Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/39

Rh contribute somewhat towards this effect; but the principal cause of it is this, that nearly all the statues and pictures it contains express a state of noble and beautiful peace and life-enjoyment, that they present the ideal of life in a moment of quiet prosperity. The Madonna rests in the contemplation of her heavenly child; the child in the contemplation of the Father in Heaven, who regards with compassion even the fate of the sparrow; John in the vision which makes the desert bloom; Apollo and Venus, in the sense of their own beauty; fauns dance in their own vigorous pleasure of life; and the celebrated wrestlers, I Lottatori, content evidently only in noble sport, or noble earnest. One can see in him that is undermost that he will soon raise himself again, and that he knows he shall. The Pope sits calmly in the consciousness of his domination, and Charles V., on the shore of the stormy ocean, has a pleasure in guiding his horse against the wind, and in steadily keeping his seat whilst yonder ships are tossed by the waves. It may be necessary and important that art should arrest and perpetuate even the transitory dissonances of human life, but the highest aim of art must, however, be to represent the victory over them, as well as life's ideal of truth or beauty.

I have retained from the splendid halls of the Pitti