itual thoughts? And are not those
thoughts newer, purer, and more unselfish in the youth than in the
man? What eye has the man, that the youth's is not as comprehensive,
keen, rapid, and penetrating? or what hand, that the youth's is not
as swift, forceful, cunning, and true? And what does the youth gain
in becoming man? Is it freshness, or deepness, or power, or wisdom?
nay rather--is it not languor--the languor of satiety--of
indifferentism? And thus soul-rusted and earth-charmed, what mate is
he for his former youth? Drunken with the world-lees, what can he do
but pourtray nature drunken as well, and consumed with the same fever
or stupor that consumes himself, making up with gilding and filigree
what he lacks in truth and sincerity? and what comparison shall exist
here and between what his youth might or could have done, with a soul
innocent and untroubled as heaven's deep calm of blue, gazing on
earth with seraph eyes--looking, but not longing--or, in the spirit
rapt away before the emerald-like rainbow-crowned throne, witnessing
"things that shall be hereafter," and drawing them down almost as
stainless as he beheld them? What an array of deep, earnest, and
noble thinkers, like angels armed with a brightness that withers,
stand between Giotto and Raffaelle; to mention only Orcagna,
Ghiberti, Masaccio, Lippi, Fra Beato Angelico, and Francia. Parallel
_them_ with post-Raffaelle artists? If you think you can, you have
dared a labour of which the fruit shall be to you as Dead Sea apples,
golden and sweet to the eye, but, in the mouth, ashes and bitterness.
And the Phidian era was a youthful one--the highest and purest period
of Hellenic art: after that time they added no more gods or heroes,
but took for models instead--the Alcibiadeses and Phyrnes, and made
Bacchuses and Aphrodites; not as Phidias would have--clothed with the
greatness of thought, or girded with valour, or veiled with modesty;
but dissolved with the voluptuousness of the bath, naked, wanton, and
shameless.

_Sophon._ You hear, Kosmon, that Christian prefers ripe youth to ripe
manhood: and he is right. Early summer is nobler than early autumn;
the head is wiser than the hand. You take the hand to mean too much:
you should not judge by quantity, or luxuriance, or dexterity, but by
quality, chastity, and fidelity. And colour and tone are only a fair
setting to thought and virtue. Perhaps it is the fate, or rather the
duty, of mortals to make a sacrific