to the Benedictine collie, in Landseer's "Shepherd's Chief Mourner," and the Benedictine bulldog, in Mr. Briton Rivière's "Sympathy."1

64. On the other hand, here is an enlargement, made to about the proper scale, from a small engraving which I brought with me from Naples, of a piece of the Classic Pompeian art which has lately been so much the admiration of the aesthetic cliques of Paris and London.' It purports to represent a sublimely classic cat, catching a sublimely classic chicken; and is perhaps quite as much like a cat as the white spectra of Monte Cassino are like dogs. But at a glance I can tell you,-nor will you, surely, doubt the truth of the telling,—that it is art in precipitate decadence; that no bettering or even far dragging on of its existence is possible for it; that it is the work of a nation already in the jaws of death, and of a school which is passing away in shame.

65. Remember, therefore, and write it on the very tables of your heart, that you must never, when you have to judge of character in national styles, regard them in their decadence, but always in their spring and youth. Greek art is to be studied from Homeric days to those of Marathon; Gothic, from Alfred to the Black Prince in England, from Clovis to St. Louis in France; and the combination of both, which occurs first with absolute balance in the pulpit by Nicholas of Pisa in her Baptistery, thenceforward up to Perugino and Sandro Botticelli. A period of decadence follows among all the nations of Europe, out of the ashes and embers of which the flame

[For other references to the "Shepherd's Chief Mourner," see Vol. III. pp. 88, 114, Vol. IV. p. 302 n., Vol. VII. p. 338; and to "Sympathy," "A Museum or Picture Gallery," § 20 (Vol. XXXIV.). The report (Pall Mall Gazette, May 21)

adds:

"The mention of the dog led Mr. Ruskin to remark incidentally that the nucleus of all that was best in the Academy was to be found in three pictures which hang side by side in Room 4-Mr. Briton Rivière's 'Playfellow' (392), quite the most beautiful thing of the kind I ever saw,' and Mr. P. R. Morris's two pictures of children (391 and 397)."] 2 [This enlargement was made by Mr. Macdonald; it was not placed in the Oxford Collection.]

3

[See in Vol. XXIII. Plate VI. and pp. 22, 23.]

leaps again in Rubens and Vandyke; and so gradually glows and coruscates into the intermittent corona of indescribably various modern mind, of which in England you may, as I said, take Sir Joshua and Gainsborough for not only the topmost, but the hitherto total, representatives; total, that is to say, out of the range of landscape, and above that of satire and caricature. All that the rest can do partially, they can do perfectly. They do it, not only perfectly, but nationally; they are at once the greatest, and the Englishest, of all our school.

The Englishest-and observe also, therefore the greatest: take that for an universal, exceptionless law;-the largest soul of any country is altogether its own. Not the citizen of the world, but of his own city,-nay, for the best men, you may say, of his own village. Patriot always, provincial always, of his own crag or field always.' A Liddesdale man, or a Tynedale; Angelico from the Rock of Fesole, or Virgil from the Mantuan marsh. You dream of National unity!-you might as well strive to melt the stars down into one nugget, and stamp them small into coin with one Cæsar's face.

66. What mental qualities, especially English, you find in the painted heroes and beauties of Reynolds and Gainsborough, I can only discuss with you hereafter. But what external and corporeal qualities these masters of our masters love to paint, I must ask you to-day to consider for a few moments, under Mr. Carlyle's guidance, as well as mine, and with the analysis of Sartor Resartus. Take, as types of the best work ever laid on British canvas,-types which I am sure you will without demur accept, Sir Joshua's Age of Innocence, and Mrs. Pelham feeding chickens;3 Gainsborough's Mrs. Graham, divinely doing nothing, and

1 [See further on this subject, § 197 (below, p. 397).]

2 This, however, was not done.]

3 [For other references to "The Age of Innocence," see Ariadne Florentina, § 125 (Vol. XXII. p. 379), and Flamboyant Architecture, § 11 (Vol. XIX. p. 250); to "Mrs. Pelham," Sir Joshua and Holbein, § 10 (Vol. XÏX. p. 9), and St. George's Guild Report, 1884 (Vol. XXX. p. 72 n.).]

Blue Boy similarly occupied; and, finally, Reynolds' Lord Heathfield magnanimously and irrevocably locking up Gibraltar. Suppose, now, under the instigation of Mr. Carlyle and Sartor, and under the counsel of Zeuxis and Parrhasius, we had it really in our power to bid Sir Joshua and Gainsborough paint all these over again, in the classic manner. Would you really insist on having her white frock taken off the Age of Innocence; on the Blue Boy's divesting himself of his blue; on-we may not dream of anything more classic-Mrs. Graham's taking the feathers out of her hat; and on Lord Heathfield's parting,-I dare not suggest, with his regimentals, but his orders of the Bath, or what else?

