ologist for Greek
art; that I find, in spite of all the devotion of the admirable scholars
who have so long maintained in our public schools the authority of Greek
literature, our younger students take no interest in the manual work of
the people upon whose thoughts the tone of their early intellectual life
has exclusively depended. But I am not surprised that the interest, if
awakened, should not at first take the form of admiration. The
inconsistency between an Homeric description of a piece of furniture or
armour, and the actual rudeness of any piece of art approximating within
even three or four centuries, to the Homeric period, is so great, that
we at first cannot recognize the art as elucidatory of, or in any way
related to, the poetic language.

79. You will find, however, exactly the same kind of discrepancy between
early sculpture, and the languages of deed and thought, in the second
birth, and childhood, of the world, under Christianity. The same fair
thoughts and bright imaginations arise again; and similarly, the fancy
is content with the rudest symbols by which they can be formalized to
the eyes. You cannot understand that the rigid figure (2) with chequers
or spots on its breast, and sharp lines of drapery to its feet, could
represent, to the Greek, the healing majesty of heaven: but can you any
better understand how a symbol so haggard as this (Fig. 5) could
represent to the noblest hearts of the Christian ages the power and
ministration of angels? Yet it not only did so, but retained in the rude
undulatory and linear ornamentation of its dress, record of the thoughts
intended to be conveyed by the spotted aegis and falling chiton of
Athena, eighteen hundred years before. Greek and Venetian alike, in
their noble childhood, knew with the same terror the coiling wind and
congealed hail in heaven--saw with the same thankfulness the dew shed
softly on the earth, and on its flowers; and both recognized, ruling
these, and symbolized by them, the great helpful spirit of Wisdom, which
leads the children of men to all knowledge, all courage, and all art.

80. Read the inscription written on the sarcophagus (Plate V.), at the
extremity of which this angel is sculptured. It stands in an open recess
in the rude brick wall of the west front of the church of St. John and
Paul at Venice, being the tomb of the two doges, father and son, Jacopo
and Lorenzo Tiepolo. This is the inscription:--

"Quos natura pares stud