ngs into the splendid luxuries
of a castle in Spain.

V.

CHILD-ANGELS.

He shall give his angels charge over thee,
To keep thee in all thy ways.
They shall bear thee up in their hands,
Lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.
PSALM XCI.

CHAPTER V.

CHILD-ANGELS.

To represent the perfect innocence and purity of an angel, a being whose
native atmosphere is the very presence of God, a creature not subject to
the limitations of physical laws, ever speeding on divine errands from
heaven to earth and back again to heaven, nothing could be more natural
than that art should use the face and form of innocent human childhood.

Child-angels were first seen in art during the Italian Renaissance, and
formed a conspicuous feature in the religious paintings of the period.
One of the most interesting and beautiful forms in which they appear is
as a great host, or "glory," filling the background of a composition.

From the announcement of the Saviour's birth to the Galilean shepherds,
to the vision of Saint John on the Isle of Patmos, we find various
allusions in the New Testament to the presence of angel companies in the
affairs of human life. It was therefore entirely legitimate and
appropriate to introduce a visible embodiment of the heavenly hosts into
the many sacred scenes portrayed in art, whether these were
representations of the actual incidents of Bible history, or the
imaginative embodiments of religious ideals.

The Sistine Madonna suggests itself at once as a most beautiful
illustration. The entire canvas is studded with tiny child faces,
delicately outlined,--a veritable cloud of witnesses, dissolving into
the golden glory with which they are surrounded. What a contrast is the
exquisite spirituality of this conception to Perugino's angel glories,
where baby faces, each with six many-hued wings are ranged at regular
intervals throughout the composition!

A less notable example of Raphael's unique treatment of the angel host
is in his Vision of Ezekiel, a small painting of earlier date than the
Sistine Madonna. Here the idea is manifestly drawn from the prophet's
description of his vision of the four living creatures in a great amber
wheel, which was "full of eyes."

Turning from Raphael's clouds of dimly suggested cherub faces to those
representations of the angel throngs in which the child forms are more
distinctly delineated, we find t