It
produces joy in the melancholy, it brings both the contented and the angry
man to the knowledge of human misery; it moves the obstinate to
compunction, the mundane to penitence, the contemplative to contemplation,
and the fearful to shame. It shows us death and what we are, more gently
than in any other way; the torments and dangers of hell; so far as is
possible, it represents to us the glory and peace of the blessed, and the
incomprehensible image of our Lord God. It represents to us the modesty of
His saints, the constancy of the martyrs, the purity of the virgins, the
beauty of the angels, and the love and ardour with which the seraphim
burn, better than in any other way, and lifts up our spirit and plunges
our mind into the depths beyond the stars, to imagine the empirean that
there exists. What shall I say of how it brings before us the worthies who
passed away so long ago, and whose bones even are not now upon this earth,
to enable us to imitate them in their bright deeds? Or how it shows us
their councils and battles by examples and delightful histories? Their
great deeds, their piety and their manners? To captains it shows the
manoeuvres of the old armies, the cohorts and their disposition, their
discipline and their military order. It animates and creates daring, by
emulation and an honest envy of the famous ones, as Scipio the African
confessed.
"It leaves a memorial of the present times for those who come after.
Painting shows us the garb of the pilgrim or of antiquity, the variety of
foreign peoples and nations, buildings, animals, and monsters, which in
writing it would be prolix to hear about, and even then it would be but
badly understood.
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