l. In spite of the vast
scale on which he worked his devilish will, his life presents a total
picture of sordid vice, differing only from pot-house dissipation and
schoolboy cruelty in point of size. And this of a truth is the Nemesis
of evil. After a time, mere tyrannous caprice must become commonplace
and cloying, tedious to the tyrant, and uninteresting to the student
of humanity: nor can I believe that Caligula failed to perceive this
to his own infinite disgust.

Suetonius asserts that he was hideously ugly. How are we to square
this testimony with the witness of the bronze before us? What changed
the face, so beautiful and terrible in youth, to ugliness that shrank
from sight in manhood? Did the murderers find it blurred in its fine
lineaments, furrowed with lines of care, hollowed with the soul's
hunger? Unless a life of vice and madness had succeeded in making
Caligula's face what the faces of some maniacs are--the bloated ruin
of what was once a living witness to the soul within--I could fancy
that death may have sanctified it with even more beauty than this
bust of the self-tormented young man shows. Have we not all seen the
anguish of thought-fretted faces smoothed out by the hands of the
Deliverer?

FERRARI AT VERCELLI

It is possible that many visitors to the Cathedral of Como have
carried away the memory of stately women with abundant yellow hair and
draperies of green and crimson, in a picture they connect thereafter
with Gaudenzio Ferrari. And when they come to Milan, they are probably
both impressed and disappointed by a Martyrdom of S. Catherine in the
Brera, bearing the same artist's name. If they wish to understand this
painter, they must seek him at Varallo, at Saronno, and at Vercelli.
In the Church of S. Cristoforo in Vercelli, Gaudenzio Ferrari at the
full height of his powers showed what he could do to justify Lomazzo's
title chosen for him of the Eagle. He has indeed the strong wing and
the swiftness of the king of birds. And yet the works of few really
great painters--and among the really great we place Ferrari--leave
upon the mind a more distressing sense of imperfection. Extraordinary
fertility of fancy, vehement dramatic passion, sincere study of
nature, and great command of technical resources are here (as
elsewhere in Ferrari's frescoes) neutralised by an incurable defect of
the combining and harmonising faculty, so essential to a masterpiece.
There is stuff enough of thought and vigo