the slave of an archaic smile:  and he is a designer as frank, instinctive, and exhaustless as Tintoret, while Leonardo’s design is only an agony of science, admired chiefly because it is painful, and capable of analysis in its best accomplishment.  Luini has left nothing behind him that is not lovely; but of his life I believe hardly anything is known beyond remnants of tradition which murmur about Lugano and Saronno, and which remain ungleaned.  This only is certain, that he was born in the loveliest district of North Italy, where hills, and streams, and air meet in softest harmonies.  Child of the Alps, and of their divinest lake, he is taught, without doubt or dismay, a lofty religious creed, and a sufficient law of life, and of its mechanical arts.  Whether lessoned by Leonardo himself, or merely one of many disciplined in the system of the Milanese school, he learns unerringly to draw, unerringly and enduringly to paint.  His tasks are set him without question day by day, by men who are justly satisfied with his work, and who accept it without any harmful praise, or senseless blame.  Place, scale, and subject are determined for him on the cloister wall or the church dome; as he is required, and for sufficient daily bread, and little more, he paints what he has been taught to design wisely, and has passion to realize gloriously:  every touch he lays is eternal, every thought he conceives is beautiful and pure:  his hand moves always in radiance of blessing; from day to day his life enlarges in power and peace; it passes away cloudlessly, the starry twilight remaining arched far against the night.

158.  Oppose to such a life as this that of a great painter amidst the elements of modern English liberty.  Take the life of Turner, in whom the artistic energy and inherent love of beauty were at least as strong as in Luini:  but, amidst the disorder and ghastliness of the lower streets of London, his instincts in early infancy were warped into toleration of evil, or even into delight in it.  He gathers what he can of instruction by questioning and prying among half-informed masters; spells out some knowledge of classical fable; educates himself, by an admirable force, to the production of wildly majestic or pathetically tender and pure pictures, by which he cannot live.  There is no one to judge them, or to command him:  only some of the English upper classes hire him to paint their houses and parks, and destroy the drawings afterwards by the most wanton neglect.  Tired of laboring carefully, without either reward or praise, he dashes out into various experimental and popular works—­makes himself the servant of the lower public, and is dragged hither and thither at their will; while yet, helpless and guideless, he indulges his idiosyncrasies till they change into insanities; the strength of his soul increasing its sufferings, and giving force to its errors; all the purpose of life degenerating into instinct; and the web of his