can be, without didactic purpose. The leaders of the strong schools
are, and must be always, either teachers of theology, or preachers of
the moral law. I need not tell you that it was as teachers of theology
on the walls of the Vatican that the masters with whose names you are
most familiar obtained their perpetual fame. But however great their
fame, you have not practically, I imagine, ever been materially assisted
in your preparation for the schools either of philosophy or divinity by
Raphael's 'School of Athens,' by Raphael's 'Theology,'--or by Michael
Angelo's 'Judgment.' My task, to-day, is to set before you some part of
the design of the first Master of the works in the Sistine Chapel; and I
believe that, from his teaching, you will, even in the hour which I ask
you now to give, learn what may be of true use to you in all your future
labor, whether in Oxford or elsewhere.

183. You have doubtless, in the course of these lectures, been
occasionally surprised by my speaking of Holbein and Sandro Botticelli,
as Reformers, in the same tone of respect, and with the same implied
assertion of their intellectual power and agency, with which it is usual
to speak of Luther and Savonarola. You have been accustomed, indeed, to
hear painting and sculpture spoken of as supporting or enforcing Church
doctrine; but never as reforming or chastising it. Whether Protestant or
Roman Catholic, you have admitted what in the one case you held to be
the abuse of painting in the furtherance of idolatry,--in the other, its
amiable and exalting ministry to the feebleness of faith. But neither
has recognized,--the Protestant his ally,--or the Catholic his enemy, in
the far more earnest work of the great painters of the fifteenth
century. The Protestant was, in most cases, too vulgar to understand the
aid offered to him by painting; and in all cases too terrified to
believe in it. He drove the gift-bringing Greek with imprecations from
his sectarian fortress, or received him within it only on the condition
that he should speak no word of religion there.

184. On the other hand, the Catholic, in most cases too indolent to
read, and, in all, too proud to dread, the rebuke of the reforming
painters, confused them with the crowd of his old flatterers, and little
noticed their altered language or their graver brow. In a little while,
finding they had ceased to be amusing, he effaced their works, not as
dangerous, but as dull; and recognized only