"No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of the misunderstanding of the end of art." ... "The first cause of the fall of the arts in Europe was a relentless requirement of perfection" (p. 172). By reading the intermediate text, you will be put in possession of many good reasons for this opinion; and, comparing it with that just cited about the Campanile of Giotto, will be brought, I hope, into a wholesome state of not knowing what to think. Then turn to p. 167, where the great law of finish is again maintained as strongly as ever: "Perfect finish (finish, that is to say, up to the point possible) is always desirable from the greatest masters, and is always given by them."--§ 19. And, lastly, if you look to § 19 of the chapter on the Early Renaissance, you will find the profoundest respect paid to completion; and, at the close of that chapter, § 38, the principle is resumed very strongly. "As _ideals of executive perfection_, these palaces are most notable among the architecture of Europe, and the Rio façade of the Ducal palace, as an example of finished masonry in a vast building, is one of the finest things, not only in Venice, but in the world." Now all these passages are perfectly true; and, as in much more serious matters, the essential thing for the reader is to receive their truth, however little he may be able to see their consistency. If truths of apparent contrary character are candidly and rightly received, they will fit themselves together in the mind without any trouble. But no truth maliciously received will nourish you, or fit with others. The clue of connection may in this case, however, be given in a word. Absolute finish is always right; finish, inconsistent with prudence and passion, wrong. The imperative demand for finish is ruinous, because it refuses better things than finish. The stopping short of the finish, which is honorably possible to human energy, is destructive on the other side, and not in less degree. Err, of the two, on the side of completion. [4] In general illustration of the subject, the following extract from my private diary possesses some interest. It refers to two portraits which happened to be placed opposite to each other in the arrangement of a gallery; one, modern, of a (foreign) general on horseback at a review; the other, by Vandyck, also an equestrian portrait, of an ancestor of his family, whom I shall here simply call the "knight:" "I have seldom seen so noble a Vandyck, chiefly because it is painted with less flightiness and flimsiness than usual, with a grand quietness and reserve--almost like Titian. The other is, on the contrary, as vulgar and base a picture as I have ever seen, and it becomes a matter of extreme interest to trace the cause of the difference.