Lovers of the Fine Arts—and they ought to be the whole civilised world—owe an especial regard and reverence to the Monastic Orders, without whom there would have been, and would be now, no Art at all. Taking the Fine Arts at their lowest value, as a mere source of pleasure, from the love of imitation or representation of agreeable objects—the remembrancer of scenes of interest, the elegant accomplishment by which homes are embellished and made more beautifully homely—surely some little gratitude is due, where it has been the fashion to be sparing of any praise, to those good and pious men who in their convents prepared, improved, and invented colours as well as implements of Art; were themselves the early painters, and by their extensive patronage may be called the Fathers of the Arts. Had the world derived from the monastic orders no other good, that one should have insured them a perpetual respect.

But the Arts do not stand alone—are themselves a sisterhood, if we may so speak—many orders, but one religion; one bond binding them together—the culture of humanity.

History has unfortunately too often been the work of infidel hands and hearts. Whatever is of religion has been viewed with a prejudice; the vices of mankind at large have been tenderly treated; while such as could with truth or untruth be charged upon religious orders, have met with little mercy, and have been exempted from the common apology of the age. In this, little candour has been shown. It would be fairer, speaking of any class of men, to inquire whether they were worse or better than others—a benefit or a plague-spot on society; and it would be fairer to see what efforts they made for their own and for the general improvement, and rather to estimate their success, where few but themselves struggled for amelioration, than to single out every fault, every corruption, and of every age, and to bring the accumulation to bear upon the head, as it were, of one generation. The monastic orders have been the theme of general abuse by many a flippant writer, as if they lived but at one particular period, and were but examples of ignorance and vice—the encouragers of superstition for their own selfish ends. The "dark ages" have been indeed dark to those who have shut their eyes to the light which, small and glimmering though it appeared from our broad and open way of life, might, if followed with a gentle curiosity, have led into undreamt-of recesses, found to contain great treasures; and as the bodily, so the mental eye would have accommodated its vision to the degree of light given, and would have seen distinctly both form and beauty, which would have burst with a kind of glory upon them through the gloom, and met them as goodness would meet willing seekers.

"I know nothing," says one writer, "of those ages that knew nothing." As it has been justly retorted—how did he, knowing nothing of them, know that they knew nothing? It might be more easy to show that, if he knew anything about anything, he was mainly indebted to those very ages which kept within them the light of knowledge, preserved and cherished from utterly going out with the sanctity of a vestal fire. Turn where we will, we see the monuments of the labour of the monastic orders—wonderful monuments. And surely if any age may be said with truth to be dark, dark were those of the two last centuries which, with the wondrous edifices before their eyes, saw not their beauty mutilated, and with most unwarrantable conceit thought they had improved upon them. Whose was the ignorance? Look at our architecture. Great advancement has been made, and is making daily; and what is the consequence of this revived taste? A proper appreciation of the architecture of the "dark ages." Our best hope is, to imitate successfully. Who were they who designed these miracles of art? Devout men—the monastic orders! Who furnished every species of decoration—the sculpture, the painted glass, the pictures, that were a language? Men who themselves lived humbly and sparingly, that they might devote themselves, their talents, and their possessions to make an exalted and visible religion upon earth, as the one thing needful for future generations of men. Such, undoubtedly, was the one mind of the great religious orders—we speak of their purpose and of their doings. It was their mission over every land: we say not that corruption did not find them out, that there was no canker in their fruit. The enemy knew where to sow his tares; but perverse people tore, uprooted and cast from them the wheat, and loved to lay waste; and, as is ever the case, hating whom they injure, they vilified per fas et nefas; and, upon the plea of others' corruption, became themselves robbers, plunderers, and, too often, assassins.

It has been charged against these orders, that from the extreme of poverty they became rich. Hinc illÆ lachrymÆ. But how did they so increase? Because toil and labour were their law: they brought wealth out of lands chosen for their sterility, that their rule of toil might be the more continually exercised. Industry had its natural fruits, and spread its influence: they taught as well as practised; and their object, how they disposed of that which they gained, is now well known. The monuments, long unheeded, are before us. That we may not be unjustly thought, in what we have said, to favour Romish institutions, we would make a distinction, too little observed,—we would not confound the retired, the benevolent, the religious lives of those benefactors in the monastic orders, with the political tyrannical Papacy in Rome itself. There was ambition and avarice—a worldliness, at the instigation of the "Prince of this world," working out a system whose necessities begot the vilest superstitions and idolatries for unholy gain, and disseminated corruption instead of life. The history of the Popes is not the history of the devout and laborious of the monastic orders at all times. They were indeed within the pale of the Church of Rome, for there was then no other; but they who cultivated wastes, taught the people, and preserved and invented arts and literature, were far other men. The evil of Papacy had not reached them at once in their wildernesses. When the corrupt system did reach them, it bore its fruit. But even then, and among such, be it remembered, arose those who were still pure, and above the corruptions—and from them originated the Reformation. In reasoning upon past institutions, consideration must be had of the peculiar phase of the world when they arose. The whole altered condition of society would make that a positive evil which was once a positive good. Monastic institutions have done their work;—they cannot be restored, in a healthy state, in a Protestant country, whose constitution, and the laws that both make and support it, and the habits, manners, and feelings of the people, are entirely repugnant to them. Romanism is antagonistic with everything that is not of it. It demands at all times and everywhere to be the dominant power. To give it more than toleration, is to put into its hands that fulcrum which will be incessantly employed to subvert every institution that cannot be resolved into itself. Neither governments nor homes can escape its snares and its tyranny.

And here we would offer a quotation from Mrs Jameson's introduction to this her third volume of the Series on Religious Art; and we cannot but think that the scrutiny her subject has led her to make, into the real character of the religions orders of the middle ages, has given a more serious, we would say solemn, respect for them than was perceptible in the two former volumes. Not that we would charge any levity upon her in them: the reverse; but we do think that the reverence and respect for the subjects generally have fallen advantageously upon the "orders" themselves.

"In the first place, then, monachism in art, taken in a large sense, is historically interesting, as the expression of a most important era of human culture. We are outliving the gross prejudices which once represented the life of the cloister as being from first to last a life of laziness and imposture. We know that, but for the monks, the light of liberty and literature and science had been for ever extinguished, and that for six centuries there existed for the thoughtful, the gentle, the inquiring, the devout spirit no peace, no security, no home but the cloister. There learning trimmed her lamp, there contemplation 'pruned her wings;' there the traditions of art, preserved from age to age by lonely studious men, kept alive in form and colour the idea of a beauty beyond that of earth—of a might beyond that of the spear and the shield—of a Divine sympathy with suffering humanity. To this we may add another and a stronger claim on our respect and moral sympathies. The protection and the better education given to women in these early communities—the venerable and distinguished rank assigned to them when, as governesses of their order, they became in a manner dignitaries of the church—the introduction of their beautiful and saintly effigies, clothed with all the insignia of sanctity and authority, into the decoration of places of worship and books of devotion—did more, perhaps, for the general cause of womanhood than all the boasted institutions of chivalry."

