§ LVII. Let us now return to Venice, where, in the second chapel

counting from right to left, at the west end of the Church of the Frari,

there is a very early fourteenth, or perhaps late thirteenth, century

tomb, another exquisite example of the perfect Gothic form. It is a

knight's; but there is no inscription upon it, and his name is unknown.

It consists of a sarcophagus, supported on bold brackets against the

chapel wall, bearing the recumbent figure, protected by a simple canopy

in the form of a pointed arch, pinnacled by the knight's crest; beneath

which the shadowy space is painted dark blue, and strewn with stars. The

statue itself is rudely carved; but its lines, as seen from the intended

distance, are both tender and masterly. The knight is laid in his mail,

only the hands and face being bare. The hauberk and helmet are of

chain-mail, the armor for the limbs of jointed steel; a tunic, fitting

close to the breast, and marking the noble swell of it by two narrow

embroidered lines, is worn over the mail; his dagger is at his right

side; his long cross-belted sword, not seen by the spectator from below,

at his left. His feet rest on a hound (the hound being his crest), which

looks up towards its master. In general, in tombs of this kind, the face

of the statue is slightly turned towards the spectator; in this

monument, on the contrary, it is turned away from him, towards the depth

of the arch: for there, just above the warrior's breast, is carved a

small image of St. Joseph bearing the infant Christ, who looks down upon

the resting figure; and to this image its countenance is turned. The

appearance of the entire tomb is as if the warrior had seen the vision

of Christ in his dying moments, and had fallen back peacefully upon his

pillow, with his eyes still turned to it, and his hands clasped in

prayer.

§ LVIII. On the opposite side of this chapel is another very lovely

tomb, to Duccio degli Alberti, a Florentine ambassador at Venice;

noticeable chiefly as being the first in Venice on which any images of

the Virtues appear. We shall return to it presently, but some account

must first be given of the more important among the other tombs in

Venice belonging to the perfect period. Of these, by far the most

interesting, though not the most elaborate, is that of the great Doge

Francesco Dandolo, whose ashes, it might have been thought, were

honorable enough to have been permitted to rest undisturbed in the

chapter-house of the Frari, where they were first laid. But, as if there

were not room enough, nor waste houses enough in the desolate city to

receive a few convent papers, the monks, wanting an "archivio," have

separated the tomb into three pieces: the canopy, a simple arch

sustained on brackets, still remains on the blank walls of the

desecrated chamber; the sarcophagus has been transported to a kind of

museum of antiquities, established in what was once the cloister of

Santa Maria della Salute; and the painting which filled the lunette

behind it is hung far out of sight, at one end of the sacristy of the

same church. The sarcophagus is completely charged with bas-reliefs: at

its two extremities are the types of St. Mark and St. John; in front, a

noble sculpture of the death of the Virgin; at the angles, angels

holding vases. The whole space is occupied by the sculpture; there are

no spiral shafts or panelled divisions; only a basic plinth below, and

crowning plinth above, the sculpture being raised from a deep concave

field between the two, but, in order to give piquancy and

picturesqueness to the mass of figures, two small trees are introduced

at the head and foot of the Madonna's couch, an oak and a stone pine.

§ LIX. It was said above,[17] in speaking of the frequent disputes of

the Venetians with the Pontifical power, which in their early days they

had so strenuously supported, that "the humiliation of Francesco Dandolo

blotted out the shame of Barbarossa." It is indeed well that the two

events should be remembered together. By the help of the Venetians,

Alexander III. was enabled, in the twelfth century, to put his foot upon

the neck of the emperor Barbarossa, quoting the words of the Psalm,

"Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder." A hundred and fifty

years later, the Venetian ambassador, Francesco Dandolo, unable to

obtain even an audience from the Pope, Clement V., to whom he had been

sent to pray for a removal of the sentence of excommunication pronounced

against the republic, concealed himself (according to the common

tradition) beneath the Pontiff's dining-table; and thence coming out as

he sat down to meat, embraced his feet, and obtained, by tearful

entreaties, the removal of the terrible sentence.

I say, "according to the common tradition;" for there are some doubts

cast upon the story by its supplement. Most of the Venetian historians

assert that Francesco Dandolo's surname of "Dog" was given him first on

this occasion, in insult, by the cardinals; and that the Venetians, in

remembrance of the grace which his humiliation had won for them, made it

a title of honor to him and to his race. It has, however, been

proved[18] that the surname was borne by the ancestors of Francesco

Dandolo long before; and the falsity of this seal of the legend renders

also its circumstances doubtful. But the main fact of grievous

humiliation having been undergone, admits of no dispute; the existence

of such a tradition at all is in itself a proof of its truth; it was not

one likely to be either invented or received without foundation: and it

will be well, therefore, that the reader should remember, in connection

with the treatment of Barbarossa at the door of the Church of St.

Mark's, that in the Vatican, one hundred and fifty years later, a

Venetian noble, a future Doge, submitted to a degradation, of which the

current report among his people was, that he had crept on his hands and

knees from beneath the Pontiff's table to his feet, and had been spurned

as a "dog" by the cardinals present.

§ LX. There are two principal conclusions to be drawn from this: the

obvious one respecting the insolence of the Papal dominion in the

thirteenth century; the second, that there were probably most deep piety

and humility in the character of the man who could submit to this

insolence for the sake of a benefit to his country. Probably no motive

would have been strong enough to obtain such a sacrifice from most men,

however unselfish; but it was, without doubt, made easier to Dandolo by

his profound reverence for the Pontifical office; a reverence which,

however _we_ may now esteem those who claimed it, could not but have

been felt by nearly all good and faithful men at the time of which we

are speaking. This is the main point which I wish the reader to remember

as we look at his tomb, this, and the result of it,--that, some years

afterwards, when he was seated on the throne which his piety had saved,

"there were sixty princes' ambassadors in Venice at the same time,

requesting the judgment of the Senate on matters of various concernment,

_so great was the fame of the uncorrupted justice of the Fathers_."[19]

Observe, there are no virtues on this tomb. Nothing but religious

history or symbols; the Death of the Virgin in front, and the types of

St. Mark and St. John at the extremities.

§ LXI. Of the tomb of the Doge Andrea Dandolo, in St. Mark's, I have

spoken before. It is one of the first in Venice which presents, in a

canopy, the Pisan idea of angels withdrawing curtains, as of a couch, to

look down upon the dead. The sarcophagus is richly decorated with

flower-work; the usual figures of the Annunciation are at the sides; an

enthroned Madonna in the centre; and two bas-reliefs, one of the

martyrdom of the Doge's patron saint, St. Andrew, occupy the

intermediate spaces. All these tombs have been richly colored; the hair

of the angels has here been gilded, their wings bedropped with silver,

and their garments covered with the most exquisite arabesques. This

tomb, and that of St. Isidore in another chapel of St. Mark's, which was

begun by this very Doge, Andrea Dandolo, and completed after his death

in 1354, are both nearly alike in their treatment, and are, on the

whole, the best existing examples of Venetian monumental sculpture.

§ LXII. Of much ruder workmanship, though still most precious, and

singularly interesting from its quaintness, is a sarcophagus in the

northernmost chapel, beside the choir of St. John and Paul, charged with

two bas-reliefs and many figures, but which bears no inscription. It

has, however, a shield with three dolphins on its brackets; and as at

the feet of the Madonna in its centre there is a small kneeling figure

of a Doge, we know it to be the tomb of the Doge Giovanni Dolfino, who

came to the throne in 1356.

He was chosen Doge while, as provveditore, he was in Treviso, defending

the city against the King of Hungary. The Venetians sent to the

besiegers, praying that their newly elected Doge might be permitted to

pass the Hungarian lines. Their request was refused, the Hungarians

exulting that they held the Doge of Venice prisoner in Treviso. But

Dolfino, with a body of two hundred horse, cut his way through their

lines by night, and reached Mestre (Malghera) in safety, where he was

met by the Senate. His bravery could not avert the misfortunes which

were accumulating on the republic. The Hungarian war was ignominiously

terminated by the surrender of Dalmatia: the Doge's heart was broken,

his eyesight failed him, and he died of the plague four years after he

had ascended the throne.

§ LXIII. It is perhaps on this account, perhaps in consequence of later

injuries, that the tomb has neither effigy nor inscription: that it has

been subjected to some violence is evident from the dentil which once

crowned its leaf-cornice being now broken away, showing the whole front.

But, fortunately, the sculpture of the sarcophagus itself is little

injured.

There are two saints, male and female, at its angles, each in a little

niche; a Christ, enthroned in the centre, the Doge and Dogaressa

kneeling at his feet; in the two intermediate panels, on one side the

Epiphany, on the other the Death of the Virgin; the whole supported, as

well as crowned, by an elaborate leaf-plinth. The figures under the

niches are rudely cut, and of little interest. Not so the central group.

