"
"But," said I, "we cannot judge people with so many 'ifs.' If old
Pontifex had lived in Giotto's time he might have been another Giotto,
but he did not live in Giotto's time."
"I tell you, Edward," said my father with some severity, "we must
judge men not so much by what they do, as by what they make us feel
that they have it in them to do. If a man has done enough, either in
painting, music or the affairs of life, to make me feel that I might
trust him in an emergency he has done enough. It is not by what a
man has actually put upon his canvas, nor yet by the acts which he has
set down, so to speak, upon the canvas of his life that I will judge
him, but by what he makes me feel that he felt and aimed at. If he has
made me feel that he felt those things to be lovable which I hold
lovable myself I ask no more; his grammar may have been imperfect, but
still I have understood him; he and I are en rapport; and I say again,
Edward, that old Pontifex was not only an able man, but one of the
very ablest men I ever knew."
Against this there was no more to be said, and my sisters eyed me to
silence. Somehow or other my sisters always did eye me to silence when
I differed from my father.
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