f
God. Neither of them has left one completely noble or completely
didactic picture; while Holbein and Botticelli, in consummate pieces of
art, led the way before the eyes of all men, to the purification of
their Church and land.

173. III. But the need of reformation presented itself to these two men
last named on entirely different terms.

To Holbein, when the word of the Catholic Church proved false, and its
deeds bloody; when he saw it selling permission of sin in his native
Augsburg, and strewing the ashes of its enemies on the pure Alpine
waters of Constance, what refuge was there for _him_ in more ancient
religion? Shall he worship Thor again, and mourn over the death of
Balder? He reads Nature in her desolate and narrow truth, and she
teaches him the Triumph of Death.

But, for Botticelli, the grand gods are old, are immortal. The priests
may have taught falsely the story of the Virgin;--did they not also lie,
in the name of Artemis, at Ephesus;--in the name of Aphrodite, at
Cyprus?--but shall, therefore, Chastity or Love be dead, or the full
moon paler over Arno? Saints of Heaven and Gods of Earth!--shall _these_
perish because vain men speak evil of them! Let _us_ speak good forever,
and grave, as on the rock, for ages to come, the glory of Beauty, and
the triumph of Faith.

174. Holbein had bitterer task.

Of old, the one duty of the painter had been to exhibit the virtues of
this life, and hopes of the life to come. Holbein had to show the vices
of this life, and to obscure the hope of the future. "Yes, we walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, and fear all evil, for Thou
art not with us, and Thy rod and Thy staff comfort us not." He does not
choose this task. It is thrust upon him,--just as fatally as the burial
of the dead is in a plague-struck city. These are the things he sees,
and must speak. He will not become a better artist thereby; no drawing
of supreme beauty, or beautiful things, will be possible to him. Yet we
cannot say he ought to have done anything else, nor can we praise him
specially in doing this. It is his fate; the fate of all the bravest in
that day.

[Illustration: THE CHILD'S BEDTIME.

(Fig. 5) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut.]

175. For instance, there is no scene about which a shallow and feeble
painter would have been more sure to adopt the commonplaces of the creed
of his time than the death of a child,--chiefly, and most of all, the
death of a country child,--