Instead of a niche, the Christ is seated under a square tent, or

tabernacle, formed by curtains running on rods; the idea, of course, as

usual, borrowed from the Pisan one, but here ingeniously applied. The

curtains are opened in front, showing those at the back of the tent,

behind the seated figure; the perspective of the two retiring sides

being very tolerably suggested. Two angels, of half the size of the

seated figure, thrust back the near curtains, and look up reverently to

the Christ; while again, at their feet, about one third of _their_ size,

and half-sheltered, as it seems, by their garments, are the two kneeling

figures of the Doge and Dogaressa, though so small and carefully cut,

full of life. The Christ raising one hand as to bless, and holding a

book upright and open on the knees, does not look either towards them or

to the angels, but forward; and there is a very noticeable effort to

represent Divine abstraction in the countenance: the idea of the three

magnitudes of spiritual being,--the God, the Angel, and the Man,--is

also to be observed, aided as it is by the complete subjection of the

angelic power to the Divine; for the angels are in attitudes of the most

lowly watchfulness of the face of Christ, and appear unconscious of the

presence of the human beings who are nestled in the folds of their

garments.

§ LXIV. With this interesting but modest tomb of one of the kings of

Venice, it is desirable to compare that of one of her senators, of

exactly the same date, which is raised against the western wall of the

Frari, at the end of the north aisle. It bears the following remarkable

inscription:

"ANNO MCCCLX. prima die Julii Sepultura . Domini . Simonii Dandolo .

amador . de . Justisia . e . desiroso . de . acrese . el . ben .

chomum."

The "Amador de Justitia" has perhaps some reference to Simon Dandolo's

having been one of the Giunta who condemned the Doge Faliero. The

sarcophagus is decorated merely by the Annunciation group, and an

enthroned Madonna with a curtain behind her throne, sustained by four

tiny angels, who look over it as they hold it up; but the workmanship of

the figures is more than usually beautiful.

§ LXV. Seven years later, a very noble monument was placed on the north

side of the choir of St. John and Paul, to the Doge Marco Cornaro,

chiefly, with respect to our present subject, noticeable for the absence

of religious imagery from the sarcophagus, which is decorated with

roses only; three very beautiful statues of the Madonna and two saints

are, however, set in the canopy above. Opposite this tomb, though about

fifteen years later in date, is the richest monument of the Gothic

period in Venice; that of the Doge Michele Morosini, who died in 1382.

It consists of a highly florid canopy,--an arch crowned by a gable, with

pinnacles at the flanks, boldly crocketed, and with a huge finial at the

top representing St. Michael,--a medallion of Christ set in the gable;

under the arch, a mosaic, representing the Madonna presenting the Doge

to Christ upon the cross; beneath, as usual, the sarcophagus, with a

most noble recumbent figure of the Doge, his face meagre and severe, and

sharp in its lines, but exquisite in the form of its small and princely

features. The sarcophagus is adorned with elaborate wrinkled leafage,

projecting in front of it into seven brackets, from which the statues

are broken away; but by which, for there can be no doubt that these last

statues represented the theological and cardinal Virtues, we must for a

moment pause.

§ LXVI. It was noticed above, that the tomb of the Florentine

ambassador, Duccio, was the first in Venice which presented images of

the Virtues. Its small lateral statues of Justice and Temperance are

exquisitely beautiful, and were, I have no doubt, executed by a

Florentine sculptor; the whole range of artistical power and religious

feeling being, in Florence, full half a century in advance of that of

Venice. But this is the first truly Venetian tomb which has the Virtues;

and it becomes of importance, therefore, to know what was the character

of Morosini.

The reader must recollect, that I dated the commencement of the fall of

Venice from the death of Carlo Zeno, considering that no state could be

held as in decline, which numbered such a man amongst its citizens.

Carlo Zeno was a candidate for the Ducal bonnet together with Michael

Morosini; and Morosini was chosen. It might be anticipated, therefore,

that there was something more than usually admirable or illustrious in

his character. Yet it is difficult to arrive at a just estimate of it,

as the reader will at once understand by comparing the following

statements:

§ LXVI. 1. "To him (Andrea Contarini) succeeded Morosini, at the age

of seventy-four years; a most learned and prudent man, who also

reformed several laws."--_Sansovino_, Vite de' Principi.

2. "It was generally believed that, if his reign had been longer, he

would have dignified the state by many noble laws and institutes; but

by so much as his reign was full of hope, by as much was it short in

duration, for he died when he had been at the head of the republic

but four months."--_Sabellico_, lib. viii.

3. "He was allowed but a short time to enjoy this high dignity, which

he had so well deserved by his rare virtues, for God called him to

Himself on the 15th of October."--_Muratori_, Annali de' Italia.

4. "Two candidates presented themselves; one was Zeno, the other that

Michael Morosini who, during the war, had tripled his fortune by his

speculations. The suffrages of the electors fell upon him, and he was

proclaimed Doge on the 10th of June."--_Daru_, Histoire de Venise,

lib. x.

5. "The choice of the electors was directed to Michele Morosini, a

noble of illustrious birth, derived from a stock which, coeval with

the republic itself, had produced the conqueror of Tyre, given a

queen to Hungary, and more than one Doge to Venice. The brilliancy of

this descent was tarnished in the present chief representative of the

family by the most base and grovelling avarice; for at that moment,

in the recent war, at which all other Venetians were devoting their

whole fortunes to the service of the state, Morosini sought in the

distresses of his country an opening for his own private enrichment,

and employed his ducats, not in the assistance of the national wants,

but in speculating upon houses which were brought to market at a

price far beneath their real value, and which, upon the return of

peace, insured the purchaser a fourfold profit. 'What matters the

fall of Venice to me, so as I fall not together with her?' was his

selfish and sordid reply to some one who expressed surprise at the

transaction."--_Sketches of Venetian History_. Murray, 1831.

§ LXVIII. The writer of the unpretending little history from which the

last quotation is taken has not given his authority for this statement,

and I could not find it, but believed, from the general accuracy of the

book, that some authority might exist better than Daru's. Under these

circumstances, wishing if possible to ascertain the truth, and to clear

the character of this great Doge from the accusation, if it proved

groundless, I wrote to the Count Carlo Morosini, his descendant, and one

of the few remaining representatives of the ancient noblesse of Venice;

one, also, by whom his great ancestral name is revered, and in whom it

is exalted. His answer appears to me altogether conclusive as to the

utter fallacy of the reports of Daru and the English history. I have

placed his letter in the close of this volume (Appendix 6), in order

that the reader may himself be the judge upon this point; and I should

not have alluded to Daru's report, except for the purpose of

contradicting it, but that it still appears to me impossible that any

modern historian should have gratuitously invented the whole story, and

that, therefore, there must have been a trace in the documents which

Daru himself possessed, of some scandal of this kind raised by

Morosini's enemies, perhaps at the very time of the disputed election

with Carlo Zeno. The occurrence of the Virtues upon his tomb, for the

first time in Venetian monumental work, and so richly and conspicuously

placed, may partly have been in public contradiction of such a floating

rumor. But the face of the statue is a more explicit contradiction

still; it is resolute, thoughtful, serene, and full of beauty; and we

must, therefore, for once, allow the somewhat boastful introduction of

the Virtues to have been perfectly just: though the whole tomb is most

notable, as furnishing not only the exact intermediate condition in

style between the pure Gothic and its final Renaissance corruption, but,

at the same time, the exactly intermediate condition of _feeling_

between the pure calmness of early Christianity, and the boastful pomp

of the Renaissance faithlessness; for here we have still the religious

humility remaining in the mosaic of the canopy, which shows the Doge

kneeling before the cross, while yet this tendency to self-trust is

shown in the surrounding of the coffin by the Virtues.

§ LXIX. The next tomb by the side of which they appear is that of Jacopo

Cavalli, in the same chapel of St. John and Paul which contains the tomb

of the Doge Delfin. It is peculiarly rich in religious imagery, adorned

by boldly cut types of the four evangelists, and of two saints, while,

on projecting brackets in front of it, stood three statues of Faith,

Hope, and Charity, now lost, but drawn in Zanotto's work. It is all rich

in detail, and its sculptor has been proud of it, thus recording his

name below the epitaph:

"QST OPERA DINTALGIO E FATTO IN PIERA,

UNVENICIAN LAFE CHANOME POLO,

NATO DI JACHOMEL CHATAIAPIERA."

This work of sculpture is done in stone;

A Venetian did it, named Paul,

Son of Jachomel the stone-cutter.

Jacopo Cavalli died in 1384. He was a bold and active Veronese soldier,

did the state much service, was therefore ennobled by it, and became the

founder of the house of the Cavalli; but I find no especial reason for

the images of the Virtues, especially that of Charity, appearing at his

tomb, unless it be this: that at the siege of Feltre, in the war against

Leopold of Austria, he refused to assault the city, because the senate

would not grant his soldiers the pillage of the town. The feet of the

recumbent figure, which is in full armor, rest on a dog, and its head on

two lions; and these animals (neither of which form any part of the

knight's bearings) are said by Zanotto to be intended to symbolize his

bravery and fidelity. If, however, the lions are meant to set forth

courage, it is a pity they should have been represented as howling.

