215. Do not, therefore, I entreat you, think that I speak with any purpose of defending one system of theology against another; least of all, reformed against Catholic theology. There probably never was a system of religion so destructive to the loveliest arts and the loveliest virtues of men, as the modern Protestantism, which consists in an assured belief in the Divine forgiveness of all your sins, and the Divine correctness of all your opinions. But in the first searching and sincere activities, the doctrines of the Reformation produced the most instructive art, and the grandest literature, yet given to the world; while Italy, in her interested resistance to those doctrines, polluted and exhausted the arts she already possessed. Her iridescence of dying statesmanship--her magnificence of hollow piety,--were represented in the arts of Venice and Florence by two mighty men on either side--Titian and Tintoret,--Michael Angelo and Raphael. Of the calm and brave statesmanship, the modest and faithful religion, which had been her strength, I am content to name one chief representative artist at Venice, John Bellini. 216. Let me now map out for you roughly the chronological relations of these five men. It is impossible to remember the minor years, in dates; I will give you them broadly in decades, and you can add what finesse afterwards you like. Recollect, first, the great year 1480. Twice four's eight--you can't mistake it. In that year Michael Angelo was five years old; Titian, three years old; Raphael, within three years of being born. So see how easily it comes. Michael Angelo five years old--and you divide six between Titian and Raphael,--three on each side of your standard year, 1480. Then add to 1480, forty years--an easy number to recollect, surely; and you get the exact year of Raphael's death, 1520. In that forty years all the new effort and deadly catastrophe took place. 1480 to 1520. Now, you have only to fasten to those forty years, the life of Bellini, who represents the best art before them, and of Tintoret, who represents the best art after them. 217. I cannot fit you these on with a quite comfortable exactness, but with very slight inexactness I can fit them firmly. John Bellini was ninety years old when he died. He lived fifty years before the great forty of change, and he saw the forty, and died. Then Tintoret is born; lives eighty[42] years after the forty, and closes, in dying, the sixteenth century, and the great arts of the world. Those are the dates, roughly; now for the facts connected with them. John Bellini precedes the change, meets, and resists it victoriously to his death. Nothing of flaw or failure is ever to be discerned in him. Then Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Titian, together, bring about the deadly change, playing into each other's hands--Michael Angelo being the chief captain in evil; Titian, in natural force.