three purses which he gave to a
poor gentleman to dower his three daughters whose beauty exposed them to
dangers. On the other side, throng King David, apostles, martyrs, Saint
Peter the Dominican with his wounded head, Saint Laurence holding his
gridiron, Saint Stephen with a palm in his hand, and Saint George armed
from head to foot; then, in the foreground of the picture, is the
charming group of saints of perfectly celestial grace: the kneeling
Magdalen offers her vase of perfumes; Saint Caecilia advances, crowned
with roses; Saint Clara gleams through her veil, constellated with
crosses and golden stars; Saint Catherine of Alexandria leans upon the
wheel, the instrument of her execution, as calmly and peacefully as if
it were a spinning-wheel; and Saint Agnes holds in her arms a little
white lamb, the symbol of innocent purity.

[Illustration: THE CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN.
_Fra Angelico._]

Fra Beato Angelico has given to these youthful saints a celestial and
ideal beauty, whose type exists not upon this earth: they are visible
souls, rather than bodies, they are thoughts of human form enveloped in
these chaste draperies of white, rose, and blue, sown with stars and
embroidered, clothed as might be the happy spirits who rejoice in the
eternal light of Paradise. If there be paintings in Heaven, surely they
must resemble those of Fra Angelico.

_Guide de l'Amateur au Musee du Louvre_ (Paris, 1882).

JUDITH

(_SANDRO BOTTICELLI_)

MAURICE HEWLETT

In the days when it was verging on a question whether a man could be at
the same time a good Christian and an artist the chosen subjects of
painting were significant of the approaching crisis--those glaring moral
contrasts in history which, for want of a happier term, we call
dramatic. Why this was so, whether Art took a hint from Politics, or had
withdrawn her more intimate manifestations to await likelier times, is a
question it were long to answer. The subjects, at any rate, were such as
the Greeks, with their surer instincts and saving grace of sanity in
matters of this kind, either forbore to meddle with or treated as
decoratively as they treated acanthus-wreaths. To-day we call them
"effective" subjects; we find they produce shocks and tremors; we think
it braces us to shudder, and we think that Art is a kind of emotional
pill; we measure it quantitatively, and say that we "know what we like."
And doubtless there is something piquant in th