The instinct for recording which dictates such a note as this is characteristic of Dürer, and called into being many of his drawings. Many such naïve and explicit records as that on the drawing which Raphael sent him are to be found in the flyleaves of books and on the margins of prints and drawings, his possessions. In such notes we may see not only an effect of the curiosity, and desire to arrange and co-ordinate information, which resulted in modern science; but something that is akin to that worship and respect for the deeds and productions of those long dead or in distant countries, in which the human spirit relieved itself from the oppressive expectation of judgment and vengeance which had paralysed it, as the beauty of the supernatural world was lost sight of behind its terrors, and witches and wizards engrossed the popular mind, in which for a time saints and angels had held the ascendancy. The future now became the return of a golden age; not a garish and horrible novelty called heaven and hell, but a human society beautiful as that of the Greeks, grand as that of republican Rome, sweet and hospitable as the household of Jesus and Mary. The Reformation is in part a return of the old fears; but Dürer has recorded only one bad dream, whereas he tells that he was often visited by dreams worthy of the glorious Renascence. "Would to God it were possible for me to see the work and art of the mighty masters to come, who are yet unborn, for I know that I might be improved. Ah! _how often in my_ sleep do I behold great works of art and beautiful things, the like whereof never appear to me awake, but so soon as I awake even the remembrance of them leaveth me!" Why was he not sent to Rome to see the ceiling of the Sistina and Raphael's Stanze? Perchance it was these that he saw in his dreams? CHAPTER VI DÜRER'S JOURNEY TO THE NETHERLANDS I