§ LXX. We must next pause for an instant beside the tomb of Michael

Steno, now in the northern aisle of St. John and Paul, having been

removed there from the destroyed church of the Servi: first, to note its

remarkable return to the early simplicity, the sarcophagus being

decorated only with two crosses in quatrefoils, though it is of the

fifteenth century, Steno dying in 1413; and, in the second place, to

observe the peculiarity of the epitaph, which eulogises Steno as having

been "amator justitie, pacis, et ubertatis," "a lover of justice, peace,

and plenty." In the epitaphs of this period, the virtues which are made

most account of in public men are those which were most useful to their

country. We have already seen one example in the epitaph on Simon

Dandolo; and similar expressions occur constantly in laudatory mentions

of their later Doges by the Venetian writers. Thus Sansovino of Marco

Cornaro, "Era savio huomo, eloquente, e amava molto la pace e l'

abbondanza della citta;" and of Tomaso Mocenigo, "Huomo oltre modo

desideroso della pace."

Of the tomb of this last-named Doge mention has before been made. Here,

as in Morosini's, the images of the Virtues have no ironical power,

although their great conspicuousness marks the increase of the boastful

feeling in the treatment of monuments. For the rest, this tomb is the

last in Venice which can be considered as belonging to the Gothic

period. Its mouldings are already rudely classical, and it has

meaningless figures in Roman armor at the angles; but its tabernacle

above is still Gothic, and the recumbent figure is very beautiful. It

was carved by two Florentine sculptors in 1423.

§ LXXI. Tomaso Mocenigo was succeeded by the renowned Doge, Francesco

Foscari, under whom, it will be remembered, the last additions were made

to the Gothic Ducal Palace; additions which, in form only, not in

spirit, corresponded to the older portions; since, during his reign, the

transition took place which permits us no longer to consider the

Venetian architecture as Gothic at all. He died in 1457, and his tomb is

the first important example of Renaissance art.

Not, however, a good characteristic example. It is remarkable chiefly as

introducing all the faults of the Renaissance at an early period, when

its merits, such as they are, were yet undeveloped. Its claim to be

rated as a classical composition is altogether destroyed by the remnants

of Gothic feeling which cling to it here and there in their last forms

of degradation; and of which, now that we find them thus corrupted, the

sooner we are rid the better. Thus the sarcophagus is supported by a

species of trefoil arches; the bases of the shafts have still their

spurs; and the whole tomb is covered by a pediment, with crockets and a

pinnacle. We shall find that the perfect Renaissance is at least pure in

its insipidity, and subtle in its vice; but this monument is remarkable

as showing the refuse of one style encumbering the embryo of another,

and all principles of life entangled either in the swaddling clothes or

the shroud.

§ LXXII. With respect to our present purpose, however, it is a monument

of enormous importance. We have to trace, be it remembered, the pride of

state in its gradual intrusion upon the sepulchre; and the consequent

and correlative vanishing of the expressions of religious feeling and

heavenly hope, together with the more and more arrogant setting forth of

the virtues of the dead. Now this tomb is the largest and most costly we

have yet seen; but its means of religious expression are limited to a

single statue of Christ, small and used merely as a pinnacle at the top.

The rest of the composition is as curious as it is vulgar. The conceit,

so often noticed as having been borrowed from the Pisan school, of

angels withdrawing the curtains of the couch to look down upon the dead,

was brought forward with increasing prominence by every succeeding

sculptor; but, as we draw nearer to the Renaissance period, we find that

the _angels_ become of less importance, and the _curtains_ of more. With

the Pisans, the curtains are introduced as a motive for the angels; with

the Renaissance sculptors, the angels are introduced merely as a motive

for the curtains, which become every day more huge and elaborate. In the

monument of Mocenigo, they have already expanded into a tent, with a

pole in the centre of it: and in that of Foscari, for the first time,

the _angels are absent altogether_; while the curtains are arranged in

the form of an enormous French tent-bed, and are sustained at the flanks

by two diminutive figures in Roman armor; substituted for the angels,

merely that the sculptor might _show his knowledge_ of classical

costume. And now observe how often a fault in feeling induces also a

fault in style. In the old tombs, the angels used to stand on or by the

side of the sarcophagus; but their places are here to be occupied by the

Virtues, and therefore, to sustain the diminutive Roman figures at the

necessary height, each has a whole Corinthian pillar to himself, a

pillar whose shaft is eleven feet high, and some three or four feet

round: and because this was not high enough, it is put on a pedestal

four feet and a half high; and has a spurred base besides of its own, a

tall capital, then a huge bracket above the capital, and then another

pedestal above the bracket, and on the top of all the diminutive figure

who has charge of the curtains.

§ LXXIII. Under the canopy, thus arranged, is placed the sarcophagus

with its recumbent figure. The statues of the Virgin and the saints have

disappeared from it. In their stead, its panels are filled with

half-length figures of Faith, Hope, and Charity; while Temperance and

Fortitude are at the Doge's feet, Justice and Prudence at his head,

figures now the size of life, yet nevertheless recognizable only by

their attributes: for, except that Hope raises her eyes, there is no

difference in the character or expression of any of their faces,--they

are nothing more than handsome Venetian women, in rather full and

courtly dresses, and tolerably well thrown into postures for effect from

below. Fortitude could not of course be placed in a graceful one without

some sacrifice of her character, but that was of no consequence in the

eyes of the sculptors of this period, so she leans back languidly, and

nearly overthrows her own column; while Temperance, and Justice opposite

to her, as neither the left hand of the one nor the right hand of the

other could be seen from below, have been _left with one hand each_.

§ LXXIV. Still these figures, coarse and feelingless as they are, have

been worked with care, because the principal effect of the tomb depends

on them. But the effigy of the Doge, of which nothing but the side is

visible, has been utterly neglected; and the ingenuity of the sculptor

is not so great, at the best, as that he can afford to be slovenly.

There is, indeed, nothing in the history of Foscari which would lead us

to expect anything particularly noble in his face; but I trust,

nevertheless, it has been misrepresented by this despicable carver; for

no words are strong enough to express the baseness of the portraiture. A

huge, gross, bony clown's face, with the peculiar sodden and sensual

cunning in it which is seen so often in the countenances of the worst

Romanist priest; a face part of iron and part of clay, with the

immobility of the one, and the foulness of the other, double chinned,

blunt-mouthed, bony-cheeked, with its brows drawn down into meagre lines

and wrinkles over the eyelids; the face of a man incapable either of joy

or sorrow, unless such as may be caused by the indulgence of passion, or

the mortification of pride. Even had he been such a one, a noble workman

would not have written it so legibly on his tomb; and I believe it to be

the image of the carver's own mind that is there hewn in the marble, not

that of the Doge Foscari. For the same mind is visible enough

throughout, the traces of it mingled with those of the evil taste of the

whole time and people. There is not anything so small but it is shown in

some portion of its treatment; for instance, in the placing of the

shields at the back of the great curtain. In earlier times, the shield,

as we have seen, was represented as merely suspended against the tomb by

a thong, or if sustained in any other manner, still its form was simple

and undisguised. Men in those days used their shields in war, and

therefore there was no need to add dignity to their form by external

ornament. That which, through day after day of mortal danger, had borne

back from them the waves of battle, could neither be degraded by

simplicity, nor exalted by decoration. By its rude leathern thong it

seemed to be fastened to their tombs, and the shield of the mighty was

not cast away, though capable of defending its master no more.

§ LXXV. It was otherwise in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The

changed system of warfare was rapidly doing away with the practical

service of the shield; and the chiefs who directed the battle from a

distance, or who passed the greater part of their lives in the

council-chamber, soon came to regard the shield as nothing more than a

field for their armorial bearings. It then became a principal object of

their Pride of State to increase the conspicuousness of these marks of

family distinction by surrounding them with various and fantastic

ornament, generally scroll or flower work, which of course deprived the

shield of all appearance of being intended for a soldier's use. Thus the

shield of the Foscari is introduced in two ways. On the sarcophagus,

the bearings are three times repeated, enclosed in circular disks, which

are sustained each by a couple of naked infants. Above the canopy, two

shields of the usual form are set in the centre of circles filled by a

radiating ornament of shell flutings, which give them the effect of

ventilators; and their circumference is farther adorned by gilt rays,

undulating to represent a glory.

