mated
branches; those, disanimated members--yet the animal and vegetable
lives sufficiently kept distinct--_his_ Dryad lay--an approximation of
two natures, which to conceive, it must be seen; analogous to, not the
same with, the delicacies of Ovidian transformations.

To the lowest subjects, and, to a superficial comprehension, the
most barren, the Great Masters gave loftiness and fruitfulness. The
large eye of genius saw in the meanness of present objects their
capabilities of treatment from their relations to some grand
Past or Future. How has Raphael--we must still linger about the
Vatican--treated the humble craft of the ship-builder, in _his_
"Building of the Ark?" It is in that scriptural series, to which we
have referred, and which, judging from some fine rough old graphic
sketches of them which we possess, seem to be of a higher and more
poetic grade than even the Cartoons. The dim of sight are the
timid and the shrinking. There is a cowardice in modern art. As
the Frenchmen, of whom Coleridge's friend made the prophetic guess
at Rome, from the beard and horns of the Moses of Michael Angelo
collected no inferences beyond that of a He Goat and a Cornuto; so
from this subject, of mere mechanic promise, it would instinctively
turn away, as from one incapable of investiture with any grandeur. The
dock-yards at Woolwich would object derogatory associations. The depot
at Chatham would be the mote and the beam in its intellectual eye. But
not to the nautical preparations in the ship-yards of Civita Vecchia
did Raphael look for instructions, when he imagined the Building of
the Vessel that was to be conservatory of the wrecks of the species of
drowned mankind. In the intensity of the action, he keeps ever out of
sight the meanness of the operation. There is the Patriarch, in calm
forethought, and with holy prescience, giving directions. And there
are his agents--the solitary but sufficient Three--hewing, sawing,
every one with the might and earnestness of a Demiurgus; under some
instinctive rather than technical guidance; giant-muscled; every one a
Hercules, or liker to those Vulcanian Three, that in sounding caverns
under Mongibello wrought in fire--Brontes, and black Steropes, and
Pyracmon. So work the workmen that should repair a world!

Artists again err in the confounding of _poetic_ with _pictorial
subjects_. In the latter, the exterior accidents are nearly
everything, the unseen qualities as nothing. Othello's