minds as the sign of the
+      great change in the temper of Florence, and in her laws, in mid-thirteenth
+      century; and remember also, when you go to Florence and see that mighty
+      tower of the Palazzo Vecchio (noble still, in spite of the calamitous and
+      accursed restorations which have smoothed its rugged outline, and effaced
+      with modern vulgarisms its lovely sculpture)&mdash;terminating the shadowy
+      perspectives of the Uffizii, or dominant over the city seen from Fésole or
+      Bellosguardo,&mdash;that, as the tower of Giotto is the notablest monument
+      in the world of the Religion of Europe, so, on this tower of the Palazzo
+      Vecchio, first shook itself to the winds the Lily standard of her liberal,&mdash;because
+      honest,&mdash;commerce.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LECTURE V. PAX VOBISCUM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      112. My last lecture ended with a sentence which I thought, myself, rather
+      pretty, and quite fit for a popular newspaper, about the 'lily standard of
+      liberal commerce.' But it might occur, and I hope did occur, to some of
+      you, that it would have been more appropriate if the lily had changed
+      colour the other way, from red to white, (instead of white to red,) as a
+      sign of a pacific constitution and kindly national purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      113. I believe otherwise, however; and although the change itself was for
+      the sake of change merely, you may see in it, I think, one of the
+      historical coincidences which contain true instruction for us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quite one of the chiefest art-mistakes and stupidities of men has been
+      their tendency to dress soldiers in red clothes, and monks, or pacific
+      persons, in black, white, or grey ones. At least half of that mental bias
+      of young people, which sustains the wickedness of war among us at this
+      day, is owing to the prettiness of uniforms. Make all Hussars black, all
+      Guards black, all troops of the line black; dress officers and men, alike,
+      as you would public executioners; and the number of candidates for
+      commissions will be greatly diminished. Habitually, on the contrary, you
+      dress these destructive rustics and their officers in scarlet and gold,
+      but give your productive rustics no costume of honour or beauty; you give
+      your peaceful student a costume which he tucks up to his waist, because he
+      is ashamed of it; and dress your pious rectors, and your sisters of
+      charity, in black, as if it were <i>their</i> trade instead of the
+      soldier's to send people to hell, and their own destiny to arrive there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      114. But the investiture of the lily of Florence with scarlet is a symbol,&mdash;unintentional,
+      observe, but not the less notable,&mdash;of the recovery of human sense
+      and intelligence in this matter. The reign of war was past; this was the
+      sign of it;&mdash;the red glow, not now of the Towers of Dis, but of the
+      Carita, "che appena fora dentro al fuoco nota." And a day is coming, be
+      assured, when the kings of Europe will dress their peaceful troops
+      beautifully; will clothe their peasant girls "in scarlet, with other
+      delights," and "put on ornaments of gold upon <i>their</i> apparel;" when
+      the crocus and the lily will not be the only living things dressed
+      daintily in our land, and the glory of the wisest monarchs be indeed, in
+      that their people, like themselves, shall be, at least in some dim
+      likeness, "arrayed like one of these."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      115. But as for the immediate behaviour of Florence herself, with her new
+      standard, its colour was quite sufficiently significant in that old
+      symbolism, when the first restrial bearing was drawn by dying fingers
+      dipped in blood. The Guelphic revolution had put her into definite
+      political opposition with her nearest, and therefore,&mdash;according to
+      the custom and Christianity of the time,&mdash;her hatefullest,
+      neighbours,&mdash;Pistoja, Pisa, Siena, and Volterra. What glory might not
+      be acquired, what kind purposes answered, by making pacific mercantile
+      states also of those benighted towns! Besides, the death of the Emperor
+      had thrown his party everywhere into discouragement; and what was the use
+      of a flag which flew no farther than over the new palazzo?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      116. Accordingly, in the next year, the pacific Florentines began by
+      ravaging the territory of Pistoja; then attacked the Pisans at Pontadera,
+      and took 3000 prisoners; and finished by traversing, and eating up all
+      that could be ate in, the country of Siena; besides beating the Sienese
+      under the castle of Montalcino. Returning in triumph after these
+      benevolent operations, they resolved to strike a new piece of money in
+      memory of them,&mdash;the golden Florin!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      117. This coin I have placed in your room of study, to be the first of the
+      series of coins which I hope to arrange for you, not chronologically, but
+      for the various interest, whether as regards art or history, which they
+      should possess in your general studies. "The Florin of Florence," (says
+      Sismondi), "through all the monetary revolutions of all neighbouring
+      countries, and while the bad faith of governments adulterated their coin
+      from one end of Europe to the other, has always remained the same; it is,
+      to-day," (I don't know when, exactly, he wrote this,&mdash;but it doesn't
+      matter), "of the same weight, and bears the same name and the same stamp,
+      which it did when it was struck in 1252." It was gold of the purest title
+      (24 carats), weighed the eighth of an ounce, and carried, as you see, on
+      one side the image of St. John Baptist, on the other the Fleur-de-lys. It
+      is the coin which Chaucer takes for the best representation of beautiful
+      money in the Pardoner's Tale: this, in his judgment, is the fairest mask
+      of Death. Villani's relation of its moral and commercial effect at Tunis
+      is worth translating, being in the substance of it, I doubt not, true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      118. "And these new florins beginning to scatter through the world, some
+      of them got to Tunis, in Barbary; and the King of Tunis, who was a worthy
+      and wise lord, was greatly pleased with them, and had them tested; and
+      finding them of fine gold, he praised them much, and had the legend on
+      them interpreted to him,&mdash;to wit, on one side 'St. John Baptist,' on
+      the other 'Florentia.' So seeing they were pieces of Christian money, he
+      sent for the Pisan merchants, who were free of his port, and much before
+      the King (and also the Florentines traded in Tunis through Pisan agents),&mdash;{see
+      these hot little Pisans, how they are first everywhere,}&mdash;and asked
+      of them what city it was among the Christians which made the said florins.
+      And the Pisans answered in spite and envy, 'They are our land Arabs.' The
+      King answered wisely, "It does not appear to me Arab's money; you Pisans,
+      what golden money have <i>you</i> got?" Then they were confused, and knew
+      not what to answer. So he asked if there was any Florentine among them.
+      And there was found a merchant from the other-side-Arno, by name Peter
+      Balducci, discreet and wise. The King asked him of the state and being of
+      Florence, of which the Pisans made their Arabs,&mdash;who answered him
+      wisely, showing the power and magnificence of Florence; and how Pisa, in
+      comparison, was not, either in land or people, the half of Florence; and
+      that they had no golden money; and that the gold of which those florins
+      had been made was gained by the Florentines above and beyond them, by many
+      victories. Wherefore the said Pisans were put to shame, and the King, both
+      by reason of the florin, and for the words of our wise citizen, made the
+      Florentines free, and appointed for them their own Fondaco, and church, in
+      Tunis, and gave them privileges like the Pisans. And this we know for a
+      truth from the same Peter, having been in company with him at the office
+      of the Priors."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      119. I cannot tell you what the value of the piece was at this time: the
+      sentence with which Sismondi concludes his account of it being only useful
+      as an example of the total ignorance of the laws of currency in which many
+      even of the best educated persons at the present day remain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Its value," he says always the same, "answers to eleven francs forty
+      centimes of France."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But all that can be scientifically said of any piece of money is that it
+      contains a given weight of a given metal. Its value in other coins, other
+      metals, or other general produce, varies not only from day to day, but
+      from instant to instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      120. With this coin of Florence ought in justice to be ranked the Venetian
+      zecchin; {1} but of it I can only thus give you account in another place,&mdash;for
+      I must at once go on now to tell you the first use I find recorded, as
+      being made by the Florentines of their new money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: In connection with the Pisans' insulting intention by their
+      term of Arabs, remember that the Venetian 'zecca,' (mint) came from the
+      Arabic 'sehk,' the steel die used in coinage.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They pursued in the years 1253 and 1254 their energetic promulgation of
+      peace. They ravaged the lands of Pistoja so often, that the Pistojese
+      submitted themselves, on condition of receiving back their Guelph exiles,
+      and admitting a Florentine garrison into Pistoja. Next they attacked Monte
+      Reggione, the March-fortress of the Sienese; and pressed it so vigorously
+      that Siena was fain to make peace too, on condition of ceasing her
+      alliance with the Ghibellines. Next they ravaged the territory of
+      Volterra: the townspeople, confident in the strength of their rock
+      fortress, came out to give battle; the Florentines beat them up the hill,
+      and entered the town gates with the fugitives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      121. And, for note to this sentence, in my long-since-read volume of
+      Sismondi, I find a cross-fleury at the bottom of the page, with the date
+      1254 underneath it; meaning that I was to remember that year as the
+      beginning of Christian warfare. For little as you may think it, and
+      grotesquely opposed as this ravaging of their neighbours' territories may
+      seem to their pacific mission, this Florentine army is fighting in
+      absolute good faith. Partly self-deceived, indeed, by their own ambition,
+      and by their fiery natures, rejoicing in the excitement of battle, they
+      have nevertheless, in this their "year of victories,"&mdash;so they ever
+      afterwards called it,&mdash;no occult or malignant purpose. At least,
+      whatever is occult or malignant is also unconscious; not now in cruel, but
+      in kindly jealousy of their neighbours, and in a true desire to
+      communicate and extend to them the privileges of their own new artizan
+      government, the Trades of Florence have taken arms. They are justly proud
+      of themselves; rightly assured of the wisdom of the change they have made;
+      true to each other for the time, and confident in the future. No army ever
+      fought in better cause, or with more united heart. And accordingly they
+      meet with no check, and commit no error; from tower to tower of the field
+      fortresses,&mdash;from gate to gate of the great cities,&mdash;they march
+      in one continuous and daily more splendid triumph, yet in gentle and
+      perfect discipline; and now, when they have entered Volterra with her
+      fugitives, after stress of battle, not a drop of blood is shed, nor a
+      single house pillaged, nor is any other condition of peace required than
+      the exile of the Ghibelline nobles. You may remember, as a symbol of the
+      influence of Christianity in this result, that the Bishop of Volterra,
+      with his clergy, came out in procession to meet them as they began to run
+      {1} the streets, and obtained this mercy; else the old habits of pillage
+      would have prevailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: Corsona la citta senza contesto niuno."&mdash;<i>Villani.</i>}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      122. And from Volterra, the Florentine army entered on the territory of
+      Pisa; and now with so high prestige, that the Pisans at once sent
+      ambassadors to them with keys in their hands, in token of submission. And
+      the Florentines made peace with them, on condition that the Pisans should
+      let the Florentine merchandize pass in and out without tax;&mdash;should
+      use the same weights as Florence,&mdash;the same cloth measure,&mdash;and
+      the same alloy of money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      123. You see that Mr. Adam Smith was not altogether the originator of the
+      idea of free trade; and six hundred years have passed without bringing
+      Europe generally to the degree of mercantile intelligence, as to weights
+      and currency, which Florence had in her year of victories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Pisans broke this peace two years afterwards, to help the Emperor
+      Manfred; whereupon the Florentines attacked them instantly again; defeated
+      them on the Serchio, near Lucca; entered the Pisan territory by the Val di
+      Serchio; and there, cutting down a great pine tree, struck their florins
+      on the stump of it, putting, for memory, under the feet of the St. John, a
+      trefoil "in guise of a little tree." And note here the difference between
+      artistic and mechanical coinage. The Florentines, using pure gold, and
+      thin, can strike their coin anywhere, with only a wooden anvil, and their
+      engraver is ready on the instant to make such change in the stamp as may
+      record any new triumph. Consider the vigour, popularity, pleasantness of
+      an art of coinage thus ductile to events, and easy in manipulution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      124. It is to be observed also that a thin gold coinage like that of the
+      English angel, and these Italian zecchins, is both more convenient and
+      prettier than the massive gold of the Greeks, often so small that it drops
+      through the fingers, and, if of any size, inconveniently large in value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      125. It was in the following year, 1255, that the Florentines made the
+      noblest use of their newly struck florins, so far as I know, ever recorded
+      in any history; and a Florentine citizen made as noble refusal of them.
+      You will find the two stories in Giovanni Villani, Book 6th, chapters 61,
+      62. One or two important facts are added by Sismondi, but without
+      references. I take his statement as on the whole trustworthy, using
+      Villani's authority wherever it reaches; one or two points I have farther
+      to explain to you myself as I go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      126. The first tale shows very curiously the mercenary and independent
+      character of warfare, as it now was carried on by the great chiefs,
+      whether Guelph or Ghibelline. The Florentines wanted to send a troop of
+      five hundred horse to assist Orvieto, a Guelph town, isolated on its rock,
+      and at present harrassed upon it. They gave command of this troop to the
+      Knight Guido Guerra de' Conti Guidi, and he and his riders set out for
+      Orvieto by the Umbrian road, through Arezzo, which was at peace with
+      Florence, though a Ghibelline town. The Guelph party within the town asked
+      help from the passing Florentine battalion; and Guido Guerra, without any
+      authority for such action, used the troop of which he was in command in
+      their favour, and drove out the Ghibellines. Sismondi does not notice what
+      is quite one of the main points in the matter, that this troop of horse
+      must have been mainly composed of Count Guido's own retainers, and not of
+      Florentine citizens, who would not have cared to leave their business on
+      such a far-off quest as this help to Orvieto. However, Arezzo is thus
+      brought over to the Florentine interest; and any other Italian state would
+      have been sure, while it disclaimed the Count's independent action, to
+      keep the advantage of it. Not so Florence. She is entirely resolved, in
+      these years of victory, to do justice to all men so far she understands
+      it; and in this case it will give her some trouble to do it, and worse,&mdash;cost
+      her some of her fine new florins. For her counter-mandate is quite
+      powerless with Guido Guerra. He has taken Arezzo mainly with his own men,
+      and means to stay there, thinking that the Florentines, if even they do
+      not abet him, will take no practical steps against him. But he does not
+      know this newly risen clan of military merchants, who quite clearly
+      understand what honesty means, and will put themselves out of their way to
+      keep their faith. Florence calls out her trades instantly, and with gules,
+      a dragon vert, and or, a bull sable, they march, themselves, angrily up
+      the Val d'Arno, replace the adverse Ghibellines in Arezzo, and send Master
+      Guido de' Conti Guido about his business. But the prettiest and most
+      curious part of the whole story is their equity even to him, after he had
+      given them all this trouble. They entirely recognize the need he is under
+      of getting meat, somehow, for the mouths of these five hundred riders of
+      his; also they hold him still their friend, though an unmanageable one;
+      and admit with praise what of more or less patriotic and Guelphic
+      principle may be at the root of his disobedience. So when he claims twelve
+      thousand lire,&mdash;roughly, some two thousand pounds of money at present
+      value,&mdash;from the Guelphs of Arezzo for his service, and the Guelphs,
+      having got no good of it, owing to this Florentine interference, object to
+      paying him, the Florentines themselves lend them the money,&mdash;and are
+      never paid a farthing of it back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      127. There is a beautiful "investment of capital" for your modern merchant
+      to study! No interest thought of, and little hope of ever getting back the
+      principal. And yet you will find that there were no mercantile "panics,"
+      in Florence in those days, nor failing bankers, {1} nor "clearings out of
+      this establishment&mdash;any reasonable offer accepted."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote: Some account of the state of modern British business in this
+      kind will be given, I hope, in some number of "Fors Clavigera" for this
+      year, 1874.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      128. But the second story, of a private Florentine citizen, is better
+      still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that campaign against Pisa in which the florins were struck on the root
+      of pine, the conditions of peace had been ratified by the surrender to
+      Florence of the Pisan fortress of Mutrona, which commanded a tract of
+      seaboard below Pisa, of great importance for the Tuscan trade. The
+      Florentines had stipulated for the right not only of holding, but of
+      destroying it, if they chose; and in their Council of Ancients, after long
+      debate, it was determined to raze it, the cost of its garrison being
+      troublesome, and the freedom of seaboard all that the city wanted. But the
+      Pisans feeling the power that the fortress had against them in case of
+      future war, and doubtful of the issue of council at Florence, sent a
+      private negotiator to the member of the Council of Ancients who was known
+      to have most influence, though one of the poorest of them, Aldobrandino
+      Ottobuoni; and offered him four thousand golden florins if he would get
+      the vote passed to raze Mutrona. The vote <i>had</i> passed the evening
+      before. Aldobrandino dismissed the Pisan ambassador in silence, returned
+      instantly into the council, and without saying anything of the offer that
+      had been made to him, got them to reconsider their vote, and showed them
+      such reason for keeping Mutrona in its strength, that the vote for its
+      destruction was rescinded. "And note thou, oh reader," says Villani, "the
+      virtue of such a citizen, who, not being rich in substance, had yet such
+      continence and loyalty for his state."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      129. You might, perhaps, once, have thought me detaining you needlessly
+      with these historical details, little bearing, it is commonly supposed, on
+      the subject of art. But you are, I trust, now in some degree persuaded
+      that no art, Florentine or any other, can be understood without knowing
+      these sculptures and mouldings of the national soul. You remember I first
+      begun this large digression when it became a question with us why some of
+      Giovanni Pisano's sepulchral work had been destroyed at Perugia. And now
+      we shall get our first gleam of light on the matter, finding similar
+      operations carried on in Florence. For a little while after this speech in
+      the Council of Ancients, Aldobrandino died, and the people, at public
+      cost, built him a tomb of marble, "higher than any other" in the church of
+      Santa Reparata, engraving on it these verses, which I leave you to
+      construe, for I cannot:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+       Fons est supremus Aldobrandino amoenus.
+        Ottoboni natus, a bono civita datus.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Only I suppose the pretty word 'amoenus' may be taken as marking the
+      delightfulness and sweetness of character which had won all men's love,
+      more, even, than their gratitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      130. It failed of its effect, however, on the Tuscan aristocratic mind.
+      For, when, after the battle of the Arbia, the Ghibellines had again their
+      own way in Florence, though Ottobuoni had been then dead three years, they
+      beat down his tomb, pulled the dead body out of it, dragged it&mdash;by
+      such tenure as it might still possess&mdash;through the city, and threw
+      the fragments of it into ditches. It is a memorable parallel to the
+      treatment of the body of Cromwell by our own Cavaliers; and indeed it
+      seems to me one of the highest forms of laudatory epitaph upon a man, that
+      his body should be thus torn from its rest. For he can hardly have spent
+      his life better than in drawing on himself the kind of enmity which can so
+      be gratified; and for the most loving of lawgivers, as of princes, the
+      most enviable and honourable epitaph has always been
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      {Greek: "<i>oide plitai anton emisoun anton</i>."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      131. Not but that pacific Florence, in her pride of victory, was beginning
+      to show unamiableness of temper also, on her so equitable side. It is
+      perhaps worth noticing, for the sake of the name of Correggio, that in
+      1257, when Matthew Correggio, of Parma, was the Podesta of Florence, the
+      Florentines determined to destroy the castle and walls of Poggibonzi,
+      suspected of Ghibelline tendency, though the Poggibonzi people came with
+      "coregge in collo," leathern straps round their necks, to ask that their
+      cattle might be spared. And the heartburnings between the two parties went
+      on, smouldering hotter and hotter, till July, 1258, when the people having
+      discovered secret dealings between the Uberti and the Emperor Manfred, and
+      the Uberti refusing to obey citation to the popular tribunals, the trades
+      ran to arms, attacked the Uberti palace, killed a number of their people,
+      took prisoner, Uberto of the Uberti, Hubert of the Huberts, or Bright-mind
+      of the Bright-minds, with 'Mangia degl' Infangati, ('Gobbler {1} of the
+      dirty ones' this knight's name sounds like,)&mdash;and after they had
+      confessed their guilt, beheaded them in St. Michael's corn-market; and all
+      the rest of the Uberti and Ghibelline families were driven out of
+      Florence, and their palaces pulled down, and the walls towards Siena built
+      with the stones of them; and two months afterwards, the people suspecting
+      the Abbot of Vallombrosa of treating with the Ghibellines, took him, and
+      tortured him; and he confessing under torture, "at the cry of the people,
+      they beheaded him in the square of St. Apollinare." For which unexpected
+      piece of clangorous impiety the Florentines were excommunicated, besides
+      drawing upon themselves the steady enmity of Pavia, the Abbot's native
+      town; "and indeed people say the Abbot was innocent, though he belonged to
+      a great Ghibelline house. And for this sin, and for many others done by
+      the wicked people, many wise persons say that God, for Divine judgment,
+      permitted upon the said people the revenge and slaughter of Monteaperti."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote: At least, the compound 'Mangia-pane,' 'munch-bread,' stands
+      still for a good-for-nothing fellow.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      132. The sentence which I have last read introduces, as you must at once
+      have felt, a new condition of things. Generally, I have spoken of the
+      Ghibellines as infidel, or impious; and for the most part they represent,
+      indeed, the resistance of kingly to priestly power. But, in this action of
+      Florence, we have the rise of another force against the Church, in the end
+      to be much more fatal to it, that of popular intelligence and popular
+      passion. I must for the present, however, return to our immediate
+      business; and ask you to take note of the effect, on actually existing
+      Florentine architecture, of the political movements of the ten years we
+      have been studying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      133. In the revolution of Candlemas, 1248, the successful Ghibellines
+      throw down thirty-six of the Guelph palaces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in the revolution of July, 1258, the successful Guelphs throw down <i>all</i>
+      the Ghibelline palaces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime the trades, as against the Knights Castellans, have thrown down
+      the tops of all the towers above seventy-five feet high.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And we shall presently have a proposal, after the battle of the Arbia, to
+      throw down Florence altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      134. You think at first that this is remarkably like the course of
+      republican reformations in the present day? But there is a wide
+      difference. In the first place, the palaces and towers are not thrown down
+      in mere spite or desire of ruin, but after quite definite experience of
+      their danger to the State, and positive dejection of boiling lead and
+      wooden logs from their machicolations upon the heads below. In the second
+      place, nothing is thrown down without complete certainty on the part of
+      the overthrowers that they are able, and willing, to build as good or
+      better things instead; which, if any like conviction exist in the minds of
+      modern republicans, is a wofully ill-founded one: and lastly, these
+      abolitions of private wealth were coincident with a widely spreading
+      disposition to undertake, as I have above noticed, works of public
+      utility, <i>from which no dividends were to be received by any of the
+      shareholders</i>; and for the execution of which the <i>builders received
+      no commission on the cost</i>, but payment at the rate of so much a day,
+      carefully adjusted to the exertion of real power and intelligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      135. We must not, therefore, without qualification blame, though we may
+      profoundly regret, the destructive passions of the thirteenth century. The
+      architecture of the palaces thus destroyed in Florence contained examples
+      of the most beautiful round-arched work that had been developed by the
+      Norman schools; and was in some cases adorned with a barbaric splendour,
+      and fitted into a majesty of strength which, so far as I can conjecture
+      the effect of it from the few now existing traces, must have presented
+      some of the most impressive aspects of street edifice ever existent among
+      civil societies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      136. It may be a temporary relief for you from the confusion of following
+      the giddy successions of Florentine temper, if I interrupt, in this place,
+      my history of the city by some inquiry into technical points relating to
+      the architecture of these destroyed palaces. Their style is familiar to
+      us, indeed, in a building of which it is difficult to believe the early
+      date,&mdash;the leaning tower of Pisa. The lower stories of it are of the
+      twelfth century, and the open arcades of the cathedrals of Pisa and Lucca,
+      as well as the lighter construction of the spire of St. Niccol, at Pisa,
+      (though this was built in continuation of the older style by Niccola
+      himself,) all represent to you, though in enriched condition, the general
+      manner of buidling in palaces of the Norman period in Val d'Arno. That of
+      the Tosinghi, above the old market in Florence, is especially mentioned by
+      Villani, as more than a hundred feet in height, entirely built with little
+      pillars, (colonnelli,) of marble. On their splendid masonry was founded
+      the exquisiteness of that which immediately succeeded them, of which the
+      date is fixed by definite examples both in Verona and Florence, and which
+      still exists in noble masses in the retired streets and courts of either
+      city; too soon superseded, in the great thoroughfares, by the effeminate
+      and monotonous luxury of Venetian renaissance, or by the heaps of quarried
+      stone which rise into the ruggedness of their native cliffs, in the Pitti
+      and Strozzi palaces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LECTURE VI. MARBLE COUCHANT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      137. I told you in my last lecture that the exquisiteness of Florentine
+      thirteenth century masonry was founded on the strength and splendour of
+      that which preceded it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I use the word 'founded' in a literal as well as figurative sense. While
+      the merchants, in their year of victories, threw down the walls of the
+      war-towers, they as eagerly and diligently set their best craftsmen to
+      lift higher the walls of their churches. For the most part, the Early
+      Norman or Basilican forms were too low to please them in their present
+      enthusiasm. Their pride, as well as their piety, desired that these stones
+      of their temples might be goodly; and all kinds of junctions, insertions,
+      refittings, and elevations were undertaken; which, the genius of the
+      people being always for mosaic, are so perfectly executed, and mix up
+      twelfth and thirteenth century work in such intricate harlequinade, that
+      it is enough to drive a poor antiquary wild.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      138. I have here in my hand, however, a photograph of a small church,
+      which shows you the change at a glance, and attests it in a notable
+      manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You know Hubert of Lucca was the first captain of the Florentine people,
+      and the march in which they struck their florin on the pine trunk was
+      through Lucca, on Pisa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now here is a little church in Lucca, of which the lower half of the
+      façade is of the twelfth century, and the top, built by the Florentines,
+      in the thirteenth, and sealed for their own by two fleur-de-lys, let into
+      its masonry. The most important difference, marking the date, is in the
+      sculpture of the heads which carry the archivolts. But the most palpable
+      difference is in the Cyclopean simplicity of irregular bedding in the
+      lower story; and the delicate bands of alternate serpentine and marble,
+      which follow the horizontal or couchant placing of the stones above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      139. Those of you who, interested in English Gothic, have visited Tuscany,
+      are, I think, always offended at first, if not in permanence, by these
+      horizontal stripes of her marble walls. Twenty-two years ago I quoted, in
+      vol. i. of the "Stones of Venice," Professor Willis's statement that "a
+      practice more destructive of architectural grandeur could hardly be
+      conceived;" and I defended my favourite buildings against that judgement,
+      first by actual comparison in the plate opposite the page, of a piece of
+      them with an example of our modern grandeur; secondly, (vol. i., chap.
+      v.,) by a comparison of their aspect with that of the building of the
+      grandest piece of wall in the Alps,&mdash;that Matterhorn in which you all
+      have now learned to take some gymnastic interest; and thirdly, (vol. i.,
+      chap. xxvi.,) by reference to the use of barred colours, with delight, by
+      Giotto and all subsequent colourists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      140. But it did not then occur to me to ask, much as I always disliked the
+      English Perpendicular, what would have been the effect on the spectator's
+      mind, had the buildings been striped vertically instead of horizontally;
+      nor did I then know, or in the least imagine, how much <i>practical</i>
+      need there was for reference from the structure of the edifice to that of
+      the cliff; and how much the permanence, as well as propriety, of structure
+      depended on the stones being <i>couchant</i> in the wall, as they had been
+      in the quarry: to which subject I wish to-day to direct your attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      141. You will find stated with as much clearness as I am able, in the
+      first and fifth lectures in "Aratra Pentelíci," the principles of
+      architectural design to which, in all my future teaching, I shall have
+      constantly to appeal; namely, that architecture consists distinctively in
+      the adaptation of form to resist force;&mdash;that, practically, it may be
+      always thought of as doing this by the ingenious adjustment of various
+      pieces of solid material; that the perception of this ingenious
+      adjustment, or structure, is to be always joined with our admiration of
+      the superadded ornament; and that all delightful ornament is the honouring
+      of such useful structures; but that the beauty of the ornament itself is
+      independent of the structure, and arrived at by powers of mind of a very
+      different class from those which are necessary to give skill in
+      architecture proper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      142. During the course of this last summer I have been myself very
+      directly interested in some of the quite elementary processes of true
+      architecture. I have been building a little pier into Coniston Lake, and
+      various walls and terraces in a steeply sloping garden, all which had to
+      be constructed of such rough stones as lay nearest. Under the dextrous
+      hands of a neighbour farmer's son, the pier projected, and the walls rose,
+      as if enchanted; every stone taking its proper place, and the loose dyke
+      holding itself as firmly upright as if the gripping cement of the
+      Florentine towers had fastened it. My own better acquaintance with the
+      laws of gravity and of statics did not enable me, myself, to build six
+      inches of dyke that would stand; and all the decoration possible under the
+      circumstances consisted in turning the lichened sides of the stones
+      outwards. And yet the noblest conditions of building in the world are
+      nothing more than the gradual adornment, by play of the imagination, of
+      materials first arranged by this natural instinct of adjustment. You must
+      not lose sight of the instinct of building, but you must not think the
+      play of the imagination depends upon it. Intelligent laying of stones is
+      always delightful; but the fancy must not be limited to its contemplation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: PLATE V.&mdash;DOOR OF THE BAPTISTERY. PISA.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      143. In the more elaborate architecture of my neighbourhood, I have taken
+      pleasure these many years; one of the first papers I ever wrote on
+      architecture was a study of the Westmoreland cottage;&mdash;properly,
+      observe, the cottage of West-mereland, of the land of western lakes. Its
+      principal feature is the projecting porch at its door, formed by two rough
+      slabs of Coniston slate, set in a blunt gable; supported, if far
+      projecting, by two larger masses for uprights. A disciple of Mr. Pugin
+      would delightedly observe that the porch of St. Zeno at Verona was nothing
+      more than the decoration of this construction; but you do not suppose that
+      the first idea of putting two stones together to keep off rain was all on
+      which the sculptor of St. Zeno wished to depend for your entertainment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      144. Perhaps you may most clearly understand the real connection between
+      structure and decoration by considering all architecture as a kind of
+      book, which must be properly bound indeed, and in which the illumination
+      of the pages has distinct reference in all its forms to the breadth of the
+      margins and length of the sentences; but is itself free to follow its own
+      quite separate and higher objects of design.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      145. Thus, for instance, in the architecture which Niccola was occupied
+      upon, when a boy, under his Byzantine master. Here is the door of the
+      Baptistery at Pisa, again by Mr. Severn delightfully enlarged for us from
+      a photograph. {1} The general idea of it is a square-headed opening in a
+      solid wall, faced by an arch carried on shafts. And the ornament does
+      indeed follow this construction so that the eye catches it with ease,&mdash;but
+      under what arbitrary conditions! In the square door, certainly the
+      side-posts of it are as important members as the lintel they carry; but
+      the lintel is carved elaborately, and the side-posts left blank. Of the
+      facing arch and shaft, it would be similarly difficult to say whether the
+      sustaining vertical, or sustained curve, were the more important member of
+      the construction; but the decorator now reverses the distribution of his
+      care, adorns the vertical member with passionate elaboration, and runs a
+      narrow band, of comparatively uninteresting work, round the arch. Between
+      this outer shaft and inner door is a square pilaster, of which the
+      architect carves one side, and lets the other alone. It is followed by a
+      smaller shaft and arch, in which he reverses his treatment of the outer
+      order by cutting the shaft delicately and the arch deeply. Again, whereas
+      in what is called the decorated construction of English Gothic, the
+      pillars would have been left plain and the spandrils deep cut,&mdash;here,
+      are we to call it decoration of the construction, when the pillars are
+      carved and the spandrils left plain? Or when, finally, either these
+      spandril spaces on each side of the arch, or the corresponding slopes of
+      the gable, are loaded with recumbent figures by the sculptors of the
+      renaissance, are we to call, for instance, Michael Angelo's Dawn and
+      Twilight, only the decorations of the sloping plinths of a tomb, or trace
+      to a geometrical propriety the subsequent rule in Italy that no window
+      could be properly complete for living people to look out of, without
+      having two stone people sitting on the corners of it above? I have heard
+      of charming young ladies occasionally, at very crowded balls, sitting on
+      the stairs,&mdash;would you call them, in that case, only decorations of
+      the construction of the staircase?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: Plate 5 is from the photograph itself; the enlarged drawing
+      showed the arrangement of parts more clearly, but necessarily omitted
+      detail which it is better here to retain.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      146. You will find, on consideration, the ultimate fact to be that to
+      which I have just referred you;&mdash;my statement in "Aratra," that the
+      idea of a construction originally useful is retained in good architecture,
+      through all the amusement of its ornamentation; as the idea of the proper
+      function of any piece of dress ought to be retained through its changes in
+      form or embroidery. A good spire or porch retains the first idea of a roof
+      usefully covering a space, as a Norman high cap or elongated Quaker's
+      bonnet retains the original idea of a simple covering for the head; and
+      any extravagance of subsequent fancy may be permitted, so long as the
+      notion of use is not altogether lost. A girl begins by wearing a plain
+      round hat to shade her from the sun; she ties it down over her ears on a
+      windy day; presently she decorates the edge of it, so bent, with flowers
+      in front, or the riband that ties it with a bouquet at the side, and it
+      becomes a bonnet. This decorated construction may be discreetly changed,
+      by endless fashion, so long as it does not become a clearly useless riband
+      round the middle of the head, or a clearly useless saucer on the top of
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      147. Again, a Norman peasant may throw up the top of her cap into a peak,
+      or a Bernese one put gauze wings at the side of it, and still be dressed
+      with propriety, so long as her hair is modestly confined, and her ears
+      healthily protected, by the matronly safeguard of the real construction.
+      She ceases to be decorously dressed only when the material becomes too
+      flimsy to answer such essential purpose, and the flaunting pendants or
+      ribands can only answer the ends of coquetry or ostentation. Similarly, an
+      architect may deepen or enlarge, in fantastic exaggeration, his original
+      Westmoreland gable into Rouen porch, and his original square roof into
+      Coventry spire; but he must not put within his splendid porch, a little
+      door where two persons cannot together get in, nor cut his spire away into
+      hollow filigree, and mere ornamental perviousness to wind and rain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      148. Returning to our door at Pisa, we shall find these general questions
+      as to the distribution of ornament much confused with others as to its
+      time and style. We are at once, for instance, brought to a pause as to the
+      degree in which the ornamentation was once carried out in the doors
+      themselves. Their surfaces were, however, I doubt not, once recipients of
+      the most elaborate ornament, as in the Baptistery of Florence; and in
+      later bronze, by John of Bologna, in the door of the Pisan cathedral
+      opposite this one. And when we examine the sculpture and placing of the
+      lintel, which at first appeared the most completely Greek piece of
+      construction of the whole, we find it so far advanced in many Gothic
+      characters, that I once thought it a later interpolation cutting the inner
+      pilasters underneath their capitals, while the three statues set on it are
+      certainly, by several tens of years, later still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      149. How much ten years did at this time, one is apt to forget; and how
+      irregularly the slower minds of the older men would surrender themselves,
+      sadly, or awkwardly, to the vivacities of their pupils. The only wonder is
+      that it should be usually so easy to assign conjectural dates within
+      twenty or thirty years; but, at Pisa, the currents of tradition and
+      invention run with such cross eddies, that I often find myself utterly at
+      fault. In this lintel, for instance, there are two pieces separated by a
+      narrower one, on which there has been an inscription, of which in my
+      enlarged plate you may trace, though, I fear, not decipher, the few
+      letters that remain. The uppermost of these stones is nearly pure in its
+      Byzantine style; the lower, already semi-Gothic. Both are exquisite of
+      their kind, and we will examine them closely; but first note these points
+      about the stones of them. We are discussing work at latest of the
+      thirteenth century. Our loss of the inscription is evidently owing to the
+      action of the iron rivets which have been causelessly used at the two
+      horizontal joints. There was nothing whatever in the construction to make
+      these essential, and, but for this error, the entire piece of work, as
+      delicate as an ivory tablet, would be as intelligible to-day as when it
+      was laid in its place. {1}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote: Plates 6 and 7 give, in greater clearness, the sculpture of
+      this lintel, for notes on which see Appendix.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      150. <i>Laid</i>. I pause upon this word, for it is an important one. And
+      I must devote the rest of this lecture to consideration merely of what
+      follows from the difference between laying a stone and setting it up,
+      whether we regard sculpture or construction. The subject is so wide, I
+      scarcely know how to approach it. Perhaps it will be the pleasantest way
+      to begin if I read you a letter from one of yourselves to me. A very
+      favourite pupil, who travels third class always, for sake of better
+      company, wrote to me the other day: "One of my fellow-travellers, who was
+      a builder, or else a master mason, told me that the way in which red
+      sandstone buildings last depends entirely on the way in which the stone is
+      laid. It must lie as it does in the quarry; but he said that very few
+      workmen could always tell the difference between the joints of planes of
+      cleavage and the&mdash;something else which I couldn't catch,&mdash;by
+      which he meant, I suppose planes of stratification. He said too that some
+      people, though they were very particular
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: PLATE VI.&mdash;THE STORY OF ST. JOHN. ADVENT.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: PLATE VII.&mdash;THE STORY OF ST. JOHN. DEPARTURE.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      about having the stone laid well, allowed blocks to stand in the rain the
+      wrong way up, and that they never recovered one wetting. The stone of the
+      same quarry varies much, and he said that moss will grow immediately on
+      good stone, but not on bad. How curious,&mdash;nature helping the best
+      workman!" Thus far my favourite pupil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      151. 'Moss will grow on the best stone.' The first thing your modern
+      restorer would do is to scrape it off; and with it, whatever knitted
+      surface, half moss root, protects the interior stone. Have you ever
+      considered the infinite functions of protection to mountain form exercised
+      by the mosses and lichens? It will perhaps be refreshing to you after our
+      work among the Pisan marbles and legends, if we have a lecture or two on
+      moss. Meantime I need not tell you that it would not be a satisfactory
+      natural arrangement if moss grew on marble, and that all fine workmanship
+      in marble implies equal exquisiteness of surface and edge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      152. You will observe also that the importance of laying the stone in the
+      building as it lay in its bed was from the first recognised by all good
+      northern architects, to such extent that to lay stones 'en delit,' or in a
+      position out of their bedding, is a recognized architectural term in
+      France, where all structural building takes its rise; and in that form of
+      'delit' the word gets most curiously involved with the Latin delictum and
+      deliquium. It would occupy the time of a whole lecture if I entered into
+      the confused relations of the words derived from lectus, liquidus,
+      delinquo, diliquo, and deliquesco; and of the still more confused, but
+      beautifully confused, (and enriched by confusion,) forms of idea, whether
+      respecting morality or marble, arising out of the meanings of these words:
+      the notions of a bed gathered or strewn for the rest, whether of rocks or
+      men; of the various states of solidity and liquidity connected with
+      strength, or with repose; and of the duty of staying quiet in a place, or
+      under a law, and the mischief of leaving it, being all fastened in the
+      minds of early builders, and of the generations of men for whom they
+      built, by the unescapable bearing of geological laws on their life; by the
+      ease or difficulty of splitting rocks, by the variable consistency of the
+      fragments split, by the innumerable questions occurring practically as to
+      bedding and cleavage in every kind of stone, from tufo to granite, and by
+      the unseemly, or beautiful, destructive, or protective, effects of
+      decomposition. {1} The same processes of time which cause your Oxford
+      oolite to flake away like the leaves of a mouldering book, only warm with
+      a glow of perpetually deepening gold the marbles of Athens and Verona; and
+      the same laws of chemical change which reduce the granites of Dartmoor to
+      porcelain clay, bind the sands of Coventry into stones which can be built
+      up halfway to the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: This passage cannot but seem to the reader loose and
+      fantastic. I have elaborate notes, and many an unwritten thought, on these
+      matters, but no time or strength to develop them. The passage is not
+      fantastic, but the rapid index of what I know to be true in all the named
+      particulars. But compare, for mere rough illustration of what I mean, the
+      moral ideas relating to the stone of Jacob's pillow, or the tradition of
+      it, with those to which French Flamboyant Gothic owes its character.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      153. But now, as to the matter immediately before us, observe what a
+      double question arises about laying stones as they lie in the quarry.
+      First, how <i>do</i> they lie in the quarry? Secondly, how can we lay them
+      so in every part of our building?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. How do they lie in the quarry? Level, perhaps, at Stonesfield and
+      Coventry; but at an angle of 45° at Carrara; and for aught I know, of 90°
+      in Paros or Pentelicus. Also, the <i>bedding</i> is of prime importance at
+      Coventry, but the <i>cleavage</i> at Coniston. {1}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: There are at least four definite cleavages at Coniston,
+      besides joints. One of these cleavages furnishes the Coniston slate of
+      commerce; another forms the ranges of Wetherlam and Yewdale crag; a third
+      cuts these ranges to pieces, striking from north-west to south-east; and a
+      fourth into other pieces, from north-east to south-west.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      B. And then, even if we know what the quarry bedding is, how are we to
+      keep it always in our building? You may lay the stones of a wall carefully
+      level, but how will you lay those of an arch? You think these, perhaps,
+      trivial, or merely curious questions. So far from it, the fact that while
+      the bedding in Normandy is level, that at Carrara is steep, and that the
+      forces which raised the beds of Carrara crystallized them also, so that
+      the cleavage which is all-important in the stones of my garden wall is of
+      none in the duomo of Pisa,&mdash;simply determined the possibility of the
+      existence of Pisan sculpture at all, and regulated the whole life and
+      genius of Nicholas the Pisan and of Christian art. And, again, the fact
+      that you can put stones in true bedding in a wall, but cannot in an arch,
+      determines the structural transition from classical to Gothic
+      architecture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      154. The <i>structural</i> transition, observe; only a part, and that not
+      altogether a coincident part, of the <i>moral</i> transition. Read
+      carefully, if you have time, the articles 'Pierre' and 'Meneau' in M.
+      Violet le Duc's Dictionary of Architecture, and you will know everything
+      that is of importance in the changes dependent on the mere qualities of <i>matter</i>.
+      I must, however, try to set in your view also the relative acting
+      qualities of <i>mind</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You will find that M. Violet le Duc traces all the forms of Gothic tracery
+      to the geometrical and practically serviceable development of the stone
+      'chassis,' chasing, or frame, for the glass. For instance, he attributes
+      the use of the cusp or 'redent' in its more complex forms, to the
+      necessity, or convenience, of diminishing the space of glass which the
+      tracery grasps; and he attributes the reductions of the mouldings in the
+      tracery bar under portions of one section, to the greater facility thus
+      obtained by the architect in directing his workmen. The plan of a window
+      once given, and the moulding-section,&mdash;all is said, thinks M. Violet
+      le Duc. Very convenient indeed, for modern architects who have commission
+      on the cost. But certainly not necessary, and perhaps even inconvenient,
+      to Niccola Pisano, who is himself his workman, and cuts his own traceries,
+      with his apron loaded with dust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      155. Again, the <i>re</i>dent&mdash;the 'tooth within tooth' of a French
+      tracery&mdash;may be necessary, to bite its glass. But the cusp, cuspis,
+      spiny or spearlike point of a thirteenth century illumination, is not in
+      the least necessary to transfix the parchment. Yet do you suppose that the
+      structural convenience of the redent entirely effaces from the mind of the
+      designer the aesthetic characters which he seeks in the cusp? If you could
+      for an instant imagine this, you would be undeceived by a glance either at
+      the early redents of Amiens, fringing hollow vaults, or the late redents
+      of Rouen, acting as crockets on the <i>outer</i> edges of pediments. 156.
+      Again: if you think of the tracery in its <i>bars</i>, you call the cusp a
+      redent; but if you think of it in the <i>openings</i>, you call the
+      apertures of it foils. Do you suppose that the thirteenth century builder
+      thought only of the strength of the bars of his enclosure, and never of
+      the beauty of the form he enclosed? You will find in my chapter on the
+      Aperture, in the "Stones of Venice," full development of the aesthetic
+      laws relating to both these forms, while you may see, in Professor
+      Willis's 'Architecture of the Middle Ages,' a beautiful analysis of the
+      development of tracery from the juxtaposition of aperture; and in the
+      article 'Meneau,' just quoted of M. Violet le Duc, an equally beautiful
+      analysis of its development from the masonry of the chassis. You may at
+      first think that Professor Willis's analysis is inconsistent with M.
+      Violet le Duc's. But they are no more inconsistent than the accounts of
+      the growth of a human being would be, if given by two anatomists, of whom
+      one had examined only the skeleton and the other only the respiratory
+      system; and who, therefore, supposed&mdash;the first, that the animal had
+      been made only to leap, and the other only to sing. I don't mean that
+      either of the writers I name are absolutely thus narrow in their own
+      views, but that, so far as inconsistency appears to exist between them, it
+      is of that partial kind only.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      157. And for the understanding of our Pisan traceries we must introduce a
+      third element of similarly distinctive nature. We must, to press our
+      simile a little farther, examine the growth of the animal as if it had
+      been made neither to leap, nor to sing, but only to think. We must observe
+      the transitional states of its nerve power; that is to say, in our window
+      tracery we must consider not merely how its ribs are built, (or how it
+      stands,) nor merely how its openings are shaped, or how it breathes; but
+      also what its openings are made to light, or its shafts to receive, of
+      picture or image. As the limbs of the building, it may be much; as the
+      lungs of the building, more. As the <i>eyes</i> {1} of the building, what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: I am ashamed to italicize so many words; but these passages,
+      written for oral delivery, can only be understood if read with oral
+      emphasis. This is the first aeries of lectures which I have printed as
+      they were to be spoken; and it is a great mistake.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      158. Thus you probably have a distinct idea&mdash;those of you at least
+      who are interested in architecture&mdash;of the shape of the windows in
+      Westminster Abbey, in the Cathedral of Chartres, or in the Duomo of Milan.
+      Can any of you, I should like to know, make a guess at the shape of the
+      windows in the Sistine Chapel, the Stanze of the Vatican, the Scuola di
+      San Rocco, or the lower church of Assisi? The soul or anima of the first
+      three buildings is in their windows; but of the last three, in their
+      walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these points I may for the present leave you to think over for
+      yourselves, except one, to which I must ask yet for a few moments your
+      further attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      159. The trefoils to which I have called your attention in Niccola's
+      pulpit are as absolutely without structural office in the circles as in
+      the panels of the font beside it. But the circles are drawn with evident
+      delight in the lovely circular line, while the trefoil is struck out by
+      Niccola so roughly that there is not a true compass curve or section in
+      any part of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roughly, I say. Do you suppose I ought to have said carelessly? So far
+      from it, that if one sharper line or more geometric curve had been given,
+      it would have caught the eye too strongly, and drawn away the attention
+      from the sculpture. But imagine the feeling with which a French master
+      workman would first see these clumsy intersections of curves. It would be
+      exactly the sensation with which a practical botanical draughtsman would
+      look at a foliage background of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Sir Joshua's sketched leaves would indeed imply some unworkmanlike
+      haste. We must not yet assume the Pisan master to have allowed himself in
+      any such. His mouldings may be hastily cut, for they are, as I have just
+      said, unnecessary to his structure, and disadvantageous to his decoration;
+      but he is not likely to be careless about arrangements necessary for
+      strength. His mouldings may be cut hastily, but do you think his <i>joints</i>
+      will be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      160. What subject of extended inquiry have we in this word, ranging from
+      the cementless clefts between the couchant stones of the walls of the
+      kings of Rome, whose iron rivets you had but the other day placed in your
+      hands by their discoverer, through the grip of the stones of the Tower of
+      the Death-watch, to the subtle joints in the marble armour of the
+      Florentine Baptistery!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our own work must certainly be left with a rough surface at this place,
+      and we will fit the edges of it to our next piece of study as closely as
+      we may.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LECTURE VII. MARBLE RAMPANT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      161. I closed my last lecture at the question respecting Nicholas's
+      masonry. His mouldings may be careless, but do you think his joints will
+      be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I must remind you now of the expression as to the building of the communal
+      palace&mdash;"of <i>dressed</i> stones" {1}&mdash;as opposed to the Tower
+      of the Death-watch, in which the grip of cement had been so good.
+      Virtually, you will find that the schools of structural architecture are
+      those which use cement to bind
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: "Pietre conce." The portion of the has-reliefs of Orvieto,
+      given in the opposite plate, will show the importance of the jointing.
+      Observe the way in which the piece of stone with the three principal
+      figures is dovetailed above the extended band, and again in the rise above
+      the joint of the next stone on the right, the sculpture of the wings being
+      carried across the junction. I have chosen this piece on purpose, because
+      the loss of the broken fragment, probably broken by violence, and the only
+      serious injury which the sculptures have received, serves to show the
+      perfection of the uninjured surface, as compared with northern sculpture
+      of the same date. I have thought it well to show at the same time the
+      modern German engraving of the subject, respecting which see Appendix.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: PLATE VIII.&mdash;"THE CHARGE TO ADAM." GIOVANNI PISANO.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      their materials together, and in which, therefore, balance of <i>weight</i>
+      becomes a continual and inevitable question. But the schools of sculptural
+      architecture are those in which stones are fitted without cement, in
+      which, therefore, the question of <i>fitting</i> or adjustment is
+      continual and inevitable, but the sustainable weight practically
+      unlimited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      162. You may consider the Tower of the Death-watch as having been knit
+      together like the mass of a Roman brick wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the dressed stone work of the thirteenth century is the hereditary
+      completion of such block-laying, as the Parthenon in marble; or, in tufo,
+      as that which was shown you so lately in the walls of Romulus; and the
+      decoration of that system of couchant stone is by the finished grace of
+      mosaic or sculpture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      163. It was also pointed out to you by Mr. Parker that there were two
+      forms of Cyclopean architecture; one of level blocks, the other of
+      polygonal,&mdash;contemporary, but in localities affording different
+      material of stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have placed in this frame examples of the Cyclopean horizontal, and the
+      Cyclopean polygonal, architecture of the thirteenth century. And as Hubert
+      of Lucca was the master of the new buildings at Florence, I have chosen
+      the Cyclopean horizontal from his native city of Lucca; and as our
+      Nicholas and John brought their new Gothic style into practice at Orvieto,
+      I have chosen the Cyclopean polygonal from their adopted city of Orvieto.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both these examples of architecture are early thirteenth century work, the
+      beginnings of its new and Christian style, but beginnings with which
+      Nicholas and John had nothing to do; they were part of the national work
+      going on round them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      164. And this example from Lucca is of a very important class indeed. It
+      is from above the east entrance gate of Lucca, which bears the cross above
+      it, as the doors of a Christian city should. Such a city is, or ought to
+      be, a place of peace, as much as any monastery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This custom of placing the cross above the gate is Byzantine-Christian;
+      and here are parallel instances of its treatment from Assisi. The lamb
+      with the cross is given in the more elaborate arch of Verona.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      165. But farther. The mosaic of this cross is so exquisitely fitted that
+      no injury has been received by it to this day from wind or weather. And
+      the horizontal dressed stones are laid so daintily that not an edge of
+      them has stirred; and, both to draw your attention to their beautiful
+      fitting, and as a substitute for cement, the architect cuts his uppermost
+      block so as to dovetail into the course below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dovetail, I say deliberately. This is stone carpentry, in which the
+      carpenter despises glue. I don't say he won't use glue, and glue of the
+      best, but he feels it to be a nasty thing, and that it spoils his wood or
+      marble. None, at least, he determines shall be seen outside, and his
+      laying of stones shall be so solid and so adjusted that, take all the
+      cement away, his wall shall yet stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stonehenge, the Parthenon, the walls of the Kings, this gate of Lucca,
+      this window of Orvieto, and this tomb at Verona, are all built on the
+      Cyclopean principle. They will stand without cement, and no cement shall
+      be seen outside. Mr. Burgess and I actually tried the experiment on this
+      tomb. Mr. Burgess modelled every stone of it in clay, put them together,
+      and it stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      166. Now there are two most notable characteristics about this Cyclopean
+      architecture to which I beg your close attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first: that as the laying of stones is so beautiful, their joints
+      become a subject of admiration, and great part of the architectural
+      ornamentation is in the beauty of lines of separation, drawn as finely as
+      possible. Thus the separating lines of the bricks at Siena, of this gate
+      at Lucca, of the vault at Verona, of this window at Orvieto, and of the
+      contemporary refectory at Furness Abbey, are a main source of the pleasure
+      you have in the building. Nay, they are not merely engravers' lines, but,
+      in finest practice, they are mathematical lines&mdash;length without
+      breadth. Here in my hand is a little shaft of Florentine mosaic executed
+      at the present day. The separations between the stones are, in dimension,
+      mathematical lines. And the two sides of the thirteenth century porch of
+      St. Anastasia at Verona are built in this manner,&mdash;so exquisitely,
+      that for some time, my mind not having been set at it, I passed them by as
+      painted!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      167. That is the first character of the Florentine Cyclopean But secondly;
+      as the joints are so firm, and as the building must never stir or settle
+      after it is built, the sculptor may trust his work to two stones set side
+      by side, or one above another, and carve continuously over the whole
+      surface, disregarding the joints, if he so chooses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the degree of precision with which Nicholas of Pisa and his son
+      adjusted their stones, you may judge by this rough sketch of a piece of
+      St. Mary's of the Thorn, in which the design is of panels enclosing very
+      delicately sculptured heads; and one would naturally suppose that the
+      enclosing panels would be made of jointed pieces, and the heads carved
+      separately and inserted. But the Pisans would have considered that unsafe
+      masonry,&mdash;liable to the accident of the heads being dropped out, or
+      taken away. John of Pisa did indeed use such masonry, of necessity, in his
+      fountain; and the bas-reliefs <i>have</i> been taken away. But here one
+      great block of marble forms part of two panels, and the mouldings and head
+      are both carved in the solid, the joint running just behind the neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      168. Such masonry is, indeed, supposing there were no fear of thieves,
+      gratuitously precise in a case of this kind, in which the ornamentation is
+      in separate masses, and might be separately carved. But when the
+      ornamentation is current, and flows or climbs along the stone in the
+      manner of waves or plants, the concealment of the joints of the pieces of
+      marble becomes altogether essential. And here we enter upon a most curious
+      group of associated characters in Gothic as opposed to Greek architecture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      169. If you have been able to read the article to which I referred you,
+      'Meneau,' in M. Violet le Duc's dictionary, you know that one great
+      condition of the perfect Gothic structure is that the stones shall be 'en
+      de-lit,' set up on end. The ornament then, which on the reposing or
+      couchant stone was current only, on the erected stone begins to climb
+      also, and becomes, in the most heraldic sense of the term, rampant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the heraldic sense, I say, as distinguished from the still wider
+      original sense of advancing with a stealthy, creeping, or clinging motion,
+      as a serpent on the ground, and a cat, or a vine, up a tree-stem. And
+      there is one of these reptile, creeping, or rampant things, which is the
+      first whose action was translated into marble, and otherwise is of
+      boundless importance in the arts and labours of man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      170. You recollect Kingsley's expression,&mdash;now hackneyed, because
+      admired for its precision,&mdash;the '<i>crawling foam</i>,' of waves
+      advancing on sand. Tennyson has somewhere also used, with equal truth, the
+      epithet 'climbing' of the spray of breakers against vertical rock. {1} In
+      either instance, the sea action is literally 'rampant'; and the course of
+      a great breaker, whether in its first proud likeness to a rearing horse,
+      or in the humble and subdued gaining of the outmost verge of its foam on
+      the sand, or the intermediate spiral whorl which gathers into a lustrous
+      precision, like that of a polished shell, the grasping force of a giant,
+      you have the most vivid sight and embodiment of literally rampant energy;
+      which the Greeks expressed in their symbolic Poseidon, Scylla, and
+      sea-horse, by the head and crest of the man, dog, or horse, with the body
+      of the serpent; and of which you will find the slower image, in
+      vegetation, rendered both by the spiral tendrils of grasping or climbing
+      plants, and the perennial gaining of the foam or the lichen upon barren
+      shores of stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote: Perhaps I am thinking of Lowell, not Tennyson; I have not time
+      to look.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      171. If you will look to the thirtieth chapter of vol. i. in the new
+      edition of the "Stones of Venice," which, by the gift of its publishers, I
+      am enabled to lay on your table to be placed in your library, you will
+      find one of my first and most eager statements of the necessity of
+      inequality or change in form, made against the common misunderstanding of
+      Greek symmetry, and illustrated by a woodcut of the spiral ornament on the
+      treasury of Atreus at Mycenae. All that is said in that chapter respecting
+      nature and the ideal, I now beg most earnestly to recommend and ratify to
+      you; but although, even at that time, I knew more of Greek art than my
+      antagonists, my broken reading has given me no conception of the range of
+      its symbolic power, nor of the function of that more or less formal spiral
+      line, as expressive, not only of the waves of the sea, but of the zones of
+      the whirlpool, the return of the tempest, and the involution of the
+      labyrinth. And although my readers say that I wrote then better than I
+      write now, I cannot refer you to the passage without asking you to pardon
+      in it what I now hold to be the petulance and vulgarity of expression,
+      disgracing the importance of the truth it contains. A little while ago,
+      without displeasure, you permitted me to delay you by the account of a
+      dispute on a matter of taste between my father and me, in which he was
+      quietly and unavailingly right. It seems to me scarcely a day, since, with
+      boyish conceit, I resisted his wise entreaties that I would re-word this
+      clause; and especially take out of it the description of a sea-wave as
+      "laying a great white tablecloth of foam" all the way to the shore. Now,
+      after an interval of twenty years, I refer you to the passage, repentant
+      and humble as far as regards its style, which people sometimes praised,
+      but with absolue re-assertion of the truth and value of its contents,
+      which people always denied. As natural form is varied, so must beautiful
+      ornament be varied. You are not an artist by reproving nature into
+      deathful sameness, but by animating your copy of her into vital variation.