Now, be it remembered that all this was effected in the midst of a hostile and turbulent world, whom they thus subdued by their sanctity to an awe and respect, without which there would have been no peace to them, no shelter to the pure and the weak from injury and wrong. Do we not see here the strongest proof of their earnestness, their piety, their charity, and that they were, under Heaven, the ministers of blessings to mankind? There was a period, however, when the entire seclusion of the cloister ceased to be beneficial—the contemplative life must be succeeded by the active. From that period must we date the promise of all that is great and good in art, science, and every effort of human genius, which burst winged out of darkness into day, with the rise of the Mendicant orders.

"If the three great divisions of the regular ecclesiastics seem to have had each a distinct vocation, there was at least one vocation common to all. The Benedictine monks instituted schools of learning; the Augustines built noble cathedrals; the Mendicant orders founded hospitals: all became patrons of the fine arts, on such a scale of munificence that the protection of the most renowned princes has been mean and insignificant in comparison. Yet, in their relation to art, this splendid patronage was the least of their merits. The earliest artists of the middle ages were the monks of the Benedictine orders. In their convents were preserved, from age to age, the traditional treatment of sacred subjects, and that pure unworldly sentiment which in later times was ill exchanged for the learning of schools and the competition of academies; and as they were the only depositories of chemical and medical knowledge, and the only compounders of drugs, we owe to them also the discovery and preparation of some of the finest colours, and the invention or the improvement of the implements used in painting: for the monks not only prepared their own colours, but when they employed secular painters in decorating their convents, the materials furnished from their own laboratories were consequently of the best and most durable kind. As architects, as glass-painters, as mosaic workers, as carvers in wood and metal, they were the precursors of all that has since been achieved in Christian art; and if so few of these admirable and gifted men are known to us individually and by name, it is because they worked for the honour of God and their community—not for profit, nor for reputation."

Mutability is written upon the face of all earthly things, whether they be good or evil in themselves. We progress and we retrograde according as influences act upon us. If we would judge in candour, we cannot take any class of facts of things or persons by themselves—all are parts of one whole; but how made one, is a speculation of a deep philosophy. It is hard to place upon the map of understanding the hidden causes, and their relation to each other, which make up the general social aspect at any one period. However we may advance, in knowledge, however that knowledge may operate as a check, mankind are in heart intrinsically the same they ever were—they have within them the same passions, the same instincts; and though we are daily pronouncing, as we look back upon past ages, that such and such things never can be again, that we cannot have the same superstitions, nor exercise the same cruelties, whatever we may hope, we do in fact say but this, that the identical facts and identical personages will not come again upon the stage of life. Of this we may be sure, that under certain influences, always within the sphere of our liabilities, the passions of men will lead them to the same excesses, the same fanaticism, the same crimes. The plot of the drama may be somewhat varied, or even new, but tragedy and comedy will still designate the play of human actions. We may have crusades without a Holy Land to recover—as we have had a Bartholomew massacre; we have had, and may have again, in civilised Europe, the political massacres which, in reading history in our closets in our own peaceful homes, we had fondly deemed passed away for ever. Fanaticism in religion and politics is still a human instinct—the sleeping volcano in every man's breast, though he knows it not, believes it not. "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" Who can answer for himself? It is wiser, far better to bow the head in humility—"Lead us not into temptation." As the times are, as people are, in peace or in suffering, will be their religious hopes or their religious fears—a gloom or a comfort, a wholesome practical virtue or a feverish excitement, a personal selfishness, a frenzy of despair—intolerance and persecution the result. The civil troubles of England made our religion, or that which passes for religion among the masses, gloomy and morose on the one hand, and, on the other, an awful conceit of self-righteousness. There was the asceticism of the early ages, but in a new form: there were no deserts, no dens into which fanatics could fly from worldly pleasure: compelled to live in its sight, they persecuted it to the death, and took their own insane pleasure in denying pleasure to others. General distress will naturally engender unwholesome excitement, and it will infect invariably the religious mind. These remarks are not superfluous—they arise out of the subject. Mrs Jameson herself sees analogies of times, which it may be worth our while to pause and consider.

"It seems to me that in the movement of the thirteenth century there was something analogous to the times through which we of this present generation have lived. There had been nearly a hundred years of desolating wars. The Crusades had upheaved society from its depths, as a storm upheaves the ocean, and changed the condition of men and nations.... A generation sprang up physically predisposed to a sort of morbid exaltation, and powerfully acted on by the revelation of a hitherto unseen, unfelt world of woe. In the words of Scripture 'men could not stop their ears from hearing of blood, nor shut their eyes from seeing of evil.' There was a deep, almost universal, feeling of the pressure and burden of sorrow—an awakening of the conscience to wrong, a blind anxious groping for the right, a sense that what had hitherto sufficed to humanity, would suffice no longer. But in the uneasy ferment of men's minds, religious fear took the place of religious hope, and the religious sympathies and aspirations assumed, in their excess, a disordered and exaggerated form.... But what was dark misery and bewilderment in the weak and ignorant, assumed in the more highly endowed a higher form; and to St Francis and his order we owe what has been happily called the mystic school in poetry and painting—that school which so strangely combined the spiritual with the sensual, the beautiful with the terrible, and the tender with the inexorable—which first found utterance in the works of Dante and of the ancient painters of Tuscany and Umbria. It has been disputed often whether the suggestions of Dante influenced Giotto, or the creations of Giotto inspired Dante; but the true influence and inspiration were around both, and dominant over both, when the two greatest men of their age united to celebrate a religion of retribution and suffering—to solemnise the espousals of sanctity with the self-abnegation which despises all things, rather than with the love that pardons and the hope that rejoices—and which, in closing the gates of pleasure, 'would have shut the gates of mercy on mankind.'"

