280. And if you will fix your minds only on the conditions of human life which the Giver of it demands, "He hath shown thee, oh man, what is good, and what doth thy Lord require of thee, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God," you will find that such obedience is always acknowledged by temporal blessing. If, turning from the manifest miseries of cruel ambition, and manifest wanderings of insolent belief, you summon to your thoughts rather the state of unrecorded multitudes, who laboured in silence, and adored in humility, widely as the snows of Christendom brought memory of the Birth of Christ, or her spring sunshine, of His Resurrection, you may know that the promise of the Bethlehem angels has been literally fulfilled; and will pray that your English fields, joyfully as the banks of Arno, may still dedicate their pure lilies to St. Mary of the Flower.
APPENDIX. (NOTES ON THE PLATES ILLUSTRATING THIS VOLUME.)
In the delivery of the preceding Lectures, some account was given of the theologic design of the sculptures by Giovanni Pisano at Orvieto, which I intended to have printed separately, and in more complete form, in this Appendix. But my strength does not now admit of my fulfilling the half of my intentions, and I find myself, at present, tired, and so dead in feeling, that I have no quickness in interpretation, or skill in description of emotional work. I must content myself, therefore, for the time, with a short statement of the points which I wish the reader to observe in the Plates, and which were left unnoticed in the text.
The frontispiece is the best copy I can get, in permanent materials, of a photograph of the course of the Arno, through Pisa, before the old banks were destroyed. Two arches of the Ponte-a-Mare which was carried away in the inundation of 1870, are seen in the distance; the church of La Spina, in its original position overhanging the river; and the buttressed and rugged walls of the mediaeval shore. Never more, any of these, to be seen in reality, by living eyes.
PLATE I.—A small portion of a photograph of Nicolo Pisano's Adoration of the Magi, on the pulpit of the Pisan Baptistery. The intensely Greek character of the heads, and the severely impetuous chiselling (learned from Late Roman rapid work), which drives the lines of the drapery nearly straight, may be seen better in a fragment of this limited measure than in the crowded massing of the entire subject. But it may be observed also that there is both a thoughtfulness and a tenderness in the features, whether of the Virgin or the attendant angel, which already indicate an aim beyond that of Greek art.
PLATE II—The Pulpit of the Baptistery (of which the preceding plate represents a portion). I have only given this general view for convenience of reference. Beautiful photographs of the subject on a large scale are easily attainable.
PLATE III.—The Fountain of Perugia. Executed from a sketch by Mr. Arthur Severn. The perspective of the steps is not quite true; we both tried to get it right, but found that it would be a day or two's work, to little purpose, and so let them go at hazard. The inlaid pattern behind is part of the older wall of the cathedral; the late door is of course inserted.
PLATE IV., LETTER E.—From Norman Bible in the British Museum; showing the moral temper which regulated common ornamentation in the twelfth century.