d--perhaps meaning,
"my life, or my head, upon the truth of this." The attendant monk behind
him is terror-struck; but will follow his master. The dark Moorish
servants of the Magi show no emotion--will arrange their masters' trains
as usual, and decorously sustain their retreat.

Lastly, for the Soldan himself. In a modern work, you would assuredly
have had him staring at St. Francis with his eyebrows up, or frowning
thunderously at the Magi, with them bent as far down as they would go.
Neither of these aspects does he bear according to Giotto. A perfect
gentleman and king, he looks on his Magi with quiet eyes of decision; he
is much the noblest person in the room--though an infidel, the true hero
of the scene, far more so than St. Francis. It is evidently the Soldan
whom Giotto wants you to think of mainly, in this picture of Christian
missionary work.

He does not altogether take the view of the Heathen which you would get
in an Exeter Hall meeting. Does not expatiate on their ignorance, their
blackness, or their nakedness. Does not at all think of the Florentine
Islington and Pentonville, as inhabited by persons in every respect
superior to the Kings of the East; nor does he imagine every other
religion but his own to be log-worship. Probably the people who really
worship logs--whether in Persia or Pentonville--will be left to worship
logs to their hearts' content, thinks Giotto. But to those who worship
_God_, and who have obeyed the laws of heaven written in their hearts,
and numbered the stars of it visible to them,--to these, a nearer star
may rise; and a higher God be revealed.

You are to note, therefore, that Giotto's Soldan is the type of all
noblest religion and law, in countries where the name of Christ has not
been preached. There was no doubt what king or people should be chosen:
the country of the three Magi had already been indicated by the miracle
of Bethlehem; and the religion and morality of Zoroaster were the
purest, and in spirit the oldest, in the heathen world. Therefore, when
Dante in the nineteenth and twentieth books of the Paradise, gives his
final interpretation of the law of human and divine justice in relation
to the gospel of Christ--the lower and enslaved body of the heathen
being represented by St. Philip's convert ("Christians like these the
Ethiop shall condemn")--the noblest state of heathenism is at once
chosen, as by Giotto: "What may the _Persians_ say unto _your_ kings?"
Comp