Dante himself, the great man of his age, the deep in soul and intellect, but individualises the character of an age; and, as far as individual character can portray a general, tends to confirm the observations into which the nature of our subject led us. Dante lived a whole life of injury and wrong, of sorrow, of persecution, which doubtless darkened and embrowned every faculty of his consummate genius. The persecutions of the early Christians drove men into solitudes, where the tumult and fear of the world was exchanged for tumult and fear within; for they were where nature, ordaining every man to work for a common good, never intended them to be, and therefore would not give them peace. No wonder, if, in their bewildered fancies, they were haunted by demons, and took their fevered visions for realities. No wonder if they enacted the extravagant vagaries of insanity, and their faith (still faith) became mixed with a fabulous superstition. The anchorite was sought as a holy man; people believed in his miraculous powers as people have believed since—and people believe now, though no longer in anchorites. There are even Protestant miracle-workers, and thousands who have a kind of belief in their hearts which they will not acknowledge in words; and, while they ridicule the Romish calendar, have their own Protestant saints, and worship them, too, with an idolatry perhaps not less in reality than that which they so vehemently condemn in others. It is well to discountenance seriously and gravely the lying legends of Rome, and to sift from the fables the evil purpose with which they are fabricated or propagated, to expose the hidden design—a dominant power over minds and persons. But, to be candid, there was a time when legends of miracles were household words, and yet had nothing to do with priestcraft and Popery. Such things were before Popery; and that corrupt Church but took advantage of a human propensity, which they could not hope to eradicate. It would indeed be wonderful if there was not at all times a ready belief in them, as long as people believed anything, and that there might be powers above the human. And be it remembered, that many legends of miracles are of that early date which may be said to have begun ere miracles had ceased—ere the belief, not in the possibility, but in the present existence, could be well worn out. The necessity of keeping up the show of them has indeed been the crime, and is the crying disgrace, of the Romish Church. All we mean to assert is, that, considering the contiguity of the true and the false, in point of time, there is at least a great diminution of disparagement of intellect in those who, in the earliest times, took visions and dreams for facts, and events, that happened to be simultaneous, for miracles. Then, again, we know that many of these legends were but repetitions, and in their origin not intended to pass for truth. The lives of saints were the school-themes in convents—the only, schools. The names and a few leading lines of life of saints given, scholars were to fill up, as their imaginations could supply detail; consequently we see many of them to be of a puerile and even infantine fancy, and taken from nursery tales enlarged—a kind of 'raw-head and bloody-bones'—children boiled in a pot, the Thyestean supper, and the children leaping whole out of the dish. And here we would ask the Romish clergy, who certainly in their accredited books propagate fables scarcely less ridiculous, if the being ridiculous is not a test of their falsity? We cannot, while we are reasonable, suppose otherwise than that the Author of miracles would at least guard them from contempt of this kind; that, as they are intended for the conversion of mankind, they should not present themselves in a ridiculous posture, or under ridiculous coincidences. Such was not the pattern of the Scripture miracles. We would, however, make a great distinction between the fraudulent (that is, having a fraudulent purpose) legends, and those which are merely exaggerations or repetitions, readily and naturally applied under congenial circumstances, and for the most part allegorical of the Christian charities, and inculcating Christian virtues. Shall we shock the reader if we add, too, that there may be a very innocent superstition? Since bloody persecution has ceased, superstition in the eyes of this wise-growing age is like the dog that the member of a Peace Society rebuked thus, "Friend, I won't beat thee, but I'll cry mad dog." Should a child, now-a-days, on lying down in bed, say, as children did say in our younger days—

there may be grounds for fear that, should ever the Government inspectors of schools hear of it, the poor innocents would be put to an inconvenient questioning; and it is possible that these inspectors, or multitudes of men equally learned, discreet, and wise, may, after lecturing the school teachers and scholars on superstition, go directly, with as great credulity, to a lecture of another kind, and to witness mesmeric experiments, which assume powers far beyond those of any miracles whatever. Those who would smile at the tale of a holy man healing the sick by a word, will credit a somnambulist who, upon a physician's fee, professes to look blindfolded into the inside of his credulous patient, and, without knowing anything whatever about medicine, say what drug will effect a cure; who advertises to be at home for consultation upon people's most private affairs—to tell them of unknown, unsuspected, important papers and documents—to tell the past, the present, and, more wonderful, the future. And, with a wonderful inconsistency, there are men who, having entire faith in these assumptions, and on the infallibility of their science, have no belief whatever in a soul, scoff at spirituality, and boldly pronounce the phenomena of seeing without eyes, travelling without feet, bidding doors, whether of mansion or of cabinets, open to them, and, being obeyed, of knowing all secrets which were never told; of knowing what is passing thousands of miles off with persons never before seen, by holding any person's hand; of entering into that person; of prophesying; of knowing thoughts and their consequences, as to be shown in events;—audaciously, we say, pronouncing these phenomena to arise from materialism.

While such things are, and things as strange, who can hope to expel superstition from the stronghold of man's belief? and who would wish to do it altogether, if the vacant citadel is to be taken possession of by such philosophy as this—the fanaticism of science? And whilst we condemn, as it must be confessed we ought, but duly and discreetly, the greater part of the Romish saintology, their legends and the works of art relating to them, as all belonging to "ages dark" and obsolete, it may not be altogether amiss to turn over some of the old and new pages of the evangelical magazines, where modern saints figure in portraiture and biography—that is, in our enlightened art and literature; and it is more than probable we shall be humbled and disgusted, and be charitably disposed to make some apologies even for the aurea legenda. And should any, in their folly or in their wickedness, desire to set up a new idol, to rival or obliterate the memory of St Johanna Southcote the immaculate, or St Huntingdon, for whom the fishes leaped voluntarily from the ponds into his sanctified hands, and for whose sake sudden death came upon the man who would not receive him as a tenant, let such person or persons not despair of collecting a household of "Latter-day Saints" after the authorised manner of Joe Smith the Mormonist. It may be read in modern biographies, that children almost infants have been miraculously converted whilst in idle play, and have gone back to their homes and converted their great-grandfathers. Poor good John Wesley believed many of these absurd things. He assented to the assertion of the profligate who courted his sister, that it was by "the Lord's directions;" and again, that suddenly "the Lord" had told him to transfer his affections to John's other sister. The published Sancta sanctorum of religious sects are nigh forgotten now-a-days; but they still exist, as did other legends, to be collected in form, should a seeming necessity or a cunning purpose require it: for there are multitudes who credit them now, and many more who might, without much difficulty, be made strenuous to establish them for "their Church."

We must not, however, forget, that the subject of Mrs Jameson's book before us is the legends of the monastic orders in their connection with art. And here modern superstition or fanaticism is at a desperate disadvantage. Modern art itself is far too worldly, too material a thing for spirituality, real or assumed. In those evangelical portraits to which we have already alluded, gross, and, as it would almost seem, studiedly ugly similitudes, lest the flesh should boast, shining with an unction too human, and with the conceit of self-applause escaping from every pore, and redolent of congregational adoration, vulgar personifications of peculiar and hostile sectarianism, the material man has been alone the aim of the artist. There is no tale told—no act of devotion represented—no religious procession, no temple spirituality,—but the man alone; not as he might be seen—humble, devout towards God, but, as it were, with his back to sacred things, and his face towards his people, as if he were the sole or chief recipient of worship. How different in character were the works of Angelico, Il Beato, of Giotto, and those great and pious men, who with their wondrous genius adorned the cloisters of the monastic orders—not with the portraiture of the monks of the day, but with devout and holy processions, acts of their founders, and incidents of sacred history! They taught by the eye; and it possessed, in some respects, a charm above that of the being taught by books. Picture, at once, is able to imbue the spectator with a kind of spirituality ere it touches the understanding; whereas, in reading, it is the uninformed and grosser imagination supplies the portraiture from scenes of a narrow experience, and personages of a homely familiarity.

