GERMAN SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING. 329 



type of the intermediate condition between Egypt and Eng- 

 land not Holbein, but Botticelli. I am obliged to do this ; 

 because in the Southern art, the religious temper remains un- 

 conquered by the doctrines of the Keformation. Botticelli 

 was what Luther wished to be, but could not be a re- 

 former still believing in the Church : his mind is at peace ; 

 and his art, therefore, can pursue the delight of beauty, and 

 yet remain prophetic. But it was far otherwise in Germany. 

 There the Keformation of manners became the destruction of 

 faith ; and art therefore, not a prophecy, but a protest. It is 

 the chief work of the greatest Protestant who ever lived,* 

 which I ask you to study with me to-day. 



149. I said that the power of engraving had developed itself 

 during the introduction of three new (practically and vitally 

 new, that is to say) elements, into the minds of men : ele- 

 ments which briefly may be expressed thus : 



1. Classicism, and Literary Science. 



2. Medicine, and Physical Science. f 



3. Keformation, and Keligious Science. 



And first of Classicism. 



You feel, do not you, in this typical work of Gainsbor- 

 ough's, that his subject as well as his picture is ' artless ' in a 

 lovely sense ; nay, not only artless, but ignorant, and un- 

 scientific, in a beautiful way? You would be afterwards 

 remorseful, I think, and angry with yourself seeing the 

 effect produced on her face if you were to ask this little lady 



* I do not mean the greatest teacher of reformed faith ; but the 

 greatest protestant against faith unreformed. 



f It has become the permitted fashion among modern mathemati- 

 cians, chemists, and apothecaries, to call themselves ' scientific men,' as 

 opposed to theologians, poets, and artists. They know their sphere to 

 be a separate one ; but their ridiculous notion of its being a peculiarly 

 scientific one ought not to be allowed in our Universities. There is a 

 science of Morals, a science of History, a science of Grammar, a science 

 of Music, and a science of Painting; and all these are quite beyond 

 comparison higher fields for human intellect, and require accuracies of 

 intenser observation, than either chemistry, electricity, or geology. 



