dness, other than those which attach to every
group of gentle mother and ruddy babe; while his Faiths, Charities, or
other well-ordered and emblem-fitted virtues are even less lovely than
his ordinary portraits of women.

It was a faultful temper, which, having so mighty a power of realization
at command, never became so much interested in any fact of human history
as to spend one touch of heartfelt skill upon it;--which, yielding
momentarily to indolent imagination, ended, at best, in a Puck, or a
Thais; a Mercury as Thief, or a Cupid as Linkboy. How wide the interval
between this gently trivial humor, guided by the wave of a feather, or
arrested by the enchantment of a smile,--and the habitual dwelling of
the thoughts of the great Greeks and Florentines among the beings and
the interests of the eternal world!

156. In some degree it may indeed be true that the modesty and sense of
the English painters are the causes of their simple practice. All that
they did, they did well, and attempted nothing over which conquest was
doubtful. They knew they could paint men and women: it did not follow
that they could paint angels. Their own gifts never appeared to them so
great as to call for serious question as to the use to be made of them.
"They could mix colors and catch likeness--yes; but were they therefore
able to teach religion, or reform the world? To support themselves
honorably, pass the hours of life happily, please their friends, and
leave no enemies, was not this all that duty could require, or prudence
recommend? Their own art was, it seemed, difficult enough to employ all
their genius: was it reasonable to hope also to be poets or theologians?
Such men had, indeed, existed; but the age of miracles and prophets was
long past; nor, because they could seize the trick of an expression, or
the turn of a head, had they any right to think themselves able to
conceive heroes with Homer, or gods with Michael Angelo."

157. Such was, in the main, their feeling: wise, modest, unenvious, and
unambitious. Meaner men, their contemporaries or successors, raved of
high art with incoherent passion; arrogated to themselves an equality
with the masters of elder time, and declaimed against the degenerate
tastes of a public which acknowledged not the return of the Heraclidae.
But the two great--the two only painters of their age--happy in a
reputation founded as deeply in the heart as in the judgment of mankind,
demanded no higher fun