need I point out to you how, between the persecution of other
people's creeds and the absolution of one's own crimes, all Christian
error is concluded."

In relation to this Mr. Ruskin referred to the history of the founder of
the power of the Scalas, Mastino, a simple citizen, chosen first to be
podesta and then captain of Verona, for his justice and sagacity, who,
although wise and peaceful in his policy, employed the civil power in
the persecution of heresy, burning above two hundred persons; and he
also related how Can Signorio della Scala on his death-bed, after giving
a pious charge to his children, ordered the murder of his
brother--examples of the boundless possibility of self-deception. One of
these children killed the other, and was himself driven from the throne,
so ending the dynasty of the Scalas. Referring to his illustrations, Mr.
Ruskin pointed out the expressions of hope, in the conquest of death,
and the rewards of faith, apparent in the art of the time. The Lombard
architecture expresses the triumph of law over passion, the Christian,
that of hope over sorrow.

Mr. Ruskin concluded his remarks on this period by commenting on the
history and the tomb of Can Grande della Scala, a good knight and true,
as busy and bright a life as is found in the annals of chivalry.

237. III. "The period when classical literature and art were again known
in Italy, and the painters and sculptors, who had been gaining steadily
in power for two hundred years--power not of practice merely, but of
race also--with every circumstance in their favor around them, received
their finally perfect instruction, both in geometrical science, in that
of materials, and in the anatomy and action of the human body. Also the
people about them--the models of their work--had been perfected in
personal beauty by a chivalric war; in imagination by a transcendental
philosophy; in practical intellect by stern struggle for civic law; and
in commerce, not in falsely made or vile or unclean things, but in
lovely things, beautifully and honestly made. And now, therefore, you
get out of all the world's long history since it was peopled by men till
now--you get just fifty years of perfect work. Perfect. It is a strong
word; it is also a _true_ one. The doing of these fifty years is
unaccusably Right, as art; what its sentiment may be--whether too great
or too little, whether superficial or sincere--is another question, but
as artists' work it admits