rched, lank, high on the top of an unearthly car, made of the
spine and ribs of some antediluvian creature, with springs and traces
of ghastly jaw and collar and thigh bones, supported on either side by
galloping skeletons, skeletons made up of skeletons, of all that is
strangest in the bones and beaks of beasts and birds, on which ride
young fauns and satyrs. To her chariot, by a yoke of human bones,
are harnessed two stalwart naked youths, and two others sustain its
plough-like end; grand, magnificently moving figures, bounding forward
like wild horses, the unearthly carriage swinging and creaking as they
go. And, as they go, brushing through the high, dry, maremma-grass, the
witch cowers on her chariot, clutching in one hand a heap of babies,
in the other a vessel filled with fire, whose smoke, mingling with
her long, dishevelled hair, floats behind, sweeping through the rank
vegetation, curling and eddying into vague, strange semblances of
lions, apes, chimaeras. Forward dashes the outrunner on his goat, onward
bound the naked litter-bearers; up gallop the fauns and satyrs on the
fleshless, monstrous carcases; up and down sways the creaking, cracking
chariot of bones; one moment more, and the wild, splendid, hideous
triumph will have swept out of sight, leaving behind only trampled
marsh-plants and a trail of fantastic, lurid smoke among the ruffled,
moaning reeds and grasses.

Such is Raphael's _Stregozzo_. It is a master-piece of drawing and of
pictorial fancy, it is perhaps the highest achievement of great art in
the direction of the supernatural: for Duerer is often hideous, Rembrandt
always obscure, and the moderns, like Blake and Dore, distinctly
run counter to the essential nature of art in their attempts after
vagueness. When once told the subject of the print, by Agostino
Veneziano, our imagination easily flies off on to the track of the
supernatural; but, in so doing, it leaves the work behind, and on return
to it we experience a return to the natural. If, on the other hand, we
are not told the subject of the print, we very possibly see nothing
supernatural in it: there are splendid figures worthy of Michael Angelo,
and grotesque fancies, in the shape of the skeletons and coach of bones,
worthy of Leonardo; as a whole, the print is striking, beautiful, and
problematic, but it falls short of the effect which would be produced by
the mere words "a witch riding through a marsh on a chariot of bones,"
if left