+      But I thought at that time that only Goths were rightly changeful. I never
+      thought Greeks were. Their reserved variation escaped me, or I thought it
+      accidental. Here, however, is a coin of the finest Greek workmanship,
+      which shows you their mind in this matter unmistakably. Here are the waves
+      of the Adriatic round a knight of Tarentum, and there is no doubt of their
+      variableness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      172. This pattern of sea-wave, or river whirlpool, entirely sacred in the
+      Greek mind, and the {Greek: *bostruchos*} or similarly curling wave in
+      flowing hair, are the two main sources of the spiral form in lambent or
+      rampant decoration. Of such lambent ornament, the most important piece is
+      the crocket, of which I rapidly set before you the origin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      173. Here is a drawing of the gable of the bishop's throne in the upper
+      church at Assisi, of the exact period when the mosaic workers of the
+      thirteenth century at Rome adopted rudely the masonry of the north.
+      Briefly, this is a Greek temple pediment, in which, doubtful of their
+      power to carve figures beautiful enough, they cut a trefoiled hold for
+      ornament, and bordered the edges with harlequinade of mosaic. They then
+      call to their help the Greek sea-waves, and let the surf of the Ægean
+      climb along the slopes, and toss itself at the top into a fleur-de-lys.
+      Every wave is varied in outline and proportionate distance, though cut
+      with a precision of curve like that of the sea itself. From this root we
+      are able&mdash;but it must be in a lecture on crockets only&mdash;to trace
+      the succeeding changes through the curl of Richard II.'s hair, and the
+      crisp leaves of the forests of Picardy, to the knobbed extravagances of
+      expiring Gothic. But I must to-day let you compare one piece of perfect
+      Gothic work with the perfect Greek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      174. There is no question in my own mind, and, I believe, none in that of
+      any other long-practised student of mediæval art, that in pure structural
+      Gothic the church of St. Urbain at Troyes is without rival in Europe. Here
+      is a rude sketch of its use of the crocket in the spandrils of its
+      external tracery, and here are the waves of the Greek sea round the son of
+      Poseidon. Seventeen hundred years are between them, but the same mind is
+      in both. I wonder how many times seventeen hundred years Mr. Darwin will
+      ask, to retrace the Greek designer of this into his primitive ape; or how
+      many times six hundred years of such improvements as we have made on the
+      church of St. Urbain, will be needed in order to enable our descendants to
+      regard the designers of that, as only primitive apes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      175. I return for a moment to my gable at Assisi. You see that the crest
+      of the waves at the top form a rude likeness of a fleur-de-lys. There is,
+      however, in this form no real intention of imitating a flower, any more
+      than in the meeting of the tails of these two Etruscan griffins. The
+      notable circumstance in this piece of Gothic is its advanced form of
+      crocket, and its prominent foliation, with nothing in the least
+      approaching to floral ornament.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      176. And now, observe this very curious fact in the personal character of
+      two contemporary artists. See the use of my manually graspable flag. Here
+      is John of Pisa,&mdash;here Giotto. They are contemporary for twenty
+      years;&mdash;but these are the prime of Giotto's life, and the last of
+      John's life: virtually, Giotto is the later workman by full twenty years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Giotto always uses severe geometrical mouldings, and disdains all
+      luxuriance of leafage to set off interior sculpture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John of Pisa not only adopts Gothic tracery, but first allows himself
+      enthusiastic use of rampant vegetation;&mdash;and here in the façade of
+      Orvieto, you have not only perfect Gothic in the sentiment of Scripture
+      history, but such luxurious ivy ornamentation as you cannot afterwards
+      match for two hundred years. Nay, you can scarcely match it then&mdash;for
+      grace of line, only in the richest flamboyant of France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      177. Now this fact would set you, if you looked at art from its aesthetic
+      side only, at once to find out what German artists had taught Giovanni
+      Pisano. There <i>were</i> Germans teaching him,&mdash;some teaching him
+      many things; and the intense conceit of the modern German artist imagines
+      them to have taught him all things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he learnt his luxuriance, and Giotto his severity, in another school.
+      The quality in both is Greek; and altogether moral. The grace and the
+      redundance of Giovanui are the first strong manifestation of those
+      characters in the Italian mind which culminate in the Madonnas of Luini
+      and the arabesques of Raphael. The severity of Giotto belongs to him, on
+      the contrary, not only as one of the strongest practical men who ever
+      lived on this solid earth, but as the purest and firmest reformer of the
+      discipline of the Christian Church, of whose writings any remains exist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      178. Of whose writings, I say; and you look up, as doubtful that he has
+      left any. Hieroglyphics, then, let me say instead; or, more accurately
+      still, hierographics. St. Francis, in what he wrote and said, taught much
+      that was false. But Giotto, his true disciple, nothing but what was true.
+      And where <i>he</i> uses an arabesque of foliage, depend upon it it will
+      be to purpose&mdash;not redundant. I return for the time to our soft and
+      luxuriant John of Pisa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      179. Soft, but with no unmanly softness; luxuriant, but with no unmannered
+      luxury. To him you owe as to their first sire in art, the grace of
+      Ghiberti, the tenderness of Raphael, the awe of Michael Angelo.
+      Second-rate qualities in all the three, but precious in their kind, and
+      learned, as you shall see, essentially from this man. Second-rate he also,
+      but with most notable gifts of this inferior kind. He is the Canova of the
+      thirteenth century; but the Canova of the thirteenth, remember, was
+      necessarily a very different person from the Canova of the eighteenth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cauova of the eighteenth century mimicked Greek grace for the delight
+      of modern revolutionary sensualists. The Canova of the thirteenth century
+      brought living Gothic truth into the living faith of his own time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Greek truth, and Gothic 'liberty,'&mdash;in that noble sense of the word,
+      derived from the Latin 'liber,' of which I have already spoken, and which
+      in my next lecture I will endeavour completely to develope. Meanwhile let
+      me show you, as far as I can, the architecture itself about which these
+      subtle questions arise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      180. Here are five frames, containing the best representations I can get
+      for you of the façade of the cathedral of Orvieto. I must remind you,
+      before I let you look at them, of the reason why that cathedral was built;
+      for I have at last got to the end of the parenthesis which began in my
+      second lecture, on the occasion of our hearing that John of Pisa was sent
+      for to Perugia, to carve the tomb of Pope Urban IV.; and we must now know
+      who this Pope was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      181. He was a Frenchman, born at that Troyes, in Champagne, which I gave
+      you as the centre of French architectural skill, and Royalist character.
+      He was born in the lowest class of the people, rose like Wolsey; became
+      Bishop of Verdun; then, Patriarch of Jerusalem; returned in the year 1261,
+      from his Patriarchate, to solicit the aid of the then Pope, Alexander IV.,
+      against the Saracen. I do not know on what day he arrived in Rome; but on
+      the 25th of May, Alexander died, and the Cardinals, after three months'
+      disputing, elected the suppliant Patriarch to be Pope himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      182. A man with all the fire of France in him, all the faith, and all the
+      insolence; incapable of doubting a single article of his creed, or
+      relaxing one tittle of his authority; destitute alike of reason and of
+      pity; and absolutely merciless either to an infidel, or an enemy. The
+      young Prince Manfred, bastard son of Frederick II., now representing the
+      main power of the German empire, was both; and against him the Pope
+      brought into Italy a religious French knight, of character absolutely like
+      his own, Charles of Anjou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      183. The young Manfred, now about twenty years old, was as good a soldier
+      as he was a bad Christian; and there was no safety for Urban at Rome. The
+      Pope seated himself on a worthy throne for a thirteenth-century St. Peter.
+      Fancy the rock of Edinburgh Castle, as steep on all sides as it is to the
+      west; and as long as the Old Town; and you have the rock of Orvieto.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      184. Here, enthroned against the gates of hell, in unassailable fortitude,
+      and unfaltering faith, sat Urban; the righteousness of his cause presently
+      to be avouched by miracle, notablest among those of the Roman Church.
+      Twelve miles east of his rock, beyond the range of low Apennine, shone the
+      quiet lake, the Loch Leven of Italy, from whose island the daughter of
+      Theodoric needed not to escape&mdash;Fate seeking her there; and in a
+      little chapel on its shore a Bohemian priest, infected with Northern
+      infidelity, was brought back to his allegiance by seeing the blood drop
+      from the wafer in his hand. And the Catholic Church recorded this heavenly
+      testimony to her chief mystery, in the Festa of the Corpus Domini, and the
+      Fabric of Orvieto.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      185. And sending was made for John, and for all good labourers in marble;
+      but Urban never saw a stone of the great cathedral laid. His citation of
+      Manfred to appear in his presence to answer for his heresy, was fixed
+      against the posts of the doors of the old Duomo. But Urban had dug the
+      foundation of the pile to purpose, and when he died at Perugia, still
+      breathed, from his grave, calamity to Manfred, and made from it glory to
+      the Church. He had secured the election of a French successor; from the
+      rock of Orvieto the spirit of Urban led the French chivalry, when Charles
+      of Anjou saw the day of battle come, so long desired. Manfred's Saracens,
+      with their arrows, broke his first line; the Pope's legate blessed the
+      second, and gave them absolution of all their sins, for their service to
+      the Church. They charged for Orvieto with their old cry of 'Mont-Joie,
+      Chevaliers!' and before night, while Urban lay sleeping in his carved tomb
+      at Perugia, the body of Manfred lay only recognizable by those who loved
+      him, naked among the slain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      186. Time wore on and on. The Suabian power ceased in Italy; between white
+      and red there was now no more contest;&mdash;the matron of the Church,
+      scarlet-robed, reigned, ruthless, on her seven hills. Time wore on; and, a
+      hundred years later, now no more the power of the kings, but the power of
+      the people,&mdash;rose against her. St. Michael, from the corn market,&mdash;Or
+      San Michele,&mdash;the commercial strength of Florence, on a question of
+      free trade in corn. And note, for a little bye piece of botany, that in
+      Val d'Arno lilies grow among the corn instead of poppies. The purple
+      gladiolus glows through all its green fields in early spring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      187. A question of free trade in corn, then, arose between Florence and
+      Rome. The Pope's legate in Bologna stopped the supply of polenta, the
+      Florentines depending on that to eat with their own oil. Very wicked, you
+      think, of the Pope's legate, acting thus against quasi-Protestant
+      Florence? Yes; just as wicked as the&mdash;not quasi-Protestants&mdash;but
+      intensely positive Protestants, of Zurich, who tried to convert the
+      Catholic forest-cantons by refusing them salt. Christendom has been
+      greatly troubled about bread and salt: the then Protestant Pope,
+      Zuinglius, was killed at the battle of Keppel, and the Catholic cantons
+      therefore remain Catholic to this day; while the consequences of this
+      piece of protectionist economy at Bologna are equally interesting and
+      direct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      188. The legate of Bologna, not content with stopping the supplies of
+      maize to Florence, sent our own John Hawkwood, on the 24th June, 1375, to
+      burn all the maize the Florentines had got growing; and the abbot of
+      Montemaggiore sent a troop of Perugian religious gentlemen-riders to
+      ravage similarly the territory of Siena. Whereupon, at Florence, the
+      Gonfalonier of Justice, Aloesio Aldobrandini, rose in the Council of
+      Ancients and proposed, as an enterprise worthy of Florentine generosity,
+      the freedom of all the peoples who groaned under the tyranny of the
+      Church. And Florence, Siena, Pisa, Lucca, and Arezzo,&mdash;all the great
+      cities of Etruria, the root of religion in Italy,&mdash;joined against the
+      tyranny of religion. Strangely, this Etrurian league is not now to restore
+      Tarquin to Rome, but to drive the Roman Tarquin into exile. The story of
+      Lucretia had been repeated in Perugia; but the Umbrian Lucretia had died,
+      not by suicide, but by falling on the pavement from the window through
+      which she tried to escape. And the Umbrian Sextus was the Abbot of
+      Montemaggiore's nephew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      189. Florence raised her fleur-de-lys standard: and, in ten days, eighty
+      cities of Romagua were free, out of the number of whose names I will read
+      you only these&mdash;Urbino, Foligno, Spoleto, Narni, Camerino,
+      Toscanella, Perugia, Orvieto.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And while the wind and the rain still beat the body of Manfred, by the
+      shores of the Rio Verde, the body of Pope Urban was torn from its tomb,
+      and not one stone of the carved work thereof left upon another. 190. I
+      will only ask you to-day to notice farther that the Captain of Florence,
+      in this war, was a 'Conrad of Suabia,' and that she gave him, beside her
+      own flag, one with only the word 'Libertas' inscribed on it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told you that the first stroke of the bell on the Tower of the Lion
+      began the carillon for European civil and religious liberty. But perhaps,
+      even in the fourteenth century, Florence did not understand, by that word,
+      altogether the same policy which is now preached in France, Italy, and
+      England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What she did understand by it, we will try to ascertain in the course of
+      next lecture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LECTURE VIII. FRANCHISE.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ 191. In my first lecture of this course, you remember that I showed
+you the Lion of St. Mark's with Niccola Pisano's, calling the one
+an evangelical-preacher lion, and the other a real, and naturally
+affectionate, lioness.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And the one I showed you as Byzantine, the other as Gothic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So that I thus called the Greek art pious, and the Gothic profane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereas in nearly all our ordinary modes of thought, and in all my own
+      general references to either art, we assume Greek or classic work to be
+      profane, and Gothic, pious, or religious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      192. Very short reflection, if steady and clear, will both show you how
+      confused our ideas are usually on this subject, and how definite they may
+      within certain limits become.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First of all, don't confuse piety with Christianity. There are pious
+      Greeks and impious Greeks; pious Turks and impious Turks; pious Christians
+      and impious Christians; pious modern infidels and impious modern infidels.
+      In case you do not quite know what piety really means, we will try to know
+      better in next lecture; for the present, understand that I mean distinctly
+      to call Greek art, in the true sense of the word, pious, and Gothic, as
+      opposed to it, profane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      193. But when I oppose these two words, Gothic and Greek, don't run away
+      with the notion that I necessarily mean to oppose <i>Christian</i> and
+      Greek. You must not confuse Gothic blood in a man's veins, with Christian
+      feeling in a man's breast. There are unconverted and converted Goths;
+      unconverted and converted Greeks. The Greek and Gothic temper is equally
+      opposed, where the name of Christ has never been uttered by either, or
+      when every other name is equally detested by both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I want you to-day to examine with me that essential difference between
+      Greek and Gothic temper, irrespective of creed, to which I have referred
+      in my preface to the last edition of the "Stones of Venice," saying that
+      the Byzantines gave law to Norman license. And I must therefore ask your
+      patience while I clear your minds from some too prevalent errors as to the
+      meaning of those two words, law and license.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      194. There is perhaps no more curious proof of the disorder which
+      impatient and impertinent science is introducing into classical thought
+      and language, than the title chosen by the Duke of Argyll for his
+      interesting study of Natural History&mdash;'The Reign of Law.' Law cannot
+      reign. If a natural law, it admits no disobedience, and has nothing to put
+      right. If a human one, it can compel no obedience, and has no power to
+      prevent wrong. A king only can reign;&mdash;a person, that is to say, who,
+      conscious of natural law, enforces human law so far as it is just.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      195. Kinghood is equally necessary in Greek dynasty, and in Gothic.
+      Theseus is every inch a king, as well as Edward III. But the laws which
+      they have to enforce on their own and their companions' humanity are
+      opposed to each other as much as their dispositions are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The function of a Greek king was to enforce labour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That of a Gothic king, to restrain rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The laws of Greece determine the wise methods of labour; and the laws of
+      France determine the wise restraints of passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the sins of Greece are in Indolence, and its pleasures; and the sins
+      of France are in fury, and its pleasures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      196. You are now again surprised, probably, at hearing me oppose France
+      typically to Greece. More strictly, I might oppose only a part of France,&mdash;Normandy.
+      But it is better to say, France, {1} as embracing the seat of the
+      established Norman power in the Island of our Lady; and the province in
+      which it was crowned,&mdash;Champagne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: "Normandie, la franche." "France, la solue;" (chanson de
+      Roland). One of my good pupils referred me to this ancient and glorious
+      French song.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      France is everlastingly, by birth, name, and nature, the country of the
+      Franks, or free persons; and the first source of European frankness, or
+      franchise. The Latin for franchise is libertas. But the modern or
+      Cockney-English word liberty,&mdash;Mr. John Stuart Mill's,&mdash;is not
+      the equivalent of libertas; and the modern or Cockney-French word liberté,&mdash;M.
+      Victor Hugo's,&mdash;is not the equivalent of franchise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      197. The Latin for franchise, I have said, is libertas; the Greek is
+      {Greek: *eleupheria*}. In the thoughts of all three nations, the idea is
+      precisely the same, and the word used for the idea by each nation
+      therefore accurately translates the word of the other: {Greek:
+      *eleupheria*}&mdash;libertas&mdash;franchise&mdash;reciprocally translate
+      each other. Leonidas is characteristically {Greek: *eleupheros*} among
+      Greeks; Publicola, characteristically liber, among Romans; Edward III. and
+      the Black Prince, characteristically frank among French. And that common
+      idea, which the words express, as all the careful scholars among you will
+      know, is, with all the three nations, mainly of deliverance from the
+      slavery of passion. To be {Greek: *eleupheros*}, liber, or franc, is first
+      to have learned how to rule our own passions; and then, certain that our
+      own conduct is right, to persist in that conduct against all resistance,
+      whether of counter-opinion, counter pain, or counter-pleasure. To be
+      defiant alike of the mob's thought, of the adversary's threat, and the
+      harlot's temptation,&mdash;this is in the meaning of every great nation to
+      be free; and the one condition upon which that freedom can be obtained is
+      pronounced to you in a single verse of the 119th Psalm, "I will walk at
+      liberty, for I seek Thy precepts."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      198. Thy precepts:&mdash;Law, observe, being dominant over the Gothic as
+      over the Greek king, but a quite different law. Edward III. feeling no
+      anger against the Sieur de Ribaumont, and crowning him with his own pearl
+      chaplet, is obeying the law of love, <i>restraining</i> anger; but
+      Theseus, slaying the Minotaur, is obeying the law of justice, and <i>enforcing</i>
+      anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The one is acting under the law of the charity, {Greek: *charis*} or grace
+      of God; the other under the law of His judgment. The two together fulfil
+      His {Greek: *krisis*} and {Greek: *agapae*}.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      199. Therefore the Greek dynasties are finally expressed in the kinghoods
+      of Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, who judge infallibly, and divide
+      arithmetically. But the dynasty of the Gothic king is in equity and
+      compassion, and his arithmetic is in largesse,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        "Whose moste joy was, I wis,
+     When that she gave, and said, Have this."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      So that, to put it in shortest terms of all, Greek law is of Stasy, and
+      Gothic of Ecstasy; there is no limit to the freedom of the Gothic hand or
+      heart, and the children are most in the delight and the glory of liberty
+      when they most seek their Father's precepts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      200. The two lines I have just quoted are, as you probably remember, from
+      Chaucer's translation of the French Romance of the Rose, out of which I
+      before quoted to you the description of the virtue of Debonnaireté. Now
+      that Debonnaireté of the Painted Chamber of Westminster is the typical
+      figure used by the French sculptors and painters for 'franchise,'
+      frankness, or Frenchness; but in the Painted Chamber, Debonnaireté, high
+      breeding, 'out of goodnestedness,' or gentleness, is used, as an English
+      king's English, of the Norman franchise. Here, then, is our own royalty,&mdash;let
+      us call it Englishness, the grace of our proper kinghood;&mdash;and here
+      is French royalty, the grace of French kinghood&mdash;Frenchness, rudely
+      but sufficiently drawn by M. Didron from the porch of Chartres. She has
+      the crown of fleur-de-lys, and William the Norman's shield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      201. Now this grace of high birth, the grace of his or her Most Gracious
+      Majesty, has her name at Chartres written beside her, in Latin. Had it
+      been in Greek, it would have been {Greek: *elevtheria*}. Being in Latin,
+      what do you think it must be necessarily?&mdash;Of course, Libertas. Now
+      M. Didron is quite the best writer on art that I know,&mdash;full of sense
+      and intelligence; but of course, as a modern Frenchman,&mdash;one of a
+      nation for whom the Latin and Gothic ideas of libertas have entirely
+      vanished,&mdash;he is not on his guard against the trap here laid for him.
+      He looks at the word libertas through his spectacles;&mdash;can't
+      understand, being a thoroughly good antiquary, {1} how such a virtue, or
+      privilege, could honestly be carved with approval in the twelfth century;&mdash;rubs
+      his spectacles; rubs the inscription, to make sure of its every letter;
+      stamps it, to make surer still;&mdash;and at last, though in a greatly
+      bewildered state of mind, remains convinced that here is a sculpture of
+      'La Liberte' in the twelfth century. "C'est bien la liberte!" "On lit
+      parfaitement libertas."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: Historical antiquary; not art-antiquary I must limitedly say,
+      however. He has made a grotesque mess of his account of the Ducal Palace
+      of Venice, through his ignorance of the technical characters of
+      sculpture.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      202. Not so, my good M. Didron!&mdash;a very different personage, this; of
+      whom more, presently, though the letters of her name are indeed so
+      plainly, 'Libertas, at non liberalitas,' liberalitas being the Latin for
+      largesse, not for franchise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, then, is the opposition between the Greek and Gothic dynasties, in
+      their passionate or vital nature; in the <i>animal</i> and <i>inbred</i>
+      part of them;&mdash;Classic and romantic, Static and exstatic. But now,
+      what opposition is there between their divine natures? Between Theseus and
+      Edward III., as warriors, we now know the difference; but between Theseus
+      and Edward III, as theologians; as dreaming and discerning creatures, as
+      didactic kings,&mdash;engraving letters with the point of the sword,
+      instead of thrusting men through with it,&mdash;changing the club into the
+      ferula, and becoming schoolmasters as well as kings; what is, thus, the
+      difference between them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Theologians I called them. Philologians would be a better word,&mdash;lovers
+      of the {Greek: *Logos*}, or Word, by which the heavens and earth were
+      made. What logos, <i>about</i> this Logos, have they learned, or can they
+      teach?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      203. I showed you, in my first lecture, the Byzantine Greek lion, as
+      descended by true unblemished line from the Nemean Greek; but with this
+      difference: Heracles kills the beast, and makes a helmet and cloak of his
+      skin; the Greek St. Mark converts the beast, and makes an evangelist of
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Is not that a greater difference, think you, than one of mere decadence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This 'maniera goffa e sproporzionata' of Vasari is not, then, merely the
+      wasting away of former leonine strength into thin rigidities of death?
+      There is another change going on at the same time,&mdash;body perhaps
+      subjecting itself to spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will not teaze you with farther questions. The facts are simple enough.
+      Theseus and Heracles have their religion, sincere and sufficient,&mdash;a
+      religion of lion-killers, minotaur-killers, very curious and rude;
+      Eleusinian mystery mingled in it, inscrutable to us now,&mdash;partly
+      always so, even to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      204. Well; the Greek nation, in process of time, loses its manliness,&mdash;becomes
+      Graeculus instead of Greek. But though effeminate and feeble, it inherits
+      all the subtlety of its art, all the cunning of its mystery; and it is
+      converted to a more spiritual religion. Nor is it altogether degraded,
+      even by the diminution of its animal energy. Certain spiritual phenomena
+      are possible to the weak, which are hidden from the strong;&mdash;nay, the
+      monk may, in his order of being, possess strength denied to the warrior.
+      Is it altogether, think you, by blundering, or by disproportion in
+      intellect or in body, that Theseus becomes St. Athanase? For that is the
+      kind of change which takes place, from the days of the great King of
+      Athens, to those of the great Bishop of Alexandria, in the thought and
+      theology, or, summarily, in the spirit of the Greek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now we have learned indeed the difference between the Gothic knight and
+      the Greek knight; but what will be the difference between the Gothic saint
+      and Greek saint?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Franchise of body against constancy of body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Franchise of thought, then, against constancy of thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edward III. against Theseus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Frank of Assisi against St. Athanase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      205. Utter franchise, utter gentleness in theological thought. Instead of,
+      'This is the faith, which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be
+      saved,' 'This is the love, which if a bird or an insect keep faithfully,
+      <i>it</i> shall be saved.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gentlemen, you have at present arrived at a phase of natural science in
+      which, rejecting alike the theology of the Byzantine, and the affection of
+      the Frank, you can only contemplate a bird as flying under the reign of
+      law, and a cricket as singing under the compulsion of caloric.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not know whether you yet feel that the position of your boat on the
+      river also depends entirely on the reign of law, or whether, as your
+      churches and concert-rooms are privileged in the possession of organs
+      blown by steam, you are learning yourselves to sing by gas, and expect the
+      Dies Irae to the announced by a steam-trumpet. But I can very positively
+      assure you that, in my poor domain of imitative art, not all the
+      mechanical or gaseous forces of the world, nor all the laws of the
+      universe, will enable you either to see a colour, or draw a line, without
+      that singular force anciently called the soul, which it was the function
+      of the Greek to discipline in the duty of the servants of God, and of the
+      Goth to lead into the liberty of His children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      206. But in one respect I wish you were more conscious of the existence of
+      law than you appear to be. The difference which I have pointed out to you
+      as existing between these great nations, exists also between two orders of
+      intelligence among men, of which the one is usually called Classic, the
+      other Romantic. Without entering into any of the fine distinctions between
+      these two sects, this broad one is to be observed as constant: that the
+      writers and painters of the Classic school set down nothing but what is
+      known to be true, and set it down in the perfectest manner possible in
+      their way, and are thenceforward authorities from whom there is no appeal.
+      Romantic writers and painters, on the contrary, express themselves under
+      the impulse of passions which may indeed lead them to the discovery of new
+      truths, or to the more delightful arrangement or presentment of things
+      already known: but their work, however brilliant or lovely, remains
+      imperfect, and without authority. It is not possible, of course, to
+      separate these two orders of men trenchantly: a classic writer may
+      sometimes, whatever his care, admit an error, and a romantic one may reach
+      perfection through enthusiasm. But, practically, you may separate the two
+      for your study and your education; and, during your youth, the business of
+      us your masters is to enforce on you the reading, for school work, only of
+      classical books: and to see that your minds are both informed of the
+      indisputable facts they contain, and accustomed to act with the infallible
+      accuracy of which they set the example.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      207. I have not time to make the calculation, but I suppose that the daily
+      literature by which we now are principally nourished, is so large in issue
+      that though St. John's "even the world itself could not contain the books
+      which should be written" may be still hyperbole, it is nevertheless
+      literally true that the world might be <i>wrapped</i> in the books which
+      are written; and that the sheets of paper covered with type on any given
+      subject, interesting to the modern mind, (say the prospects of the
+      Claimant,) issued in the form of English morning papers during a single
+      year, would be enough literally to pack the world in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      208. Now I will read you fifty-two lines of a classical author, which,
+      once well read and understood, contain more truth than has been told you
+      all this year by this whole globe's compass of print.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fifty-two lines, of which you will recognize some as hackneyed, and see
+      little to admire in others. But it is not possible to put the statements
+      they contain into better English, nor to invalidate one syllable of the
+      statements they contain. {1}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: 'The Deserted Village,' line 251 to 302.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      209. Even those, and there may be many here, who would dispute the truth
+      of the passage, will admit its exquisite distinctness and construction. If
+      it be untrue, that is merely because I have not been taught by my modern
+      education to recognize a classical author; but whatever my mistakes, or
+      yours, may be, there <i>are</i> certain truths long known to all rational
+      men, and indisputable. You may add to them, but you cannot diminish them.
+      And it is the business of a University to determine what books of this
+      kind exist, and to enforce the understanding of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      210. The classical and romantic arts which we have now under examination
+      therefore consist,&mdash;the first, in that which represented, under
+      whatever symbols, truths respecting the history of men, which it is proper
+      that all should know; while the second owes its interest to passionate
+      impulse or incident. This distinction holds in all ages, but the
+      distinction between the franchise of Northern, and the constancy of
+      Byzantine, art, depends partly on the unsystematic play of emotion in the
+      one, and the appointed sequence of known fact or determined judgment in
+      the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You will find in the beginning of M. Didron's book, already quoted, an
+      admirable analysis of what may be called the classic sequence of Christian
+      theology, as written in the sculpture of the Cathedral of Chartres. You
+      will find in the treatment of the façade of Orvieto the beginning of the
+      development of passionate romance,&mdash;the one being grave sermon
+      writing; the other, cheerful romance or novel writing: so that the one
+      requires you to think, the other only to feel or perceive; the one is
+      always a parable with a meaning, the other only a story with an
+      impression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      211. And here I get at a result concerning Greek art, which is very
+      sweeping and wide indeed. That it is all parable, but Gothic, as distinct
+      from it, literal. So absolutely does this hold, that it reaches down to
+      our modern school of landscape. You know I have always told you Turner
+      belonged to the Greek school. Precisely as the stream of blood coming from
+      under the throne of judgment in the Byzantine mosaic of Torcello is a sign
+      of condemnation, his scarlet clouds are used by Turner as a sign of death;
+      and just as on an Egyptian tomb the genius of death lays the sun down
+      behind the horizon, so in his Cephalus and Procris, the last rays of the
+      sun withdraw from the forest as the nymph expires.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet, observe, both the classic and romantic teaching may be equally
+      earnest, only different in manner. But from classic art, unless you
+      understand it, you may get nothing; from romantic art, even if you don't
+      understand it, you get at least delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      212. I cannot show the difference more completely or fortunately than by
+      comparing Sir Walter Scott's type of libertas, with the franchise of
+      Chartres Cathedral, or Debonnaireté of the Painted Chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Chartres, and Westminster, the high birth is shown by the crown; the
+      strong bright life by the flowing hair; the fortitude by the conqueror's
+      shield; and the truth by the bright openness of the face:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+       "She was not brown, nor dull of hue,
+        But white as snowe, fallen newe."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      All these are symbols, which, if you cannot read, the image is to you only
+      an uninteresting stiff figure. But Sir Walter's Franchise, Diana Vernon,
+      interests you at once in personal aspect and character. She is no symbol
+      to you; but if you acquaint yourself with her perfectly, you find her
+      utter frankness, governed by a superb self-command; her spotless truth,
+      refined by tenderness; her fiery enthusiasm, subdued by dignity; and her
+      fearless liberty, incapable of doing wrong, joining to fulfil to you, in
+      sight and presence, what the Greek could only teach by signs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      213. I have before noticed&mdash;though I am not sure that you have yet
+      believed my statement of it&mdash;the significance of Sir Walter's as of
+      Shakspeare's names; Diana 'Vernon, semper viret,' gives you the conditions
+      of purity and youthful strength or spring which imply the highest state of
+      libertas. By corruption of the idea of purity, you get the modern heroines
+      of London Journal&mdash;or perhaps we may more fitly call it 'Cockney-daily'&mdash;literature.
+      You have one of them in perfection, for instance, in Mr. Charles Reade's
+      'Griffith Gaunt'&mdash;"Lithe, and vigorous, and one with her great white
+      gelding;" and liable to be entirely changed in her mind about the
+      destinies of her life by a quarter of an hour's conversation with a
+      gentleman unexpectedly handsome; the hero also being a person who looks at
+      people whom he dislikes, with eyes "like a dog's in the dark;" and both
+      hero and heroine having souls and intellects also precisely corresponding
+      to those of a dog's in the dark, which is indeed the essential picture of
+      the practical English national mind at this moment,&mdash;happy if it
+      remains doggish,&mdash;Circe not usually being content with changing
+      people into dogs only. For the Diana Vernon of the Greek is Artemis
+      Laphria, who is friendly to the dog; not to the swine. Do you see, by the
+      way, how perfectly the image is carried out by Sir Walter in putting his
+      Diana on the border country? "Yonder blue hill is in Scotland," she says
+      to her cousin,&mdash;not in the least thinking less of him for having been
+      concerned, it may be, in one of Bob Roy's forays. And so gradually you get
+      the idea of Norman franchise carried out in the free-rider or free-booter;
+      not safe from degradation on that side also; but by no means of swinish
+      temper, or foraging, as at present the British speculative public, only
+      with the snout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      214. Finally, in the most soft and domestic form of virtue, you have
+      Wordsworth's ideal:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      "Her household motions light and free,
+       And steps of virgin liberty."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The distinction between these northern types of feminine virtue, and the
+      figures of Alcestis, Antigone, or Iphigenia, lies deep in the spirit of
+      the art of either country, and is carried out into its most unimportant
+      details. We shall find in the central art of Florence at once the
+      thoughtfulness of Greece and the gladness of England, associated under
+      images of monastic severity peculiar to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what Diana Vernon is to a French ballerine dancing the Cancan, the
+      'libertas' of Chartres and Westminster is to the 'liberty' of M. Victor
+      Hugo and Mr. John Stuart Mill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LECTURE IX. THE TYRRHENE SEA.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      215. We may now return to the points of necessary history, having our
+      ideas fixed within accurate limits as to the meaning of the word Liberty;
+      and as to the relation of the passions which separated the Guelph and
+      Ghibelline to those of our own days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Lombard or Guelph league consisted, after the accession of Florence,
+      essentially of the three great cities&mdash;Milan, Bologna, and Florence;
+      the Imperial or Ghibelline league, of Verona, Pisa, and Siena. Venice and
+      Genoa, both nominally Guelph, are in furious contention always for sea
+      empire while Pisa and Genoa are in contention, not so much for empire, as
+      honour. Whether the trade of the East was to go up the Adriatic, or round
+      by the Gulf of Genoa, was essentially a mercantile question; but whether,
+      of the two ports in sight of each other, Pisa or Genoa was to be the Queen
+      of the Tyrrhene Sea, was no less distinctly a personal one than which of
+      two rival beauties shall preside at a tournament.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      216. This personal rivalry, so far as it was separated from their
+      commercial interests, was indeed mortal, but not malignant. The quarrel
+      was to be decided to the death, but decided with honour; and each city had
+      four observers permittedly resident in the other, to give account of all
+      that was done there in naval invention and armament.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      217. Observe, also, in the year 1251, when we quitted our history, we left
+      Florence not only Guelph, as against the Imperial power, (that is to say,
+      the body of her knights who favoured the Pope and Italians, in dominion
+      over those who favoured Manfred and the Germans), but we left her also
+      definitely with her apron thrown over her shield; and the tradesmen and
+      craftsmen in authority over the knight, whether German or Italian, Papal
+      or Imperial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is in 1251. Now in these last two lectures I must try to mark the
+      gist of the history of the next thirty years. The Thirty Years' War, this,
+      of the middle ages, infinitely important to all ages; first observe,
+      between Guelph and Ghibelline, ending in the humiliation of the
+      Ghibelline; and, secondly, between Shield and Apron, or, if you like
+      better, between Spear and Hammer, ending in the breaking of the Spear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      218. The first decision of battle, I say, is that between Guelph and
+      Ghibelline, headed by two men of precisely oppposite characters, Charles
+      of Anjou and Manfred of Suabia. That I may be able to define the
+      opposition of their characters intelligibly, I must first ask your
+      attention to some points of general scholarship. I said in my last lecture
+      that, in this one, it would be needful for us to consider what piety was,
+      if we happened not to know; or worse than that, it may be, not
+      instinctively to feel. Such want of feeling is indeed not likely in you,
+      being English-bred; yet as it is the modern cant to consider all such
+      sentiment as useless, or even shameful, we shall be in several ways
+      advantaged by some examination of its nature. Of all classical writers,
+      Horace is the one with whom English gentlemen have on the average most
+      sympathy; and I believe, therefore, we shall most simply and easily get at
+      our point by examining the piety of Horace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      219. You are perhaps, for the moment, surprised, whatever might have been
+      admitted of Æneas, to hear Horace spoken of as a pious person. But of
+      course when your attention is turned to the matter you will recollect many
+      lines in which the word 'pietas' occurs, of which you have only hitherto
+      failed to allow the force because you supposed Horace did not mean what he
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      220. But Horace always and altogether means what he says. It is just
+      because&mdash;whatever his faults may have been&mdash;he was not a
+      hypocrite, that English gentlemen are so fond of him. "Here is a frank
+      fellow, anyhow," they say, "and a witty one." Wise men know that he is
+      also wise. True men know that he is also true. But pious men, for want of
+      attention, do not always know that he is pious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One great obstacle to your understanding of him is your having been forced
+      to construct Latin verses, with introduction of the word 'Jupiter' always,
+      at need, when you were at a loss for a dactyl. You always feel as if
+      Horace only used it also when he wanted a dactyl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      221. Get quit of that notion wholly. All immortal writers speak out of
+      their hearts. Horace spoke out of the abundance of his heart, and tells
+      you precisely what he is, as frankly as Montaigne. Note then, first, how
+      modest he is: "Ne parva Tyrrhenum per aequor, vela darem;&mdash;Operosa
+      parvus, carmina fingo." Trust him in such words; he absolutely means them;
+      knows thoroughly that he cannot sail the Tyrrhene Sea,&mdash;knows that he
+      cannot float on the winds of Matinum,&mdash;can only murmur in the sunny
+      hollows of it among the heath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But note, secondly, his pride: "Exegi monumentum sere perennius." He is
+      not the least afraid to say that. He did it; knew he had done it; said he
+      had done it; and feared no charge of arrogance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      222. Note thirdly, then, his piety, and accept his assured speech of it:
+      "Dis pietas mea, et Musa, cordi est." He is perfectly certain of that
+      also; serenely tells you so; and you had better believe him. Well for you,
+      if you can believe him; for to believe him, you must understand him first;
+      and I can tell you, you won't arrive at that understanding by looking out
+      the word 'pietas' in your White-and-Riddle. If you do you will find those
+      tiresome contractions, Etym. Dub., stop your inquiry very briefly, as you
+      go back; if you go forward, through the Italian pieta, you will arrive
+      presently in another group of ideas, and end in misericordia, mercy, and
+      pity. You must not depend on the form of the word; you must find out what
+      it stands for in Horace's mind, and in Virgil's. More than race to the
+      Roman; more than power to the statesman; yet helpless beside the grave,&mdash;"Non,
+      Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te, Restitvet pietas."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nay, also what it stands for as an attribute, not only of men, but of
+      gods; nor of those only as merciful, but also as avenging. Against Æneas
+      himself, Dido invokes the waves of the Tyrrhene Sea, "si quid pia numina
+      possunt." Be assured there is no getting at the matter by dictionary or
+      context. To know what love means, you must love; to know what piety means,
+      you must be pious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      223. Perhaps you dislike the word, now, from its vulgar use. You may have
+      another if you choose, a metaphorical one,&mdash;close enough it seems to
+      Christianity, and yet still absolutely distinct from it,&mdash;{Greek:
+      *christos*}. Suppose, as you watch the white bloom of the olives of Val
+      d'Arno and Val di Nievole, which modern piety and economy suppose were
+      grown by God only to supply you with fine Lucca oil, you were to consider,
+      instead, what answer you could make to the Socratio question, {Greek:
+      *pothen un tis tovto to chrisma labot*}. {1}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: Xem. Conviv., ii.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      224. I spoke to you first of Horace's modesty. All piety begins in
+      modesty. You must feel that you are a very little creature, and that you
+      had better do as you are bid. You will then begin to think what you are
+      bid to do, and who bids it. And you will find, unless you are very unhappy
+      indeed, that there is always a quite clear notion of right and wrong in
+      your minds, which you can either obey or disobey, at your pleasure. Obey
+      it simply and resolutely; it will become clearer to you every day: and in
+      obedience to it, you will find a sense of being in harmony with nature,
+      and at peace with God, and all His creatures. You will not understand how
+      the peace comes, nor even in what it consists. It is the peace that passes
+      understanding;&mdash;it is just as visionary and imaginative as love is,
+      and just as real, and just as necessary to the life of man. It is the only
+      source of true cheerfulness, and of true common sense; and whether you
+      believe the Bible, or don't,&mdash;or believe the Koran, or don't&mdash;or
+      believe the Vedas, or don't&mdash;it will enable you to believe in God,
+      and please Him, and be such a part of the {Greek: *eudokia*} of the
+      universe as your nature fits you to be, in His sight, faithful in awe to
+      the powers that are above you, and gracious in regard to the creatures
+      that are around.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      225. I will take leave on this head to read one more piece of Carlyle,
+      bearing much on present matters. "I hope also they will attack earnestly,
+      and at length extinguish and eradicate, this idle habit of 'accounting for
+      the moral sense,' as they phrase it. A most singular problem;&mdash;instead
+      of bending every thought to have more, and ever more, of 'moral sense,'
+      and therewith to irradiate your own poor soul, and all its work, into
+      something of divineness, as the one thing needful to you in this world! A
+      very futile problem that other, my friends; futile, idle, and far worse;
+      leading to what moral ruin, you little dream of! The moral sense, thank
+      God, is a thing you never will 'account for;' that, if you could think of
+      it, is the perennial miracle of man; in all times, visibly connecting poor
+      transitory man, here on this bewildered earth, with his Maker who is
+      eternal in the heavens. By no greatest happiness principle, greatest
+      nobleness principle, or any principle whatever, will you make that in the
+      least clearer than it already is;&mdash;forbear, I say, or you may darken
+      it away from you altogether! 'Two things,' says the memorable Kant,
+      deepest and most logical of metaphysical thinkers, 'two things strike me
+      dumb: the infinite starry heavens; and the sense of right and wrong in
+      man.' Visible infinites, both; say nothing of them; don't try to 'account
+      for them;' for you can say nothing wise."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      226. Very briefly, I must touch one or two further relative conditions in
+      this natural history of the soul. I have asked you to take the
+      metaphorical, but distinct, word '{Greek: *chrisma*}' rather than the
+      direct but obscure one 'piety'; mainly because the Master of your religion
+      chose the metaphorical epithet for the perpetual one of His own life and
+      person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if you will spend a thoughtful hour or two in reading the scripture,
+      which pious Greeks read, not indeed on daintily printed paper, but on
+      daintily painted clay,&mdash;if you will examine, that is to say, the
+      scriptures of the Athenian religion, on their Pan-Athenaic vases, in their
+      faithful days, you will find that the gift of the literal {Greek:
+      *chrisma*}, or anointing oil, to the victor in the kingly and visible
+      contest of life, is signed always with the image of that spirit or goddess
+      of the air who was the source of their invisible life. And let me, before
+      quitting this part of my subject, give you one piece of what you will find
+      useful counsel. If ever from the right apothecary, or {Greek:
+      muropolaes}', you get any of that {Greek: *chrisma*},&mdash;don't be
+      careful, when you set it by, of looking for dead dragons or dead dogs in
+      it. But look out for the dead flies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      227. Again; remember, I only quote St. Paul as I quote Xenophon to you;
+      but I expect you to get some good from both. As I want you to think what
+      Xenophon means by '{Greek: *manteia*},' so I want you to consider also
+      what St. Paul means by '{Greek: *prophetia*}.' He tells you to prove all
+      things,&mdash;to hold fast what is good, and not to despise
+      'prophesyings.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      228. Now it is quite literally probable, that this world, having now for
+      some five hundred years absolutely refused to do as it is plainly bid by
+      every prophet that ever spoke in any nation, and having reduced itself
+      therefore to Saul's condition, when he was answered neither by Urim nor by
+      prophets, may be now, while you sit there, receiving necromantic answers
+      from the witch of Endor. But with that possibility you have no concern.
+      There is a prophetic power in your own hearts, known to the Greeks, known
+      to the Jews, known to the Apostles, and knowable by you. If it is now
+      silent to you, do not despise it by tranquillity under that privation; if
+      it speaks to you, do not despise it by disobedience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      229. Now in this broad definition of Pietas, as reverence to sentimental
+      law, you will find I am supported by all classical authority and use of
+      this word. For the particular meaning of which I am next about to use the
+      word Religion, there is no such general authority, nor can there be, for
+      any limited or accurate meaning of it. The best authors use the word in
+      various senses; and you must interpret each writer by his own context. I
+      have myself continually used the term vaguely. I shall endeavour,
+      henceforward, to use it under limitations which, willing always to accept,
+      I shall only transgress by carelessness, or compliance with some
+      particular use of the word by others. The power in the word, then, which I
+      wish you now to notice, is in its employment with respect to doctrinal
+      divisions. You do not say that one man is of one piety, and another of
+      another; but you do, that one man is of one religion, and another of
+      another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      230. The religion of any man is thus properly to be interpreted, as the
+      feeling which binds him, irrationally, to the fulfilment of duties, or
+      acceptance of beliefs, peculiar to a certain company of which he forms a
+      member, as distinct from the rest of the world. 'Which binds him <i>irrationally</i>,'
+      I say;&mdash;by a feeling, at all events, apart from reason, and often
+      superior to it; such as that which brings back the bee to its hive, and
+      the bird to her nest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A man's religion is the form of mental rest, or dwelling-place, which,
+      partly, his fathers have gained or built for him, and partly, by due
+      reverence to former custom, he has built for himself; consisting of
+      whatever imperfect knowledge may have been granted, up to that time, in
+      the land of his birth, of the Divine character, presence, and dealings;
+      modified by the circumstances of surrounding life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be, that sudden accession of new knowledge may compel him to cast
+      his former idols to the moles and to the bats. But it must be some very
+      miraculous interposition indeed which can justify him in quitting the
+      religion of his forefathers; and, assuredly, it must be an unwise
+      interposition which provokes him to insult it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      231. On the other hand, the value of religious ceremonial, and the virtue
+      of religious truth, consist in the meek fulfilment of the one as the fond
+      habit of a family; and the meek acceptance of the other, as the narrow
+      knowledge of a child. And both are destroyed at once, and the ceremonial
+      or doctrinal prejudice becomes only an occasion of sin, if they make us
+      either wise in our own conceit, or violent in our methods of proselytism.
+      Of those who will compass sea and land to make one proselyte, it is too
+      generally true that they are themselves the children of hell, and make
+      their proselytes twofold more so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      232. And now I am able to state to you, in terms so accurately defined
+      that you cannot misunderstand them, that we are about to study the results
+      in Italy of the victory of an impious Christian over a pious Infidel, in a
+      contest which, if indeed principalities of evil spirit are ever permitted
+      to rule over the darkness of this world, was assuredly by them wholly
+      provoked, and by them finally decided. The war was not actually ended
+      until the battle of Tagliacozzo, fought in August, 1268; but you need not
+      recollect that irregular date, or remember it only as three years after
+      the great battle of Welcome, Benevento; which was the decisive one.
+      Recollect, therefore, securely:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     1250. The First Trades Revolt in Florence.
+      1260. Battle of the Arbia.
+      1265. Battle of Welcome.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then between the battle of Welcome and of Tagliacozzo, (which you might
+      almost English in the real meaning of it as the battle of Hart's Death:
+      'cozzo' is a butt or thrust with the horn, and you may well think of the
+      young Conradin as a wild hart or stag of the hills)&mdash;between those
+      two battles, in 1266, comes the second and central revolt of the trades in
+      Florence, of which I have to speak in next lecture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      233. The two German princes who perished in these two battles&mdash;Manfred
+      of Tarentum, and his nephew and ward Conradin&mdash;are the natural son,
+      and the legitimate grandson of Frederick II.: they are also the last
+      assertors of the infidel German power in south Italy against the Church;
+      and in alliance with the Saracens; such alliance having been maintained
+      faithfully ever since Frederick II.'s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and
+      cornation as its king. Not only a great number of Manfred's forts were
+      commanded by Saracen governors, but he had them also appointed over civil
+      tribunals. My own impression is that he found the Saracens more just and
+      trustworthy than the Christians; but it is proper to remember the
+      allegations of the Church against the whole Suabian family; namely, that
+      Manfred had smothered his father Frederick under cushions at Ferentino;
+      and that, of Frederick's sons, Conrad had poisoned Henry, and Manfred had
+      poisoned Conrad. You will, however, I believe, find the Prince Manfred one
+      of the purest representatives of northern chivalry. Against his nephew,
+      educated in all knightly accomplishment by his mother, Elizabeth of
+      Bavaria, nothing could be alleged by his enemies, even when resolved on
+      his death, but the splendour of his spirit and the brightness of his
+      youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      234. Of the character of their enemy, Charles of Anjou, there will remain
+      on your minds, after careful examination of his conduct, only the doubt
+      whether I am justified in speaking of him as Christian against Infidel.