Yet even in very many of the monastic pictures Mrs Jameson finds a defect, in the too human purpose of the painters and their patrons: she ascribes somewhat of a vain-glorious and exclusive, where the chief object was to exalt a St Benedict, a St Francis, or St Dominick, not as men, but as saints of their respective orders, and for those orders. Still, we think this objection is carried too far. The purpose was, at least, no present portraiture; and surely the subjects did often convey precept, and were calculated to touch the heart, and kindle devotion, and encourage human charities. Undoubtedly, far higher in the poetical scale were those themes of an actual Divinity, of which she treated so enthusiastically in the first part of her former volumes—ascending from angels and archangels, from the heavenly host, to the precincts around the throne of the Divine glory. Yet be it duly weighed, in favour of the patronage of the monastic orders, that this exaltation of art in its theme was not altogether ever abandoned; and upon the whole, we doubt if advantages were not in some degree gained by the admixture of things more comprehensible, and more directly appealing to natural sensibilities. Besides, there was a class of paintings which arose out of our human affections, and which, therefore, led to a pious trust, through our common sympathies: we allude to votive pictures, which were of the earliest and latest date—pervading, indeed, the whole religion; for it was, in truth, a practice continued from the heathen worship.

"The pictures, too," says our authoress, "which are suspended in churches as votive memorials of benefits received, are often very touching. I recollect such a picture in the gallery of Vienna. A youth about fifteen, in the character of Tobias, is led by the hand of his guardian angel Raphael; and on the other side is St Leonard, the patron of captives, holding his broken fetters; Christ the Redeemer appears above; and below in a corner kneels an elderly man, his eyes fixed on the youth. The arrangement of this group leaves us no doubt of its purpose. It was the votive offering of a father whose son had escaped, or had been redeemed from captivity. The picture is very beautiful, and either by Andrea del Sarto, or one of his school. If we could discover where it had been originally placed, we might discover the facts and personages to which it alludes; but, even on the walls of a gallery, we recognise its pathetic significance: we read it as a poem—as a hymn of thanksgiving."

Mrs Jameson makes a very good remark upon a deficiency in catalogues of galleries and collections—the omission of the name of the church or chapel, or the confraternity, whence the pictures were purchased, and such history as might be known respecting them. Our collectors, indeed, are not without their picture-pedigrees; but they are of a curious kind—rather too expressive of a fear of dupery of dealers, and implying but little good foundation of taste in purchasers. Picture-pedigrees refer not to an inherent virtue, visible as the pure blood of the Arabian courser, but to the supposed taste or better known wealth of the last possessor. Few pictures stand on their own merits—they acquire a virtue from the hands or houses they have passed through, more than from the hands that worked them. Indeed, the known collector is generally the only authenticity of the painter, and stamps the value. But to say somewhat of pictures of sacred subjects—and they are by far the finest in known collections—from this deficiency in the catalogues much of their interest is lost; not only so, but we see them in the midst of strange incongruities, as well as injured in their effect by locality, and by light unsuited to them. We cannot judge fairly of their real excellence, nor understand the actual religious power they once possessed. Many of them were painted for private chapels or oratories, and purposely, perhaps, for dim religious light; for an intimate communion of the devout with the one sentiment and with it alone. We have often earnestly wished that, in building national galleries, the large and ostentatious display, at one view, were not the object, and that the particular character of our greatest works were well considered, and fit positions given, and proper lights adjusted. It would be a great thing, for instance, to see the "Raising of Lazarus" of Sebastian del Piombo, in our National Gallery, in a room by itself, and under a studied and arranged light. It is now where it is not all, and at all times, visible; and it is far too important in itself, of too impressive a character, for the look of one passing moment, and the distraction of many things. In the Vatican the Apollo has a room to himself. Picture galleries should not emulate the show-rooms of trade. If the pictures are irrecoverably removed from their own birthplace, from their own home, separated from their local history and interest, much may still be done, in some degree, to preserve for them their general character, and to allow them to make the intended general impression. And it is in fact for this purpose that we highly estimate this work of Mrs Jameson, that, in referring to these legends, we may read the productions to which they have given rise.

"What a lively, living, really religious interest is given to one of these sacred groups when we know the locality, or the community for which it was executed; and how it becomes enriched as a production of mind when it speaks to the mind through a thousand associations, will be felt, I think, after reading the legends which follow."

The Benedictine order stands first in point of time and in interest, not as regards art only, but as the great civilising order of the world. The Benedictines were the early missionaries of the north of Europe; they, banished the impure and inhuman rites of heathenism, by conveying, regardless of peril, the light of the gospel into the wilds of Britain, Gaul, Saxony, and Belgium. They gave security to the oppressed, rescued from the spoiler, and were a refuge to the poor in times of tyranny and barbarism. They were the sole depositaries of learning and of the arts; collected and transcribed books—particularly the Scriptures—which were charitably bestowed or deposited as precious gifts. We owe to them not only the diffusion of the Scriptures, but the preservation of classical literature. To them we owe the recovery of the works of Pliny, Sallust, and Cicero.

"They were the fathers of Gothic architecture; they were the earliest illuminators and limners; and, to crown their deservings under this head, the inventor of the gamut, and the first who instituted a school of music, was a Benedictine monk, Guido d'Arezzo."

They were the great civilisers, by bringing science to bear upon agriculture; the authors of experimental farming and gardening; the cultivators of new fruits and herbs. They cleared and cultivated; science and the plough went with them wherever they planted the cross. We cannot forbear quoting the words of Sir James Stephen:—

"The greatness of the Benedictines did not, however, consist either in their agricultural skill, their prodigies of architecture, or their priceless libraries, but in their parentage of countless men and women illustrious for active piety, for wisdom in the government of mankind, for profound learning, and for that contemplative spirit which discovers, within the soul itself, things beyond the limits of the perceptible creation."

The Benedictines were introduced into England about fifty years after the death of their founder, in A.D. 543. Augustine the monk, however, was not the first Christian missionary to this country, as it has commonly been represented. The Benedictine order was established here by him. The whole Christian world was then divided upon the question, whether the Eastern or Western Patriarch should be acknowledged head of the universal church. Under him England was subjected to Rome. St Benedict was of a noble family, and born at Norcia, in the duchy of Spoleto, about A.D. 480. Sent to Rome to study literature, and disgusted by the profligacy of his companions, at a period when opinions as to the efficacy of solitude and penance were prevalent, he separated himself from vicious contagion in a hermitage, at fifteen years of age. He would probably have died under suffering and privation had not his nurse, doubting, perhaps, between the idea of his inspiration or his insanity, followed him, begged for him, and administered to his wants. Benedict thought to deny himself this comfort—escaped, and hid himself among the rocks of Subiaco, about forty miles from Rome. He here met with a hermit, and lived three years in a cavern, unknown to his family, and shared with the hermit the scanty fare of bread and water. In this solitude he was not without temptations; visions too earthly, and such as well might assault his age, were rendered vain by increased penance. He is said to have rushed from his cave, and to have thrown himself into a thicket of briars and nettles, until the blood flowed. They still show at Subiaco the rose-bushes propagated from those which wounded the saint.

The scenery about Subiaco has even now a monastic charm; it has its lonely recesses, its silent dells. We have ourselves threaded its deep valley, and laying aside the pencil, been the hermit of an hour by the side of its clear mountain river—and then ascended the rocky heights to visit the convents of St Benedict and Santa Scholastica. We well remember to have taken shelter from a land-storm, such as Poussin has painted, and probably from this spot, in a cave which had heretofore doubtless been the home of more than one follower of St Benedict.

