tude of figures, all finished
with the greatest Dutch exactness; in fact, the ideas are rather a little
too Dutch, for the Ethiopian king is dressed in a surplice, with boots
and spurs, and brings, for a present, a gold model of a modern ship.

The monks of a certain monastery at Messina, exhibited, with great
triumph, a letter written by the Virgin Mary with her own hand. Unluckily
for them, this was not, as it easily might have been, written on the
ancient papyrus, but on paper made of rags. On some occasion, a visiter,
to whom this was shown, observed, with affected solemnity, that the
letter involved also a miracle, for the paper on which it was written was
not in existence till several hundred years after the mother of our Lord
had ascended into heaven.

In the church of St. Zacharia, at Venice, is the picture of a Virgin and
Child, whom an angel is entertaining with an air upon the violin. Jean
Belin was the artist, in 1500. So, also, in the college library of
Aberdeen, to a very neat Dutch missal, are appended elegant paintings on
the margin, of the angels appearing to the shepherds, with one of the men
playing on the bagpipes.

There is a picture in a church at Bruges that puts not only all
chronology, but all else, out of countenance. It is the marriage of Jesus
Christ with Saint Catherine of Sienna. But who marries them? St. Dominic,
the patron of the church. Who joins their hands? Why, the Virgin Mary.
And to crown the anachronism, King David plays the harp at the wedding!

Albert Durer represented an angel in a flounced petticoat, driving Adam
and Eve from Paradise.

Lewis Cigoli painted a picture of the Circumcision of the Holy Child,
Jesus, and drew the high priest, Simeon, with spectacles on his nose;
upon a supposition, probably, that, in respect of his great age, that aid
would be necessary. Spectacles, however, were not known for fourteen
centuries afterwards.

In a picture painted by F. Chello della Puera, the Virgin Mary is placed
on a velvet sofa, playing with a cat and a paroquet, and about to help
herself to coffee from an engraved coffee-pot.

In another, painted by Peter of Cortona, representing the reconciliation
of Jacob and Laban, (now in the French Museum), the painter has
represented a steeple or belfry rising over the trees. A belfry in the
mountains of Mesopotamia, in the time of Jacob!

N. Poussin's celebrated picture, at the same place, of Rebecca at the
Well, has the whole bac