to which I propose to lead you, of the lives of Cimabue and
Giotto, and the relation of their work at Assisi to the chapel and
chambers of the Vatican.

224. To-day let me finish what I have to tell you of the style of
southern engraving. What sudden bathos in the sentence, you think! So
contemptible the question of style, then, in painting, though not in
literature? You study the 'style' of Homer; the style, perhaps, of
Isaiah; the style of Horace, and of Massillon. Is it so vain to study
the style of Botticelli?

In all cases, it is equally vain, if you think of their style first. But
know their purpose, and then, their way of speaking is worth thinking
of. These apparently unfinished and certainly unfilled outlines of the
Florentine,--clumsy work, as Vasari thought them,--as Mr. Otley and most
of our English amateurs still think them,--are these good or bad
engraving?

You may ask now, comprehending their motive, with some hope of answering
or being answered rightly. And the answer is, They are the finest
gravers' work ever done yet by human hand. You may teach, by process of
discipline and of years, any youth of good artistic capacity to engrave
a plate in the modern manner; but only the noblest passion, and the
tenderest patience, will ever engrave one line like these of Sandro
Botticelli.

225. Passion, and patience! Nay, even these you may have to-day in
England, and yet both be in vain. Only a few years ago, in one of our
northern iron-foundries, a workman of intense power and natural
art-faculty set himself to learn engraving;--made his own tools; gave
all the spare hours of his laborious life to learn their use; learnt it;
and engraved a plate which, in manipulation, no professional engraver
would be ashamed of. He engraved his blast furnace, and the casting of a
beam of a steam engine. This, to him, was the power of God,--it was his
life. No greater earnestness was ever given by man to promulgate a
Gospel. Nevertheless, the engraving is absolutely worthless. The blast
furnace _is not_ the power of God; and the life of the strong spirit was
as much consumed in the flames of it, as ever driven slave's by the
burden and heat of the day.

How cruel to say so, if he yet lives, you think! No, my friends; the
cruelty will be in you, and the guilt, if, having been brought here to
learn that God is your Light, you yet leave the blast furnace to be the
only light of England.

226. It has been, as I said in the