e divine authority in
your imagination; but in the intellectual work of six intervening
centuries; which, simply, by artistic discipline, has refined this crude
conception for you, and filled you, partly with an innate sensation,
partly with an acquired knowledge, of higher forms,--which render this
Byzantine crucifix as horrible to you, as it was pleasing to its maker.
More is required to excite your fancy; but your fancy is of no more
authority than his was: and a point of national art-skill is quite
conceivable, in which the best we can do now will be as offensive to the
religious dreamers of the more highly cultivated time, as this Byzantine
crucifix is to you.

MARY. But surely, Angelico will always retain his power over everybody?

L. Yes, I should think, always; as the gentle words of a child will: but
you would be much surprised, Mary, if you thoroughly took the pains to
analyse, and had the perfect means of analysing, that power of
Angelico,--to discover its real sources. Of course it is natural, at
first, to attribute it to the pure religious fervour by which he was
inspired; but do you suppose Angelico was really the only monk, in all
the Christian world of the middle ages, who laboured, in art, with a
sincere religious enthusiasm?

MARY. No, certainly not.

L. Anything more frightful, more destructive of all religious faith
whatever, than such a supposition, could not be. And yet, what other
monk ever produced such work? I have myself examined carefully upwards
of two thousand illuminated missals, with especial view to the discovery
of any evidence of a similar result upon the art, from the monkish
devotion; and utterly in vain.

MARY. But then, was not Fra Angelico a man of entirely separate and
exalted genius?

L. Unquestionably; and granting him to be that, the peculiar phenomenon
in his art is, to me, not its loveliness, but its weakness. The effect
of 'inspiration,' had it been real, on a man of consummate genius,
should have been, one would have thought, to make everything that he did
faultless and strong, no less than lovely. But of all men, deserving to
be called 'great,' Fra Angelico permits to himself the least pardonable
faults, and the most palpable follies. There is evidently within him a
sense of grace, and power of invention, as great as Ghiberti's:--we are
in the habit of attributing those high qualities to his religious
enthusiasm; but, if they were produced by that enthusiasm in him,