228. Be not too squeamish in the choice of your materials; you will disgrace the best, if you cannot give value to the worst: the gold and azure wasted on Rosselli's[42] draperies cannot give value to their folds or hide the wants beneath.
229. There are moments when all are men, and only men, and ought to be no more; but the artist, who when his daily task is over can lock his meditation up with his tools—ranks with mechanics.
230. Date the death of emulation and of excellence from the moment of your employer's indifference; and mediocrity of success from the moment of his meddling with the process of your work.
231. One of the most unexplored regions of art are dreams, and what may be called the personification of sentiment: the Prophets, Sibyls and Patriarchs of Michael Angelo are so many branches of one great sentiment. The dream of Raffaello is a characteristic representation of a dream; the dream of Michael Angelo is moral inspiration, a sublime sentiment.
Coroll.—Of three visionary subjects ascribed to Raffaello and known from the prints of Marc Antonio, Georgio Mantuano, and Agostino Veneziano, this alludes to the last, called by the Italians Stregozzo, by the French "La Carcasse:" an association of ideas big with the very elements of dreams, and almost a definition. That it be a conception of Raffaello rests on no other proof than the tablet of Marc Antonio and its own internal merit; which is so uniform that although one principal figure is undoubtedly transcribed from another in the cartoon of Pisa, the whole can never be considered as a pasticcio.