it must be necessarily?—Of course, Libertas. Now M. Didron is quite the best writer on art that I know,—full of sense and intelligence; but of course, as a modern Frenchman,—one of a nation for whom the Latin and Gothic ideas of libertas have entirely vanished,—he is not on his guard against the trap here laid for him. He looks at the word libertas through his spectacles;—can't understand, being a thoroughly good antiquary,[1] how such a virtue, or privilege, could honestly be carved with approval in the twelfth century;—rubs his spectacles; rubs the inscription, to make sure of its every letter; stamps it, to make surer still;—and at last, though in a greatly bewildered state of mind, remains convinced that here is a sculpture of 'La Liberté' in the twelfth century. "C'est bien la liberté!" "On lit parfaitement libertas."
202. Not so, my good M. Didron!—a very different personage, this; of whom more, presently, though the letters of her name are
- ↑ Historical antiquary; not art-antiquary I must limitedly say, however. He has made a grotesque mess of his account of the Ducal Palace of Venice, through his ignorance of the technical characters of sculpture.
