You had then the Norman and Lombard races coming down on this: kings,
and hunters--splendid in war--insatiable of action. You had the Greek
and Arabian races flowing from the east, bringing with them the law of
the City, and the dream of the Desert.
Cimabue--Etruscan born, gave, we saw, the life of the Norman to the
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.
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