209. This last sentence would have been wholly true, had Mr. Helps written 'no great _living_ change.' The changes of Dissolution are continually produced by self-interest,--for instance, a great number of the changes in your methods of life in England just now, and many of those in your moral temper, are produced by the percentage on the sale of iron. And I should have otherwise interpreted the heroism of the young Chartist, and said that he was moved on the 10th of April, by a deep under-current of self-interest; that by overthrowing Lordship, he expected to get much more for himself than his salary as an heraldic painter; and that he had not, in painting his carriage-panels, sentiment enough, or even sentiment at all. "Paint me my arms,--" said Giotto, as the youth threw him his white shield with that order--"he speaks as if he were one of the Bardi!" Our English panel-painter had lost the consciousness that there yet remained above him, so much as one, of the Bardi. May not that be somewhat the Bardi's fault? in that they have not taught their Giottos, lately, the function of heraldry, or of any other higher historical painting. We have, especially, to-day, to consider what that function is. 210. I said that the function of historical painting, in representing animals, is to discern and record what is best and most beautiful in their ways of life, and their forms; so also, in representing man, it is to record of man what has been best in his acts and way of life, and fairest in his form. But this way of the life of man has been a long one. It is difficult to know it--more difficult to judge; to do either with complete equity is impossible; but it is always possible to do it with the charity which does not rejoice in iniquity. 211. Among the many mistakes we have lately fallen into, touching that same charity, one of the worst is our careless habit of always thinking of her as pitiful, and to be concerned only with miserable and wretched persons; whereas her chief joy is in being reverent, and concerned mainly with noble and venerable persons. Her poorest function is the giving of pity; her highest is the giving of _praise_. For there are many men, who, however fallen, do not like to be pitied; but all men, however far risen, like to be praised.