It was not by greater learning, not by the discovery of new theories
of art, not by greater taste, nor by "ideal" principles of selection,
that he became the head of the progressive schools of Italy. It was
simply by being interested in what was going on around him, by
substituting the gestures of living men for conventional attitudes,
and portraits of living men for conventional faces, and incidents of
every-day life for conventional circumstances, that he became great,
and the master of the great. Giotto was to his contemporaries
precisely what Millais is to _his_ contemporaries,--a daring
naturalist, in defiance of tradition, idealism, and formalism. The
Giottesque movement in the fourteenth, and Pre-Raphaelite movement in
the nineteenth centuries, are precisely similar in bearing and
meaning: both being the protests of vitality against mortality, of
spirit against letter, and of truth against tradition: and both, which
is the more singular, literally links in one unbroken chain of
feeling; for exactly as Niccola Pisano and Giotto were helped by the
classical sculptures discovered in their time, the Pre-Raphaelites
have been helped by the works of Niccola and Giotto at Pisa and
Florence: and thus the fiery cross of truth has been delivered from
spirit to spirit, over the dust of intervening generations.

But what, it may be said by the reader, is the use of the works of
Giotto to _us_? They may indeed have been wonderful for their time,
and of infinite use in that time; but since, after Giotto, came
Leonardo and Correggio, what is the use of going back to the ruder
art, and republishing it in the year 1854? Why should we fret
ourselves to dig down to the root of the tree, when we may at once
enjoy its fruit and foliage? I answer, first, that in all matters
relating to human intellect, it is a great thing to have hold of the
root: that at least we ought to see it, and taste it, and handle it;