shall blush for our inconstancy, our indifference, our imbecility, which
have led us to neglect such a pregnant communion. Not only persons but
works of art produce this effect, and they are those with whom it is the
greatest benefit to live.

It is true that, compared with Giotto, Rembrandt, or Michael Angelo,
Duerer does not appear comprehensive enough. It is with him as with
Milton; we wish to add others to his great gifts, above all to take him
out from his surroundings, to free him from the accidents of place and
time. In one sense he is poorer than Milton: we cannot go to him as to a
source of emotional exhilaration. If he ever proves himself able so to
stir us, it is too occasionally to be a reason why we frequent him as it
may be one why we frequent Milton. Nevertheless, the greater characters
of control which are his in an unmatched degree, his constancy, his
resource and deliberate effectiveness, joined to that blandness, that
sunshine, which seems so often to replace emotion and thought in works
of image-shaping art, are of priceless beneficence, and with them we
would abide. Intellectual passion may seem indeed sometimes to dissipate
this sunshine and control without making good their loss. Such cases
enable us to feel that the latter are more essential: and it is these
latter qualities which Duerer possessed in such fulness. In return for
our contemplation, they build up within us the dignity of man and render
it radiant and serene. Those who have felt their influence longest and
most constantly will believe that they may well warrant the modern
prophet who wrote:

The idea of beauty and of human nature perfect on all its sides, which
is the dominant idea of poetry, is a true and invaluable idea, though it
has not yet had the success that the idea of conquering the obvious
faults of our animality and of a human nature perfect on the moral