+      But you will cease to doubt this when you have entirely entered into the
+      conditions of this nascent Christianity of the thirteenth century. You
+      will find that while men who desire to be virtuous receive it as the
+      mother of virtues, men who desire to be criminal receive it as the
+      forgiver of crimes; and that therefore, between Ghibelline or Infidel
+      cruelty, and Guelph or Christian cruelty, there is always this difference,&mdash;that
+      the Infidel cruelty is done in hot blood, and the Christian's in cold. I
+      hope (in future lectures on the architecture of Pisa) to illustrate to you
+      the opposition between the Ghibelline Conti, counts, and the Guelphic
+      Visconti, viscounts or "against counts," which issues, for one thing, in
+      that, by all men blamed as too deliberate, death of the Count Ugolino
+      della Gherardesca. The Count Ugolino was a traitor, who entirely deserved
+      death; but another Count of Pisa, entirely faithful to the Ghibelline
+      cause, was put to death by Charles of Anjou, not only in cold blood, but
+      with resolute infliction of Ugolino's utmost grief;&mdash;not in the
+      dungeon, but in the full light of day&mdash;his son being first put to
+      death before his eyes. And among the pieces of heraldry most significant
+      in the middle ages, the asp on the shield of the Guelphic viscounts is to
+      be much remembered by you as a sign of this merciless cruelty of mistaken
+      religion; mistaken, but not in the least hypocritical. It has perfect
+      confidence in itself, and can answer with serenity for all its deeds. The
+      serenity of heart never appears in the guilty Infidels; they die in
+      despair or gloom, greatly satisfactory to adverse religious minds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      235. The French Pope, then, Urban of Troyes, had sent for Charles of
+      Anjou; who would not have answered his call, even with all the strength of
+      Anjou and Provence, had not Scylla of the Tyrrhene Sea been on his side.
+      Pisa, with eighty galleys (the Sicilian fleet added to her own), watched
+      and defended the coasts of Rome. An irresistible storm drove her fleet to
+      shelter; and Charles, in a single ship, reached the mouth of the Tiber,
+      and found lodgings at Rome in the convent of St. Paul. His wife meanwhile
+      spent her dowry in increasing his land army, and led it across the Alps.
+      How he had got his wife, and her dowry, we must hear in Villani's words,
+      as nearly as I can give their force in English, only, instead of the
+      English word pilgrim, I shall use the Italian 'romeo' for the sake both of
+      all English Juliets, and that you may better understand the close of the
+      sixth canto of the Paradise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      236. "Now the Count Raymond Berenger had for his inheritance all Provence
+      on this side Rhone; and he was a wise and courteous signor, and of noble
+      state, and virtuous; and in his time they did honourable things; and to
+      his court came by custom all the gentlemen of Provence, and France, and
+      Catalonia, for his courtesy and noble state; and there they made many
+      cobbled verses, and Provençal songs of great sentences."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      237. I must stop to tell you that 'cobbled' or 'coupled' verses mean
+      rhymes, as opposed to the dull method of Latin verse; for we have now got
+      an ear for jingle, and know that dove rhymes to love. Also, "songs of
+      great sentences" mean didactic songs, containing much in little, (like the
+      new didactic Christian painting,) of which an example (though of a later
+      time) will give you a better idea than any description.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        "Vraye foy de necessité,
+         Non tant seulement d'equité,
+         Nous fait de Dieu sept choses croire:
+         C'est sa doulce nativité,
+         Son baptesme d'humilité,
+         Et sa mort, digne de mémoire:
+         Son descens en la chartre noire,
+         Et sa resurrection, voire;
+         S'ascencion d'auctorité,
+         La venue judicatoire,
+         Ou ly bons seront mis en gloire,
+         Et ly mals en adversité."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      238. "And while they were making these cobbled verses and harmonious
+      creeds, there came a romeo to court, returning from the shrine of St.
+      James." I must stop again just to say that he ought to have been called a
+      pellegrino, not a romeo, for the three kinds of wanderers are,&mdash;Palmer,
+      one who goes to the Holy Land; Pilgrim, one who goes to Spain; and Romeo,
+      one who goes to Rome. Probably this romeo had been to both. "He stopped at
+      Count Raymond's court, and was so wise and worthy (valoroso), and so won
+      the Count's grace, that he made him his master and guide in all things.
+      Who also, maintaining himself in honest and religious customs of life, in
+      a little time, by his industry and good sense, doubled the Count's
+      revenues three times over, maintaining always a great and honoured court.
+      Now the Count had four daughters, and no son; and by the sense and
+      provision of the good romeo&mdash;(I can do no better than translate
+      'procaccio' provision, but it is only a makeshift for the word derived
+      from procax, meaning the general talent of prudent impudence, in getting
+      forward; 'forwardness,' has a good deal of the true sense, only diluted;)&mdash;well,
+      by the sense and&mdash;progressive faculty, shall we say?&mdash;of the
+      good pilgrim, he first married the eldest daughter, by means of money, to
+      the good King Louis of France, saying to the Count, 'Let me alone,&mdash;Lascia-mi-fare&mdash;and
+      never mind the expense, for if you marry the first one well, I'll marry
+      you all the others cheaper, for her relationship."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      239. "And so it fell out, sure enough; for incontinently the King of
+      England (Henry III.) because he was the King of France's relation, took
+      the next daughter, Eleanor, for very little money indeed; next, his
+      natural brother, elect King of the Romans, took the third; and, the
+      youngest still remaining unmarried,&mdash;says the good romeo, 'Now for
+      this one, I will you to have a strong man for son-in-law, who shall be thy
+      heir;'&mdash;and so he brought it to pass. For finding Charles, Count of
+      Anjou, brother of the King Louis, he said to Raymond, "'Give her now to
+      him, for his fate is to be the best man in the world,'&mdash;prophesying
+      of him. And so it was done. And after all this it came to pass, by envy
+      which ruins all good, that the barons of Provence became jealous of the
+      good romeo, and accused him to the Count of having ill-guided his goods,
+      and made Raymond demand account of them. Then the good romeo said, 'Count,
+      I have served thee long, and have put thee from little state into mighty,
+      and for this, by false counsel of thy people, thou art little grateful. I
+      came into thy court a poor romeo; I have lived honestly on thy means; now,
+      make to be given to me my little mule and my staff and my wallet, as I
+      came, and I will make thee quit of all my service.' The Count would not he
+      should go; but for nothing would he stay; and so he came, and so he
+      departed, that no one ever knew whence he had come, nor whither he went.
+      It was the thought of many that he was indeed a sacred spirit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      240. This pilgrim, you are to notice, is put by Dante in the orb of
+      justice, as a just servant; the Emperor Justinian being the image of a
+      just ruler. Justinian's law-making turned out well for England; but the
+      good romeo's match-making ended ill for it; and for Borne, and Naples
+      also. For Beatrice of Provence resolved to be a queen like her three
+      sisters, and was the prompting spirit of Charles's expedition to Italy.
+      She was crowned with him, Queen of Apulia and Sicily, on the day of the
+      Epiphany, 1265; she and her husband bringing gifts that day of magical
+      power enough; and Charles, as soon as the feast of coronation was over,
+      set out to give battle to Manfred and his Saracens. "And this Charles,"
+      says Villani, "was wise, and of sane counsel; and of prowess in arms, and
+      fierce, and much feared and redoubted by all the kings in the world;&mdash;magnanimous
+      and of high purposes; fearless in the carrying forth of every great
+      enterprise; firm in every adversity; a verifier of his every word;
+      speaking little,&mdash;doing much; and scarcely ever laughed, and then but
+      a little; sincere, and without flaw, as a religious and catholic person;
+      stern in justice, and fierce in look; tall and nervous in person, olive
+      coloured, and with a large nose, and well he appeared a royal majesty more
+      than other men. Much he watched, and little he slept; and used to say that
+      so much time as one slept, one lost; generous to his men-at-arms, but
+      covetous to acquire land, signory, and coin, come how it would, to furnish
+      his enterprises and wars: in courtiers, servants of pleasure, or jocular
+      persons, he delighted never."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      241. To this newly crowned and resolute king, riding south from Rome,
+      Manfred, from his vale of Nocera under Mount St. Augelo, sends to offer
+      conditions of peace. Jehu the son of Nimshi is not swifter of answer to
+      Ahaziah's messenger than the fiery Christian king, in his 'What hast thou
+      to do with peace?' Charles answers the messengers with his own lips: "Tell
+      the Sultan of Nocera, this day I will put him in hell, or he shall put me
+      in paradise."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      242. Do not think it the speech of a hypocrite. Charles was as fully
+      prepared for death that day as ever Scotch Covenanter fighting for his
+      Holy League; and as sure that death would find him, if it found, only to
+      glorify and bless. Balfour of Burley against Claverhouse is not more
+      convinced in heart that he draws the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. But
+      all the knightly pride of Claverhouse himself is knit together, in
+      Charles, with fearless faith, and religious wrath. "This Saracen scum, led
+      by a bastard German,&mdash;traitor to his creed, usurper among his race,&mdash;dares
+      it look me, a Christian knight, a prince of the house of France, in the
+      eyes? Tell the Sultan of Nocera, to-day I put him in hell, or he puts me
+      in paradise."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They are not passionate words neither; any more than hypocritical ones.
+      They are measured, resolute, and the fewest possible. He never wasted
+      words, nor showed his mind, but when he meant it should be known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      243. The messenger returned, thus answered; and the French king rode on
+      with his host. Manfred met him in the plain of Grandella, before
+      Benevento. I have translated the name of the fortress 'Welcome.' It was
+      altered, as you may remember, from Maleventum, for better omen; perhaps,
+      originally, only {Greek: *maloeis*}&mdash;a rock full of wild goats?&mdash;associating
+      it thus with the meaning of Tagliacozzo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      244. Charles divided his army into four companies. The captain of his own
+      was our English Guy de Montfort, on whom rested the power and the fate of
+      his grandfather, the pursuer of the Waldensian shepherds among the rocks
+      of the wild goats. The last, and it is said the goodliest, troop was of
+      the exiled Guelphs of Florence, under Guido Guerra, whose name you already
+      know. "These," said Manfred, as he watched them ride into their ranks,
+      "cannot lose to-day." He meant that if he himself was the victor, he would
+      restore these exiles to their city. The event of the battle was decided by
+      the treachery of the Count of Caserta, Manfred's brother-in-law. At the
+      end of the day only a few knights remained with him, whom he led in the
+      last charge. As he helmed himself, the crest fell from his helmet. "Hoc
+      est signum Dei," he said,&mdash;so accepting what he saw to be the purpose
+      of the Ruler of all things; not claiming God as his friend. not asking
+      anything of Him, as if His purpose could be changed; not fearing Him as an
+      enemy; but accepting simply His sign that the appointed day of death was
+      come. He rode into the battle armed like a nameless soldier, and lay
+      unknown among the dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      245. And in him died all southern Italy. Never, after that day's
+      treachery, did her nobles rise, or her people prosper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the finding of the body of Manfred, and its casting forth, accursed,
+      you may read, if you will, the story in Dante. I trace for you to-day
+      rapidly only the acts of Charles after this victory, and its consummation,
+      three years later, by the defeat of Conradin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The town of Benevento had offered no resistance to Charles, but he gave it
+      up to pillage, and massacred its inhabitants. The slaughter,
+      indiscriminate, continued for eight days; the women and children were
+      slain with the men, being of Saracen blood. Manfred's wife, Sybil of
+      Epirus, his children, and all his barons, died, or were put to death, in
+      the prisons of Provence. With the young Conrad, all the faithful
+      Ghibel-line knights of Pisa were put to death. The son of Frederick of
+      Antioch, who drove the Guelphs from Florence, had his eyes torn out, and
+      was hanged, he being the last child of the house of Suabia. Twenty-four of
+      the barons of Calabria were executed at Gallipoli, and at Home. Charles
+      cut off the feet of those who had fought for Conrad; then&mdash;fearful
+      lest they should be pitied&mdash;shut them into a house of wood, and
+      burned them. His lieutenant in Sicily, William of the Standard, besieged
+      the town of Augusta, which defended itself with some fortitude, but was
+      betrayed, and all its inhabitants, (who must have been more than three
+      thousand, for there were a thousand able to bear arms,) massacred in cold
+      blood; the last of them searched for in their hiding-places, when the
+      streets were empty, dragged to the sea-shore, then beheaded, and their
+      bodies thrown into the sea. Throughout Calabria the Christian judges of
+      Charles thus forgave his enemies. And the Mohammedan power and heresy
+      ended in Italy, and she became secure in her Catholic creed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      246. Not altogether secure under French dominion. After fourteen years of
+      misery, Sicily sang her angry vespers, and a Calabrian admiral burnt the
+      fleet of Charles before his eyes, where Scylla rules her barking Salamis.
+      But the French king died in prayerful peace, receiving the sacrament with
+      these words of perfectly honest faith, as he reviewed his past life: "Lord
+      God, as I truly believe that you are my Saviour, so I pray you to have
+      mercy on my soul; and as I truly made the conquest of Sicily more to serve
+      the Holy Church than for my own covetousness, so I pray you to pardon my
+      sins."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      247. You are to note the two clauses of this prayer. He prays absolute
+      mercy, on account of his faith in Christ; but remission of purgatory, in
+      proportion to the quantity of good work he has done, or meant to do, as
+      against evil. You are so much wiser in these days, you think, not
+      believing in purgatory; and so much more benevolent,&mdash;not massacring
+      women and children. But we must not be too proud of not believing in
+      purgatory, unless we are quite sure of our real desire to be purified: and
+      as to our not massacring children, it is true that an English gentleman
+      will not now himself willingly put a knife into the throat either of a
+      child or a lamb; but he will kill any quantity of children by disease in
+      order to increase his rents, as unconcernedly as he will eat any quantity
+      of mutton. And as to absolute massacre, I do not suppose a child feels so
+      much pain in being killed as a full-grown man, and its life is of less
+      value to it. No pain either of body or thought through which you could put
+      an infant, would be comparable to that of a good son, or a faithful lover,
+      dying slowly of a painful wound at a distance from a family dependent upon
+      him, or a mistress devoted to him. But the victories of Charles, and the
+      massacres, taken in sum, would not give a muster-roll of more than twenty
+      thousand dead; men, women, and children counted all together. On the
+      plains of France, since I first began to speak to you on the subject of
+      the arts of peace, at least five hundred thousand men, in the prime of
+      life, have been massacred by the folly of one Christian emperor, the
+      insolence of another, and the mingling of mean rapacity with meaner
+      vanity, which Christian nations now call 'patriotism.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      248. But that the Crusaders, (whether led by St. Louis or by his brother,)
+      who habitually lived by robbery, and might be swiftly enraged to murder,
+      were still too savage to conceive the spirit or the character of this
+      Christ whose cross they wear, I have again and again alleged to you; not,
+      I imagine, without question from many who have been accustomed to look to
+      these earlier ages as authoritative in doctrine, if not in example. We
+      alike err in supposing them more spiritual or more dark, than our own.
+      They had not yet attained to the knowledge which we have despised, nor
+      dispersed from their faith the shadows with which we have again
+      overclouded ours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their passions, tumultuous and merciless as the Tyrrhene Sea, raged indeed
+      with the danger, but also with the uses, of naturally appointed storm;
+      while ours, pacific in corruption, languish in vague maremma of misguided
+      pools; and are pestilential most surely as they retire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LECTURE X. FLEUR DE LYS.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ 249. Through all the tempestuous winter which during the period of
+history we have been reviewing, weakened, in their war with the opposed
+rocks of religious or knightly pride, the waves of the Tuscan Sea,
+there has been slow increase of the Favonian power which is to bring
+fruitfulness to the rock, peace to the wave. The new element which is
+introduced in the thirteenth century, and perfects for a little time the
+work of Christianity, at least in some few chosen souls, is the law of
+Order and Charity, of intellectual and moral virtue, which it now became
+the function of every great artist to teach, and of every true citizen
+to maintain.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      250. I have placed on your table one of the earliest existing engravings
+      by a Florentine hand, representing the conception which the national mind
+      formed of this spirit of order and tranquillity, "Cosmico," or the Equity
+      of Kosmos, not by senseless attraction, but by spiritual thought and law.
+      He stands pointing with his left hand to the earth, set only with tufts of
+      grass; in his right hand he holds the ordered system of the universe&mdash;heaven
+      and earth in one orb;&mdash;the heaven made cosmic by the courses of its
+      stars; the earth cosmic by
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: PLATE IX.&mdash;THE CHARGE TO ADAM. MODERN ITALIAN. }
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      the seats of authority and fellowship,&mdash;castles on the hills and
+      cities in the plain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      251. The tufts of grass under the feet of this figure will appear to you,
+      at first, grotesquely formal. But they are only the simplest expression,
+      in such herbage, of the subjection of all vegetative force to this law of
+      order, equity, or symmetry, which, made by the Greek the principal method
+      of his current vegetative sculpture, subdues it, in the hand of Cora or
+      Triptolemus, into the merely triple sceptre, or animates it, in Florence,
+      to the likeness of the Fleur-de-lys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      252. I have already stated to you that if any definite flower is meant by
+      these triple groups of leaves, which take their authoritatively typical
+      form in the crowns of the Cretan and Laciuian Hera, it is not the violet,
+      but the purple iris; or sometimes, as in Pindar's description of the birth
+      of Ismus, the yellow water-flag, which you know so well in spring, by the
+      banks of your Oxford streams. {1} But, in general, it means simply the
+      springing of beautiful and orderly vegetation in fields upon which the dew
+      falls pure. It is the expression, therefore, of peace on the redeemed and
+      cultivated earth, and of the pleasure of heaven in the uncareful happiness
+      of men clothed without labour, and fed without fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: In the catalogues of the collection of drawings in this room,
+      and in my "Queen of the Air" you will find all that I would ask you to
+      notice about the various names and kinds of the flower, and their symbolic
+      use.&mdash;Note only, with respect to our present purpose, that while the
+      true white lily is placed in the hands of the Angel of the Annunciation
+      even by Florentine artists, in their general design, the fleur-de-lys is
+      given to him by Giovaiini Pisano on the façade of Orvieto; and that the
+      flower in the crown-circlets of European kings answers, as I stated to you
+      in my lecture on the Corona, to the Narcissus fillet of early Greece; the
+      crown of abundance and rejoicing.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      253. In the passage, so often read by us, which announces the advent of
+      Christianity as the dawn of peace on earth, we habitually neglect great
+      part of the promise, owing to the false translation of the second clause
+      of the sentence. I cannot understand how it should be still needful to
+      point out to you here in Oxford that neither the Greek words {Greek: *"en
+      anthriopois evdokia,"*} nor those of the vulgate, "in terra pax hominibus
+      bonæ voluntatis," in the slightest degree justify our English words,
+      "goodwill to men."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of God's goodwill to men, and to all creatures, for ever, there needed no
+      proclamation by angels. But that men should be able to please <i>Him</i>,&mdash;that
+      their wills should be made holy, and they should not only possess peace in
+      themselves, but be able to give joy to their God, in the sense in which He
+      afterwards is pleased with His own baptized Son;&mdash;this was a new
+      thing for Angels to declare, and for shepherds to believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      254. And the error was made yet more fatal by its repetition in a passage
+      of parallel importance,&mdash;the thanksgiving, namely, offered by Christ,
+      that His Father, while He had hidden what it was best to know, not from
+      the wise and prudent, but from some among the wise and prudent, and had
+      revealed it unto babes; not 'for so it seemed good' in His sight, but
+      'that there might be well pleasing in His sight,'&mdash;namely, that the
+      wise and simple might equally live in the necessary knowledge, and enjoyed
+      presence, of God. And if, having accurately read these vital passages, you
+      then as carefully consider the tenour of the two songs of human joy in the
+      birth of Christ, the Magnificat, and the Nunc dimittis, you will find the
+      theme of both to be, not the newness of blessing, but the equity which
+      disappoints the cruelty and humbles the strength of men; which scatters
+      the proud in the imagination of their hearts; which fills the hungry with
+      good things; and is not only the glory of Israel, but the light of the
+      Gentiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      255. As I have been writing these paragraphs, I have been checking myself
+      almost at every word,&mdash;wondering, Will they be restless on their
+      seats at this, and thinking all the while that they did not come here to
+      be lectured on Divinity? You may have been a little impatient,&mdash;how
+      could it well be otherwise? Had I been explaining points of anatomy, and
+      showing you how you bent your necks and straightened your legs, you would
+      have thought me quite in my proper function; because then, when you went
+      with a party of connoisseurs through the Vatican, you could point out to
+      them the insertion of the clavicle in the Apollo Belvidere; and in the
+      Sistine Chapel the perfectly accurate delineation of the tibia in the legs
+      of Christ. Doubtless; but you know I am lecturing at present on the goffi,
+      and not on Michael Angelo; and the goffi are very careless about clavicles
+      and shin-bones; so that if, after being lectured on anatomy, you went into
+      the Campo Santo of Pisa, you would simply find nothing to look at, except
+      three tolerably well-drawn skeletons. But if after being lectured on
+      theology, you go into the Campo Santo of Pisa, you will find not a little
+      to look at, and to remember.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      256. For a single instance, you know Michael Angelo is admitted to have
+      been so far indebted to these goffi as to borrow from the one to whose
+      study of mortality I have just referred, Orcagna, the gesture of his
+      Christ in the Judgment, He borrowed, however, accurately speaking, the
+      position only, not the gesture; nor the meaning of it. {1} You all
+      remember the action of Michael Angelo's Christ,&mdash;the right hand
+      raised as if in violence of reprobation; and the left closed across His
+      breast, as refusing all mercy. The action is one which appeals to persons
+      of very ordinary sensations, and is very naturally adopted by the
+      Renaissance painter, both for its popular effect, and its capabilities for
+      the exhibition of his surgical science. But the old painter-theologian,
+      though indeed he showed the right hand of Christ lifted, and the left hand
+      laid across His breast, had another meaning in the actions. The fingers of
+      the left hand are folded, in both the figures; but in Michael Angelo's as
+      if putting aside an appeal; in Orcagna's, the fingers are bent to draw
+      back the drapery from the right side. The right hand is raised by Michael
+      Angelo as in anger; by Orcagna, only to show the wounded palm. And as, to
+      the believing disciples, He showed them His hands and His side, so that
+      they were glad,&mdash;so, to the unbelievers, at their judgment, He shows
+      the wounds in hand and side. They shall look on Him whom they pierced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote: I found all this in M. Didron's Iconographie, above quoted; I
+      had never noticed the difference between the two figures myself.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      257. And thus, as we follow our proposed examination of the arts of the
+      Christian centuries, our understanding of their work will be absolutely
+      limited by the degree of our sympathy with the religion which our fathers
+      have bequeathed to us. You cannot interpret classic marbles without
+      knowing and loving your Pindar and Æschylus, neither can you interpret
+      Christian pictures without knowing and loving your Isaiah and Matthew. And
+      I shall have continually to examine texts of the one as I would verses of
+      the other; nor must you retract yourselves from the labour in suspicion
+      that I desire to betray your scepticism, or undermine your positivism,
+      because I recommend to you the accurate study of books which have hitherto
+      been the light of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      258. The change, then, in the minds of their readers at this date, which
+      rendered it possible for them to comprehend the full purport of
+      Christianity, was in the rise of the new desire for equity and rest,
+      amidst what had hitherto been mere lust for spoil, and joy in battle. The
+      necessity for justice was felt in the now extending commerce; the desire
+      of rest in the now pleasant and fitly furnished habitation; and the energy
+      which formerly could only be satisfied in strife, now found enough both of
+      provocation and antagonism in the invention of art, and the forces of
+      nature. I have in this course of lectures endeavoured to fasten your
+      attention on the Florentine Revolution of 1250, because its date is so
+      easily memorable, and it involves the principles of every subsequent one,
+      so as to lay at once the foundations of whatever greatness Florence
+      afterwards achieved by her mercantile and civic power. But I must not
+      close even this slight sketch of the central history of Val d'Aruo without
+      requesting you, as you find time, to associate in your minds, with this
+      first revolution, the effects of two which followed it, being indeed
+      necessary parts of it, in the latter half of the century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      259. Remember then that the first, in 1250, is embryonic; and the
+      significance of it is simply the establishment of order, and justice
+      against violence and iniquity. It is equally against the power of knights
+      and priests, so far as either are unjust,&mdash;not otherwise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Manfred fell at Benevento, his lieutenant, the Count Guido Novello,
+      was in command of Florence. He was just, but weak; and endeavoured to
+      temporize with the Guelphs. His effort ought to be notable to you, because
+      it was one of the wisest and most far-sighted ever made in Italy; but it
+      failed for want of resolution, as the gentlest and best men are too apt to
+      fail. He brought from Bologna two knights of the order&mdash;then recently
+      established&mdash;of joyful brethren; afterwards too fatally corrupted,
+      but at this time pure in purpose. They constituted an order of chivalry
+      which was to maintain peace, obey the Church, and succour widows and
+      orphans; but to be bound by no monastic vows. Of these two knights, he
+      chose one Guelph, the other Ghibelline; and under their balanced power
+      Gruido hoped to rank the forces of the civil, manufacturing, and trading
+      classes, divided into twelve corporations of higher and lower arts. {1}
+      But the moment this beautiful arrangement was made, all parties&mdash;Guelph,
+      Ghibelline, and popular,&mdash;turned unanimously against Count Guido
+      Novello. The benevolent but irresolute captain indeed gathered his men
+      into the square of the Trinity; but the people barricaded the streets
+      issuing from it; and Guido, heartless, and unwilling for civil warfare,
+      left the city with his Germans in good order. And so ended the incursion
+      of the infidel Tedeschi for this time. The Florentines then dismissed the
+      merry brothers whom the Tedeschi had set over them, and besought help from
+      Orvieto and Charles of Anjou; who sent them Guy de Montfort and eight
+      hundred French riders; the blessing of whose presence thus, at their own
+      request, was granted them on Easter Day, 1267.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote: The seven higher arts were, Lawyers, Physicians, Bankers,
+      Merchants of Foreign Goods, Wool Manufacturers, Silk Manufacturers,
+      Furriers. The five lower arts were, Retail Sellers of Cloth, Butchers,
+      Shoemakers, Masons and Carpenters, Smiths.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Candlemas, if you recollect, 1251, they open their gates to the
+      Germans; and on Easter, 1267, to the French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      260. Remember, then, this revolution, as coming between the battles of
+      Welcome and Tagliacozzo; and that it expresses the lower revolutionary
+      temper of the trades, with English and French assistance. Its immediate
+      result was the appointment of five hundred and sixty lawyers, woolcombers,
+      and butchers, to deliberate upon all State questions,&mdash;under which
+      happy ordinances you will do well, in your own reading, to leave Florence,
+      that you may watch, for a while, darling little Pisa, all on fire for the
+      young Conradin. She sent ten vessels across the Gulf of Genoa to fetch
+      him; received his cavalry in her plain of Sarzana; and putting five
+      thousand of her own best sailors into thirty ships, sent them to do what
+      they could, all down the coast of Italy. Down they went; startling Gaeta
+      with an attack as they passed; found Charles of Anjou's French and
+      Sicilian fleet at Messina, fought it, beat it, and burned twenty-seven of
+      its ships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      261. Meantime, the Florentines prospered as they might with their
+      religious-democratic constitution,&mdash;until the death, in the odour of
+      sanctity, of Charles of Anjou, and of that Pope Martin IV. whose tomb was
+      destroyed with Urban's at Perugia. Martin died, as you may remember, of
+      eating Bolsena eels,&mdash;that being his share in the miracles of the
+      lake; and you will do well to remember at the same time, that the price of
+      the lake eels was three soldi a pound; and that Niccola of Pisa worked at
+      Siena for six soldi a day, and his son Giovanni for four.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      262. And as I must in this place bid farewell, for a time, to Niccola and
+      to his son, let me remind you of the large commission which the former
+      received on the occasion of the battle of Tagliacozzo, and its subsequent
+      massacres, when the victor, Charles, having to his own satisfaction
+      exterminated the seed of infidelity, resolves, both in thanksgiving, and
+      for the sake of the souls of the slain knights for whom some hope might
+      yet be religiously entertained, to found an abbey on the battle-field. In
+      which purpose he sent for Niccola to Naples, and made him build on the
+      field of Tagliacozzo, a church and abbey of the richest; and caused to be
+      buried therein the infinite number of the bodies of those who died in that
+      battle day; ordering farther, that, by many monks, prayer should be made
+      for their souls, night and day. In which fabric the king was so pleased
+      with Niccola's work that he rewarded and honoured him highly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      263. Do you not begin to wonder a little more what manner of man this
+      Nicholas was, who so obediently throws down the towers which offend the
+      Ghibelliues, and so skilfully puts up the pinnacles which please the
+      Guelphs? A passive power, seemingly, he;&mdash;plastic in the hands of any
+      one who will employ him to build, or to throw down. On what exists of
+      evidence, demonstrably in these years here is the strongest brain of
+      Italy, thus for six shilling a day doing what it is bid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      264. I take farewell of him then, for a little time, ratifying to you, as
+      far as my knowledge permits, the words of my first master in Italian art,
+      Lord Lindsay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In comparing the advent of Niccola Pisano to that of the sun at his
+      rising, I am conscious of no exaggeration; on the contrary, it is the only
+      simile by which I can hope to give you an adequate impression of his
+      brilliancy and power relatively to the age in which he flourished. Those
+      sons of Erebus, the American Indians, fresh from their traditional
+      subterranean world, and gazing for the first time on the gradual dawning
+      of the day in the East, could not have been more dazzled, more astounded,
+      when the sun actually appeared, than the popes and podestas, friars and
+      freemasons must have been in the thirteenth century, when from among the
+      Biduinos, Bonannos, and Antealmis of the twelfth, Niccola emerged in his
+      glory, sovereign and supreme, a fount of light, diffusing warmth and
+      radiance over Christendom. It might be too much to parallel him in actual
+      genius with Dante and Shakspeare; they stand alone and unapproachable,
+      each on his distinct pinnacle of the temple of Christian song; and yet
+      neither of them can boast such extent and durability of influence, for
+      whatever of highest excellence has been achieved in sculpture and
+      painting, not in Italy only, but throughout Europe, has been in obedience
+      to the impulse he primarily gave, and in following up the principle which
+      he first struck out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "His latter days were spent in repose at Pisa, but the precise year of his
+      death is uncertain; Vasari fixes it in 1275; it could not have been much
+      later. He was buried in the Campo Santo. Of his personal character we,
+      alas! know nothing; even Shakspeare is less a stranger to us. But that it
+      was noble, simple, and consistent, and free from the petty foibles that
+      too frequently beset genius, may be fairly presumed from the works he has
+      left behind him, and from the eloquent silence of tradition."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      265. Of the circumstances of Niccola Pisano's death, or the ceremonials
+      practised at it, we are thus left in ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The more exemplary death of Charles of Aujou took place on the 7th of
+      January, then, 1285; leaving the throne of Naples to a boy of twelve; and
+      that of Sicily, to a Prince of Spain. Various discord, between French,
+      Spanish, and Calabrese vices, thenceforward paralyzes South Italy, and
+      Florence becomes the leading power of the Guelph faction. She had been
+      inflamed and pacified through continual paroxysms of civil quarrel during
+      the decline of Charles's power; but, throughout, the influence of the
+      nobles declines, by reason of their own folly and insolence; while the
+      people, though with no small degree of folly and insolence on their own
+      side, keep hold of their main idea of justice. In the meantime, similar
+      assertions of law against violence, and the nobility of useful occupation,
+      as compared with that of idle rapine, take place in Bologna, Siena, and
+      even at Rome, where Bologna sends her senator, Branca Leone, (short for
+      Branca-di-Leone, Lion's Grip,) whose inflexible and rightly guarded reign
+      of terror to all evil and thievish persons, noble or other, is one of the
+      few passages of history during the middle ages, in which the real power of
+      civic virtue may be seen exercised without warping by party spirit, or
+      weakness of vanity or fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      266. And at last, led by a noble, Giano della Bella, the people of
+      Florence write and establish their final condemnation of noblesse living
+      by rapine, those 'Ordinamenti della Giustizia,' which practically excluded
+      all idle persons from government, and determined that the priors, or
+      leaders of the State, should be priors, or leaders of its arts and
+      productive labour; that its head 'podesta' or 'power' should be the
+      standard-bearer of justice; and its council or parliament composed of
+      charitable men, or good men: "boni viri," in the sense from which the
+      French formed their noun 'bonte.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The entire governing body was thus composed, first, of the Podestas,
+      standard-bearer of justice; then of his military captain; then of his
+      lictor, or executor; then of the twelve priors of arts and liberties&mdash;properly,
+      deliberators on the daily occupations, interests, and pleasures of the
+      body politic;&mdash;and, finally, of the parliament of "kind men," whose
+      business was to determine what kindness could be shown to other states, by
+      way of foreign policy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      267. So perfect a type of national government has only once been reached
+      in the history of the human race. And in spite of the seeds of evil in its
+      own impatience, and in the gradually increasing worldliness of the
+      mercantile body; in spite of the hostility of the angry soldier, and the
+      malignity of the sensual priest, this government gave to Europe the entire
+      cycle of Christian art, properly so called, and every highest Master of
+      labour, architectural, scriptural, or pictorial, practised in true
+      understanding of the faith of Christ;&mdash;Orcagna, Giotto, Brunelleschi,
+      Lionardo, Luini as his pupil, Lippi, Luca, Angelico, Botticelli, and
+      Michael Angelo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      268. I have named two men, in this group, whose names are more familiar to
+      your ears than any others, Angelico and Michael Angelo;&mdash;who yet are
+      absent from my list of those whose works I wish you to study, being both
+      extravagant in their enthusiasm,&mdash;the one for the nobleness of the
+      spirit, and the other for that of the flesh. I name them now, because the
+      gifts each had were exclusively Florentine; in whatever they have become
+      to the mind of Europe since, they are utterly children of the Val d'Arno.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      269. You are accustomed, too carelessly, to think of Angelico as a child
+      of the Church, rather than of Florence. He was born in l387,&mdash;just
+      eleven years, that is to say, after the revolt of Florence <i>against</i>
+      the Church, and ten after the endeavour of the Church to recover her power
+      by the massacres of Faenza and Cesena. A French and English army of
+      pillaging riders were on the other side of the Alps,&mdash;six thousand
+      strong; the Pope sent for it; Robert Cardinal of Geneva brought it into
+      Italy. The Florentines fortified their Apennines against it; but it took
+      winter quarters at Cesena, where the Cardinal of Geneva massacred five
+      thousand persons in a day, and the children and sucklings were literally
+      dashed against the stones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      270. That was the school which the Christian Church had prepared for their
+      brother Angelica. But Fèsole, secluding him in the shade of her mount of
+      Olives, and Florence revealing to him the true voice of his Master, in the
+      temple of St. Mary of the Flower, taught him his lesson of peace on earth,
+      and permitted him his visions of rapture in heaven. And when the massacre
+      of Cesena was found to have been in vain, and the Church was compelled to
+      treat with the revolted cities who had united to mourn for her victories,
+      Florence sent her a living saint, Catherine of Siena, for her political
+      Ambassador.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      271. Of Michael Angelo I need not tell you: of the others, we will read
+      the lives, and think over them one by one; the great fact which I have
+      written this course of lectures to enforce upon your minds is the
+      dependence of all the arts on the virtue of the State, and its kindly
+      order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The absolute mind and state of Florence, for the seventy years of her
+      glory, from 1280 to 1350, you find quite simply and literally described in
+      the ll2th Psalm, of which I read you the descriptive verses, in the words
+      in which they sang it, from this typically perfect manuscript of the time:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ Gloria et divitie in domo ejus, justitia ejus manet in seculum seculi.
+  Exortum est in tenebris lumen reotis, misericors, et miserator, et
+Justus.  Jocundus homo, qui miseretur, et commodat: disponet sermones suos  in
+judicio.  Dispersit, dedit pauperibus; justitia ejus manet in seculum seculi;
+  cornu ejus exaltabitur in gloria.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I translate simply, praying you to note as the true one, the <i>literal</i>
+      meaning of every word:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ Glory and riches are in his house. His justice remains for ever.
+  Light is risen in darkness for the straightforward people.
+  He is merciful in heart, merciful in deed, and just.
+  A jocund man; who is merciful, and lends.
+  He will dispose his words in judgment.
+  He hath dispersed. He hath given to the poor. His justice remain!
+    for ever. His horn shall be exalted in glory.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      272. With vacillating, but steadily prevailing effort, the Florentines
+      maintained this life and character for full half a century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You will please now look at my staff of the year 1300, {Footnote: Page 33
+      in my second lecture on Engraving.} adding the names of Dante and Orcagna,
+      having each their separate masterful or prophetic function.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is Florence's contribution to the intellectual work of the world
+      during these years of justice. Now, the promise of Christianity is given
+      with lesson from the fleur-de-lys: Seek ye first the royalty of God, and
+      His justice, "and all these things," material wealth, "shall be added unto
+      you." It is a perfectly clear, perfectly literal,&mdash;never failing and
+      never unfulfilled promise. There is no instance in the whole cycle of
+      history of its not being accomplished,&mdash;fulfilled to the uttermost,
+      with full measure, pressed down, and running over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      273. Now hear what Florence was, and what wealth she had got by her
+      justice. In the year 1330, before she fell, she had within her walls a
+      hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, of whom all the men&mdash;(laity)&mdash;between
+      the ages of fifteen and seventy, were ready at an instant to go out to
+      war, under their banners, in number twenty-four thousand. The army of her
+      entire territory was eighty thousand; and within it she counted fifteen
+      hundred noble, families, every one absolutely submissive to her gonfalier
+      of justice. She had within her walls a hundred and ten churches, seven
+      priories, and thirty hospitals for the sick and poor; of foreign guests,
+      on the average, fifteen hundred, constantly. From eight to ten thousand
+      children were taught to read in her schools. The town was surrounded by
+      some fifty square miles of uninterrupted garden, of olive, corn, vine,
+      lily, and rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the monetary existence of England and France depended upon her wealth.
+      Two of her bankers alone had lent Edward III. of England five millions of
+      money (in sterling value of this present hour).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      274. On the 10th of March, 1337, she was first accused, with truth, of
+      selfish breach of treaties. On the l0th of April, all her merchants in
+      France were imprisoned by Philip Valois; and presently afterwards Edward
+      of England failed, quite in your modern style, for his five millions.
+      These money losses would have been nothing to her; but on the 7th of
+      August, the captain of her army, Pietro de' Rossi of Parma, the
+      unquestioned best knight in Italy, received a chance spear-stroke before
+      Monselice, and died next day. He was the Bayard of Italy; and greater than
+      Bayard, because living in a nobler time. He never had failed in any
+      military enterprise, nor ever stained success with cruelty or shame. Even
+      the German troops under him loved him without bounds. To his companions he
+      gave gifts with such largesse, that his horse and armour were all that at
+      any time he called his own. Beautiful and pure as Sir Galahad, all that
+      was brightest in womanhood watched and honoured him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And thus, 8th August, 1337, he went to his own place.&mdash;To-day I trace
+      the fall of Florence no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will review the points I wish you to remember; and briefly meet, so far
+      as I can, the questions which I think should occur to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      275. I have named Edward III. as our heroic type of Franchise. And yet I
+      have but a minute ago spoken of him as 'failing' in quite your modern
+      manner. I must correct my expression:&mdash;he had no intent of failing
+      when he borrowed; and did not spend his money on himself. Nevertheless, I
+      gave him as an example of frankness; but by no means of honesty. He is
+      simply the boldest and royalest of Free Riders; the campaign of Crecy is,
+      throughout, a mere pillaging foray. And the first point I wish you to
+      notice is the difference in the pecuniary results of living by robbery,
+      like Edward III., or by agriculture and just commerce, like the town of
+      Florence. That Florence can lend five millions to the King of England, and
+      loose them with little care, is the result of her olive gardens and her
+      honesty. Now hear the financial phenomena attending military exploits, and
+      a life of pillage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      276. I give you them in this precise year, 1338, in which the King of
+      England failed to the Florentines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He obtained from the prelates, barons, and knights of the
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: PLATE X.&mdash;THE NATIVITY. GIOVANNI PISANO. }
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      shires, one half of their wool for this year&mdash;a very valuable and
+      extraordinary grant. He seized all the tin "(above-ground, you mean Mr.
+      Henry!)" in Cornwall and Devonshire, took possession of the lands of all
+      priories alien, and of the money, jewels, and valuable effects of the
+      Lombard merchants. He demanded certain quantities of bread, corn, oats,
+      and bacon, from each county; borrowed their silver plate from many abbeys,
+      as well as great sums of money both abroad and at home; and pawned his
+      crown for fifty thousand florins." {1}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote 1: Henry's "History of England," book iv., chap. i.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He pawns his queen's jewels next year; and finally summons all the
+      gentlemen of England who had forty pounds a year, to come and receive the
+      honour of knighthood, or pay to be excused!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      277. II. The failures of Edward, or of twenty Edwards, would have done
+      Florence no harm, had she remained true to herself, and to her
+      neighbouring states. Her merchants only fall by their own increasing
+      avarice; and above all by the mercantile form of pillage, usury. The idea
+      that money could beget money, though more absurd than alchemy, had yet an
+      apparently practical and irresistibly tempting confirmation in the wealth
+      of villains, and the success of fools. Alchemy, in its day, led to pure
+      chemistry; and calmly yielded to the science it had fostered. But all
+      wholesome indignation against usurers was prevented, in the Christian
+      mind, by wicked and cruel religious hatred of the race of Christ. In the
+      end, Shakspeare himself, in his fierce effort against the madness,
+      suffered himself to miss his mark by making his usurer a Jew: the
+      Franciscan institution of the Mount of Pity failed before the lust of
+      Lombardy, and the logic of Augsburg; and, to this day, the worship of the
+      Immaculate Virginity of Money, mother of the Omnipotence of Money, is the
+      Protestant form of Madonna worship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      278. III. The usurer's fang, and the debtor's shame, might both have been
+      trodden down under the feet of Italy, had her knights and her workmen
+      remained true to each other. But the brotherhoods of Italy were not of
+      Cain to Abel&mdash;but of Cain to Cain. Every man's sword was against his
+      fellow. Pisa sank before Genoa at Meloria, the Italian Ægos-Potamos; Genoa
+      before Venice in the war of Chiozza, the Italian siege of Syracuse.
+      Florence sent her Brunelleschi to divert the waves of Serchio against the
+      walls of Lucca; Lucca her Castruccio, to hold mock tournaments before the
+      gates of vanquished Florence. The weak modern Italian reviles or bewails
+      the acts of foreign races, as if his destiny had depended upon these; let
+      him at least assume the pride, and bear the grief, of remembering that,
+      among all the virgin cities of his country, there has not been one which
+      would not ally herself with a stranger, to effect a sister's ruin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      279. Lastly. The impartiality with which I have stated the acts, so far as
+      known to me, and impulses, so far as discernible by me, of the contending
+      Church and Empire, cannot but give offence, or provoke suspicion, in the
+      minds of those among you who are accustomed to hear the cause of Religion
+      supported by eager disciples, or attacked by confessed enemies. My
+      confession of hostility would be open, if I were an enemy indeed; but I
+      have never possessed the knowledge, and have long ago been cured of the
+      pride, which makes men fervent in witness for the Church's virtue, or
+      insolent in declamation against her errors. The will of Heaven, which
+      grants the grace and ordains the diversities of Religion, needs no
+      defence, and sustains no defeat, by the humours of men; and our first
+      business in relation to it is to silence our wishes, and to calm our
+      fears. If, in such modest and disciplined temper, you arrange your
+      increasing knowledge of the history of mankind, you will have no final
+      difficulty in distinguishing the operation of the Master's law from the
+      consequences of the disobedience to it which He permits; nor will you
+      respect the law less, because, accepting only the obedience of love, it
+      neither hastily punishes, nor pompously rewards, with what men think
+      reward or chastisement. Not always under the feet of Korah the earth is
+      rent; not always at the call of Elijah the clouds gather; but the guarding
+      mountains for ever stand round about Jerusalem; and the rain, miraculous
+      evermore, makes green the fields for the evil and the good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      280. And if you will fix your minds only on the conditions of human life
+      which the Giver of it demands, "He hath shown thee, oh man, what is good,
+      and what doth thy Lord require of thee, but to do justice, and to love
+      mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God," you will find that such obedience
+      is always acknowledged by temporal blessing. If, turning from the manifest
+      miseries of cruel ambition, and manifest wanderings of insolent belief,
+      you summon to your thoughts rather the state of unrecorded multitudes, who
+      laboured in silence, and adored in humility, widely as the snows of
+      Christendom brought memory of the Birth of Christ, or her spring sunshine,
+      of His Resurrection, you may know that the promise of the Bethlehem angels
+      has been literally fulfilled; and will pray that your English fields,
+      joyfully as the banks of Arno, may still dedicate their pure lilies to St.
+      Mary of the Flower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_APPE" id="link2H_APPE"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      APPENDIX. (NOTES ON THE PLATES ILLUSTRATING THIS VOLUME.)
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the delivery of the preceding Lectures, some account was given of the
+      theologic design of the sculptures by Giovanni Pisano at Orvieto, which I
+      intended to have printed separately, and in more complete form, in this
+      Appendix. But my strength does not now admit of my fulfilling the half of
+      my intentions, and I find myself, at present, tired, and so dead in
+      feeling, that I have no quickness in interpretation, or skill in
+      description of emotional work. I must content myself, therefore, for the
+      time, with a short statement of the points which I wish the reader to
+      observe in the Plates, and which were left unnoticed in the text.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The frontispiece is the best copy I can get, in permanent materials, of a
+      photograph of the course of the Arno, through Pisa, before the old banks
+      were destroyed. Two arches of the Ponte-a-Mare which was carried away in
+      the inundation of 1870, are seen in the distance; the church of La Spina,
+      in its original position overhanging the river; and the buttressed and
+      rugged walls of the mediaeval shore. Never more, any of these, to be seen
+      in reality, by living eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLATE I.&mdash;A small portion of a photograph of Nicolo Pisano's
+      Adoration of the Magi, on the pulpit of the Pisan Baptistery. The
+      intensely Greek character of the heads, and the severely impetuous
+      chiselling (learned from Late Roman rapid work), which drives the lines of
+      the drapery nearly straight, may be seen better in a fragment of this
+      limited measure than in the crowded massing of the entire subject. But it
+      may be observed also that there is both a thoughtfulness and a tenderness
+      in the features, whether of the Virgin or the attendant angel, which
+      already indicate an aim beyond that of Greek art.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLATE II&mdash;The Pulpit of the Baptistery (of which the preceding plate
+      represents a portion). I have only given this general view for convenience
+      of reference. Beautiful photographs of the subject on a large scale are
+      easily attainable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLATE III.&mdash;The Fountain of Perugia. Executed from a sketch by Mr.
+      Arthur Severn. The perspective of the steps is not quite true; we both
+      tried to get it right, but found that it would be a day or two's work, to
+      little purpose, and so let them go at hazard. The inlaid pattern behind is
+      part of the older wall of the cathedral; the late door is of course
+      inserted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLATE IV., LETTER E.&mdash;From Norman Bible in the British Museum;
+      showing the moral temper which regulated common ornamentation in the
+      twelfth century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLATE V.&mdash;Door of the Baptistery at Pisa. The reader must note that,
+      although these plates are necessarily, in fineness of detail, inferior to
+      the photographs from which they are taken, they have the inestimable
+      advantage of permanence, and will not fade away into spectres when the
+      book is old. I am greatly puzzled by the richness of the current
+      ornamentation on the main pillars, as opposed to the general severity of
+      design. I never can understand how the men who indulged in this flowing
+      luxury of foliage were so stern in their masonry and figure-draperies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLATE VI.&mdash;Part of the lintel of the door represented on Plate V.,
+      enlarged. I intended, in the Lecture on Marble Couchant, to have insisted,
+      at some length, on the decoration of the lintel and side-posts, as one of
+      the most important phases of mystic ecclesiastical sculpture. But I find
+      the materials furnished by Lucca, Pisa, and Florence, for such an essay
+      are far too rich to be examined cursorily; the treatment even of this
+      single lintel could scarcely be enough explained in the close of the
+      Lecture. I must dwell on some points of it now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Look back to Section 175 in "Aratra Pentelici," giving statement of the
+      four kinds of relief in sculpture. The uppermost of these plinths is of
+      the kind I have called 'round relief'; you might strike it out on a coin.
+      The lower is 'foliate relief'; it looks almost as if the figures had been
+      cut out of one layer of marble, and laid against another behind it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The uppermost, at the distance of my diagram, or in nature itself, would
+      scarcely be distinguished at a careless glance from an egg-and-arrow
+      moulding. You could not have a more simple or forcible illustration of my
+      statement in the first chapter of "Aratra," that the essential business of
+      sculpture is to produce a series of agreeable bosses or rounded surfaces;
+      to which, if possible, some meaning may afterwards be attached. In the
+      present instance, every egg becomes an angel, or evangelist, and every
+      arrow a lily, or a wing. {1} The whole is in the most exquisitely finished
+      Byzantine style.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote: In the contemporary south door of the Duomo of Genoa, the Greek
+      moulding is used without any such transformation.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am not sure of being right in my interpretation of the meaning of these
+      figures; but I think there can be little question about it. There are
+      eleven altogether; the three central, Christ with His mother and St.
+      Joseph; then, two evangelists, with two alternate angels, on each side.
+      Each of these angels carries a rod, with a fleur-de-lys termination; their
+      wings decorate the intermediate ridges (formed, in a pure Greek moulding,
+      by the arrows); and, behind the heads of all the figures, there is now a
+      circular recess; once filled, I doubt not, by a plate of gold. The Christ,
+      and the Evangelists, all carry books, of which each has a mosaic, or
+      intaglio ornament, in the shape of a cross. I could not show you a more
+      severe or perfectly representative piece of <i>architectural</i>
+      sculpture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heads of the eleven figures are as simply decorative as the ball
+      flowers are in our English Gothic tracery; the slight irregularity
+      produced by different gesture and character giving precisely the sort of
+      change which a good designer wishes to see in the parts of a consecutive
+      ornament.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moulding closes at each extremity with a palm-tree, correspondent in
+      execution with those on coins of Syracuse; for the rest, the interest of
+      it consists only in these slight variations of attitude by which the
+      figures express wonder or concern at some event going on in their
+      presence. They are looking down; and I do not doubt, are intended to be
+      the heavenly witnesses of the story engraved on the stone below,&mdash;The
+      Life and Death of the Baptist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lower stone on which this is related, is a model of skill in Fiction,
+      properly so called. In Fictile art, in Fictile history, it is equally
+      exemplary. 'Feigning' or 'affecting' in the most exquisite way by
+      fastening intensely on the principal points.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ask yourselves what are the principal points to be insisted on, in the
+      story of the Baptist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came, "preaching the Baptism of Repentance for the remission of sins."
+      That is his Advice, or Order-preaching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he came, "to bear witness of the Light." "Behold the Lamb of God,
+      which taketh away the sins of the world." That is his declaration, or
+      revelation-preaching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the end of his own life is in the practice of this preaching&mdash;if
+      you will think of it&mdash;under curious difficulties in both kinds.
+      Difficulties in putting away sin&mdash;difficulties in obtaining sight.
+      The first half of the stone begins with the apocalyptic preaching. Christ,
+      represented as in youth, is set under two trees, in the wilderness. St.
+      John is scarcely at first seen; he is only the guide, scarcely the
+      teacher, of the crowd of peoples, nations, and languages, whom he leads,
+      pointing them to the Christ. Without doubt, all these figures have
+      separate meaning. I am too ignorant to interpret it; but observe
+      generally, they are the thoughtful and wise of the earth, not its ruffians
+      or rogues. This is not, by any means, a general amnesty to blackguards,
+      and an apocalypse to brutes, which St. John is preaching. These are quite
+      the best people he can find to call, or advise. You see many of them carry
+      rolls of paper in their hands, as he does himself. In comparison with the
+      books of the upper cornice, these have special meaning, as throughout
+      Byzantine design.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ "Adverte quod patriarchæ et prophetse pinguntur cum rotulis
+  in manibus; quidam vero apostoli cum libris, et quidam
+  cum rotulis. Nempe quia ante Christi adventum fides figurative
+  ostendebatur, et quoad multa, in se implicita erat. Ad
+  quod ostendendum patriarchse et prophetæ pinguntur cum rotulis,
+  per quos quasi qusedam imperfecta cognitio design atur;
+  quia vero apostoli a Christo perfecte edocti suut, ideo libris,
+  per quos designatur perfecta cognitio, uti possunt."
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        WILLIAM DURANDUS, quoted by Didron, p. 305.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      PLATE VII.&mdash;Next to this subject of the preaching comes the Baptism:
+      and then, the circumstances of St. John's death. First, his declaration to
+      Herod, "It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife:" on which he
+      is seized and carried to prison:&mdash;next, Herod's feast,&mdash;the
+      consultation between daughter and mother, "What shall I ask?"&mdash;the
+      martyrdom, and burial by the disciples. The notable point in the treatment
+      of all these subjects is the quiet and mystic Byzantine dwelling on
+      thought rather than action. In a northern sculpture of this subject, the
+      daughter of Herodias would have been assuredly dancing; and most probably,
+      casting a somersault. With the Byzantine, the debate in her mind is the
+      only subject of interest, and he carves above, the evil angels, laying
+      their hands on the heads, first of Herod and Herodias, and then of
+      Herodias and her daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLATE VIII.&mdash;The issuing of commandment not to eat of the tree of
+      knowledge. (Orvieto Cathedral.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, with Plates X. and XII., will give a sufficiently clear conception
+      to any reader who has a knowledge of sculpture, of the principles of
+      Giovanni Pisano's design. I have thought it well worth while to publish
+      opposite two of them, facsimiles of the engravings which profess to
+      represent them in Gruiier's monograph {1} of the Orvieto sculptures; for
+      these outlines will, once for all, and better than any words, show my
+      pupils what is the real virue of mediaeval work,&mdash;the power which we
+      medievalists rejoice in it for. Precisely the qualities which are <i>not</i>
+      in the modern drawings, are the essential virtues of the early sculpture.