§ LXXVI. We now approach that period of the early Renaissance which was

noticed in the preceding chapter as being at first a very visible

improvement on the corrupted Gothic. The tombs executed during the

period of the Byzantine Renaissance exhibit, in the first place, a

consummate skill in handling the chisel, perfect science of drawing and

anatomy, high appreciation of good classical models, and a grace of

composition and delicacy of ornament derived, I believe, principally

from the great Florentine sculptors. But, together with this science,

they exhibit also, for a short time, some return to the early religious

feeling, forming a school of sculpture which corresponds to that of the

school of the Bellini in painting; and the only wonder is that there

should not have been more workmen in the fifteenth century doing in

marble what Perugino, Francia, and Bellini did on canvas. There are,

indeed, some few, as I have just said, in whom the good and pure temper

shows itself: but the sculptor was necessarily led sooner than the

painter to an exclusive study of classical models, utterly adverse to

the Christian imagination; and he was also deprived of the great

purifying and sacred element of color, besides having much more of

merely mechanical and therefore degrading labor to go through in the

realization of his thought. Hence I do not know any example in sculpture

at this period, at least in Venice, which has not conspicuous faults

(not faults of imperfection, as in early sculpture, but of purpose and

sentiment), staining such beauties as it may possess; and the whole

school soon falls away, and merges into vain pomp and meagre metaphor.

§ LXXVII. The most celebrated monument of this period is that to the

Doge Andrea Vendramin, in the Church of St. John and Paul, sculptured

about 1480, and before alluded to in the first chapter of the first

volume. It has attracted public admiration, partly by its costliness,

partly by the delicacy and precision of its chiselling; being otherwise

a very base and unworthy example of the school, and showing neither

invention nor feeling. It has the Virtues, as usual, dressed like

heathen goddesses, and totally devoid of expression, though graceful and

well studied merely as female figures. The rest of its sculpture is all

of the same kind; perfect in workmanship, and devoid of thought. Its

dragons are covered with marvellous scales, but have no terror nor sting

in them; its birds are perfect in plumage, but have no song in them; its

children lovely of limb, but have no childishness in them.

§ LXXVIII. Of far other workmanship are the tombs of Pietro and Giovanni

Mocenigo, in St. John and Paul, and of Pietro Bernardo in the Frari; in

all which the details are as full of exquisite fancy, as they are

perfect in execution; and in the two former, and several others of

similar feeling, the old religious symbols return; the Madonna is again

seen enthroned under the canopy, and the sarcophagus is decorated with

legends of the saints. But the fatal errors of sentiment are,

nevertheless, always traceable. In the first place, the sculptor is

always seen to be intent upon the exhibition of his skill, more than on

producing any effect on the spectator's mind; elaborate backgrounds of

landscape, with tricks of perspective, imitations of trees, clouds, and

water, and various other unnecessary adjuncts, merely to show how marble

could be subdued; together with useless under-cutting, and over-finish

in subordinate parts, continually exhibiting the same cold vanity and

unexcited precision of mechanism. In the second place, the figures have

all the peculiar tendency to posture-making, which, exhibiting itself

first painfully in Perugino, rapidly destroyed the veracity of

composition in all art. By posture-making I mean, in general, that

action of figures which results from the painter's considering, in the

first place, not how, under the circumstances, they would actually have

walked, or stood, or looked, but how they may most gracefully and

harmoniously walk or stand. In the hands of a great man, posture, like

everything else, becomes noble, even when over-studied, as with Michael

Angelo, who was, perhaps, more than any other, the cause of the

mischief; but, with inferior men, this habit of composing attitudes ends

necessarily in utter lifelessness and abortion. Giotto was, perhaps, of

all painters, the most free from the infection of the poison, always

conceiving an incident naturally, and drawing it unaffectedly; and the

absence of posture-making in the works of the Pre-Raphaelites, as

opposed to the Attitudinarianism of the modern school, has been both one

of their principal virtues, and of the principal causes of outcry

against them.

§ LXXIX. But the most significant change in the treatment of these

tombs, with respect to our immediate object, is in the form of the

sarcophagus. It was above noted, that, exactly in proportion to the

degree of the pride of life expressed in any monument, would be also the

fear of death; and therefore, as these tombs increase in splendor, in

size, and beauty of workmanship, we perceive a gradual desire to _take

away from the definite character of the sarcophagus_. In the earliest

times, as we have seen, it was a gloomy mass of stone; gradually it

became charged with religious sculpture; but never with the slightest

desire to disguise its form, until towards the middle of the fifteenth

century. It then becomes enriched with flower-work and hidden by the

Virtues; and, finally, losing its foursquare form, it is modelled on

graceful types of ancient vases, made as little like a coffin as

possible, and refined away in various elegancies, till it becomes, at

last, a mere pedestal or stage for the portrait statue. This statue, in

the meantime, has been gradually coming back to life, through a curious

series of transitions. The Vendramin monument is one of the last which

shows, or pretends to show, the recumbent figure laid in death. A few

years later, this idea became disagreeable to polite minds; and, lo! the

figures which before had been laid at rest upon the tomb pillow, raised

themselves on their elbows, and began to look round them. The soul of

the sixteenth century dared not contemplate its body in death.

§ LXXX. The reader cannot but remember many instances of this form of

monument, England being peculiarly rich in examples of them; although,

with her, tomb sculpture, after the fourteenth century, is altogether

imitative, and in no degree indicative of the temper of the people. It

was from Italy that the authority for the change was derived; and in

Italy only, therefore, that it is truly correspondent to the change in

the national mind. There are many monuments in Venice of this

semi-animate type, most of them carefully sculptured, and some very

admirable as portraits, and for the casting of the drapery, especially

those in the Church of San Salvador; but I shall only direct the reader

to one, that of Jacopo Pesaro, Bishop of Paphos, in the Church of the

Frari; notable not only as a very skilful piece of sculpture, but for

the epitaph, singularly characteristic of the period, and confirmatory

of all that I have alleged against it:

"James Pesaro, Bishop of Paphos, who conquered the Turks in war,

himself in peace, transported from a noble family among the Venetians

to a nobler among the angels, laid here, expects the noblest crown,

which the just Judge shall give to him in that day. He lived the

years of Plato. He died 24th March, 1547."[20]

The mingled classicism and carnal pride of this epitaph surely need no

comment. The crown is expected as a right from the justice of the judge,

and the nobility of the Venetian family is only a little lower than that

of the angels. The quaint childishness of the "Vixit annos Platonicos"

is also very notable.

§ LXXXI. The statue, however, did not long remain in this partially

recumbent attitude. Even the expression of peace became painful to the

frivolous and thoughtless Italians, and they required the portraiture to

be rendered in a manner that should induce no memory of death. The

statue rose up, and presented itself in front of the tomb, like an actor

upon a stage, surrounded now not merely, or not at all, by the Virtues,

but by allegorical figures of Fame and Victory, by genii and muses, by

personifications of humbled kingdoms and adoring nations, and by every

circumstance of pomp, and symbol of adulation, that flattery could

suggest, or insolence could claim.

§ LXXXII. As of the intermediate monumental type, so also of this, the

last and most gross, there are unfortunately many examples in our own

country; but the most wonderful, by far, are still at Venice. I shall,

however, particularize only two; the first, that of the Doge John

Pesaro, in the Frari. It is to be observed that we have passed over a

considerable interval of time; we are now in the latter half of the

seventeenth century; the progress of corruption has in the meantime been

incessant, and sculpture has here lost its taste and learning as well as

its feeling. The monument is a huge accumulation of theatrical scenery

in marble: four colossal negro caryatides, grinning and horrible, with

faces of black marble and white eyes, sustain the first story of it;

above this, two monsters, long-necked, half dog and half dragon, sustain

an ornamental sarcophagus, on the top of which the full-length statue of

the Doge in robes of state stands forward with its arms expanded, like

an actor courting applause, under a huge canopy of metal, like the roof

of a bed, painted crimson and gold; on each side of him are sitting

figures of genii, and unintelligible personifications gesticulating in

Roman armor; below, between the negro caryatides, are two ghastly

figures in bronze, half corpse, half skeleton, carrying tablets on which

is written the eulogium: but in large letters graven in gold, the

following words are the first and last that strike the eye; the first

two phrases, one on each side, on tablets in the lower story, the last

under the portrait statue above:

VIXIT ANNOS LXX. DEVIXIT ANNO MDCLIX.

"HIC REVIXIT ANNO MDCLXIX."

We have here, at last, the horrible images of death in violent contrast

with the defiant monument, which pretends to bring the resurrection

down to earth, "Hic revixit;" and it seems impossible for false taste

and base feeling to sink lower. Yet even this monument is surpassed by

one in St. John and Paul.

§ LXXXIII. But before we pass to this, the last with which I shall

burden the reader's attention, let us for a moment, and that we may feel

the contrast more forcibly, return to a tomb of the early times.

In a dark niche in the outer wall of the outer corridor of St.

Mark's--not even in the church, observe, but in the atrium or porch of

it, and on the north side of the church,--is a solid sarcophagus of

white marble, raised only about two feet from the ground on four stunted

square pillars. Its lid is a mere slab of stone; on its extremities are

sculptured two crosses; in front of it are two rows of rude figures, the

uppermost representing Christ with the Apostles: the lower row is of six

figures only, alternately male and female, holding up their hands in the

usual attitude of benediction; the sixth is smaller than the rest, and

the midmost of the other five has a glory round its head. I cannot tell

the meaning of these figures, but between them are suspended censers

attached to crosses; a most beautiful symbolic expression of Christ's

mediatorial function. The whole is surrounded by a rude wreath of vine

leaves, proceeding out of the foot of a cross.

