majestic for
being in ruins. 'All other pictures look like oil and varnish, we are
stopped and attracted by the colouring, the penciling, the finishing,
the instrumentality of art; but the on the canvas.... There is nothing
between us and the subject; we look through a frame and see Scripture
histories, and amidst the wreck of colour and the mouldering of material
beauty, nothing is left but a universe of thought, or the broad imminent
shadows of calm contemplation and majestic pains.'

And that Raphael did not neglect the minutest details in these sketches,
will be seen by the accompanying note: 'The foreground of Raphael's two
cartoons, "The Miraculous Draught of Fishes," and "The Charge to
Peter," are covered with plants of the common sea cole-wort, of which
the sinuated leaves and clustered blossoms would have exhausted the
patience of any other artist; but have appeared worthy of prolonged and
thoughtful labour to the great mind of Raphael.'--_Ruskin_.

Whole clusters of anecdotes gather round the cartoons, which, as they
have to do with the work and not the worker, I leave untouched, with
regret. But I must forewarn my readers by mentioning some of the refuted
criticisms which have been applied to the cartoons. Reading the
criticisms and their answers ought to render us modest and wary in
'picking holes' in great pictures, as forward and flippant critics, old
and young, are tempted to pick them. With regard to the 'Miraculous
Draught of Fishes,' a great outcry was once set up that Raphael had made
the boat too little to hold the figures he has placed in it. But Raphael
made the boat little advisedly; if he had not done so, the picture would
have been 'all boat,' a contingency scarcely to be desired; on the
other hand, if Raphael had diminished the figures to suit the size of
the boat, these figures would not have suited those of the other
cartoons, and the cartoon would have lost greatly in dignity and effect.

In the cartoon of the 'Death of Ananias,' carping objectors were ready
to suggest that Raphael had committed an error in time by introducing
Sapphira in the background counting her ill-gotten gains, at the moment
when her no less guilty husband has fallen down in the agonies of death.
It was hours afterwards that Sapphira entered into the presence of the
apostles. But we must know that time and space do not exist for
painters, who have to tell their story at one stroke, as it were.

In the treating of th