374 ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 



wood occurs, as far as I know, in no other engravings but 

 this and the illustrations to Dante ; and I am content to leave 

 it, with little comment, for the reader's quiet study, as show- 

 ing the exuberance of imagination which other men at this 

 time in Italy allowed to waste itself in idle arabesque, re- 

 strained by Botticelli to his most earnest purposes ; and giv- 

 ing the withered tree-trunks hewn for the rude throne of the 

 aged prophetess, the same harmony with her fading spirit 

 which the rose has with youth, or the laurel with victory. 

 Also in its weird characters, you have the best example I can 

 show you of the orders of decorative design which are espe- 

 cially expressible by engraving, and which belong to a group 

 of art-instincts scarcely now to be understood, much less re- 

 covered, (the influence of modern naturalistic imitation being 

 too strong to be conquered) the instincts, namely, for the 

 arrangement of pure line, in labyrinthine intricacy, through 

 which the grace of order may give continual clue. The en- 

 tire body of ornamental design, connected with writing, in the 

 middle ages seems as if it were a sensible symbol, to the eye 

 and brain, of the methods of error and recovery, the minglings 

 of crooked with straight, and perverse with progressive, which 

 constitute the great problem of human morals and fate ; and 

 when I chose the title for the collected series of these lectures, 

 I hoped to have justified it by careful analysis of the methods 

 of labyrinthine ornament, which, made sacred by Theseian tra- 

 ditions,* and beginning in imitation of physical truth, with 

 the spiral waves of the waters of Babylon as the Assyrian 

 carved them, entangled in their returns the eyes of men, on 

 Greek vase and Christian manuscript till they closed in the 

 arabesques which sprang round the last luxury of Venice and 

 Borne. 



But the labyrinth of life itself, and its more and more inter- 

 woven occupation, become too manifold, and too difficult for 

 me; and of the time wasted in the blind lanes of it, perhaps that 

 spent in analysis or recommendation of the art to which men's 

 present conduct makes them insensible, has been chiefly cast 

 away. On the walls of the little room where I finally revise 

 * Callimachus, 'Delos,' 304 etc. 