On the bar of marble which separates the two rows of figures are

inscribed these words:

"Here lies the Lord Marin Morosini, Duke."

It is the tomb of the Doge Marino Morosini, who reigned from 1249 to

1252.

§ LXXXIV. From before this rude and solemn sepulchre let us pass to the

southern aisle of the church of St. John and Paul; and there, towering

from the pavement to the vaulting of the church, behold a mass of

marble, sixty or seventy feet in height, of mingled yellow and white,

the yellow carved into the form of an enormous curtain, with ropes,

fringes, and tassels, sustained by cherubs; in front of which, in the

now usual stage attitudes, advance the statues of the Doge Bertuccio

Valier, his son the Doge Silvester Falier, and his son's wife,

Elizabeth. The statues of the Doges, though mean and Polonius-like, are

partly redeemed by the Ducal robes; but that of the Dogaressa is a

consummation of grossness, vanity, and ugliness,--the figure of a large

and wrinkled woman, with elaborate curls in stiff projection round her

face, covered from her shoulders to her feet with ruffs, furs, lace,

jewels, and embroidery. Beneath and around are scattered Virtues,

Victories, Fames, genii,--the entire company of the monumental stage

assembled, as before a drop scene,--executed by various sculptors, and

deserving attentive study as exhibiting every condition of false taste

and feeble conception. The Victory in the centre is peculiarly

interesting; the lion by which she is accompanied, springing on a

dragon, has been intended to look terrible, but the incapable sculptor

could not conceive any form of dreadfulness, could not even make the

lion look angry. It looks only lachrymose; and its lifted forepaws,

there being no spring nor motion in its body, give it the appearance of

a dog begging. The inscriptions under the two principal statues are as

follows:

"Bertucius Valier, Duke,

Great in wisdom and eloquence,

Greater in his Hellespontic victory,

Greatest in the Prince his son.

Died in the year 1658."

"Elisabeth Quirina,

The wife of Silvester,

Distinguished by Roman virtue,

By Venetian piety,

And by the Ducal crown,

Died 1708."

The writers of this age were generally anxious to make the world aware

that they understood the degrees of comparison, and a large number of

epitaphs are principally constructed with this object (compare, in the

Latin, that of the Bishop of Paphos, given above): but the latter of

these epitaphs is also interesting from its mention, in an age now

altogether given up to the pursuit of worldly honor, of that "Venetian

piety" which once truly distinguished the city from all others; and of

which some form and shadow, remaining still, served to point an epitaph,

and to feed more cunningly and speciously the pride which could not be

satiated with the sumptuousness of the sepulchre.

§ LXXXV. Thus far, then, of the second element of the Renaissance spirit,

the Pride of State; nor need we go farther to learn the reason of the

fall of Venice. She was already likened in her thoughts, and was

therefore to be likened in her ruin, to the Virgin of Babylon. The Pride

of State and the Pride of Knowledge were no new passions: the sentence

against them had gone forth from everlasting. "Thou saidst, I shall be a

lady for ever; so that thou didst not lay these things to thine heart ...

_Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee_; and thou hast

said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me. Therefore shall evil

come upon thee ...; thy merchants from thy youth, they shall wander every

one to his quarter; none shall save thee."[21]

§ LXXXVI. III. PRIDE OF SYSTEM. I might have illustrated these evil

principles from a thousand other sources, but I have not time to pursue

the subject farther, and must pass to the third element above named, the

Pride of System. It need not detain us so long as either of the others,

for it is at once more palpable and less dangerous. The manner in which

the pride of the fifteenth century corrupted the sources of knowledge,

and diminished the majesty, while it multiplied the trappings, of state,

is in general little observed; but the reader is probably already well

and sufficiently aware of the curious tendency to formulization and

system which, under the name of philosophy, encumbered the minds of the

Renaissance schoolmen. As it was above stated, grammar became the first

of sciences; and whatever subject had to be treated, the first aim of

the philosopher was to subject its principles to a code of laws, in the

observation of which the merit of the speaker, thinker, or worker, in

or on that subject, was thereafter to consist; so that the whole mind of

the world was occupied by the exclusive study of Restraints. The sound

of the forging of fetters was heard from sea to sea. The doctors of all

the arts and sciences set themselves daily to the invention of new

varieties of cages and manacles; they themselves wore, instead of gowns,

a chain mail, whose purpose was not so much to avert the weapon of the

adversary as to restrain the motions of the wearer; and all the acts,

thoughts, and workings of mankind,--poetry, painting, architecture, and

philosophy,--were reduced by them merely to so many different forms of

fetter-dance.

§ LXXXVII. Now, I am very sure that no reader who has given any

attention to the former portions of this work, or the tendency of what

else I have written, more especially the last chapter of the "Seven

Lamps," will suppose me to underrate the importance, or dispute the

authority, of law. It has been necessary for me to allege these again

and again, nor can they ever be too often or too energetically alleged,

against the vast masses of men who now disturb or retard the advance of

civilization; heady and high-minded, despisers of discipline, and

refusers of correction. But law, so far as it can be reduced to form and

system, and is not written upon the heart,--as it is, in a Divine

loyalty, upon the hearts of the great hierarchies who serve and wait

about the throne of the Eternal Lawgiver,--this lower and formally

expressible law has, I say, two objects. It is either for the definition

and restraint of sin, or the guidance of simplicity; it either explains,

forbids, and punishes wickedness, or it guides the movements and actions

both of lifeless things and of the more simple and untaught among

responsible agents. And so long, therefore, as sin and foolishness are

in the world, so long it will be necessary for men to submit themselves

painfully to this lower law, in proportion to their need of being

corrected, and to the degree of childishness or simplicity by which they

approach more nearly to the condition of the unthinking and inanimate

things which are governed by law altogether; yet yielding, in the manner

of their submission to it, a singular lesson to the pride of

man,--being obedient more perfectly in proportion to their

greatness.[22] But, so far as men become good and wise, and rise above

the state of children, so far they become emancipated from this written

law, and invested with the perfect freedom which consists in the fulness

and joyfulness of compliance with a higher and unwritten law; a law so

universal, so subtle, so glorious, that nothing but the heart can keep

it.

§ LXXXVIII. Now pride opposes itself to the observance of this Divine

law in two opposite ways: either by brute resistance, which is the way

of the rabble and its leaders, denying or defying law altogether; or by

formal compliance, which is the way of the Pharisee, exalting himself

while he pretends to obedience, and making void the infinite and

spiritual commandment by the finite and lettered commandment. And it is

easy to know which law we are obeying: for any law which we magnify and

keep through pride, is always the law of the letter; but that which we

love and keep through humility, is the law of the Spirit: And the letter

killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.

§ LXXXIX. In the appliance of this universal principle to what we have

at present in hand, it is to be noted, that all written or writable law

respecting the arts is for the childish and ignorant: that in the

beginning of teaching, it is possible to say that this or that must or

must not be done; and laws of color and shade may be taught, as laws of

harmony are to the young scholar in music. But the moment a man begins

to be anything deserving the name of an artist, all this teachable law

has become a matter of course with him; and if, thenceforth, he boast

himself anywise in the law, or pretend that he lives and works by it, it

is a sure sign that he is merely tithing cummin, and that there is no

true art nor religion in him. For the true artist has that inspiration

in him which is above all law, or rather, which is continually working

out such magnificent and perfect obedience to supreme law, as can in no

wise be rendered by line and rule. There are more laws perceived and

fulfilled in the single stroke of a great workman, than could be written

in a volume. His science is inexpressibly subtle, directly taught him by

his Maker, not in any wise communicable or imitable.[23] Neither can any

written or definitely observable laws enable us to do any great thing.

It is possible, by measuring and administering quantities of color, to

paint a room wall so that it shall not hurt the eye; but there are no

laws by observing which we can become Titians. It is possible so to

measure and administer syllables, as to construct harmonious verse; but

there are no laws by which we can write Iliads. Out of the poem or the

picture, once produced, men may elicit laws by the volume, and study

them with advantage, to the better understanding of the existing poem or

picture; but no more write or paint another, than by discovering laws of

vegetation they can make a tree to grow. And therefore, wheresoever we

find the system and formality of rules much dwelt upon, and spoken of as

anything else than a help for children, there we may be sure that noble

art is not even understood, far less reached. And thus it was with all

the common and public mind in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The

greater men, indeed, broke through the thorn hedges; and, though much

time was lost by the learned among them in writing Latin verses and

anagrams, and arranging the framework of quaint sonnets and dexterous

syllogisms, still they tore their way through the sapless thicket by

force of intellect or of piety; for it was not possible that, either in

literature or in painting, rules could be received by any strong mind,

so as materially to interfere with its originality: and the crabbed

discipline and exact scholarship became an advantage to the men who

could pass through and despise them; so that in spite of the rules of

the drama we had Shakspeare, and in spite of the rules of art we had

Tintoret,--both of them, to this day, doing perpetual violence to the

vulgar scholarship and dim-eyed proprieties of the multitude.

