A Hero of a Hundred Fights, by Sarah Tytler

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Newbould's Saints. A S it happened, the picture was still harder for - him to bear. It was one of Newbould's saints, that were so picturesque and attractive, addressing themselves alike to the singular credulity of the saint worshipper, and to the condescending Platonic approval of the...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Newbould's Saints. A S it happened, the picture was still harder for - him to bear. It was one of Newbould's saints, that were so picturesque and attractive, addressing themselves alike to the singular credulity of the saint worshipper, and to the condescending Platonic approval of the unbelieving Sadducee and Epicurean. Newbould every now and then painted a saint, to keep his hand in for variety, to show his versatility; perhaps with a certain vague yearning after what was so far apart from his ordinary walk. Whatever his motive in so doing, he delighted the simple among his numerous clients, vindicating, as he thus did, their faith in his radical goodness under all his sneers and scoffs, and he compelled the Sadducee and Epicurean to tolerate and to put an aesthetic value on such work. Newbould's saints, by the way, did not retain a single trait of sin-soiled struggling humanity. Though he was a Protestant, he instinctively canonised his subjects, whether they were Protestant or Roman Catholic?generally they were Roman Catholic?and raised them to the heights of beatitude on his canvas. One felt that the longer he lived and every fresh saint he painted, the more he was disposed to regard his version of angelic purity and guilelessness with the gentle pity of superior knowledge of the world, and of the increased practicality and force of character which such knowledge supplies. Newbould's saints were in malice children, but in understanding they were not men. They were unsophisticated dreamers and disinterested enthusiasts, fit for the painter to pat tenderly on the back, laugh at softly, and use for his own purposes. They formed warnings rather than examples, and their existence was so exceptional and abnormal that there was not the slightest occasion for it...