+      If you like the Gruner outlines best, you need not trouble yourself to go
+      to Orvieto, or anywhere else in Italy. Sculpture, such as those outlines
+      represent, can be supplied to you by the acre, to order, in any modern
+      academician's atelier. But if you like the strange, rude, quaint, Gothic
+      realities (for these photographs are, up to a certain point, a vision of
+      the reality) best; then, don't study mediaeval art under the direction of
+      modern illustrators. Look at it&mdash;for however short a time, where you
+      can find it&mdash;veritable and untouched, however mouldered or shattered.
+      And abhor, as you would the mimicry of your best friend's manners by a
+      fool, all restorations and improving copies. For remember, none but fools
+      think they can restore&mdash;none, but worse fools, that they can improve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Footnote: The drawings are by some Italian draughtsman, whose name it is
+      no business of mine to notice.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Examine these outlines, then, with extreme care, and point by point. The
+      things which they have refused or lost, are the things you have to love,
+      in Giovanni Pisano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will merely begin the task of examination, to show you how to set about
+      it. Take the head of the commanding Christ. Although inclined forward from
+      the shoulders in the advancing motion of the whole body, the head itself
+      is not stooped; but held entirely upright, the line of forehead sloping
+      backwards. The command is given in calm authority; not in mean anxiety.
+      But this was not expressive enough for the copyist,&mdash;"How much better
+      <i>I</i> can show what is meant!" thinks he. So he puts the line of
+      forehead and nose upright; projects the brow out of its straight line; and
+      the expression then becomes,&mdash;"Now, be very careful, and mind what I
+      say." Perhaps you like this 'improved' action better? Be it so; only, it
+      is not Giovanni Pisano's design; but the modern Italian's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next, take the head of Eve. It is much missed in the photograph&mdash;nearly
+      all the finest lines lost&mdash;but enough is got to show Giovanni's mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It appears, he liked long-headed people, with sharp chins and straight
+      noses. It might be very wrong of him; but that was his taste. So much so,
+      indeed, that Adam and Eve have,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: PLATE XI.&mdash;THE NATIVITY. MODERN ITALIAN.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      both of them, heads not much shorter than one-sixth of their entire
+      height.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your modern Academy pupil, of course, cannot tolerate this monstrosity. He
+      indulgently corrects Giovanni, and Adam and Eve have entirely orthodox
+      one-eighth heads, by rule of schools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But how of Eve's sharp-cut nose and pointed chin, thin lips, and look of
+      quiet but rather surprised attention&mdash;not specially reverent, but
+      looking keenly out from under her eyelids, like a careful servant
+      receiving an order?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well&mdash;those are all Giovanni's own notions;&mdash;not the least
+      classical, nor scientific, nor even like a pretty, sentimental modern
+      woman. Like a Florentine woman&mdash;in Giovanni's time&mdash;it may be;
+      at all events, very certainly, what Giovanni thought proper to carve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now examine your modern edition. An entirely proper Greco-Roman academy
+      plaster bust, with a proper nose, and proper mouth, and a round chin, and
+      an expression of the most solemn reverence; always, of course, of a
+      classical description. Very fine, perhaps. But not Giovanni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After Eve's head, let us look at her feet. Giovanni has his own positive
+      notions about those also. Thin and bony, to excess, the right, undercut
+      all along, so that the profile looks as thin as the mere elongated line on
+      an Etruscan vase; and the right showing the five toes all well separate,
+      nearly straight, and the larger ones almost as long as fingers! the shin
+      bone above carried up in as severe and sharp a curve as the edge of a
+      sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now examine the modern copy. Beautiful little fleshy, Venus-de'-Medici
+      feet and toes&mdash;no undercutting to the right foot,&mdash;the left
+      having the great-toe properly laid over the second, according to the
+      ordinances of schools and shoes, and a well-developed academic and
+      operatic calf and leg. Again charming, of course. But only according to
+      Mr. Gibson or Mr. Power&mdash;not according to Giovanni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Farther, and finally, note the delight with which Giovanni has dwelt,
+      though without exaggeration, on the muscles of the breast and ribs in the
+      Adam; while he has subdued all away into virginal severity in Eve. And
+      then note, and with conclusive admiration, how in the exact and only place
+      where the poor modern fool's anatomical knowledge should have been shown,
+      the wretch loses his hold of it! How he has entirely missed and effaced
+      the grand Greek pectoral muscles of Giovanni's Adam, but has studiously
+      added what mean fleshliness he could to the Eve; and marked with black
+      spots the nipple and navel, where Giovanni left only the severe marble in
+      pure light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These instances are enough to enable you to detect the insolent changes in
+      the design of Giovanni made by the modern Academy-student in so far as
+      they relate to form absolute. I must farther, for a few moments, request
+      your attention to the alterations made in the light and shade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You may perhaps remember some of the passages. They occur frequently, both
+      in my inaugural lectures, and in "Aratra Pentelici," in which I have
+      pointed out the essential connection between the schools of sculpture and
+      those of chiaroscuro. I have always spoken of the Greek, or essentially
+      sculpture-loving schools, as chiaroscurist; always of the Gothic, or
+      colour-loving schools, as non-chiaroscurist. And in one place, (I have not
+      my books here, and cannot refer to it,) I have even defined sculpture as
+      light-and-shade drawing with the chisel. Therefore, the next point you
+      have to look to, after the absolute characters of form, is the mode in
+      which the sculptor has placed his shadows, both to express these, and to
+      force the eye to the points of his composition which he wants looked at.
+      You cannot possibly see a more instructive piece of work, in these
+      respects, than Giovanni's design of the Nativity, Plate X. So far as I yet
+      know Christian art, this is the central type of the treatment of the
+      subject; it has all the intensity and passion of the earliest schools,
+      together with a grace of repose which even in Ghiberti's beautiful
+      Nativity, founded upon it, has scarcely been increased, but rather lost in
+      languor. The motive of the design is the frequent one among all the early
+      masters; the Madonna lifts the covering from the cradle to show the Child
+      to one of the servants, who starts forward adoring. All the light and
+      shade is disposed
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ {Illustration: PLATE XII.&mdash;THE ANNUNCIATION AND VISITATION.}
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      to fix the eye on these main actions. First, one intense deeply-cut mass
+      of shadow, under the pointed arch, to throw out the head and lifted hand
+      of the Virgin. A vulgar sculptor would have cut all black behind the head;
+      Giovanni begins with full shadow; then subdues it with drapery absolutely
+      quiet in fall; then lays his fullest possible light on the head, the hand,
+      and the edge of the lifted veil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He has undercut his Madonna's profile, being his main aim, too delicately
+      for time to spare; happily the deep-cut brow is left, and the exquisitely
+      refined line above, of the veil and hair. The rest of the work is
+      uninjured, and the sharpest edges of light are still secure. You may note
+      how the passionate action of the servant is given by the deep shadows
+      under and above her arm, relieving its curves in all their length, and by
+      the recess of shade under the cheek and chin, which lifts the face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now take your modern student's copy, and look how <i>he</i> has placed his
+      lights and shades. You see, they go as nearly as possible exactly where
+      Giovanni's <i>don't</i>. First, pure white under this Gothic arch, where
+      Giovanni has put his fullest dark. Secondly, just where Giovanni has used
+      his whole art of chiselling, to soften his stone away, and show the
+      wreaths of the Madonna's hair lifting her veil behind, the accursed modern
+      blockhead carves his shadow straight down, because he thinks that will be
+      more in the style of Michael Angelo. Then he takes the shadows away from
+      behind the profile, and from under the chin, and from under the arm, and
+      puts in two grand square blocks of dark at the ends of the cradle, that
+      you may be safe to look at that, instead of the Child. Next, he takes it
+      all away from under the servant's arms, and lays it all behind above the
+      calf of her leg. Then, not having wit enough to notice Giovanni's
+      undulating surface beneath the drapery of the bed on the left, he limits
+      it with a hard parallel-sided bar of shade, and insists on the vertical
+      fold under the Madonna's arm, which Giovanni has purposely cut flat that
+      it may not interfere with the arm above; finally, the modern animal has
+      missed the only pieces of womanly form which Giovanni admitted, the
+      rounded right arm and softly revealed breast; and absolutely removed, as
+      if it were no part of the composition, the horizontal incision at the base
+      of all&mdash;out of which the first folds of the drapery rise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot give you any better example, than this modern Academy-work, of
+      the total ignorance of the very first meaning of the word 'Sculpture' into
+      which the popular schools of existing art are plunged. I will not insist,
+      now, on the uselessness, or worse, of their endeavours to represent the
+      older art, and of the necessary futility of their judgment of it. The
+      conclusions to which I wish to lead you on these points will be the
+      subject of future lectures, being of too great importance for examination
+      here. But you cannot spend your time in more profitable study than by
+      examining and comparing, touch for touch, the treatment of light and
+      shadow in the figures of the Christ and sequent angels, in Plates VIII.
+      and IX., as we have partly examined those of the subject before us; and in
+      thus assuring yourself of the uselessness of trusting to any ordinary
+      modern copyists, for anything more than the rudest chart or map&mdash;and
+      even that inaccurately surveyed&mdash;of ancient design.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last plate given in this volume contains the two lovely subjects of
+      the Annunciation and Visitation, which, being higher from the ground, are
+      better preserved than the groups represented in the other plates. They
+      will be found to justify, in subtlety of chiselling, the title I gave to
+      Giovanni, of the Canova of the thirteenth century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am obliged to leave without notice, at present, the branch of ivy, given
+      in illustration of the term 'marble rampant,' at the base of Plate VIII.
+      The foliage of Orvieto can only be rightly described in connection with
+      the great scheme of leaf-ornamentation which ascended from the ivy of the
+      Homeric period in the sculptures of Cyprus, to the roses of Botticelli,
+      and laurels of Bellini and Titian.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
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+  </body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Val d'Arno, by John Ruskin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Val d'Arno
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+
+Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8523]
+This file was first posted on July 19, 2003
+Last Updated: May 17, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VAL D'ARNO ***
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+                VAL D'ARNO
+
+
+                  BY
+
+
+               JOHN RUSKIN, M.A.
+
+
+
+
+   LECTURE I. NICHOLAS THE PISAN
+  LECTURE II. JOHN THE PISAN
+ LECTURE III. SHIELD AND APRON
+  LECTURE IV. PARTED PER PALE
+   LECTURE V. PAX VOBISCUM
+  LECTURE VI. MARBLE COUCHANT
+ LECTURE VII. MARBLE RAMPANT
+LECTURE VIII. FRANCHISE  LECTURE IX. THE TYRRHENE SEA
+   LECTURE X. FLEUR DE LYS
+              APPENDIX
+
+
+
+
+               LIST OF PLATES.
+
+
+    THE ANCIENT SHORES OF ARNO
+
+
+    I. THE PISAN LATONA
+   II. NICCOLA PISANO'S PULPIT
+  III. THE FOUNTAIN OF PERUGIA
+   IV. NORMAN IMAGERY
+    V. DOOR OF THE BAPTISTERY. PISA
+   VI. THE STORY OF ST. JOHN. ADVENT
+  VII.  "    "   "   "    "   DEPARTURE
+ VIII. "THE CHARGE TO ADAM" GIOVANNI PISANO
+   IX.   "     "    "   "   MODERN ITALIAN
+    X. THE NATIVITY. GIOVANNI PISANO
+   XI.  "     "      MODERN ITALIAN
+  XII. THE ANNUNCIATION AND VISITATION
+
+
+
+
+                VAL D'ARNO
+
+               TEN LECTURES
+
+                   ON
+
+THE TUSCAN ART DIRECTLY ANTECEDENT TO THE FLORENTINE
+            YEAR OF VICTORIES
+
+
+GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD IN MICHAELMAS
+               TERM, 1873
+
+
+
+
+                 LECTURE I.
+
+              NICHOLAS THE PISAN.
+
+1. On this day, of this month, the 20th of October, six hundred and
+twenty-three years ago, the merchants and tradesmen of Florence met
+before the church of Santa Croce; marched through the city to the palace
+of their Podesta; deposed their Podesta; set over themselves, in his
+place, a knight belonging to an inferior city; called him "Captain of
+the People;" appointed under him a Signory of twelve Ancients chosen
+from among themselves; hung a bell for him on the tower of the Lion,
+that he might ring it at need, and gave him the flag of Florence to
+bear, half white, and half red.
+
+The first blow struck upon the bell in that tower of the Lion began
+the tolling for the passing away of the feudal system, and began the
+joy-peal, or carillon, for whatever deserves joy, in that of our modern
+liberties, whether of action or of trade.
+
+2. Within the space of our Oxford term from that day, namely, on the
+13th of December in the same year, 1250, died, at Ferentino, in Apulia,
+the second Frederick, Emperor of Germany; the second also of the two
+great lights which in his lifetime, according to Dante's astronomy,
+ruled the world,--whose light being quenched, "the land which was once
+the residence of courtesy and valour, became the haunt of all men who
+are ashamed to be near the good, or to speak to them."
+
+          "In sul paese chadice e po riga
+           solea valore e cortesia trovar si
+           prima che federigo Bavessi briga,
+           or puo sicuramente indi passarsi
+           per qualuuche lasciassi per vergogna
+           di ragionar co buoni, e appressarsi."
+                           PURO., Cant. 16.
+
+
+3. The "Paese che Adice e Po riga" is of course Lombardy; and might have
+been enough distinguished by the name of its principal river. But Dante
+has an especial reason for naming the Adige. It is always by the valley
+of the Adige that the power of the German Caesars descends on Italy; and
+that battlemented bridge, which doubtless many of you remember, thrown
+over the Adige at Verona, was so built that the German riders might have
+secure and constant access to the city. In which city they had their
+first stronghold in Italy, aided therein by the great family of the
+Montecchi, Montacutes, Mont-aigu-s, or Montagues; lords, so called, of
+the mountain peaks; in feud with the family of the Cappelletti,--hatted,
+or, more properly, scarlet-hatted, persons. And this accident of
+nomenclature, assisted by your present familiar knowledge of the real
+contests of the sharp mountains with the flat caps, or petasoi, of
+cloud, (locally giving Mont Pilate its title, "Pileatus,") may in many
+points curiously illustrate for you that contest of Frederick the Second
+with Innocent the Fourth, which in the good of it and the evil alike,
+represents to all time the war of the solid, rational, and earthly
+authority of the King, and State, with the more or less spectral,
+hooded, imaginative, and nubiform authority of the Pope, and Church.
+
+4. It will be desirable also that you clearly learn the material
+relations, governing spiritual ones,--as of the Alps to their clouds,
+so of the plains to their rivers. And of these rivers, chiefly note the
+relation to each other, first, of the Adige and Po; then of the Arno
+and Tiber. For the Adige, representing among the rivers and fountains of
+waters the channel of Imperial, as the Tiber of the Papal power, and the
+strength of the Coronet being founded on the white peaks that look down
+upon Hapsburg and Hohenzollern, as that of the Scarlet Cap in the marsh
+of the Campagna, "quo tenuis in sicco aqua destituisset," the study of
+the policies and arts of the cities founded in the two great valleys of
+Lombardy and Tuscany, so far as they were affected by their bias to the
+Emperor, or the Church, will arrange itself in your minds at once in
+a symmetry as clear as it will be, in our future work, secure and
+suggestive.
+
+5. "Tenuis, in sicco." How literally the words apply, as to the native
+streams, so to the early states or establishings of the great cities of
+the world. And you will find that the policy of the Coronet, with its
+tower-building; the policy of the Hood, with its dome-building; and
+the policy of the bare brow, with its cot-building,--the three main
+associations of human energy to which we owe the architecture of
+our earth, (in contradistinction to the dens and caves of it,)--are
+curiously and eternally governed by mental laws, corresponding to the
+physical ones which are ordained for the rocks, the clouds, and the
+streams.
+
+The tower, which many of you so well remember the daily sight of, in
+your youth, above the "winding shore" of Thames,--the tower upon
+the hill of London; the dome which still rises above its foul and
+terrestrial clouds; and the walls of this city itself, which has been
+"alma," nourishing in gentleness, to the youth of England, because
+defended from external hostility by the difficultly fordable streams of
+its plain, may perhaps, in a few years more, be swept away as heaps of
+useless stone; but the rocks, and clouds, and rivers of our country will
+yet, one day, restore to it the glory of law, of religion, and of life.
+
+6. I am about to ask you to read the hieroglyphs upon the architecture
+of a dead nation, in character greatly resembling our own,--in laws
+and in commerce greatly influencing our own;--in arts, still, from her
+grave, tutress of the present world. I know that it will be expected of
+me to explain the merits of her arts, without reference to the wisdom of
+her laws; and to describe the results of both, without investigating the
+feelings which regulated either. I cannot do this; but I will at once
+end these necessarily vague, and perhaps premature, generalizations;
+and only ask you to study some portions of the life and work of two men,
+father and son, citizens of the city in which the energies of this great
+people were at first concentrated; and to deduce from that study
+the conclusions, or follow out the inquiries, which it may naturally
+suggest.
+
+7. It is the modern fashion to despise Vasari. He is indeed despicable,
+whether as historian or critic,--not least in his admiration of Michael
+Angelo; nevertheless, he records the traditions and opinions of his day;
+and these you must accurately know, before you can wisely correct. I
+will take leave, therefore, to begin to-day with a sentence from Vasari,
+which many of you have often heard quoted, but of which, perhaps, few
+have enough observed the value.
+
+"Niccola Pisano finding himself under certain Greek sculptors who were
+carving the figures and other intaglio ornaments of the cathedral of
+Pisa, and of the temple of St. John, and there being, among many spoils
+of marbles, brought by the Pisan fleet, [1] some ancient tombs, there
+was one among the others most fair, on which was sculptured the hunting
+of Meleager." [2]
+
+[Footnote 1: "Armata." The proper word for a land army is "esercito."]
+
+[Footnote 2: Vol. i., p. 60, of Mrs. Foster's English translation, to
+which I shall always refer, in order that English students may compare
+the context if they wish. But the pieces of English which I give are
+my own direct translation, varying, it will be found, often, from Mrs.
+Foster's, in minute, but not unimportant, particulars.]
+
+Get the meaning and contents of this passage well into your minds. In
+the gist of it, it is true, and very notable.
+
+8. You are in mid thirteenth century; 1200-1300. The Greek nation has
+been dead in heart upwards of a thousand years; its religion dead, for
+six hundred. But through the wreck of its faith, and death in its heart,
+the skill of its hands, and the cunning of its design, instinctively
+linger. In the centuries of Christian power, the Christians are still
+unable to build but under Greek masters, and by pillage of Greek
+shrines; and their best workman is only an apprentice to the 'Graeculi
+esurientes' who are carving the temple of St. John.
+
+9. Think of it. Here has the New Testament been declared for 1200 years.
+No spirit of wisdom, as yet, has been given to its workmen, except
+that which has descended from the Mars Hill on which St. Paul stood
+contemptuous in pity. No Bezaleel arises, to build new tabernacles,
+unless he has been taught by Daedalus.
+
+10. It is necessary, therefore, for you first to know precisely the
+manner of these Greek masters in their decayed power; the manner
+which Vasari calls, only a sentence before, "That old Greek manner,
+blundering, disproportioned,"--Goffa, e sproporzionata.
+
+"Goffa," the very word which Michael Angelo uses of Perugino. Behold,
+the Christians despising the Dunce Greeks, as the Infidel modernists
+despise the Dunce Christians. [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Compare "Ariadne Floreutina," Sec. 46.]
+
+11. I sketched for you, when I was last at Pisa, a few arches of the
+apse of the duomo, and a small portion of the sculpture of the font of
+the Temple of St. John. I have placed them in your rudimentary series,
+as examples of "quella vecchia maniera Greca, goffa e sproporzionata."
+My own judgment respecting them is,--and it is a judgment founded on
+knowledge which you may, if you choose, share with me, after working
+with me,--that no architecture on this grand scale, so delicately
+skilful in execution, or so daintily disposed in proportion, exists
+elsewhere in the world.
+
+12. Is Vasari entirely wrong then?
+
+No, only half wrong, but very fatally half wrong. There are Greeks, and
+Greeks.
+
+This head with the inlaid dark iris in its eyes, from the font of St.
+John, is as pure as the sculpture of early Greece, a hundred years
+before Phidias; and it is so delicate, that having drawn with equal care
+this and the best work of the Lombardi at Venice (in the church of the
+Miracoli), I found this to possess the more subtle qualities of design.
+And yet, in the cloisters of St. John Lateran at Rome, you have Greek
+work, if not contemporary with this at Pisa, yet occupying a parallel
+place in the history of architecture, which is abortive, and monstrous
+beyond the power of any words to describe. Vasari knew no difference
+between these two kinds of Greek work. Nor do your modern architects.
+To discern the difference between the sculpture of the font of Pisa, and
+the spandrils of the Lateran cloister, requires thorough training of the
+hand in the finest methods of draughtsmanship; and, secondly, trained
+habit of reading the mythology and ethics of design. I simply assure you
+of the fact at present; and if you work, you may have sight and sense of
+it.
+
+13. There are Greeks, and Greeks, then, in the twelfth century,
+differing as much from each other as vice, in all ages, must differ from
+virtue. But in Vasari's sight they are alike; in ours, they must be so,
+as far as regards our present purpose. As men of a school, they are to
+be summed under the general name of 'Byzantines;' their work all alike
+showing specific characters of attenuate, rigid, and in many respects
+offensively unbeautiful, design, to which Vasari's epithets of "goffa,
+e sproporzionata" are naturally applied by all persons trained only in
+modern principles. Under masters, then, of this Byzantine race, Niccola
+is working at Pisa.
+
+14. Among the spoils brought by her fleets from Greece, is a
+sarcophagus, with Meleager's hunt on it, wrought "con bellissima
+maniera," says Vasari.
+
+You may see that sarcophagus--any of you who go to Pisa;--touch it, for
+it is on a level with your hand; study it, as Niccola studied it, to
+your mind's content. Within ten yards of it, stand equally accessible
+pieces of Niccola's own work and of his son's. Within fifty yards of it,
+stands the Byzantine font of the chapel of St. John. Spend but the good
+hours of a single day quietly by these three pieces of marble, and you
+may learn more than in general any of you bring home from an entire
+tour in Italy. But how many of you ever yet went into that temple of St.
+John, knowing what to look for; or spent as much time in the Campo Santo
+of Pisa, as you do in Mr. Ryman's shop on a rainy day?
+
+15. The sarcophagus is not, however, (with Vasari's pardon) in
+'bellissima maniera' by any means. But it is in the classical Greek
+manner instead of the Byzantine Greek manner. You have to learn the
+difference between these.
+
+Now I have explained to you sufficiently, in "Aratra Pentelici," what
+the classical Greek manner is. The manner and matter of it being easily
+summed--as those of natural and unaffected life;--nude life when nudity
+is right and pure; not otherwise. To Niccola, the difference between
+this natural Greek school, and the Byzantine, was as the difference
+between the bull of Thurium and of Delhi, (see Plate 19 of "Aratra
+Pentelici").
+
+Instantly he followed the natural fact, and became the Father of
+Sculpture to Italy.
+
+16. Are we, then, also to be strong by following the natural fact?
+
+Yes, assuredly. That is the beginning and end of all my teaching to you.
+But the noble natural fact, not the ignoble. You are to study men; not
+lice nor entozoa. And you are to study the souls of men in their bodies,
+not their bodies only. Mulready's drawings from the nude are more
+degraded and bestial than the worst grotesques of the Byzantine or even
+the Indian image makers. And your modern mob of English and American
+tourists, following a lamplighter through the Vatican to have pink light
+thrown for them on the Apollo Belvidere, are farther from capacity of
+understanding Greek art, than the parish charity boy, making a ghost out
+of a turnip, with a candle inside.
+
+17. Niccola followed the facts, then. He is the Master of Naturalism
+in Italy. And I have drawn for you his lioness and cubs, to fix that in
+your minds. And beside it, I put the Lion of St. Mark's, that you may
+see exactly the kind of change he made. The Lion of St. Mark's (all
+but his wings, which have been made and fastened on in the fifteenth
+century), is in the central Byzantine manner; a fine decorative piece
+of work, descending in true genealogy from the Lion of Nemea, and the
+crested skin of him that clothes the head of the Heracles of Camarina.
+It has all the richness of Greek Daedal work,--nay, it has fire and
+life beyond much Greek Daedal work; but in so far as it is non-natural,
+symbolic, decorative, and not like an actual lion, it would be felt
+by Niccola Pisano to be imperfect. And instead of this decorative
+evangelical preacher of a lion, with staring eyes, and its paw on
+a gospel, he carves you a quite brutal and maternal lioness, with
+affectionate eyes, and paw set on her cub.
+
+18. Fix that in your minds, then. Niccola Pisano is the Master of
+Naturalism in Italy,--therefore elsewhere; of Naturalism, and all that
+follows. Generally of truth, common-sense, simplicity, vitality,--and of
+all these, with consummate power. A man to be enquired about, is not
+he? and will it not make a difference to you whether you look, when you
+travel in Italy, in his rough early marbles for this fountain of life,
+or only glance at them because your Murray's Guide tells you,--and think
+them "odd old things"?
+
+19. We must look for a moment more at one odd old thing--the sarcophagus
+which was his tutor. Upon it is carved the hunting of Meleager; and it
+was made, or by tradition received as, the tomb of the mother of the
+Countess Matilda. I must not let you pass by it without noticing two
+curious coincidences in these particulars. First, in the Greek subject
+which is given Niccola to read.
+
+The boar, remember, is Diana's enemy. It is sent upon the fields of
+Calydon in punishment of the refusal of the Calydonians to sacrifice
+to her. 'You have refused _me_,' she said; 'you will not have Artemis
+Laphria, Forager Diana, to range in your fields. You shall have the
+Forager Swine, instead.'
+
+Meleager and Atalanta are Diana's servants,--servants of all order,
+purity, due sequence of season, and time. The orbed architecture of
+Tuscany, with its sculptures of the succession of the labouring months,
+as compared with the rude vaults and monstrous imaginations of the past,
+was again the victory of Meleager.
+
+20. Secondly, take what value there is in the tradition that this
+sarcophagus was made the tomb of the mother of the
+
+ [Illustration: PLATE I:--THE PISAN LATONA. Angle of Panel of the
+Adoration, in Niccola's Pulpit.]
+
+Countess Matilda. If you look to the fourteenth chapter of the third
+volume of "Modern Painters," you will find the mythic character of the
+Countess Matilda, as Dante employed it explained at some length. She is
+the representative of Natural Science as opposed to Theological.
+
+21. Chance coincidences merely, these; but full of teaching for us,
+looking back upon the past. To Niccola, the piece of marble was,
+primarily, and perhaps exclusively, an example of free chiselling, and
+humanity of treatment. What else it was to him,--what the spirits
+of Atalanta and Matilda could bestow on him, depended on what he was
+himself. Of which Vasari tells you nothing. Not whether he was gentleman
+or clown--rich or poor--soldier or sailor. Was he never, then, in those
+fleets that brought the marbles back from the ravaged Isles of Greece?
+was he at first only a labourer's boy among the scaffoldings of the
+Pisan apse,--his apron loaded with dust--and no man praising him for his
+speech? Rough he was, assuredly; probably poor; fierce and energetic,
+beyond even the strain of Pisa,--just and kind, beyond the custom of his
+age, knowing the Judgment and Love of God: and a workman, with all his
+soul and strength, all his days.
+
+22. You hear the fame of him as of a sculptor only. It is right that you
+should; for every great architect must be a sculptor, and be renowned,
+as such, more than by his building. But Niccola Pisano had even more
+influence on Italy as a builder than as a carver.
+
+For Italy, at this moment, wanted builders more than carvers; and a
+change was passing through her life, of which external edifice was a
+necessary sign. I complained of you just now that you never looked at
+the Byzantine font in the temple of St. John. The sacristan generally
+will not let you. He takes you to a particular spot on the floor, and
+sings a musical chord. The chord returns in prolonged echo from the
+chapel roof, as if the building were all one sonorous marble bell.
+
+Which indeed it is; and travellers are always greatly amused at being
+allowed to ring this bell; but it never occurs to them to ask how it
+came to be ringable:--how that tintinnabulate roof differs from the dome
+of the Pantheon, expands into the dome of Florence, or declines into the
+whispering gallery of St. Paul's.
+
+23. When you have had full satisfaction of the tintinnabulate roof, you
+are led by the sacristan and Murray to Niccola Pisano's pulpit; which,
+if you have spare time to examine it, you find to have six sides, to be
+decorated with tablets of sculpture, like the sides of the sarcophagus,
+and to be sustained on seven pillars, three of which are themselves
+carried on the backs of as many animals.
+
+All this arrangement had been contrived before Niccola's time, and
+executed again and again. But behold! between the capitals of the
+pillars and the sculptured tablets there are interposed five cusped
+arches, the hollow beneath the pulpit showing dark through their foils.
+You have seen such cusped arches before, you think?
+
+Yes, gentlemen, _you_ have; but the Pisans had _not_. And that
+intermediate layer of the pulpit means--the change, in a word, for all
+Europe, from the Parthenon to Amiens Cathedral. For Italy it means the
+rise of her Gothic dynasty; it means the duomo of Milan instead of the
+temple of Paestum.
+
+24. I say the duomo of Milan, only to put the change well before your
+eyes, because you all know that building so well. The duomo of Milan is
+of entirely bad and barbarous Gothic, but the passion of pinnacle and
+fret is in it, visibly to you, more than in other buildings. It will
+therefore serve to show best what fulness of change this pulpit of
+Niccola Pisano signifies.
+
+In it there is no passion of pinnacle nor of fret. You see the edges of
+it, instead of being bossed, or knopped, or crocketed, are mouldings
+of severest line. No vaulting, no clustered shafts, no traceries, no
+fantasies, no perpendicular flights of aspiration. Steady pillars, each
+of one polished block; useful capitals, one trefoiled arch between them;
+your panel above it; thereon your story of the founder of Christianity.
+The whole standing upon beasts, they being indeed the foundation of us,
+(which Niccola knew far better than Mr. Darwin); Eagle to carry your
+Gospel message--Dove you think it ought to be?
+
+[Illustration: PLATE II.--NICCOLA PISANO'S PULPIT.]
+
+Eagle, says Niccola, and not as symbol of St. John Evangelist only, but
+behold! with prey between its claws. For the Gospel, it is Niccola's
+opinion, is not altogether a message that you may do whatever you like,
+and go straight to heaven. Finally, a slab of marble, cut hollow
+a little to bear your book; space enough for you to speak from at
+ease,--and here is your first architecture of Gothic Christianity!
+
+25. Indignant thunder of dissent from German doctors,--clamour from
+French savants. 'What! and our Treves, and our Strasburg, and our
+Poictiers, and our Chartres! And you call _this_ thing the first
+architecture of Christianity!' Yes, my French and German friends, very
+fine the buildings you have mentioned are; and I am bold to say I love
+them far better than you do, for you will run a railroad through any of
+them any day that you can turn a penny by it. I thank you also, Germans,
+in the name of our Lady of Strasburg, for your bullets and fire; and
+I thank you, Frenchmen, in the name of our Lady of Rouen, for your new
+haberdashers' shops in the Gothic town;--meanwhile have patience with me
+a little, and let me go on.
+
+26. No passion of fretwork, or pinnacle whatever, I said, is in this
+Pisan pulpit. The trefoiled arch itself, pleasant as it is, seems
+forced a little; out of perfect harmony with the rest (see Plate II.).
+Unnatural, perhaps, to Niccola?
+
+Altogether unnatural to him, it is; such a thing never would have come
+into his head, unless some one had shown it him. Once got into his head,
+he puts it to good use; perhaps even he will let this somebody else put
+pinnacles and crockets into his head, or at least, into his son's, in
+a little while. Pinnacles,--crockets,--it may be, even traceries. The
+ground-tier of the baptistery is round-arched, and has no pinnacles;
+but look at its first story. The clerestory of the Duomo of Pisa has no
+traceries, but look at the cloister of its Campo Santo.
+
+27. I pause at the words;--for they introduce a new group of thoughts,
+which presently we must trace farther.
+
+The Holy Field;--field of burial. The "cave of Machpelah which is before
+Mamre," of the Pisans. "There they buried Abraham, and Sarah his wife;
+there they buried Isaac, and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah."
+
+How do you think such a field becomes holy,--how separated, as the
+resting-place of loving kindred, from that other field of blood, bought
+to bury strangers in?
+
+When you have finally succeeded, by your gospel of mammon, in making
+all the men of your own nation not only strangers to each other, but
+enemies; and when your every churchyard becomes therefore a field of the
+stranger, the kneeling hamlet will vainly drink the chalice of God
+in the midst of them. The field will be unholy. No cloisters of noble
+history can ever be built round such an one.
+
+28. But the very earth of this at Pisa was holy, as you know. That
+"armata" of the Tuscan city brought home not only marble and ivory, for
+treasure; but earth,--a fleet's burden,--from the place where there was
+healing of soul's leprosy: and their field became a place of holy tombs,
+prepared for its office with earth from the land made holy by one tomb;
+which all the knighthood of Christendom had been pouring out its life to
+win.
+
+29. I told you just now that this sculpture of Niccola's was the
+beginning of Christian architecture. How do you judge that Christian
+architecture in the deepest meaning of it to differ from all other?
+
+All other noble architecture is for the glory of living gods and men;
+but this is for the glory of death, in God and man. Cathedral, cloister,
+or tomb,--shrine for the body of Christ, or for the bodies of the
+saints. All alike signifying death to this world;--life, other than of
+this world.
+
+Observe, I am not saying how far this feeling, be it faith, or be it
+imagination, is true or false;--I only desire you to note that the power
+of all Christian work begins in the niche of the catacomb and depth
+of the sarcophagus, and is to the end definable as architecture of the
+tomb.
+
+30. Not altogether, and under every condition, sanctioned in doing
+such honour to the dead by the Master of it. Not every grave is by His
+command to be worshipped. Graves there may be--too little guarded, yet
+dishonourable;--"ye are as graves that appear not, and the men that
+walk over them are not aware of them." And graves too much guarded, yet
+dishonourable, "which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but are within
+full of all uncleanness." Or graves, themselves honourable, yet which
+it may be, in us, a crime to adorn. "For they indeed killed them, and ye
+build their sepulchres."
+
+Questions, these, collateral; or to be examined in due time; for the
+present it is enough for us to know that all Christian architecture, as
+such, has been hitherto essentially of tombs.
+
+It has been thought, gentlemen, that there is a fine Gothic revival in
+your streets of Oxford, because you have a Gothic door to your County
+Bank:
+
+Remember, at all events, it was other kind of buried treasure, and
+bearing other interest, which Niccola Pisano's Gothic was set to guard.
+
+
+
+
+                LECTURE II.
+
+               JOHN THE PISAN.
+
+31. I closed my last lecture with the statement, on which I desired to
+give you time for reflection, that Christian architecture was, in its
+chief energy, the adornment of tombs,--having the passionate function of
+doing honour to the dead.
+
+But there is an ethic, or simply didactic and instructive architecture,
+the decoration of which you will find to be normally representative of
+the virtues which are common alike to Christian and Greek. And there
+is a natural tendency to adopt such decoration, and the modes of design
+fitted for it, in civil buildings. [1]
+
+[Footnote: "These several rooms were indicated by symbol and device:
+Victory for the soldier, Hope for the exile, the Muses for the poets,
+Mercury for the artists, Paradise for the preacher."--(Sagacius Gazata,
+of the Palace of Can Grande. I translate only Sismondi's quotation.)]
+
+32. _Civil_, or _civic_, I say, as opposed to military. But again
+observe, there are two kinds of military building. One, the robber's
+castle, or stronghold, out of which he issues to pillage; the other, the
+honest man's castle, or stronghold, into which he retreats from pillage.
+They are much like each other in external forms;--but Injustice,
+or Unrighteousness, sits in the gate of the one, veiled with forest
+branches, (see Giotto's painting of him); and Justice or Righteousness
+_enters_ by the gate of the other, over strewn forest branches. Now, for
+example of this second kind of military architecture, look at Carlyle's
+account of Henry the Fowler, [1] and of his building military towns, or
+burgs, to protect his peasantry. In such function you have the first and
+proper idea of a walled town,--a place into which the pacific country
+people can retire for safety, as the Athenians in the Spartan war.
+Your fortress of this kind is a religious and civil fortress, or burg,
+defended by burgers, trained to defensive war. Keep always this idea of
+the proper nature of a fortified city:--Its walls mean protection,--its
+gates hospitality and triumph. In the language familiar to you, spoken
+of the chief of cities: "Its walls are to be Salvation, and its gates to
+be Praise." And recollect always the inscription over the north gate of
+Siena: "Cor magis tibi Sena pandit."--"More than her gates, Siena opens
+her heart to you."
+
+[Footnote 1: "Frederick," vol. i.]
+
+33. When next you enter London by any of the great lines, I should like
+you to consider, as you approach the city, what the feelings of the
+heart of London are likely to be on your approach, and at what part of
+the railroad station an inscription, explaining such state of her heart,
+might be most fitly inscribed. Or you would still better understand
+the difference between ancient and modern principles of architecture by
+taking a cab to the Elephant and Castle, and thence walking to London
+Bridge by what is in fact the great southern entrance of London. The
+only gate receiving you is, however, the arch thrown over the road to
+carry the South-Eastern Railway itself; and the only exhibition either
+of Salvation or Praise is in the cheap clothes' shops on each side; and
+especially in one colossal haberdasher's shop, over which you may see
+the British flag waving (in imitation of Windsor Castle) when the master
+of the shop is at home. 34. Next to protection from external hostility,
+the two necessities in a city are of food and water supply;--the latter
+essentially constant. You can store food and forage, but water must flow
+freely. Hence the Fountain and the Mercato become the centres of civil
+architecture.
+
+Premising thus much, I will ask you to look once more at this cloister
+of the Campo Santo of Pisa.
+
+35. On first entering the place, its quiet, its solemnity, the
+perspective of its aisles, and the conspicuous grace and precision of
+its traceries, combine to give you the sensation of having entered a
+true Gothic cloister. And if you walk round it hastily, and, glancing
+only at a fresco or two, and the confused tombs erected against them,
+return to the uncloistered sunlight of the piazza, you may quite easily
+carry away with you, and ever afterwards retain, the notion that
+the Campo Santo of Pisa is the same kind of thing as the cloister of
+Westminster Abbey.
+
+36. I will beg you to look at the building, thus photographed, more
+attentively. The "long-drawn aisle" is here, indeed,--but where is the
+"fretted vault"?
+
+A timber roof, simple as that of a country barn, and of which only the
+horizontal beams catch the eye, connects an entirely plain outside wall
+with an interior one, pierced by round-headed openings; in which are
+inserted pieces of complex tracery, as foreign in conception to the rest
+of the work as if the Pisan armata had gone up the Rhine instead of to
+Crete, pillaged South Germany, and cut these pieces of tracery out of
+the windows of some church in an advanced stage of fantastic design at
+Nuremberg or Frankfort.
+
+37. If you begin to question, hereupon, who was the Italian robber,
+whether of marble or thought, and look to your Vasari, you find the
+building attributed to John the Pisan; [1]--and you suppose the son to
+have been so pleased by his father's adoption of Gothic forms that he
+must needs borrow them, in this manner, ready made, from the Germans,
+and thrust them into his round arches, or wherever else they would go.
+
+[Footnote 1: The present traceries are of fifteenth century work,
+founded on Giovanni's design.]
+
+We will look at something more of his work, however, before drawing such
+conclusion.
+
+38. In the centres of the great squares of Siena and Perugia, rose,
+obedient to engineers' art, two perennial fountains Without engineers'
+art, the glens which cleave the sand-rock of Siena flow with living
+water; and still, if there be a hell for the forger in Italy, he
+remembers therein the sweet grotto and green wave of Fonte Branda.
+But on the very summit of the two hills, crested by their great civic
+fortresses, and in the centres of their circuit of walls, rose the two
+guided wells; each in basin of goodly marble, sculptured--at Perugia, by
+John of Pisa, at Siena, by James of Quercia.
+
+39. It is one of the bitterest regrets of my life (and I have many which
+some men would find difficult to bear,) that I never saw, except when I
+was a youth, and then with sealed eyes, Jacopo della Quercia's fountain.
+[1] The Sienese, a little while since, tore it down, and put up a model
+of it by a modern carver. In like manner, perhaps, you will some day
+knock the Elgin marbles to pieces, and commission an Academician to put
+up new ones,--the Sienese doing worse than that (as if the Athenians
+were _themselves_ to break their Phidias' work).
+
+[Footnote 1: I observe that Charles Dickens had the fortune denied to
+me. "The market-place, or great Piazza, is a large square, with a great
+broken-nosed fountain in it." ("Pictures from Italy.")]
+
+But the fountain of John of Pisa, though much injured, and glued
+together with asphalt, is still in its place.
+
+40. I will now read to you what Vasari first says of him, and it. (I.
+67.) "Nicholas had, among other sons, one called John, who, because he
+always followed his father, and, under his discipline, intended (bent
+himself to, with a will,) sculpture and architecture, in a few years
+became not only equal to his father, but in some things superior to him;
+wherefore Nicholas, being now old, retired himself into Pisa, and
+living quietly there, left the government of everything to his son.
+Accordingly, when Pope Urban IV. died in Perugia, sending was made for
+John, who, going there, made the tomb of that Pope of marble, the which,
+together with that of Pope Martin IV., was afterwards thrown down, when
+the Perugians
+
+[Illustration: PLATE III.--THE FOUNTAIN OF PERUGIA.]
+
+enlarged their vescovado; so that only a few relics are seen sprinkled
+about the church. And the Perugians, having at the same time brought
+from the mountain of Pacciano, two miles distant from the city, through
+canals of lead, a most abundant water, by means of the invention and
+industry of a friar of the order of St. Silvester, it was given to John
+the Pisan to make all the ornaments of this fountain, as well of bronze
+as of marble. On which he set hand to it, and made there three orders
+of vases, two of marble and one of bronze. The first is put upon twelve
+degrees of twelve-faced steps; the second is upon some columns which
+put it upon a level with the first one;" (that is, in the middle of it,)
+"and the third, which is of bronze, rests upon three figures which have
+in the middle of them some griffins, of bronze too, which pour water out
+on every side."
+
+41. Many things we have to note in this passage, but first I will show
+you the best picture I can of the thing itself.
+
+The best I can; the thing itself being half destroyed, and what remains
+so beautiful that no one can now quite rightly draw it; but Mr. Arthur
+Severn, (the son of Keats's Mr. Severn,) was with me, looking reverently
+at those remains, last summer, and has made, with help from the sun,
+this sketch for you (Plate III.); entirely true and effective as far as
+his time allowed.
+
+Half destroyed, or more, I said it was,--Time doing grievous work on it,
+and men worse. You heard Vasari saying of it, that it stood on twelve
+degrees of twelve-faced steps. These--worn, doubtless, into little
+more than a rugged slope--have been replaced by the moderns with four
+circular steps, and an iron railing; [1] the bas-reliefs have been
+carried off from the panels of the second vase, and its fair marble lips
+choked with asphalt:--of what remains, you have here a rough but true
+image.
+
+[Footnote 1: In Mr. Severn's sketch, the form of the original foundation
+is approximately restored.]
+
+In which you see there is not a trace of Gothic feeling or design of any
+sort. No crockets, no pinnacles, no foils, no vaultings, no grotesques
+in sculpture. Panels between pillars, panels carried on pillars,
+sculptures in those panels like the Metopes of the Parthenon; a Greek
+vase in the middle, and griffins in the middle of that. Here is your
+font, not at all of Saint John, but of profane and civil-engineering
+John. This is _his_ manner of baptism of the town of Perugia.
+
+42. Thus early, it seems, the antagonism of profane Greek to
+ecclesiastical Gothic declares itself. It seems as if in Perugia, as in
+London, you had the fountains in Trafalgar Square against Queen Elinor's
+Cross; or the viaduct and railway station contending with the Gothic
+chapel, which the master of the large manufactory close by has erected,
+because he thinks pinnacles and crockets have a pious influence; and
+will prevent his workmen from asking for shorter hours, or more wages.
+
+43. It _seems_ only; the antagonism is quite of another kind,--or,
+rather, of many other kinds. But note at once how complete it is--how
+utterly this Greek fountain of Perugia, and the round arches of Pisa,
+are opposed to the school of design which gave the trefoils to Niccola's
+pulpit, and the traceries to Giovanni's Campo Santo.
+
+The antagonism, I say, is of another kind than ours; but deep and wide;
+and to explain it, I must pass for a time to apparently irrelevant
+topics.
+
+You were surprised, I hope, (if you were attentive enough to catch the
+points in what I just now read from Vasari,) at my venturing to bring
+before you, just after I had been using violent language against the
+Sienese for breaking up the work of Quercia, that incidental sentence
+giving account of the much more disrespectful destruction, by the
+Perugians, of the tombs of Pope Urban IV., and Martin IV.
+
+Sending was made for John, you see, first, when Pope Urban IV. died in
+Perugia--whose tomb was to be carved by John; the Greek fountain being a
+secondary business. But the tomb was so well destroyed, afterwards, that
+only a few relics remained scattered here and there.
+
+The tomb, I have not the least doubt, was Gothic;--and the breaking of
+it to pieces was not in order to restore it afterwards, that a living
+architect might get the job of restoration. Here is a stone out of one
+of Giovanni Pisano's loveliest Gothic buildings, which I myself saw with
+my own eyes dashed out, that a modern builder might be paid for putting
+in another. But Pope Urban's tomb was not destroyed to such end. There
+was no qualm of the belly, driving the hammer,--qualm of the conscience
+probably; at all events, a deeper or loftier antagonism than one on
+points of taste, or economy.
+
+44. You observed that I described this Greek profane manner of design
+as properly belonging to _civil_ buildings, as opposed not only
+to ecclesiastical buildings, but to military ones. Justice, or
+Righteousness, and Veracity, are the characters of Greek art. These
+_may_ be opposed to religion, when religion becomes fantastic; but they
+_must_ be opposed to war, when war becomes unjust. And if, perchance,
+fantastic religion and unjust war happen to go hand in hand, your Greek
+artist is likely to use his hammer against them spitefully enough.
+
+45. His hammer, or his Greek fire. Hear now this example of the
+engineering ingenuities of our Pisan papa, in his younger days.
+
+"The Florentines having begun, in Niccola's time, to throw down many
+towers, which had been built in a barbarous manner through the whole
+city; either that the people might be less hurt, by their means, in the
+fights that often took place between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, or
+else that there might be greater security for the State, it appeared
+to them that it would be very difficult to ruin the Tower of the
+Death-watch, which was in the place of St. John, because it had its
+walls built with such a grip in them that the stones could not be
+stirred with the pickaxe, and also because it was of the loftiest;
+whereupon Nicholas, causing the tower to be cut, at the foot of it, all
+the length of one of its sides; and closing up the cut, as he made it,
+with short (wooden) under-props, about a yard long, and setting fire
+to them, when the props were burned, the tower fell, and broke itself
+nearly all to pieces: which was held a thing so ingenious and so useful
+for such affairs, that it has since passed into a custom, so that when
+it is needful, in this easiest manner, any edifice may be thrown down."
+
+46. 'When it is needful.' Yes; but when is that? If instead of the
+towers of the Death-watch in the city, one could ruin the towers of the
+Death-watch of evil pride and evil treasure in men's hearts, there would
+be need enough for such work both in Florence and London. But the walls
+of those spiritual towers have still stronger 'grip' in them, and are
+fireproof with a vengeance.
+
+        "Le mure me parean die ferro fosse,
+         . . . e el mi dixe, il fuoco eterno
+         Chentro laffoca, le dimostra rosse."
+
+
+But the towers in Florence, shattered to fragments by this ingenious
+engineer, and the tombs in Perugia, which his son will carve, only
+that they also may be so well destroyed that only a few relics remain,
+scattered up and down the church,--are these, also, only the iron
+towers, and the red-hot tombs, of the city of Dis?
+
+Let us see.
+
+47. In order to understand the relation of the tradesmen and working
+men, including eminently the artist, to the general life of the
+thirteenth century, I must lay before you the clearest elementary charts
+I can of the course which the fates of Italy were now appointing for
+her.
+
+My first chart must be geographical. I want you to have a clearly
+dissected and closely fitted notion of the natural boundaries of her
+states, and their relations to surrounding ones. Lay hold first, firmly,
+of your conception of the valleys of the Po and the Arno, running
+counter to each other--opening east and opening west,--Venice at the end
+of the one, Pisa at the end of the other.
+
+48. These two valleys--the hearts of Lombardy and Etruria--virtually
+contain the life of Italy. They are entirely different in character:
+Lombardy, essentially luxurious and worldly, at this time rude in art,
+but active; Etruria, religious, intensely imaginative, and inheriting
+refined forms of art from before the days of Porsenna.
+
+49. South of these, in mid-Italy, you have Romagna,--the valley of
+the Tiber. In that valley, decayed Rome, with her lust of empire
+inextinguishable;--no inheritance of imaginative art, nor power of it;
+dragging her own ruins hourly into more fantastic ruin, and defiling her
+faith hourly with more fantastic guilt.
+
+South of Romagna, you have the kingdoms of Calabria and Sicily,---Magna
+Graecia, and Syracuse, in decay;----strange spiritual fire from the
+Saracenic east still lighting the volcanic land, itself laid all in
+ashes.
+
+50. Conceive Italy then always in these four masses: Lombardy, Etruria,
+Romagna, Calabria.
+
+Now she has three great external powers to deal with: the western,
+France--the northern, Germany--the eastern, Arabia. On her right the
+Frank; on her left the Saracen; above her, the Teuton. And roughly, the
+French are a religious chivalry; the Germans a profane chivalry; the
+Saracens an infidel chivalry. What is best of each is benefiting Italy;
+what is worst, afflicting her. And in the time we are occupied with, all
+are afflicting her.
+
+What Charlemagne, Barbarossa, or Saladin did to teach her, you can trace
+only by carefullest thought. But in this thirteenth century all these
+three powers are adverse to her, as to each other. Map the methods of
+their adversity thus:---
+
+51. Germany, (profane chivalry,) is vitally adverse to the Popes;
+endeavouring to establish imperial and knightly power against theirs. It
+is fiercely, but frankly, covetous of Italian territory, seizes all it
+can of Lombardy and Calabria, and with any help procurable either from
+robber Christians or robber Saracens, strives, in an awkward manner, and
+by open force, to make itself master of Rome, and all Italy.
+
+52. France, all surge and foam of pious chivalry, lifts herself in
+fitful rage of devotion, of avarice, and of pride. She is the natural
+ally of the church; makes her own monks the proudest of the Popes;
+raises Avignon into another Rome; prays and pillages insatiably; pipes
+pastoral songs of innocence, and invents grotesque variations of crime;
+gives grace to the rudeness of England, and venom to the cunning of
+Italy. She is a chimera among nations, and one knows not whether to
+admire most the valour of Guiscard, the virtue of St. Louis or the
+villany of his brother.
+
+53. The Eastern powers--Greek, Israelite, Saracen--are at once the
+enemies of the Western, their prey, and their tutors.
+
+They bring them methods of ornament and of merchandise, and stimulate in
+them the worst conditions of pugnacity, bigotry, and rapine. That is
+the broad geographical and political relation of races. Next, you must
+consider the conditions of their time.
+
+54. I told you, in my second lecture on Engraving, that before the
+twelfth century the nations were too savage to be Christian, and after
+the fifteenth too carnal to be Christian.
+
+The delicacy of sensation and refinements of imagination necessary to
+understand Christianity belong to the mid period when men risen from a
+life of brutal hardship are not yet fallen to one of brutal luxury. You
+can neither comprehend the character of Christ while you are chopping
+flints for tools, and gnawing raw bones for food; nor when you have
+ceased to do anything with either tools or hands, and dine on gilded
+capons. In Dante's lines, beginning
+
+     "I saw Bellincion Berti walk abroad
+      In leathern girdle, with a clasp of bone,"
+
+
+you have the expression of his sense of the increasing luxury of the
+age, already sapping its faith. But when Bellincion Berti walked abroad
+in skins not yet made into leather, and with the bones of his dinner in
+a heap at his door, instead of being cut into girdle clasps, he was just
+as far from capacity of being a Christian.
+
+55. The following passage, from Carlyle's "Chartism," expresses better
+than any one else has done, or is likely to do it, the nature of this
+Christian era, (extending from the twelfth to the sixteenth century,) in
+England,--the like being entirely true of it elsewhere:--
+
+"In those past silent centuries, among those silent classes, much had
+been going on. Not only had red deer in the New and other forests been
+got preserved and shot; and treacheries [1] of Simon de Montfort, wars
+of Red and White Roses, battles of Crecy, battles of Bosworth, and many
+other battles, been got transacted and adjusted; but England wholly,
+not without sore toil and aching bones to the millions of sires and
+the millions of sons of eighteen generations, had been got drained and
+tilled, covered with yellow harvests, beautiful and rich in possessions.
+The mud-wooden Caesters and Chesters had become steepled, tile-roofed,
+compact towns. Sheffield had taken to the manufacture of Sheffield
+whittles. Worstead could from wool spin yarn, and knit or weave the same
+into stockings or breeches for men. England had property valuable to the
+auctioneer; but the accumulate manufacturing, commercial, economic
+skill which lay impalpably warehoused in English hands and heads, what
+auctioneer could estimate?
