happy fortune none have shared with them.  To show that with all these qualifications they have been pre-eminent in energy and dignity, let us instance the ’Air Demons’ of Orcagna, where there is a woman borne through the air by an Evil Spirit.  Her expression is the most terrible imaginable; she grasps her bearer with desperation, looking out around her into space, agonized with terror.  There are other figures in the same picture of men who have been cast down, and are falling through the air:  one descends with his hands tied, his chin up, and long hair hanging from his head in a mass.  One of the Evil Spirits hovering over them has flat wings, as though they were made of plank:  this gives a most powerful character to the figure.  Altogether, this picture contains perhaps a greater amount of bold imagination and originality of conception than any of the kind ever painted.  For sublimity there are few works which equal the ‘Archangels’ of Giotto, who stand singly, holding their sceptres, and with relapsed wings.  The ‘Paul’ of Masaccio is a well-known example of the dignified simplicity of which these artists possessed so large a share.  These instances might be multiplied without end; but surely enough have been cited in the way of example to show the surpassing talent and knowledge of these painters, and their consequent success, by following natural principles, until the introduction of false and meretricious ornament led the Arts from the simple chastity of nature, which it is as useless to attempt to elevate as to endeavour to match the works of God by those of man.  Let the artist be content to study nature alone, and not dream of elevating any of her works, which are alone worthy of representation.{5}

{5} The sources from which these examples are drawn, and where many more might be found, are principally:—­D’Agincourt:  “Histoire de l’Art par les Monumens;”—­Rossini:  “Storia della Pittura;”—­Ottley:  “Italian School of Design," and his 120 Fac-similes of scarce prints;—­and the “Gates of San Giovanni,” by Ghiberti; of which last a cast of one entire is set up in the Central School of Design, Somerset House; portions of the same are also in the Royal Academy.

The Arts have always been most important moral guides.  Their flourishing has always been coincident with the most wholesome period of a nation’s:  never with the full and gaudy bloom which but hides corruption, but the severe health of its most active and vigorous life; its mature youth, and not the floridity of age, which, like the wide full open petals of a flower, indicates that its glory is about to pass away.  There has certainly always been a period like the short warm season the Canadians call the “Indian Summer,” which is said to be produced by the burning of the western forests, causing a factitious revival of the dying year:  so there always seems to have been a flush of life before the final death of the Arts in each period:—­in Greece, in the sculptors and architects of the time after