n conquerors,
beside the shore of the last great Red Sea, the sea of glass mingled
with fire, hand knit with hand, and voice with voice, the joyful winds
of heaven following the measure of their motion, and the flowers of the
new earth looking on, like stars pausing in their courses.

93. And yet all this is but the lowest part and narrowest reach of
Angelico's conceptions. Joy and gentleness, patience and power, he could
indicate by gesture--but Devotion could be told by the countenance only.
There seems to have been always a stern limit by which the thoughts of
other men were stayed; the religion that was painted even by Perugino,
Francia, and Bellini, was finite in its spirit--the religion of earthly
beings, checked, not indeed by the corruption, but by the veil and the
sorrow of clay. But with Fra Angelico the glory of the countenance
reaches to actual transfiguration; eyes that see no more darkly,
incapable of all tears, foreheads flaming, like Belshazzar's marble
wall, with the writing of the Father's name upon them, lips tremulous
with love, and crimson with the light of the coals of the altar--and all
this loveliness, thus enthusiastic and ineffable, yet sealed with the
stability which the coming and going of ages as countless as sea-sand
cannot dim nor weary, and bathed by an ever flowing river of holy
thought, with God for its source, God for its shore, and God for its
ocean.

94. We speak in no inconsiderate enthusiasm. We feel assured that to any
person of just feeling who devotes sufficient time to the examination of
these works, all terms of description must seem derogatory. Where such
ends as these have been reached, it ill becomes us to speak of minor
deficiencies as either to be blamed or regretted: it cannot be
determined how far even what we deprecate may be accessory to our
delight, nor by what intricate involution what we deplore may be
connected with what we love. Every good that nature herself bestows, or
accomplishes, is given with a counterpoise, or gained at a sacrifice;
nor is it to be expected of Man that he should win the hardest battles
and tread the narrowest paths, without the betrayal of a weakness, or
the acknowledgment of an error.

95. With this final warning against our author's hesitating approbation
of what is greatest and best, we must close our specific examination of
the mode in which his design has been worked out. We have done enough to
set the reader upon his guard against