He became so holy, in the estimation of the villagers and shepherds, that they brought their sick to his cavern to be healed by him. A neighbouring society of hermits prayed him to put himself at their head. He knew the morals of the monastery, and, with the intention of reforming them, he yielded to their solicitation. The strictness of life required by him alarmed and excited the envy of these men, and poison was given him in a cup of wine. It is told that upon his blessing the cup, it fell from the traitor's hands. Upon this he left them, and again retired to his cave at Subiaco. But the fame of his sanctity brought many to Subiaco, which became crowded with huts and cells. Among those who came to him were two Roman senators, Anicius and Tertullus, who brought their sons, Maurus and Placidus, to be educated by him in the way of salvation. He had now induced his followers to build twelve monasteries, in each of which he placed twelve disciples and a superior. One Florentius, through envy at seeing so many of his own followers drawn away from him, maligned Benedict, and endeavoured to destroy him by means of a poisoned loaf. Not succeeding in this, the same Florentius introduced into one of the monasteries seven young women, in order to corrupt the monks. Benedict now, as was his wont, fled from evil, and left Subiaco; but soon Florentius was crushed by the fall of a gallery of his house. His disciple, Maurus, who sent to acquaint Benedict of the fate of his adversary, was enjoined a severe penance for his too triumphant expression, that a judgment had overtaken his enemy. Here was Christian forgiveness and Christian charity, worthy of imitation in these enlightened days.

Paganism was not yet extinct. Benedict hearing that, while the bishops were extending Christianity in distant regions, idolatry was practised near to the capital of Christendom—the worship of Apollo on Monte Cassino—repaired thither, and by his preaching prevailed upon the people to break their statue and the altar, and burn the consecrated grove; and here he built two chapels in honour of St John the Baptist and St Martin of Tours.

On the same mountain he built the celebrated monastery, the parent institution of his order.

"Hence," (we quote from Mrs Jameson,) "was promulgated the famous rule, which became, from that time forth, the general law of the monks of western Europe, and which gave to monachism its definite form. The rule given to the Cenobites of the East, and which, according to an old tradition, had been revealed to St Pachomius by an angel, comprised the three vows—of poverty, of chastity, and obedience. To these Benedict added two other obligations: the first was manual labour with their hands seven hours in the day: secondly, the vows were perpetual; but he ordained that these perpetual vows should be preceded by a noviciate of a year, during which the entire code was read repeatedly from the beginning to the end, and, at the conclusion, the reader said, in an emphatic voice, 'This is the law under which thou art to live, and strive for salvation; if thou canst observe it, enter; if thou canst not, go in peace—thou art free.' But the vows once taken were irrevocable, and the punishment for breaking them most severe. On the whole, however, and setting apart that which belonged to the superstition of the time, the rule given by St Benedict to his order was humane, moderate, wise, and eminently Christian in spirit."

Towards the close of his long life, Benedict was joined at Subiaco by his sister Scholastica, who had also devoted herself to a religious life. She retired to a cell near his convent, and is generally considered the first Benedictine nun. It is said that Totila, king of the Goths, visited him in the year 540, and, casting himself at his feet, entreated his blessing, but was reproved by Benedict for his cruelties; and it is said that he became from that time more humane. Shortly after, Benedict died of a fever, caught by visiting the poor. In his last illness he ordered his grave to be dug. Supported by his disciples, he stood upon the brink to contemplate his last earthly home—was carried by his desire to the foot of the altar in the church, where he received the last sacrament, and expired on the 20th March 543. It is natural to expect that legends of so remarkable a man should abound; and it is to the credit of the ecclesiastics of his order that they reproach the legendary writers for their improbable stories. Benedict saw his order spread during his life; but so widely did this rule supersede all others, that when Charlemagne made inquiry throughout his empire, if other monks existed, none were found but of the Benedictine order. St Maurus his early disciple, introduced the order into France; the other, St Placidus, was sent into Sicily, where he was joined by his sister Flavia. They were, it is said, massacred at Messina, in front of their convent, with thirty others, by an irruption of pirates. We the more notice the latter statement, because it is the subject of a celebrated picture by Correggio in the gallery at Parma, and of which copies are frequently met with. We dwell at some length on the order of St Benedict, because of its chief importance. All the monasteries already in existence, from the time of St Augustine, accepted the rule; and, during the next six hundred years, the grand ecclesiastical edifices which rose in England were "chiefly founded by or for the members of this magnificent order." The information concerning the works of the Benedictines in our country will be found extremely interesting in this new volume by Mrs Jameson. Space will not allow us to do more than refer the reader to its pages. Mrs Jameson eloquently deplores the mutilation and destruction of so many great memorials of the Benedictines, under the rapacity of Henry VIII. and his minion plunderers; and of the ferocious and degradingly-fanatic Puritans she thus speaks:—

"When I recall the history of the ecclesiastical potentates of Italy in the sixteenth century, I could almost turn Puritan myself; but when I think of the wondrous and beautiful productions of human skill, all the memorials of the great and gifted men of old, the humanisers and civilisers of our country, which once existed, and of which our great cathedrals—noble and glorious as they are even now—are but the remains, it is with a very cordial hatred of the profane savage ignorance which destroyed and desecrated them."

We are not sure that what yet remains is safe. We are surrounded with political fanatics, who hate everything ecclesiastical; and the people are not taught sufficiently to be lovers of art to wish to preserve what belongs to it. We cannot but remember that at the Bristol riots, for the furtherance of the Reform mania, attempts were made to burn down the cathedral, and that the bishop's palace was actually burnt to the ground, and the good bishop was in great hazard of his life. The Bible and all his library were ostentatiously destroyed.

Heterogeneous parliaments grant no money for the building and decorating churches; it were well if they did so, as a public act, that the people might feel that these places of worship are their own, and with that feeling understand and venerate every art which, in the chain of decoration, might receive a sanctity thereby.

To return. One or two noted characters of the English saintology we cannot omit to mention. St Neot and St Swithin had the glory of educating our Alfred. St Neot gave his name to two towns in England.

"He was a monk of Glastonbury; and it is recorded of him, that he visited Rome seven times, was very learned, mild, religious, fond of singing, humble to all, affable in conversation, wise in transacting business, venerable in aspect, severe in countenance, moderate even in his walk, sincere, upright, calm, temperate, and charitable. This good man is said to have reproved Alfred for his faults, and to have consoled him in his misfortunes."

St Swithin still lives in popular superstition; and is perhaps the object of prayer or deprecation among the ignorant, according as they may lack rain for their fields, or dread the pains of rheumatism. He was Bishop of Winchester. He accompanied Alfred to Rome. His character resembled that given of St Neot; he was a devout champion of the church. Perhaps the reader is not acquainted with the origin of the popular superstition with regard to this saint. We give it in Mrs Jameson's words:—

"He had ordered that his body should be buried among the poor, outside the church, 'under the feet of the passengers, and exposed to the droppings of the eaves from above.' When his clergy attempted to remove the body to a more honourable tomb inside the church, there came on such a storm or rain as effectually stopped the procession; and this continued for forty days without intermission, till the project was abandoned, and his remains were suffered to rest in the humble grave he had chosen for himself."