+
+[Footnote 1: Perhaps not altogether so, any more than Oliver's dear
+papa Carlyle. We may have to read _him_ also, otherwise than the British
+populace have yet read, some day.]
+
+"Hardly an Englishman to be met with but could do something; some
+cunninger thing than break his fellow-creature's head with battle-axes.
+The seven incorporated trades, with their million guild-brethren, with
+their hammers, their shuttles, and tools, what an army,--fit to conquer
+that land of England, as we say, and hold it conquered! Nay, strangest
+of all, the English people had acquired the faculty and habit of
+thinking,--even of believing; individual conscience had unfolded itself
+among them;--Conscience, and Intelligence its handmaid. [1] Ideas
+of innumerable kinds were circulating among these men; witness one
+Shakspeare, a wool-comber, poacher or whatever else, at Stratford, in
+Warwickshire, who happened to write books!--the finest human figure,
+as I apprehend, that Nature has hitherto seen fit to make of our widely
+Teutonic clay. Saxon, Norman, Celt, or Sarmat, I find no human soul
+so beautiful, these fifteen hundred known years;--our supreme modern
+European man. Him England had contrived to realize: were there not
+ideas?
+
+[Footnote 1: Observe Carlyle's order of sequence. Perceptive Reason is
+the Handmaid of Conscience, not Conscience hers. If you resolve to do
+right, you will soon do wisely; but resolve only to do wisely, and you
+will never do right.]
+
+"Ideas poetic and also Puritanic, that had to seek utterance in the
+notablest way! England had got her Shakspeare, but was now about to get
+her Milton and Oliver Cromwell. This, too, we will call a new expansion,
+hard as it might be to articulate and adjust; this, that a man could
+actually have a conscience for his own behoof, and not for his priest's
+only; that his priest, be he who he might, would henceforth have to take
+that fact along with him."
+
+56. You observe, in this passage, account is given you of two
+things--(A) of the development of a powerful class of tradesmen and
+artists; and, (B) of the development of an individual conscience.
+
+In the savage times you had simply the hunter, digger, and robber; now
+you have also the manufacturer and salesman. The ideas of ingenuity
+with the hand, of fairness in exchange, have occurred to us. We can do
+something now with our fingers, as well as with our fists; and if we
+want our neighbours' goods, we will not simply carry them off, as of
+old, but offer him some of ours in exchange.
+
+57. Again; whereas before we were content to let our priests do for us
+all they could, by gesticulating, dressing, sacrificing, or beating of
+drums and blowing of trumpets; and also direct our steps in the way of
+life, without any doubt on our part of their own perfect acquaintance
+with it,--we have now got to do something for ourselves--to think
+something for ourselves; and thus have arrived in straits of conscience
+which, so long as we endeavour to steer through them honestly, will be
+to us indeed a quite secure way of life, and of all living wisdom.
+
+58. Now the centre of this new freedom of thought is in Germany; and the
+power of it is shown first, as I told you in my opening lecture, in the
+great struggle of Frederick II. with Rome. And German freedom of thought
+had certainly made some progress, when it had managed to reduce the Pope
+to disguise himself as a soldier, ride out of Rome by moonlight, and
+gallop his thirty-four miles to the seaside before
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IV.--NORMAN IMAGERY.]
+
+summer dawn. Here, clearly, is quite a new state of things for the Holy
+Father of Christendom to consider, during such wholesome horse-exercise.
+
+59. Again; the refinements of new art are represented by
+France--centrally by St. Louis with his Sainte Chapelle. Happily, I am
+able to lay on your table to-day--having placed it three years ago in
+your educational series--a leaf of a Psalter, executed for St. Louis
+himself. He and his artists are scarcely out of their savage life yet,
+and have no notion of adorning the Psalms better than by pictures of
+long-necked cranes, long-eared rabbits, long-tailed lions, and red and
+white goblins putting their tongues out. [1] But in refinement of touch,
+in beauty of colour, in the human faculties of order and grace, they are
+long since, evidently, past the flint and bone stage,--refined enough,
+now,--subtle enough, now, to learn anything that is pretty and fine,
+whether in theology or any other matter.
+
+[Footnote 1: I cannot go to the expense of engraving this most subtle
+example; but Plate IV. shows the average conditions of temper and
+imagination in religious ornamental work of the time.]
+
+60. Lastly, the new principle of Exchange is represented by Lombardy and
+Venice, to such purpose that your Merchant and Jew of Venice, and your
+Lombard of Lombard Street, retain some considerable influence on your
+minds, even to this day.
+
+And in the exact midst of all such transition, behold, Etruria with her
+Pisans--her Florentines,--receiving, resisting, and reigning over all:
+pillaging the Saracens of their marbles--binding the French bishops
+in silver chains;--shattering the towers of German tyranny into
+small pieces,--building with strange jewellery the belfry tower for
+newly-conceived Christianity;--and, in sacred picture, and sacred song,
+reaching the height, among nations, most passionate, and most pure.
+
+I must close my lecture without indulging myself yet, by addition
+of detail; requesting you, before we next meet, to fix these general
+outlines in your minds, so that, without disturbing their distinctness,
+I may trace in the sequel the relations of Italian Art to these
+political and religious powers; and determine with what force of
+passionate sympathy, or fidelity of resigned obedience, the Pisan
+artists, father and son, executed the indignation of Florence and
+fulfilled the piety of Orvieto.
+
+
+
+
+
+               LECTURE III.
+
+              SHIELD AND APRON.
+
+61. I laid before you, in my last lecture, first lines of the chart of
+Italian history in the thirteenth century, which I hope gradually to
+fill with colour, and enrich, to such degree as may be sufficient for
+all comfortable use. But I indicated, as the more special subject of our
+immediate study, the nascent power of liberal thought, and liberal art,
+over dead tradition and rude workmanship.
+
+To-day I must ask you to examine in greater detail the exact relation of
+this liberal art to the illiberal elements which surrounded it.
+
+62. You do not often hear me use that word "Liberal" in any favourable
+sense. I do so now, because I use it also in a very narrow and exact
+sense. I mean that the thirteenth century is, in Italy's year of life,
+her 17th of March. In the light of it, she assumes her toga virilis; and
+it is sacred to her god Liber.
+
+63. To her god _Liber_,--observe: not Dionusos, still less Bacchus, but
+her own ancient and simple deity. And if you have read with some care
+the statement I gave you, with Carlyle's help, of the moment and
+manner of her change from savageness to dexterity, and from rudeness to
+refinement of life, you will hear, familiar as the lines are to you, the
+invocation in the first Georgic with a new sense of its meaning:--
+
+        "Vos, O clarissima mundi
+    Lumina, labentem coelo quae ducitis annum,
+    Liber, et alma Ceres; vestro si munere tellus
+    Chaoniam pingui glandem mutavit arista,
+    Poculaqu' inventis Acheloia miscuit uvis,
+    Munera vestra cano."
+
+
+These gifts, innocent, rich, full of life, exquisitely beautiful in
+order and grace of growth, I have thought best to symbolize to you,
+in the series of types of the power of the Greek gods, placed in your
+educational series, by the blossom of the wild strawberry; which in
+rising from its trine cluster of trine leaves,--itself as beautiful as
+a white rose, and always single on its stalk, like an ear of corn, yet
+with a succeeding blossom at its side, and bearing a fruit which is as
+distinctly a group of seeds as an ear of corn itself, and yet is the
+pleasantest to taste of all the pleasant things prepared by nature
+for the food of men, [1]--may accurately symbolize, and help you to
+remember, the conditions of this liberal and delightful, yet entirely
+modest and orderly, art, and thought.
+
+[Footnote 1: I am sorry to pack my sentences together in this confused
+way. But I have much to say; and cannot always stop to polish or adjust
+it as I used to do.]
+
+64. You will find in the fourth of my inaugural lectures, at the 98th
+paragraph, this statement,--much denied by modern artists and authors,
+but nevertheless quite unexceptionally true,--that the entire vitality
+of art depends upon its having for object either to _state a true
+thing_, or _adorn a serviceable one_. The two functions of art in Italy,
+in this entirely liberal and virescent phase of it,--virgin art, we
+may call it, retaining the most literal sense of the words virga and
+virgo,--are to manifest the doctrines of a religion which now, for the
+first time, men had soul enough to understand; and to adorn edifices
+or dress, with which the completed politeness of daily life might be
+invested, its convenience completed, and its decorous and honourable
+pride satisfied.
+
+65. That pride was, among the men who gave its character to the century,
+in honourableness of private conduct, and useful magnificence of public
+art. Not of private or domestic art: observe this very particularly.
+
+"Such was the simplicity of private manners,"--(I am now quoting
+Sismondi, but with the fullest ratification that my knowledge enables
+me to give,)--"and the economy of the richest citizens, that if a city
+enjoyed repose only for a few years, it doubled its revenues, and found
+itself, in a sort, encumbered with its riches. The Pisans knew neither
+of the luxury of the table, nor that of furniture, nor that of a number
+of servants; yet they were sovereigns of the whole of Sardinia, Corsica,
+and Elba, had colonies at St. Jean d'Acre and Constantinople, and their
+merchants in those cities carried on the most extended commerce with the
+Saracens and Greeks." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Sismondi; French translation, Brussels, 1838; vol. ii., p.
+275.]
+
+66. "And in that time," (I now give you my own translation of Giovanni
+Villani,) "the citizens of Florence lived sober, and on coarse meats,
+and at little cost; and had many customs and playfulnesses which were
+blunt and rude; and they dressed themselves and their wives with coarse
+cloth; many wore merely skins, with no lining, and _all_ had only
+leathern buskins; [1] and the Florentine ladies, plain shoes and
+stockings with no ornaments; and the best of them were content with
+a close gown of coarse scarlet of Cyprus, or camlet girded with an
+old-fashioned clasp-girdle; and a mantle over all, lined with vaire,
+with a hood above; and that, they threw over their heads. The women of
+lower rank were dressed in the same manner, with coarse green Cambray
+cloth; fifty pounds was the ordinary bride's dowry, and a hundred or
+a hundred and fifty would in those times have been held brilliant,
+('isfolgorata,' dazzling, with sense of dissipation or extravagance;)
+and most maidens were twenty or more before they married. Of such gross
+customs were then the Florentines; but of good faith, and loyal among
+themselves and in their state; and in their coarse life, and poverty,
+did more and braver things than are done in our days with more
+refinement and riches."
+
+[Footnote 1: I find this note for expansion on the margin of my lecture,
+but had no time to work it out:--'This lower class should be either
+barefoot, or have strong shoes--wooden clogs good. Pretty Boulogne
+sabot with purple stockings. Waterloo Road--little girl with her hair
+in curlpapers,--a coral necklace round her neck--the neck bare--and her
+boots of thin stuff, worn out, with her toes coming through, and rags
+hanging from her heels,--a profoundly accurate type of English national
+and political life. Your hair in curlpapers--borrowing tongs from every
+foreign nation, to pinch you into manners. The rich ostentatiously
+wearing coral about the bare neck; and the poor--cold as the stones and
+indecent.']
+
+67. I detain you a moment at the words "scarlet of Cyprus, or camlet."
+
+Observe that camelot (camelet) from _kamaelotae_, camel's skin, is a
+stuff made of silk and camel's hair originally, afterwards of silk and
+wool. At Florence, the camel's hair would always have reference to the
+Baptist, who, as you know, in Lippi's picture, wears the camel's
+skin itself, made into a Florentine dress, such as Villani has just
+described, "col tassello sopra," with the hood above. Do you see how
+important the word "Capulet" is becoming to us, in its main idea?
+
+68. Not in private nor domestic art, therefore, I repeat to you, but
+in useful magnificence of public art, these citizens expressed their
+pride:--and that public art divided itself into two branches--civil,
+occupied upon ethic subjects of sculpture and painting; and religious,
+occupied upon scriptural or traditional histories, in treatment of
+which, nevertheless, the nascent power and liberality of thought were
+apparent, not only in continual amplification and illustration of
+scriptural story by the artist's own invention, but in the acceptance
+of profane mythology, as part of the Scripture, or tradition, given by
+Divine inspiration.
+
+69. Nevertheless, for the provision of things necessary in domestic
+life, there developed itself, together with the group of inventive
+artists exercising these nobler functions, a vast body of craftsmen,
+and, literally, _man_ufacturers, workers by hand, who associated
+themselves, as chance, tradition, or the accessibility of material
+directed, in towns which thenceforward occupied a leading position in
+commerce, as producers of a staple of excellent, or perhaps inimitable,
+quality; and the linen or cambric of Cambray, the lace of Mechlin,
+the wool of Worstead, and the steel of Milan, implied the tranquil and
+hereditary skill of multitudes, living in wealthy industry, and humble
+honour.
+
+70. Among these artisans, the weaver, the ironsmith, the goldsmith, the
+carpenter, and the mason necessarily took the principal rank, and on
+their occupations the more refined arts were wholesomely based, so that
+the five businesses may be more completely expressed thus:
+
+        The weaver and embroiderer,
+        The ironsmith and armourer,
+        The goldsmith and jeweller,
+        The carpenter and engineer,
+        The stonecutter and painter.
+
+
+You have only once to turn over the leaves of Lionardo's sketch book,
+in the Ambrosian Library, to see how carpentry is connected with
+engineering,--the architect was always a stonecutter, and the
+stonecutter not often practically separate, as yet, from the painter,
+and never so in general conception of function. You recollect, at a much
+later period, Kent's description of Cornwall's steward:
+
+"KENT. You cowardly rascal!--nature disclaims in thee, a tailor made
+thee!
+
+CORNWALL. Thou art a strange fellow--a tailor make a man?
+
+KENT. Ay, sir; a stonecutter, or a painter, could not have made him so
+ill; though they had been but two hours at the trade."
+
+71. You may consider then this group of artizans with the merchants, as
+now forming in each town an important Tiers Etat, or Third State of
+the people, occupied in service, first, of the ecclesiastics, who
+in monastic bodies inhabited the cloisters round each church; and,
+secondly, of the knights, who, with their retainers, occupied, each
+family their own fort, in allied defence of their appertaining streets.
+
+72. A Third Estate, indeed; but adverse alike to both the others, to
+Montague as to Capulet, when they become disturbers of the public peace;
+and having a pride of its own,--hereditary still, but consisting in
+the inheritance of skill and knowledge rather than of blood,--which
+expressed the sense of such inheritance by taking its name habitually
+from the master rather than the sire; and which, in its natural
+antagonism to dignities won only by violence, or recorded only by
+heraldry, you may think of generally as the race whose bearing is the
+Apron, instead of the shield.
+
+73. When, however, these two, or in perfect subdivision three, bodies
+of men, lived in harmony,--the knights remaining true to the State, the
+clergy to their faith, and the workmen to their craft,--conditions of
+national force were arrived at, under which all the great art of the
+middle ages was accomplished. The pride of the knights, the avarice of
+the priests, and the gradual abasement of character in the craftsman,
+changing him from a citizen able to wield either tools in peace or
+weapons in war, to a dull tradesman, forced to pay mercenary troops to
+defend his shop door, are the direct causes of common ruin towards the
+close of the sixteenth century.
+
+74. But the deep underlying cause of the decline in national character
+itself, was the exhaustion of the Christian faith. None of its practical
+claims were avouched either by reason or experience; and the imagination
+grew weary of sustaining them in despite of both. Men could not, as
+their powers of reflection became developed, steadily conceive that the
+sins of a life might be done away with, by finishing it with Mary's name
+on the lips; nor could tradition of miracle for ever resist the personal
+discovery, made by each rude disciple by himself, that he might pray to
+all the saints for a twelvemonth together, and yet not get what he asked
+for.
+
+75. The Reformation succeeded in proclaiming that existing Christianity
+was a lie; but substituted no theory of it which could be more
+rationally or credibly sustained; and ever since, the religion of
+educated persons throughout Europe has been dishonest or ineffectual;
+it is only among the labouring peasantry that the grace of a pure
+Catholicism, and the patient simplicities of the Puritan, maintain their
+imaginative dignity, or assert their practical use.
+
+76. The existence of the nobler arts, however, involves the
+harmonious life and vital faith of the three classes whom we have
+just distinguished; and that condition exists, more or less disturbed,
+indeed, by the vices inherent in each class, yet, on the whole,
+energetically and productively, during the twelfth, thirteenth,
+fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. But our present subject being
+Architecture only, I will limit your attention altogether to the state
+of society in the great age of architecture, the thirteenth century.
+A great age in all ways; but most notably so in the correspondence
+it presented, up to a just and honourable point, with the utilitarian
+energy of our own days.
+
+77. The increase of wealth, the safety of industry, and the conception
+of more convenient furniture of life, to which we must attribute the
+rise of the entire artist class, were accompanied, in that century, by
+much enlargement in the conception of useful public works: and--not by
+_private_ enterprise,--that idle persons might get dividends out of the
+public pocket,--but by _public_ enterprise,--each citizen paying down
+at once his share of what was necessary to accomplish the benefit to the
+State,--great architectural and engineering efforts were made for
+the common service. Common, observe; but not, in our present sense,
+republican. One of the most ludicrous sentences ever written in the
+blindness of party spirit is that of Sismondi, in which he declares,
+thinking of these public works only, that 'the architecture of the
+thirteenth century is entirely republican.' The architecture of
+the thirteenth century is, in the mass of it, simply baronial or
+ecclesiastical; it is of castles, palaces, or churches; but it is true
+that splendid civic works were also accomplished by the vigour of the
+newly risen popular power.
+
+"The canal named Naviglio Graude, which brings the waters of the Ticino
+to Milan, traversing a distance of thirty miles, was undertaken in 1179,
+recommended in 1257, and, soon after, happily terminated; in it still
+consists the wealth of a vast extent of Lombardy. At the same time the
+town of Milan rebuilt its walls, which were three miles round, and
+had sixteen marble gates, of magnificence which might have graced the
+capital of all Italy. The Genovese, in 1276 and 1283, built their two
+splendid docks, and the great wall of their quay; and in 1295 finished
+the noble aqueduct which brings pure and abundant waters to their city
+from a great distance among their mountains. There is not a single town
+in Italy which at the same time did not undertake works of this kind;
+and while these larger undertakings were in progress, stone bridges were
+built across the rivers, the streets and piazzas were paved with
+large slabs of stone, and every free government recognized the duty of
+providing for the convenience of the citizens." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Simondi, vol ii. chap. 10.]
+
+78. The necessary consequence of this enthusiasm in useful building, was
+the formation of a vast body of craftsmen and architects; corresponding
+in importance to that which the railway, with its associated industry,
+has developed in modern times, but entirely different in personal
+character, and relation to the body politic.
+
+Their personal character was founded on the accurate knowledge of their
+business in all respects; the ease and pleasure of unaffected invention;
+and the true sense of power to do everything better than it had ever
+been yet done, coupled with general contentment in life, and in its
+vigour and skill.
+
+It is impossible to overrate the difference between such a condition
+of mind, and that of the modern artist, who either does not know his
+business at all, or knows it only to recognize his own inferiority to
+every former workman of distinction.
+
+79. Again: the political relation of these artificers to the State was
+that of a caste entirely separate from the noblesse; [1] paid for their
+daily work what was just, and competing with each other to supply the
+best article they could for the money. And it is, again, impossible to
+overrate the difference between such a social condition, and that of the
+artists of to-day, struggling to occupy a position of equality in wealth
+with the noblesse,--paid irregular and monstrous prices by an entirely
+ignorant and selfish public; and competing with each other to supply the
+worst article they can for the money.
+
+[Footnote 1: The giving of knighthood to Jacopo della Quercia for his
+lifelong service to Siena was not the elevation of a dexterous workman,
+but grace to a faithful citizen.]
+
+I never saw anything so impudent on the walls of any exhibition, in
+any country, as last year in London. It was a daub professing to be a
+"harmony in pink and white" (or some such nonsense;) absolute rubbish,
+and which had taken about a quarter of an hour to scrawl or daub--it
+had no pretence to be called painting. The price asked for it was two
+hundred and fifty guineas.
+
+80. In order to complete your broad view of the elements of social
+power in the thirteenth century, you have now farther to understand the
+position of the country people, who maintained by their labour these
+three classes, whose action you can discern, and whose history you can
+read; while, of those who maintained them, there is no history,
+except of the annual ravage of their fields by contending cities or
+nobles;--and, finally, that of the higher body of merchants, whose
+influence was already beginning to counterpoise the prestige of noblesse
+in Florence, and who themselves constituted no small portion of the
+noblesse of Venice.
+
+The food-producing country was for the most part still possessed by
+the nobles; some by the ecclesiastics; but a portion, I do not know how
+large, was in the hands of peasant proprietors, of whom Sismondi gives
+this, to my mind, completely pleasant and satisfactory, though, to his,
+very painful, account:--
+
+"They took no interest in public affairs; they had assemblies of their
+commune at the village in which the church of their parish was situated,
+and to which they retreated to defend themselves in case of war; they
+had also magistrates of their own choice; but all their interests
+appeared to them enclosed in the circle of their own commonality; they
+did not meddle with general politics, and held it for their point of
+honour to remain faithful, through all revolutions, to the State of
+which they formed a part, obeying, without hesitation, its chiefs,
+whoever they were, and by whatever title they occupied their places."
+
+81. Of the inferior agricultural labourers, employed on the farms of the
+nobles and richer ecclesiastics, I find nowhere due notice, nor does any
+historian seriously examine their manner of life. Liable to every form
+of robbery and oppression, I yet regard their state as not only morally
+but physically happier than that of riotous soldiery, or the lower class
+of artizans, and as the safeguard of every civilized nation, through
+all its worst vicissitudes of folly and crime. Nature has mercifully
+appointed that seed must be sown, and sheep folded, whatever lances
+break, or religions fail; and at this hour, while the streets of
+Florence and Verona are full of idle politicians, loud of tongue,
+useless of hand and treacherous of heart, there still may be seen in
+their market-places, standing, each by his heap of pulse or maize, the
+grey-haired labourers, silent, serviceable, honourable, keeping faith,
+untouched by change, to their country and to Heaven. [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Compare "Sesame and Lilies," sec. 38, p. 58. (P. 86 of the
+small edition of 1882.)]
+
+82. It is extremely difficult to determine in what degree the feelings
+or intelligence of this class influenced the architectural design of the
+thirteenth century;--how far afield the cathedral tower was intended
+to give delight, and to what simplicity of rustic conception Quercia or
+Ghiberti appealed by the fascination of their Scripture history. You may
+at least conceive, at this date, a healthy animation in all men's minds,
+and the children of the vineyard and sheepcote crowding the city on its
+festa days, and receiving impulse to busier, if not nobler, education,
+in its splendour. [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Of detached abbeys, see note on Education of Joan of Arc,
+"Sesame and Lilies," sec. 82, p. 106. (P. 158 of the small edition of
+1882.)]
+
+83. The great class of the merchants is more difficult to define; but
+you may regard them generally as the examples of whatever modes of life
+might be consistent with peace and justice, in the economy of transfer,
+as opposed to the military license of pillage.
+
+They represent the gradual ascendancy of foresight, prudence, and order
+in society, and the first ideas of advantageous national intercourse.
+Their body is therefore composed of the most intelligent and temperate
+natures of the time,--uniting themselves, not directly for the purpose
+of making money, but to obtain stability for equal institutions,
+security of property, and pacific relations with neighbouring states.
+Their guilds form the only representatives of true national
+council, unaffected, as the landed proprietors were, by merely local
+circumstances and accidents.
+
+84. The strength of this order, when its own conduct was upright, and
+its opposition to the military body was not in avaricious cowardice,
+but in the resolve to compel justice and to secure peace, can only
+be understood by you after an examination of the great changes in the
+government of Florence during the thirteenth century, which, among other
+minor achievements interesting to us, led to that destruction of the
+Tower of the Death-watch, so ingeniously accomplished by Niccola Pisano.
+This change, and its results, will be the subject of my next lecture.
+I must to-day sum, and in some farther degree make clear, the facts
+already laid before you.
+
+85. We have seen that the inhabitants of every great Italian state may
+be divided, and that very stringently, into the five classes of knights,
+priests, merchants, artists, and peasants. No distinction exists between
+artist and artizan, except that of higher genius or better conduct; the
+best artist is assuredly also the best artizan; and the simplest workman
+uses his invention and emotion as well as his fingers. The entire body
+of artists is under the orders (as shopmen are under the orders of their
+customers), of the knights, priests, and merchants,--the knights for the
+most part demanding only fine goldsmiths' work, stout armour, and rude
+architecture; the priests commanding both the finest architecture
+and painting, and the richest kinds of decorative dress and
+jewellery,--while the merchants directed works of public use, and were
+the best judges of artistic skill. The competition for the Baptistery
+gates of Florence is before the guild of merchants; nor is their award
+disputed, even in thought, by any of the candidates.
+
+86. This is surely a fact to be taken much to heart by our present
+communities of Liverpool and Manchester. They probably suppose, in their
+modesty, that lords and clergymen are the proper judges of art, and
+merchants can only, in the modern phrase, 'know what they like,' or
+follow humbly the guidance of their golden-crested or flat-capped
+superiors. But in the great ages of art, neither knight nor pope shows
+signs of true power of criticism. The artists crouch before them, or
+quarrel with them, according to their own tempers. To the merchants they
+submit silently, as to just and capable judges. And look what men these
+are, who submit. Donatello, Ghiberti, Quercia, Luca! If men like these
+submit to the merchant, who shall rebel?
+
+87. But the still franker, and surer, judgment of innocent pleasure was
+awarded them by all classes alike: and the interest of the public was
+the _final _rule of right,--that public being always eager to see, and
+earnest to learn. For the stories told by their artists formed, they
+fully believed, a Book of Life; and every man of real genius took up his
+function of illustrating the scheme of human morality and salvation,
+as naturally, and faithfully, as an English mother of to-day giving her
+children their first lessons in the Bible. In this endeavour to teach
+they almost unawares taught themselves; the question "How shall I
+represent this most clearly?" became to themselves, presently, "How was
+this most likely to have happened?" and habits of fresh and accurate
+thought thus quickly enlivened the formalities of the Greek pictorial
+theology; formalities themselves beneficent, because restraining by
+their severity and mystery the wantonness of the newer life. Foolish
+modern critics have seen nothing in the Byzantine school but a
+barbarism to be conquered and forgotten. But that school brought to the
+art-scholars of the thirteenth century, laws which had been serviceable
+to Phidias, and symbols which had been beautiful to Homer: and methods
+and habits of pictorial scholarship which gave a refinement of manner
+to the work of the simplest craftsman, and became an education to
+the higher artists which no discipline of literature can now bestow,
+developed themselves in the effort to decipher, and the impulse to
+re-interpret, the Eleusinian divinity of Byzantine tradition.
+
+88. The words I have just used, "pictorial scholarship," and "pictorial
+theology," remind me how strange it must appear to you that in this
+sketch of the intellectual state of Italy in the thirteenth century I
+have taken no note of literature itself, nor of the fine art of Music
+with which it was associated in minstrelsy. The corruption of the
+meaning of the word "clerk," from "a chosen person" to "a learned one,"
+partly indicates the position of literature in the war between the
+golden crest and scarlet cap; but in the higher ranks, literature and
+music became the grace of the noble's life, or the occupation of the
+monk's, without forming any separate class, or exercising any
+materially visible political power. Masons or butchers might establish
+a government,--but never troubadours: and though a good knight held his
+education to be imperfect unless he could write a sonnet and sing it,
+he did not esteem his castle to be at the mercy of the "editor" of a
+manuscript. He might indeed owe his life to the fidelity of a minstrel,
+or be guided in his policy by the wit of a clown; but he was not the
+slave of sensual music, or vulgar literature, and never allowed his
+Saturday reviewer to appear at table without the cock's comb.
+
+89. On the other hand, what was noblest in thought or saying was in
+those times as little attended to as it is now. I do not feel sure that,
+even in after times, the poem of Dante has had any political effect
+on Italy; but at all events, in his life, even at Verona, where he was
+treated most kindly, he had not half so much influence with Can Grande
+as the rough Count of Castelbarco, not one of whose words was ever
+written, or now remains; and whose portrait, by no means that of a man
+of literary genius, almost disfigures, by its plainness, the otherwise
+grave and perfect beauty of his tomb.
+
+
+
+
+                LECTURE IV.
+
+              PARTED PER PALE.
+
+90. The chart of Italian intellect and policy which I have endeavoured
+to put into form in the last three lectures, may, I hope, have given you
+a clear idea of the subordinate, yet partly antagonistic, position
+which the artist, or merchant,--whom in my present lecture I shall class
+together,--occupied, with respect to the noble and priest. As an honest
+labourer, he was opposed to the violence of pillage, and to the folly
+of pride: as an honest thinker, he was likely to discover any
+latent absurdity in the stories he had to represent in their nearest
+likelihood; and to be himself moved strongly by the true meaning of
+events which he was striving to make ocularly manifest. The painter
+terrified himself with his own fiends, and reproved or comforted himself
+by the lips of his own saints, far more profoundly than any verbal
+preacher; and thus, whether as craftsman or inventor, was likely to
+be foremost in defending the laws of his city, or directing its
+reformation.
+
+91. The contest of the craftsman with the pillaging soldier is typically
+represented by the war of the Lombard League with Frederick II.; and
+that of the craftsman with the hypocritical priest, by the war of the
+Pisans with Gregory IX. (1241). But in the present lecture I wish only
+to fix your attention on the revolutions in Florence, which indicated,
+thus early, the already established ascendancy of the moral forces which
+were to put an end to open robber-soldiership; and at least to compel
+the assertion of some higher principle in war, if not, as in some
+distant day may be possible, the cessation of war itself.
+
+The most important of these revolutions was virtually that of which I
+before spoke to you, taking place in mid-thirteenth century, in the
+year l250,--a very memorable one for Christendom, and the very crisis of
+vital change in its methods of economy, and conceptions of art.
+
+92. Observe, first, the exact relations at that time of Christian and
+Profane Chivalry. St. Louis, in the winter of 1248-9, lay in the isle
+of Cyprus, with his crusading army. He had trusted to Providence for
+provisions; and his army was starving. The profane German emperor,
+Frederick II., was at war with Venice, but gave a safe-conduct to the
+Venetian ships, which enabled them to carry food to Cyprus, and to
+save St. Louis and his crusaders. Frederick had been for half his life
+excommunicate,--and the Pope (Innocent IV.) at deadly spiritual and
+temporal war with him;--spiritually, because he had brought Saracens
+into Apulia; temporally, because the Pope wanted Apulia for himself.
+St. Louis and his mother both wrote to Innocent, praying him to be
+reconciled to the kind heretic who had saved the whole crusading army.
+But the Pope remained implacably thundrous; and Frederick, weary of
+quarrel, stayed quiet in one of his Apulian castles for a year.
+The repose of infidelity is seldom cheerful, unless it be criminal.
+Frederick had much to repent of, much to regret, nothing to hope,
+and nothing to do. At the end of his year's quiet he was attacked by
+dysentery, and so made his final peace with the Pope, and heaven,--aged
+fifty-six.
+
+93. Meantime St. Louis had gone on into Egypt, had got his army
+defeated, his brother killed, and himself carried captive. You may be
+interested in seeing, in the leaf of his psalter which I have laid on
+the table, the death of that brother set down in golden letters, between
+the common letters of ultramarine, on the eighth of February.
+
+94. Providence, defied by Frederick, and trusted in by St. Louis, made
+such arrangements for them both; Providence not in anywise regarding the
+opinions of either king, but very much regarding the facts, that the one
+had no business in Egypt, nor the other in Apulia.
+
+No two kings, in the history of the world, could have been happier, or
+more useful, than these two might have been, if they only had had the
+sense to stay in their own capitals, and attend to their own affairs.
+But they seem only to have been born to show what grievous results,
+under the power of discontented imagination, a Christian could achieve
+by faith, and a philosopher by reason. [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: It must not be thought that this is said in disregard of
+the nobleness of either of these two glorious Kings. Among the many
+designs of past years, one of my favorites was to write a life of
+Frederick II. But I hope that both his, and that of Henry II. of
+England, will soon be written now, by a man who loves them as well as I
+do, and knows them far better.]
+
+95. The death of Frederick II. virtually ended the soldier power
+in Florence; and the mercantile power assumed the authority it
+thenceforward held, until, in the hands of the Medici, it destroyed the
+city.
+
+We will now trace the course and effects of the three revolutions which
+closed the reign of War, and crowned the power of Peace.
+
+96. In the year 1248, while St. Louis was in Cyprus, I told you
+Frederick was at war with Venice. He was so because she stood, if not
+as the leader, at least as the most important ally, of the great Lombard
+mercantile league against the German military power.
+
+That league consisted essentially of Venice, Milan, Bologna, and Genoa,
+in alliance with the Pope; the Imperial or Ghibelline towns were, Padua
+and Verona under Ezzelin; Mantua, Pisa, and Siena. I do not name the
+minor towns of north Italy which associated themselves with each party:
+get only the main localities of the contest well into your minds. It
+was all concentrated in the furious hostility of Genoa and Pisa; Genoa
+fighting really very piously for the Pope, as well as for herself; Pisa
+for her own hand, and for the Emperor as much as suited her. The mad
+little sea falcon never caught sight of another water-bird on the wing,
+but she must hawk at it; and as an ally of the Emperor, balanced Venice
+and Genoa with her single strength. And so it came to pass that the
+victory of either the Guelph or Ghibelline party depended on the final
+action of Florence.
+
+97. Florence meanwhile was fighting with herself, for her own amusement.
+She was nominally at the head of the Guelphic League in Tuscany; but
+this only meant that she hated Siena and Pisa, her southern and western
+neighbours. She had never declared openly against the Emperor. On the
+contrary, she always recognized his authority, in an imaginative manner,
+as representing that of the Caesars. She spent her own energy chiefly in
+street-fighting,--the death of Buondelmonti in 1215 having been the root
+of a series of quarrels among her nobles which gradually took the form
+of contests of honour; and were a kind of accidental tournaments, fought
+to the death, because they could not be exciting or dignified enough on
+any other condition. And thus the manner of life came to be customary,
+which you have accurately, with its consequences, pictured by
+Shakspeare. Samson bites his thumb at Abraham, and presently the streets
+are impassable in battle. The quarrel in the Canongate between the
+Leslies and Seytons, in Scott's 'Abbot,' represents the same temper; and
+marks also, what Shakspeare did not so distinctly, because it would have
+interfered with the domestic character of his play, the connection of
+these private quarrels with political divisions which paralyzed the
+entire body of the State.--Yet these political schisms, in the earlier
+days of Italy, never reached the bitterness of Scottish feud, [1]
+because they were never so sincere. Protestant and Catholic Scotsmen
+faithfully believed each other to be servants of the devil; but the
+Guelph and Ghibelline of Florence each respected, in the other, the
+fidelity to the Emperor, or piety towards the Pope, which he found it
+convenient, for the time, to dispense with in his own person. The street
+fighting was therefore more general, more chivalric, more good-humoured;
+a word of offence set all the noblesse of the town on fire; every one
+rallied to his post; fighting began at once in half a dozen places of
+recognized convenience, but ended in the evening; and, on the following
+day, the leaders determined in contended truce who had fought best,
+buried their dead triumphantly, and better fortified any weak points,
+which the events of the previous day had exposed at their palace
+corners. Florentine dispute was apt to centre itself about the gate of
+St. Peter, [2] the tower of the cathedral, or the fortress-palace of the
+Uberti, (the family of Dante's Bellincion Berti and of Farinata), which
+occupied the site of the present Palazzo Vecchio. But the streets of
+Siena seem to have afforded better barricade practice. They are as steep
+as they are narrow--extremely both; and the projecting stones on their
+palace fronts, which were left, in building, to sustain, on occasion,
+the barricade beams across the streets, are to this day important
+features in their architecture.
+
+[Footnote 1: Distinguish always the personal from the religious feud;
+personal feud is more treacherous and violent in Italy than in Scotland;
+but not the political or religious feud, unless involved with vast
+material interests.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Sismondi, vol. ii., chap. ii.; G. Villani, vi., 33.]
+
+98. Such being the general state of matters in Florence, in this year
+1248, Frederick writes to the Uberti, who headed the Ghibellines,
+to engage them in serious effort to bring the city distinctly to
+the Imperial side. He was besieging Parma; and sent his natural son,
+Frederick, king of Antioch, with sixteen hundred German knights, to give
+the Ghibellines assured preponderance in the next quarrel.
+
+The Uberti took arms before their arrival; rallied all their Ghibelline
+friends into a united body, and so attacked and carried the Guelph
+barricades, one by one, till their antagonists, driven together by local
+defeat, stood in consistency as complete as their own, by the gate
+of St. Peter, 'Scheraggio.' Young Frederick, with his German riders,
+arrived at this crisis; the Ghibellines opening the gates to him; the
+Guelphs, nevertheless, fought at their outmost barricade for four days
+more; but at last, tired, withdrew from the city, in a body, on the
+night of Candlemas, 2nd February, 1248; leaving the Ghibellines and
+their German friends to work their pleasure,--who immediately
+set themselves to throw down the Guelph palaces, and destroyed
+six-and-thirty of them, towers and all, with the good help of Niccola
+Pisano,--for this is the occasion of that beautiful piece of new
+engineering of his.
+
+99. It is the first interference of the Germans in Florentine affairs
+which belongs to the real cycle of modern history. Six hundred years
+later, a troop of German riders entered Florence again, to restore its
+Grand Duke; and our warmhearted and loving English poetess, looking on
+from Casa Guidi windows, gives the said Germans many hard words, and
+thinks her darling Florentines entirely innocent in the matter. But if
+she had had clear eyes, (yeux de lin [1] the Romance of the Rose calls
+them,) she would have seen that white-coated cavalry with its heavy guns
+to be nothing more than the rear-guard of young Frederick of Antioch;
+and that Florence's own Ghibellines had opened her gates to them.
+Destiny little regards cost of time; she does her justice at that
+telescopic distance just as easily and accurately as close at hand.
+
+[Footnote 1: Lynx.]
+
+100. "Frederick of _Antioch_." Note the titular coincidence. The
+disciples were called Christians first in Antioch; here we have our
+lieutenant of Antichrist also named from that town. The anti-Christian
+Germans got into Florence upon Sunday morning; the Guelphs fought on
+till Wednesday, which was Candlemas;--the Tower of the Death-watch was
+thrown down next day. It was so called because it stood on the Piazza of
+St John; and all dying people in Florence called on St. John for help;
+and looked, if it might be, to the top of this highest and best-built of
+towers. The wicked anti-Christian Ghibellines, Nicholas of Pisa helping,
+cut the side of it "so that the tower might fall on the Baptistery. But
+as it pleased God, for better reverencing of the blessed St. John, the
+tower, which was a hundred and eighty feet high, as it was coming down,
+plainly appeared to eschew the holy church, and turned aside, and fell
+right across the square; at which all the Florentines marvelled, (pious
+or impious,) and the _people_ (anti-Ghibelline) were greatly delighted."
+
+101. I have no doubt that this story is apocryphal, not only in its
+attribution of these religious scruples to the falling tower; but in
+its accusation of the Ghibellines as having definitely intended the
+destruction of the Baptistery. It is only modern reformers who feel the
+absolute need of enforcing their religious opinions in so practical a
+manner. Such a piece of sacrilege would have been revolting to Farinata;
+how much more to the group of Florentines whose temper is centrally
+represented by Dante's, to all of whom their "bel San Giovanni" was
+dear, at least for its beauty, if not for its sanctity. And Niccola
+himself was too good a workman to become the instrument of the
+destruction of so noble a work,--not to insist on the extreme
+probability that he was also too good an engineer to have had his
+purpose, if once fixed, thwarted by any tenderness in the conscience of
+the collapsing tower. The tradition itself probably arose after the
+rage of the exiled Ghibellines had half consented to the destruction,
+on political grounds, of Florence itself; but the form it took is of
+extreme historical value, indicating thus early at least the suspected
+existence of passions like those of the Cromwellian or Garibaldian
+soldiery in the Florentine noble; and the distinct character of the
+Ghibelline party as not only anti-Papal, but profane.
+
+102. Upon the castles, and the persons of their antagonists, however,
+the pride, or fear, of the Ghibellines had little mercy; and in their
+day of triumph they provoked against themselves nearly every rational as
+well as religious person in the commonwealth. They despised too much the
+force of the newly-risen popular power, founded on economy, sobriety,
+and common sense; and, alike by impertinence and pillage, increased the
+irritation of the civil body; until, as aforesaid, on the 20th October,
+1250, all the rich burgesses of Florence took arms; met in the square
+before the church of Santa Croce, ("where," says Sismondi, "the republic
+of the dead is still assembled today,") thence traversed the city to the
+palace of the Ghibelline podesta; forced him to resign; named Uberto of
+Lucca in his place, under the title of Captain of the People; divided
+themselves into twenty companies, each, in its own district of the city,
+having its captain [1] and standard; and elected a council of twelve
+ancients, constituting a seniory or signoria, to deliberate on and
+direct public affairs.
+
+[Footnote 1: 'Corporal,' literally'.]
+
+103. What a perfectly beautiful republican movement! thinks Sismondi,
+seeing, in all this, nothing but the energy of a multitude; and entirely
+ignoring the peculiar capacity of this Florentine mob,--capacity of two
+virtues, much forgotten by modern republicanism,--order, namely; and
+obedience; together with the peculiar instinct of this Florentine
+multitude, which not only felt itself to need captains, but knew where
+to find them.
+
+104. Hubert of Lucca--How came they, think you, to choose _him _out of
+a stranger city, and that a poorer one than their own? Was there no
+Florentine then, of all this rich and eager crowd, who was fit to govern
+Florence?
+
+I cannot find any account of this Hubert, Bright mind, of Ducca; Villani
+says simply of him, "Fu il primo capitano di Firenze."
+
+They hung a bell for him in the Campanile of the Lion, and gave him
+the flag of Florence to bear; and before the day was over, that 20th
+of October, he had given every one of the twenty companies their flags
+also. And the bearings of the said gonfalons were these. I will give you
+this heraldry as far as I can make it out from Villani; it will be very
+useful to us afterwards; I leave the Italian when I cannot translate
+it:--
+
+105. A. Sesto, (sixth part of the city,) of the other side of Arno.
+
+        Gonfalon 1. Gules; a ladder, argent.
+             2. Argent; a scourge, sable.
+             3. Azure; (una piazza bianca con
+               nicchi vermigli).
+             4. Gules; a dragon, vert.
+
+
+B. Sesto of St. Peter Scheraggio.
+
+             1. Azure; a chariot, or.
+             2. Or; a bull, sable.
+             3. Argent; a lion rampant, sable.
+             4. (A lively piece, "pezza gagliarda")
+                Barry of (how many?) pieces,
+                argent and sable.
+
+
+You may as well note at once of this kind of bearing, called 'gagliarda'
+by Villani, that these groups of piles, pales, bends, and bars, were
+called in English heraldry 'Restrial bearings,' "in respect of their
+strength and solid substance, which is able to abide the stresse and
+force of any triall they shall be put unto." [1] And also that, the
+number of bars being uncertain, I assume the bearing to be 'barry,' that
+is, having an even number of bars; had it been odd, as of seven bars, it
+should have been blazoned, argent; three bars, sable; or, if so divided,
+sable, three bars argent.
+
+[Footnote 1: Guillim, sect. ii., chap. 3.]
+
+This lively bearing was St. Pulinari's.
+
+C. Sesto of Borgo.
+
+             1. Or; a viper, vert.
+             2. Argent; a needle, (?) (aguglia)
+                sable.
+             3. Vert; a horse unbridled;
+                draped, argent, a cross,
+                gules.
+
+
+D. Sesto of St. Brancazio.
+
+             1. Vert; a lion rampant, proper.
+             2. Argent; a lion rampant, gules.
+             3. Azure; a lion rampant, argent.
+
+
+E. Sesto of the Cathedral gates.
+
+             1. Azure; a lion (passant?) or.
+             2. Or; a dragon, vert.
+             3. Argent; a lion rampant,
+                azure, crowned, or.
+
+
+F. Sesto of St. Peter's gates.
+
+             1. Or; two keys, gules.
+             2. An Italian (or more definitely
+               a Greek and Etruscan bearing;
+               I do not know how to
+               blazon it;) concentric bands,
+               argent and sable. This is
+               one of the remains of the
+               Greek expressions of storm;
+               hail, or the Trinacrian limbs,
+               being put on the giant's
+               shields also. It is connected
+               besides with the Cretan
+               labyrinth, and the circles of
+               the Inferno.
+             3. Parted per fesse, gules and
+               vai (I don't know if vai
+               means grey--not a proper
+               heraldic colour--or vaire).
+
+
+106. Of course Hubert of Lucca did not determine these bearings, but
+took them as he found them, and appointed them for standards; [1] he did
+the same for all the country parishes, and ordered them to come into
+the city at need. "And in this manner the old people of Florence ordered
+itself; and for more strength of the people, they ordered and began to
+build the palace which is behind the Badia,--that is to say, the one
+which is of dressed stone, with the tower; for before there was no
+palace of the commune in Florence, but the signory abode sometimes in
+one part of the town, sometimes in another.
+
+[Footnote 1: We will examine afterwards the heraldry of the trades,
+chap, xi., Villani.]
+
+107. "And as the people had now taken state and signory on themselves,
+they ordered, for greater strength of the people, that all the towers of
+Florence--and there were many 180 feet high [1]--should be cut down to
+75 feet, and no more; and so it was done, and with the stones of them
+they walled the city on the other side Arno."
+
+[Footnote: 120 braccia.]
+
+108. That last sentence is a significant one. Here is the central
+expression of the true burgess or townsman temper,--resolute maintenance
+of fortified peace. These are the walls which modern republicanism
+throws down, to make boulevards over their ruins.
+
+109. Such new order being taken, Florence remained quiet for full two
+months. On the 13th of December, in the same year, died the Emperor
+Frederick II.; news of his death did not reach Florence till the 7th
+January, 1251. It had chanced, according to Villani, that on the actual
+day of his death, his Florentine vice-regent, Rinieri of Montemerlo, was
+killed by a piece of the vaulting [1] of his room falling on him as he
+slept. And when the people heard of the Emperor's death, "which was most
+useful and needful for Holy Church, and for our commune," they took
+the fall of the roof on his lieutenant as an omen of the extinction
+of Imperial authority, and resolved to bring home all their Guelphic
+exiles, and that the Ghibellines should be forced to make peace with
+them. Which was done, and the peace really lasted for full six months;
+when, a quarrel chancing with Ghibelline Pistoja, the Florentines, under
+a Milanese podesta, fought their first properly communal and commercial
+battle, with great slaughter of Pistojese. Naturally enough, but very
+unwisely, the Florentine Ghibellines declined to take part in this
+battle; whereupon the people, returning flushed with victory, drove them
+all out, and established pure Guelph government in Florence, changing at
+the same time the flag of the city from gules, a lily argent, to argent,
+a lily gules; but the most ancient bearing of all, simply parted
+per pale, argent and gules, remained always on their carroccio of
+battle,--"Non si muto mai."
+
+[Footnote 1: "Una volta ch' era sopra la camera."]
+
+110. "Non si muto mai." Villani did not know how true his words were.
+That old shield of Florence, parted per pale, argent and gules, (or
+our own Saxon Oswald's, parted per pale, or and purpure,) are heraldry
+changeless in sign; declaring the necessary balance, in ruling men, of
+the Rational and Imaginative powers; pure Alp, and glowing cloud.
+
+Church and State--Pope and Emperor--Clergy and Laity,--all these are
+partial, accidental--too often, criminal--oppositions; but the bodily
+and spiritual elements, seemingly adverse, remain in everlasting
+harmony,
+
+Not less the new bearing of the shield, the red fleur-de-lys, has
+another meaning. It is red, not as ecclesiastical, but as free. Not of
+Guelph against Ghibelline, but of Labourer against Knight. No more his
+serf, but his minister. His duty no more 'servitium,' but 'ministerium,'
+'mestier.' We learn the power of word after word, as of sign after sign,
+as we follow the traces of this nascent art. I have sketched for you
+this lily from the base of the tower of Giotto. You may judge by the
+subjects of the sculpture beside it that it was built just in this fit
+of commercial triumph; for all the outer bas-reliefs are of trades.
+
+111. Draw that red lily then, and fix it in your minds as the sign
+of the great change in the temper of Florence, and in her laws, in
+mid-thirteenth century; and remember also, when you go to Florence and
+see that mighty tower of the Palazzo Vecchio (noble still, in spite of
+the calamitous and accursed restorations which have smoothed its
+rugged outline, and effaced with modern vulgarisms its lovely
+sculpture)--terminating the shadowy perspectives of the Uffizii, or
+dominant over the city seen from Fesole or Bellosguardo,--that, as the
+tower of Giotto is the notablest monument in the world of the Religion
+of Europe, so, on this tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, first shook
+itself to the winds the Lily standard of her liberal,--because
+honest,--commerce.
+
+
+
+
+                LECTURE V.
+
+               PAX VOBISCUM.
+
+112. My last lecture ended with a sentence which I thought, myself,
+rather pretty, and quite fit for a popular newspaper, about the 'lily
+standard of liberal commerce.' But it might occur, and I hope did occur,
+to some of you, that it would have been more appropriate if the lily had
+changed colour the other way, from red to white, (instead of white to
+red,) as a sign of a pacific constitution and kindly national purpose.
+
+113. I believe otherwise, however; and although the change itself was
+for the sake of change merely, you may see in it, I think, one of the
+historical coincidences which contain true instruction for us.
+
+Quite one of the chiefest art-mistakes and stupidities of men has been
+their tendency to dress soldiers in red clothes, and monks, or pacific
+persons, in black, white, or grey ones. At least half of that mental
+bias of young people, which sustains the wickedness of war among us
+at this day, is owing to the prettiness of uniforms. Make all Hussars
+black, all Guards black, all troops of the line black; dress officers
+and men, alike, as you would public executioners; and the number of
+candidates for commissions will be greatly diminished. Habitually, on
+the contrary, you dress these destructive rustics and their officers in
+scarlet and gold, but give your productive rustics no costume of honour
+or beauty; you give your peaceful student a costume which he tucks up
+to his waist, because he is ashamed of it; and dress your pious rectors,
+and your sisters of charity, in black, as if it were _their_ trade
+instead of the soldier's to send people to hell, and their own destiny
+to arrive there.
+
+114. But the investiture of the lily of Florence with scarlet is a
+symbol,--unintentional, observe, but not the less notable,--of the
+recovery of human sense and intelligence in this matter. The reign of
+war was past; this was the sign of it;--the red glow, not now of the
+Towers of Dis, but of the Carita, "che appena fora dentro al fuoco
+nota." And a day is coming, be assured, when the kings of Europe will
+dress their peaceful troops beautifully; will clothe their peasant girls
+"in scarlet, with other delights," and "put on ornaments of gold upon
+_their_ apparel;" when the crocus and the lily will not be the only
+living things dressed daintily in our land, and the glory of the wisest
+monarchs be indeed, in that their people, like themselves, shall be, at
+least in some dim likeness, "arrayed like one of these."
+
+115. But as for the immediate behaviour of Florence herself, with her
+new standard, its colour was quite sufficiently significant in that old
+symbolism, when the first restrial bearing was drawn by dying fingers
+dipped in blood. The Guelphic revolution had put her into definite
+political opposition with her nearest, and therefore,--according to
+the custom and Christianity of the time,--her hatefullest,
+neighbours,--Pistoja, Pisa, Siena, and Volterra. What glory might not
+be acquired, what kind purposes answered, by making pacific mercantile
+states also of those benighted towns! Besides, the death of the Emperor
+had thrown his party everywhere into discouragement; and what was the
+use of a flag which flew no farther than over the new palazzo?
+
+116. Accordingly, in the next year, the pacific Florentines began
+by ravaging the territory of Pistoja; then attacked the Pisans at
+Pontadera, and took 3000 prisoners; and finished by traversing, and
+eating up all that could be ate in, the country of Siena; besides
+beating the Sienese under the castle of Montalcino. Returning in triumph
+after these benevolent operations, they resolved to strike a new piece
+of money in memory of them,--the golden Florin!
+
+117. This coin I have placed in your room of study, to be the first
+of the series of coins which I hope to arrange for you, not
+chronologically, but for the various interest, whether as regards art or
+history, which they should possess in your general studies. "The Florin
+of Florence," (says Sismondi), "through all the monetary revolutions
+of all neighbouring countries, and while the bad faith of governments
+adulterated their coin from one end of Europe to the other, has always
+remained the same; it is, to-day," (I don't know when, exactly, he wrote
+this,--but it doesn't matter), "of the same weight, and bears the same
+name and the same stamp, which it did when it was struck in 1252."
+It was gold of the purest title (24 carats), weighed the eighth of
+an ounce, and carried, as you see, on one side the image of St. John
+Baptist, on the other the Fleur-de-lys. It is the coin which Chaucer
+takes for the best representation of beautiful money in the Pardoner's
+Tale: this, in his judgment, is the fairest mask of Death. Villani's
+relation of its moral and commercial effect at Tunis is worth
+translating, being in the substance of it, I doubt not, true.
