330 ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 



to spell a very long word ? Also, if you wished to know how 

 many times the sevens go in forty-nine, you would perhaps 

 wisely address yourself elsewhere. On the other hand, you 

 do not doubt that this lady * knows very well how many times 

 the sevens go in forty-nine, and is more Mistress of Arts than 

 any of us are Masters of them. 



150. You have then, in the one case, a beautiful simplicity, 

 and a blameless ignorance ; in the other, a beautiful artful- 

 ness, and a wisdom which you do not dread, or, at least, 

 even though dreading, love. But you know also that we may 

 remain in a hateful and culpable ignorance ; and, as I fear 

 too many of us in competitive effort feel, become possessed of 

 a hateful knowledge. 



Ignorance, therefore, is not evil absolutely ; but, innocent, 

 may be loveable. 



Knowledge also is not good absolutely ; but, guilty, may 

 be hateful. 



So, therefore, when I now repeat my former statement, that 

 the first main opposition between the Northern and Southern 

 schools is in the simplicity of the one, and the scholarship of 

 the other, that statement may imply sometimes the superiority 

 of the North, and sometimes of the South. You may have a 

 heavenly simplicity opposed to a hellish (that is to say, a lust- 

 ful and arrogant) scholarship ; or you may have a barbarous 

 and presumptuous ignorance opposed to a divine and dis- 

 ciplined wisdom. Ignorance opposed to learning in both 

 cases ; but evil to good, as the case may be. 



151. For instance : the last time I was standing before Ea- 

 phael's arabesques in the Loggias of the Vatican, I wrote down 

 in my pocket-book the description, or, more modestly speak- 

 ing, the inventory, of the small portion of that infinite wilder- 

 ness of sensual fantasy which happened to be opposite me. 

 It consisted of a woman's face, with serpents for hair, and a 

 virgin's breasts, with stumps for arms, ending in blue butter- 

 flies' wings, the whole changing at the waist into a goat's body, 

 which ended below in an obelisk upside-down, to the apex at 



* The Cumsean Sibyl, Plate VII. , Lecture VL 



