wn upon the ground only by the cords that
bind him. One of the most striking effects produced is the sense of
loneliness. You behold Christ deserted both in heaven and earth; that
despair is in him which wrung forth the saddest utterance man ever made,
"Why hast Thou forsaken me?" Even in this extremity, however, he is
still divine. The great and reverent painter has not suffered the Son of
God to be merely an object of pity, though depicting him in a state so
profoundly pitiful. He is rescued from it, we know not how,--by nothing
less than miracle,--by a celestial majesty and beauty, and some quality
of which these are the outward garniture. He is as much, and as visibly,
our Redeemer, there bound, there fainting, and bleeding from the
scourge, with the cross in view, as if he sat on his throne of glory in
the heavens! Sodoma, in this matchless picture, has done more towards
reconciling the incongruity of Divine Omnipotence and outraged,
suffering Humanity, combined in one person, than the theologians ever
did.

This hallowed work of genius shows what pictorial art, devoutly
exercised, might effect in behalf of religious truth; involving, as it
does, deeper mysteries of revelation, and bringing them closer to man's
heart, and making him tenderer to be impressed by them, than the most
eloquent words of preacher or prophet.

It is not of pictures like the above that galleries, in Rome or
elsewhere, are made up, but of productions immeasurably below them,
and requiring to be appreciated by a very different frame of mind. Few
amateurs are endowed with a tender susceptibility to the sentiment of
a picture; they are not won from an evil life, nor anywise morally
improved by it. The love of art, therefore, differs widely in its
influence from the love of nature; whereas, if art had not strayed away
from its legitimate paths and aims, it ought to soften and sweeten
the lives of its worshippers, in even a more exquisite degree than the
contemplation of natural objects. But, of its own potency, it has no
such effect; and it fails, likewise, in that other test of its moral
value which poor Hilda was now involuntarily trying upon it. It cannot
comfort the heart in affliction; it grows dim when the shadow is upon
us.

So the melancholy girl wandered through those long galleries, and over
the mosaic pavements of vast, solitary saloons, wondering what had
become of the splendor that used to beam upon her from the walls. She
grew