y will end "by loving his Church more than
truth."[7]

Between the Christian artist and the head of the Church grew, as might
be expected, a bond of mutual respect and attachment. Overbeck and Pius
IX. had much in common; they were as brothers in affliction; the age was
unbelieving; they had fallen upon evil days; and each was sustained
alike by unshaken faith in the Church. Concerning _The Stations_, the
drawings of which are in the private rooms of the Vatican, the Pope
showed the liveliest interest, and wrote a letter to the artist full of
apostolic benedictions. He had also evinced his friendly regard by
giving sittings for his portrait. Afterwards, in 1857, came the
commission to paint, for the Quirinal Palace, the large tempera picture
representing Christ miraculously escaping from the Jews, who, according
to the Gospel of St. Luke, had "thrust him out of the city, and had led
him to the brow of the hill whereon the city was built, that they might
cast him down headlong." This astounding composition is the one step
from the sublime to the ridiculous; it represents Christ with the right
foot on the edge of a precipice, the left in the air on the heads of
small angels: it was intended to symbolise the Pope's escape from Rome,
and his subsequent return to the city; and further it expressly
signified the triumph of the spiritual over the temporal power.[8] While
the large and important work was in progress, Pius IX. paid a visit to
the painter in his studio, an event to the honour of modern art
comparable to the old stories touching Francis I. with Leonardo da Vinci
and Philip IV. in the painting-room of Velazquez. This abortive miracle
on canvas left on my mind, when seen in the studio, a very painful
impression, and sound critics--Zahn and others--pronounce the subject as
unpaintable, and the work most unfortunate. Overbeck had not the power
possessed by the old masters of carrying the imagination into the age of
miracle.

I have been at some pains to make the account here given of the
painter's works exhaustive. My opportunities of observation have been
favourable, and yet, especially as no complete biography of the artist
has hitherto been published, some minor works may have escaped my
notice. Here, in conclusion, may fitly come a few additions. _The
Raising of Lazarus_, the exquisite drawing of which, now in the
Dusseldorf Academy, has already received notice, was, in 1822, painted
in oils. _The Death of St. J