Adoration, in Niccola's Pulpit.]

Countess Matilda. If you look to the fourteenth chapter of the third
volume of "Modern Painters," you will find the mythic character of the
Countess Matilda, as Dante employed it explained at some length. She is
the representative of Natural Science as opposed to Theological.

21. Chance coincidences merely, these; but full of teaching for us,
looking back upon the past. To Niccola, the piece of marble was,
primarily, and perhaps exclusively, an example of free chiselling, and
humanity of treatment. What else it was to him,--what the spirits of
Atalanta and Matilda could bestow on him, depended on what he was
himself. Of which Vasari tells you nothing. Not whether he was
gentleman or clown--rich or poor--soldier or sailor. Was he never,
then, in those fleets that brought the marbles back from the ravaged
Isles of Greece? was he at first only a labourer's boy among the
scaffoldings of the Pisan apse,--his apron loaded with dust--and no man
praising him for his speech? Rough he was, assuredly; probably poor;
fierce and energetic, beyond even the strain of Pisa,--just and kind,
beyond the custom of his age, knowing the Judgment and Love of God: and
a workman, with all his soul and strength, all his days.

22. You hear the fame of him as of a sculptor only. It is right that
you should; for every great architect must be a sculptor, and be
renowned, as such, more than by his building. But Niccola Pisano had
even more influence on Italy as a builder than as a carver.

For Italy, at this moment, wanted builders more than carvers; and a
change was passing through her life, of which external edifice was a
necessary sign. I complained of you just now that you never looked at