Such is the story of this Jupiter Pluvius of our Saxon ancestors, and of our Protestant calendar.

We cannot be allowed altogether to pass by St Dunstan. Mr Turner, in his Anglo-Saxon history, represents him as having introduced the Benedictine order into England: the fact being that there had been no other order from the time of St Augustine of Canterbury. St Dunstan is chiefly known in popular belief for his treatment of Elgiva. The story of Edwin and Elgiva, is of too romantic a cast to be willingly abandoned. He is quoted also as an object of ridicule, whenever ridicule of ecclesiastical matters or personages is thought desirable. He was, however, as Mrs Jameson justly considers him, "one of the most striking and interesting characters of the times." He was himself an artist, as well as the subject of art. He was born in 925. He gained instruction at the great seminary, Glastonbury, of which he afterwards became a professed monk. A painter, a musician, and a skilful artificer in metal, he followed strictly the industrial rule of his order. Learned in books, he was also an accomplished scribe. He constructed an organ "with brass pipes, filled with air from the bellows, and which uttered," says Bede, "a grand and most sweet melody." He was made successively Bishop of Worcester, of London, and at length Archbishop of Canterbury. If he did not introduce, he at least reformed the Benedictine order in England: he founded monasteries and schools, promoted learning, and a taste for science and the arts. Like other saints, he has his fabulous history of miracles.

"He relates himself a vision in which he beheld the espousals of his mother—for whom he entertained the profoundest love and veneration—with the Saviour of the world, accompanied with all the circumstances of heavenly pomp amid a choir of angels. One of the angels asked Dunstan why he did not join in the song of rejoicing, when he excused himself on account of his ignorance. The angel then taught him the song. The next morning St Dustan assembled his monks around him, and, relating his vision, taught them the very hymn which he had learned in his dream, and commanded them to sing it. Mr Turner calls this an impious story; whereas, it is merely one form of those old allegorical legends which are figurative of the mystic espousals of the soul, or the church (as in the Marriage of St Catherine) and which appear to have been suggested by the language of the Canticles."

In our view, Mrs Jameson might have made quite a more simple solution; for it is altogether offensive if his earthly mother is meant, (as the words "for whom he entertained," &c. would imply); but if he thereby expressed, that he had by his vow but one mother, the Church, and the Canticle was an Evangelical one—and therefore that he was angel-taught—we see nothing in the story but a quaintness belonging to the age, and by no means derogatory to the character for piety of St Dunstan.

Concerning St Thomas-À-Becket, we cannot but quote the eloquent words of our authoress:—

"Lord Campbell, in his recent and admirably written life of Becket, as chancellor and minister of Henry II., tells us that his vituperators are to be found among bigoted Protestants, and his unqualified eulogists among intolerant Catholics. After stating, with the perspicuity of a judge in Equity, their respective arguments and opinions, he sums up in favour of the eulogists, and decides that, setting aside exaggeration, miracle, and religious prejudice, the most merciful view of the character of Becket is also the most just. And is it not pleasant, where the imagination has been so excited by strange vicissitudes and picturesque scenes of his various life—the judgment so dazzled by his brilliant and generous qualities, the sympathies so touched by the tragic circumstances of his death—to have our scruples set at rest, and to be allowed to admire and to venerate with a good conscience; and this, too, on the authority of one accustomed to balance evidence, and not swerved by any bias to extreme religious opinions? But it is not as statesman, chancellor, or prelate that Becket takes his place in sacred art. It is in his character of canonised saint and martyr that I have to speak of him here. He was murdered or martyred because he pertinaciously defended the spiritual against the royal authority; and we must remember, in the eleventh century, the cause of the Church was, in fact, the cause of the weak against the strong, the cause of civilisation and of the people against barbarism and tyranny; and that by his contemporaries he was regarded as the champion of the oppressed Saxon race against the Norman nobility."

Why is the eulogy of the Church confined in this passage to the eleventh century? It was, and is, and ever will be, the cause of the people. We mean the Church as the Church should ever be, cleansed from every superstition, every impurity, the Reformed Church of England, or even that ancient Church which existed in this our land before Popery was—emphatically the Church of England in this our, not a Pope's England, free from superstitious, in principle unpersecuting. With regard to Becket, he was a sincere man, nor did he disparage the Benedictines in his own character. The strong man—the man of vigorous intellect and of direct purpose—will ever find in all minds but the mean a ready reception and excuse for actions which, in their nature distasteful, would not be tolerated in the weak, the vacillating, though even the more virtuous. Becket's history is well adapted to historical art. His mother, daughter to the Emir of Palestine, delivering his father from captivity, seeking him in England, knowing no English words but London and Gilbert, is of the richest tissue of old romance.

From the seventh to the twelfth century almost all the men distinguished as statesmen, or as scholars, or as churchmen, were of the Benedictine order. And when their influence declined, owing to the disorders and neglect of the primitive rule which crept into religions houses, there were not wanting men who conscientiously opposed the corruption. Many retired again to the hermit's cell, the wild and the forest, till numerous communities at length arose to re-establish the strictness of the rule, and constituted the reformed Benedictines.

The origin of the Augustine order lies in much obscurity. We are told that Augustine assembled together persons disposed to a religious and charitable life; but it does not appear that he himself instituted a religious order. About the middle of the ninth century, Pope Leo III. and the Emperor Lothaire incorporated all the various denominations of Christian clergy who had not entered the ranks of monachism, and gave them the rule of discipline promulgated by St Augustine. Under Innocent IV., after much difficulty, and not without the assumption of no less a miracle than the re-appearance of St Augustine himself, all those recluses, and hermits, and fraternities, bound to no discipline, were brought under that rule, and enjoined to wear the habit in which the saint had appeared—the sign of poverty and humility. Such were the "Austin Friars" in England. St Patrick and St Bridget of Ireland were of this order; who, though every vestige of them has been destroyed or mutilated, still live in story and legend in the faith of the people of Ireland.

"To the Augustines belong the two great military orders, the Knights Templars (1118) and the knights of St John of Jerusalem, afterwards styled of Malta (1092.) The first wear the red cross on the white mantle, the second the white cross on the black mantle or cassock. They may thus be recognised in portraits; but in connection with sacred art I have nothing to record of them here."

With us their architecture is still the monument of their greatness and their piety.

Of the Mendicant orders—the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the Carmelites—it will be in place to speak only of the two first: the Carmelites, though claiming Elijah himself as their founder, never having been an influential order. The strong religious movement of the thirteenth century exhibited no results more important than the rise of the two great mendicant communities of St Francis and St Dominick.

