unprofitable and hardening influence, unless so far as out of the
suffering, hinted rather than expressed, we may raise into nobler relief
the eternal enduring of fortitude and affection, of mercy and
self-devotion, or when, as by the threshing-floor of Ornan, and by the
cave of Lazarus, the angel of the Lord is to be seen in the
chastisement, and his love to be manifested to the despair of men.

Sec. 33. Recapitulation

Thus, then, we have in some sort enumerated those evil signs which are
most necessary to be shunned in the seeking of ideal beauty,[46] though
it is not the knowledge of them, but the dread and hatred of them, which
will effectually aid the painter; as on the other hand it is not by mere
admission of the loveliness of good and holy expression that its subtile
characters are to be traced. Raffaelle himself, questioned on this
subject, made doubtful answer; he probably could not trace through what
early teaching, or by what dies of emotion the image had been sealed
upon his heart. Our own Bacon, who well saw the impossibility of
reaching it by the combination of many separate beauties, yet explains
not the nature of that "kind of felicity" to which he attributes
success. I suppose those who have conceived and wrought the loveliest
things, have done so by no theorizing, but in simple labor of love, and
could not, if put to a bar of rationalism, defend all points of what
they had done, but painted it in their own delight, and to the delight
of all besides, only always with that respect of conscience and "fear of
swerving from that which is right, which maketh diligent observers of
circumstances the loose regard whereof is the nurse of vulgar folly, no
less than Solomon's attention thereunto was of natural furtherances the
most effectual to make him eminent above others, for he gave good heed,
and pierced everything to the very ground."[47]

With which good heed, and watching of the instants when men feel warmly
and rightly, as the Indians do for the diamond in their washing of sand,
and that with the desire and hope of finding true good in men, and not
with the ready vanity that sets itself to fiction instantly, and carries
its potter's wheel about with it always, (off which there will come only
clay vessels of regular shape after all,) instead of the pure
mirror that can show the seraph standing by the human body--standing as
signal to the heavenly land:[48] with this heed and this charity, there
are