more especially in his Madonnas. It is precisely this which
all copies and engravings render at best most imperfectly; and in
point of expression the most successful engraving of the Madonna di
San Sisto is certainly that of Steinla.]

* * * * *

The poets are ever the best commentators on the painters. I have
already given from the great "singers of high poems" in the fourteenth
century _their_ exposition of the theological type of the Madonna.
Now, in some striking passages of our modern poets, we may find a most
beautiful commentary on what I have termed the _moral_ type.

The first is from Wordsworth, and may be recited before the Madonna di
San Sisto:--

"Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied!
Woman! above all women glorified;
Out tainted nature's solitary boast;
Purer than foam on central ocean tost;
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied roses, than the unblemish'd moon
Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast,
Thy Image falls to earth. Yet some I ween,
Not unforgiven, the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible Power, in which did blend
All that was mix'd and reconcil'd in thee,
Of mother's love with maiden purity,
Of high with low, celestial with terrene."

The next, from Shelley, reads like a hymn in honour of the Immaculate
Conception:--

Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman
All that is insupportable in thee
Of light, and love, and immortality!
Sweet Benediction in the eternal curse!
Veil'd Glory of this lampless Universe!
Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form
Among the Dead! Thou Star above the storm!
Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror!
Thou Harmony of Nature's art! Thou Mirror
In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun,
All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on!"

"See where she stands! a mortal shape endued
With love, and life, and light, and deity;
The motion which may change but cannot die,
An image of some bright eternity;
A shadow of some golden dream; a splendour
Leaving the third sphere pilotless."

I do not know whether intentionally or not, but we have here assembled
some of the favourite symbols of the Virgin--the moon, the star, the
"_terribilis ut castrorum acies_" (Cant. vi. 10), and the mirror.

The third is a passage from Robert Brownin