I said just now, the Titian was the only perfect one of the four. Everything there is done with absolute rightness: and you don’t see how. The hair in the Lippi is too stiff,—in the Velasquez, too slight; and one sees that it is drawn in the one, dashed in the other; but by Titian only, ‘painted’—you don’t know how.
I say the Titian is the most perfect. It does not [[294]]follow that it is the best. There are gifts shown in the others, and feelings, which are not in it; and of which the relative worth may be matter of question. For instance, the Lippi, as I told you before, is a painting wrought in real Religion;—that is to say, in the binding of the heart in obedience to the conceived nature and laws of God.
The Titian is wrought in what Mr. Harrison calls the Religion of Humanity: but ought more accurately to call, the Religion of Manity, (for the English use of the word ‘humane’ is continually making him confuse benevolence with religion,)—that is to say, in the binding of the heart in obedience to the nature and laws of Man.
And, finally, the Velasquez is wrought in the still more developed Modern Religion of Dogity, or obedience of the heart to the nature and laws of Dog; (the lovely little idol, you observe, dominant on velvet throne, as formerly the Madonna). Of which religion, as faithfully held by the brave British Squire, in its widest Catholic form of horse-and-dog-ity, and passionately and tenderly indulged by the devoted British matron in the sectarian limitation of Lapdogity,—there is more to be told than Velasquez taught, or than we can learn, to-day. [[295]]
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
I. Affairs of the Company.
I leave our accounts now wholly in the hands of Mr. Walker and Mr. Rydings, reserving to myself only the usual—as I understand—and proper functions of Director,—that of spending the Company’s money. I have ordered, as above stated, repairs at Barmouth, which will somewhat exceed our rents, I fancy; and a mineral cabinet for the Museum at Sheffield, in which the minerals are to rest, each in its own little cell, on purple, or otherwise fittingly coloured, velvet of the best. Permission to handle and examine them at ease will be eventually given, as a moral and mineralogical prize to the men who attain a certain proficiency in the two sciences of Mineralogy and Behaviour.
Our capital, it will be observed, is increased, by honest gift, this month, to the encouraging amount of £16 16s.;—the iniquitous interest, of which our shareholders get none, I have pretty nearly spent in our new land purchase.
Cash Account of St. George’s Company.
(From June 15th to Aug. 15th, 1876.)