Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/217

Rh Italian pieta, you will arrive presently in another group of ideas, and end in misericordia, mercy, and pity. You must not depend on the form of the word; you must find out what it stands for in Horace's mind, and in Virgil's. More than race to the Roman; more than power to the statesman; yet helpless beside the grave, "Non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te, Restituet pietas."

Nay, also what it stands for as an attribute, not only of men, but of gods; nor of those only as merciful, but also as avenging. Against Æneas himself, Dido invokes the waves of the Tyrrhene Sea, "si quid pia numina possunt." Be assured there is no getting at the matter by dictionary or context. To know what love means, you must love; to know what piety means, you must be pious.

223. Perhaps you dislike the word, now, from its vulgar use. You may have another if you choose, a metaphorical one,—close enough it seems to Christianity, and yet still absolutely distinct from it,—. Suppose, as you watch the white bloom of the olives of Val d'Arno and Val di Nievole, which modern piety and economy suppose were grown by God