d of this? They--the artists--have Moses
and the prophets, the frescoes of Raphael and Michael Angelo--let them
study them. Doubtless,--but we still reply, and with no impiety--they
will not repent, they will not forsake their idols and their evil
ways--they will not abandon Sense for Spirit, oils for fresco--unless
these great ones of the past, these Sleepers of Ephesus, arise from the
dead.... It is not by studying art in its perfection--by worshiping
Raphael and Michael Angelo exclusively of all other excellence--that we
can expect to rival them, but by re-ascending to the fountain-head--by
planting ourselves as acorns in the ground those oaks are rooted in, and
growing up to their level--in a word, by studying Duccio and Giotto that
we may paint like Taddeo di Bartolo and Masaccio, Taddeo di Bartolo and
Masaccio that we may paint like Perugino and Luca Signorelli, Perugino
and Luca Signorelli that we may paint like Raphael and Michael Angelo.
And why despair of this, or even of shaming the Vatican? For with genius
and God's blessing nothing is impossible.

"I would not be a blind partisan, but, with all their faults, the old
masters I plead for knew how to touch the heart. It may be difficult at
first to believe this; like children, they are shy with us--like
strangers, they bear an uncouth mien and aspect--like ghosts from the
other world, they have an awkward habit of shocking our
conventionalities with home truths. But with the dead as with the living
all depends on the frankness with which we greet them, the sincerity
with which we credit their kindly qualities; sympathy is the key to
truth--we must love, in order to appreciate."--iii., p. 418.

* * *

97. These are beautiful sentences; yet this let the young painter of
these days remember always, that whomsoever he may love, or from
whomsoever learn, he can now no more go back to those hours of infancy
and be born again.[12] About the faith, the questioning and the
teaching of childhood there is a joy and grace, which we may often envy,
but can no more assume:--the voice and the gesture must not be imitated
when the innocence is lost. Incapability and ignorance in the act of
being struggled against and cast away are often endowed with a peculiar
charm--but both are only contemptible when they are pretended. Whatever
we have now to do, we may be sure, first, that its strength and life
must be drawn from the real nature with us and about us a