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Music from the West. 227
school of art; our school of Painting dating only from the last century. Whereas in Italy the painters had long preceded the musicians, in England the musicians had enjoyed their primrose-time, if not their June or their Indian summer, long ere the painter was known except by the stiff outline on the wall, howsoever well intentioned, meagre in form and paltry in colour. Our travelled men, such as Milton, had brought home fancies. Our abiding patrons, such as Lord Guildford, George Herbert, the high-toned Evelyn, the convenient, gossiping, yet altogether delightful Pepys, opened their minds to this player on the lute, or the other foreign son, or vocal enchantments of ' the Italian gentlewoman who would not be kissed, which Master Killigrew, who brought her in, did acquaint us with;' long ere painting had got beyond the stiffest of stiff Gothicism. And again: that beautiful and harmonious architect—I mean Wren—to whom we owe the exquisitely harmonious outer cupola of St. Paul's, and St. Stephen's, Walbrook, and a host of other eclectic examples, could arise and vindicate himself, and produce (to hunt the figure a few steps further) a host of melodious details in stone, after
the Revolution, with its Ironsides and its fanatics,
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