ng as well as
Dante's; not without perpetuating, also, what he deemed worthy of his
own.

196. What would that be, think you? His chosen works before the Pope in
Rome?--his admired Madonnas in Florence?--his choirs of angels and
thickets of flowers? Some few of these yes, as you shall presently see;
but "the best attempt of this kind from his hand is the Triumph of
Faith, by Fra Girolamo Savonarola, of Ferrara, of whose sect our artist
was so zealous a partisan that he totally abandoned painting, and not
having any other means of living, he fell into very great difficulties.
But his attachment to the party he had adopted increased; he became what
was then called a Piagnone, or Mourner, and abandoned all labor;
insomuch that, finding himself at length become old, being also very
poor, he must have died of hunger had he not been supported by Lorenzo
de' Medici, for whom he had worked at the small hospital of Volterra and
other places, who assisted him while he lived, as did other friends and
admirers of his talents."

197. In such dignity and independence--having employed his talents not
wholly at the orders of the dealer--died, a poor bedesman of Lorenzo de'
Medici, the President of that high academy of art in Rome, whose
Academicians were Perugino, Ghirlandajo, Angelico, and Signorelli; and
whose students, Michael Angelo and Raphael.

'A worthless, ill-conducted fellow on the whole,' thinks Vasari, 'with a
crazy fancy for scratching on copper.'

Well, here are some of the scratches for you to see; only, first, I must
ask you seriously for a few moments to consider what the two powers
were, which, with this iron pen of his, he has set himself to reprove.

198. Two great forms of authority reigned over the entire civilized
world, confessedly, and by name, in the Middle Ages. They reign over it
still, and must forever, though at present very far from confessed; and,
in most places, ragingly denied.

The first power is that of the Teacher, or true Father; the Father 'in
God.' It may be--happy the children to whom it is--the actual father
also; and whose parents have been their tutors. But, for the most part,
it will be some one else who teaches them, and molds their minds and
brain. All such teaching, when true, being from above, and coming down
from the Father of Lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow
of turning, is properly that of the holy Catholic '[Greek: ekklesia],'
council, church, or papacy, of