observed Kenyon.
"That idea is somewhat in his style, but I cannot help regretting that
it came into your mind just then."

The dark-robed figure had shrunk back, and was quite lost to sight among
the shadows of the chapel.

"There was an English poet," resumed Kenyon, turning again towards the
window, "who speaks of the 'dim, religious light,' transmitted through
painted glass. I always admired this richly descriptive phrase; but,
though he was once in Italy, I question whether Milton ever saw any
but the dingy pictures in the dusty windows of English cathedrals,
imperfectly shown by the gray English daylight. He would else have
illuminated that word 'dim' with some epithet that should not chase
away the dimness, yet should make it glow like a million of rubies,
sapphires, emeralds, and topazes. Is it not so with yonder window? The
pictures are most brilliant in themselves, yet dim with tenderness and
reverence, because God himself is shining through them."

"The pictures fill me with emotion, but not such as you seem to
experience," said Donatello. "I tremble at those awful saints; and, most
of all, at the figure above them. He glows with Divine wrath!"

"My dear friend," said Kenyon, "how strangely your eyes have transmuted
the expression of the figure! It is divine love, not wrath!"

"To my eyes," said Donatello stubbornly, "it is wrath, not love! Each
must interpret for himself."

The friends left the church, and looking up, from the exterior, at
the window which they had just been contemplating within, nothing; was
visible but the merest outline of dusky shapes, Neither the individual
likeness of saint, angel, nor Saviour, and far less the combined scheme
and purport of the picture, could anywise be made out. That miracle of
radiant art, thus viewed, was nothing better than an incomprehensible
obscurity, without a gleam of beauty to induce the beholder to attempt
unravelling it.

"All this," thought the sculptor, "is a most forcible emblem of the
different aspect of religious truth and sacred story, as viewed from the
warm interior of belief, or from its cold and dreary outside. Christian
faith is a grand cathedral, with divinely pictured windows. Standing
without, you see no glory, nor can possibly imagine any; standing
within, every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendors."

After Kenyon and Donatello emerged from the church, however, they had
better opportunity for acts of charity and m