the
furrows with the black paste which at once exhibited and preserved them.
The transition from that niello-work to modern engraving is one of no
real moment: my object is to make you understand the qualities which
constitute the _merit_ of the engraving, whether charged with niello or
ink. And this I hope ultimately to accomplish by studying with you some
of the works of the four men, Botticelli and Mantegna in the south,
Duerer and Holbein in the north, whose names I have put in our last flag,
above and beneath those of the three mighty painters, Perugino the
captain, Bellini on one side--Luini on the other.

The four following lectures[P] will contain data necessary for such
study: you must wait longer before I can place before you those by which
I can justify what must greatly surprise some of my audience--my having
given Perugino the captain's place among the three painters.

72. But I do so, at least primarily, because what is commonly thought
affected in his design is indeed the true remains of the great
architectural symmetry which was soon to be lost, and which makes him
the true follower of Arnolfo and Brunelleschi; and because he is a sound
craftsman and workman to the very heart's core. A noble, gracious, and
quiet laborer from youth to death,--never weary, never impatient, never
untender, never untrue. Not Tintoret in power, not Raphael in
flexibility, not Holbein in veracity, not Luini in love,--their gathered
gifts he has, in balanced and fruitful measure, fit to be the guide, and
impulse, and father of all.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] Compare "Aratra Pentelici," Sec. 154.

[E] "Holbein and His Time," 4to, Bentley, 1872, (a very valuable book,)
p. 17. Italics mine.

[F] See Carlyle, "Frederick," Book III., chap. viii.

[G] I believe I am taking too much trouble in writing these lectures.
This sentence, Sec. 44, has cost me, I suppose, first and last, about as
many hours as there are lines in it;--and my choice of these two words,
faith and death, as representatives of power, will perhaps, after all,
only puzzle the reader.

[H] He is said by Vasari to have called Francia the like. Francia is a
child compared to Perugino; but a finished working-goldsmith and
ornamental painter nevertheless; and one of the very last men to be
called 'goffo,' except by unparalleled insolence.

[I] The diagram used at the lecture is engraved on page 30; the reader
had better draw it larger for himself, as it had to be made