ive love, with which the infant Jesus, laying his hand
on the head of the bird, half reproves St John, as it were saying, "Love
them and hurt them not." Notice, too, the unfrightened calm of the bird
itself, passive under the hand of its loving Creator. All these are
features of the very highest power of human art.

'Again, in accompaniments, all is as it should be. The Virgin, modestly
and beautifully draped; St John, girt about the loins, not only in
accord with his well-known prophetic costume, but also as partaking of
sinful humanity, and therefore needing such cincture: the Child
Redeemer, with a slight cincture, just to suggest motherly care, but not
over the part usually concealed, as indeed it never ought to be, seeing
that in Him was no sin, and that it is this spotless purity which is
ever the leading idea in representations of Him as an infant. Notice,
too, his foot, beautifully resting on that of his mother; the unity
between them being thus wonderfully though slightly kept up. Her eye has
just been dwelling on the book of the Prophecies open in her hand; and
thus the spectator's thought is ruled in accordance with the high
mission of the Holy One of God, and thrown forward into the grand and
blessed future. It is a holy and wonderful picture; I had not seen any
in Italy which had struck or refreshed me more.'[14]

And allow me to write two or three words with regard to the 'Madonna
della Sedia,' or our Lady of the Chair, an engraving of which used to
charm me when a child. The Virgin, very young and simple-looking in her
loveliness, is seated on a low chair, clasping the Divine Child, who is
leaning in weariness on her breast. In the original picture, St John
with his cross is standing--a boy at the Virgin's knee, but he is absent
from the old engraving. The meek adoring tenderness in the face of the
mother, the holy ingenuousness in that of the child, are expressions to
be long studied.

Of Raphael's cartoons, which, so many of us can see for ourselves, I
cannot trust myself to do more than to repeat what strikes me as a
singularly apt phrase of Hazlitt's, given by Mrs Jameson, that the
cartoons are instances in which 'the corruptible has put on
incorruption.' That from the very slightness of the materials employed,
and the very injuries which the cartoons have sustained, we have the
greatest triumph of art, where 'the sense of power supersedes the
appearance of effort,' and where the result is the more