Opposite this window, on the white wall, is a small shrine or picture (I can't see which, for it is in sharp retiring perspective), with a lamp before it, and a silver vessel hung from the lamp, looking like one for holding incense.

The bed is a broad four-poster, the posts being beautifully wrought golden or gilded rods, variously wreathed and branched, carrying a canopy of warm red. The princess's shield is at the head of it, and the feet are raised entirely above the floor of the room, on a dais which projects at the lower end so as to form a seat, on which the child has laid her crown. Her little blue slippers lie at the side of the bed,-her white dog beside them. The coverlid is scarlet, the white sheet folded half way back over it; the young girl lies straight, bending neither at waist nor knee, the sheet rising and falling over her in a narrow unbroken wave, like the shape of the coverlid of the last sleep, when the turf scarcely rises. Her head is turned towards us on the pillow, the cheek resting on her hand, as if she were thinking, yet utterly calm in sleep, and almost colourless. Her hair is tied with a narrow riband, and divided into two wreaths, which encircle her head like a double crown. The white night-gown hides the arm raised on the pillow, down to the wrist. At the door of the room an angel enters; (the little dog, though lying awake, vigilant, takes no notice). -F. C., Letter 20.

"The Angel of the Lord," says the legend. What! thinks Carpaccio;-to this little maid of fifteen, the angel that came to Moses and Joshua? Not so, but her own guardian angel.

Guardian, and to tell her that God will guide her heart to-morrow, and put His own answer on her lips, concerning her marriage. Shall not such angel be crowned with light, and strew her chamber with lilies?

There is no glory round his head; there is no gold on his robes; they are of subdued purple and gray. His wings are colourless-his face. calm, but sorrowful,-wholly in shade. In his right hand he bears the martyr's palm; in his left, the fillet borne by the Greek angels of victory, and, together with it, gathers up, knotted in his hand, the folds of shroud with which the Etrurians veil the tomb.-F. C., Letter 71.

24. LIPPI AND BOTTICELLI.-I will tell you what Lippi must have taught any boy whom he loved. First, humility, and to live in joy and peace, injuring no man-if such innocence might be.

Nothing is so manifest in every face by him, as its gentleness and rest. Secondly, to finish his work perfectly, and in such temper that the angels might say of it-not he himself -"Iste perfecit opus." Do you remember what I told you in the Eagle's Nest, that true humility [* See § 4 of this volume.]

SECOND SERIES.

E

J

*

was in hoping that angels might sometimes admire our work; not in hoping that we should ever be able to admire theirs? Thirdly,-a little thing it seems, but was a great one,-love of flowers. No one draws such lilies or such daisies as Lippi. Botticelli beat him afterwards in roses, but never in lilies. Fourthly, due honour for classical tradition. Lippi is the only religious painter who dresses John Baptist in the camelskin, as the Greeks dressed Heracles in the lion's over the head. Lastly, and chiefly of all, Le Père Hyacinthe taught his pupil all,-Le certain views about the doctrine of the Church, which the boy thought of more deeply than his tutor, and that by a great deal; and Master Sandro presently got himself into such question for painting heresy, that if he had been as hotheaded as he was true-hearted, he would soon have come to bad end by the tar-barrel. But he is so sweet and so modest, that nobody is frightened; so clever, that everybody is pleased: and at last, actually the Pope sends for him to paint his own private chapel,-where the first thing my young gentleman does, mind you, is to paint the devil in a monk's dress, tempting

* The world was not then ready for Le Père Hyacinthe ;but the real gist of the matter is that Lippi did, openly and bravely, what the highest prelates in the Church did basely and in secret; also he loved, where they only lusted; and he has been proclaimed therefore by them—and too foolishly believed by us to have been a shameful person.

Christ! The sauciest thing, out and out, done in the history of the Reformation, it seems to me; yet so wisely done, and with such true respect otherwise shown for what was sacred in the Church, that the Pope didn't mind: and all went on as merrily as marriage bells.-A. F., VI., § 189.

25.

SUPERSTITION AND RELIGION IN ART. -I am no Puritan, and have never praised or advocated puritanical art. The two pictures which I would last part with out of our National Gallery, if there were question of parting with any, would be Titian's Bacchus and Correggio's Venus. But the noble naturalism of these was the fruit of ages of previous courage, continence, and religion-it was the fulness of passion in the life of a Britomart. But the mid-age and old age of nations is not like the mid-age or old age of noble women. National decrepitude must be criminal. National death can only be by disease, and yet it is almost impossible, out of the history of the art of nations, to elicit the true conditions relating to its decline in any demonstrable manner. The history of Italian art is that of a struggle between superstition and naturalism on one side, between continence and sensuality on another. So far as naturalism prevailed over superstition, there is always progress; so far as sensuality over chastity, death.

And the two contests are simultaneous. It is impossible to distinguish one victory from the other. Observe, however, I say victory over superstition, not over religion. Let me carefully define the difference. Superstition, in all times. and among all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts of a man; who is present in some places, not in others; who makes some places holy and not others; who is kind to one person, unkind to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay to him, or praise you refuse to him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, whatever form of faith it colours, is the essence of superstition. And religion is the belief in a Spirit whose mercies are over all His works-who is kind even to the unthankful and the evil; who is everywhere present, and therefore is in no place to be sought, and in no place to be evaded; to whom all creatures, times, and things are everlastingly holy, and who claims-not tithes of wealth, nor sevenths of days-but all the wealth that we have, and all the days that we live, and all the beings that we are, but who claims that totality because He delights only in the delight of His creatures; and because, therefore, the one duty that they owe to Him, and the only service they