the charlatanisms and
Pharisaisms of a man's own times. The essence of Christianity lies
neither in dogma, nor yet in abnormally holy life, but in faith in an
unseen world, in doing one's duty, in speaking the truth, in finding the
true life rather in others than in oneself, and in the certain hope that
he who loses his life on these behalfs finds more than he has lost. What
can Agnosticism do against such Christianity as this? I should be
shocked if anything I had ever written or shall ever write should seem to
make light of these things. I should be shocked also if I did not know
how to be amused with things that amiable people obviously intended to be
amusing.

The reader may need to be reminded that Oropa is among the somewhat
infrequent sanctuaries at which the Madonna and infant Christ are not
white, but black. I shall return to this peculiarity of Oropa later on,
but will leave it for the present. For the general characteristics of
the place I must refer the reader to my book, "Alps and Sanctuaries." {9}
I propose to confine myself here to the ten or a dozen chapels containing
life-sized terra-cotta figures, painted up to nature, that form one of
the main features of the place. At a first glance, perhaps, all these
chapels will seem uninteresting; I venture to think, however, that some,
if not most of them, though falling a good deal short of the best work at
Varallo and Crea, are still in their own way of considerable importance.
The first chapel with which we need concern ourselves is numbered 4, and
shows the Conception of the Virgin Mary. It represents St. Anne as
kneeling before a terrific dragon or, as the Italians call it, "insect,"
about the size of a Crystal Palace pleiosaur. This "insect" is supposed
to have just had its head badly crushed by St. Anne, who seems to be
begging its pardon. The text "Ipsa conteret caput tuum" is written
outside the chapel. The figures have no artistic interest. As regards
dragons being called insects, the reader may perhaps remember that the
island of S. Giulio, in the Lago d'Orta, was infested with _insetti_,
which S. Giulio destroyed, and which appear, in a fresco underneath the
church on the island, to have been monstrous and ferocious dragons; but I
cannot remember whether their bodies are divided into three sections, and
whether or no they have exactly six legs--without which, I am told, they
cannot be true insects.

The fifth chapel represents the birth