to Tabachetti and Miel d'Anvers. Sir Henry Layard should keep to the
good old plan of saying that the picture would have been better if
the artist had taken more pains, and praising the works of Pietro
Perugino. Personally, I confess I am sorry he has never seen the
Sacro Monte. If he has trod on so many ploughshares without having
seen Varallo, what might he not have achieved in the plenitude of a
taste which has been cultivated in every respect save that of not
pretending to know more than one does know, if he had actually been
there, and seen some one or two of the statues themselves?

I have only sampled Sir Henry Layard's work in respect of two other
painters, but have found no less reason to differ from him there than
here. I refer to his remarks about Giovanni and Gentile Bellini. I
must reserve the counter-statement of my own opinion for another
work, in which I shall hope to deal with the real and supposed
portraits of those two great men. I will, however, take the present
opportunity of protesting against a sentence which caught my eye in
passing, and which I believe to be as fundamentally unsound as any I
ever saw written, even by a professional art critic or by a director
of a national collection. Sir Henry Layard, in his chapter on
Leonardo da Vinci, says -


"One thing prominently taught us by the works of Leonardo and
Raffaelle, of Michael Angelo and Titian, is distinctly this--that
purity of morals, freedom of institutions, and sincerity of faith
have nothing to do with excellence in art."


I should prefer to say, that if the works of the four artists above