spective); but I do not raise these points to-day. Admit the aim--let
us note the patience; nor this in engraving only. I have taken an
engraving for my instance, but I might have taken any form of Art. I
call upon all good artists, painters, sculptors, metal-workers, to bear
witness with me in what I now tell the public in their name,--that the
same Fortitude, the same deliberation, the same perseverance in resolute
act--is needed to do _anything_ in Art that is worthy. And why is it,
you workmen, that you are silent always concerning your toil; and mock
at us in your hearts, within that shrine at Eleusis, to the gate of
which you have hewn your way through so deadly thickets of thorn; and
leave us, foolish children, outside, in our conceited thinking either
that we can enter it in play, or that we are grander for not entering?
Far more earnestly is it to be asked, why do you _stoop_ to us as you
mock us? If your secrecy were a noble one,--if, in that incommunicant
contempt, you wrought your own work with majesty, whether we would
receive it or not, it were kindly, though ungraciously, done; but now
you make yourselves our toys, and do our childish will in servile
silence. If engraving were to come to an end this day, and no guided
point should press metal more, do you think it would be in a blaze of
glory that your art would expire?--that those plates in the annuals, and
black proofs in broad shop windows, are of a nobly monumental
character,--"chalybe perennius"? I am afraid your patience has been too
much like yonder poor Italian child's; and over that genius of yours,
low laid by the Matin shore, if it expired so, the lament for Archytas
would have to be sung again;--"pulveris exigui--munera." Suppose you
were to shake off the dust again! cleanse your wings, like the morning
bees on that Matin promontory; rise, in noble _im_patience, for there is
such a thing: the Impatience of the Fourth Cornice.

"Cui buon voler, e giusto amor cavalca."

Shall we try, together, to think over the meaning of that Haste, when
the May mornings come?

FOOTNOTES:

[67] A small portion of this chapter was read by Mr. Ruskin, at Oxford,
in November 1884, as a by-lecture, during the delivery of the course on
the "Pleasures of England."--ED.

[68] The rest of this and the whole of the succeeding paragraph is also
reprinted in _Ariadne Florentina_, Sec. 115, and para. i. of 116.--ED.

CHAPTER IV.[69]

59. It is a wild Mar