he servants,--is shown further to have been
distressful, or at least embarrassed, poverty by their want of wine on
such an occasion. It was not certainly to remedy an accident of
careless provision, but to supply a need sorrowfully betraying the
narrow circumstances of His hosts, that our Lord wrought the beginning
of miracles. Many mystic meanings have been sought in the act, which,
though there is no need to deny, there is little evidence to certify:
but we may joyfully accept, as its first indisputable meaning, that of
simple kindness; the wine being provided here, when needed, as the
bread and fish were afterwards for the hungry multitudes. The whole
value of the miracle, in its serviceable tenderness, is at once
effaced when the marriage is supposed, as by Veronese and other
artists of later times, to have taken place at the house of a rich
man. For the rest, Giotto sufficiently implies, by the lifted hand of
the Madonna, and the action of the fingers of the bridegroom, as if
they held sacramental bread, that there lay a deeper meaning under the
miracle for those who could accept it. How all miracle _is_ accepted
by common humanity, he has also shown in the figure of the ruler of
the feast, drinking. This unregarding forgetfulness of present
spiritual power is similarly marked by Veronese, by placing the figure
of a fool with his bauble immediately underneath that of Christ, and
by making a cat play with her shadow in one of the wine-vases.

It is to be remembered, however, in examining all pictures of this
subject, that the miracle was not made manifest to all the guests;--to
none indeed, seemingly, except Christ's own disciples: the ruler of
the feast, and probably most of those present (except the servants who
drew the water), knew or observed nothing of what was passing, and
merely thought the good wine had been "kept until now."

* * * * *

XXIV.

THE RAISING OF LAZARUS.

In consequence of the intermediate position which Giotto occupies
between the Byzantine and Naturalist schools, two relations of
treatment are to be generally noted in his work. As compared with the
Byzantines, he is a realist, whose power consists in the introduction
of living character and various incidents, modifying the formerly
received Byzantine symbols. So far as he has to do this, he is a
realist of the purest kind, endeavoring always to conceive events
precisely as they were likely to have happene