67. I own that I cannot, even myself, as I propose the alternatives, answer absolutely as a Goth, nor without some wistful leanings towards classic principle. Nevertheless, I feel confident in your general admission that the charm of all these pictures is in great degree dependent on toilette; that the fond and graceful flatteries of each master do in no small measure consist in his management of frillings and trimmings, cuffs and collarettes; and on beautiful flingings or fastenings of investiture, which can only here and there be called a drapery, but insists on the perfectness of the forms it conceals, and deepens their harmony by its contradiction. And although now and then, when great ladies wish to be painted as sibyls or goddesses, Sir Joshua does his best to bethink himself of Michael Angelo, and Guido, and the Lightnings, and the Auroras, and all the rest of it, you will, I think, admit that the culminating sweetness and rightness of him are in some little Lady So-and-so, with round hat and strong shoes; and that a final separation from the Greek art which can be proud in a torso without a head, is achieved by the master who paints for you five little girls' heads, without ever a torso!?

[No. 111 in the National Gallery; compare Vol. XIV. p. 223. Gainsborough's "Blue Boy" (Jonathan Buttall) is at Grosvenor House; his "Hon. Mrs. Graham" (née Cathcart) is in the National Gallery of Scotland.]

2 [For another reference to the "Heads of Angels," painted from the daughter of Lord William Lennox (No. 182 in the National Gallery), see Queen of the Air, § 176 (Vol. XIX. p. 419).]

68. Thus, then, we arrive at a clearly intelligible distinction between the Gothic and Classic schools, and a clear notion also of their dependence on one another. All jesting apart, I think you may safely take Luca della Robbia with his scholars for an exponent of their unity, to all nations. Luca is brightly Tuscan, with the dignity of a Greek; he has English simplicity, French grace, Italian devotion, and is, I think, delightful to the truest lovers of art in all nations, and of all ranks. The Florentine Contadina rejoices to see him above her fruit-stall in the Mercato Vecchio;1 and, having by chance the other day a little Nativity by him on the floor of my study (one of his frequentest designs of the Infant Christ laid on the ground, and the Madonna kneeling to Him)—having it, I say, by chance on the floor, when a fashionable little girl with her mother came to see me, the child about three years old-though there were many pretty and glittering things about the room which might have caught her eye or her fancy, the first thing, nevertheless, my little lady does, is to totter quietly up to the white Infant Christ, and kiss it.

2

69. Taking, then, Luca, for central between Classic and Gothic in sculpture, for central art of Florence, in painting, I show you the copies made for the St. George's Guild, of the two frescoes by Sandro Botticelli, lately bought by the French Government for the Louvre. These copies, made under the direction of Mr. C. F. Murray, while the frescoes were still untouched, are of singular value now. For in their transference to canvas for carriage much violent damage

3

[Now destroyed; the Luca della Robbia is in the Bargello: see Mornings in Florence, § 27 (Vol. XXIII. p. 323).]

[This piece remains over the mantelpiece in the study at Brantwood.] [See Vol. XXI. p. 299. One of the copies is in the Ruskin Drawing School and is here reproduced (Plate XXXVII.). The two frescoes are called in the catalogue of the Louvre : "1297. Giovanna Tornabuoni and the Graces, or Virtues," and "1298. Lorenzo Tornabuoni and the Liberal Arts." According to the interpretation usually given of the latter fresco, Philosophy is the presiding "Muse"; and Arithmetic, the Science unnamed by Ruskin; whilst it is Dialectic, the Seventh Liberal Art, who leads in Lorenzo Tornabuoni, a young man famous among his contemporaries for his learning and modesty. The subject of the other fresco is

was sustained by the originals; and as, even before, they were not presentable to the satisfaction of the French public, the backgrounds were filled in with black, the broken edges cut away; and, thus repainted and maimed, they are now, disgraced and glassless, let into the wall of a stair-landing on the outside of the Louvre galleries.

You will judge for yourselves of their deservings; but for my own part I can assure you of their being quite central and classic Florentine painting, and types of the manner in which, so far as you follow the instructions given in the Laws of Fésole, you will be guided to paint. Their subjects should be of special interest to us in Oxford and Cambridge, as bearing on institutions of colleges for maidens no less than bachelors. For these frescoes represent the Florentine ideal of education for maid and bachelor, -the one baptized by the Graces for her marriage, and the other brought to the tutelage of the Great Powers of Knowledge, under a great presiding Muse, whose name you must help me to interpret; and with good help, both from maid and bachelor, I hope we shall soon be able to name, and honour, all their graces and virtues rightly.

Five out of the six Sciences and Powers on her right hand and left, I know. They are, on her left-geometry, astronomy, and music; on her right-logic and rhetoric. The third, nearest her, I do not know, and will not guess. She herself bears a mighty bow, and I could give you conjectural interpretations of her, if I chose, to any extent; but will wait until I hear what you think of her yourselves. I must leave you also to discover by whom the youth is introduced to the great conclave; but observe, that, as in the frescoes of the Spanish Chapel, before he can approach

the reception of Giovanna Tornabuoni by Venus and the Graces. The frescoes were executed by Botticelli in 1486, being commissioned by Giovanni Tornabuoni on the occasion of the marriage of his son, Lorenzo, with Giovanna degli Albizzi. They adorned the walls of a room in the Tornabuoni villa near Fiesole. At some subsequent date the room was whitewashed; in 1873 Dr. Lemmi, then the owner of the villa, observed traces of colour through cracks in the plaster, and Botticelli's paintings were brought to light. In 1882 the two frescoes (a third fell to pieces) were acquired for the Louvre.]