ich is, that art is the
only thing inaccessible to falsehood. Being the offspring of the heart
and natural inspiration, it cannot be allied to what is false, it will
not be violated; it protests, and if the false triumphs, it dies. All
the rest may be aped and acted. They very well managed to make a
theology in the sixteenth and a morality in the seventeenth century;
but never could they form an art. They can ape the holy and the just;
but how can they mimic the beautiful?--Thou art ugly, poor Tartuffe,
and ugly shalt thou remain: it is thy token. What! you reach the
beautiful, or ever lay a finger upon it? This would be impious beyond
all impiety!--The beautiful is the face of God!

[1] In 1771. On Sacred Hearts (by Tabaraud), p. 82.

[2] In 1834, being busy with Christian iconography, I looked over the
collections of the portraits of Christ in the Royal Library. Those
published within the last thirty years are the most humiliating I have
ever seen, both for art and human nature. Every man (whether a
philosopher or a believer) who retains any sentiment of religion will
be disgusted with them. Every impropriety, every sensuality and low
passion is there: the childish, dandified seminarist, the licentious
priest, the fat curate who looks like _Maingrat_, &c. The engraving is
as good as the drawing--a skewer and the snuff of a tallow candle.

PART II.

ON DIRECTION IN GENERAL, AND ESPECIALLY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

CHAPTER I.

RESEMBLANCES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SEVENTEENTH AND NINETEENTH
CENTURIES.--CHRISTIAN ART.--IT IS WE WHO HAVE RESTORED THE
CHURCH.--WHAT IT ADDS TO THE POWER OF THE PRIEST.--THE CONFESSIONAL.

There are two objections to be made against all that I have said, and I
will state them:--

First. "The examples are taken from the seventeenth century, at a time
when the direction was influenced by theological questions, which now
no longer occupy either the world or the Church; for instance, the
question of grace and free-will, and that of Quietism or repose in
love." But this I have already answered. Such questions are obsolete,
dead, if you will, as theories; but, in the spirit and practical method
which emanate from these theories, they are, and ever will be, living.
There are no longer to be found speculative people, simple enough to
trace out expressly a doctrine of lethargy and moral annihilation; but
there will always be found enough quacks to practice qui