And then, tell me, whether you yourselves, or any one you have known, did ever at any time receive from this picture any, the smallest vital thought, warning, quickening, or help?  It may have appalled, or impressed you for a time, as a thunder-cloud might:  but has it ever taught you anything—­chastised in you anything—­confirmed a purpose—­fortified a resistance—­purified a passion?  I know that for you, it has done none of these things; and I know also that, for others, it has done very different things.  In every vain and proud designer who has since lived, that dark carnality of Michael Angelo’s has fostered insolent science, and fleshly imagination.  Daubers and blockheads think themselves painters, and are received by the public as such, if they know how to foreshorten bones and decipher entrails; and men with capacity of art either shrink away (the best of them always do) into petty felicities and innocencies of genre painting—­landscapes, cattle, family breakfasts, village schoolings, and the like; or else, if they have the full sensuous art-faculty that would have made true painters of them, being taught from their youth up, to look for and learn the body instead of the spirit, have learned it and taught it to such purpose, that at this hour, when I speak to you, the rooms of the Royal Academy of England, receiving also what of best can be sent there by the masters of France, contain not one picture honourable to the arts of their age; and contain many which are shameful in their record of its manners.

Of that, hereafter.  I will close to-day by giving you some brief account of the scheme of Tintoret’s Paradise, in justification that it is the thoughtfullest as well as mightiest picture in the world.

In the highest centre is Christ, leaning on the globe of the earth, which is of dark crystal.  Christ is crowned with a glory as of the sun, and all the picture is lighted by that glory, descending through circle beneath circle of cloud, and of flying or throned spirits.

The Madonna, beneath Christ, and at some interval from Him, kneels to Him.  She is crowned with the Seven stars, and kneels on a cloud of angels, whose wings change into ruby fire where they are near her.

The three great Archangels, meeting from three sides, fly towards Christ.  Michael delivers up his scales and sword.  He is followed by the Thrones and Principalities of the Earth; so inscribed—­Throni—­Principatus.  The Spirits of the Thrones bear scales in their hands; and of the Princedoms, shining globes:  beneath the wings of the last of these are the four great teachers and lawgivers, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, St. Augustine, and behind St. Augustine stands his mother, watching him, her chief joy in Paradise.

Under the Thrones are set the Apostles, St. Paul separated a little from the rest, and put lowest, yet principal; under St. Paul, is St. Christopher, bearing a massive globe, with a cross upon it:  but to mark him as the Christ-bearer, since here in Paradise he cannot have the child on his shoulders, Tintoret has thrown on the globe a flashing stellar reflection of the sun round the head of Christ.