+
+118. "And these new florins beginning to scatter through the world,
+some of them got to Tunis, in Barbary; and the King of Tunis, who was
+a worthy and wise lord, was greatly pleased with them, and had them
+tested; and finding them of fine gold, he praised them much, and had
+the legend on them interpreted to him,--to wit, on one side 'St. John
+Baptist,' on the other 'Florentia.' So seeing they were pieces of
+Christian money, he sent for the Pisan merchants, who were free of his
+port, and much before the King (and also the Florentines traded in Tunis
+through Pisan agents),--[see these hot little Pisans, how they are first
+everywhere,]--and asked of them what city it was among the Christians
+which made the said florins. And the Pisans answered in spite and envy,
+'They are our land Arabs.' The King answered wisely, "It does not appear
+to me Arab's money; you Pisans, what golden money have _you_ got?" Then
+they were confused, and knew not what to answer. So he asked if there
+was any Florentine among them. And there was found a merchant from the
+other-side-Arno, by name Peter Balducci, discreet and wise. The King
+asked him of the state and being of Florence, of which the Pisans
+made their Arabs,--who answered him wisely, showing the power and
+magnificence of Florence; and how Pisa, in comparison, was not, either
+in land or people, the half of Florence; and that they had no golden
+money; and that the gold of which those florins had been made was gained
+by the Florentines above and beyond them, by many victories. Wherefore
+the said Pisans were put to shame, and the King, both by reason of the
+florin, and for the words of our wise citizen, made the Florentines
+free, and appointed for them their own Fondaco, and church, in Tunis,
+and gave them privileges like the Pisans. And this we know for a truth
+from the same Peter, having been in company with him at the office of
+the Priors."
+
+119. I cannot tell you what the value of the piece was at this time:
+the sentence with which Sismondi concludes his account of it being only
+useful as an example of the total ignorance of the laws of currency in
+which many even of the best educated persons at the present day remain.
+
+"Its value," he says always the same, "answers to eleven francs forty
+centimes of France."
+
+But all that can be scientifically said of any piece of money is that
+it contains a given weight of a given metal. Its value in other coins,
+other metals, or other general produce, varies not only from day to day,
+but from instant to instant.
+
+120. With this coin of Florence ought in justice to be ranked the
+Venetian zecchin; [1] but of it I can only thus give you account in
+another place,--for I must at once go on now to tell you the first use I
+find recorded, as being made by the Florentines of their new money.
+
+[Footnote 1: In connection with the Pisans' insulting intention by their
+term of Arabs, remember that the Venetian 'zecca,' (mint) came from the
+Arabic 'sehk,' the steel die used in coinage.]
+
+They pursued in the years 1253 and 1254 their energetic promulgation of
+peace. They ravaged the lands of Pistoja so often, that the Pistojese
+submitted themselves, on condition of receiving back their Guelph
+exiles, and admitting a Florentine garrison into Pistoja. Next they
+attacked Monte Reggione, the March-fortress of the Sienese; and pressed
+it so vigorously that Siena was fain to make peace too, on condition
+of ceasing her alliance with the Ghibellines. Next they ravaged the
+territory of Volterra: the townspeople, confident in the strength of
+their rock fortress, came out to give battle; the Florentines beat them
+up the hill, and entered the town gates with the fugitives.
+
+121. And, for note to this sentence, in my long-since-read volume of
+Sismondi, I find a cross-fleury at the bottom of the page, with the
+date 1254 underneath it; meaning that I was to remember that year as
+the beginning of Christian warfare. For little as you may think it, and
+grotesquely opposed as this ravaging of their neighbours' territories
+may seem to their pacific mission, this Florentine army is fighting
+in absolute good faith. Partly self-deceived, indeed, by their own
+ambition, and by their fiery natures, rejoicing in the excitement of
+battle, they have nevertheless, in this their "year of victories,"--so
+they ever afterwards called it,--no occult or malignant purpose. At
+least, whatever is occult or malignant is also unconscious; not now in
+cruel, but in kindly jealousy of their neighbours, and in a true desire
+to communicate and extend to them the privileges of their own new
+artizan government, the Trades of Florence have taken arms. They are
+justly proud of themselves; rightly assured of the wisdom of the change
+they have made; true to each other for the time, and confident in the
+future. No army ever fought in better cause, or with more united heart.
+And accordingly they meet with no check, and commit no error; from
+tower to tower of the field fortresses,--from gate to gate of the great
+cities,--they march in one continuous and daily more splendid triumph,
+yet in gentle and perfect discipline; and now, when they have entered
+Volterra with her fugitives, after stress of battle, not a drop of blood
+is shed, nor a single house pillaged, nor is any other condition
+of peace required than the exile of the Ghibelline nobles. You may
+remember, as a symbol of the influence of Christianity in this result,
+that the Bishop of Volterra, with his clergy, came out in procession to
+meet them as they began to run [1] the streets, and obtained this mercy;
+else the old habits of pillage would have prevailed.
+
+[Footnote 1: Corsona la citta senza contesto niuno."--_Villani._]
+
+122. And from Volterra, the Florentine army entered on the territory
+of Pisa; and now with so high prestige, that the Pisans at once sent
+ambassadors to them with keys in their hands, in token of submission.
+And the Florentines made peace with them, on condition that the
+Pisans should let the Florentine merchandize pass in and out without
+tax;--should use the same weights as Florence,--the same cloth
+measure,--and the same alloy of money.
+
+123. You see that Mr. Adam Smith was not altogether the originator
+of the idea of free trade; and six hundred years have passed without
+bringing Europe generally to the degree of mercantile intelligence, as
+to weights and currency, which Florence had in her year of victories.
+
+The Pisans broke this peace two years afterwards, to help the Emperor
+Manfred; whereupon the Florentines attacked them instantly again;
+defeated them on the Serchio, near Lucca; entered the Pisan territory
+by the Val di Serchio; and there, cutting down a great pine tree, struck
+their florins on the stump of it, putting, for memory, under the feet of
+the St. John, a trefoil "in guise of a little tree." And note here the
+difference between artistic and mechanical coinage. The Florentines,
+using pure gold, and thin, can strike their coin anywhere, with only a
+wooden anvil, and their engraver is ready on the instant to make such
+change in the stamp as may record any new triumph. Consider the vigour,
+popularity, pleasantness of an art of coinage thus ductile to events,
+and easy in manipulution.
+
+124. It is to be observed also that a thin gold coinage like that of the
+English angel, and these Italian zecchins, is both more convenient and
+prettier than the massive gold of the Greeks, often so small that it
+drops through the fingers, and, if of any size, inconveniently large in
+value.
+
+125. It was in the following year, 1255, that the Florentines made
+the noblest use of their newly struck florins, so far as I know, ever
+recorded in any history; and a Florentine citizen made as noble refusal
+of them. You will find the two stories in Giovanni Villani, Book 6th,
+chapters 61, 62. One or two important facts are added by Sismondi, but
+without references. I take his statement as on the whole trustworthy,
+using Villani's authority wherever it reaches; one or two points I have
+farther to explain to you myself as I go on.
+
+126. The first tale shows very curiously the mercenary and independent
+character of warfare, as it now was carried on by the great chiefs,
+whether Guelph or Ghibelline. The Florentines wanted to send a troop
+of five hundred horse to assist Orvieto, a Guelph town, isolated on its
+rock, and at present harrassed upon it. They gave command of this troop
+to the Knight Guido Guerra de' Conti Guidi, and he and his riders set
+out for Orvieto by the Umbrian road, through Arezzo, which was at peace
+with Florence, though a Ghibelline town. The Guelph party within the
+town asked help from the passing Florentine battalion; and Guido Guerra,
+without any authority for such action, used the troop of which he was
+in command in their favour, and drove out the Ghibellines. Sismondi does
+not notice what is quite one of the main points in the matter, that
+this troop of horse must have been mainly composed of Count Guido's own
+retainers, and not of Florentine citizens, who would not have cared to
+leave their business on such a far-off quest as this help to Orvieto.
+However, Arezzo is thus brought over to the Florentine interest; and
+any other Italian state would have been sure, while it disclaimed
+the Count's independent action, to keep the advantage of it. Not so
+Florence. She is entirely resolved, in these years of victory, to do
+justice to all men so far she understands it; and in this case it will
+give her some trouble to do it, and worse,--cost her some of her fine
+new florins. For her counter-mandate is quite powerless with Guido
+Guerra. He has taken Arezzo mainly with his own men, and means to stay
+there, thinking that the Florentines, if even they do not abet him, will
+take no practical steps against him. But he does not know this newly
+risen clan of military merchants, who quite clearly understand what
+honesty means, and will put themselves out of their way to keep their
+faith. Florence calls out her trades instantly, and with gules, a dragon
+vert, and or, a bull sable, they march, themselves, angrily up the Val
+d'Arno, replace the adverse Ghibellines in Arezzo, and send Master Guido
+de' Conti Guido about his business. But the prettiest and most curious
+part of the whole story is their equity even to him, after he had given
+them all this trouble. They entirely recognize the need he is under of
+getting meat, somehow, for the mouths of these five hundred riders of
+his; also they hold him still their friend, though an unmanageable
+one; and admit with praise what of more or less patriotic and Guelphic
+principle may be at the root of his disobedience. So when he claims
+twelve thousand lire,--roughly, some two thousand pounds of money at
+present value,--from the Guelphs of Arezzo for his service, and
+the Guelphs, having got no good of it, owing to this Florentine
+interference, object to paying him, the Florentines themselves lend them
+the money,--and are never paid a farthing of it back.
+
+127. There is a beautiful "investment of capital" for your modern
+merchant to study! No interest thought of, and little hope of ever
+getting back the principal. And yet you will find that there were no
+mercantile "panics," in Florence in those days, nor failing bankers,
+[1] nor "clearings out of this establishment--any reasonable offer
+accepted."
+
+[Footnote: Some account of the state of modern British business in this
+kind will be given, I hope, in some number of "Fors Clavigera" for this
+year, 1874.]
+
+128. But the second story, of a private Florentine citizen, is better
+still.
+
+In that campaign against Pisa in which the florins were struck on the
+root of pine, the conditions of peace had been ratified by the surrender
+to Florence of the Pisan fortress of Mutrona, which commanded a tract
+of seaboard below Pisa, of great importance for the Tuscan trade. The
+Florentines had stipulated for the right not only of holding, but of
+destroying it, if they chose; and in their Council of Ancients, after
+long debate, it was determined to raze it, the cost of its garrison
+being troublesome, and the freedom of seaboard all that the city wanted.
+But the Pisans feeling the power that the fortress had against them in
+case of future war, and doubtful of the issue of council at Florence,
+sent a private negotiator to the member of the Council of Ancients who
+was known to have most influence, though one of the poorest of them,
+Aldobrandino Ottobuoni; and offered him four thousand golden florins if
+he would get the vote passed to raze Mutrona. The vote _had_ passed the
+evening before. Aldobrandino dismissed the Pisan ambassador in silence,
+returned instantly into the council, and without saying anything of the
+offer that had been made to him, got them to reconsider their vote, and
+showed them such reason for keeping Mutrona in its strength, that the
+vote for its destruction was rescinded. "And note thou, oh reader,"
+says Villani, "the virtue of such a citizen, who, not being rich in
+substance, had yet such continence and loyalty for his state."
+
+129. You might, perhaps, once, have thought me detaining you needlessly
+with these historical details, little bearing, it is commonly supposed,
+on the subject of art. But you are, I trust, now in some degree
+persuaded that no art, Florentine or any other, can be understood
+without knowing these sculptures and mouldings of the national soul. You
+remember I first begun this large digression when it became a question
+with us why some of Giovanni Pisano's sepulchral work had been destroyed
+at Perugia. And now we shall get our first gleam of light on the matter,
+finding similar operations carried on in Florence. For a little while
+after this speech in the Council of Ancients, Aldobrandino died, and
+the people, at public cost, built him a tomb of marble, "higher than any
+other" in the church of Santa Reparata, engraving on it these verses,
+which I leave you to construe, for I cannot:--
+
+       Fons est supremus Aldobrandino amoenus.
+        Ottoboni natus, a bono civita datus.
+
+
+Only I suppose the pretty word 'amoenus' may be taken as marking the
+delightfulness and sweetness of character which had won all men's love,
+more, even, than their gratitude.
+
+130. It failed of its effect, however, on the Tuscan aristocratic mind.
+For, when, after the battle of the Arbia, the Ghibellines had again
+their own way in Florence, though Ottobuoni had been then dead three
+years, they beat down his tomb, pulled the dead body out of it, dragged
+it--by such tenure as it might still possess--through the city, and
+threw the fragments of it into ditches. It is a memorable parallel to
+the treatment of the body of Cromwell by our own Cavaliers; and indeed
+it seems to me one of the highest forms of laudatory epitaph upon a man,
+that his body should be thus torn from its rest. For he can hardly have
+spent his life better than in drawing on himself the kind of enmity
+which can so be gratified; and for the most loving of lawgivers, as of
+princes, the most enviable and honourable epitaph has always been
+
+      [Greek: "_oide plitai anton emisoun anton_."
+
+
+131. Not but that pacific Florence, in her pride of victory, was
+beginning to show unamiableness of temper also, on her so equitable
+side. It is perhaps worth noticing, for the sake of the name of
+Correggio, that in 1257, when Matthew Correggio, of Parma, was the
+Podesta of Florence, the Florentines determined to destroy the castle
+and walls of Poggibonzi, suspected of Ghibelline tendency, though the
+Poggibonzi people came with "coregge in collo," leathern straps
+round their necks, to ask that their cattle might be spared. And the
+heartburnings between the two parties went on, smouldering hotter
+and hotter, till July, 1258, when the people having discovered secret
+dealings between the Uberti and the Emperor Manfred, and the Uberti
+refusing to obey citation to the popular tribunals, the trades ran to
+arms, attacked the Uberti palace, killed a number of their people, took
+prisoner, Uberto of the Uberti, Hubert of the Huberts, or Bright-mind
+of the Bright-minds, with 'Mangia degl' Infangati, ('Gobbler [1] of
+the dirty ones' this knight's name sounds like,)--and after they had
+confessed their guilt, beheaded them in St. Michael's corn-market; and
+all the rest of the Uberti and Ghibelline families were driven out of
+Florence, and their palaces pulled down, and the walls towards Siena
+built with the stones of them; and two months afterwards, the people
+suspecting the Abbot of Vallombrosa of treating with the Ghibellines,
+took him, and tortured him; and he confessing under torture, "at the cry
+of the people, they beheaded him in the square of St. Apollinare."
+For which unexpected piece of clangorous impiety the Florentines were
+excommunicated, besides drawing upon themselves the steady enmity of
+Pavia, the Abbot's native town; "and indeed people say the Abbot was
+innocent, though he belonged to a great Ghibelline house. And for this
+sin, and for many others done by the wicked people, many wise persons
+say that God, for Divine judgment, permitted upon the said people the
+revenge and slaughter of Monteaperti."
+
+[Footnote: At least, the compound 'Mangia-pane,' 'munch-bread,' stands
+still for a good-for-nothing fellow.]
+
+132. The sentence which I have last read introduces, as you must at once
+have felt, a new condition of things. Generally, I have spoken of
+the Ghibellines as infidel, or impious; and for the most part they
+represent, indeed, the resistance of kingly to priestly power. But, in
+this action of Florence, we have the rise of another force against
+the Church, in the end to be much more fatal to it, that of popular
+intelligence and popular passion. I must for the present, however,
+return to our immediate business; and ask you to take note of the
+effect, on actually existing Florentine architecture, of the political
+movements of the ten years we have been studying.
+
+133. In the revolution of Candlemas, 1248, the successful Ghibellines
+throw down thirty-six of the Guelph palaces.
+
+And in the revolution of July, 1258, the successful Guelphs throw down
+_all_ the Ghibelline palaces.
+
+Meantime the trades, as against the Knights Castellans, have thrown down
+the tops of all the towers above seventy-five feet high.
+
+And we shall presently have a proposal, after the battle of the Arbia,
+to throw down Florence altogether.
+
+134. You think at first that this is remarkably like the course
+of republican reformations in the present day? But there is a wide
+difference. In the first place, the palaces and towers are not
+thrown down in mere spite or desire of ruin, but after quite definite
+experience of their danger to the State, and positive dejection of
+boiling lead and wooden logs from their machicolations upon the heads
+below. In the second place, nothing is thrown down without complete
+certainty on the part of the overthrowers that they are able, and
+willing, to build as good or better things instead; which, if any
+like conviction exist in the minds of modern republicans, is a wofully
+ill-founded one: and lastly, these abolitions of private wealth were
+coincident with a widely spreading disposition to undertake, as I have
+above noticed, works of public utility, _from which no dividends were to
+be received by any of the shareholders_; and for the execution of which
+the _builders received no commission on the cost_, but payment at the
+rate of so much a day, carefully adjusted to the exertion of real power
+and intelligence.
+
+135. We must not, therefore, without qualification blame, though we may
+profoundly regret, the destructive passions of the thirteenth century.
+The architecture of the palaces thus destroyed in Florence contained
+examples of the most beautiful round-arched work that had been developed
+by the Norman schools; and was in some cases adorned with a barbaric
+splendour, and fitted into a majesty of strength which, so far as I can
+conjecture the effect of it from the few now existing traces, must have
+presented some of the most impressive aspects of street edifice ever
+existent among civil societies.
+
+136. It may be a temporary relief for you from the confusion of
+following the giddy successions of Florentine temper, if I interrupt, in
+this place, my history of the city by some inquiry into technical points
+relating to the architecture of these destroyed palaces. Their style
+is familiar to us, indeed, in a building of which it is difficult to
+believe the early date,--the leaning tower of Pisa. The lower stories of
+it are of the twelfth century, and the open arcades of the cathedrals of
+Pisa and Lucca, as well as the lighter construction of the spire of St.
+Niccol, at Pisa, (though this was built in continuation of the older
+style by Niccola himself,) all represent to you, though in enriched
+condition, the general manner of buidling in palaces of the Norman
+period in Val d'Arno. That of the Tosinghi, above the old market in
+Florence, is especially mentioned by Villani, as more than a hundred
+feet in height, entirely built with little pillars, (colonnelli,) of
+marble. On their splendid masonry was founded the exquisiteness of that
+which immediately succeeded them, of which the date is fixed by definite
+examples both in Verona and Florence, and which still exists in noble
+masses in the retired streets and courts of either city; too soon
+superseded, in the great thoroughfares, by the effeminate and monotonous
+luxury of Venetian renaissance, or by the heaps of quarried stone
+which rise into the ruggedness of their native cliffs, in the Pitti and
+Strozzi palaces.
+
+
+
+
+
+                LECTURE VI.
+
+              MARBLE COUCHANT.
+
+137. I told you in my last lecture that the exquisiteness of Florentine
+thirteenth century masonry was founded on the strength and splendour of
+that which preceded it.
+
+I use the word 'founded' in a literal as well as figurative sense. While
+the merchants, in their year of victories, threw down the walls of the
+war-towers, they as eagerly and diligently set their best craftsmen to
+lift higher the walls of their churches. For the most part, the Early
+Norman or Basilican forms were too low to please them in their present
+enthusiasm. Their pride, as well as their piety, desired that these
+stones of their temples might be goodly; and all kinds of junctions,
+insertions, refittings, and elevations were undertaken; which, the
+genius of the people being always for mosaic, are so perfectly executed,
+and mix up twelfth and thirteenth century work in such intricate
+harlequinade, that it is enough to drive a poor antiquary wild.
+
+138. I have here in my hand, however, a photograph of a small church,
+which shows you the change at a glance, and attests it in a notable
+manner.
+
+You know Hubert of Lucca was the first captain of the Florentine people,
+and the march in which they struck their florin on the pine trunk was
+through Lucca, on Pisa.
+
+Now here is a little church in Lucca, of which the lower half of the
+facade is of the twelfth century, and the top, built by the Florentines,
+in the thirteenth, and sealed for their own by two fleur-de-lys, let
+into its masonry. The most important difference, marking the date, is
+in the sculpture of the heads which carry the archivolts. But the most
+palpable difference is in the Cyclopean simplicity of irregular bedding
+in the lower story; and the delicate bands of alternate serpentine and
+marble, which follow the horizontal or couchant placing of the stones
+above.
+
+139. Those of you who, interested in English Gothic, have visited
+Tuscany, are, I think, always offended at first, if not in permanence,
+by these horizontal stripes of her marble walls. Twenty-two years ago
+I quoted, in vol. i. of the "Stones of Venice," Professor Willis's
+statement that "a practice more destructive of architectural grandeur
+could hardly be conceived;" and I defended my favourite buildings
+against that judgement, first by actual comparison in the plate opposite
+the page, of a piece of them with an example of our modern grandeur;
+secondly, (vol. i., chap. v.,) by a comparison of their aspect with
+that of the building of the grandest piece of wall in the Alps,--that
+Matterhorn in which you all have now learned to take some gymnastic
+interest; and thirdly, (vol. i., chap. xxvi.,) by reference to the
+use of barred colours, with delight, by Giotto and all subsequent
+colourists.
+
+140. But it did not then occur to me to ask, much as I always disliked
+the English Perpendicular, what would have been the effect on the
+spectator's mind, had the buildings been striped vertically instead of
+horizontally; nor did I then know, or in the least imagine, how much
+_practical_ need there was for reference from the structure of the
+edifice to that of the cliff; and how much the permanence, as well as
+propriety, of structure depended on the stones being _couchant_ in the
+wall, as they had been in the quarry: to which subject I wish to-day to
+direct your attention.
+
+141. You will find stated with as much clearness as I am able, in
+the first and fifth lectures in "Aratra Pentelici," the principles of
+architectural design to which, in all my future teaching, I shall have
+constantly to appeal; namely, that architecture consists distinctively
+in the adaptation of form to resist force;--that, practically, it may be
+always thought of as doing this by the ingenious adjustment of various
+pieces of solid material; that the perception of this ingenious
+adjustment, or structure, is to be always joined with our admiration
+of the superadded ornament; and that all delightful ornament is the
+honouring of such useful structures; but that the beauty of the ornament
+itself is independent of the structure, and arrived at by powers of mind
+of a very different class from those which are necessary to give skill
+in architecture proper.
+
+142. During the course of this last summer I have been myself very
+directly interested in some of the quite elementary processes of true
+architecture. I have been building a little pier into Coniston Lake, and
+various walls and terraces in a steeply sloping garden, all which had to
+be constructed of such rough stones as lay nearest. Under the dextrous
+hands of a neighbour farmer's son, the pier projected, and the walls
+rose, as if enchanted; every stone taking its proper place, and the
+loose dyke holding itself as firmly upright as if the gripping cement of
+the Florentine towers had fastened it. My own better acquaintance with
+the laws of gravity and of statics did not enable me, myself, to build
+six inches of dyke that would stand; and all the decoration possible
+under the circumstances consisted in turning the lichened sides of the
+stones outwards. And yet the noblest conditions of building in the world
+are nothing more than the gradual adornment, by play of the imagination,
+of materials first arranged by this natural instinct of adjustment. You
+must not lose sight of the instinct of building, but you must not think
+the play of the imagination depends upon it. Intelligent laying of
+stones is always delightful; but the fancy must not be limited to its
+contemplation.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE V.--DOOR OF THE BAPTISTERY. PISA.]
+
+143. In the more elaborate architecture of my neighbourhood, I have
+taken pleasure these many years; one of the first papers I ever wrote
+on architecture was a study of the Westmoreland cottage;--properly,
+observe, the cottage of West-mereland, of the land of western lakes.
+Its principal feature is the projecting porch at its door, formed by two
+rough slabs of Coniston slate, set in a blunt gable; supported, if far
+projecting, by two larger masses for uprights. A disciple of Mr. Pugin
+would delightedly observe that the porch of St. Zeno at Verona was
+nothing more than the decoration of this construction; but you do not
+suppose that the first idea of putting two stones together to keep off
+rain was all on which the sculptor of St. Zeno wished to depend for your
+entertainment.
+
+144. Perhaps you may most clearly understand the real connection between
+structure and decoration by considering all architecture as a kind of
+book, which must be properly bound indeed, and in which the illumination
+of the pages has distinct reference in all its forms to the breadth of
+the margins and length of the sentences; but is itself free to follow
+its own quite separate and higher objects of design.
+
+145. Thus, for instance, in the architecture which Niccola was occupied
+upon, when a boy, under his Byzantine master. Here is the door of the
+Baptistery at Pisa, again by Mr. Severn delightfully enlarged for us
+from a photograph. [1] The general idea of it is a square-headed opening
+in a solid wall, faced by an arch carried on shafts. And the ornament
+does indeed follow this construction so that the eye catches it
+with ease,--but under what arbitrary conditions! In the square door,
+certainly the side-posts of it are as important members as the lintel
+they carry; but the lintel is carved elaborately, and the side-posts
+left blank. Of the facing arch and shaft, it would be similarly
+difficult to say whether the sustaining vertical, or sustained curve,
+were the more important member of the construction; but the decorator
+now reverses the distribution of his care, adorns the vertical member
+with passionate elaboration, and runs a narrow band, of comparatively
+uninteresting work, round the arch. Between this outer shaft and inner
+door is a square pilaster, of which the architect carves one side, and
+lets the other alone. It is followed by a smaller shaft and arch, in
+which he reverses his treatment of the outer order by cutting the shaft
+delicately and the arch deeply. Again, whereas in what is called the
+decorated construction of English Gothic, the pillars would have
+been left plain and the spandrils deep cut,--here, are we to call it
+decoration of the construction, when the pillars are carved and the
+spandrils left plain? Or when, finally, either these spandril spaces
+on each side of the arch, or the corresponding slopes of the gable, are
+loaded with recumbent figures by the sculptors of the renaissance, are
+we to call, for instance, Michael Angelo's Dawn and Twilight, only the
+decorations of the sloping plinths of a tomb, or trace to a geometrical
+propriety the subsequent rule in Italy that no window could be properly
+complete for living people to look out of, without having two stone
+people sitting on the corners of it above? I have heard of charming
+young ladies occasionally, at very crowded balls, sitting on the
+stairs,--would you call them, in that case, only decorations of the
+construction of the staircase?
+
+[Footnote 1: Plate 5 is from the photograph itself; the enlarged drawing
+showed the arrangement of parts more clearly, but necessarily omitted
+detail which it is better here to retain.]
+
+146. You will find, on consideration, the ultimate fact to be that to
+which I have just referred you;--my statement in "Aratra," that the idea
+of a construction originally useful is retained in good architecture,
+through all the amusement of its ornamentation; as the idea of the
+proper function of any piece of dress ought to be retained through its
+changes in form or embroidery. A good spire or porch retains the first
+idea of a roof usefully covering a space, as a Norman high cap or
+elongated Quaker's bonnet retains the original idea of a simple covering
+for the head; and any extravagance of subsequent fancy may be permitted,
+so long as the notion of use is not altogether lost. A girl begins by
+wearing a plain round hat to shade her from the sun; she ties it down
+over her ears on a windy day; presently she decorates the edge of it, so
+bent, with flowers in front, or the riband that ties it with a bouquet
+at the side, and it becomes a bonnet. This decorated construction may be
+discreetly changed, by endless fashion, so long as it does not become
+a clearly useless riband round the middle of the head, or a clearly
+useless saucer on the top of it.
+
+147. Again, a Norman peasant may throw up the top of her cap into a
+peak, or a Bernese one put gauze wings at the side of it, and still be
+dressed with propriety, so long as her hair is modestly confined, and
+her ears healthily protected, by the matronly safeguard of the real
+construction. She ceases to be decorously dressed only when the material
+becomes too flimsy to answer such essential purpose, and the flaunting
+pendants or ribands can only answer the ends of coquetry or
+ostentation. Similarly, an architect may deepen or enlarge, in fantastic
+exaggeration, his original Westmoreland gable into Rouen porch, and his
+original square roof into Coventry spire; but he must not put within his
+splendid porch, a little door where two persons cannot together get
+in, nor cut his spire away into hollow filigree, and mere ornamental
+perviousness to wind and rain.
+
+148. Returning to our door at Pisa, we shall find these general
+questions as to the distribution of ornament much confused with others
+as to its time and style. We are at once, for instance, brought to a
+pause as to the degree in which the ornamentation was once carried out
+in the doors themselves. Their surfaces were, however, I doubt not,
+once recipients of the most elaborate ornament, as in the Baptistery of
+Florence; and in later bronze, by John of Bologna, in the door of the
+Pisan cathedral opposite this one. And when we examine the sculpture and
+placing of the lintel, which at first appeared the most completely Greek
+piece of construction of the whole, we find it so far advanced in many
+Gothic characters, that I once thought it a later interpolation cutting
+the inner pilasters underneath their capitals, while the three statues
+set on it are certainly, by several tens of years, later still.
+
+149. How much ten years did at this time, one is apt to forget; and
+how irregularly the slower minds of the older men would surrender
+themselves, sadly, or awkwardly, to the vivacities of their pupils. The
+only wonder is that it should be usually so easy to assign conjectural
+dates within twenty or thirty years; but, at Pisa, the currents of
+tradition and invention run with such cross eddies, that I often find
+myself utterly at fault. In this lintel, for instance, there are
+two pieces separated by a narrower one, on which there has been an
+inscription, of which in my enlarged plate you may trace, though, I
+fear, not decipher, the few letters that remain. The uppermost of
+these stones is nearly pure in its Byzantine style; the lower, already
+semi-Gothic. Both are exquisite of their kind, and we will examine them
+closely; but first note these points about the stones of them. We are
+discussing work at latest of the thirteenth century. Our loss of the
+inscription is evidently owing to the action of the iron rivets which
+have been causelessly used at the two horizontal joints. There was
+nothing whatever in the construction to make these essential, and,
+but for this error, the entire piece of work, as delicate as an ivory
+tablet, would be as intelligible to-day as when it was laid in its
+place. [1]
+
+[Footnote: Plates 6 and 7 give, in greater clearness, the sculpture of
+this lintel, for notes on which see Appendix.]
+
+150. _Laid_. I pause upon this word, for it is an important one. And
+I must devote the rest of this lecture to consideration merely of what
+follows from the difference between laying a stone and setting it up,
+whether we regard sculpture or construction. The subject is so wide, I
+scarcely know how to approach it. Perhaps it will be the pleasantest
+way to begin if I read you a letter from one of yourselves to me. A
+very favourite pupil, who travels third class always, for sake of better
+company, wrote to me the other day: "One of my fellow-travellers, who
+was a builder, or else a master mason, told me that the way in which red
+sandstone buildings last depends entirely on the way in which the stone
+is laid. It must lie as it does in the quarry; but he said that very few
+workmen could always tell the difference between the joints of planes
+of cleavage and the--something else which I couldn't catch,--by which he
+meant, I suppose planes of stratification. He said too that some people,
+though they were very particular
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VI.--THE STORY OF ST. JOHN. ADVENT.]
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VII.--THE STORY OF ST. JOHN. DEPARTURE.]
+
+about having the stone laid well, allowed blocks to stand in the rain
+the wrong way up, and that they never recovered one wetting. The
+stone of the same quarry varies much, and he said that moss will grow
+immediately on good stone, but not on bad. How curious,--nature helping
+the best workman!" Thus far my favourite pupil.
+
+151. 'Moss will grow on the best stone.' The first thing your modern
+restorer would do is to scrape it off; and with it, whatever knitted
+surface, half moss root, protects the interior stone. Have you ever
+considered the infinite functions of protection to mountain form
+exercised by the mosses and lichens? It will perhaps be refreshing to
+you after our work among the Pisan marbles and legends, if we have a
+lecture or two on moss. Meantime I need not tell you that it would not
+be a satisfactory natural arrangement if moss grew on marble, and that
+all fine workmanship in marble implies equal exquisiteness of surface
+and edge.
+
+152. You will observe also that the importance of laying the stone in
+the building as it lay in its bed was from the first recognised by all
+good northern architects, to such extent that to lay stones 'en delit,'
+or in a position out of their bedding, is a recognized architectural
+term in France, where all structural building takes its rise; and in
+that form of 'delit' the word gets most curiously involved with the
+Latin delictum and deliquium. It would occupy the time of a whole
+lecture if I entered into the confused relations of the words derived
+from lectus, liquidus, delinquo, diliquo, and deliquesco; and of
+the still more confused, but beautifully confused, (and enriched by
+confusion,) forms of idea, whether respecting morality or marble,
+arising out of the meanings of these words: the notions of a bed
+gathered or strewn for the rest, whether of rocks or men; of the various
+states of solidity and liquidity connected with strength, or with
+repose; and of the duty of staying quiet in a place, or under a law,
+and the mischief of leaving it, being all fastened in the minds of early
+builders, and of the generations of men for whom they built, by the
+unescapable bearing of geological laws on their life; by the ease
+or difficulty of splitting rocks, by the variable consistency of the
+fragments split, by the innumerable questions occurring practically as
+to bedding and cleavage in every kind of stone, from tufo to granite,
+and by the unseemly, or beautiful, destructive, or protective, effects
+of decomposition. [1] The same processes of time which cause your Oxford
+oolite to flake away like the leaves of a mouldering book, only warm
+with a glow of perpetually deepening gold the marbles of Athens and
+Verona; and the same laws of chemical change which reduce the granites
+of Dartmoor to porcelain clay, bind the sands of Coventry into stones
+which can be built up halfway to the sky.
+
+[Footnote 1: This passage cannot but seem to the reader loose and
+fantastic. I have elaborate notes, and many an unwritten thought, on
+these matters, but no time or strength to develop them. The passage is
+not fantastic, but the rapid index of what I know to be true in all the
+named particulars. But compare, for mere rough illustration of what I
+mean, the moral ideas relating to the stone of Jacob's pillow, or the
+tradition of it, with those to which French Flamboyant Gothic owes its
+character.]
+
+153. But now, as to the matter immediately before us, observe what a
+double question arises about laying stones as they lie in the quarry.
+First, how _do_ they lie in the quarry? Secondly, how can we lay them so
+in every part of our building?
+
+A. How do they lie in the quarry? Level, perhaps, at Stonesfield and
+Coventry; but at an angle of 45 deg. at Carrara; and for aught I know, of
+90 deg. in Paros or Pentelicus. Also, the _bedding_ is of prime importance
+at Coventry, but the _cleavage_ at Coniston. [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: There are at least four definite cleavages at Coniston,
+besides joints. One of these cleavages furnishes the Coniston slate
+of commerce; another forms the ranges of Wetherlam and Yewdale crag;
+a third cuts these ranges to pieces, striking from north-west to
+south-east; and a fourth into other pieces, from north-east to
+south-west.]
+
+B. And then, even if we know what the quarry bedding is, how are we
+to keep it always in our building? You may lay the stones of a wall
+carefully level, but how will you lay those of an arch? You think these,
+perhaps, trivial, or merely curious questions. So far from it, the fact
+that while the bedding in Normandy is level, that at Carrara is steep,
+and that the forces which raised the beds of Carrara crystallized them
+also, so that the cleavage which is all-important in the stones of my
+garden wall is of none in the duomo of Pisa,--simply determined the
+possibility of the existence of Pisan sculpture at all, and regulated
+the whole life and genius of Nicholas the Pisan and of Christian art.
+And, again, the fact that you can put stones in true bedding in a
+wall, but cannot in an arch, determines the structural transition from
+classical to Gothic architecture.
+
+154. The _structural_ transition, observe; only a part, and that not
+altogether a coincident part, of the _moral_ transition. Read carefully,
+if you have time, the articles 'Pierre' and 'Meneau' in M. Violet le
+Duc's Dictionary of Architecture, and you will know everything that
+is of importance in the changes dependent on the mere qualities of
+_matter_. I must, however, try to set in your view also the relative
+acting qualities of _mind_.
+
+You will find that M. Violet le Duc traces all the forms of Gothic
+tracery to the geometrical and practically serviceable development of
+the stone 'chassis,' chasing, or frame, for the glass. For instance, he
+attributes the use of the cusp or 'redent' in its more complex forms, to
+the necessity, or convenience, of diminishing the space of glass which
+the tracery grasps; and he attributes the reductions of the mouldings in
+the tracery bar under portions of one section, to the greater facility
+thus obtained by the architect in directing his workmen. The plan of
+a window once given, and the moulding-section,--all is said, thinks M.
+Violet le Duc. Very convenient indeed, for modern architects who have
+commission on the cost. But certainly not necessary, and perhaps even
+inconvenient, to Niccola Pisano, who is himself his workman, and cuts
+his own traceries, with his apron loaded with dust.
+
+155. Again, the _re_dent--the 'tooth within tooth' of a French
+tracery--may be necessary, to bite its glass. But the cusp, cuspis,
+spiny or spearlike point of a thirteenth century illumination, is not in
+the least necessary to transfix the parchment. Yet do you suppose that
+the structural convenience of the redent entirely effaces from the mind
+of the designer the aesthetic characters which he seeks in the cusp?
+If you could for an instant imagine this, you would be undeceived by a
+glance either at the early redents of Amiens, fringing hollow vaults,
+or the late redents of Rouen, acting as crockets on the _outer_ edges
+of pediments. 156. Again: if you think of the tracery in its _bars_, you
+call the cusp a redent; but if you think of it in the _openings_, you
+call the apertures of it foils. Do you suppose that the thirteenth
+century builder thought only of the strength of the bars of his
+enclosure, and never of the beauty of the form he enclosed? You will
+find in my chapter on the Aperture, in the "Stones of Venice," full
+development of the aesthetic laws relating to both these forms, while
+you may see, in Professor Willis's 'Architecture of the Middle Ages,' a
+beautiful analysis of the development of tracery from the juxtaposition
+of aperture; and in the article 'Meneau,' just quoted of M. Violet le
+Duc, an equally beautiful analysis of its development from the masonry
+of the chassis. You may at first think that Professor Willis's
+analysis is inconsistent with M. Violet le Duc's. But they are no more
+inconsistent than the accounts of the growth of a human being would be,
+if given by two anatomists, of whom one had examined only the skeleton
+and the other only the respiratory system; and who, therefore,
+supposed--the first, that the animal had been made only to leap, and the
+other only to sing. I don't mean that either of the writers I name
+are absolutely thus narrow in their own views, but that, so far as
+inconsistency appears to exist between them, it is of that partial kind
+only.
+
+157. And for the understanding of our Pisan traceries we must introduce
+a third element of similarly distinctive nature. We must, to press our
+simile a little farther, examine the growth of the animal as if it
+had been made neither to leap, nor to sing, but only to think. We must
+observe the transitional states of its nerve power; that is to say, in
+our window tracery we must consider not merely how its ribs are built,
+(or how it stands,) nor merely how its openings are shaped, or how it
+breathes; but also what its openings are made to light, or its shafts
+to receive, of picture or image. As the limbs of the building, it may
+be much; as the lungs of the building, more. As the _eyes_ [1] of the
+building, what?
+
+[Footnote 1: I am ashamed to italicize so many words; but these
+passages, written for oral delivery, can only be understood if read with
+oral emphasis. This is the first aeries of lectures which I have printed
+as they were to be spoken; and it is a great mistake.]
+
+158. Thus you probably have a distinct idea--those of you at least
+who are interested in architecture--of the shape of the windows in
+Westminster Abbey, in the Cathedral of Chartres, or in the Duomo of
+Milan. Can any of you, I should like to know, make a guess at the shape
+of the windows in the Sistine Chapel, the Stanze of the Vatican, the
+Scuola di San Rocco, or the lower church of Assisi? The soul or anima of
+the first three buildings is in their windows; but of the last three, in
+their walls.
+
+All these points I may for the present leave you to think over for
+yourselves, except one, to which I must ask yet for a few moments your
+further attention.
+
+159. The trefoils to which I have called your attention in Niccola's
+pulpit are as absolutely without structural office in the circles as in
+the panels of the font beside it. But the circles are drawn with evident
+delight in the lovely circular line, while the trefoil is struck out by
+Niccola so roughly that there is not a true compass curve or section in
+any part of it.
+
+Roughly, I say. Do you suppose I ought to have said carelessly? So
+far from it, that if one sharper line or more geometric curve had been
+given, it would have caught the eye too strongly, and drawn away the
+attention from the sculpture. But imagine the feeling with which a
+French master workman would first see these clumsy intersections
+of curves. It would be exactly the sensation with which a practical
+botanical draughtsman would look at a foliage background of Sir Joshua
+Reynolds.
+
+But Sir Joshua's sketched leaves would indeed imply some unworkmanlike
+haste. We must not yet assume the Pisan master to have allowed himself
+in any such. His mouldings may be hastily cut, for they are, as I have
+just said, unnecessary to his structure, and disadvantageous to his
+decoration; but he is not likely to be careless about arrangements
+necessary for strength. His mouldings may be cut hastily, but do you
+think his _joints_ will be?
+
+160. What subject of extended inquiry have we in this word, ranging from
+the cementless clefts between the couchant stones of the walls of the
+kings of Rome, whose iron rivets you had but the other day placed in
+your hands by their discoverer, through the grip of the stones of the
+Tower of the Death-watch, to the subtle joints in the marble armour of
+the Florentine Baptistery!
+
+Our own work must certainly be left with a rough surface at this place,
+and we will fit the edges of it to our next piece of study as closely as
+we may.
+
+
+
+
+                LECTURE VII.
+
+              MARBLE RAMPANT.
+
+161. I closed my last lecture at the question respecting Nicholas's
+masonry. His mouldings may be careless, but do you think his joints will
+be?
+
+I must remind you now of the expression as to the building of the
+communal palace--"of _dressed_ stones" [1]--as opposed to the Tower
+of the Death-watch, in which the grip of cement had been so good.
+Virtually, you will find that the schools of structural architecture are
+those which use cement to bind
+
+[Footnote 1: "Pietre conce." The portion of the has-reliefs of Orvieto,
+given in the opposite plate, will show the importance of the jointing.
+Observe the way in which the piece of stone with the three principal
+figures is dovetailed above the extended band, and again in the rise
+above the joint of the next stone on the right, the sculpture of the
+wings being carried across the junction. I have chosen this piece on
+purpose, because the loss of the broken fragment, probably broken
+by violence, and the only serious injury which the sculptures have
+received, serves to show the perfection of the uninjured surface, as
+compared with northern sculpture of the same date. I have thought
+it well to show at the same time the modern German engraving of the
+subject, respecting which see Appendix.]
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--"THE CHARGE TO ADAM." GIOVANNI PISANO.]
+
+their materials together, and in which, therefore, balance of _weight_
+becomes a continual and inevitable question. But the schools of
+sculptural architecture are those in which stones are fitted without
+cement, in which, therefore, the question of _fitting_ or adjustment
+is continual and inevitable, but the sustainable weight practically
+unlimited.
+
+162. You may consider the Tower of the Death-watch as having been knit
+together like the mass of a Roman brick wall.
+
+But the dressed stone work of the thirteenth century is the hereditary
+completion of such block-laying, as the Parthenon in marble; or, in
+tufo, as that which was shown you so lately in the walls of Romulus; and
+the decoration of that system of couchant stone is by the finished grace
+of mosaic or sculpture.
+
+163. It was also pointed out to you by Mr. Parker that there were two
+forms of Cyclopean architecture; one of level blocks, the other of
+polygonal,--contemporary, but in localities affording different material
+of stone.
+
+I have placed in this frame examples of the Cyclopean horizontal, and
+the Cyclopean polygonal, architecture of the thirteenth century. And as
+Hubert of Lucca was the master of the new buildings at Florence, I have
+chosen the Cyclopean horizontal from his native city of Lucca; and as
+our Nicholas and John brought their new Gothic style into practice at
+Orvieto, I have chosen the Cyclopean polygonal from their adopted city
+of Orvieto.
+
+Both these examples of architecture are early thirteenth century work,
+the beginnings of its new and Christian style, but beginnings with which
+Nicholas and John had nothing to do; they were part of the national work
+going on round them.
+
+164. And this example from Lucca is of a very important class indeed.
+It is from above the east entrance gate of Lucca, which bears the cross
+above it, as the doors of a Christian city should. Such a city is, or
+ought to be, a place of peace, as much as any monastery.
+
+This custom of placing the cross above the gate is Byzantine-Christian;
+and here are parallel instances of its treatment from Assisi. The lamb
+with the cross is given in the more elaborate arch of Verona.
+
+165. But farther. The mosaic of this cross is so exquisitely fitted that
+no injury has been received by it to this day from wind or weather. And
+the horizontal dressed stones are laid so daintily that not an edge of
+them has stirred; and, both to draw your attention to their beautiful
+fitting, and as a substitute for cement, the architect cuts his
+uppermost block so as to dovetail into the course below.
+
+Dovetail, I say deliberately. This is stone carpentry, in which the
+carpenter despises glue. I don't say he won't use glue, and glue of the
+best, but he feels it to be a nasty thing, and that it spoils his wood
+or marble. None, at least, he determines shall be seen outside, and his
+laying of stones shall be so solid and so adjusted that, take all the
+cement away, his wall shall yet stand.
+
+Stonehenge, the Parthenon, the walls of the Kings, this gate of Lucca,
+this window of Orvieto, and this tomb at Verona, are all built on the
+Cyclopean principle. They will stand without cement, and no cement shall
+be seen outside. Mr. Burgess and I actually tried the experiment on this
+tomb. Mr. Burgess modelled every stone of it in clay, put them together,
+and it stood.
+
+166. Now there are two most notable characteristics about this Cyclopean
+architecture to which I beg your close attention.
+
+The first: that as the laying of stones is so beautiful, their joints
+become a subject of admiration, and great part of the architectural
+ornamentation is in the beauty of lines of separation, drawn as finely
+as possible. Thus the separating lines of the bricks at Siena, of this
+gate at Lucca, of the vault at Verona, of this window at Orvieto, and
+of the contemporary refectory at Furness Abbey, are a main source of the
+pleasure you have in the building. Nay, they are not merely engravers'
+lines, but, in finest practice, they are mathematical lines--length
+without breadth. Here in my hand is a little shaft of Florentine mosaic
+executed at the present day. The separations between the stones are,
+in dimension, mathematical lines. And the two sides of the thirteenth
+century porch of St. Anastasia at Verona are built in this manner,--so
+exquisitely, that for some time, my mind not having been set at it, I
+passed them by as painted!
+
+167. That is the first character of the Florentine Cyclopean But
+secondly; as the joints are so firm, and as the building must never
+stir or settle after it is built, the sculptor may trust his work to two
+stones set side by side, or one above another, and carve continuously
+over the whole surface, disregarding the joints, if he so chooses.
+
+Of the degree of precision with which Nicholas of Pisa and his son
+adjusted their stones, you may judge by this rough sketch of a piece of
+St. Mary's of the Thorn, in which the design is of panels enclosing very
+delicately sculptured heads; and one would naturally suppose that the
+enclosing panels would be made of jointed pieces, and the heads carved
+separately and inserted. But the Pisans would have considered that
+unsafe masonry,--liable to the accident of the heads being dropped out,
+or taken away. John of Pisa did indeed use such masonry, of necessity,
+in his fountain; and the bas-reliefs _have_ been taken away. But here
+one great block of marble forms part of two panels, and the mouldings
+and head are both carved in the solid, the joint running just behind the
+neck.
+
+168. Such masonry is, indeed, supposing there were no fear of thieves,
+gratuitously precise in a case of this kind, in which the ornamentation
+is in separate masses, and might be separately carved. But when the
+ornamentation is current, and flows or climbs along the stone in the
+manner of waves or plants, the concealment of the joints of the pieces
+of marble becomes altogether essential. And here we enter upon a most
+curious group of associated characters in Gothic as opposed to Greek
+architecture.
+
+169. If you have been able to read the article to which I referred you,
+'Meneau,' in M. Violet le Duc's dictionary, you know that one great
+condition of the perfect Gothic structure is that the stones shall be
+'en de-lit,' set up on end. The ornament then, which on the reposing or
+couchant stone was current only, on the erected stone begins to climb
+also, and becomes, in the most heraldic sense of the term, rampant.
+
+In the heraldic sense, I say, as distinguished from the still wider
+original sense of advancing with a stealthy, creeping, or clinging
+motion, as a serpent on the ground, and a cat, or a vine, up a
+tree-stem. And there is one of these reptile, creeping, or rampant
+things, which is the first whose action was translated into marble, and
+otherwise is of boundless importance in the arts and labours of man.
+
+170. You recollect Kingsley's expression,--now hackneyed, because
+admired for its precision,--the '_crawling foam_,' of waves advancing
+on sand. Tennyson has somewhere also used, with equal truth, the epithet
+'climbing' of the spray of breakers against vertical rock. [1] In either
+instance, the sea action is literally 'rampant'; and the course of a
+great breaker, whether in its first proud likeness to a rearing horse,
+or in the humble and subdued gaining of the outmost verge of its foam on
+the sand, or the intermediate spiral whorl which gathers into a lustrous
+precision, like that of a polished shell, the grasping force of a
+giant, you have the most vivid sight and embodiment of literally rampant
+energy; which the Greeks expressed in their symbolic Poseidon, Scylla,
+and sea-horse, by the head and crest of the man, dog, or horse, with
+the body of the serpent; and of which you will find the slower image, in
+vegetation, rendered both by the spiral tendrils of grasping or climbing
+plants, and the perennial gaining of the foam or the lichen upon barren
+shores of stone.
+
+[Footnote: Perhaps I am thinking of Lowell, not Tennyson; I have not
+time to look.]
+
+171. If you will look to the thirtieth chapter of vol. i. in the new
+edition of the "Stones of Venice," which, by the gift of its publishers,
+I am enabled to lay on your table to be placed in your library, you
+will find one of my first and most eager statements of the necessity of
+inequality or change in form, made against the common misunderstanding
+of Greek symmetry, and illustrated by a woodcut of the spiral ornament
+on the treasury of Atreus at Mycenae. All that is said in that chapter
+respecting nature and the ideal, I now beg most earnestly to recommend
+and ratify to you; but although, even at that time, I knew more of Greek
+art than my antagonists, my broken reading has given me no conception
+of the range of its symbolic power, nor of the function of that more
+or less formal spiral line, as expressive, not only of the waves of the
+sea, but of the zones of the whirlpool, the return of the tempest, and
+the involution of the labyrinth. And although my readers say that I
+wrote then better than I write now, I cannot refer you to the passage
+without asking you to pardon in it what I now hold to be the petulance
+and vulgarity of expression, disgracing the importance of the truth it
+contains. A little while ago, without displeasure, you permitted me to
+delay you by the account of a dispute on a matter of taste between my
+father and me, in which he was quietly and unavailingly right. It seems
+to me scarcely a day, since, with boyish conceit, I resisted his wise
+entreaties that I would re-word this clause; and especially take out of
+it the description of a sea-wave as "laying a great white tablecloth of
+foam" all the way to the shore. Now, after an interval of twenty years,
+I refer you to the passage, repentant and humble as far as regards its
+style, which people sometimes praised, but with absolue re-assertion
+of the truth and value of its contents, which people always denied. As
+natural form is varied, so must beautiful ornament be varied. You
+are not an artist by reproving nature into deathful sameness, but by
+animating your copy of her into vital variation. But I thought at that
+time that only Goths were rightly changeful. I never thought Greeks
+were. Their reserved variation escaped me, or I thought it accidental.
+Here, however, is a coin of the finest Greek workmanship, which shows
+you their mind in this matter unmistakably. Here are the waves of the
+Adriatic round a knight of Tarentum, and there is no doubt of their
+variableness.
+
+172. This pattern of sea-wave, or river whirlpool, entirely sacred in
+the Greek mind, and the [Greek: *bostruchos*] or similarly curling wave
+in flowing hair, are the two main sources of the spiral form in lambent
+or rampant decoration. Of such lambent ornament, the most important
+piece is the crocket, of which I rapidly set before you the origin.
+
+173. Here is a drawing of the gable of the bishop's throne in the upper
+church at Assisi, of the exact period when the mosaic workers of the
+thirteenth century at Rome adopted rudely the masonry of the north.
+Briefly, this is a Greek temple pediment, in which, doubtful of their
+power to carve figures beautiful enough, they cut a trefoiled hold for
+ornament, and bordered the edges with harlequinade of mosaic. They then
+call to their help the Greek sea-waves, and let the surf of the AEgean
+climb along the slopes, and toss itself at the top into a fleur-de-lys.
+Every wave is varied in outline and proportionate distance, though cut
+with a precision of curve like that of the sea itself. From this root
+we are able--but it must be in a lecture on crockets only--to trace the
+succeeding changes through the curl of Richard II.'s hair, and the
+crisp leaves of the forests of Picardy, to the knobbed extravagances of
+expiring Gothic. But I must to-day let you compare one piece of perfect
+Gothic work with the perfect Greek.
+
+174. There is no question in my own mind, and, I believe, none in
+that of any other long-practised student of mediaeval art, that in pure
+structural Gothic the church of St. Urbain at Troyes is without rival in
+Europe. Here is a rude sketch of its use of the crocket in the spandrils
+of its external tracery, and here are the waves of the Greek sea round
+the son of Poseidon. Seventeen hundred years are between them, but the
+same mind is in both. I wonder how many times seventeen hundred years
+Mr. Darwin will ask, to retrace the Greek designer of this into his
+primitive ape; or how many times six hundred years of such improvements
+as we have made on the church of St. Urbain, will be needed in order
+to enable our descendants to regard the designers of that, as only
+primitive apes.
