d. Nothing can be more superficial than
this varnish of classicality. The names of Cicero, Brutus, Augustus were
in all mouths; but the real character of these men, or of any others, or
of the times they lived in, was very slightly realized. The classic
architecture, with its cogent adaptation and sequence of parts, is cut
up into theatre-scenery: its "members" are members no longer, but scraps
to be stuck about at will. The gods and heroes of the ancient world have
become the pageant of a holiday; even the sacred legends of the Church
receive only an outward respect, and at last not even that. Claude wants
a foreground-figure and puts in AEneas, Diana, or Moses, he cares little
which, and he would hear, unmoved, Mr. Ruskin's eloquent denunciation of
their utter unfitness for the assumed character, and the absurdity of
the whole action of the piece.

But the Renaissance had its religion, too,--namely, Culture. The one
"virtue," acknowledged on all hands, alike by busy merchants, soldiers,
despots, women, the acquaintance with Greek and Roman literature and
art, was not quite the idle dilettanteism it seems. Lorenzo de' Medici
said, that, without the knowledge of the Platonic philosophy, it was
hard to be a good citizen and Christian. Leo X. thought, "Nothing more
excellent or more useful has been given by the Creator to mankind, if we
except only the knowledge and true worship of Himself, than these
studies, which not only lead to the ornament and guidance of human life,
but are applicable and useful to every particular situation." That this
culture was superficial, that it regarded only show and outside, is no
reproach, but means only that it was not a mere galvanizing of dead
bones, that a new spirit was masquerading in these garments. Had it been
in earnest in its revival of the past, it would have been insignificant;
its disregard of the substance, and care for the form alone, showed that
the form was used only as a protest against the old forms. A provincial
narrowness, even a slight air of vulgarity, was felt to attach to the
teachings of the Church. Gentility had come to imply not only
heathendom, ("_gentilis est qui in Christum non credit_,") but liberal
breeding. The attraction of the classic culture, "the humanities," as it
was well called, was just this cosmopolitan largeness, that it had no
prejudices and prescribed no test, but was open to all kinds of merit
and every manner of man. Goethe, who belongs in go