more fitted for the uses of the world, more sensitive to what is noble in nature—­by its contemplation.  At the best Correggio does but please us in our lighter moments, and we are apt to feel that the pleasure he has given is of an enervating kind.  To expect obvious morality of any artist is confessedly absurd.  It is not the artist’s province to preach, or even to teach, except by remote suggestion.  Yet the mind of the artist may be highly moralised, and then he takes rank not merely with the ministers to refined pleasure, but also with the educators of the world.  He may, for example, be penetrated with a just sense of humanity like Shakspere, or with a sublime temperance like Sophocles, instinct with prophetic intuition like Michelangelo, or with passionate experience like Beethoven.  The mere sight of the work of Pheidias is like breathing pure health-giving air.  Milton and Dante were steeped in religious patriotism; Goethe was pervaded with philosophy, and Balzac with scientific curiosity.  Ariosto, Cervantes, and even Boccaccio are masters in the mysteries of common life.  In all these cases the tone of the artist’s mind is felt throughout his work:  what he paints, or sings, or writes, conveys a lesson while it pleases.  On the other hand, depravity in an artist or a poet percolates through work which has in it nothing positive of evil, and a very miasma of poisonous influence may rise from the apparently innocuous creations of a tainted soul.  Now Correggio is moralised in neither way—­neither as a good nor as a bad man, neither as an acute thinker nor as a deliberate voluptuary.  He is simply sensuous.  On his own ground he is even very fresh and healthy:  his delineation of youthful maternity, for example, is as true as it is beautiful; and his sympathy with the gleefulness of children is devoid of affectation.  We have then only to ask ourselves whether the defect in him of all thought and feeling which is not at once capable of graceful fleshly incarnation, be sufficient to lower him in the scale of artists.  This question must of course be answered according to our definition of the purposes of art.  There is no doubt that the most highly organised art—­that which absorbs the most numerous human qualities and effects a harmony between the most complex elements—­is the noblest.  Therefore the artist who combines moral elevation and power of thought with a due appreciation of sensual beauty, is more elevated and more beneficial than one whose domain is simply that of carnal loveliness.  Correggio, if this be so, must take a comparatively low rank.  Just as we welcome the beautiful athlete for the radiant life that is in him, but bow before the personality of Sophocles, whose perfect form enshrined a noble and highly educated soul, so we gratefully accept Correggio for his grace, while we approach the consummate art of Michelangelo with reverent awe.  It is necessary in aesthetics as elsewhere to recognise a hierarchy of excellence, the grades of which are