ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 



they will finally be to you more impressive than if hey had 

 been wrought out with every superficial means of efiect, on 

 each block. 



For it is as a symbol, not as a scenic effect, that in each 

 case the chiaroscuro is given. Holbein, I said, is at the head 

 of the painter-reformers, and his Dance of Death is the most 

 energetic and telling of all the forms given, in this epoch, to 

 the Rationalist spirit of reform, preaching the new Gospel of 

 Death, " It is no matter whether you are priest or layman, 

 what you believe, or what you do : here is the end." You 

 shall see, in the course of our inquiry, that Botticelli, in like 

 manner, represents the Faithful and Catholic temper of re- 

 form. 



86. The teaching of Holbein is therefore always melancholy, 

 for the most part purely rational ; and entirely furious in 

 its indignation against all who, either by actual injustice in 

 this life, or by what he holds to be false promise of another, 

 destroy the good, or the energy, of the few days which man 

 has to live. Against the rich, the luxurious, the Pharisee, the 

 false law} T er, the priest, and the unjust judge, Holbein uses 

 his fiercest mockery ; but he is never himself unjust ; never 

 caricatures or equivocates ; gives the facts as he knows them, 

 with explanatory sj^mbols, few and clear. 



87. Among the powers which he hates, the pathetic and 

 ingenious preaching of untruth is one of the chief ; and it is 

 curious to find his biographer, knowing this, and reasoning, 

 as German critics nearly always do, from acquired knowledge, 

 not perception, imagine instantly that he sees hypocrisy in 

 the face of Holbein's preacher. "How skilfully," says Dr. 

 Woltmann, " is the preacher propounding his doctrines ; how 

 thoroughly is his hypocrisy expressed in the features of his 

 countenance, and in the gestures of his hands." But look at 

 the cut yourself, candidly. I challenge you to find the slight- 

 est trace of hypocrisy in either feature or gesture. Holbein 

 knew better. It is not the hypocrite who has power in the 

 pulpit. It is the sincere preacher of untruth who does mis- 

 chief there. The hypocrite's place of power is in trade, or in 

 general society ; none but the sincere ever get fatal influence 



