Of course there were many reactionary tendencies among the men who had been trained in the pure Tuscan schools, which partly concealed, or adorned, the materialism of their advance; and Raphael himself, after profoundly studying the arabesques of Pompeii and of the palace of the Caesars, beguiled the tedium, and illustrated the spirituality of the converse of Moses and Elias with Christ concerning His decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem, by placing them, above the Mount of Transfiguration, in the attitudes of two humming-birds on the top of a honeysuckle. 240. But the best of these ornamental arrangements were insufficient to sustain the vivacity, while they conclusively undermined the sincerity, of the Christian faith, and "the real consequences of the acceptance of this kind (Roman Bath and Sarcophagus kind)" of religious idealism were instant and manifold.[45] * * * So far as it was received and trusted in by thoughtful persons, it only served to chill all the conceptions of sacred history which they might otherwise have obtained. Whatever they could have fancied for themselves about the wild, strange, infinitely stern, infinitely tender, infinitely varied veracities of the life of Christ, was blotted out by the vapid fineries of Raphael: the rough Galilean pilot, the orderly custom receiver, and all the questioning wonder and fire of uneducated apostleship, were obscured under an antique mask of philosophical faces and long robes. The feeble, subtle, suffering, ceaseless energy and humiliation of St. Paul were confused with an idea of a meditative Hercules leaning on a sweeping sword; and the mighty presences of Moses and Elias were softened by introductions of delicate grace, adopted from dancing nymphs and rising Auroras. Now no vigorously minded religious person could possibly receive pleasure or help from such art as this; and the necessary result was the instant rejection of it by the healthy religion of the world. Raphael ministered, with applause, to the impious luxury of the Vatican, but was trampled underfoot at once by every believing and advancing Christian of his own and subsequent times; and thenceforward pure Christianity and "high art" took separate roads, and fared on, as best they might, independently of each other.