so.

Look at this piece of Sandro's work, the Libyan Sibyl.[AH]

It is as ordered and normal as the Egyptian's--as graceful and facile as
Gainsborough's. It retains the majesty of old religion; it is invested
with the joy of newly awakened childhood.

Mind, I do not expect you--do not wish you--to enjoy Botticelli's dark
engraving as much as Gainsborough's aerial sketch; for due comparison of
the men, painting should be put beside painting. But there is enough
even in this copy of the Florentine plate to show you the junction of
the two powers in it--of prophecy, and delight.

148. Will these two powers, do you suppose, be united in the same manner
in the contemporary Northern art? That Northern school is my subject
to-day; and yet I give you, as type of the intermediate condition
between Egypt and England--not Holbein, but Botticelli. I am obliged to
do this; because in the Southern art, the religious temper remains
unconquered by the doctrines of the Reformation. Botticelli was--what
Luther wished to be, but could not be--a reformer still believing in the
Church: his mind is at peace; and his art, therefore, can pursue the
delight of beauty, and yet remain prophetic. But it was far otherwise in
Germany. There the Reformation of manners became the destruction of
faith; and art therefore, not a prophecy, but a protest. It is the
chief work of the greatest Protestant who ever lived,[AI] which I ask
you to study with me to-day.

149. I said that the power of engraving had developed itself during the
introduction of three new--(practically and vitally new, that is to
say)--elements, into the minds of men: elements which briefly may be
expressed thus:

1. Classicism, and Literary Science.

2. Medicine, and Physical Science.[AJ]

3. Reformation, and Religious Science.

And first of Classicism.

You feel, do not you, in this typical work of Gainsborough's, that his
subject as well as his picture is 'artless' in a lovely sense;--nay, not
only artless, but ignorant, and unscientific, in a beautiful way? You
would be afterwards remorseful, I think, and angry with yourself--seeing
the effect produced on her face--if you were to ask this little lady to
spell a very long word? Also, if you wished to know how many times the
sevens go in forty-nine, you would perhaps wisely address yourself
elsewhere. On the other hand, you do not doubt that _this_ lady[AK]
knows very well how many times the sevens go in fort