+
+175. I return for a moment to my gable at Assisi. You see that the crest
+of the waves at the top form a rude likeness of a fleur-de-lys. There
+is, however, in this form no real intention of imitating a flower, any
+more than in the meeting of the tails of these two Etruscan griffins.
+The notable circumstance in this piece of Gothic is its advanced form
+of crocket, and its prominent foliation, with nothing in the least
+approaching to floral ornament.
+
+176. And now, observe this very curious fact in the personal character
+of two contemporary artists. See the use of my manually graspable flag.
+Here is John of Pisa,--here Giotto. They are contemporary for twenty
+years;--but these are the prime of Giotto's life, and the last of John's
+life: virtually, Giotto is the later workman by full twenty years.
+
+But Giotto always uses severe geometrical mouldings, and disdains all
+luxuriance of leafage to set off interior sculpture.
+
+John of Pisa not only adopts Gothic tracery, but first allows himself
+enthusiastic use of rampant vegetation;--and here in the facade of
+Orvieto, you have not only perfect Gothic in the sentiment of Scripture
+history, but such luxurious ivy ornamentation as you cannot afterwards
+match for two hundred years. Nay, you can scarcely match it then--for
+grace of line, only in the richest flamboyant of France.
+
+177. Now this fact would set you, if you looked at art from its
+aesthetic side only, at once to find out what German artists had taught
+Giovanni Pisano. There _were_ Germans teaching him,--some teaching
+him many things; and the intense conceit of the modern German artist
+imagines them to have taught him all things.
+
+But he learnt his luxuriance, and Giotto his severity, in another
+school. The quality in both is Greek; and altogether moral. The grace
+and the redundance of Giovanui are the first strong manifestation of
+those characters in the Italian mind which culminate in the Madonnas of
+Luini and the arabesques of Raphael. The severity of Giotto belongs to
+him, on the contrary, not only as one of the strongest practical men who
+ever lived on this solid earth, but as the purest and firmest reformer
+of the discipline of the Christian Church, of whose writings any remains
+exist.
+
+178. Of whose writings, I say; and you look up, as doubtful that he has
+left any. Hieroglyphics, then, let me say instead; or, more accurately
+still, hierographics. St. Francis, in what he wrote and said, taught
+much that was false. But Giotto, his true disciple, nothing but what
+was true. And where _he_ uses an arabesque of foliage, depend upon it it
+will be to purpose--not redundant. I return for the time to our soft and
+luxuriant John of Pisa.
+
+179. Soft, but with no unmanly softness; luxuriant, but with no
+unmannered luxury. To him you owe as to their first sire in art, the
+grace of Ghiberti, the tenderness of Raphael, the awe of Michael Angelo.
+Second-rate qualities in all the three, but precious in their kind, and
+learned, as you shall see, essentially from this man. Second-rate he
+also, but with most notable gifts of this inferior kind. He is the
+Canova of the thirteenth century; but the Canova of the thirteenth,
+remember, was necessarily a very different person from the Canova of the
+eighteenth.
+
+The Cauova of the eighteenth century mimicked Greek grace for the
+delight of modern revolutionary sensualists. The Canova of the
+thirteenth century brought living Gothic truth into the living faith of
+his own time.
+
+Greek truth, and Gothic 'liberty,'--in that noble sense of the word,
+derived from the Latin 'liber,' of which I have already spoken, and
+which in my next lecture I will endeavour completely to develope.
+Meanwhile let me show you, as far as I can, the architecture itself
+about which these subtle questions arise.
+
+180. Here are five frames, containing the best representations I can get
+for you of the facade of the cathedral of Orvieto. I must remind you,
+before I let you look at them, of the reason why that cathedral was
+built; for I have at last got to the end of the parenthesis which began
+in my second lecture, on the occasion of our hearing that John of Pisa
+was sent for to Perugia, to carve the tomb of Pope Urban IV.; and we
+must now know who this Pope was.
+
+181. He was a Frenchman, born at that Troyes, in Champagne, which I gave
+you as the centre of French architectural skill, and Royalist character.
+He was born in the lowest class of the people, rose like Wolsey; became
+Bishop of Verdun; then, Patriarch of Jerusalem; returned in the year
+1261, from his Patriarchate, to solicit the aid of the then Pope,
+Alexander IV., against the Saracen. I do not know on what day he arrived
+in Rome; but on the 25th of May, Alexander died, and the Cardinals,
+after three months' disputing, elected the suppliant Patriarch to be
+Pope himself.
+
+182. A man with all the fire of France in him, all the faith, and all
+the insolence; incapable of doubting a single article of his creed, or
+relaxing one tittle of his authority; destitute alike of reason and of
+pity; and absolutely merciless either to an infidel, or an enemy. The
+young Prince Manfred, bastard son of Frederick II., now representing
+the main power of the German empire, was both; and against him the Pope
+brought into Italy a religious French knight, of character absolutely
+like his own, Charles of Anjou.
+
+183. The young Manfred, now about twenty years old, was as good a
+soldier as he was a bad Christian; and there was no safety for Urban
+at Rome. The Pope seated himself on a worthy throne for a
+thirteenth-century St. Peter. Fancy the rock of Edinburgh Castle, as
+steep on all sides as it is to the west; and as long as the Old Town;
+and you have the rock of Orvieto.
+
+184. Here, enthroned against the gates of hell, in unassailable
+fortitude, and unfaltering faith, sat Urban; the righteousness of his
+cause presently to be avouched by miracle, notablest among those of the
+Roman Church. Twelve miles east of his rock, beyond the range of low
+Apennine, shone the quiet lake, the Loch Leven of Italy, from whose
+island the daughter of Theodoric needed not to escape--Fate seeking her
+there; and in a little chapel on its shore a Bohemian priest, infected
+with Northern infidelity, was brought back to his allegiance by seeing
+the blood drop from the wafer in his hand. And the Catholic Church
+recorded this heavenly testimony to her chief mystery, in the Festa of
+the Corpus Domini, and the Fabric of Orvieto.
+
+185. And sending was made for John, and for all good labourers in
+marble; but Urban never saw a stone of the great cathedral laid. His
+citation of Manfred to appear in his presence to answer for his heresy,
+was fixed against the posts of the doors of the old Duomo. But Urban had
+dug the foundation of the pile to purpose, and when he died at Perugia,
+still breathed, from his grave, calamity to Manfred, and made from it
+glory to the Church. He had secured the election of a French successor;
+from the rock of Orvieto the spirit of Urban led the French chivalry,
+when Charles of Anjou saw the day of battle come, so long desired.
+Manfred's Saracens, with their arrows, broke his first line; the Pope's
+legate blessed the second, and gave them absolution of all their sins,
+for their service to the Church. They charged for Orvieto with their
+old cry of 'Mont-Joie, Chevaliers!' and before night, while Urban lay
+sleeping in his carved tomb at Perugia, the body of Manfred lay only
+recognizable by those who loved him, naked among the slain.
+
+186. Time wore on and on. The Suabian power ceased in Italy; between
+white and red there was now no more contest;--the matron of the Church,
+scarlet-robed, reigned, ruthless, on her seven hills. Time wore on; and,
+a hundred years later, now no more the power of the kings, but the power
+of the people,--rose against her. St. Michael, from the corn market,--Or
+San Michele,--the commercial strength of Florence, on a question of free
+trade in corn. And note, for a little bye piece of botany, that in
+Val d'Arno lilies grow among the corn instead of poppies. The purple
+gladiolus glows through all its green fields in early spring.
+
+187. A question of free trade in corn, then, arose between Florence and
+Rome. The Pope's legate in Bologna stopped the supply of polenta, the
+Florentines depending on that to eat with their own oil. Very wicked,
+you think, of the Pope's legate, acting thus against quasi-Protestant
+Florence? Yes; just as wicked as the--not quasi-Protestants--but
+intensely positive Protestants, of Zurich, who tried to convert the
+Catholic forest-cantons by refusing them salt. Christendom has been
+greatly troubled about bread and salt: the then Protestant Pope,
+Zuinglius, was killed at the battle of Keppel, and the Catholic cantons
+therefore remain Catholic to this day; while the consequences of this
+piece of protectionist economy at Bologna are equally interesting and
+direct.
+
+188. The legate of Bologna, not content with stopping the supplies of
+maize to Florence, sent our own John Hawkwood, on the 24th June, 1375,
+to burn all the maize the Florentines had got growing; and the abbot
+of Montemaggiore sent a troop of Perugian religious gentlemen-riders
+to ravage similarly the territory of Siena. Whereupon, at Florence, the
+Gonfalonier of Justice, Aloesio Aldobrandini, rose in the Council of
+Ancients and proposed, as an enterprise worthy of Florentine generosity,
+the freedom of all the peoples who groaned under the tyranny of the
+Church. And Florence, Siena, Pisa, Lucca, and Arezzo,--all the great
+cities of Etruria, the root of religion in Italy,--joined against the
+tyranny of religion. Strangely, this Etrurian league is not now to
+restore Tarquin to Rome, but to drive the Roman Tarquin into exile. The
+story of Lucretia had been repeated in Perugia; but the Umbrian Lucretia
+had died, not by suicide, but by falling on the pavement from the window
+through which she tried to escape. And the Umbrian Sextus was the Abbot
+of Montemaggiore's nephew.
+
+189. Florence raised her fleur-de-lys standard: and, in ten days, eighty
+cities of Romagua were free, out of the number of whose names I
+will read you only these--Urbino, Foligno, Spoleto, Narni, Camerino,
+Toscanella, Perugia, Orvieto.
+
+And while the wind and the rain still beat the body of Manfred, by the
+shores of the Rio Verde, the body of Pope Urban was torn from its tomb,
+and not one stone of the carved work thereof left upon another. 190. I
+will only ask you to-day to notice farther that the Captain of Florence,
+in this war, was a 'Conrad of Suabia,' and that she gave him, beside her
+own flag, one with only the word 'Libertas' inscribed on it.
+
+I told you that the first stroke of the bell on the Tower of the
+Lion began the carillon for European civil and religious liberty. But
+perhaps, even in the fourteenth century, Florence did not understand, by
+that word, altogether the same policy which is now preached in France,
+Italy, and England.
+
+What she did understand by it, we will try to ascertain in the course of
+next lecture.
+
+
+
+
+                LECTURE VIII.
+
+                FRANCHISE.
+
+ 191. In my first lecture of this course, you remember that I showed
+you the Lion of St. Mark's with Niccola Pisano's, calling the one
+an evangelical-preacher lion, and the other a real, and naturally
+affectionate, lioness.
+
+And the one I showed you as Byzantine, the other as Gothic.
+
+So that I thus called the Greek art pious, and the Gothic profane.
+
+Whereas in nearly all our ordinary modes of thought, and in all my own
+general references to either art, we assume Greek or classic work to be
+profane, and Gothic, pious, or religious.
+
+192. Very short reflection, if steady and clear, will both show you how
+confused our ideas are usually on this subject, and how definite they
+may within certain limits become.
+
+First of all, don't confuse piety with Christianity. There are pious
+Greeks and impious Greeks; pious Turks and impious Turks; pious
+Christians and impious Christians; pious modern infidels and impious
+modern infidels. In case you do not quite know what piety really means,
+we will try to know better in next lecture; for the present, understand
+that I mean distinctly to call Greek art, in the true sense of the word,
+pious, and Gothic, as opposed to it, profane.
+
+193. But when I oppose these two words, Gothic and Greek, don't run away
+with the notion that I necessarily mean to oppose _Christian_ and Greek.
+You must not confuse Gothic blood in a man's veins, with Christian
+feeling in a man's breast. There are unconverted and converted Goths;
+unconverted and converted Greeks. The Greek and Gothic temper is equally
+opposed, where the name of Christ has never been uttered by either, or
+when every other name is equally detested by both.
+
+I want you to-day to examine with me that essential difference between
+Greek and Gothic temper, irrespective of creed, to which I have referred
+in my preface to the last edition of the "Stones of Venice," saying that
+the Byzantines gave law to Norman license. And I must therefore ask your
+patience while I clear your minds from some too prevalent errors as to
+the meaning of those two words, law and license.
+
+194. There is perhaps no more curious proof of the disorder which
+impatient and impertinent science is introducing into classical thought
+and language, than the title chosen by the Duke of Argyll for his
+interesting study of Natural History--'The Reign of Law.' Law cannot
+reign. If a natural law, it admits no disobedience, and has nothing to
+put right. If a human one, it can compel no obedience, and has no power
+to prevent wrong. A king only can reign;--a person, that is to say, who,
+conscious of natural law, enforces human law so far as it is just.
+
+195. Kinghood is equally necessary in Greek dynasty, and in Gothic.
+Theseus is every inch a king, as well as Edward III. But the laws which
+they have to enforce on their own and their companions' humanity are
+opposed to each other as much as their dispositions are.
+
+The function of a Greek king was to enforce labour.
+
+That of a Gothic king, to restrain rage.
+
+The laws of Greece determine the wise methods of labour; and the laws of
+France determine the wise restraints of passion.
+
+For the sins of Greece are in Indolence, and its pleasures; and the sins
+of France are in fury, and its pleasures.
+
+196. You are now again surprised, probably, at hearing me oppose France
+typically to Greece. More strictly, I might oppose only a part of
+France,--Normandy. But it is better to say, France, [1] as embracing the
+seat of the established Norman power in the Island of our Lady; and the
+province in which it was crowned,--Champagne.
+
+[Footnote 1: "Normandie, la franche." "France, la solue;" (chanson de
+Roland). One of my good pupils referred me to this ancient and glorious
+French song.]
+
+France is everlastingly, by birth, name, and nature, the country of the
+Franks, or free persons; and the first source of European frankness,
+or franchise. The Latin for franchise is libertas. But the modern or
+Cockney-English word liberty,--Mr. John Stuart Mill's,--is not
+the equivalent of libertas; and the modern or Cockney-French word
+liberte,--M. Victor Hugo's,--is not the equivalent of franchise.
+
+197. The Latin for franchise, I have said, is libertas; the Greek is
+[Greek: *eleupheria*]. In the thoughts of all three nations, the idea
+is precisely the same, and the word used for the idea by each nation
+therefore accurately translates the word of the other: [Greek:
+*eleupheria*]--libertas--franchise--reciprocally translate each other.
+Leonidas is characteristically [Greek: *eleupheros*] among Greeks;
+Publicola, characteristically liber, among Romans; Edward III. and the
+Black Prince, characteristically frank among French. And that common
+idea, which the words express, as all the careful scholars among you
+will know, is, with all the three nations, mainly of deliverance from
+the slavery of passion. To be [Greek: *eleupheros*], liber, or franc,
+is first to have learned how to rule our own passions; and then, certain
+that our own conduct is right, to persist in that conduct against
+all resistance, whether of counter-opinion, counter pain, or
+counter-pleasure. To be defiant alike of the mob's thought, of the
+adversary's threat, and the harlot's temptation,--this is in the meaning
+of every great nation to be free; and the one condition upon which that
+freedom can be obtained is pronounced to you in a single verse of the
+119th Psalm, "I will walk at liberty, for I seek Thy precepts."
+
+198. Thy precepts:--Law, observe, being dominant over the Gothic as over
+the Greek king, but a quite different law. Edward III. feeling no anger
+against the Sieur de Ribaumont, and crowning him with his own pearl
+chaplet, is obeying the law of love, _restraining_ anger; but Theseus,
+slaying the Minotaur, is obeying the law of justice, and _enforcing_
+anger.
+
+The one is acting under the law of the charity, [Greek: *charis*] or
+grace of God; the other under the law of His judgment. The two together
+fulfil His [Greek: *krisis*] and [Greek: *agapae*].
+
+199. Therefore the Greek dynasties are finally expressed in the
+kinghoods of Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, who judge infallibly, and
+divide arithmetically. But the dynasty of the Gothic king is in equity
+and compassion, and his arithmetic is in largesse,
+
+        "Whose moste joy was, I wis,
+     When that she gave, and said, Have this."
+
+
+So that, to put it in shortest terms of all, Greek law is of Stasy, and
+Gothic of Ecstasy; there is no limit to the freedom of the Gothic hand
+or heart, and the children are most in the delight and the glory of
+liberty when they most seek their Father's precepts.
+
+200. The two lines I have just quoted are, as you probably remember,
+from Chaucer's translation of the French Romance of the Rose, out
+of which I before quoted to you the description of the virtue
+of Debonnairete. Now that Debonnairete of the Painted Chamber of
+Westminster is the typical figure used by the French sculptors and
+painters for 'franchise,' frankness, or Frenchness; but in the Painted
+Chamber, Debonnairete, high breeding, 'out of goodnestedness,' or
+gentleness, is used, as an English king's English, of the Norman
+franchise. Here, then, is our own royalty,--let us call it Englishness,
+the grace of our proper kinghood;--and here is French royalty, the grace
+of French kinghood--Frenchness, rudely but sufficiently drawn by M.
+Didron from the porch of Chartres. She has the crown of fleur-de-lys,
+and William the Norman's shield.
+
+201. Now this grace of high birth, the grace of his or her Most Gracious
+Majesty, has her name at Chartres written beside her, in Latin. Had it
+been in Greek, it would have been [Greek: *elevtheria*]. Being in Latin,
+what do you think it must be necessarily?--Of course, Libertas. Now M.
+Didron is quite the best writer on art that I know,--full of sense and
+intelligence; but of course, as a modern Frenchman,--one of a nation for
+whom the Latin and Gothic ideas of libertas have entirely vanished,--he
+is not on his guard against the trap here laid for him. He looks at
+the word libertas through his spectacles;--can't understand, being a
+thoroughly good antiquary, [1] how such a virtue, or privilege, could
+honestly be carved with approval in the twelfth century;--rubs his
+spectacles; rubs the inscription, to make sure of its every letter;
+stamps it, to make surer still;--and at last, though in a greatly
+bewildered state of mind, remains convinced that here is a sculpture of
+'La Liberte' in the twelfth century. "C'est bien la liberte!" "On lit
+parfaitement libertas."
+
+[Footnote 1: Historical antiquary; not art-antiquary I must limitedly
+say, however. He has made a grotesque mess of his account of the Ducal
+Palace of Venice, through his ignorance of the technical characters of
+sculpture.]
+
+202. Not so, my good M. Didron!--a very different personage, this;
+of whom more, presently, though the letters of her name are indeed so
+plainly, 'Libertas, at non liberalitas,' liberalitas being the Latin for
+largesse, not for franchise.
+
+This, then, is the opposition between the Greek and Gothic dynasties, in
+their passionate or vital nature; in the _animal_ and _inbred_ part
+of them;--Classic and romantic, Static and exstatic. But now, what
+opposition is there between their divine natures? Between Theseus
+and Edward III., as warriors, we now know the difference; but between
+Theseus and Edward III, as theologians; as dreaming and discerning
+creatures, as didactic kings,--engraving letters with the point of the
+sword, instead of thrusting men through with it,--changing the club into
+the ferula, and becoming schoolmasters as well as kings; what is, thus,
+the difference between them?
+
+Theologians I called them. Philologians would be a better word,--lovers
+of the [Greek: *Logos*], or Word, by which the heavens and earth were
+made. What logos, _about_ this Logos, have they learned, or can they
+teach?
+
+203. I showed you, in my first lecture, the Byzantine Greek lion, as
+descended by true unblemished line from the Nemean Greek; but with this
+difference: Heracles kills the beast, and makes a helmet and cloak of
+his skin; the Greek St. Mark converts the beast, and makes an evangelist
+of him.
+
+Is not that a greater difference, think you, than one of mere decadence?
+
+This 'maniera goffa e sproporzionata' of Vasari is not, then, merely the
+wasting away of former leonine strength into thin rigidities of death?
+There is another change going on at the same time,--body perhaps
+subjecting itself to spirit.
+
+I will not teaze you with farther questions. The facts are simple
+enough. Theseus and Heracles have their religion, sincere and
+sufficient,--a religion of lion-killers, minotaur-killers, very
+curious and rude; Eleusinian mystery mingled in it, inscrutable to us
+now,--partly always so, even to them.
+
+204. Well; the Greek nation, in process of time, loses its
+manliness,--becomes Graeculus instead of Greek. But though effeminate
+and feeble, it inherits all the subtlety of its art, all the cunning of
+its mystery; and it is converted to a more spiritual religion. Nor is
+it altogether degraded, even by the diminution of its animal energy.
+Certain spiritual phenomena are possible to the weak, which are hidden
+from the strong;--nay, the monk may, in his order of being, possess
+strength denied to the warrior. Is it altogether, think you, by
+blundering, or by disproportion in intellect or in body, that Theseus
+becomes St. Athanase? For that is the kind of change which takes place,
+from the days of the great King of Athens, to those of the great Bishop
+of Alexandria, in the thought and theology, or, summarily, in the spirit
+of the Greek.
+
+Now we have learned indeed the difference between the Gothic knight and
+the Greek knight; but what will be the difference between the Gothic
+saint and Greek saint?
+
+Franchise of body against constancy of body.
+
+Franchise of thought, then, against constancy of thought.
+
+Edward III. against Theseus.
+
+And the Frank of Assisi against St. Athanase.
+
+205. Utter franchise, utter gentleness in theological thought. Instead
+of, 'This is the faith, which except a man believe faithfully, he
+cannot be saved,' 'This is the love, which if a bird or an insect keep
+faithfully, _it_ shall be saved.'
+
+Gentlemen, you have at present arrived at a phase of natural science in
+which, rejecting alike the theology of the Byzantine, and the affection
+of the Frank, you can only contemplate a bird as flying under the reign
+of law, and a cricket as singing under the compulsion of caloric.
+
+I do not know whether you yet feel that the position of your boat on
+the river also depends entirely on the reign of law, or whether, as your
+churches and concert-rooms are privileged in the possession of organs
+blown by steam, you are learning yourselves to sing by gas, and expect
+the Dies Irae to the announced by a steam-trumpet. But I can very
+positively assure you that, in my poor domain of imitative art, not all
+the mechanical or gaseous forces of the world, nor all the laws of
+the universe, will enable you either to see a colour, or draw a line,
+without that singular force anciently called the soul, which it was the
+function of the Greek to discipline in the duty of the servants of God,
+and of the Goth to lead into the liberty of His children.
+
+206. But in one respect I wish you were more conscious of the existence
+of law than you appear to be. The difference which I have pointed out
+to you as existing between these great nations, exists also between two
+orders of intelligence among men, of which the one is usually called
+Classic, the other Romantic. Without entering into any of the fine
+distinctions between these two sects, this broad one is to be observed
+as constant: that the writers and painters of the Classic school set
+down nothing but what is known to be true, and set it down in the
+perfectest manner possible in their way, and are thenceforward
+authorities from whom there is no appeal. Romantic writers and painters,
+on the contrary, express themselves under the impulse of passions which
+may indeed lead them to the discovery of new truths, or to the more
+delightful arrangement or presentment of things already known: but
+their work, however brilliant or lovely, remains imperfect, and without
+authority. It is not possible, of course, to separate these two orders
+of men trenchantly: a classic writer may sometimes, whatever his
+care, admit an error, and a romantic one may reach perfection through
+enthusiasm. But, practically, you may separate the two for your study
+and your education; and, during your youth, the business of us your
+masters is to enforce on you the reading, for school work, only of
+classical books: and to see that your minds are both informed of
+the indisputable facts they contain, and accustomed to act with the
+infallible accuracy of which they set the example.
+
+207. I have not time to make the calculation, but I suppose that the
+daily literature by which we now are principally nourished, is so large
+in issue that though St. John's "even the world itself could not
+contain the books which should be written" may be still hyperbole, it
+is nevertheless literally true that the world might be _wrapped_ in the
+books which are written; and that the sheets of paper covered with type
+on any given subject, interesting to the modern mind, (say the prospects
+of the Claimant,) issued in the form of English morning papers during a
+single year, would be enough literally to pack the world in.
+
+208. Now I will read you fifty-two lines of a classical author, which,
+once well read and understood, contain more truth than has been told you
+all this year by this whole globe's compass of print.
+
+Fifty-two lines, of which you will recognize some as hackneyed, and see
+little to admire in others. But it is not possible to put the statements
+they contain into better English, nor to invalidate one syllable of the
+statements they contain. [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: 'The Deserted Village,' line 251 to 302.]
+
+209. Even those, and there may be many here, who would dispute the truth
+of the passage, will admit its exquisite distinctness and construction.
+If it be untrue, that is merely because I have not been taught by
+my modern education to recognize a classical author; but whatever my
+mistakes, or yours, may be, there _are_ certain truths long known to
+all rational men, and indisputable. You may add to them, but you cannot
+diminish them. And it is the business of a University to determine what
+books of this kind exist, and to enforce the understanding of them.
+
+210. The classical and romantic arts which we have now under examination
+therefore consist,--the first, in that which represented, under whatever
+symbols, truths respecting the history of men, which it is proper
+that all should know; while the second owes its interest to passionate
+impulse or incident. This distinction holds in all ages, but the
+distinction between the franchise of Northern, and the constancy of
+Byzantine, art, depends partly on the unsystematic play of emotion in
+the one, and the appointed sequence of known fact or determined judgment
+in the other.
+
+You will find in the beginning of M. Didron's book, already quoted,
+an admirable analysis of what may be called the classic sequence of
+Christian theology, as written in the sculpture of the Cathedral of
+Chartres. You will find in the treatment of the facade of Orvieto the
+beginning of the development of passionate romance,--the one being grave
+sermon writing; the other, cheerful romance or novel writing: so that
+the one requires you to think, the other only to feel or perceive; the
+one is always a parable with a meaning, the other only a story with an
+impression.
+
+211. And here I get at a result concerning Greek art, which is very
+sweeping and wide indeed. That it is all parable, but Gothic, as
+distinct from it, literal. So absolutely does this hold, that it reaches
+down to our modern school of landscape. You know I have always told you
+Turner belonged to the Greek school. Precisely as the stream of blood
+coming from under the throne of judgment in the Byzantine mosaic of
+Torcello is a sign of condemnation, his scarlet clouds are used by
+Turner as a sign of death; and just as on an Egyptian tomb the genius
+of death lays the sun down behind the horizon, so in his Cephalus and
+Procris, the last rays of the sun withdraw from the forest as the nymph
+expires.
+
+And yet, observe, both the classic and romantic teaching may be equally
+earnest, only different in manner. But from classic art, unless you
+understand it, you may get nothing; from romantic art, even if you don't
+understand it, you get at least delight.
+
+212. I cannot show the difference more completely or fortunately than
+by comparing Sir Walter Scott's type of libertas, with the franchise of
+Chartres Cathedral, or Debonnairete of the Painted Chamber.
+
+At Chartres, and Westminster, the high birth is shown by the crown; the
+strong bright life by the flowing hair; the fortitude by the conqueror's
+shield; and the truth by the bright openness of the face:
+
+       "She was not brown, nor dull of hue,
+        But white as snowe, fallen newe."
+
+
+All these are symbols, which, if you cannot read, the image is to you
+only an uninteresting stiff figure. But Sir Walter's Franchise, Diana
+Vernon, interests you at once in personal aspect and character. She is
+no symbol to you; but if you acquaint yourself with her perfectly,
+you find her utter frankness, governed by a superb self-command; her
+spotless truth, refined by tenderness; her fiery enthusiasm, subdued by
+dignity; and her fearless liberty, incapable of doing wrong, joining to
+fulfil to you, in sight and presence, what the Greek could only teach by
+signs.
+
+213. I have before noticed--though I am not sure that you have yet
+believed my statement of it--the significance of Sir Walter's as
+of Shakspeare's names; Diana 'Vernon, semper viret,' gives you the
+conditions of purity and youthful strength or spring which imply the
+highest state of libertas. By corruption of the idea of purity, you get
+the modern heroines of London Journal--or perhaps we may more fitly call
+it 'Cockney-daily'--literature. You have one of them in perfection, for
+instance, in Mr. Charles Reade's 'Griffith Gaunt'--"Lithe, and vigorous,
+and one with her great white gelding;" and liable to be entirely changed
+in her mind about the destinies of her life by a quarter of an hour's
+conversation with a gentleman unexpectedly handsome; the hero also being
+a person who looks at people whom he dislikes, with eyes "like a dog's
+in the dark;" and both hero and heroine having souls and intellects also
+precisely corresponding to those of a dog's in the dark, which is indeed
+the essential picture of the practical English national mind at this
+moment,--happy if it remains doggish,--Circe not usually being content
+with changing people into dogs only. For the Diana Vernon of the Greek
+is Artemis Laphria, who is friendly to the dog; not to the swine. Do you
+see, by the way, how perfectly the image is carried out by Sir Walter
+in putting his Diana on the border country? "Yonder blue hill is in
+Scotland," she says to her cousin,--not in the least thinking less of
+him for having been concerned, it may be, in one of Bob Roy's forays.
+And so gradually you get the idea of Norman franchise carried out in the
+free-rider or free-booter; not safe from degradation on that side
+also; but by no means of swinish temper, or foraging, as at present the
+British speculative public, only with the snout.
+
+214. Finally, in the most soft and domestic form of virtue, you have
+Wordsworth's ideal:
+
+      "Her household motions light and free,
+       And steps of virgin liberty."
+
+
+The distinction between these northern types of feminine virtue, and the
+figures of Alcestis, Antigone, or Iphigenia, lies deep in the spirit of
+the art of either country, and is carried out into its most unimportant
+details. We shall find in the central art of Florence at once the
+thoughtfulness of Greece and the gladness of England, associated under
+images of monastic severity peculiar to herself.
+
+And what Diana Vernon is to a French ballerine dancing the Cancan, the
+'libertas' of Chartres and Westminster is to the 'liberty' of M. Victor
+Hugo and Mr. John Stuart Mill.
+
+
+
+
+                LECTURE IX.
+
+              THE TYRRHENE SEA.
+
+215. We may now return to the points of necessary history, having
+our ideas fixed within accurate limits as to the meaning of the word
+Liberty; and as to the relation of the passions which separated the
+Guelph and Ghibelline to those of our own days.
+
+The Lombard or Guelph league consisted, after the accession of Florence,
+essentially of the three great cities--Milan, Bologna, and Florence; the
+Imperial or Ghibelline league, of Verona, Pisa, and Siena. Venice and
+Genoa, both nominally Guelph, are in furious contention always for sea
+empire while Pisa and Genoa are in contention, not so much for empire,
+as honour. Whether the trade of the East was to go up the Adriatic, or
+round by the Gulf of Genoa, was essentially a mercantile question; but
+whether, of the two ports in sight of each other, Pisa or Genoa was to
+be the Queen of the Tyrrhene Sea, was no less distinctly a personal one
+than which of two rival beauties shall preside at a tournament.
+
+216. This personal rivalry, so far as it was separated from their
+commercial interests, was indeed mortal, but not malignant. The quarrel
+was to be decided to the death, but decided with honour; and each city
+had four observers permittedly resident in the other, to give account of
+all that was done there in naval invention and armament.
+
+217. Observe, also, in the year 1251, when we quitted our history, we
+left Florence not only Guelph, as against the Imperial power, (that is
+to say, the body of her knights who favoured the Pope and Italians, in
+dominion over those who favoured Manfred and the Germans), but we left
+her also definitely with her apron thrown over her shield; and the
+tradesmen and craftsmen in authority over the knight, whether German or
+Italian, Papal or Imperial.
+
+That is in 1251. Now in these last two lectures I must try to mark the
+gist of the history of the next thirty years. The Thirty Years' War,
+this, of the middle ages, infinitely important to all ages; first
+observe, between Guelph and Ghibelline, ending in the humiliation of
+the Ghibelline; and, secondly, between Shield and Apron, or, if you like
+better, between Spear and Hammer, ending in the breaking of the Spear.
+
+218. The first decision of battle, I say, is that between Guelph and
+Ghibelline, headed by two men of precisely oppposite characters,
+Charles of Anjou and Manfred of Suabia. That I may be able to define
+the opposition of their characters intelligibly, I must first ask your
+attention to some points of general scholarship. I said in my last
+lecture that, in this one, it would be needful for us to consider what
+piety was, if we happened not to know; or worse than that, it may be,
+not instinctively to feel. Such want of feeling is indeed not likely in
+you, being English-bred; yet as it is the modern cant to consider all
+such sentiment as useless, or even shameful, we shall be in several ways
+advantaged by some examination of its nature. Of all classical writers,
+Horace is the one with whom English gentlemen have on the average most
+sympathy; and I believe, therefore, we shall most simply and easily get
+at our point by examining the piety of Horace.
+
+219. You are perhaps, for the moment, surprised, whatever might have
+been admitted of AEneas, to hear Horace spoken of as a pious person. But
+of course when your attention is turned to the matter you will recollect
+many lines in which the word 'pietas' occurs, of which you have only
+hitherto failed to allow the force because you supposed Horace did not
+mean what he said.
+
+220. But Horace always and altogether means what he says. It is just
+because--whatever his faults may have been--he was not a hypocrite, that
+English gentlemen are so fond of him. "Here is a frank fellow, anyhow,"
+they say, "and a witty one." Wise men know that he is also wise. True
+men know that he is also true. But pious men, for want of attention, do
+not always know that he is pious.
+
+One great obstacle to your understanding of him is your having been
+forced to construct Latin verses, with introduction of the word
+'Jupiter' always, at need, when you were at a loss for a dactyl. You
+always feel as if Horace only used it also when he wanted a dactyl.
+
+221. Get quit of that notion wholly. All immortal writers speak out of
+their hearts. Horace spoke out of the abundance of his heart, and tells
+you precisely what he is, as frankly as Montaigne. Note then, first,
+how modest he is: "Ne parva Tyrrhenum per aequor, vela darem;--Operosa
+parvus, carmina fingo." Trust him in such words; he absolutely means
+them; knows thoroughly that he cannot sail the Tyrrhene Sea,--knows that
+he cannot float on the winds of Matinum,--can only murmur in the sunny
+hollows of it among the heath.
+
+But note, secondly, his pride: "Exegi monumentum sere perennius." He is
+not the least afraid to say that. He did it; knew he had done it; said
+he had done it; and feared no charge of arrogance.
+
+222. Note thirdly, then, his piety, and accept his assured speech of it:
+"Dis pietas mea, et Musa, cordi est." He is perfectly certain of that
+also; serenely tells you so; and you had better believe him. Well for
+you, if you can believe him; for to believe him, you must understand
+him first; and I can tell you, you won't arrive at that understanding
+by looking out the word 'pietas' in your White-and-Riddle. If you do
+you will find those tiresome contractions, Etym. Dub., stop your inquiry
+very briefly, as you go back; if you go forward, through the Italian
+pieta, you will arrive presently in another group of ideas, and end in
+misericordia, mercy, and pity. You must not depend on the form of the
+word; you must find out what it stands for in Horace's mind, and in
+Virgil's. More than race to the Roman; more than power to the statesman;
+yet helpless beside the grave,--"Non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia,
+non te, Restitvet pietas."
+
+Nay, also what it stands for as an attribute, not only of men, but of
+gods; nor of those only as merciful, but also as avenging. Against AEneas
+himself, Dido invokes the waves of the Tyrrhene Sea, "si quid pia numina
+possunt." Be assured there is no getting at the matter by dictionary
+or context. To know what love means, you must love; to know what piety
+means, you must be pious.
+
+223. Perhaps you dislike the word, now, from its vulgar use. You may
+have another if you choose, a metaphorical one,--close enough it seems
+to Christianity, and yet still absolutely distinct from it,--[Greek:
+*christos*]. Suppose, as you watch the white bloom of the olives of Val
+d'Arno and Val di Nievole, which modern piety and economy suppose
+were grown by God only to supply you with fine Lucca oil, you were to
+consider, instead, what answer you could make to the Socratio question,
+[Greek: *pothen un tis tovto to chrisma labot*]. [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Xem. Conviv., ii.]
+
+224. I spoke to you first of Horace's modesty. All piety begins in
+modesty. You must feel that you are a very little creature, and that you
+had better do as you are bid. You will then begin to think what you
+are bid to do, and who bids it. And you will find, unless you are very
+unhappy indeed, that there is always a quite clear notion of right
+and wrong in your minds, which you can either obey or disobey, at your
+pleasure. Obey it simply and resolutely; it will become clearer to you
+every day: and in obedience to it, you will find a sense of being in
+harmony with nature, and at peace with God, and all His creatures. You
+will not understand how the peace comes, nor even in what it consists.
+It is the peace that passes understanding;--it is just as visionary and
+imaginative as love is, and just as real, and just as necessary to the
+life of man. It is the only source of true cheerfulness, and of true
+common sense; and whether you believe the Bible, or don't,--or believe
+the Koran, or don't--or believe the Vedas, or don't--it will enable you
+to believe in God, and please Him, and be such a part of the [Greek:
+*eudokia*] of the universe as your nature fits you to be, in His sight,
+faithful in awe to the powers that are above you, and gracious in regard
+to the creatures that are around.
+
+225. I will take leave on this head to read one more piece of Carlyle,
+bearing much on present matters. "I hope also they will attack
+earnestly, and at length extinguish and eradicate, this idle habit of
+'accounting for the moral sense,' as they phrase it. A most singular
+problem;--instead of bending every thought to have more, and ever more,
+of 'moral sense,' and therewith to irradiate your own poor soul, and all
+its work, into something of divineness, as the one thing needful to you
+in this world! A very futile problem that other, my friends; futile,
+idle, and far worse; leading to what moral ruin, you little dream of!
+The moral sense, thank God, is a thing you never will 'account for;'
+that, if you could think of it, is the perennial miracle of man; in all
+times, visibly connecting poor transitory man, here on this bewildered
+earth, with his Maker who is eternal in the heavens. By no greatest
+happiness principle, greatest nobleness principle, or any principle
+whatever, will you make that in the least clearer than it already
+is;--forbear, I say, or you may darken it away from you altogether!
+'Two things,' says the memorable Kant, deepest and most logical of
+metaphysical thinkers, 'two things strike me dumb: the infinite starry
+heavens; and the sense of right and wrong in man.' Visible infinites,
+both; say nothing of them; don't try to 'account for them;' for you can
+say nothing wise."
+
+226. Very briefly, I must touch one or two further relative conditions
+in this natural history of the soul. I have asked you to take the
+metaphorical, but distinct, word '[Greek: *chrisma*]' rather than
+the direct but obscure one 'piety'; mainly because the Master of your
+religion chose the metaphorical epithet for the perpetual one of His own
+life and person.
+
+But if you will spend a thoughtful hour or two in reading the scripture,
+which pious Greeks read, not indeed on daintily printed paper, but
+on daintily painted clay,--if you will examine, that is to say, the
+scriptures of the Athenian religion, on their Pan-Athenaic vases, in
+their faithful days, you will find that the gift of the literal [Greek:
+*chrisma*], or anointing oil, to the victor in the kingly and visible
+contest of life, is signed always with the image of that spirit or
+goddess of the air who was the source of their invisible life. And let
+me, before quitting this part of my subject, give you one piece of what
+you will find useful counsel. If ever from the right apothecary, or
+[Greek: muropolaes]', you get any of that [Greek: *chrisma*],--don't be
+careful, when you set it by, of looking for dead dragons or dead dogs in
+it. But look out for the dead flies.
+
+227. Again; remember, I only quote St. Paul as I quote Xenophon to you;
+but I expect you to get some good from both. As I want you to think what
+Xenophon means by '[Greek: *manteia*],' so I want you to consider also
+what St. Paul means by '[Greek: *prophetia*].' He tells you to prove all
+things,--to hold fast what is good, and not to despise 'prophesyings.'
+
+228. Now it is quite literally probable, that this world, having now for
+some five hundred years absolutely refused to do as it is plainly bid by
+every prophet that ever spoke in any nation, and having reduced itself
+therefore to Saul's condition, when he was answered neither by Urim
+nor by prophets, may be now, while you sit there, receiving necromantic
+answers from the witch of Endor. But with that possibility you have no
+concern. There is a prophetic power in your own hearts, known to the
+Greeks, known to the Jews, known to the Apostles, and knowable by you.
+If it is now silent to you, do not despise it by tranquillity under that
+privation; if it speaks to you, do not despise it by disobedience.
+
+229. Now in this broad definition of Pietas, as reverence to sentimental
+law, you will find I am supported by all classical authority and use of
+this word. For the particular meaning of which I am next about to use
+the word Religion, there is no such general authority, nor can there be,
+for any limited or accurate meaning of it. The best authors use the
+word in various senses; and you must interpret each writer by his
+own context. I have myself continually used the term vaguely. I shall
+endeavour, henceforward, to use it under limitations which, willing
+always to accept, I shall only transgress by carelessness, or compliance
+with some particular use of the word by others. The power in the word,
+then, which I wish you now to notice, is in its employment with respect
+to doctrinal divisions. You do not say that one man is of one piety,
+and another of another; but you do, that one man is of one religion, and
+another of another.
+
+230. The religion of any man is thus properly to be interpreted, as the
+feeling which binds him, irrationally, to the fulfilment of duties, or
+acceptance of beliefs, peculiar to a certain company of which he forms
+a member, as distinct from the rest of the world. 'Which binds him
+_irrationally_,' I say;--by a feeling, at all events, apart from reason,
+and often superior to it; such as that which brings back the bee to its
+hive, and the bird to her nest.
+
+A man's religion is the form of mental rest, or dwelling-place, which,
+partly, his fathers have gained or built for him, and partly, by due
+reverence to former custom, he has built for himself; consisting of
+whatever imperfect knowledge may have been granted, up to that time, in
+the land of his birth, of the Divine character, presence, and dealings;
+modified by the circumstances of surrounding life.
+
+It may be, that sudden accession of new knowledge may compel him to cast
+his former idols to the moles and to the bats. But it must be some very
+miraculous interposition indeed which can justify him in quitting
+the religion of his forefathers; and, assuredly, it must be an unwise
+interposition which provokes him to insult it.
+
+231. On the other hand, the value of religious ceremonial, and the
+virtue of religious truth, consist in the meek fulfilment of the one as
+the fond habit of a family; and the meek acceptance of the other, as
+the narrow knowledge of a child. And both are destroyed at once, and the
+ceremonial or doctrinal prejudice becomes only an occasion of sin, if
+they make us either wise in our own conceit, or violent in our methods
+of proselytism. Of those who will compass sea and land to make one
+proselyte, it is too generally true that they are themselves the
+children of hell, and make their proselytes twofold more so.
+
+232. And now I am able to state to you, in terms so accurately defined
+that you cannot misunderstand them, that we are about to study the
+results in Italy of the victory of an impious Christian over a pious
+Infidel, in a contest which, if indeed principalities of evil spirit are
+ever permitted to rule over the darkness of this world, was assuredly
+by them wholly provoked, and by them finally decided. The war was not
+actually ended until the battle of Tagliacozzo, fought in August, 1268;
+but you need not recollect that irregular date, or remember it only as
+three years after the great battle of Welcome, Benevento; which was the
+decisive one. Recollect, therefore, securely:
+
+     1250. The First Trades Revolt in Florence.
+      1260. Battle of the Arbia.
+      1265. Battle of Welcome.
+
+
+Then between the battle of Welcome and of Tagliacozzo, (which you might
+almost English in the real meaning of it as the battle of Hart's Death:
+'cozzo' is a butt or thrust with the horn, and you may well think of the
+young Conradin as a wild hart or stag of the hills)--between those two
+battles, in 1266, comes the second and central revolt of the trades in
+Florence, of which I have to speak in next lecture.
+
+233. The two German princes who perished in these two battles--Manfred
+of Tarentum, and his nephew and ward Conradin--are the natural son,
+and the legitimate grandson of Frederick II.: they are also the last
+assertors of the infidel German power in south Italy against the Church;
+and in alliance with the Saracens; such alliance having been maintained
+faithfully ever since Frederick II.'s triumphal entry into Jerusalem,
+and cornation as its king. Not only a great number of Manfred's forts
+were commanded by Saracen governors, but he had them also appointed over
+civil tribunals. My own impression is that he found the Saracens more
+just and trustworthy than the Christians; but it is proper to remember
+the allegations of the Church against the whole Suabian family; namely,
+that Manfred had smothered his father Frederick under cushions at
+Ferentino; and that, of Frederick's sons, Conrad had poisoned Henry,
+and Manfred had poisoned Conrad. You will, however, I believe, find the
+Prince Manfred one of the purest representatives of northern chivalry.
+Against his nephew, educated in all knightly accomplishment by his
+mother, Elizabeth of Bavaria, nothing could be alleged by his enemies,
+even when resolved on his death, but the splendour of his spirit and the
+brightness of his youth.
+
+234. Of the character of their enemy, Charles of Anjou, there will
+remain on your minds, after careful examination of his conduct, only
+the doubt whether I am justified in speaking of him as Christian against
+Infidel. But you will cease to doubt this when you have entirely entered
+into the conditions of this nascent Christianity of the thirteenth
+century. You will find that while men who desire to be virtuous receive
+it as the mother of virtues, men who desire to be criminal receive it
+as the forgiver of crimes; and that therefore, between Ghibelline or
+Infidel cruelty, and Guelph or Christian cruelty, there is always this
+difference,--that the Infidel cruelty is done in hot blood, and the
+Christian's in cold. I hope (in future lectures on the architecture of
+Pisa) to illustrate to you the opposition between the Ghibelline Conti,
+counts, and the Guelphic Visconti, viscounts or "against counts," which
+issues, for one thing, in that, by all men blamed as too deliberate,
+death of the Count Ugolino della Gherardesca. The Count Ugolino was
+a traitor, who entirely deserved death; but another Count of Pisa,
+entirely faithful to the Ghibelline cause, was put to death by Charles
+of Anjou, not only in cold blood, but with resolute infliction of
+Ugolino's utmost grief;--not in the dungeon, but in the full light of
+day--his son being first put to death before his eyes. And among the
+pieces of heraldry most significant in the middle ages, the asp on the
+shield of the Guelphic viscounts is to be much remembered by you as a
+sign of this merciless cruelty of mistaken religion; mistaken, but not
+in the least hypocritical. It has perfect confidence in itself, and
+can answer with serenity for all its deeds. The serenity of heart never
+appears in the guilty Infidels; they die in despair or gloom, greatly
+satisfactory to adverse religious minds.
+
+235. The French Pope, then, Urban of Troyes, had sent for Charles of
+Anjou; who would not have answered his call, even with all the strength
+of Anjou and Provence, had not Scylla of the Tyrrhene Sea been on his
+side. Pisa, with eighty galleys (the Sicilian fleet added to her own),
+watched and defended the coasts of Rome. An irresistible storm drove her
+fleet to shelter; and Charles, in a single ship, reached the mouth of
+the Tiber, and found lodgings at Rome in the convent of St. Paul. His
+wife meanwhile spent her dowry in increasing his land army, and led it
+across the Alps. How he had got his wife, and her dowry, we must hear in
+Villani's words, as nearly as I can give their force in English, only,
+instead of the English word pilgrim, I shall use the Italian 'romeo' for
+the sake both of all English Juliets, and that you may better understand
+the close of the sixth canto of the Paradise.
+
+236. "Now the Count Raymond Berenger had for his inheritance all
+Provence on this side Rhone; and he was a wise and courteous signor,
+and of noble state, and virtuous; and in his time they did honourable
+things; and to his court came by custom all the gentlemen of Provence,
+and France, and Catalonia, for his courtesy and noble state; and there
+they made many cobbled verses, and Provencal songs of great sentences."
+
+237. I must stop to tell you that 'cobbled' or 'coupled' verses mean
+rhymes, as opposed to the dull method of Latin verse; for we have now
+got an ear for jingle, and know that dove rhymes to love. Also, "songs
+of great sentences" mean didactic songs, containing much in little,
+(like the new didactic Christian painting,) of which an example (though
+of a later time) will give you a better idea than any description.
+
+        "Vraye foy de necessite,
+         Non tant seulement d'equite,
+         Nous fait de Dieu sept choses croire:
+         C'est sa doulce nativite,
+         Son baptesme d'humilite,
+         Et sa mort, digne de memoire:
+         Son descens en la chartre noire,
+         Et sa resurrection, voire;
+         S'ascencion d'auctorite,
+         La venue judicatoire,
+         Ou ly bons seront mis en gloire,
+         Et ly mals en adversite."
+
+
+238. "And while they were making these cobbled verses and harmonious
+creeds, there came a romeo to court, returning from the shrine of St.
+James." I must stop again just to say that he ought to have been
+called a pellegrino, not a romeo, for the three kinds of wanderers
+are,--Palmer, one who goes to the Holy Land; Pilgrim, one who goes to
+Spain; and Romeo, one who goes to Rome. Probably this romeo had been to
+both. "He stopped at Count Raymond's court, and was so wise and worthy
+(valoroso), and so won the Count's grace, that he made him his master
+and guide in all things. Who also, maintaining himself in honest and
+religious customs of life, in a little time, by his industry and good
+sense, doubled the Count's revenues three times over, maintaining always
+a great and honoured court. Now the Count had four daughters, and no
+son; and by the sense and provision of the good romeo--(I can do no
+better than translate 'procaccio' provision, but it is only a makeshift
+for the word derived from procax, meaning the general talent of prudent
+impudence, in getting forward; 'forwardness,' has a good deal of the
+true sense, only diluted;)--well, by the sense and--progressive
+faculty, shall we say?--of the good pilgrim, he first married the eldest
+daughter, by means of money, to the good King Louis of France, saying to
+the Count, 'Let me alone,--Lascia-mi-fare--and never mind the expense,
+for if you marry the first one well, I'll marry you all the others
+cheaper, for her relationship."
+
+239. "And so it fell out, sure enough; for incontinently the King of
+England (Henry III.) because he was the King of France's relation, took
+the next daughter, Eleanor, for very little money indeed; next, his
+natural brother, elect King of the Romans, took the third; and, the
+youngest still remaining unmarried,--says the good romeo, 'Now for this
+one, I will you to have a strong man for son-in-law, who shall be thy
+heir;'--and so he brought it to pass. For finding Charles, Count of
+Anjou, brother of the King Louis, he said to Raymond, "'Give her now to
+him, for his fate is to be the best man in the world,'--prophesying of
+him. And so it was done. And after all this it came to pass, by envy
+which ruins all good, that the barons of Provence became jealous of the
+good romeo, and accused him to the Count of having ill-guided his goods,
+and made Raymond demand account of them. Then the good romeo said,
+'Count, I have served thee long, and have put thee from little state
+into mighty, and for this, by false counsel of thy people, thou art
+little grateful. I came into thy court a poor romeo; I have lived
+honestly on thy means; now, make to be given to me my little mule and
+my staff and my wallet, as I came, and I will make thee quit of all my
+service.' The Count would not he should go; but for nothing would he
+stay; and so he came, and so he departed, that no one ever knew whence
+he had come, nor whither he went. It was the thought of many that he was
+indeed a sacred spirit."
+
+240. This pilgrim, you are to notice, is put by Dante in the orb of
+justice, as a just servant; the Emperor Justinian being the image of a
+just ruler. Justinian's law-making turned out well for England; but the
+good romeo's match-making ended ill for it; and for Borne, and Naples
+also. For Beatrice of Provence resolved to be a queen like her three
+sisters, and was the prompting spirit of Charles's expedition to Italy.
+She was crowned with him, Queen of Apulia and Sicily, on the day of the
+Epiphany, 1265; she and her husband bringing gifts that day of magical
+power enough; and Charles, as soon as the feast of coronation was over,
+set out to give battle to Manfred and his Saracens. "And this Charles,"
+says Villani, "was wise, and of sane counsel; and of prowess in arms,
+and fierce, and much feared and redoubted by all the kings in the
+world;--magnanimous and of high purposes; fearless in the carrying forth
+of every great enterprise; firm in every adversity; a verifier of his
+every word; speaking little,--doing much; and scarcely ever laughed,
+and then but a little; sincere, and without flaw, as a religious and
+catholic person; stern in justice, and fierce in look; tall and nervous
+in person, olive coloured, and with a large nose, and well he appeared a
+royal majesty more than other men. Much he watched, and little he slept;
+and used to say that so much time as one slept, one lost; generous to
+his men-at-arms, but covetous to acquire land, signory, and coin,
+come how it would, to furnish his enterprises and wars: in courtiers,
+servants of pleasure, or jocular persons, he delighted never."
+
+241. To this newly crowned and resolute king, riding south from Rome,
+Manfred, from his vale of Nocera under Mount St. Augelo, sends to offer
+conditions of peace. Jehu the son of Nimshi is not swifter of answer
+to Ahaziah's messenger than the fiery Christian king, in his 'What hast
+thou to do with peace?' Charles answers the messengers with his own
+lips: "Tell the Sultan of Nocera, this day I will put him in hell, or he
+shall put me in paradise."
+
+242. Do not think it the speech of a hypocrite. Charles was as fully
+prepared for death that day as ever Scotch Covenanter fighting for his
+Holy League; and as sure that death would find him, if it found, only
+to glorify and bless. Balfour of Burley against Claverhouse is not more
+convinced in heart that he draws the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.
+But all the knightly pride of Claverhouse himself is knit together, in
+Charles, with fearless faith, and religious wrath. "This Saracen scum,
+led by a bastard German,--traitor to his creed, usurper among his
+race,--dares it look me, a Christian knight, a prince of the house of
+France, in the eyes? Tell the Sultan of Nocera, to-day I put him in
+hell, or he puts me in paradise."
+
+They are not passionate words neither; any more than hypocritical ones.