§ XC. But in architecture it was not so; for that was the art of the

multitude, and was affected by all their errors; and the great men who

entered its field, like Michael Angelo, found expression for all the

best part of their minds in sculpture, and made the architecture merely

its shell. So the simpletons and sophists had their way with it: and the

reader can have no conception of the inanities and puerilities of the

writers, who, with the help of Vitruvius, re-established its "five

orders," determined the proportions of each, and gave the various

recipes for sublimity and beauty, which have been thenceforward followed

to this day, but which may, I believe, in this age of perfect machinery,

be followed out still farther. If, indeed, there are only five perfect

forms of columns and architraves, and there be a fixed proportion to

each, it is certainly possible, with a little ingenuity, so to regulate

a stonecutting machine, as that it shall furnish pillars and friezes to

the size ordered, of any of the five orders, on the most perfect Greek

models, in any quantity; an epitome, also, of Vitruvius, may be made so

simple, as to enable any bricklayer to set them up at their proper

distances, and we may dispense with our architects altogether.

§ XCI. But if this be not so, and there be any truth in the faint

persuasion which still lurks in men's minds that architecture _is_ an

art, and that it requires some gleam of intellect to practise it, then

let the whole system of the orders and their proportions be cast out and

trampled down as the most vain, barbarous, and paltry deception that was

ever stamped on human prejudice; and let us understand this plain truth,

common to all work of man, that, if it be good work, it is not a copy,

nor anything done by rule, but a freshly and divinely imagined thing.

Five orders! There is not a side chapel in any Gothic cathedral but it

has fifty orders, the worst of them better than the best of the Greek

ones, and all new; and a single inventive human soul could create a

thousand orders in an hour.[24] And this would have been discovered even

in the worst times, but that, as I said, the greatest men of the age

found expression for their invention in the other arts, and the best of

those who devoted themselves to architecture were in great part occupied

in adapting the construction of buildings to new necessities, such as

those developed by the invention of gunpowder (introducing a totally new

and most interesting science of fortification, which directed the

ingenuity of Sanmicheli and many others from its proper channel), and

found interest of a meaner kind in the difficulties of reconciling the

obsolete architectural laws they had consented to revive, and the forms

of Roman architecture which they agreed to copy, with the requirements

of the daily life of the sixteenth century.

§ XCII. These, then, were the three principal directions in which the

Renaissance pride manifested itself, and its impulses were rendered

still more fatal by the entrance of another element, inevitably

associated with pride. For, as it is written, "He that trusteth in his

own heart is a fool," so also it is written, "The fool hath said in his

heart, There is no God;" and the self-adulation which influenced not

less the learning of the age than its luxury, led gradually to the

forgetfulness of all things but self, and to an infidelity only the more

fatal because it still retained the form and language of faith.

§ XCIII. IV. INFIDELITY. In noticing the more prominent forms in which

this faithlessness manifested itself, it is necessary to distinguish

justly between that which was the consequence of respect for Paganism,

and that which followed from the corruption of Catholicism. For as the

Roman architecture is not to be made answerable for the primal

corruption of the Gothic, so neither is the Roman philosophy to be made

answerable for the primal corruption of Christianity. Year after year,

as the history of the life of Christ sank back into the depths of time,

and became obscured by the misty atmosphere of the history of the

world,--as intermediate actions and incidents multiplied in number, and

countless changes in men's modes of life, and tones of thought, rendered

it more difficult for them to imagine the facts of distant time,--it

became daily, almost hourly, a greater effort for the faithful heart to

apprehend the entire veracity and vitality of the story of its Redeemer;

and more easy for the thoughtless and remiss to deceive themselves as to

the true character of the belief they had been taught to profess. And

this must have been the case, had the pastors of the Church never failed

in their watchfulness, and the Church itself never erred in its practice

or doctrine. But when every year that removed the truths of the Gospel

into deeper distance, added to them also some false or foolish

tradition; when wilful distortion was added to natural obscurity, and

the dimness of memory was disguised by the fruitfulness of fiction;

when, moreover, the enormous temporal power granted to the clergy

attracted into their ranks multitudes of men who, but for such

temptation, would not have pretended to the Christian name, so that

grievous wolves entered in among them, not sparing the flock; and when,

by the machinations of such men, and the remissness of others, the form

and administrations of Church doctrine and discipline had become little

more than a means of aggrandizing the power of the priesthood, it was

impossible any longer for men of thoughtfulness or piety to remain in an

unquestioning serenity of faith. The Church had become so mingled with

the world that its witness could no longer be received; and the

professing members of it, who were placed in circumstances such as to

enable them to become aware of its corruptions, and whom their interest

or their simplicity did not bribe or beguile into silence, gradually

separated themselves into two vast multitudes of adverse energy, one

tending to Reformation, and the other to Infidelity.

§ XCIV. Of these, the last stood, as it were, apart, to watch the course

of the struggle between Romanism and Protestantism; a struggle which,

however necessary, was attended with infinite calamity to the Church.

For, in the first place, the Protestant movement was, in reality, not

_reformation_ but _reanimation_. It poured new life into the Church, but

it did not form or define her anew. In some sort it rather broke down

her hedges, so that all they who passed by might pluck off her grapes.

The reformers speedily found that the enemy was never far behind the

sower of good seed; that an evil spirit might enter the ranks of

reformation as well as those of resistance; and that though the deadly

blight might be checked amidst the wheat, there was no hope of ever

ridding the wheat itself from the tares. New temptations were invented

by Satan wherewith to oppose the revived strength of Christianity: as

the Romanist, confiding in his human teachers, had ceased to try whether

they were teachers sent from God, so the Protestant, confiding in the

teaching of the Spirit, believed every spirit, and did not try the

spirits whether they were of God. And a thousand enthusiasms and

heresies speedily obscured the faith and divided the force of the

Reformation.

§ XCV. But the main evils rose out of the antagonism of the two great

parties; primarily, in the mere fact of the existence of an antagonism.

To the eyes of the unbeliever the Church of Christ, for the first time

since its foundation, bore the aspect of a house divided against itself.

Not that many forms of schism had not before arisen in it; but either

they had been obscure and silent, hidden among the shadows of the Alps

and the marshes of the Rhine; or they had been outbreaks of visible and

unmistakable error, cast off by the Church, rootless, and speedily

withering away, while, with much that was erring and criminal, she still

retained within her the pillar and ground of the truth. But here was at

last a schism in which truth and authority were at issue. The body that

was cast off withered away no longer. It stretched out its boughs to the

sea and its branches to the river, and it was the ancient trunk that

gave signs of decrepitude. On one side stood the reanimated faith, in

its right hand the book open, and its left hand lifted up to heaven,

appealing for its proof to the Word of the Testimony and the power of

the Holy Ghost. On the other stood, or seemed to stand, all beloved

custom and believed tradition; all that for fifteen hundred years had

been closest to the hearts of men, or most precious for their help.

Long-trusted legend; long-reverenced power; long-practised discipline;

faiths that had ruled the destiny, and sealed the departure, of souls

that could not be told or numbered for multitude; prayers, that from the

lips of the fathers to those of the children had distilled like sweet

waterfalls, sounding through the silence of ages, breaking themselves

into heavenly dew to return upon the pastures of the wilderness; hopes,

that had set the face as a flint in the torture, and the sword as a

flame in the battle, that had pointed the purposes and ministered the

strength of life, brightened the last glances and shaped the last

syllables of death; charities, that had bound together the brotherhoods

of the mountain and the desert, and had woven chains of pitying or

aspiring communion between this world and the unfathomable beneath and

above; and, more than these, the spirits of all the innumerable,

undoubting, dead, beckoning to the one way by which they had been

content to follow the things that belonged unto their peace;--these all

stood on the other side: and the choice must have been a bitter one,

even at the best; but it was rendered tenfold more bitter by the

natural, but most sinful animosity of the two divisions of the Church

against each other.

§ XCVI. On one side this animosity was, of course, inevitable. The

Romanist party, though still including many Christian men, necessarily

included, also, all the worst of those who called themselves Christians.

In the fact of its refusing correction, it stood confessed as the Church

of the unholy; and, while it still counted among its adherents many of

the simple and believing,--men unacquainted with the corruption of the

body to which they belonged, or incapable of accepting any form of

doctrine but that which they had been taught from their youth,--it

gathered together with them whatever was carnal and sensual in

priesthood or in people, all the lovers of power in the one, and of ease

in the other. And the rage of these men was, of course, unlimited

against those who either disputed their authority, reprehended their

manner of life, or cast suspicion upon the popular methods of lulling

the conscience in the lifetime, or purchasing salvation on the

death-bed.

