There are some artists of whom one would naturally write in a lyrical
strain, with praise of the flesh, and those things which add to its
beauty, freshness, and mystery--fair scenes of mountain, woodland, or
sea-shore; blue sky, white cloud and sunlight, or the deep and starry
night; youth and health, strength and fertility, frankness and freedom.
And, in such a strain, one would insist that the fondness and
intoxication which these things quicken was natural, wise, and lovely.
But, quite as naturally, when one has to speak of Duerer, the mind
becomes filled with the exhilaration and the staidness that the desire
to know and the desire to act rightly beget; with the dignity of
conscious comprehension, the serenity of accomplished duty with all the
strenuousness and ardour of which the soul is capable; with science
and religion.

It is natural to refer often to the towering eminence of these virtues
in Michael Angelo; both he and Duerer were not only great artists, and
active and powerful minds, but men imbued with, and conservative of,
piety. And it seems to me, if we are to appreciate and sympathise deeply
with such men, we must try to understand the religion they believed in;
to estimate, not only what its value was supposed to be in those days,
but what value it still has for us. Surely what they prized so highly
must have had real and lasting worth? Surely it can only be the relation
of that value to common speech and common thought which has changed, not
its relation to man's most essential nature? Therefore I will first try
to arrive at a general notion of the real worth of their ideas,--that
is, the worth that is equally great from their point of view and ours.

The whole of that period, the period of the so belauded Renascence, had
within it (or so it seems to me) an incurable insufficiency, which
troubles the affections of those who praise or condemn it; so that they