That the earlier painters came nearer to fact, that they were less of the art, artificial, cannot be better shown than by the statement of a few examples from their works.  There is a magnificent Niello work by an unknown Florentine artist, on which is a group of the Saviour in the lap of the Virgin.  She is old, (a most touching point); lamenting aloud, clutches passionately the heavy-weighted body on her knee; her mouth is open.  Altogether it is one of the most powerful appeals possible to be conceived; for there are few but will consider this identification with humanity to be of more effect than any refined or emasculate treatment of the same subject by later artists, in which we have the fact forgotten for the sake of the type of religion, which the Virgin was always taken to represent, whence she is shown as still young; as if, nature being taken typically, it were not better to adhere to the emblem throughout, confident by this means to maintain its appropriateness, and, therefore, its value and force.

In the Niello work here mentioned there is a delineation of the Fall, in which the serpent has given to it a human head with a most sweet, crafty expression.  Now in these two instances the style is somewhat rude; but there are passion and feeling in it.  This is not a question of mere execution, but of mind, however developed.  Let us not mistake, however, from this that execution should be neglected, but only maintained as a most important aid, and in that quality alone, so that we do not forget the soul for the hand.  The power of representing an object, that its entire intention may be visible, its lesson felt, is all that is absolutely necessary:  mere technicalities of performance are but additions; and not the real intent and end of painting, as many have considered them to be.  For as the knowledge is stronger and more pure in Masaccio than in the Caracci, and the faith higher and greater,—­so the first represents nature with more true feeling and love, with a deeper insight into her tenderness; he follows her more humbly, and has produced to us more of her simplicity; we feel his appeal to be more earnest:  it is the crying out of the man, with none of the strut of the actor.

Let us have the mind and the mind’s-workings, not the remains of earnest thought which has been frittered away by a long dreary course of preparatory study, by which all life has been evaporated.  Never forget that there is in the wide river of nature something which every body who has a rod and line may catch, precious things which every one may dive for.

It need not be feared that this course of education would lead to a repetition of the toe-trippings of the earliest Italian school, a sneer which is manifestly unfair; for this error, as well as several others of a similar kind, was not the result of blindness or stupidity, but of the simple ignorance of what had not been applied to the service of painting at their time.  It cannot be shown that they were