Peter's look small
as a drinking-cup, shutting it soon out of sight to north, east, south,
and west, by the mysterious horizon-fold which no man can lift. And beyond
this horizon-fold of our sky shut down again other domes, which the wisest
astronomer may not measure, in whose distances our little ball and we,
with all our spinning, can hardly show like a star. If St. Peter's were
swallowed up to-morrow, it would make no real odds to anybody but the
Pope. The probabilities are that Michel Angelo himself has forgotten all
about it.
Titian and Raphael, and all the great brotherhood of painters, may kneel
reverently as priests before Nature's face, and paint pictures at sight of
which all men's eyes shall fill with grateful tears; and yet all men shall
go away, and find that the green shade of a tree, the light on a young
girl's face, the sleep of a child, the flowering of a flower, are to their
pictures as living life to beautiful death.
Coming to Art's two highest spheres,--music of sound and music of
speech,--we find that Beethoven and Mozart, and Milton and Shakespeare,
have written.
Pages:
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130