FLORENTINE SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING. 377 



But that's not all. This conical cap of hers, with one bead 

 at the top, considering how fond the Florentines are of 

 graceful head-dresses, this seems a strange one for a young 

 girl. But, exactly as I know the angel of Victory to be Greek, 

 at his Mount of Pity, so I know this head-dress to be taken 

 from a Greek coin, and to be meant for a Greek symbol It 

 is the Petasus of Hermes the mist of morning over the dew. 

 Lastly, what will the Libyan Sibyl say to you ? The letters 

 are large on her tablet. Her message is the oracle from the 

 temple of the dew : " The dew of thy birth is as the womb of 

 the morning." "Ecce venientem diem, et latentia aperien- 

 tem, tenebit gremio gentium regina." 



43. Why the daybreak came not then, nor yet has come, 

 but only a deeper darkness ; and why there is now neither 

 queen nor king of nations, but every man doing that which is 

 right in his own eyes, I would fain go on, partly to tell you, 

 and partly to meditate with you : but it is not our work for 

 to-day. The issue of the Reformation which these great 

 painters, the scholars of Dante, began, we may follow, farther, 

 in the study to which I propose to lead you, of the lives of 

 Cimabue and Giotto, and the relation of their work at Assisi 

 to the chapel and chambers of the Vatican. 



44. To-day let me finish what I have to tell you of the style 

 of southern engraving. What sudden bathos in the sentence, 

 you think ! So contemptible the question of style, then, in 

 painting, though not in literature ? You study the ' style ' of 

 Homer ; the style, perhaps, of Isaiah ; the style of Horace, 

 and of Massillon. Is it so vain to study the style of Botti- 

 celli? 



In all cases, it is equally vain, if you think of their style 

 first. But know their purpose, and then, their way of speak- 

 ing is worth thinking of. These apparently unfinished and 

 certainly unfilled outlines of the Florentine, clumsy work, 

 as Vasari thought them, as Mr. Otley and most of our 

 English amateurs still think them, are these good or bad 

 engraving ? 



You may ask now, comprehending their motive, with some 

 hope of answering or being answered rightly. And the an- 



