outline, every fold of drapery, every attitude was pregnant, to the
artist's own mind at any rate, with meaning. In spite of its
symbolism, what he wrought was never mechanically figurative, but
gifted with the independence of its own beauty, vital with an
inbreathed spirit of life. It was a happy moment, when art had reached
consciousness, and the artist had not yet become self-conscious. The
hand and the brain then really worked together for the procreation of
new forms of grace, not for the repetition of old models, or for the
invention of the strange and startling. 'Delicate, sweet, and
captivating,' are good adjectives to express the effect produced upon
the mind by the contemplation even of the average work of this period.

To study the flowing lines of the great angels traced upon the walls
of the Chapel of S. Sigismund in the Cathedral of Rimini, to follow
the undulations of their drapery that seems to float, to feel the
dignified urbanity of all their gestures, is like listening to one of
those clear early Italian compositions for the voice, which surpasses
in suavity of tone and grace of movement all that Music in her
full-grown vigour has produced. There is indeed something infinitely
charming in the crepuscular moments of the human mind. Whether it be
the rathe loveliness of an art still immature, or the beauty of art
upon the wane--whether, in fact, the twilight be of morning or of
evening, we find in the masterpieces of such periods a placid calm and
chastened pathos, as of a spirit self-withdrawn from vulgar cares,
which in the full light of meridian splendour is lacking. In the
Church of S. Francesco at Rimini the tempered clearness of the dawn is
just about to broaden into day.

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