Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/207

Rh impulse or incident. This distinction holds in all ages, but the distinction between the franchise of Northern, and the constancy of Byzantine, art, depends partly on the unsystematic play of emotion in the one, and the appointed sequence of known fact or determined judgment in the other.

You will find in the beginning of M. Didron's book, already quoted, an admirable analysis of what may be called the classic sequence of Christian theology, as written in the sculpture of the Cathedral of Chartres. You will find in the treatment of the facade of Orvieto the beginning of the development of passionate romance,—the one being grave sermon writing; the other, cheerful romance or novel writing: so that the one requires you to think, the other only to feel or perceive; the one is always a parable with a meaning, the other only a story with an impression.

211. And here I get at a result concerning Greek art, which is very sweeping and wide indeed. That it is all parable, but Gothic, as distinct from it, literal. So absolutely does this hold, that it reaches down to our modern school of landscape. You know I have always