incompatibility with one another of souls really "fair" is not
essential; and within the enchanted region of the Renaissance,
one needs not be for ever on [27] one's guard. Here there are no
fixed parties, no exclusions: all breathes of that unity of culture in
which whatsoever things are comely" are reconciled, for the
elevation and adorning of our spirits. And just in proportion as
those who took part in the Renaissance become centrally
representative of it, just so much the more is this condition
realised in them. The wicked popes, and the loveless tyrants,
who from time to time became its patrons, or mere speculators in
its fortunes, lend themselves easily to disputations, and, from this
side or that, the spirit of controversy lays just hold upon them.
But the painter of the Last Supper, with his kindred, lives in a
land where controversy has no breathing-place. They refuse to
be classified. In the story of Aucassin and Nicolette, in the
literature which it represents, the note of defiance, of the
opposition of one system to another, is sometimes harsh. Let me
conclude then with a morsel from Amis and Amile, in which the
harmony of human interests is still entire. For the story of the
great traditional friendship, in which, as I said, the liberty of the
heart makes itself felt, seems, as we have it, to have been written
by a monk--La vie des saints martyrs Amis et Amile. It was not
till the end of the seventeenth century that their names were
finally excluded from the martyrology; and their story ends with
this monkish miracle of earthly comradeship, more than faithful
unto death:--

[28] "For, as God had united them in their lives in one accord, so
they were not divided in their death, falling together side by side,
with a host of other brave men, in battle for King Charles at