efore,
founded on religion, and sculpture chiefly, are here in England effete
and corrupt, to a degree which arts never were hitherto in the history
of mankind: and it is possible to show you the condition of sculpture
living, and sculpture dead, in accurate opposition, by simply comparing
the nascent Pisan school in Italy with the existing school in England.

53. You were perhaps surprised at my placing in your educational
series, as a type of original Italian sculpture, the pulpit by Niccola
Pisano in the Duomo of Siena. I would rather, had it been possible, have
given the pulpit by Giovanni Pisano in the Duomo of Pisa; but that
pulpit is dispersed in fragments through the upper galleries of the
Duomo, and the cloister of the Campo Santo; and the casts of its
fragments now put together at Kensington are too coarse to be of use to
you. You may partly judge, however, of the method of their execution by
the eagle's head, which I have sketched from the marble in the Campo
Santo (Edu., No. 113), and the lioness with her cubs, (Edu., No. 103,
more carefully studied at Siena); and I will get you other illustrations
in due time. Meanwhile, I want you to compare the main purpose of the
Cathedral of Pisa, and its associated Bell Tower, Baptistery, and Holy
Field, with the main purpose of the principal building lately raised for
the people of London. In these days, we indeed desire no cathedrals; but
we have constructed an enormous and costly edifice, which, in claiming
educational influence over the whole London populace, and middle class,
is verily the Metropolitan cathedral of this century,--the Crystal
Palace.

54. It was proclaimed, at its erection, an example of a newly discovered
style of architecture, greater than any hitherto known,--our best
popular writers, in their enthusiasm, describing it as an edifice of
Fairyland. You are nevertheless to observe that this novel production of
fairy enchantment is destitute of every kind of sculpture, except the
bosses produced by the heads of nails and rivets; while the Duomo of
Pisa, in the wreathen work of its doors, in the foliage of its capitals,
inlaid colour designs of its facade, embossed panels of its baptistery
font, and figure sculpture of its two pulpits, contained the germ of a
school of sculpture which was to maintain, through a subsequent period
of four hundred years, the greatest power yet reached by the arts of the
world in description of Form, and expression of T