§ 2. But this possibility ceased at the Reformation. Thenceforward human life became a school of debate, troubled and fearful. Fifteen hundred years of spiritual teaching were called into fearful question, whether indeed it had been teaching by angels or devils? Whatever it had been, there was no longer any way of trusting it peacefully. A dark time for all men. We cannot now conceive it. The great horror of it lay in this:--that, as in the trial-hour of the Greek, the heavens themselves seemed to have deceived those who had trusted in them. "We had prayed with tears; we had loved with our hearts. There was no choice of way open to us. No guidance from God or man, other than this, and behold, it was a lie. 'When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He shall guide you into all truth.' And He has guided us into _no_ truth. There can be no such Spirit. There is no Advocate, no Comforter. Has there been no Resurrection?" § 3. Then came the Resurrection of Death. Never since man first saw him, face to face, had his terror been so great. "Swallowed up in victory:" alas! no; but king over all the earth. All faith, hope, and fond belief were betrayed. Nothing of futurity was now sure but the grave. For the Pan-Athenaic Triumph and the Feast of Jubilee, there came up, through fields of spring, the dance of Death. The brood of weak men fled from the face of him. A new Bacchus and his crew this, with worm for snake and gall for wine. They recoiled to such pleasure as yet remained possible to them--feeble infidelities, and luxurious sciences, and so went their way. § 4. At least, of the men with whom we are concerned--the artists--this was almost the universal fate. They gave themselves to the following of pleasure only; and as a religious school, after a few pale rays of fading sanctity from Guido, and brown gleams of gipsy Madonnahood from Murillo, came utterly to an end. Three men only stood firm, facing the new Dionysiac revel, to see what would come of it. Two in the north, Holbein and Durer, and, later, one in the south, Salvator. But the ground on which they stood differed strangely; Durer and Holbein, amidst the formal delights, the tender religions, and practical science, of domestic life and honest commerce. Salvator, amidst the pride of lascivious wealth, and the outlawed distress of impious poverty. § 5. It would be impossible to imagine any two phases of scenery or society more contrary in character, more opposite in teaching, than those surrounding Nuremberg and Naples, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. What they were then, both districts still to all general intents remain. The cities have in each case lost their splendor and power, but not their character. The surrounding scenery remains wholly unchanged. It is still in our power, from the actual aspect of the places, to conceive their effect on the youth of the two painters. [Illustration: 76. The Moat of Nuremberg.]