14: 



iiiu-ses — have done much ; very nearly all that I care for 

 your thinking of. TJie painters and monks, the one being 

 so greatly under the inliuence of the other, we may for 

 the present class together ; and may almost sum their 

 contributions to ornithology in saying that they have 

 plucked the wings from birds, to make angels of men, 

 and the claws from birds, to make devils of men. 



If you were to take away from religious art these two 

 great helps of its — I must say, on the whole, very 

 feeble — imagination ; if you were to take from it, I say, 

 the power of putting wings on shoulders, and claws on 

 fingers and toes, how w^onderfully the sphere of its 

 angelic and diabolic characters would be contracted ! 

 Reduced only to the sources of expression in face or 

 movements, you might still find in good early sculpture 

 very sufiicient devils ; but the best angels would resolve 

 themselves, I think, into little more than, and not often 

 into so much as, the likenesses of pretty women, with that 

 grave and (I do not say it ironically) majestic expression 

 wdiich they put on, when, being very fond of their hus- 

 bands and children, they seriously think either the one or 

 the other have misbehaved themselves. 



12. And it is not a little discouraging for me, and may 

 well make you doubtful of my right judgment in this en- 

 deavour to lead you into closer attention to the bird, with 

 its wings and claws still in its own possession ; — it is dis- 

 coin-aging, I say, to observe that the begiiming of sucdi 

 more faithful and accurate observation in former art, is 



