period is that it halted between two opinions, that it could not be sincere. But this double-mindedness, as I have tried to show, was necessary; and therefore to lament over it is weak. What the Renaissance achieved for the modern world was the liberation of the reason, the power of starting on a new career of progress. The false direction given to the art of sculpture at one moment of this intellectual revival may be deplored; and still more deplorable is the corresponding sensual debasement of the race who won for us the possibility of freedom. But the life of humanity is long and vigorous, and the philosopher of history knows well that the sum total of accomplishment at any time must be diminished by an unavoidable discount. The Renaissance, like a man of genius, had the defects of its qualities. FOOTNOTES: [56] _Sketches of the History of Christian Art_, vol. ii. p. 102. [57] Since I wrote the paragraph above, I have chanced to read Mr. Buskin's eloquent tirade against the modern sceptical school of critics in his "Mornings in Florence," _The Vaulted Book_, pp. 105, 106. With the spirit of it I thoroughly agree; feeling that, in the absence of solid evidence to the contrary, I would always rather accept sixteenth-century Italian tradition with Vasari, than reject it with German or English speculators of to-day. This does not mean that I wish to swear by Vasari, when he can be proved to have been wrong, but that I regard the present tendency to mistrust tradition, only because it is tradition, as in the highest sense uncritical. [58] See Appendix I., on the Pulpits of Pisa and Ravello. [59] The data is extremely doubtful. Were we to trust internal evidence--the evidence of style and handling--we should be inclined to name this not the earliest but the latest and ripest of Pisano's works. It may be suggested in passing that the form of the lunette was favourable to the composition by forcing a gradation in the figures from the centre to either side. There is an engraving of this bas-relief in Ottley's _Italian School of Design._ [60] Rheims Cathedral, for example, was begun in 1211. Upon its western portals is the loveliest of Northern Gothic sculpture.