272 ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 



Church, and in warning of the power of faith, and death,* 

 over the petty designs of men, Botticelli and Holbein to- 

 gether fought foremost in the ranks of the reformation. 



45. To-day I will endeavour to explain how they attained 

 such rank. Then, in the next two lectures, the technics of 

 both, their way of speaking ; and in the last two, what they 

 had got to say. 



First, then, we ask how they attained this rank ; who 

 taught them what they were finally best to teach ? How far 

 must every people how far did this Florentine people 

 teach its masters, before they could teach it f 



Even in these days, when every man is, by hypothesis, as 

 good as another, does not the question sound strange to you ? 

 You recognize in the past, as you think, clearly, that national 

 advance takes place always under the guidance of masters, 

 or groups of masters, possessed of what appears to be some 

 new personal sensibility or gift of invention ; and we are apt 

 to be reverent to these alone, as if the nation itself had been 

 unprogressive, and suddenly awakened, or converted, by the 

 genius of one man. 



No idea can be more superficial. Every nation must teach 

 its tutors, and prepare itself to receive them ; but the fact on 

 which our impression is founded the rising, apparently by 

 chance, of men whose singular gifts suddenly melt the multi- 

 tude, already at the point of fusion ; or suddenly form, and 

 inform, the multitude which has gained coherence enough to 

 be capable of formation, enables us to measure and map 

 the gain of national intellectual territory, by tracing first the 

 lifting of the mountain chains of its genius. 



46. I have told you that we have nothing to do at present 

 with the great transition from ancient to modern habits of 

 thought which took place at the beginning of the sixteenth 

 century. I only want to go as far as that point ; where we 



* I believe I am taking too much trouble in writing these lectures. 

 This sentence, 44, has cost me, I suppose, first and last, about as 

 many hours as there are lines in it ; and my choice of these two words, 

 faith and death, as representatives of power, will perhaps, after all, 

 only puzzle the reader. 





