FLORENTINE SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING. 363 



had seen it, and often ; and between noble persons ; knew 

 the temper in which the noblest knights went out to it ; 

 knew the strength, the patience, the glory, and the grief <*f it. 

 He would fain see his Florence in peace ; and yet he knows 

 that the wisest of her citizens are her bravest soldiers. So he 

 seeks for the ideal of a soldier, and for the greatest glory of 

 war, that in the presence of these he may speak reverently, 

 what he must speak. He does not go to Greece for his hero. 

 He is not sure that even her patiiotic wars were always right. 

 But. by his religious faith, he cannot doubt the nobleness of 

 the soldier who put the children of Israel in possession of their 

 promised land, and to whom the sign of the consent of heaven 

 was given by its pausing light in the valley of Ajalon. Must 

 then setting sun and risen moon stay, he thinks, only to look 

 upon slaughter? May no soldier of Christ bid them stay 

 otherwise than so V He draws Joshua, but quitting his hold 

 of the sword : its hilt rests on his bent knee ; and he kneels 

 before the sun, not commands it ; and this is his prayer : 



" Oh, King of kings, and Lord of lords, who alone rulest 

 always in eternity, and who correctest all our wanderings, 

 Giver of melody to the choir of angels, listen Thou a little to 

 our bitter grief, and come and rule us, oh Thou highest King, 

 with Thy love which is so sweet ! " 



Is not that a little better, and a little wiser, than Bewick's 

 jackass ? Is it not also better, and wiser, than the sneer of 

 modern science ? ' What great men are we ! we, forsooth, 

 can make almanacs, and know that the earth turns round. 

 Joshua indeed ! Let us have no more talk of the old clothes- 

 man.' 



All Bewick's simplicity is in that ; but none of Bewick's un- 

 derstanding. 



23. I pass to the attack made by Botticelli upon the guilt 

 of wealth. So I had at first written ; but I should rather 

 have written, the appeal made by him against the cruelty of 

 wealth, then first attaining the power it has maintained to this 

 day. 



The practice of receiving interest had been confined, until 

 this fifteenth century, with contempt and malediction, to the 



