Resurrection" from "the unknown God" they "ignorantly worshipped: "so sacred, that he said even of those who were hunting him down, "I bear them record that they have a zeal for God:"-so sacred, that it is emphatically called "the candle of the Lord:

so sacred, that the Great Spirit of Life and Light does not quite abandon it in its grossest darkness : but visits it, stoops to it, enters it, dwells in it, shines in it, shines out of it, and with such ineffable condescension, gentleness, and adaptation to the nature He has given it, that His own energies are only distinguishable by the declaration that "every good and perfect gift is from above," whilst in our fallen flesh dwelleth naturally "no good thing."

It may be, that some of the very relaxations we are accused of, come of an increasing sense of what I speak of: and that we are beginning to do, on this side our English waters, what we have so long called on powers and potentates to do on the other side. At all events, these are Protestant principles: and I, for one, am not ashamed, nor afraid, to follow them honestly out in their lawful consequences.

As for mediæval practice, we know, all of us, what it was. But how monstrous the imposition of falsehood beneath the mask and mummery of maintaining truth! What mockery to call "the fear of God," what was, in plain terms, the fear of the hangman!

CHAP. XVI.

THE RELIGIOUS AND THE ARTISTIC ELEMENTS. RELIGIOUS PIC

TURES. RAFFAELLE AND PRE-RAFFAELLE.

THE CARTOON OF

THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT.' RAFFAELLE IN THE VATICAN.THE CARTOON OF CHRIST'S CHARGE TO PETER. GOAT."

THE SCAPE

MR. RUSKIN tells us that,

"just as classical art was greatest in building to its Gods, so mediaval art was great in building to its God” (this also might have been in the plural number); “and modern art is not great because it builds to no God." (Edin. Lectures, p. 206.)

Of so laconic an aphorism there is small difficulty in seeing at once that it is inadmissible.

No doubt Art needs impulse as well as subject : whether the religious impulse is, in point of fact, the strongest; whether it has been really dominant, even in what are called religious works, and most dominant in the greatest of these works, is another matter. He were a bold man who should pronounce Michael Angelo greater in his "Last Judgment" than in the cartoon of Pisa: and he were a shrewd man who could determine the precise amount of the religious element even in the "Moses." We have had a Fra-Angelico and a Carlo Dolci, as to whose equality of religious feeling it would be hard to

raise a question; but of whose artistic inequalities it were no less difficult to conceive a doubt.

Let us claim for religion the right to furnish the noblest impulse; but let us not do it by violating the plainest lessons of experience. Power is power, whether angelic or demoniacal; and there is the power of ambition, of jealousy, of lust, of anger, and of revenge; as well as the happier influences of the heavenly virtues.

Of course it is a beautiful thing to say that all powerful Art has been religious Art. If we are really to have "truth first and beauty afterwards,” we may be forgiven for asking, Is it true? Shift the venue to poetry: the principle is all the same. Carry out your aphorism, and see what you come to. Of course Cowper was the first of poets. But where, then, will you place Shakspeare? where Dryden? where Lord Byron? You will find it hard to get men to adopt a rule that denies to "Faust" and "Manfred" the title of poetry.

a

As to Art being only great when building to God, this identical lecture informs us that in the school which is to bring back the golden age "every single figure is the actual portrait of a living man,”statement that puts this matter, at least, beyond dispute; for surely to believe that a man is painting under a religious impulse when he takes John Smith for John the Baptist, is beyond even Papal credulity. But let us look with becoming seriousness on a very serious subject.

It needs no argument to prove that the rendering of sacred subjects should be a sacred work: and

PROTRUDED ART.

161

that, in proportion to the dignity of what is portrayed should be the moral character of the Art that portrays it. A repentant Magdalene is no fitting food for gazing pruriency. A painter may flay Marsyas and Apollo too, if he pleases, to show his learning : but who shall make a “lay figure" of the Redeemer of the world? or what Christian will endure a lecture on anatomy at the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea?

Short of sins so gross, we may speak of all gratuitous display of Art as an offence in a religious picture. All gorgeousness purely aestheticall excessive rendering of unworthy details all chair and table painting all hard-featured realisms of any kind-disturb and mock the feeling they profess to serve. A staring religious picture is a contradiction in terms. There is no amount of power too great for sacred subjects, whilst the power is sacredly subordinated: there is no amount of sacredness in the subject that can atone for protruded Art.

All this will be readily granted in point of principle, though it has been all but systematically reversed in the practice of every school. There are other things, not less certain, on which I cannot refrain from saying a word.

Pre-Raffaellite pictures have touched a peculiar chord, and raised peculiar objections. Mr. Ruskin repudiates all idea of their being a revival of Popish Art, and even denies that they have the slightest resemblance to it.* I am not aware that those whose cause he advocates have countersigned his protest.

* Pre-Raphaelitism, p. 27.

M

The public at large has certainly a different notion; and Dr. Waagen, no mean authority, has taken historic notice of them to the same effect.*

That there is a serious attempt to bring back Popish principles, I, for one, should be slow to believe. If any be really embarked on the enterprise, they must take the consequences. They may depend upon it, this English nation, however embarrassed by political paradoxes, or how untrue. soever to its own principles, will not go backwards. There may be eccentricities here and there some stray victim to the charms of credulity, or the power of priestcraft-some hapless member of the human family, to whom the common functions of independent thought and personal responsibility are a burden for whom apostolic "plainness of speech" and the promised grace of an indwelling Spirit are insufficient, without ecclesiastical infallibility and" an arm of flesh : " but the great community has walked too long in Bible light and Bible liberty, to surrender both to an imposture, long unmasked, and which now seems doomed and destined to betray itself.

To correct artistic vices of long standing-to go honestly back to first principles; and to do this, if need be, in the face of obloquy -- is something more than artistic virtue. To inflict causeless scandal by the affectation of what is not only obsolete, but im

* He even attributes the smallness of the head in Mr. Hunt's "Light of the World” to the ambition to imitate the early masters even in their defects.