376 ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 



dissected to its last leaf, is yet bitten bare, or trampled to 

 slime, by the Minotaur of our lust ; and for the traceried spire 

 of the poplar by the brook, we possess but the four-square 

 furnace tower, to mingle its smoke with heaven's thunder- 

 clouds.* 



We will look yet at one sampler more of the engraved work, 

 done in the happy time when flowers were pure, youth simple, : 

 and imagination gay, Botticelli's Libyan Sibyl. 



Glance back first to the Hellespontic, noting the close fillet, 

 and the cloth bound below the face, and then you will be pre- 

 pared to understand the last I shall show you, and the loveli- 

 est of the southern Pythonesses. 



42. A less deep thinker than Botticelli would have made 

 her parched with thirst, and burnt with heat. But the voice 

 of God, through nature, to the Arab or the Moor, is not in the 

 thirst, but in the fountain, not in the desert, but in the grass 

 of it. And this Libyan Sibyl is the spirit of wild grass and 

 flowers, springing in desolate places. 



You see, her diadem is a wreath of them ; but the blossoms 

 of it are not fastening enough for her hair, though it is not 

 long yet (she is only in reality a Florentine girl of fourteen 

 or fifteen) so the little darling knots it under her ears, and 

 then makes herself a necklace of it. But though flowing hair 

 and flowers are wild and pretty, Botticelli had not, in these 

 only, got the power of Spring marked to his mind. Any girl 

 might wear flowers ; but few, for ornament, would be likely to 

 wear grass. So the Sibyl shall have grass in her diadem ; not 

 merely interwoven and bending, but springing and strong. 

 You thought it ugly and grotesque at first, did not you ? It 

 was made so, because precisely what Botticelli wanted you to 

 look at. 



* A manufacturer wrote to me the other day, "We don't want to make 

 smoke ! " Who said they did ? a hired murderer does not want to 

 commit murder, but does it for sufficient motive. (Even our shipown- 

 ers don't want to drown their sailors ; they will only do it for sufficient 

 motive.) If the dirty creatures did want to make smoke, there would 

 be more excuse for them : and that they are not clever enough to con- 

 sume it, is no praise to them. A man who can't help his hiccough 

 leaves the room ; why do they not leave the England they pollute ? 