"In the year 1216, Dominick the Spaniard and Francis of Assise met at Rome. They met and embraced, each recognising in the other the companion predestined to aid the Church in her conflict with the awakening mental energies so long repressed, and in her attempt to guide or crush the aspiring, inquiring, ardent, fervid spirits of the time. Some attempts were made to induce them to unite into one great body their separate institutions. Dominick would have complied: it may be that he thought to find in Francis an instrument as well as an ally. Francis, perhaps from an intuitive perception of the unyielding dogmatic character of his friend, stood aloof. They received from Innocent III. the confirmation of their respective communities, 'and parted,' as it has been well expressed, 'to divide the world between them;' for before the end of the century, nay, in the time of one generation, their followers had spread themselves in thousands and tens of thousands over the whole of Christian Europe, and sent forth their missionaries through every region of the then known world."

The rule of St Augustine was the adoption of both. The stricter Benedictine rule, though as we have seen how departed from, enjoined a seclusion from the world. They had, as Mrs Jameson expresses it, "whereever their influence had worked for good, achieved that good by gathering the people to them, not by lowering themselves to the people." The Franciscans and Dominicans, on the contrary, were to mingle with the people, even in all their domestic concerns and affections: they were, in this more intimate connection with the people, to comfort, to exhort, to rebuke. The ministering the offices of religion was not at first conceded to them. They took the more humble title of brothers and sisters of mankind—frati and suori—instead of that of fathers, padri. The Dominicans called themselves "preaching friars;" the Franciscans, with greater humility, called themselves Frati Minori, "lesser brothers." In England they were known as the black and grey friars; but they never reached the popularity or power of the Benedictines in this country. The remarkable feature in the institution of these communities was their admittance of a third class of members, called "the Tertiary Order, or the Third Order of Penitence." These were of both sexes, and of all ranks: they were not bound by vows, nor required to relinquish their secular employments. They were, however, to be strictly moral, and, as far as they might be, charitable. They were never to take up weapon except against the enemies of Christ. "Could such a brotherhood," says Mrs Jameson, "have been rendered universal, and have agreed on the question, 'Who, among men, Christ himself would have considered as His enemies?' we should have had a heaven upon earth." The Franciscans and Dominicans may be considered as one body, the difference being not in essentials, but in points of discipline and dress.

The characters of these two founders of their communities have the distinguishing stamp of Dante's genius,—

Of Dante's description of St Dominick, that he was—

we think Mrs Jameson's paraphrastic translation a little unwarrantable—"unscrupulous, inaccessible to pity, and wise as a serpent in carrying out his religious views and purposes."

Shakspeare was more true,—

Greater learning and energy characterised the Dominicans; sanctity and humility and self-denial the Franciscans. The good of both communities is eloquently set forth by Sir James Stephen, and quoted in this volume:—

"So reiterated and so just have been the assaults on the Mendicant friars, that we usually forget that, till the days of Martin Luther, the Church had never seen so great and effectual reform as theirs.... Nothing in the histories of Wesley or of Whitfield can be compared with the enthusiasm which everywhere welcomed them, or with the immediate and visible result of their labours. In an age of oligarchal tyranny, they were the protectors of the weak; in an age of ignorance, the instructors of mankind; and in an age of profligacy, the stern vindicators of the holiness of the sacerdotal character and the virtues of domestic life."

Two remarkable things are spoken of both. One, that after fasting, and being rapt in a vision, St Francis was seen with the "Stigmata," (the miracle of the present day,) the wounds of the Saviour in his hands, his feet, and his side. St Dominick invented the Rosary; which, like most inventions of the Romish Church, and from the nature of its claim, is perpetuated to this day. Of the artistic treatment of the mysteries of the rosary, Mrs Jameson professes to have much to say, when she comes to the legends of the Madonna. The cruelties towards the Albigenses—ascribed apparently with too much reason to St Dominick—shows that when religion descends to fanaticism, persecution becomes a tenet; and in this, politics and religion, when both lose their reliance on Providence to guide all things to an end, are of one character, and make the interference of man's oppressive and bloody hand the only instrument.

One of the order of St Dominick has been immortalised by Titian, in perhaps the finest work of his hands—St Peter Martyr. Fra Bartolomeo, in painting this martyr, took the portrait of that extraordinary fanatic, his friend, Jerome Savonarola, who, too successful in the destruction of works of art that did not come up to his religious mark, met with a terrible fate—being strangled, and then burned in the great square at Florence, in 1498. The face is striking, and indicative of the impetuosity of a fanatic and religious demagogue. We should be glad to treat of many of the characters, members of these communities; but space, and the difficulty of selection, where there is so much of interest, will not allow us. We therefore pass on to the Jesuits.

This most remarkable order have had little influence on art. They neglected it as a means of teaching. Their great wealth was lavished in gorgeous ornament: but few pictures, and they not of the best, are to be found in their churches. Nor, though they can justly boast of men of science, classical learning, mathematicians, astronomers, antiquarians, have they produced one painter. The Jesuits' perspective is still a standing work; but Father Pozzi can scarcely merit the name of artist,—"who used his skill less as an artist than a conjuror, to produce such illusions as make the vulgar stare." The fact is, art had long declined before the canonisation of their saint. Mrs Jameson thinks them unfortunate in this; yet it may be doubted if the genius of their order is not in a degree adverse to art, and would not at all times have disregarded it. The secret working of their system—the depositing their influence in every house, in every bosom—their ubiquity, their universal aim, required neither the particular circumstances and incidents, nor the localities of art. It was the insidious "teaching through the ear, and by their books, upon which they relied for success." Nor can it be said of them that they have been doomed to a long night of forgetfulness: in this their lack of sacred art they have not perished—Carent quia vate sacro—for they are indestructible, intangible. They have been nominally suppressed, but spring up in full vigour at the first call, and everywhere; for they exist everywhere, known and unknown. And one clause in their regulations greatly favours them in this, that they are permitted to assume the dress of the country in which they may be, whenever they shall deem it expedient. And it has been asserted that they are at liberty to assume much more than the dress, and that Jesuits are to be found among the functionaries in Protestant countries, and at Protestant courts. We have only to see the nature of their vows; and if we give them credit for zeal and honesty in fulfilling them, certainly we must be alive to the danger of such a society, whose movements are secret, and whose conscience is in implicit obedience organised throughout the body.

"They were to take, besides, a vow of special obedience to the head of the Church for the time being, devoting themselves, without condition or remuneration, to do his pleasure, and to go to any part of the world to which he should see fit to send them.... The essential duties of the new order were to be three: preaching in the first place; secondly, the guidance of souls through confession; and thirdly, the education of the young."

Surely this is a wise scheme, to prepare the kingdoms of the earth and subdue them, not to their Divine master, but to their temporal, and, through their temporal, to themselves. Their founder, Ignatius Loyola, was one of the most remarkable men of the world. His life is too well known to admit of our dwelling upon any of its incidents. He died first General of his order, 1556, and was canonised by Gregory XV. in 1622. Although the Jesuits were not conspicuous as patrons of art—nor has sacred art done much for them—yet the gorgeous pencil of Rubens, of a more material than spiritual splendour, has to a considerable degree brought them within pictorial notice and celebrity. Mrs Jameson thinks that no portrait was taken of their founder during his life. We are surprised she does not notice that wondrously fine portrait at Hampton Court, by Titian.

