en at once that she was not only a woman but a
mother-in-law of the first magnitude, or, as he called it, "una suocera
tremenda," and this without knowing that I wanted her to be a mother-in-
law myself. Unfortunately she had no real drapery, so I could not settle
the question as my friend Mr. H. F. Jones and I had been able to do at
Varallo with the figure of Eve that had been turned into a Roman soldier
assisting at the capture of Christ. I am not, however, disposed to waste
more time upon anything so obvious, and will content myself with saying
that we have here the Virgin's grandmother. I had never had the
pleasure, so far as I remembered, of meeting this lady before, and was
glad to have an opportunity of making her acquaintance.

Tradition says that it was she who chose the Virgin's name, and if so,
what a debt of gratitude do we not owe her for her judicious selection!
It makes one shudder to think what might have happened if she had named
the child Keren-Happuch, as poor Job's daughter was called. How could we
have said, "Ave Keren-Happuch!" What would the musicians have done? I
forget whether Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz was a man or a woman, but there were
plenty of names quite as unmanageable at the Virgin's grandmother's
option, and we cannot sufficiently thank her for having chosen one that
is so euphonious in every language which we need take into account. For
this reason alone we should not grudge her her portrait, but we should
try to draw the line here. I do not think we ought to give the Virgin's
great-grandmother a statue. Where is it to end? It is like Mr.
Crookes's ultimissimate atoms; we used to draw the line at ultimate
atoms, and now it seems we are to go a step farther back and have
ultimissimate atoms. How long, I wonder, will it be before we feel that
it will be a material help to us to have ultimissimissimate atoms?
Quavers stopped at demi-semi-demi, but there is no reason to suppose that
either atoms or ancestresses of the Virgin will be so complacent.

I have said that on St. Anne's left hand there is a lady who is bringing
in some flowers. St. Anne was always passionately fond of flowers. There
is a pretty story told about her in one of the Fathers, I forget which,
to the effect that when a child she was asked which she liked best--cakes
or flowers? She could not yet speak plainly and lisped out, "Oh fowses,
pretty fowses"; she added, however, with a sigh and as a kind of wistful
co