APPENDIX. 401 



street against street, and house against house, the fury of the 

 Theban dragon flamed ceaselessly, and with the same excuse 

 upon men's lips. The sign of the shield of Polynices, Justice 

 bringing back the exile, was to them all, in turn, the portent 

 of death : and their history, in the sum of it and substance, is 

 as of the servants of Joab and Abner by the pool of Gibeon. 

 " They caught every one his fellow by the head, and thrust 

 his sword in his fellow's side ; so they fell down together : 

 wherefore that place was called ' the field of the strong 

 men.' " 



Now it is not possible for Christian men to live thus, except 

 under a fever of insanity. I have before, in my lectures on 

 Prudence and Insolence in art, deliberately asserted to you 

 the logical accuracy of the term * demoniacal possession ' the 

 being in the power or possession of a betraying spirit ; and 

 the definite sign of such insanity is delight in witnessing pain, 

 usually accompanied by an instinct that gloats over or plays 

 with physical uncleanness or disease, and always by a morbid 

 egotism. It is not to be recognized for demoniacal power so 

 much by its viciousness, as its paltriness, the taking pleasure 

 in minute, contemptible, and loathsome things.* Now, in 

 the middle of the gallery of the Brera at Milan, there is an 

 elaborate study of a dead Christ, entirely characteristic of 

 early fifteenth century Italian madman's work. It is called 

 and was presented to the people as a Christ ; but it is- only 

 an anatomical study of a vulgar and ghastly dead body, with 

 the soles of the feet set straight at the spectator, and the rest 

 foreshortened. It is either Castagno's or Mantegna's, in my 

 mind, set down to Castagno ; but I have not looked at the pict- 

 ure for years, and am not sure at this moment. It does not 

 matter a straw which : it is exactly characteristic of the mad- 

 ness in which all of them Pollajuolo, Castagno, Mantegna, 

 Lionardo da Vinci, and Michael Angelo, polluted their work 

 with the science of the sepulchre, f and degraded it with pre- 



* As in the muscles of the legs and effort in stretching bows, of the 

 executioners, in the picture just referred to. 



f Observe, I entirely distinguish the study of anatomy i.e., of in- 

 tense bone and muscle from study of the nude, as the Greeks practised 



