some interest. Lord Lindsay, who merely
characterises this work of Giotto's as "the Byzantine composition,"
thus describes the usual Byzantine manner of representing the Baptism:

"The Saviour stands immersed to the middle in Jordan (_flowing between
two deep and rocky banks_), on one of which stands St. John, pouring
the water on His head, and on the other two angels hold His robes.
The Holy Spirit descends upon Him as a dove, in a stream of light,
from God the Father, usually represented by a hand from Heaven. Two of
John's disciples stand behind him as spectators. Frequently _the
river-god of Jordan_ reclines with his oars in the corner.... In the
Baptistery at Ravenna, the rope is supported, not by an angel, but by
the river-deity _Jordann_ (Iordanes?), who holds in his left hand a
reed as his sceptre."

Now in this mode of representing rivers there is something more than
the mere Pagan tradition lingering through the wrecks of the Eastern
Empire. A river, in the East and South, is necessarily recognised more
distinctly as a beneficent power than in the West and North. The
narrowest and feeblest stream is felt to have an influence on the life
of mankind; and is counted among the possessions, or honoured among
the deities, of the people who dwell beside it. Hence the importance
given, in the Byzantine compositions, to the name and specialty of the
Jordan stream. In the North such peculiar definiteness and importance
can never be attached to the name of any single fountain. Water, in
its various forms of streamlet, rain, or river, is felt as an
universal gift of heaven, not as an inheritance of a particular spot
of earth. Hence, with the Gothic artists generally, the personality of
the Jordan is lost in the green and nameless wave; and the simple rite
of the Baptism is dwelt upon, without endeavouring, as Giotto has
done, to draw the attention to the rocky shores of Bethabara and AEnon,
or to the fact that "there was much water there."

* * * * *

XXIII.

THE MARRIAGE IN CANA.

It is strange that the sweet significance of this first of the
miracles should have been lost sight of by nearly all artists after
Giotto; and that no effort was made by them to conceive the
circumstances of it in simplicity. The poverty of the family in which
the marriage took place,--proved sufficiently by the fact that a
carpenter's wife not only was asked as a chief guest, but even had
authority over t