dy stripling); Deborah never; Gideon never; Isaiah never.[5] What
single example does the reader remember of painting which suggested so
much as the faintest shadow of their deeds? Strong men in armour, or
aged men with flowing beards, he _may_ remember, who, when he looked
at his Louvre or Uffizi catalogue, he found were intended to stand for
David, or Moses. But does he suppose that, if these pictures had
suggested to him the feeblest image of the presence of such men, he
would have passed on, as he assuredly did, to the next picture,
representing, doubtless, Diana and Actaeon, or Cupid and the Graces, or
a gambling quarrel in a pothouse--with no sense of pain or surprise?
Let him meditate over the matter, and he will find ultimately that
what I say is true, and that religious art at once complete and
sincere never yet has existed.

[5] I knew nothing, when I wrote this passage, of Luini, Filippo Lippi,
or Sandro Botticelli; and had not capacity to enter into the deeper
feelings, even of the men whom I was chiefly studying,--Tintoret and Fra
Angelico. But the British public is at present as little acquainted with
the greater Florentines as I was then, and the passage, for _them_,
remains true.

SECTION II.

POWER AND OFFICE OF IMAGINATION.

9. What are the legitimate uses of the imagination,--that is to say,
of the power of perceiving, or conceiving with the mind, things which
cannot be perceived by the senses? Its first and noblest use is,[6] to
enable us to bring sensibly to our sight the things which are recorded
as belonging to our future state, or invisibly surrounding us in this.
It is given us, that we may imagine the cloud of witnesses, in heaven,
and earth, and sea, as if they were now present,--the souls of the
righteous waiting for us; that we may conceive the great army of the
inhabitants of heaven, and discover among them those whom we most
desire to be with for ever; that we may be able to vision forth the
ministry of angels beside us, and see the chariots of fire on the
mountains that gird us round; but, above all, to call up the scenes
and facts in which we are commanded to believe, and be present, as if
in the body, at every recorded event of the history of the Redeemer.
Its second and ordinary use is, to empower us to traverse the scenes
of all other history, and to force the facts to become again visible,
so as to make upon us the same impression which they would have made
if we had wit