Marvels Of Riches
Are Lavished Upon Chapels And Altars, Which Again Are So Burdened With
Bronze Gilded Or Silver Plated, And Precious Stones Wrought And
Unwrought, That The Soul, Or If Not The Soul The Taste, Shrinks Dismayed
From Them.
Execution in default of inspiration has had its way to the
last excess; there is nothing that it has
Not done to show what it can
do; and all that it has done is a triumph of misguided skill and power.
But it would be a mistake for the spectator to imagine that anything has
been done from the spirit in which he receives it; everything is the
expression of devoted faith in the forms that the art of the time
offered.
In the monstrous marble tableau, say, of "Religion Triumphing Over
Heresy," he may be very sure that the artist was not winking an ironical
eye where he made Faith spurning Schism with her foot look very much
like a lady of imperfect breeding who has lost her temper; he was most
devoutly in earnest, or at least those were so, both cleric and laic,
for whom he wrought his prodigy. We others, pagans or Protestants, had
better understand that the children of the Church, and especially the
poor children, were serious through all the shows that seem to us
preposterous; they had not renounced something for nothing; if they
bowed that very fallible thing, Reason, to Dogma, they got faith for
their reward and could gladly accept whatever symbol of it was offered
them.
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