or the earthly
life. "He will never believe that the world, with all its life and
beauty, is an unmeaning blank. He is sure, 'it means intensely and means
good.' He is sure, too, that to reproduce what is beautiful in it is
the mission of Art. If anyone objects, that the world being God's work,
Art cannot improve on it, and the painter will best leave it alone: he
answers that some things are the better for being painted; because, as
we are made, we love them best when we see them so. The artist has lent
his mind for us to see with. That is what Art means; what God wills in
giving it to us."

Nevertheless (he continues) he rubbed out his men and women; and though
now, with a Medici for his patron, he may paint as he likes, the old
schooling sticks to him.[74] And he works away at his saints, till
something comes to remind him that life is not a dream, and he kicks the
traces, as he has done now. He ends with a half-joking promise to make
the Church a gainer through his misconduct (supposing that the secret
has been kept from her), by a beautiful picture which he will paint by
way of atonement.

This picture, which he describes very humorously, is that of the
Coronation of the Virgin, now in the "Belle Arti" at Florence.[75]

ABT VOGLER is depicted at the moment when this composer of the last
century has "been extemporizing on the musical instrument of his
invention." His emotion has not yet subsided; and it is that of the
inspired musician, to whom harmonized sound is as the opening of a
heavenly world. His touch upon the keys has been as potent to charm, as
the utterance of that NAME which summoned into Solomon's presence the
creatures of Earth, Heaven, and Hell, and made them subservient to his
will. And the "slaves of the sound," whom he has conjured up, have
built him a palace more evanescent than Solomon's, but, as he describes
it, far more beautiful. They have laid its foundations below the earth.
They have carried its transparent walls up to the sky. They have tipped
each summit with meteoric fire. As earth strove upwards towards Heaven,
Heaven, in this enchanted structure, has yearned downwards towards the
earth. The great Dead came back; and those conceived for a happier
future walked before their time. New births of life and splendour united
far and near; the past, the present, and the to-come.

The vision has disappeared with the sounds which called it forth, and
the musician feels sorrowfully that it c