with this difference: Heracles kills the beast, and makes a helmet and cloak of his skin; the Greek St. Mark converts the beast, and makes an evangelist of him.
Is not that a greater difference, think you, than one of mere decadence?
This 'maniera goffa e sproporzionata' of Vasari is not, then, merely the wasting away of former leonine strength into thin rigidities of death? There is another change going on at the same time,—body perhaps subjecting itself to spirit.
I will not tease you with further questions. The facts are simple enough. Theseus and Heracles have their religion, sincere and sufficient,—a religion of lion-killers, minotaur-killers, very curious and rude; Eleusinian mystery mingled in it, inscrutable to us now,—partly always so, even to them.
204. Well; the Greek nation, in process of time, loses its manliness,—becomes Graeculus instead of Greek. But though effeminate and feeble, it inherits all the subtlety of its art, all the cunning of its mystery; and it is converted to a more spiritual religion. Nor is it altogether degraded, even by the diminution of its
