350 ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 



The value hitherto attached to Rembrandt's etchings, and 

 others imitating them, depends on a true instinct in the pub- 

 lic mind for this virtue of line. But etching is an indolent 

 and blundering method at the best ; and I do not doubt that 

 you will one day be grateful for the severe disciplines of 

 drawing required in these schools, in that they will have en- 

 abled you to know what a line may be, driven by a master's 

 chisel on silver or marble, following, and fostering as it fol- 

 lows, the instantaneous strength of his determined thought. 



LECTURE VL 



DESIGN IN THE FLORENTINE SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING. 



1. IN the first of these lectures, I stated to you their sub- 

 ject, as the investigation of the engraved work of a group of 

 men, to whom engraving, as a means of popular address, was 

 above all precious, because their art was distinctively didactic. 



Some of my hearers, must be aware that, of late years, the 

 assertion that art should be didactic has been clamorously and 

 violently derided by the countless crowd of artists who have 

 nothing to represent, and of writers who have nothing to say ; 

 and that the contrary assertion that art consists only in 

 pretty colours and fine words, is accepted, readily enough, 

 by a public which rarely pauses to look at a picture with at- 

 tention, or read a sentence with understanding. 



2. Gentlemen, believe me, there never was any great ad- 

 vancing art yet, nor can be, without didactic purpose. The 

 leaders of the strong schools are, and must be always, either 

 teachers of theology, or preachers of the moral law. I need 

 not tell you that it was as teachers of theology on the walls of 

 the Vatican that the masters with whose names you are most 

 familiar obtained their perpetual fame. But however great 

 their fame, you have not practically, I imagine, ever been ma- 

 terially assisted in your preparation for the schools either of 

 philosophy or divinity by Raphael's 'School of Athens,' by 

 Raphael's 'Theology/ or by Michael Angelo's 'Judgment' 



