these figures will seem like real
persons. Their bodies will be seen; their forms will appear through
their clothing. St. Magdalen will have a bosom. St. Martha a belly, St.
Barbara hips, St. Agnes buttocks; St. Sebastian will unveil his youthful
beauty, and St. George will display beneath his armour the muscular
wealth of a robust virility; apostles, confessors, doctors, and God
the Father himself will appear as ordinary beings like you and me; the
angels will affect an equivocal, ambiguous, mysterious beauty which
will trouble hearts. What desire for heaven will these representations
impart? None; but from them you will learn to take pleasure in the
forms of terrestrial life. Where will painters stop in their indiscreet
inquiries? They will stop nowhere. They will go so far as to show men
and women naked like the idols of the Romans. There will be a sacred art
and a profane art, and the sacred art will not be less profane than the
other."

"Get ye behind me, demons," exclaimed the old master. For in prophetic
vision he saw the righteous and the saints assuming the appearance of
melancholy athletes. He saw Apollos playing the lute on a flowery hill,
in the midst of the Muses wearing light tunics. He saw Venuses lying
under shady myrtles and the Danae exposing their charming sides to the
golden rain. He saw pictures of Jesus under the pillar's of the temple
amidst patricians, fair ladies, musicians, pages, negroes, dogs, and
parrots. He saw in an inextricable confusion of human limbs, outspread
wings, and flying draperies, crowds of tumultuous Nativities, opulent
Holy Families, emphatic Crucifixions. He saw St. Catherines, St.
Barbaras, St. Agneses humiliating patricians by the sumptuousness of
their velvets, their brocades, and their pearls, and by the splendour of
their breasts. He saw Auroras scattering roses, and a multitude of naked
Dianas and Nymphs surprised on the banks of retired streams. And the
great Margaritone died, strangled by so horrible a presentiment of the
Renaissance and the Bolognese School.

VI. MARBODIUS

We possess a precious monument of the Penguin literature of the
fifteenth century. It is a narrative of a journey to hell undertaken
by the monk Marbodius, of the order of St. Benedict, who professed
a fervent admiration for the poet Virgil. This narrative, written in
fairly good Latin, has been published by M. du Clos des Limes. It is
here translated for the first time. I believe that I