Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/211

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VIII.—-FRANCHISE.
179

but by no means of swinish temper, or foraging, as at present the British speculative public, only with the snout.

214. Finally, in the most soft and domestic form of virtue, you have Wordsworth's ideal:

"Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty."

The distinction between these northern types of feminine virtue, and the figures of Alcestis, Antigone, or Iphigenia, lies deep in the spirit of the art of either country, and is carried out into its most unimportant details. We shall find in the central art of Florence at once the thoughtfulness of Greece and the gladness of England, associated under images of monastic severity peculiar to herself.

And what Diana Vernon is to a French ballerine dancing the Cancan, the 'libertas' of Chartres and Westminster is to the 'liberty' of M. Victor Hugo and Mr. John Stuart Mill.