FLORENTINE SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING. 379 



his inevitable eye and his rightly judging heart should 

 place him in the first rank of the great artists not of England 

 only, but of all the world and of all time : that this was pos- 

 sible to him, was simply because he lived a country life. Be- 

 wick himself, Botticelli himself, Apelles himself, and twenty 

 times Apelles, condemned to slavery in the hellfire of the iron 

 furnace, could have done NOTHING. Absolute paralysis of all 

 high human faculty mu-st result from labour near fire. The 

 poor engraver of the piston-rod had faculties not like Be- 

 wick's, for if he had had those, he never would have endured 

 the degradation ; but assuredly, (I know this by his work,) 

 faculties high enough to have made him one of the most ac- 

 complished figure painters of his age. And they are scorched 

 out of him, as the sap from the grass in the oven : while on 

 his Northumberland hill-sides, Bewick grew into as stately 

 life as their strongest pine. 



And therefore, in words of his, telling consummate and un- 

 changing truth concerning the life, honour, and happiness of 

 England, and bearing directly on the points of difference be- 

 tween class and class which I have not dwelt on without need, 

 I will bring these lectures to a close. 



" I have always, through life, been of opinion that there is 

 no business of any kind that can be compared to that of a man 

 who farms his own land. It appears to me that every earthly 

 pleasure, with health, is within his reach. But numbers of 

 these men (the old statesmen) were grossly ignorant, and in 

 exact proportion to that ignorance they were sure to be offen- 

 sively proud. This led them to attempt appearing above their 

 station, which hastened them on to their ruin ; but, indeed, 

 this disposition and this kind of conduct invariably leads to 

 such results. There were many of these lairds on Tyneside ; 

 as well as many who held their lands on the tenure of ' suit 

 and service,' and were nearly on the same level as the lairds. 

 Some of the latter lost their lands (not fairly, I think) in a way 

 they could not help ; many of the former, by their misdirected 

 pride and folly, were driven into towns, to slide away into 

 nothingness, and to sink into oblivion, while their 'ha* 

 houses ' (halls), that ought to have remained in their families 



