96. "What a scene of beauty, what a flower-garden of art--how bright and how varied--must Italy have presented at the commencement of the sixteenth century, at the death of Raphael! The sacrileges we lament took place for the most part after that period; hundreds of frescoes, not merely of Giotto and those other elders of Christian Art, but of Gentile da Fabriano, Pietro della Francesca, Perugino and their compeers, were still existing, charming the eye, elevating the mind, and warming the heart. Now alas! few comparatively and fading are the relics of those great and good men. While Dante's voice rings as clear as ever, communing with us as friend with friend, theirs is dying gradually away, fainter and fainter, like the farewell of a spirit. Flaking off the walls, uncared for and neglected save in a few rare instances, scarce one of their frescoes will survive the century, and the labors of the next may not improbably be directed to the recovery and restoration of such as may still slumber beneath the whitewash and the daubs with which the Bronzinos and Zuccheros 'et id genus omne' have unconsciously sealed them up for posterity--their best title to our gratitude.--But why not begin at once? at all events in the instances numberless, where merely whitewash interposes between us and them. "It is easy to reply--what need of this? They--the artists--have Moses and the prophets, the frescoes of Raphael and Michael Angelo--let them study them. Doubtless,--but we still reply, and with no impiety--they will not repent, they will not forsake their idols and their evil ways--they will not abandon Sense for Spirit, oils for fresco--unless these great ones of the past, these Sleepers of Ephesus, arise from the dead.... It is not by studying art in its perfection--by worshiping Raphael and Michael Angelo exclusively of all other excellence--that we can expect to rival them, but by re-ascending to the fountain-head--by planting ourselves as acorns in the ground those oaks are rooted in, and growing up to their level--in a word, by studying Duccio and Giotto that we may paint like Taddeo di Bartolo and Masaccio, Taddeo di Bartolo and Masaccio that we may paint like Perugino and Luca Signorelli, Perugino and Luca Signorelli that we may paint like Raphael and Michael Angelo. And why despair of this, or even of shaming the Vatican? For with genius and God's blessing nothing is impossible.