n, in the everlasting sense and
power of Christianity. Thus most Protestants, entering for the first
time a Paradise of Angelico, would be irrevocably offended by finding
that the first person the painter wished them to speak to was St.
Dominic; and would retire from such a heaven as speedily as
possible,--not giving themselves time to discover, that whether dressed
in black, or white, or grey, and by whatever name in the calendar they
might be called, the figures that filled that Angelico heaven were
indeed more saintly, and pure, and full of love in every feature, than
any that the human hand ever traced before or since. And thus
Protestantism, having foolishly sought for the little help it requires
at the hand of painting from the men who embodied no Catholic doctrine,
has been reduced to receive it from those who believed neither
Catholicism nor Protestantism, but who read the Bible in search of the
picturesque. We thus refuse to regard the painters who passed their
lives in prayer, but are perfectly ready to be taught by those who spent
them in debauchery. There is perhaps no more popular Protestant picture
than Salvator's "Witch of Endor," of which the subject was chosen by the
painter simply because, under the names of Saul and the Sorceress, he
could paint a captain of banditti, and a Neapolitan hag.

Sec. LX. The fact seems to be that strength of religious feeling is
capable of supplying for itself whatever is wanting in the rudest
suggestions of art, and will either, on the one hand, purify what is
coarse into inoffensiveness, or, on the other, raise what is feeble into
impressiveness. Probably all art, as such, is unsatisfactory to it; and
the effort which it makes to supply the void will be induced rather by
association and accident than by the real merit of the work submitted to
it. The likeness to a beloved friend, the correspondence with a habitual
conception, the freedom from any strange or offensive particularity,
and, above all, an interesting choice of incident, will win admiration
for a picture when the noblest efforts of religious imagination would
otherwise fail of power. How much more, when to the quick capacity of
emotion is joined a childish trust that the picture does indeed
represent a fact! it matters little whether the fact be well or ill
told; the moment we believe the picture to be true, we complain little
of its being ill-painted. Let it be considered for a moment, whether the
child, with