"Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?
In both, of such lower types are we
Precisely because of our wider nature;
For time, their's—ours, for eternity.
"To-day's brief passion limits their range;
It seethes with the morrow for us and more.
They are perfect—how else? They shall never change:
We are faulty—why not? We have time in store."B
B: Old Pictures in Florence.
Prior to the period when a sceptical philosophy came down like a blight, and destroyed the bloom of his art and faith, he thus recognized that growing knowledge was an essential condition of growing goodness. Pompilia shone with a glory that mere knowledge could not give (if there were such a thing as mere knowledge).