§ XCVII. Besides this, the reassertion and defence of various tenets

which before had been little more than floating errors in the popular

mind, but which, definitely attacked by Protestantism, it became

necessary to fasten down with a band of iron and brass, gave a form at

once more rigid, and less rational, to the whole body of Romanist

Divinity. Multitudes of minds which in other ages might have brought

honor and strength to the Church, preaching the more vital truths which

it still retained, were now occupied in pleading for arraigned

falsehoods, or magnifying disused frivolities; and it can hardly be

doubted by any candid observer, that the nascent or latent errors which

God pardoned in times of ignorance, became unpardonable when they were

formally defined and defended; that fallacies which were forgiven to the

enthusiasm of a multitude, were avenged upon the stubbornness of a

Council; that, above all, the great invention of the age, which rendered

God's word accessible to every man, left all sins against its light

incapable of excuse or expiation; and that from the moment when Rome set

herself in direct opposition to the Bible, the judgment was pronounced

upon her, which made her the scorn and the prey of her own children, and

cast her down from the throne where she had magnified herself against

heaven, so low, that at last the unimaginable scene of the Bethlehem

humiliation was mocked in the temples of Christianity. Judea had seen

her God laid in the manger of the beasts of burden; it was for

Christendom to stable the beasts of burden by the altar of her God.

§ XCVIII. Nor, on the other hand, was the opposition of Protestantism to

the Papacy less injurious to itself. That opposition was, for the most

part, intemperate, undistinguishing, and incautious. It could indeed

hardly be otherwise. Fresh bleeding from the sword of Rome, and still

trembling at her anathema, the reformed churches were little likely to

remember any of her benefits, or to regard any of her teaching. Forced

by the Romanist contumely into habits of irreverence, by the Romanist

fallacies into habits of disbelief, the self-trusting, rashly-reasoning

spirit gained ground among them daily. Sect branched out of sect,

presumption rose over presumption; the miracles of the early Church

were denied and its martyrs forgotten, though their power and palm were

claimed by the members of every persecuted sect; pride, malice, wrath,

love of change, masked themselves under the thirst for truth, and

mingled with the just resentment of deception, so that it became

impossible even for the best and truest men to know the plague of their

own hearts; while avarice and impiety openly transformed reformation

into robbery, and reproof into sacrilege. Ignorance could as easily lead

the foes of the Church, as lull her slumber; men who would once have

been the unquestioning recipients, were now the shameless inventors of

absurd or perilous superstitions; they who were of the temper that

walketh in darkness, gained little by having discovered their guides to

be blind; and the simplicity of the faith, ill understood and

contumaciously alleged, became an excuse for the rejection of the

highest arts and most tried wisdom of mankind: while the learned

infidel, standing aloof, drew his own conclusions, both from the rancor

of the antagonists, and from their errors; believed each in all that he

alleged against the other; and smiled with superior humanity, as he

watched the winds of the Alps drift the ashes of Jerome, and the dust of

England drink the blood of King Charles.

§ XCIX. Now all this evil was, of course, entirely independent of the

renewal of the study of Pagan writers. But that renewal found the faith

of Christendom already weakened and divided; and therefore it was itself

productive of an effect tenfold greater than could have been apprehended

from it at another time. It acted first, as before noticed, in leading

the attention of all men to words instead of things; for it was

discovered that the language of the middle ages had been corrupt, and

the primal object of every scholar became now to purify his style. To

this study of words, that of forms being added, both as of matters of

the first importance, half the intellect of the age was at once absorbed

in the base sciences of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; studies utterly

unworthy of the serious labor of men, and necessarily rendering those

employed upon them incapable of high thoughts or noble emotion. Of the

debasing tendency of philology, no proof is needed beyond once reading

a grammarian's notes on a great poet: logic is unnecessary for men who

can reason; and about as useful to those who cannot, as a machine for

forcing one foot in due succession before the other would be to a man

who could not walk: while the study of rhetoric is exclusively one for

men who desire to deceive or be deceived; he who has the truth at his

heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue, or, if he

fear it, it is because the base rhetoric of dishonesty keeps the truth

from being heard.

§ C. The study of these sciences, therefore, naturally made men shallow

and dishonest in general; but it had a peculiarly fatal effect with

respect to religion, in the view which men took of the Bible. Christ's

teaching was discovered not to be rhetorical, St. Paul's preaching not

to be logical, and the Greek of the New Testament not to be grammatical.

The stern truth, the profound pathos, the impatient period, leaping from

point to point and leaving the intervals for the hearer to fill, the

comparatively Hebraized and unelaborate idiom, had little in them of

attraction for the students of phrase and syllogism; and the chief

knowledge of the age became one of the chief stumbling-blocks to its

religion.

§ CI. But it was not the grammarian and logician alone who was thus

retarded or perverted; in them there had been small loss. The men who

could truly appreciate the higher excellences of the classics were

carried away by a current of enthusiasm which withdrew them from every

other study. Christianity was still professed as a matter of form, but

neither the Bible nor the writings of the Fathers had time left for

their perusal, still less heart left for their acceptance. The human

mind is not capable of more than a certain amount of admiration or

reverence, and that which was given to Horace was withdrawn from David.

Religion is, of all subjects, that which will least endure a second

place in the heart or thoughts, and a languid and occasional study of it

was sure to lead to error or infidelity. On the other hand, what was

heartily admired and unceasingly contemplated was soon brought nigh to

being believed; and the systems of Pagan mythology began gradually to

assume the places in the human mind from which the unwatched

Christianity was wasting. Men did not indeed openly sacrifice to

Jupiter, or build silver shrines for Diana, but the ideas of Paganism

nevertheless became thoroughly vital and present with them at all times;

and it did not matter in the least, as far as respected the power of

true religion, whether the Pagan image was believed in or not, so long

as it entirely occupied the thoughts. The scholar of the sixteenth

century, if he saw the lightning shining from the east unto the west,

thought forthwith of Jupiter, not of the coming of the Son of Man; if he

saw the moon walking in brightness, he thought of Diana, not of the

throne which was to be established for ever as a faithful witness in

heaven; and though his heart was but secretly enticed, yet thus he

denied the God that is above.[25]

And, indeed, this double creed, of Christianity confessed and Paganism

beloved, was worse than Paganism itself, inasmuch as it refused

effective and practical belief altogether. It would have been better to

have worshipped Diana and Jupiter at once, than to have gone on through

the whole of life naming one God, imagining another, and dreading none.

Better, a thousandfold, to have been "a Pagan suckled in some creed

outworn," than to have stood by the great sea of Eternity and seen no

God walking on its waves, no heavenly world on its horizon.

§ CII. This fatal result of an enthusiasm for classical literature was

hastened and heightened by the misdirection of the powers of art. The

imagination of the age was actively set to realize these objects of

Pagan belief; and all the most exalted faculties of man, which, up to

that period, had been employed in the service of Faith, were now

transferred to the service of Fiction. The invention which had formerly

been both sanctified and strengthened by laboring under the command of

settled intention, and on the ground of assured belief, had now the

reins laid upon its neck by passion, and all ground of fact cut from

beneath its feet; and the imagination which formerly had helped men to

apprehend the truth, now tempted them to believe a falsehood. The

faculties themselves wasted away in their own treason; one by one they

fell in the potter's field; and the Raphael who seemed sent and inspired

from heaven that he might paint Apostles and Prophets, sank at once into

powerlessness at the feet of Apollo and the Muses.

§ CIII. But this was not all. The habit of using the greatest gifts of

imagination upon fictitious subjects, of course destroyed the honor and

value of the same imagination used in the cause of truth. Exactly in the

proportion in which Jupiters and Mercuries were embodied and believed,

in that proportion Virgins and Angels were disembodied and disbelieved.

The images summoned by art began gradually to assume one average value

in the spectator's mind; and incidents from the Iliad and from the

Exodus to come within the same degrees of credibility. And, farther,

while the powers of the imagination were becoming daily more and more

languid, because unsupported by faith, the manual skill and science of

the artist were continually on the increase. When these had reached a

certain point, they began to be the principal things considered in the

picture, and its story or scene to be thought of only as a theme for

their manifestation. Observe the difference. In old times, men used

their powers of painting to show the objects of faith; in later times,

they used the objects of faith that they might show their powers of

painting. The distinction is enormous, the difference incalculable as

irreconcilable. And thus, the more skilful the artist, the less his

subject was regarded; and the hearts of men hardened as their handling

softened, until they reached a point when sacred, profane, or sensual

subjects were employed, with absolute indifference, for the display of

color and execution; and gradually the mind of Europe congealed into

that state of utter apathy,--inconceivable, unless it had been

witnessed, and unpardonable, unless by us, who have been infected by

it,--which permits us to place the Madonna and the Aphrodite side by

side in our galleries, and to pass, with the same unmoved inquiry into

the manner of their handling, from a Bacchanal to a Nativity.

