whose perfect form enshrined a noble and highly educated soul, so we
gratefully accept Correggio for his grace, while we approach the
consummate art of Michelangelo with reverent awe. It is necessary in
aesthetics as elsewhere to recognise a hierarchy of excellence, the
grades of which are determined by the greater or less
comprehensiveness of the artist's nature expressed in his work. At the
same time, the calibre of the artist's genius must be estimated; for
eminent greatness even of a narrow kind will always command our
admiration: and the amount of his originality has also to be taken
into account. What is unique has, for that reason alone, a claim on
our consideration. Judged in this way, Correggio deserves a place,
say, in the sweet planet Venus, above the moon and above Mercury,
among the artists who have not advanced beyond the contemplations
which find their proper outcome in love. Yet, even thus, he aids the
culture of humanity. 'We should take care,' said Goethe, apropos of
Byron, to Eckermann, 'not to be always looking for culture in the
decidedly pure and moral. Everything that is great promotes
cultivation as soon as we are aware of it.'

* * * * *

_CANOSSA_

Italy is less the land of what is venerable in antiquity, than of
beauty, by divine right young eternally in spite of age. This is due
partly to her history and art and literature, partly to the temper of
the races who have made her what she is, and partly to her natural
advantages. Her oldest architectural remains, the temples of Paestum
and Girgenti, or the gates of Perugia and Volterra, are so adapted to
Italian landscape and so graceful in their massive strength, that we
forget the centuries which have passed over them. We leap as by a
single bound from the times of Roman greatness to the new birth of
humanity in the fourteenth century, forgetting the many years during
which Italy, like the rest of Europe, was buried in what our ancestors
called Gothic barbarism. The illumination cast upon the classic period
by the literature of Rome and by the memory of her great men is so
vivid, that we feel the days of the Republic and the Empire to be near
us; while the Italian Renaissance is so truly a revival of that former
splendour, a resumption of the music interrupted for a season, that it
is extremely difficult to form any conception of the five long
centuries which elapsed between the Lombard invasion in 568 a