Was it
ochre?--said the world--or red lead?
Schooled thus in manners, literature, and general moral principles at
Chelsea and Wapping, we have finally to inquire concerning the most
important point of all. We have seen the principal differences between
this boy and Giorgione, as respects sight of the beautiful,
understanding of poverty, of commerce, and of order of battle; then
follows another cause of difference in our training--not slight,--the
aspect of religion, namely, in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden. I
say the aspect; for that was all the lad could judge by. Disposed, for
the most part, to learn chiefly by his eyes, in this special matter he
finds there is really no other way of learning. His father had taught
him "to lay one penny upon another." Of mother's teaching, we hear of
none; of parish pastoral teaching, the reader may guess how much.
I chose Giorgione rather than Veronese to help me in carrying out this
parallel; because I do not find in Giorgione's work any of the early
Venetian monarchist element. He seems to me to have belonged more to an
abstract contemplative school. I may be wrong in this; it is no
matter;--suppose it were so, and that he came down to Venice somewhat
recusant, or insentient, concerning the usual priestly doctrines of his
day,--how would the Venetian religion, from an outer intellectual
standing-point, have _looked_ to him?
He would have seen it to be a religion indisputably powerful in human
affairs; often very harmfully so; sometimes devouring widows'
houses,[124] and consuming the strongest and fairest from among the
young; freezing into merciless bigotry the policy of the old: also, on
the other hand, animating national courage, and raising souls,
otherwise sordid, into heroism: on the whole, always a real and great
power; served with daily sacrifice of gold, time, and thought; putting
forth its claims, if hypocritically, at least in bold hypocrisy, not
waiving any atom of them in doubt or fear; and, assuredly, in large
measure, sincere, believing in itself, and believed: a goodly system,
moreover, in aspect; gorgeous, harmonious, mysterious;--a thing which
had either to be obeyed or combated, but could not be scorned.
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