For the Diana Vernon of the Greek is Artemis Laphria,
who is friendly to the dog; not to the swine. Do you see, by the way,
how perfectly the image is carried out by Sir Walter in putting his
Diana on the border country? "Yonder blue hill is in Scotland," she
says to her cousin,--not in the least thinking less of him for having
been concerned, it may be, in one of Bob Roy's forays. And so gradually
you get the idea of Norman franchise carried out in the free-rider or
free-booter; not safe from degradation on that side also; 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.
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