+They are measured, resolute, and the fewest possible. He never wasted
+words, nor showed his mind, but when he meant it should be known.
+
+243. The messenger returned, thus answered; and the French king rode
+on with his host. Manfred met him in the plain of Grandella, before
+Benevento. I have translated the name of the fortress 'Welcome.' It was
+altered, as you may remember, from Maleventum, for better omen;
+perhaps, originally, only [Greek: *maloeis*]--a rock full of wild
+goats?--associating it thus with the meaning of Tagliacozzo.
+
+244. Charles divided his army into four companies. The captain of his
+own was our English Guy de Montfort, on whom rested the power and the
+fate of his grandfather, the pursuer of the Waldensian shepherds among
+the rocks of the wild goats. The last, and it is said the goodliest,
+troop was of the exiled Guelphs of Florence, under Guido Guerra, whose
+name you already know. "These," said Manfred, as he watched them ride
+into their ranks, "cannot lose to-day." He meant that if he himself was
+the victor, he would restore these exiles to their city. The event
+of the battle was decided by the treachery of the Count of Caserta,
+Manfred's brother-in-law. At the end of the day only a few knights
+remained with him, whom he led in the last charge. As he helmed himself,
+the crest fell from his helmet. "Hoc est signum Dei," he said,--so
+accepting what he saw to be the purpose of the Ruler of all things;
+not claiming God as his friend. not asking anything of Him, as if His
+purpose could be changed; not fearing Him as an enemy; but accepting
+simply His sign that the appointed day of death was come. He rode into
+the battle armed like a nameless soldier, and lay unknown among the
+dead.
+
+245. And in him died all southern Italy. Never, after that day's
+treachery, did her nobles rise, or her people prosper.
+
+Of the finding of the body of Manfred, and its casting forth, accursed,
+you may read, if you will, the story in Dante. I trace for you
+to-day rapidly only the acts of Charles after this victory, and its
+consummation, three years later, by the defeat of Conradin.
+
+The town of Benevento had offered no resistance to Charles, but he
+gave it up to pillage, and massacred its inhabitants. The slaughter,
+indiscriminate, continued for eight days; the women and children were
+slain with the men, being of Saracen blood. Manfred's wife, Sybil of
+Epirus, his children, and all his barons, died, or were put to death,
+in the prisons of Provence. With the young Conrad, all the faithful
+Ghibel-line knights of Pisa were put to death. The son of Frederick of
+Antioch, who drove the Guelphs from Florence, had his eyes torn out, and
+was hanged, he being the last child of the house of Suabia. Twenty-four
+of the barons of Calabria were executed at Gallipoli, and at
+Home. Charles cut off the feet of those who had fought for Conrad;
+then--fearful lest they should be pitied--shut them into a house
+of wood, and burned them. His lieutenant in Sicily, William of the
+Standard, besieged the town of Augusta, which defended itself with some
+fortitude, but was betrayed, and all its inhabitants, (who must have
+been more than three thousand, for there were a thousand able to bear
+arms,) massacred in cold blood; the last of them searched for in their
+hiding-places, when the streets were empty, dragged to the sea-shore,
+then beheaded, and their bodies thrown into the sea. Throughout Calabria
+the Christian judges of Charles thus forgave his enemies. And the
+Mohammedan power and heresy ended in Italy, and she became secure in her
+Catholic creed.
+
+246. Not altogether secure under French dominion. After fourteen years
+of misery, Sicily sang her angry vespers, and a Calabrian admiral burnt
+the fleet of Charles before his eyes, where Scylla rules her barking
+Salamis. But the French king died in prayerful peace, receiving the
+sacrament with these words of perfectly honest faith, as he reviewed his
+past life: "Lord God, as I truly believe that you are my Saviour, so I
+pray you to have mercy on my soul; and as I truly made the conquest of
+Sicily more to serve the Holy Church than for my own covetousness, so I
+pray you to pardon my sins."
+
+247. You are to note the two clauses of this prayer. He prays absolute
+mercy, on account of his faith in Christ; but remission of purgatory, in
+proportion to the quantity of good work he has done, or meant to do,
+as against evil. You are so much wiser in these days, you think, not
+believing in purgatory; and so much more benevolent,--not massacring
+women and children. But we must not be too proud of not believing in
+purgatory, unless we are quite sure of our real desire to be purified:
+and as to our not massacring children, it is true that an English
+gentleman will not now himself willingly put a knife into the throat
+either of a child or a lamb; but he will kill any quantity of children
+by disease in order to increase his rents, as unconcernedly as he
+will eat any quantity of mutton. And as to absolute massacre, I do not
+suppose a child feels so much pain in being killed as a full-grown man,
+and its life is of less value to it. No pain either of body or thought
+through which you could put an infant, would be comparable to that of
+a good son, or a faithful lover, dying slowly of a painful wound at a
+distance from a family dependent upon him, or a mistress devoted to him.
+But the victories of Charles, and the massacres, taken in sum, would not
+give a muster-roll of more than twenty thousand dead; men, women, and
+children counted all together. On the plains of France, since I first
+began to speak to you on the subject of the arts of peace, at least five
+hundred thousand men, in the prime of life, have been massacred by
+the folly of one Christian emperor, the insolence of another, and the
+mingling of mean rapacity with meaner vanity, which Christian nations
+now call 'patriotism.'
+
+248. But that the Crusaders, (whether led by St. Louis or by his
+brother,) who habitually lived by robbery, and might be swiftly enraged
+to murder, were still too savage to conceive the spirit or the character
+of this Christ whose cross they wear, I have again and again alleged to
+you; not, I imagine, without question from many who have been accustomed
+to look to these earlier ages as authoritative in doctrine, if not in
+example. We alike err in supposing them more spiritual or more dark,
+than our own. They had not yet attained to the knowledge which we have
+despised, nor dispersed from their faith the shadows with which we have
+again overclouded ours.
+
+Their passions, tumultuous and merciless as the Tyrrhene Sea, raged
+indeed with the danger, but also with the uses, of naturally appointed
+storm; while ours, pacific in corruption, languish in vague maremma of
+misguided pools; and are pestilential most surely as they retire.
+
+
+
+
+                LECTURE X.
+
+               FLEUR DE LYS.
+
+ 249. Through all the tempestuous winter which during the period of
+history we have been reviewing, weakened, in their war with the opposed
+rocks of religious or knightly pride, the waves of the Tuscan Sea,
+there has been slow increase of the Favonian power which is to bring
+fruitfulness to the rock, peace to the wave. The new element which is
+introduced in the thirteenth century, and perfects for a little time the
+work of Christianity, at least in some few chosen souls, is the law of
+Order and Charity, of intellectual and moral virtue, which it now became
+the function of every great artist to teach, and of every true citizen
+to maintain.
+
+250. I have placed on your table one of the earliest existing engravings
+by a Florentine hand, representing the conception which the national
+mind formed of this spirit of order and tranquillity, "Cosmico," or the
+Equity of Kosmos, not by senseless attraction, but by spiritual thought
+and law. He stands pointing with his left hand to the earth, set only
+with tufts of grass; in his right hand he holds the ordered system of
+the universe--heaven and earth in one orb;--the heaven made cosmic by
+the courses of its stars; the earth cosmic by
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IX.--THE CHARGE TO ADAM. MODERN ITALIAN. ]
+
+the seats of authority and fellowship,--castles on the hills and cities
+in the plain.
+
+251. The tufts of grass under the feet of this figure will appear
+to you, at first, grotesquely formal. But they are only the simplest
+expression, in such herbage, of the subjection of all vegetative force
+to this law of order, equity, or symmetry, which, made by the Greek the
+principal method of his current vegetative sculpture, subdues it, in the
+hand of Cora or Triptolemus, into the merely triple sceptre, or animates
+it, in Florence, to the likeness of the Fleur-de-lys.
+
+252. I have already stated to you that if any definite flower is meant
+by these triple groups of leaves, which take their authoritatively
+typical form in the crowns of the Cretan and Laciuian Hera, it is
+not the violet, but the purple iris; or sometimes, as in Pindar's
+description of the birth of Ismus, the yellow water-flag, which you
+know so well in spring, by the banks of your Oxford streams. [1] But,
+in general, it means simply the springing of beautiful and orderly
+vegetation in fields upon which the dew falls pure. It is the
+expression, therefore, of peace on the redeemed and cultivated earth,
+and of the pleasure of heaven in the uncareful happiness of men clothed
+without labour, and fed without fear.
+
+[Footnote 1: In the catalogues of the collection of drawings in this
+room, and in my "Queen of the Air" you will find all that I would ask
+you to notice about the various names and kinds of the flower, and their
+symbolic use.--Note only, with respect to our present purpose, that
+while the true white lily is placed in the hands of the Angel of the
+Annunciation even by Florentine artists, in their general design,
+the fleur-de-lys is given to him by Giovaiini Pisano on the facade of
+Orvieto; and that the flower in the crown-circlets of European kings
+answers, as I stated to you in my lecture on the Corona, to the
+Narcissus fillet of early Greece; the crown of abundance and rejoicing.]
+
+253. In the passage, so often read by us, which announces the advent of
+Christianity as the dawn of peace on earth, we habitually neglect great
+part of the promise, owing to the false translation of the second clause
+of the sentence. I cannot understand how it should be still needful to
+point out to you here in Oxford that neither the Greek words [Greek:
+*"en anthriopois evdokia,"*] nor those of the vulgate, "in terra pax
+hominibus bonae voluntatis," in the slightest degree justify our English
+words, "goodwill to men."
+
+Of God's goodwill to men, and to all creatures, for ever, there needed
+no proclamation by angels. But that men should be able to please
+_Him_,--that their wills should be made holy, and they should not only
+possess peace in themselves, but be able to give joy to their God,
+in the sense in which He afterwards is pleased with His own baptized
+Son;--this was a new thing for Angels to declare, and for shepherds to
+believe.
+
+254. And the error was made yet more fatal by its repetition in a
+passage of parallel importance,--the thanksgiving, namely, offered by
+Christ, that His Father, while He had hidden what it was best to know,
+not from the wise and prudent, but from some among the wise and prudent,
+and had revealed it unto babes; not 'for so it seemed good' in His
+sight, but 'that there might be well pleasing in His sight,'--namely,
+that the wise and simple might equally live in the necessary knowledge,
+and enjoyed presence, of God. And if, having accurately read these vital
+passages, you then as carefully consider the tenour of the two songs of
+human joy in the birth of Christ, the Magnificat, and the Nunc dimittis,
+you will find the theme of both to be, not the newness of blessing, but
+the equity which disappoints the cruelty and humbles the strength of
+men; which scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts; which
+fills the hungry with good things; and is not only the glory of Israel,
+but the light of the Gentiles.
+
+255. As I have been writing these paragraphs, I have been checking
+myself almost at every word,--wondering, Will they be restless on their
+seats at this, and thinking all the while that they did not come here
+to be lectured on Divinity? You may have been a little impatient,--how
+could it well be otherwise? Had I been explaining points of anatomy,
+and showing you how you bent your necks and straightened your legs, you
+would have thought me quite in my proper function; because then, when
+you went with a party of connoisseurs through the Vatican, you could
+point out to them the insertion of the clavicle in the Apollo Belvidere;
+and in the Sistine Chapel the perfectly accurate delineation of the
+tibia in the legs of Christ. Doubtless; but you know I am lecturing at
+present on the goffi, and not on Michael Angelo; and the goffi are
+very careless about clavicles and shin-bones; so that if, after being
+lectured on anatomy, you went into the Campo Santo of Pisa, you would
+simply find nothing to look at, except three tolerably well-drawn
+skeletons. But if after being lectured on theology, you go into the
+Campo Santo of Pisa, you will find not a little to look at, and to
+remember.
+
+256. For a single instance, you know Michael Angelo is admitted to have
+been so far indebted to these goffi as to borrow from the one to whose
+study of mortality I have just referred, Orcagna, the gesture of his
+Christ in the Judgment, He borrowed, however, accurately speaking,
+the position only, not the gesture; nor the meaning of it. [1] You all
+remember the action of Michael Angelo's Christ,--the right hand raised
+as if in violence of reprobation; and the left closed across His breast,
+as refusing all mercy. The action is one which appeals to persons
+of very ordinary sensations, and is very naturally adopted by the
+Renaissance painter, both for its popular effect, and its
+capabilities for the exhibition of his surgical science. But the old
+painter-theologian, though indeed he showed the right hand of Christ
+lifted, and the left hand laid across His breast, had another meaning
+in the actions. The fingers of the left hand are folded, in both the
+figures; but in Michael Angelo's as if putting aside an appeal; in
+Orcagna's, the fingers are bent to draw back the drapery from the
+right side. The right hand is raised by Michael Angelo as in anger;
+by Orcagna, only to show the wounded palm. And as, to the believing
+disciples, He showed them His hands and His side, so that they were
+glad,--so, to the unbelievers, at their judgment, He shows the wounds in
+hand and side. They shall look on Him whom they pierced.
+
+[Footnote: I found all this in M. Didron's Iconographie, above quoted; I
+had never noticed the difference between the two figures myself.]
+
+257. And thus, as we follow our proposed examination of the arts of the
+Christian centuries, our understanding of their work will be absolutely
+limited by the degree of our sympathy with the religion which our
+fathers have bequeathed to us. You cannot interpret classic marbles
+without knowing and loving your Pindar and AEschylus, neither can you
+interpret Christian pictures without knowing and loving your Isaiah and
+Matthew. And I shall have continually to examine texts of the one as
+I would verses of the other; nor must you retract yourselves from
+the labour in suspicion that I desire to betray your scepticism, or
+undermine your positivism, because I recommend to you the accurate study
+of books which have hitherto been the light of the world.
+
+258. The change, then, in the minds of their readers at this date,
+which rendered it possible for them to comprehend the full purport of
+Christianity, was in the rise of the new desire for equity and rest,
+amidst what had hitherto been mere lust for spoil, and joy in battle.
+The necessity for justice was felt in the now extending commerce; the
+desire of rest in the now pleasant and fitly furnished habitation; and
+the energy which formerly could only be satisfied in strife, now found
+enough both of provocation and antagonism in the invention of art, and
+the forces of nature. I have in this course of lectures endeavoured to
+fasten your attention on the Florentine Revolution of 1250, because its
+date is so easily memorable, and it involves the principles of every
+subsequent one, so as to lay at once the foundations of whatever
+greatness Florence afterwards achieved by her mercantile and civic
+power. But I must not close even this slight sketch of the central
+history of Val d'Aruo without requesting you, as you find time, to
+associate in your minds, with this first revolution, the effects of two
+which followed it, being indeed necessary parts of it, in the latter
+half of the century.
+
+259. Remember then that the first, in 1250, is embryonic; and the
+significance of it is simply the establishment of order, and justice
+against violence and iniquity. It is equally against the power of
+knights and priests, so far as either are unjust,--not otherwise.
+
+When Manfred fell at Benevento, his lieutenant, the Count Guido Novello,
+was in command of Florence. He was just, but weak; and endeavoured
+to temporize with the Guelphs. His effort ought to be notable to you,
+because it was one of the wisest and most far-sighted ever made in
+Italy; but it failed for want of resolution, as the gentlest and best
+men are too apt to fail. He brought from Bologna two knights of the
+order--then recently established--of joyful brethren; afterwards too
+fatally corrupted, but at this time pure in purpose. They constituted
+an order of chivalry which was to maintain peace, obey the Church, and
+succour widows and orphans; but to be bound by no monastic vows. Of
+these two knights, he chose one Guelph, the other Ghibelline; and under
+their balanced power Gruido hoped to rank the forces of the civil,
+manufacturing, and trading classes, divided into twelve corporations of
+higher and lower arts. [1] But the moment this beautiful arrangement was
+made, all parties--Guelph, Ghibelline, and popular,--turned unanimously
+against Count Guido Novello. The benevolent but irresolute captain
+indeed gathered his men into the square of the Trinity; but the people
+barricaded the streets issuing from it; and Guido, heartless, and
+unwilling for civil warfare, left the city with his Germans in good
+order. And so ended the incursion of the infidel Tedeschi for this time.
+The Florentines then dismissed the merry brothers whom the Tedeschi had
+set over them, and besought help from Orvieto and Charles of Anjou; who
+sent them Guy de Montfort and eight hundred French riders; the blessing
+of whose presence thus, at their own request, was granted them on Easter
+Day, 1267.
+
+[Footnote: The seven higher arts were, Lawyers, Physicians, Bankers,
+Merchants of Foreign Goods, Wool Manufacturers, Silk Manufacturers,
+Furriers. The five lower arts were, Retail Sellers of Cloth, Butchers,
+Shoemakers, Masons and Carpenters, Smiths.]
+
+On Candlemas, if you recollect, 1251, they open their gates to the
+Germans; and on Easter, 1267, to the French.
+
+260. Remember, then, this revolution, as coming between the battles of
+Welcome and Tagliacozzo; and that it expresses the lower revolutionary
+temper of the trades, with English and French assistance. Its
+immediate result was the appointment of five hundred and sixty
+lawyers, woolcombers, and butchers, to deliberate upon all State
+questions,--under which happy ordinances you will do well, in your own
+reading, to leave Florence, that you may watch, for a while, darling
+little Pisa, all on fire for the young Conradin. She sent ten vessels
+across the Gulf of Genoa to fetch him; received his cavalry in her
+plain of Sarzana; and putting five thousand of her own best sailors into
+thirty ships, sent them to do what they could, all down the coast of
+Italy. Down they went; startling Gaeta with an attack as they passed;
+found Charles of Anjou's French and Sicilian fleet at Messina, fought
+it, beat it, and burned twenty-seven of its ships.
+
+261. Meantime, the Florentines prospered as they might with their
+religious-democratic constitution,--until the death, in the odour of
+sanctity, of Charles of Anjou, and of that Pope Martin IV. whose tomb
+was destroyed with Urban's at Perugia. Martin died, as you may remember,
+of eating Bolsena eels,--that being his share in the miracles of the
+lake; and you will do well to remember at the same time, that the price
+of the lake eels was three soldi a pound; and that Niccola of Pisa
+worked at Siena for six soldi a day, and his son Giovanni for four.
+
+262. And as I must in this place bid farewell, for a time, to Niccola
+and to his son, let me remind you of the large commission which the
+former received on the occasion of the battle of Tagliacozzo, and
+its subsequent massacres, when the victor, Charles, having to his own
+satisfaction exterminated the seed of infidelity, resolves, both in
+thanksgiving, and for the sake of the souls of the slain knights for
+whom some hope might yet be religiously entertained, to found an abbey
+on the battle-field. In which purpose he sent for Niccola to Naples, and
+made him build on the field of Tagliacozzo, a church and abbey of the
+richest; and caused to be buried therein the infinite number of the
+bodies of those who died in that battle day; ordering farther, that,
+by many monks, prayer should be made for their souls, night and day.
+In which fabric the king was so pleased with Niccola's work that he
+rewarded and honoured him highly.
+
+263. Do you not begin to wonder a little more what manner of man this
+Nicholas was, who so obediently throws down the towers which offend the
+Ghibelliues, and so skilfully puts up the pinnacles which please the
+Guelphs? A passive power, seemingly, he;--plastic in the hands of any
+one who will employ him to build, or to throw down. On what exists of
+evidence, demonstrably in these years here is the strongest brain of
+Italy, thus for six shilling a day doing what it is bid.
+
+264. I take farewell of him then, for a little time, ratifying to you,
+as far as my knowledge permits, the words of my first master in Italian
+art, Lord Lindsay.
+
+"In comparing the advent of Niccola Pisano to that of the sun at his
+rising, I am conscious of no exaggeration; on the contrary, it is the
+only simile by which I can hope to give you an adequate impression of
+his brilliancy and power relatively to the age in which he flourished.
+Those sons of Erebus, the American Indians, fresh from their traditional
+subterranean world, and gazing for the first time on the gradual
+dawning of the day in the East, could not have been more dazzled, more
+astounded, when the sun actually appeared, than the popes and podestas,
+friars and freemasons must have been in the thirteenth century, when
+from among the Biduinos, Bonannos, and Antealmis of the twelfth, Niccola
+emerged in his glory, sovereign and supreme, a fount of light, diffusing
+warmth and radiance over Christendom. It might be too much to parallel
+him in actual genius with Dante and Shakspeare; they stand alone and
+unapproachable, each on his distinct pinnacle of the temple of Christian
+song; and yet neither of them can boast such extent and durability
+of influence, for whatever of highest excellence has been achieved in
+sculpture and painting, not in Italy only, but throughout Europe, has
+been in obedience to the impulse he primarily gave, and in following up
+the principle which he first struck out.
+
+"His latter days were spent in repose at Pisa, but the precise year of
+his death is uncertain; Vasari fixes it in 1275; it could not have been
+much later. He was buried in the Campo Santo. Of his personal character
+we, alas! know nothing; even Shakspeare is less a stranger to us. But
+that it was noble, simple, and consistent, and free from the petty
+foibles that too frequently beset genius, may be fairly presumed from
+the works he has left behind him, and from the eloquent silence of
+tradition."
+
+265. Of the circumstances of Niccola Pisano's death, or the ceremonials
+practised at it, we are thus left in ignorance.
+
+The more exemplary death of Charles of Aujou took place on the 7th of
+January, then, 1285; leaving the throne of Naples to a boy of twelve;
+and that of Sicily, to a Prince of Spain. Various discord, between
+French, Spanish, and Calabrese vices, thenceforward paralyzes South
+Italy, and Florence becomes the leading power of the Guelph faction.
+She had been inflamed and pacified through continual paroxysms of civil
+quarrel during the decline of Charles's power; but, throughout, the
+influence of the nobles declines, by reason of their own folly and
+insolence; while the people, though with no small degree of folly and
+insolence on their own side, keep hold of their main idea of justice.
+In the meantime, similar assertions of law against violence, and the
+nobility of useful occupation, as compared with that of idle rapine,
+take place in Bologna, Siena, and even at Rome, where Bologna sends her
+senator, Branca Leone, (short for Branca-di-Leone, Lion's Grip,) whose
+inflexible and rightly guarded reign of terror to all evil and thievish
+persons, noble or other, is one of the few passages of history during
+the middle ages, in which the real power of civic virtue may be seen
+exercised without warping by party spirit, or weakness of vanity or
+fear.
+
+266. And at last, led by a noble, Giano della Bella, the people of
+Florence write and establish their final condemnation of noblesse
+living by rapine, those 'Ordinamenti della Giustizia,' which practically
+excluded all idle persons from government, and determined that the
+priors, or leaders of the State, should be priors, or leaders of its
+arts and productive labour; that its head 'podesta' or 'power' should be
+the standard-bearer of justice; and its council or parliament composed
+of charitable men, or good men: "boni viri," in the sense from which the
+French formed their noun 'bonte.'
+
+The entire governing body was thus composed, first, of the Podestas,
+standard-bearer of justice; then of his military captain; then of
+his lictor, or executor; then of the twelve priors of arts and
+liberties--properly, deliberators on the daily occupations, interests,
+and pleasures of the body politic;--and, finally, of the parliament of
+"kind men," whose business was to determine what kindness could be shown
+to other states, by way of foreign policy.
+
+267. So perfect a type of national government has only once been reached
+in the history of the human race. And in spite of the seeds of evil in
+its own impatience, and in the gradually increasing worldliness of the
+mercantile body; in spite of the hostility of the angry soldier, and
+the malignity of the sensual priest, this government gave to Europe the
+entire cycle of Christian art, properly so called, and every highest
+Master of labour, architectural, scriptural, or pictorial, practised
+in true understanding of the faith of Christ;--Orcagna, Giotto,
+Brunelleschi, Lionardo, Luini as his pupil, Lippi, Luca, Angelico,
+Botticelli, and Michael Angelo.
+
+268. I have named two men, in this group, whose names are more familiar
+to your ears than any others, Angelico and Michael Angelo;--who yet are
+absent from my list of those whose works I wish you to study, being
+both extravagant in their enthusiasm,--the one for the nobleness of the
+spirit, and the other for that of the flesh. I name them now, because
+the gifts each had were exclusively Florentine; in whatever they have
+become to the mind of Europe since, they are utterly children of the Val
+d'Arno.
+
+269. You are accustomed, too carelessly, to think of Angelico as a
+child of the Church, rather than of Florence. He was born in l387,--just
+eleven years, that is to say, after the revolt of Florence _against_ the
+Church, and ten after the endeavour of the Church to recover her power
+by the massacres of Faenza and Cesena. A French and English army of
+pillaging riders were on the other side of the Alps,--six thousand
+strong; the Pope sent for it; Robert Cardinal of Geneva brought it into
+Italy. The Florentines fortified their Apennines against it; but it took
+winter quarters at Cesena, where the Cardinal of Geneva massacred five
+thousand persons in a day, and the children and sucklings were literally
+dashed against the stones.
+
+270. That was the school which the Christian Church had prepared for
+their brother Angelica. But Fesole, secluding him in the shade of her
+mount of Olives, and Florence revealing to him the true voice of his
+Master, in the temple of St. Mary of the Flower, taught him his lesson
+of peace on earth, and permitted him his visions of rapture in heaven.
+And when the massacre of Cesena was found to have been in vain, and the
+Church was compelled to treat with the revolted cities who had united to
+mourn for her victories, Florence sent her a living saint, Catherine of
+Siena, for her political Ambassador.
+
+271. Of Michael Angelo I need not tell you: of the others, we will read
+the lives, and think over them one by one; the great fact which I
+have written this course of lectures to enforce upon your minds is the
+dependence of all the arts on the virtue of the State, and its kindly
+order.
+
+The absolute mind and state of Florence, for the seventy years of her
+glory, from 1280 to 1350, you find quite simply and literally described
+in the ll2th Psalm, of which I read you the descriptive verses, in the
+words in which they sang it, from this typically perfect manuscript of
+the time:--
+
+ Gloria et divitie in domo ejus, justitia ejus manet in seculum seculi.
+  Exortum est in tenebris lumen reotis, misericors, et miserator, et
+Justus.  Jocundus homo, qui miseretur, et commodat: disponet sermones suos  in
+judicio.  Dispersit, dedit pauperibus; justitia ejus manet in seculum seculi;
+  cornu ejus exaltabitur in gloria.
+
+
+I translate simply, praying you to note as the true one, the _literal_
+meaning of every word:--
+
+ Glory and riches are in his house. His justice remains for ever.
+  Light is risen in darkness for the straightforward people.
+  He is merciful in heart, merciful in deed, and just.
+  A jocund man; who is merciful, and lends.
+  He will dispose his words in judgment.
+  He hath dispersed. He hath given to the poor. His justice remain!
+    for ever. His horn shall be exalted in glory.
+
+
+272. With vacillating, but steadily prevailing effort, the Florentines
+maintained this life and character for full half a century.
+
+You will please now look at my staff of the year 1300, [Footnote: Page
+33 in my second lecture on Engraving.] adding the names of Dante and
+Orcagna, having each their separate masterful or prophetic function.
+
+That is Florence's contribution to the intellectual work of the world
+during these years of justice. Now, the promise of Christianity is given
+with lesson from the fleur-de-lys: Seek ye first the royalty of God, and
+His justice, "and all these things," material wealth, "shall be added
+unto you." It is a perfectly clear, perfectly literal,--never failing
+and never unfulfilled promise. There is no instance in the whole cycle
+of history of its not being accomplished,--fulfilled to the uttermost,
+with full measure, pressed down, and running over.
+
+273. Now hear what Florence was, and what wealth she had got by her
+justice. In the year 1330, before she fell, she had within her walls
+a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, of whom all the
+men--(laity)--between the ages of fifteen and seventy, were ready at
+an instant to go out to war, under their banners, in number twenty-four
+thousand. The army of her entire territory was eighty thousand; and
+within it she counted fifteen hundred noble, families, every one
+absolutely submissive to her gonfalier of justice. She had within her
+walls a hundred and ten churches, seven priories, and thirty hospitals
+for the sick and poor; of foreign guests, on the average, fifteen
+hundred, constantly. From eight to ten thousand children were taught to
+read in her schools. The town was surrounded by some fifty square miles
+of uninterrupted garden, of olive, corn, vine, lily, and rose.
+
+And the monetary existence of England and France depended upon her
+wealth. Two of her bankers alone had lent Edward III. of England five
+millions of money (in sterling value of this present hour).
+
+274. On the 10th of March, 1337, she was first accused, with truth, of
+selfish breach of treaties. On the l0th of April, all her merchants in
+France were imprisoned by Philip Valois; and presently afterwards Edward
+of England failed, quite in your modern style, for his five millions.
+These money losses would have been nothing to her; but on the 7th
+of August, the captain of her army, Pietro de' Rossi of Parma, the
+unquestioned best knight in Italy, received a chance spear-stroke before
+Monselice, and died next day. He was the Bayard of Italy; and greater
+than Bayard, because living in a nobler time. He never had failed in
+any military enterprise, nor ever stained success with cruelty or
+shame. Even the German troops under him loved him without bounds. To his
+companions he gave gifts with such largesse, that his horse and armour
+were all that at any time he called his own. Beautiful and pure as Sir
+Galahad, all that was brightest in womanhood watched and honoured him.
+
+And thus, 8th August, 1337, he went to his own place.--To-day I trace
+the fall of Florence no more.
+
+I will review the points I wish you to remember; and briefly meet, so
+far as I can, the questions which I think should occur to you.
+
+275. I have named Edward III. as our heroic type of Franchise. And yet
+I have but a minute ago spoken of him as 'failing' in quite your modern
+manner. I must correct my expression:--he had no intent of failing when
+he borrowed; and did not spend his money on himself. Nevertheless, I
+gave him as an example of frankness; but by no means of honesty. He is
+simply the boldest and royalest of Free Riders; the campaign of Crecy
+is, throughout, a mere pillaging foray. And the first point I wish
+you to notice is the difference in the pecuniary results of living by
+robbery, like Edward III., or by agriculture and just commerce, like the
+town of Florence. That Florence can lend five millions to the King of
+England, and loose them with little care, is the result of her olive
+gardens and her honesty. Now hear the financial phenomena attending
+military exploits, and a life of pillage.
+
+276. I give you them in this precise year, 1338, in which the King of
+England failed to the Florentines.
+
+"He obtained from the prelates, barons, and knights of the
+
+[Illustration: PLATE X.--THE NATIVITY. GIOVANNI PISANO. ]
+
+shires, one half of their wool for this year--a very valuable and
+extraordinary grant. He seized all the tin "(above-ground, you mean Mr.
+Henry!)" in Cornwall and Devonshire, took possession of the lands of all
+priories alien, and of the money, jewels, and valuable effects of the
+Lombard merchants. He demanded certain quantities of bread, corn, oats,
+and bacon, from each county; borrowed their silver plate from many
+abbeys, as well as great sums of money both abroad and at home; and
+pawned his crown for fifty thousand florins." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Henry's "History of England," book iv., chap. i.]
+
+He pawns his queen's jewels next year; and finally summons all the
+gentlemen of England who had forty pounds a year, to come and receive
+the honour of knighthood, or pay to be excused!
+
+277. II. The failures of Edward, or of twenty Edwards, would have
+done Florence no harm, had she remained true to herself, and to her
+neighbouring states. Her merchants only fall by their own increasing
+avarice; and above all by the mercantile form of pillage, usury. The
+idea that money could beget money, though more absurd than alchemy, had
+yet an apparently practical and irresistibly tempting confirmation in
+the wealth of villains, and the success of fools. Alchemy, in its
+day, led to pure chemistry; and calmly yielded to the science it had
+fostered. But all wholesome indignation against usurers was prevented,
+in the Christian mind, by wicked and cruel religious hatred of the race
+of Christ. In the end, Shakspeare himself, in his fierce effort against
+the madness, suffered himself to miss his mark by making his usurer a
+Jew: the Franciscan institution of the Mount of Pity failed before
+the lust of Lombardy, and the logic of Augsburg; and, to this day, the
+worship of the Immaculate Virginity of Money, mother of the Omnipotence
+of Money, is the Protestant form of Madonna worship.
+
+278. III. The usurer's fang, and the debtor's shame, might both have
+been trodden down under the feet of Italy, had her knights and her
+workmen remained true to each other. But the brotherhoods of Italy were
+not of Cain to Abel--but of Cain to Cain. Every man's sword was against
+his fellow. Pisa sank before Genoa at Meloria, the Italian AEgos-Potamos;
+Genoa before Venice in the war of Chiozza, the Italian siege of
+Syracuse. Florence sent her Brunelleschi to divert the waves of
+Serchio against the walls of Lucca; Lucca her Castruccio, to hold mock
+tournaments before the gates of vanquished Florence. The weak modern
+Italian reviles or bewails the acts of foreign races, as if his destiny
+had depended upon these; let him at least assume the pride, and bear the
+grief, of remembering that, among all the virgin cities of his country,
+there has not been one which would not ally herself with a stranger, to
+effect a sister's ruin.
+
+279. Lastly. The impartiality with which I have stated the acts, so
+far as known to me, and impulses, so far as discernible by me, of
+the contending Church and Empire, cannot but give offence, or provoke
+suspicion, in the minds of those among you who are accustomed to hear
+the cause of Religion supported by eager disciples, or attacked by
+confessed enemies. My confession of hostility would be open, if I were
+an enemy indeed; but I have never possessed the knowledge, and have long
+ago been cured of the pride, which makes men fervent in witness for the
+Church's virtue, or insolent in declamation against her errors. The
+will of Heaven, which grants the grace and ordains the diversities of
+Religion, needs no defence, and sustains no defeat, by the humours of
+men; and our first business in relation to it is to silence our wishes,
+and to calm our fears. If, in such modest and disciplined temper, you
+arrange your increasing knowledge of the history of mankind, you will
+have no final difficulty in distinguishing the operation of the Master's
+law from the consequences of the disobedience to it which He permits;
+nor will you respect the law less, because, accepting only the obedience
+of love, it neither hastily punishes, nor pompously rewards, with what
+men think reward or chastisement. Not always under the feet of Korah the
+earth is rent; not always at the call of Elijah the clouds gather; but
+the guarding mountains for ever stand round about Jerusalem; and the
+rain, miraculous evermore, makes green the fields for the evil and the
+good.
+
+280. And if you will fix your minds only on the conditions of human
+life which the Giver of it demands, "He hath shown thee, oh man, what is
+good, and what doth thy Lord require of thee, but to do justice, and to
+love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God," you will find that such
+obedience is always acknowledged by temporal blessing. If, turning from
+the manifest miseries of cruel ambition, and manifest wanderings
+of insolent belief, you summon to your thoughts rather the state of
+unrecorded multitudes, who laboured in silence, and adored in humility,
+widely as the snows of Christendom brought memory of the Birth of
+Christ, or her spring sunshine, of His Resurrection, you may know that
+the promise of the Bethlehem angels has been literally fulfilled; and
+will pray that your English fields, joyfully as the banks of Arno, may
+still dedicate their pure lilies to St. Mary of the Flower.
+
+
+
+
+                 APPENDIX.
+
+       (NOTES ON THE PLATES ILLUSTRATING THIS VOLUME.)
+
+In the delivery of the preceding Lectures, some account was given of the
+theologic design of the sculptures by Giovanni Pisano at Orvieto, which
+I intended to have printed separately, and in more complete form, in
+this Appendix. But my strength does not now admit of my fulfilling the
+half of my intentions, and I find myself, at present, tired, and so
+dead in feeling, that I have no quickness in interpretation, or skill in
+description of emotional work. I must content myself, therefore, for the
+time, with a short statement of the points which I wish the reader to
+observe in the Plates, and which were left unnoticed in the text.
+
+The frontispiece is the best copy I can get, in permanent materials,
+of a photograph of the course of the Arno, through Pisa, before the old
+banks were destroyed. Two arches of the Ponte-a-Mare which was carried
+away in the inundation of 1870, are seen in the distance; the church
+of La Spina, in its original position overhanging the river; and the
+buttressed and rugged walls of the mediaeval shore. Never more, any of
+these, to be seen in reality, by living eyes.
+
+PLATE I.--A small portion of a photograph of Nicolo Pisano's Adoration
+of the Magi, on the pulpit of the Pisan Baptistery. The intensely Greek
+character of the heads, and the severely impetuous chiselling (learned
+from Late Roman rapid work), which drives the lines of the drapery
+nearly straight, may be seen better in a fragment of this limited
+measure than in the crowded massing of the entire subject. But it may
+be observed also that there is both a thoughtfulness and a tenderness
+in the features, whether of the Virgin or the attendant angel, which
+already indicate an aim beyond that of Greek art.
+
+PLATE II--The Pulpit of the Baptistery (of which the preceding
+plate represents a portion). I have only given this general view for
+convenience of reference. Beautiful photographs of the subject on a
+large scale are easily attainable.
+
+PLATE III.--The Fountain of Perugia. Executed from a sketch by Mr.
+Arthur Severn. The perspective of the steps is not quite true; we both
+tried to get it right, but found that it would be a day or two's work,
+to little purpose, and so let them go at hazard. The inlaid pattern
+behind is part of the older wall of the cathedral; the late door is of
+course inserted.
+
+PLATE IV., LETTER E.--From Norman Bible in the British Museum; showing
+the moral temper which regulated common ornamentation in the twelfth
+century.
+
+PLATE V.--Door of the Baptistery at Pisa. The reader must note that,
+although these plates are necessarily, in fineness of detail, inferior
+to the photographs from which they are taken, they have the inestimable
+advantage of permanence, and will not fade away into spectres when
+the book is old. I am greatly puzzled by the richness of the current
+ornamentation on the main pillars, as opposed to the general severity of
+design. I never can understand how the men who indulged in this flowing
+luxury of foliage were so stern in their masonry and figure-draperies.
+
+PLATE VI.--Part of the lintel of the door represented on Plate V.,
+enlarged. I intended, in the Lecture on Marble Couchant, to have
+insisted, at some length, on the decoration of the lintel and
+side-posts, as one of the most important phases of mystic ecclesiastical
+sculpture. But I find the materials furnished by Lucca, Pisa, and
+Florence, for such an essay are far too rich to be examined cursorily;
+the treatment even of this single lintel could scarcely be enough
+explained in the close of the Lecture. I must dwell on some points of it
+now.
+
+Look back to Section 175 in "Aratra Pentelici," giving statement of the
+four kinds of relief in sculpture. The uppermost of these plinths is
+of the kind I have called 'round relief'; you might strike it out on a
+coin. The lower is 'foliate relief'; it looks almost as if the figures
+had been cut out of one layer of marble, and laid against another behind
+it.
+
+The uppermost, at the distance of my diagram, or in nature itself, would
+scarcely be distinguished at a careless glance from an egg-and-arrow
+moulding. You could not have a more simple or forcible illustration
+of my statement in the first chapter of "Aratra," that the essential
+business of sculpture is to produce a series of agreeable bosses or
+rounded surfaces; to which, if possible, some meaning may afterwards
+be attached. In the present instance, every egg becomes an angel, or
+evangelist, and every arrow a lily, or a wing. [1] The whole is in the
+most exquisitely finished Byzantine style.
+
+[Footnote: In the contemporary south door of the Duomo of Genoa, the
+Greek moulding is used without any such transformation.]
+
+I am not sure of being right in my interpretation of the meaning of
+these figures; but I think there can be little question about it. There
+are eleven altogether; the three central, Christ with His mother and St.
+Joseph; then, two evangelists, with two alternate angels, on each side.
+Each of these angels carries a rod, with a fleur-de-lys termination;
+their wings decorate the intermediate ridges (formed, in a pure Greek
+moulding, by the arrows); and, behind the heads of all the figures,
+there is now a circular recess; once filled, I doubt not, by a plate of
+gold. The Christ, and the Evangelists, all carry books, of which each
+has a mosaic, or intaglio ornament, in the shape of a cross. I could
+not show you a more severe or perfectly representative piece of
+_architectural_ sculpture.
+
+The heads of the eleven figures are as simply decorative as the ball
+flowers are in our English Gothic tracery; the slight irregularity
+produced by different gesture and character giving precisely the sort of
+change which a good designer wishes to see in the parts of a consecutive
+ornament.
+
+The moulding closes at each extremity with a palm-tree, correspondent in
+execution with those on coins of Syracuse; for the rest, the interest
+of it consists only in these slight variations of attitude by which
+the figures express wonder or concern at some event going on in their
+presence. They are looking down; and I do not doubt, are intended to be
+the heavenly witnesses of the story engraved on the stone below,--The
+Life and Death of the Baptist.
+
+The lower stone on which this is related, is a model of skill in
+Fiction, properly so called. In Fictile art, in Fictile history, it is
+equally exemplary. 'Feigning' or 'affecting' in the most exquisite way
+by fastening intensely on the principal points.
+
+Ask yourselves what are the principal points to be insisted on, in the
+story of the Baptist.
+
+He came, "preaching the Baptism of Repentance for the remission of
+sins." That is his Advice, or Order-preaching.
+
+And he came, "to bear witness of the Light." "Behold the Lamb of God,
+which taketh away the sins of the world." That is his declaration, or
+revelation-preaching.
+
+And the end of his own life is in the practice of this preaching--if you
+will think of it--under curious difficulties in both kinds. Difficulties
+in putting away sin--difficulties in obtaining sight. The first half of
+the stone begins with the apocalyptic preaching. Christ, represented
+as in youth, is set under two trees, in the wilderness. St. John is
+scarcely at first seen; he is only the guide, scarcely the teacher, of
+the crowd of peoples, nations, and languages, whom he leads, pointing
+them to the Christ. Without doubt, all these figures have separate
+meaning. I am too ignorant to interpret it; but observe generally, they
+are the thoughtful and wise of the earth, not its ruffians or rogues.
+This is not, by any means, a general amnesty to blackguards, and an
+apocalypse to brutes, which St. John is preaching. These are quite the
+best people he can find to call, or advise. You see many of them carry
+rolls of paper in their hands, as he does himself. In comparison
+with the books of the upper cornice, these have special meaning, as
+throughout Byzantine design.
+
+ "Adverte quod patriarchae et prophetse pinguntur cum rotulis
+  in manibus; quidam vero apostoli cum libris, et quidam
+  cum rotulis. Nempe quia ante Christi adventum fides figurative
+  ostendebatur, et quoad multa, in se implicita erat. Ad
+  quod ostendendum patriarchse et prophetae pinguntur cum rotulis,
+  per quos quasi qusedam imperfecta cognitio design atur;
+  quia vero apostoli a Christo perfecte edocti suut, ideo libris,
+  per quos designatur perfecta cognitio, uti possunt."
+
+
+        WILLIAM DURANDUS, quoted by Didron, p. 305.
+
+
+PLATE VII.--Next to this subject of the preaching comes the Baptism: and
+then, the circumstances of St. John's death. First, his declaration to
+Herod, "It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife:" on
+which he is seized and carried to prison:--next, Herod's feast,--the
+consultation between daughter and mother, "What shall I ask?"--the
+martyrdom, and burial by the disciples. The notable point in the
+treatment of all these subjects is the quiet and mystic Byzantine
+dwelling on thought rather than action. In a northern sculpture of this
+subject, the daughter of Herodias would have been assuredly dancing; and
+most probably, casting a somersault. With the Byzantine, the debate in
+her mind is the only subject of interest, and he carves above, the evil
+angels, laying their hands on the heads, first of Herod and Herodias,
+and then of Herodias and her daughter.
+
+PLATE VIII.--The issuing of commandment not to eat of the tree of
+knowledge. (Orvieto Cathedral.)
+
+This, with Plates X. and XII., will give a sufficiently clear conception
+to any reader who has a knowledge of sculpture, of the principles of
+Giovanni Pisano's design. I have thought it well worth while to publish
+opposite two of them, facsimiles of the engravings which profess to
+represent them in Gruiier's monograph [1] of the Orvieto sculptures; for
+these outlines will, once for all, and better than any words, show my
+pupils what is the real virue of mediaeval work,--the power which we
+medievalists rejoice in it for. Precisely the qualities which are
+_not_ in the modern drawings, are the essential virtues of the early
+sculpture. If you like the Gruner outlines best, you need not trouble
+yourself to go to Orvieto, or anywhere else in Italy. Sculpture, such as
+those outlines represent, can be supplied to you by the acre, to order,
+in any modern academician's atelier. But if you like the strange, rude,
+quaint, Gothic realities (for these photographs are, up to a certain
+point, a vision of the reality) best; then, don't study mediaeval art
+under the direction of modern illustrators. Look at it--for however
+short a time, where you can find it--veritable and untouched, however
+mouldered or shattered. And abhor, as you would the mimicry of your best
+friend's manners by a fool, all restorations and improving copies. For
+remember, none but fools think they can restore--none, but worse fools,
+that they can improve.
+
+[Footnote: The drawings are by some Italian draughtsman, whose name it
+is no business of mine to notice.]
+
+Examine these outlines, then, with extreme care, and point by point. The
+things which they have refused or lost, are the things you have to love,
+in Giovanni Pisano.
+
+I will merely begin the task of examination, to show you how to set
+about it. Take the head of the commanding Christ. Although inclined
+forward from the shoulders in the advancing motion of the whole body,
+the head itself is not stooped; but held entirely upright, the line of
+forehead sloping backwards. The command is given in calm authority;
+not in mean anxiety. But this was not expressive enough for the
+copyist,--"How much better _I_ can show what is meant!" thinks he. So he
+puts the line of forehead and nose upright; projects the brow out of its
+straight line; and the expression then becomes,--"Now, be very careful,
+and mind what I say." Perhaps you like this 'improved' action better?
+Be it so; only, it is not Giovanni Pisano's design; but the modern
+Italian's.
+
+Next, take the head of Eve. It is much missed in the photograph--nearly
+all the finest lines lost--but enough is got to show Giovanni's mind.
+
+It appears, he liked long-headed people, with sharp chins and straight
+noses. It might be very wrong of him; but that was his taste. So much
+so, indeed, that Adam and Eve have,
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XI.--THE NATIVITY. MODERN ITALIAN.]
+
+both of them, heads not much shorter than one-sixth of their entire
+height.
+
+Your modern Academy pupil, of course, cannot tolerate this monstrosity.
+He indulgently corrects Giovanni, and Adam and Eve have entirely
+orthodox one-eighth heads, by rule of schools.
+
+But how of Eve's sharp-cut nose and pointed chin, thin lips, and look
+of quiet but rather surprised attention--not specially reverent, but
+looking keenly out from under her eyelids, like a careful servant
+receiving an order?
+
+Well--those are all Giovanni's own notions;--not the least classical,
+nor scientific, nor even like a pretty, sentimental modern woman. Like
+a Florentine woman--in Giovanni's time--it may be; at all events, very
+certainly, what Giovanni thought proper to carve.
+
+Now examine your modern edition. An entirely proper Greco-Roman academy
+plaster bust, with a proper nose, and proper mouth, and a round chin,
+and an expression of the most solemn reverence; always, of course, of a
+classical description. Very fine, perhaps. But not Giovanni.
+
+After Eve's head, let us look at her feet. Giovanni has his own positive
+notions about those also. Thin and bony, to excess, the right, undercut
+all along, so that the profile looks as thin as the mere elongated
+line on an Etruscan vase; and the right showing the five toes all
+well separate, nearly straight, and the larger ones almost as long as
+fingers! the shin bone above carried up in as severe and sharp a curve
+as the edge of a sword.
+
+Now examine the modern copy. Beautiful little fleshy, Venus-de'-Medici
+feet and toes--no undercutting to the right foot,--the left having the
+great-toe properly laid over the second, according to the ordinances of
+schools and shoes, and a well-developed academic and operatic calf and
+leg. Again charming, of course. But only according to Mr. Gibson or Mr.
+Power--not according to Giovanni.
+
+Farther, and finally, note the delight with which Giovanni has dwelt,
+though without exaggeration, on the muscles of the breast and ribs in
+the Adam; while he has subdued all away into virginal severity in Eve.
+And then note, and with conclusive admiration, how in the exact and only
+place where the poor modern fool's anatomical knowledge should have been
+shown, the wretch loses his hold of it! How he has entirely missed and
+effaced the grand Greek pectoral muscles of Giovanni's Adam, but has
+studiously added what mean fleshliness he could to the Eve; and marked
+with black spots the nipple and navel, where Giovanni left only the
+severe marble in pure light.
+
+These instances are enough to enable you to detect the insolent changes
+in the design of Giovanni made by the modern Academy-student in so far
+as they relate to form absolute. I must farther, for a few moments,
+request your attention to the alterations made in the light and shade.
+
+You may perhaps remember some of the passages. They occur frequently,
+both in my inaugural lectures, and in "Aratra Pentelici," in which
+I have pointed out the essential connection between the schools of
+sculpture and those of chiaroscuro. I have always spoken of the Greek,
+or essentially sculpture-loving schools, as chiaroscurist; always of
+the Gothic, or colour-loving schools, as non-chiaroscurist. And in one
+place, (I have not my books here, and cannot refer to it,) I have even
+defined sculpture as light-and-shade drawing with the chisel. Therefore,
+the next point you have to look to, after the absolute characters of
+form, is the mode in which the sculptor has placed his shadows, both
+to express these, and to force the eye to the points of his composition
+which he wants looked at. You cannot possibly see a more instructive
+piece of work, in these respects, than Giovanni's design of the
+Nativity, Plate X. So far as I yet know Christian art, this is the
+central type of the treatment of the subject; it has all the intensity
+and passion of the earliest schools, together with a grace of repose
+which even in Ghiberti's beautiful Nativity, founded upon it, has
+scarcely been increased, but rather lost in languor. The motive of the
+design is the frequent one among all the early masters; the Madonna
+lifts the covering from the cradle to show the Child to one of the
+servants, who starts forward adoring. All the light and shade is
+disposed
+
+ [Illustration: PLATE XII.--THE ANNUNCIATION AND VISITATION.]
+
+to fix the eye on these main actions. First, one intense deeply-cut mass
+of shadow, under the pointed arch, to throw out the head and lifted hand
+of the Virgin. A vulgar sculptor would have cut all black behind the
+head; Giovanni begins with full shadow; then subdues it with drapery
+absolutely quiet in fall; then lays his fullest possible light on the
+head, the hand, and the edge of the lifted veil.
+
+He has undercut his Madonna's profile, being his main aim, too
+delicately for time to spare; happily the deep-cut brow is left, and the
+exquisitely refined line above, of the veil and hair. The rest of the
+work is uninjured, and the sharpest edges of light are still secure. You
+may note how the passionate action of the servant is given by the deep
+shadows under and above her arm, relieving its curves in all their
+length, and by the recess of shade under the cheek and chin, which lifts
+the face.
+
+Now take your modern student's copy, and look how _he_ has placed his
+lights and shades. You see, they go as nearly as possible exactly where
+Giovanni's _don't_. First, pure white under this Gothic arch, where
+Giovanni has put his fullest dark. Secondly, just where Giovanni has
+used his whole art of chiselling, to soften his stone away, and show
+the wreaths of the Madonna's hair lifting her veil behind, the accursed
+modern blockhead carves his shadow straight down, because he thinks that
+will be more in the style of Michael Angelo. Then he takes the shadows
+away from behind the profile, and from under the chin, and from under
+the arm, and puts in two grand square blocks of dark at the ends of
+the cradle, that you may be safe to look at that, instead of the Child.
+Next, he takes it all away from under the servant's arms, and lays it
+all behind above the calf of her leg. Then, not having wit enough to
+notice Giovanni's undulating surface beneath the drapery of the bed
+on the left, he limits it with a hard parallel-sided bar of shade, and
+insists on the vertical fold under the Madonna's arm, which Giovanni
+has purposely cut flat that it may not interfere with the arm above;
+finally, the modern animal has missed the only pieces of womanly form
+which Giovanni admitted, the rounded right arm and softly revealed
+breast; and absolutely removed, as if it were no part of the
+composition, the horizontal incision at the base of all--out of which
+the first folds of the drapery rise.
+
+I cannot give you any better example, than this modern Academy-work, of
+the total ignorance of the very first meaning of the word 'Sculpture'
+into which the popular schools of existing art are plunged. I will
+not insist, now, on the uselessness, or worse, of their endeavours to
+represent the older art, and of the necessary futility of their judgment
+of it. The conclusions to which I wish to lead you on these points will
+be the subject of future lectures, being of too great importance for
+examination here. But you cannot spend your time in more profitable
+study than by examining and comparing, touch for touch, the treatment
+of light and shadow in the figures of the Christ and sequent angels, in
+Plates VIII. and IX., as we have partly examined those of the subject
+before us; and in thus assuring yourself of the uselessness of trusting
+to any ordinary modern copyists, for anything more than the rudest chart
+or map--and even that inaccurately surveyed--of ancient design.
+
+The last plate given in this volume contains the two lovely subjects of
+the Annunciation and Visitation, which, being higher from the ground,
+are better preserved than the groups represented in the other plates.
+They will be found to justify, in subtlety of chiselling, the title I
+gave to Giovanni, of the Canova of the thirteenth century.
+
+I am obliged to leave without notice, at present, the branch of ivy,
+given in illustration of the term 'marble rampant,' at the base of Plate
+VIII. The foliage of Orvieto can only be rightly described in connection
+with the great scheme of leaf-ornamentation which ascended from the
+ivy of the Homeric period in the sculptures of Cyprus, to the roses of
+Botticelli, and laurels of Bellini and Titian.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Val d'Arno, by John Ruskin
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