328 ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 



it, that no Greek goddess was ever half so pretty as an 

 English girl, of pure clay and temper,) uglier or prettier, it 

 is more dignified and impressive. It at least belongs to the 

 domain of a lordlier, more majestic, more guiding, and or- 

 daining art. 



146. I will go back another five hundred years, and place 

 an Egyptian beside the Greek divinity. The resemblance to 

 Nature is now all but lost, the ruling law has become all. 

 The lines are reduced to an easily counted number, and their 

 arrangement is little more than a decorative sequence of 

 pleasant curves cut in porphyry, in the upper part of their 

 contour following the outline of a woman's face in profile, 

 over-crested by that of a haAvk, on a kind of pedestal. But 

 that the sign-engraver meant by his hawk, Immortality, and 

 by her pedestal, the House or Tavern of Truth, is of little im- 

 portance now to the passing traveller, not yet preparing to 

 take the sarcophagus for his place of rest. 



147. How many questions are suggested to us by these 

 transitions ! Is beauty contrary to law, and grace attainable 

 only through license ? What we gain in language, shall we 

 lose in thought? and in what we add of labour, more and 

 more forget its ends ? 



Not so. 



Look at this piece of Sandro's work, the Libyan Sibyl.* 



It is as ordered and normal as the Egyptian's ; as graceful 

 and facile as Gainsborough's. It retains the majesty of old 

 religion ; it is invested with the joy of newly-awakened child- 

 hood. 



Mind, I do not expect you do not wish you to enjoy 

 Botticelli's dark engraving as much as Gainsborough's aerial 

 sketch ; for due comparison of the men, painting should be 

 put beside painting. But there is enough even in this copy 

 of the Florentine plate to show you the junction of the two 

 powers in it of prophecy, and delight. 



148. Will these two powers, do you suppose, be united in 

 the same manner in the contemporary Northern art ? That 

 Northern school is my subject to-day ; and yet I give you, as 



* Plate X., Lecture YI. 



