Page:The Obligations of the Universities Towards Art.djvu/32

 in embracing it. In the 'Last Judgement' he painted Christ as the implacable Judge; in following the terribleness of his precursor he enforced a rule of faith that was repellent. Retribution traced by the sons of earth upon individuals behind the veil is—like the law of poetic justice in romantic fiction enforced by some novelists in their dramas—accepted by readers only as a convention of art. Faith trusts in a more patient mood.

To most Italians the offering of beauty was an all-sufficient gift; they accepted this, while they rejected the sternness which accompanied it, and turned aside from tenderer admonitions, losing thus the strength of self-government. The sentiment of Dante's love for Beatrice (particularly as this was elaborated in the Vita Nuova) became part of a religion to them, it surely encouraged a passion to parade emotion and to attitudinize in languor. The gentle sense of many of Giotto's successors made them consult their own hearts as their better guide, and by this evangel they did works that made the whole world kin; but the darnel seed of Italian imagination had taken root, it germinated in a practical disbelief in celestial overrule, and with faith destroyed the people pursued craft and Machiavellianism, which led them to the angry shedding of blood, and even to the use of poison in the sacramental cup.

Art refines the emotions taxed in daily life, and manners ever re-act upon her. In the art of design, after a career of truly sublime advance for over two hundred years, the tares strangled the still robust life. They imposed for every passion a particular action, a turn of the head for every emotion, a contortion of the face for each