this a great art indeed. For you ask of an art no more than this, that it shall be adequately representative: there are no comparative degrees.

So when I learn from the works of Ruskin that he can "read a picture to you as, if Mr. Spurgeon knew anything about art, Mr. Spurgeon would read it,—that is to say, from the plain, common-sense Protestant side"; or when I learn from the works of Mr. George Moore that Sir Frederick Burton made of the National Gallery a Museum; or when one complains of a picture that it is not didactic, and another that it holds a thought, I make haste to laugh lest I should do wrong to Tuscany, that looked upon the world to love it: for she saw that it was very good.

III

A SACRIFICE AT PRATO

(An Old-fashioned Narrative)

[Footnote: Perhaps I may be allowed to explain that this article was written from the standpoint of a cultivated Pagan of the Empire, who should have journeyed in Time as well as Space.]

The rim of the sun was burning the hill tops, and already the vanguard of his strength stemming the morning mists, when I and my companion first trod the dust of a small town which stood in our path. It still lay very hard and white, however, and sharply edged to its girdle of olives and mulberry trees drenched in dews, a compactly folded town, well fortified by strong walls and many towers, with the mist upon it and softly over it like a veil. For it lay well under the shade of the hills awaiting the sun's coming. In the streets, though they were by no means asleep, but, contrariwise, busy with the traffic of men and pack-mules, there was a shrewd bite as of night air; looking up we could perceive how faint the blue of the sky was, and the cloud-flaw how rosy yet with the flush of Aurora's