And through and in the marble we may see that the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth: yet as visibly a sleep that shall know no ending until the last day break, and the last shadow flee away; until then, she "shall not return." Her hands are laid on her breast—not praying—she has no need to pray now. She wears her dress of every day, clasped at her throat, girdled at her waist, the hem of it drooping over her feet. No disturbance of its folds by pain of sickness, no binding, no shrouding of her sweet form, in death more than in life. As a soft, low wave of summer sea, her breast rises; no more: the rippled gathering of its close mantle droops to the belt, then sweeps to her feet, straight as drifting snow. And at her feet her dog lies watching her; the mystery of his mortal life joined, by love, to her immortal one.
Few know, and fewer love, the tomb and its place,—not shrine, for it stands bare by the cathedral wall: only, by chance, a cross is cut deep into one of the foundation stones behind her head. But no goddess statue of the Greek cities, no nun's image among the cloisters of Apennine, no fancied light of angel in the homes of heaven, has more divine rank among the thoughts of men.
250. In so much as the reader can see of it, and learn, either by print or cast, or beside it; (and he would do well to stay longer in that transept than in the Tribune at Florence,) he may receive from it, unerring canon of what is evermore Lovely and Right in the dealing of the Art of Man with his fate, and his passions. Evermore lovely, and right. These two virtues of visible things go always hand in hand: but the workman is bound to assure himself of his Rightness first; then the loveliness will come.
And primarily, from this sculpture, you are to learn what a "Master" is. Here was one man at least, who knew his business, once upon a time! Unaccusably;—none of your fool's heads or clown's hearts can find a fault here! "Dog-fancier,[49] cobbler, tailor, or churl, look here"—says Master Jacopo—"look! I know what a brute is, better than you, I know what a silken tassel is—what a leathern belt is—Also, what a woman is; and also—what a Law of God is, if you care to know." This it is, to be a Master.
Then secondly—you are to note that with all the certain rightness of its material fact, this sculpture still is the Sculpture of a Dream. Ilaria is dressed as she was in life. But she never lay so on her pillow! nor so, in her grave. Those straight folds, straightly laid as a snowdrift, are impossible; known by the Master to be so—chiseled with a hand as steady as an iron beam, and as true as a ray of light—in defiance of your law of Gravity to the Earth. That law prevailed on her shroud, and prevails on her dust: but not on herself, nor on the Vision of her.
Then thirdly, and lastly. You are to learn that the doing of a piece of Art such as this is possible to the hand of Man just in the measure of his obedience to the laws which are indeed over his heart, and not over his dust: primarily, as I have said, to that great one, "Thou shalt Love the Lord thy God." Which command is straight and clear; and all men may obey it if they will,—so only that they be early taught to know Him.
And that is precisely the piece of exact Science which is not taught at present in our Board Schools—so that although my friend, with whom I was staying, was not himself, in the modern sense, ill-educated; neither did he conceive me to be so,—he yet thought it good for himself and me to have that Inscription, "Lord, teach us to Pray," illuminated on the house wall—if perchance either he or I could yet learn what John (when he still had his head) taught his Disciples.
251. But alas, for us only at last, among the people of all ages and in all climes, the lesson has become too difficult; and the Father of all, in every age, in every clime adored, is Rejected of science, as an Outside Worker, in Cockneydom of the nineteenth century.
Rejected of Science: well; but not yet, not yet—by the men who can do, as well as know. And though I have neither strength nor time, nor at present the mind to go into any review of the work done by the Third and chief School of our younger painters, headed by Burne Jones;[50] and though I know its faults, palpable enough, like those of Turner, to the poorest sight; and though I am discouraged in all its discouragements, I still hold in fullness to the hope of it in which I wrote the close of the third lecture I ever gave in Oxford—of which I will ask the reader here in conclusion to weigh the words, set down in the days of my best strength, so far as I know; and with the uttermost care given to that inaugural Oxford work, to "speak only that which I did know."
252. "Think of it, and you will find that so far from art being immoral, little else except art is moral;—that life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality: and for the words 'good,' and 'wicked,' used of men, you may almost substitute the words 'Makers' or 'Destroyers.'