Now all this evil, observe, would have been merely the necessary and

natural operation of an enthusiasm for the classics, and of a delight in

the mere science of the artist, on the most virtuous mind. But this

operation took place upon minds enervated by luxury, and which were

tempted, at the very same period, to forgetfulness or denial of all

religious principle by their own basest instincts. The faith which had

been undermined by the genius of Pagans, was overthrown by the crimes of

Christians; and the ruin which was begun by scholarship, was completed

by sensuality. The characters of the heathen divinities were as suitable

to the manners of the time as their forms were agreeable to its taste;

and Paganism again became, in effect, the religion of Europe. That is to

say, the civilized world is at this moment, collectively, just as Pagan

as it was in the second century; a small body of believers being now, as

they were then, representative of the Church of Christ in the midst of

the faithless: but there is just this difference, and this very fatal

one, between the second and nineteenth centuries, that the Pagans are

nominally and fashionably Christians, and that there is every

conceivable variety and shade of belief between the two; so that not

only is it most difficult theoretically to mark the point where

hesitating trust and failing practice change into definite infidelity,

but it has become a point of politeness not to inquire too deeply into

our neighbor's religious opinions; and, so that no one be offended by

violent breach of external forms, to waive any close examination into

the tenets of faith. The fact is, we distrust each other and ourselves

so much, that we dare not press this matter; we know that if, on any

occasion of general intercourse, we turn to our next neighbor, and put

to him some searching or testing question, we shall, in nine cases out

of ten, discover him to be only a Christian in his own way, and as far

as he thinks proper, and that he doubts of many things which we

ourselves do not believe strongly enough to hear doubted without danger.

What is in reality cowardice and faithlessness, we call charity; and

consider it the part of benevolence sometimes to forgive men's evil

practice for the sake of their accurate faith, and sometimes to forgive

their confessed heresy for the sake of their admirable practice. And

under this shelter of charity, humility, and faintheartedness, the

world, unquestioned by others or by itself, mingles with and overwhelms

the small body of Christians, legislates for them, moralizes for them,

reasons for them; and, though itself of course greatly and beneficently

influenced by the association, and held much in check by its pretence to

Christianity, yet undermines, in nearly the same degree, the sincerity

and practical power of Christianity itself, until at last, in the very

institutions of which the administration may be considered as the

principal test of the genuineness of national religion, those devoted to

education, the Pagan system is completely triumphant; and the entire

body of the so-called Christian world has established a system of

instruction for its youth, wherein neither the history of Christ's

Church, nor the language of God's law, is considered a study of the

smallest importance; wherein, of all subjects of human inquiry, his own

religion is the one in which a youth's ignorance is most easily

forgiven;[26] and in which it is held a light matter that he should be

daily guilty of lying, or debauchery, or of blasphemy, so only that he

write Latin verses accurately, and with speed.

I believe that in few years more we shall wake from all these errors in

astonishment, as from evil dreams; having been preserved, in the midst

of their madness, by those hidden roots of active and earnest

Christianity which God's grace has bound in the English nation with iron

and brass. But in the Venetian, those roots themselves had withered;

and, from the palace of their ancient religion, their pride cast them

forth hopelessly to the pasture of the brute. From pride to infidelity,

from infidelity to the unscrupulous and insatiable pursuit of pleasure,

and from this to irremediable degradation, the transitions were swift,

like the falling of a star. The great palaces of the haughtiest nobles

of Venice were stayed, before they had risen far above their

foundations, by the blast of a penal poverty; and the wild grass, on the

unfinished fragments of their mighty shafts, waves at the tide-mark

where the power of the godless people first heard the "Hitherto shalt

thou come." And the regeneration in which they had so vainly

trusted,--the new birth and clear dawning, as they thought it, of all

art, all knowledge, and all hope,--became to them as that dawn which

Ezekiel saw on the hills of Israel: "Behold the day; behold, it is come.

The rod hath blossomed, pride hath budded, violence is risen up into a

rod of wickedness. None of them shall remain, nor of their multitude;

let not the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn, for wrath is upon all

the multitude thereof."

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Or, more briefly, science has to do with facts, art with

phenomena. To science, phenomena are of use only as they lead to

facts; and to art facts are of use only as they lead to phenomena. I

use the word "art" here with reference to the fine arts only, for

the lower arts of mechanical production I should reserve the word

"manufacture."

[9] Tintoret.

[10] St. Bernard.

[11] Society always has a destructive influence upon an artist:

first by its sympathy with his meanest powers; secondly, by its

chilling want of understanding of his greatest; and, thirdly, by its

vain occupation of his time and thoughts. Of course a painter of men

must be _among_ men; but it ought to be as a watcher, not as a

companion.

[12] I intended in this place to have introduced some special

consideration of the science of anatomy, which I believe to have

been in great part the cause of the decline of modern art; but I

have been anticipated by a writer better able to treat the subject.

I have only glanced at his book; and there is something in the

spirit of it which I do not like, and some parts of it are assuredly

wrong; but, respecting anatomy, it seems to me to settle the

question indisputably, more especially as being written by a master

of the science. I quote two passages, and must refer the reader to

the sequel.

"_The scientific men of forty centuries_ have failed to describe so

accurately, so beautifully, so artistically, as Homer did, the

organic elements constituting the emblems of youth and beauty, and

the waste and decay which these sustain by time and age. All these

Homer understood better, and has described more truthfully than the

scientific men of forty centuries....

"Before I approach this question, permit me to make a few remarks on

the pre-historic period of Greece; that era which seems to have

produced nearly all the great men.

"On looking attentively at the statues within my observation, I

cannot find the slightest foundation for the assertion that their

sculptors must have dissected the human frame and been well

acquainted with the human anatomy. They, like Homer, had discovered

Nature's secret, and bestowed their whole attention on the exterior.

The exterior they read profoundly, and studied deeply--the _living

exterior_ and the _dead_. Above all, they avoided displaying the

dead and dissected interior, through the exterior. They had

discovered that the interior presents hideous shapes, but not forms.

Men during the philosophic era of Greece saw all this, each reading

the antique to the best of his abilities. The man of genius

rediscovered the canon of the ancient masters, and wrought on its

principles. The greater number, as now, unequal to this step, merely

imitated and copied those who preceded them."--_Great Artists and

Great Anatomists_. By R. Knox, M.D. London, Van Voorst, 1852.

Respecting the value of literary knowledge in general as regards

art, the reader will also do well to meditate on the following

sentences from Hallam's "Literature of Europe;" remembering at the

same time what I have above said, that "the root of all great art in

Europe is struck in the thirteenth century," and that the great time

is from 1250 to 1350:

"In Germany the tenth century, Leibnitz declares, was a golden age

of learning compared with the thirteenth."

"The writers of the thirteenth century display an incredible

ignorance, not only of pure idiom, but of common grammatical rules."

The fourteenth century was "not superior to the thirteenth in

learning.... We may justly praise Richard of Bury for his zeal in

collecting books. But his erudition appears crude, his style

indifferent, and his thoughts superficial."

I doubt the superficialness of the _thoughts_: at all events, this

is not a character of the time, though it may be of the writer; for

this would affect art more even than literature.

[13] Churton's "Early English Church." London, 1840.

[14] "Quibus nulla macula inest quæ non cernatur. Ita viri nobilitate

præditi eam vitam peragant cui nulla nota possit inviri." The first

sentence is literally, "in which there is no spot that may not be

seen." But I imagine the writer meant it as I have put it in the

text, else his comparison does not hold.

[15] Observe, however, that the magnitude spoken of here and in the

following passages, is the finished and polished magnitude sought

for the sake of pomp: not the rough magnitude sought for the sake of

sublimity: respecting which see the "Seven Lamps," chap. iii. § 5,

6, and 8.

[16] Can Grande died in 1329: we can hardly allow more than five

years for the erection of his tomb.

[17] Vol. I. Chap. I.

[18] Sansovino, lib. xiii.

[19] Tentori, vi. 142, i. 157.

[20] "Jacobus Pisaurius Paphi Episcopus qui Turcos bello, se ipsum

pace vincebat, ex nobili inter Venetas, ad nobiliorem inter Angelos

familiam delatus, nobilissimam in illa die Coronam justo Judice

reddente, hic situs expectat Vixit annos Platonicos. Obijt MDXLVII.

IX. Kal. Aprilis."

[21] Isaiah xlvii. 7, 10, 11, 15.

[22] Compare "Seven Lamps," chap. vii. § 3.

[23] See the farther remarks on Inspiration, in the fourth chapter.

[24] That is to say, orders separated by such distinctions as the old

Greek ones: considered with reference to the bearing power of the

capital, all orders may be referred to two, as long ago stated; just

as trees may be referred to the two great classes, monocotyledonous

and dicotyledonous.

[25] Job xxi: 26-28; Psalm lxxxix. 37.

[26] I shall not forget the impression made upon me at Oxford, when,

going up for my degree, and mentioning to one of the authorities

that I had not had time enough to read the Epistles properly, I was

told, that "the Epistles were separate sciences, and I need not

trouble myself about them."

The reader will find some farther notes on this subject in Appendix

7, "Modern Education."