Christianity, and ratified by the higher instincts of the Middle Ages. Nor again were artists justified before the bar of conscience in selecting the baser elements of Paganism for imitation, instead of aiming at Greek self-restraint and Roman strength of character. All this the men of the Renaissance felt when they listened to the voice within them. Their work, therefore, in so far as it pretended to be a reconstruction of the antique was false. The sensuality it shared in common with many Greek and Roman masterpieces, had ceased to be frank and in the true sense pagan. To shake off Christianity, and to revert with an untroubled conscience to the manners of a bygone age, was what they could not do. The errors I have attempted to characterise did not, however, prevent the better and more careful works of sculpture, executed in illustration of classical mythology, from having a true value. The "Perseus" of Cellini and some of Gian Bologna's statues belong to a class of aesthetic productions which show how much that is both original and excellent may be raised in the hotbed of culture.[117] They express a genuine moment of the Renaissance with vigour, and deserve to be ranked with the Latin poetry of Poliziano, Bembo, and Pontano. The worst that can be said of them is that their inspiration was factitious, and that their motives had been handled better in the age of Greek sincerity. Gian Bologna, born at Douai, but a Florentine by education, devoted himself almost exclusively to mythological sculpture. That he was a greater sculptor than his immediate predecessors will be affirmed by all who have studied his bronze "Mercury," the "Venus of Petraja," and the "Neptune" on the fountain of Bologna. Something of the genuine classic feeling had passed into his nature. The "Mercury" is not a reminiscence of any antique statue. It gives in bronze a faithful and spirited reading of Virgil's lines, and is conceived with artistic purity not unworthy of a good Greek period. The "Neptune" is something more than a muscular old man; and, in its place, it forms one of the most striking ornaments of Italy. It is worthy of remark that sculpture, in this stage, continued to be decorative. Fountains are among the most successful monuments of the late Renaissance. Even Montorsoli's fountain at Messina is in a high sense picturesquely beautiful.