Bellini

And if in our day Raphael must give way to Botticelli, with how
much greater reason should Titian in the heights of his art, with
all his earthly splendor and voluptuous glow, give place to the
lovely imagination of dear old Gian Bellini, the father of Venetian
Art?
--Mrs. Oliphant, in "The Makers of Venice"

It is a great thing to teach. I am never more complimented than when
some one addresses me as "teacher." To give yourself in a way that
will inspire others to think, to do, to become--what nobler
ambition! To be a good teacher demands a high degree of altruism,
for one must be willing to sink self, to die--as it were--that
others may live. There is something in it very much akin to
motherhood--a brooding quality. Every true mother realizes at times
that her children are only loaned to her--sent from God--and the
attributes of her body and mind are being used by some Power for a
Purpose. The thought tends to refine the heart of its dross,
obliterate pride and make her feel the sacredness of her office. All
good men everywhere recognize the holiness of motherhood--this
miracle by which the race survives.

There is a touch of pathos in the thought that while lovers live to
make themselves necessary to each other, the mother is working to
make herself unnecessary to her children. The true mother is
training her children to do without her. And the entire object of
teaching is to enable the scholar to do without his teacher.
Graduation should take place at the vanishing-point of the teacher.

Yes, the efficient teacher has in him much of this mother-quality.
Thoreau, you remember, said that genius is essentially feminine; if
he had teachers in mind his remark was certainly true. The men of
much motive power are not the best teachers--the arbitrary and
imperative type that would bend all minds to match its own may build
bridges, tunnel mountains, discover continents and capture cities,
but it can not teach. In the presence of such a towering personality
freedom dies, spontaneity droops, and thought slinks away into a
corner. The brooding quality, the patience that endures, and the
yearning of motherhood, are all absent. The man is a commander, not
a teacher; and there yet remains a grave doubt whether the warrior
and ruler have not used their influence more to make this world a
place of the skull than the abode of happiness and prosperity. The
orders to kill all the firstborn, and those over ten years of age,
were not given by teachers.

The teacher is one who makes two ideas grow where there was only one
before.

Just here, before we pass on to other themes, seems a good place to
say that we live in a very stupid old world, round like an orange
and