perform equally all the
purely mental and all the purely mechanical portions of the work. The
conditions of the problem may be assimilated to those which would
surround the search for a first-rate astronomer who was also capable of
manufacturing first-rate mathematical instruments. And yet, on the other
hand, let the inevitable results of applying the principle of the
division of labor to the fine arts be considered. Mechanical excellence
attained at the cost of artistic deadness is and must be the result. The
individuality, the soul of the artist, the expression which his cunning
hand can put into his work, is found to have been lost, evaporated in
the process. What is the special value, of which the world has heard so
much lately, of an etching? A first-rate engraving is _per se_ a more
beautiful thing than an etching; but the value, the charm of the latter
is that it is the work of the hand which was directed by the designer's
brain--that, in a word, there is no division of labor in the production
of the result. And it is impossible to avoid the conviction that the
wonderfully artistic feeling and power which pervades the work in the
Duomo of Perugia are due in a great measure to the fact that there has
been no division of labor in the production of it.

Truly, it was a remarkable and striking scene, that strange workshop,
appealing very powerfully to the imagination, and carrying the
visitor very forcibly out of the ordinary surroundings of this
nineteenth-century world, and back to the habits, ways and associations
of the great centuries of art. There in the midst of it was the
master-spirit, the artist; and in truth he was, mere outward
circumstances of costume apart, a worthy representative of the olden
time, and one well calculated to carry on and complete the illusion.
Signor Francesca Moretti is a man, I should suppose, on the better side
of forty, of a tall, stalwart figure, such as becomes a genuine workman,
with a bearded face which, put a velvet toque above it, might well
recall some of the heads which the wood-cut blocks in the old editions
of Vasari have preserved for us. A modest, unassuming man--that one
might, _a priori_, have been quite sure of--delighted to talk of his
work and of the processes connected with them, doing so with frankness,
enthusiasm and unreserve--utterly above the affectation of mystery or
secresy as to his _modus operandi_, and quite ready to say to all the
world, "Do the same i