tradition of the Greek: eager action to holy contemplation. And what
more is left for his favourite shepherd boy Giotto to do, than this,
except to paint with ever-increasing skill? We fancy he only surpassed
Cimabue--eclipsed by greater brightness.

Not so. The sudden and new applause of Italy would never have been won
by mere increase of the already-kindled light. Giotto had wholly
another work to do. The meeting of the Norman race with the Byzantine
is not merely that of action with repose--not merely that of war with
religion,--it is the meeting of _domestic_ life with _monastic_, and of
practical household sense with unpractical Desert insanity.

I have no other word to use than this last. I use it reverently,
meaning a very noble thing; I do not know how far I ought to say--even
a divine thing. Decide that for yourselves. Compare the Northern farmer
with St. Francis; the palm hardened by stubbing Thornaby waste, with
the palm softened by the imagination of the wounds of Christ. To my own
thoughts, both are divine; decide that for yourselves; but assuredly,
and without possibility of other decision, one is, humanly speaking,
healthy; the other _un_healthy; one sane, the other--insane.

To reconcile Drama with Dream, Cimabue's task was comparatively an easy
one. But to reconcile Sense with--I still use even this following word
reverently--Nonsense, is not so easy; and he who did it first,--no
wonder he has a name in the world.

I must lean, however, still more distinctly on the word "domestic." For
it is not Rationalism and commercial competition--Mr. Stuart Mill's"
other career for woman than that of wife and mother "--which are
reconcilable, by Giotto, or by anybody else, with divine vision. But