e head of the progressive schools of Italy. It was
simply by being interested in what was going on around him, by
substituting the gestures of living men for conventional attitudes,
and portraits of living men for conventional faces, and incidents of
every-day life for conventional circumstances, that he became great,
and the master of the great. Giotto was to his contemporaries
precisely what Millais is to _his_ contemporaries,--a daring
naturalist, in defiance of tradition, idealism, and formalism. The
Giottesque movement in the fourteenth, and Pre-Raphaelite movement in
the nineteenth centuries, are precisely similar in bearing and
meaning: both being the protests of vitality against mortality, of
spirit against letter, and of truth against tradition: and both, which
is the more singular, literally links in one unbroken chain of
feeling; for exactly as Niccola Pisano and Giotto were helped by the
classical sculptures discovered in their time, the Pre-Raphaelites
have been helped by the works of Niccola and Giotto at Pisa and
Florence: and thus the fiery cross of truth has been delivered from
spirit to spirit, over the dust of intervening generations.

But what, it may be said by the reader, is the use of the works of
Giotto to _us_? They may indeed have been wonderful for their time,
and of infinite use in that time; but since, after Giotto, came
Leonardo and Correggio, what is the use of going back to the ruder
art, and republishing it in the year 1854? Why should we fret
ourselves to dig down to the root of the tree, when we may at once
enjoy its fruit and foliage? I answer, first, that in all matters
relating to human intellect, it is a great thing to have hold of the
root: that at least we ought to see it, and taste it, and handle it;
for it often happens that the root is wholesome when the leaves,
however fair, are useless or poisonous. In nine cases out of ten, the
first expression of an idea is the most valuable: the idea may
afterward be polished and softened, and made more attractive to the
general eye; but the first expression of it has a freshness and
brightness, like the flash of a native crystal compared to the lustre
of glass that has been melted and cut. And in the second place, we
ought to measure the value of art less by its executive than by its
moral power. Giotto was not indeed one of the most accomplished
painters, but he was one of the greatest men, who ever lived. He was
the first master of hi