ble and pure, like Michael Angelo and Beethoven: we eagerly
treasure up like relics anecdotes showing the gentleness and generosity
of men like Lionardo and Mozart: trifling tales of caged-birds let
loose, or of poor fellow-workers assisted, which, in our desire to
trace art back to a noble origin, seem to shed so much light upon the
production of a great picture or great symphony. And yet, even as the
words leave our lips, words so sincerely consoling, we seem to catch in
our voice an unintentional inflexion of deriding scepticism. So much
light! these tales of mere ordinary goodness, such as we might hear (did
we care) of so many a dull and blundering artisan, or vacant idler,
these tales shed so much light upon the production of great works of
art! A sort of reasoning devil seems to possess us, to twitch our
little morsels of unreasoned consolation, of sanctifying, mystical
half-reasoning away from our peace-hungry souls. And he says: "What of
Perugino? What of so many undeniable realities which this Perugino of
ours, even if the purest myth, so completely typifies? How did this
cynic, this atheist, come to paint these saints? You say that he was no
cynic, no atheist, that it is all vile slander." Well, I won't dispute
that: perhaps he _was_ a saint after all. I will even grant that he
was. But in return for the concession, let us examine whether the
saints could not have been equally well painted by the traditional,
unrehabilitated Perugino, Vasari's Perugino--not the real one, oh no,
I will admit not the real one--by the typical Perugino; the man "of
exceeding little religion, who could never be got to believe in
the soul's immortality; nay, with arguments suited to his porphyry
intellect, obstinately refused all good paths; who placed all his hopes
in the goods of fortune and for money would have consented to any evil
compact." Nay, even by a Perugino a good deal worse.

An ugly, impertinent little reasoning fiend within us; but now-a-days we
have lost the formula of exorcism for this kind of devil, and listen we
must; indignantly, and with mind well made up to find all his arguments
completely false. Think over the matter, now that idea is once started,
we can no longer help. So let us discuss it with ourselves, within
ourselves, the place where most discussion must ever go on. Let us sit
here on the low-broken brick parapet, which seems to prevent all this
rough, black Perugia from precipitating itself, a mass of