In the histories of religious orders, it is a striking fact that the founders never failed to unite themselves with one or more congenial spirit, ready to co-operate with them, and doubtless, as they thought, by a Divine appointment. As St Francis and St Dominick, different as they were in individual character, had the one great sympathy under which they met, embraced, and then parted—as for one end to divide the world between them—so did Ignatius Loyola find in Francis Xavier a friend and associate, and subsequently in Francis Borgia, a no less willing disciple. One is perfectly astonished at reading accounts of the entire devotion of the whole man to the law of obedience, and the more than satisfaction, the joy, at being selected to suffering and death. It had been the dream of Francis Xavier to die a martyr in the Indies for the conversion of mankind; and when chosen to that end by Ignatius,—

"When the clearer sense and approaching accomplishment of those dark intimations were disclosed to him, passionate sobs attested the rapture which his tongue was unable to speak. He fell on his knees before Ignatius, kissed the feet of the holy father, repaired his tattered cassock, and, with no other provision than his breviary, left Rome on the 15th March 1540, for Lisbon, his destined port of embarkation for the East."

Nor is the story of St Francis Borgia less strange, showing the sudden impulse, yet continued purpose, executed after many years—never for a moment lost sight of. A grandee of Spain, high in honour and office, in his twenty-ninth year, as her master of horse he attends the funeral of the Empress Isabella, first wife of Charles V. The ceremonial required that he should raise the lid of the coffin, remove the covering, and see the face, to swear to the identity of the royal remains committed to his charge. He beheld in the solemn paleness of death the face of his beautiful and benign empress, and from that hour made a vow to dedicate himself to the service of God. Nevertheless, he repaired to his active duties—conscientiously performed them—and after the death of his wife, and six years spent in settling his affairs and providing for his children, and "bidding a farewell to every worldly care and domestic affection, departed for Rome, to place himself, and every faculty of his being, at the feet of St Ignatius." It was in the character of the humble Father Francis he visited his cousin Charles V., soon after his abdication.

How unlike are times and personages at various periods! Yet, doubtless, what man does at any time is in the man to do at all times. The influences set in in various directions: now we sail in another current and under trade-winds—and must go that course; but while we look back upon the history of our own and other countries, and read the doings of men, we marvel, and for a moment ask if they were of our flesh and blood.

A personal security has given us the experience of ease. It is not the temple but the home is in every man's thought. Let security be removed, our god Mammon be dethroned, and poverty be upon us—not as a vow, but an enforcement of the times—distress bring violence and persecution, and persecution the fever of excitement—the now sleeping capabilities of our nature would be roused to an energy which would make another generation as unlike the present as ours is to that which has been under contemplation.

The whole subject of this volume belongs to ecclesiastical history, and it is a strange one—how difficult to read to our actual knowledge, and to receive with candour. How much is there to condemn, to abhor—how much to admire, to love, to venerate. Sincerity, zeal, piety, and charity ought always to claim our sympathies, when our understandings reject a creed. If rising from contemplative communion with the saints and martyrs of the Romish calendar, with such mixed feelings, yet in which, we confess, a loving admiration preponderates, let us not come under a suspicion, so common in these days, of "tendencies to Rome." We have not the shadow of a thought that way—we utterly abominate and abhor Popery as a system, its frauds, its idolatry, or idolatries—for they are many—and the bondage which it would impose upon the necks of all people. But forbid it, charity—Christian charity above all—that we should join in a bestial persecution, and sit, as we were gods, and as some do, in severe judgment on, and denounce as children of perdition, and as doomed, all simple and innocent, virtuous and pious, members of that Church. To do this would, we conceive, be the part of a bad Protestant, for it is not the part of a Christian. But to return. It is remarkable of the Jesuits that they have no female saint. Yet, if there be truth in history, they have dealt cunningly and widely in female agencies.

We have too hastily passed by the Carmelites, and without noticing that extraordinary woman St Theresa—at a very early age a candidate for martyrdom—who with her brother, when they were children of eight and nine years of age, went begging into the country of the Moors, in hopes of being martyred for their faith at the hands of the infidels. At her death she had founded fifteen convents for men, and seventeen for women. We refer to the volume of Mrs Jameson for a larger notice of this saintly and sainted woman. We merely mention her slightly ourselves, that we may pass to her eulogy from the pens of two eloquent writers of her own sex—Mrs Jameson and Miss Martineau.

"It is impossible," says the former, "to consider, in a just and philosophic spirit, either her character or her history, without feeling that what was strong, and beautiful, and true, and earnest, and holy, was in herself, and what was morbid, miserable, and mistaken, was the result of the influences around her."

Oh, how does this eloquent apology cover with the mantle of charity, and embrace with the arms of love, many more personages than poor St Theresa, whose effigies may be seen in this volume.

We must not forget, before we lay down the pen, that not only the religious orders, but art also is a main object of this work.

We have said much to the credit of many pious, zealous, charitable, and good personages of the several orders, and will conclude with an anecdote creditable to Art; and the more willingly, as it brings us gently down to our own times—for we believe anecdotes of similar generosity may be told of many living men of the profession.

Annibal Caracci, suffering from illness and disappointment, and tempted by the promise of two thousand crowns, accepted an order from a certain Don Diego Herrera, to paint a picture in honour of a saint, in a church. He was, however, so ill that he could not perform the task. His pupil Albano nursed him, comforted him, cheered him; and between his attendances on his sick master, ran backward and forward to the church, and painted the frescoes with the greatest care—as they were to pass for the work of the master. Annibal every now and then rose from his bed and retouched and in part finished the painting. Don Diego refused the payment, as the work was not all by Annibal's hand. But the work being greatly admired, he consented to pay the two thousand crowns. And here a generous contest arose between the master and pupil; and this we give in the words of Mrs Jameson:—

"Annibal insisted on giving twelve hundred crowns to Albano, and keeping only four hundred for himself, which he said overpaid him for the little he had executed, and a few sorry drawings, (miseri disegni) not worth the money. Albano, not to be outdone in generosity, absolutely refused to take anything; saying, that he was only his master's creature and disciple, working under his orders, and profiting by his instructions. At length they agreed to submit to the arbitration of Herrera, who decided that the sixteen hundred crowns (four hundred had been paid,) should be divided between them. Even then it was with the greatest difficulty that Annibal could be persuaded to receive his share; and when he did, it was with a certain air of timidity and bashfulness—mostrando in certo modo temersene e vergognarsene."

In taking leave of Mrs Jameson's volume, the third of her series, we do so with the hope that she will speedily fulfil her promise and bring out the fourth part, relating to the Madonna, as connected with art.

The whole series we strongly recommend to the connoisseur at home as to the traveller abroad; for as the best pictures in the world are of subjects treated of by her, it is most desirable to have such a key to them as she has given, and promises further to give. The woodcuts and etchings are excellent, and maintain her reputation for judgment shown in the selection, and her skill as an artist.