udy drapery; and, in Tintoret, ruling the entire conceptions of his
greatest works to such a degree that they are an enigma or an offence,
even to this day, to all the petty disciples of a formal criticism. Of
the grotesque in our own Shakspeare I need hardly speak, nor of its
intolerableness to his French critics; nor of that of Aeschylus and
Homer, as opposed to the lower Greek writers; and so I believe it will
be found, at all periods, in all minds of the first order.

Sec. LXVIII. As an index of the greatness of nations, it is a less certain
test, or, rather, we are not so well agreed on the meaning of the term
"greatness" respecting them. A nation may produce a great effect, and
take up a high place in the world's history, by the temporary enthusiasm
or fury of its multitudes, without being truly great; or, on the other
hand, the discipline of morality and common sense may extend its
physical power or exalt its well-being, while yet its creative and
imaginative powers are continually diminishing. And again: a people may
take so definite a lead over all the rest of the world in one direction,
as to obtain a respect which is not justly due to them if judged on
universal grounds. Thus the Greeks perfected the sculpture of the human
body; threw their literature into a disciplined form, which has given it
a peculiar power over certain conditions of modern mind; and were the
most carefully educated race that the world has seen; but a few years
hence, I believe, we shall no longer think them a greater people than
either the Egyptians or Assyrians.

Sec. LXIX. If, then, ridding ourselves as far as possible of prejudices
owing merely to the school-teaching which remains from the system of the
Renaissance, we set ourselves to discover in what races the human soul,
taken all in all, reached its highest magnificence, we shall find, I
believe, two great families of men, one of the East and South, the other
of the West and North: the one including the Egyptians, Jews, Arabians,
Assyrians, and Persians; the other, I know not whence derived, but
seeming to flow forth from Scandinavia, and filling the whole of Europe
with its Norman and Gothic energy. And in both these families, wherever
they are seen in their utmost nobleness, there the grotesque is
developed in its utmost energy; and I hardly know whether most to admire
the winged bulls of Nineveh, or the winged dragons of Verona.

Sec. LXX. The reader who has not before turned