The stonecutter and painter.


You have only once to turn over the leaves of Lionardo's sketch book,
in the Ambrosian Library, to see how carpentry is connected with
engineering,--the architect was always a stonecutter, and the
stonecutter not often practically separate, as yet, from the painter,
and never so in general conception of function. You recollect, at a
much later period, Kent's description of Cornwall's steward:

"KENT. You cowardly rascal!--nature disclaims in thee, a tailor made
thee!

CORNWALL. Thou art a strange fellow--a tailor make a man?

KENT. Ay, sir; a stonecutter, or a painter, could not have made him so
ill; though they had been but two hours at the trade."

71. You may consider then this group of artizans with the merchants, as
now forming in each town an important Tiers Etat, or Third State of the
people, occupied in service, first, of the ecclesiastics, who in
monastic bodies inhabited the cloisters round each church; and,
secondly, of the knights, who, with their retainers, occupied, each
family their own fort, in allied defence of their appertaining streets.

72. A Third Estate, indeed; but adverse alike to both the others, to
Montague as to Capulet, when they become disturbers of the public
peace; and having a pride of its own,--hereditary still, but consisting
in the inheritance of skill and knowledge rather than of blood,--which
expressed the sense of such inheritance by taking its name habitually