anopies can scarcely rivet so intense a gaze. All eyes seem
fixed upon a curtain of red silk above the altar. Votive pictures,
and glass cases full of silver hearts, wax babies, hands and limbs
of every kind, are hung round it. A bell rings. A jingling organ
plays a little melody in triple time; and from the sacristy comes
forth the priest. With much reverence, and with a show of
preparation, he and the acolytes around him mount the altar steps
and pull a string which draws the curtain. Behind the silken veil we
behold Madonna and her child--a faint, old, ugly picture, blackened
with the smoke and incense of five hundred years, a wonder-working
image, cased in gold, and guarded from the common air by glass and
draperies. Jewelled crowns are stuck upon the heads of the mother
and the infant. In the efficacy of Madonna di San Brizio to ward off
agues, to deliver from the pangs of childbirth or the fury of the
storm, to keep the lover's troth and make the husband faithful to
his home, these pious women of the marshes and the mountains put a
simple trust.

While the priest sings, and the people pray to the dance-music of
the organ, let us take a quiet seat unseen, and picture to our minds
how the chapel looked when Angelico and Signorelli stood before its
plastered walls, and thought the thoughts with which they covered
them. Four centuries have gone by since those walls were white and
even to their brushes; and now you scarce can see the golden
aureoles of saints, the vast wings of the angels, and the flowing
robes of prophets through the gloom. Angelico came first, in monk's
dress, kneeling before he climbed the scaffold to paint the angry
judge, the Virgin crowned, the white-robed army of the Martyrs, and
the glorious company of the Apostles. These he placed upon the roof,
expectant of the Judgment. Then he passed away, and Luca Signorelli,
the rich man who 'lived splendidly and loved to dress himself in
noble clothes,' the liberal and courteous gentleman, took his place
upon the scaffold. For all the worldliness of his attire and the
worldliness of his living, his brain teemed with stern and terrible
thoughts. He searched the secrets of sin and of the grave, of
destruction and of resurrection, of heaven and hell. All these he
has painted on the walls beneath the saints of Fra Angelico. First
come the troubles of the last days, the preaching of Antichrist, and
the confusion of the wicked. In the next compartment we see