of the Virgin. Having obtained
permission to go inside it, I found the date 1715 cut large and deep on
the back of one figure before baking, and I imagine that this date covers
the whole. There is a Queen Anne feeling throughout the composition, and
if we were told that the sculptor and Francis Bird, sculptor of the
statue in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, had studied under the same
master, we could very well believe it. The apartment in which the Virgin
was born is spacious, and in striking contrast to the one in which she
herself gave birth to the Redeemer. St. Anne occupies the centre of the
composition, in an enormous bed; on her right there is a lady of the
George Cruikshank style of beauty, and on the left an older person. Both
are gesticulating and impressing upon St. Anne the enormous obligation
she has just conferred upon mankind; they seem also to be imploring her
not to overtax her strength, but, strange to say, they are giving her
neither flowers nor anything to eat and drink. I know no other birth of
the Virgin in which St. Anne wants so little keeping up.

I have explained in my book "Ex Voto," {10} but should perhaps repeat
here, that the distinguishing characteristic of the Birth of the Virgin,
as rendered by Valsesian artists, is that St. Anne always has eggs
immediately after the infant is born, and usually a good deal more,
whereas the Madonna never has anything to eat or drink. The eggs are in
accordance with a custom that still prevails among the peasant classes in
the Valsesia, where women on giving birth to a child generally are given
a _sabaglione_--an egg beaten up with a little wine, or rum, and sugar.
East of Milan the Virgin's mother does not have eggs, and I suppose, from
the absence of the eggs at Oropa, that the custom above referred to does
not prevail in the Biellese district. The Virgin also is invariably
washed. St. John the Baptist, when he is born at all, which is not very
often, is also washed; but I have not observed that St. Elizabeth has
anything like the attention paid her that is given to St. Anne. What,
however, is wanting here at Oropa in meat and drink is made up in Cupids;
they swarm like flies on the walls, clouds, cornices, and capitals of
columns.

Against the right-hand wall are two lady-helps, each warming a towel at a
glowing fire, to be ready against the baby should come out of its bath;
while in the right-hand foreground we have the _levatrice_, who having