seated, arrayed in pure pink, and blue and lilac, in an atmosphere of liquid gold, in glory. And thus Fra Angelico worked on, content with the dearly-purchased science of his masters, placid, beatic, effeminate, in an æsthetical paradise of his own, a paradise of sloth and sweetness, a paradise for weak souls, weak hearts, and weak eyes; patiently repeating the same fleshless angels, the same boneless saints, the same bloodless virgins; happy in smoothing the unmixed, unshaded tints of the sky, and earth, and dresses; laying on the gold of the fretted skies, and of the iridescent wings, embroidering robes, instruments of music, haloes, flowers, with threads of gold.... Sweet, simple artist saint, reducing art to something akin to the delicate pearl and silk embroidery of pious nuns, to the exquisite sweetmeat cookery of pious monks; a something too delicately gorgeous, too deliciously insipid for human wear or human food; no, the Renaissance does not exist for thee, either in its study of the truly existing, or in its study of antique beauty. Mantegna, the learned, the archæological, the pagan, who renounces his times and his faith; and Angelico, the monk, the saint, who shuts and bolts his monastery doors and sprinkles holy water in the face of the antique, the two extremes, are both exceptions. The innumerable artists of the Renaissance remained in hesitation; tried to court both the antique and the modern, to unite the pagan and the Christian--some, like Ghirlandajo, in cold indifference to all but mere form, encrusting marble bacchanals into the walls of the Virgin's paternal house, bringing together, unthinkingly, antique-draped women carrying baskets and noble Stroggi and Ruccellai ladies with gloved hands folded over their gold brocaded skirts; others, with cheerful and child-like pleasure in both antique and modern, like Benozzo, crowding together half-naked youths and nymphs treading the grapes and scaling the trellise with Florentine magnificos in plaited skirts and starched collars, among the pines and porticos, the sprawling children, barking dogs, peacocks sunning themselves, and partridges picking up grain, of his Scripture histories; yet others using the antique as mere pageant shows, allegorical mummeries destined to amuse some Duke of Ferrara or Marquis of Mantua, together with hurdle races of Jews, hags, and riderless donkeys.