uish accurately between what
they were allowed and what they were commanded to believe. Neither can
it be denied that the traditional incidents--those at least which we
find artistically treated--are often singularly beautiful, poetical,
and instructive. In the hands of the great religions artists, who
worked in their vocation with faith and simplicity, objects and scenes
the most familiar and commonplace became sanctified and glorified by
association with what we deem most holy and most venerable. In the
hands of the later painters the result was just the reverse--what
was most spiritual, most hallowed, most elevated, became secularized,
materialized, and shockingly degraded.

No subject has been more profoundly felt and more beautifully handled
by the old painters, nor more vilely mishandled by the moderns, than
the ANNUNCIATION, of all the scenes in the life of Mary the most
important and the most commonly met with. Considered merely as an
artistic subject, it is surely eminently beautiful: it places before
us the two most graceful forms which the hand of man was ever called
on to delineate;--the winged spirit fresh from paradise; the woman
not less pure, and even more highly blessed--the chosen vessel of
redemption, and the personification of all female loveliness, all
female excellence, all wisdom, and all purity.

* * * * *

We find the Annunciation, like many other scriptural incidents,
treated in two ways--as a mystery, and as an event. Taken in the
former sense, it became the expressive symbol of a momentous article
of faith, _The Incarnation of the Deity_. Taken in the latter sense,
it represented the announcement of salvation to mankind, through the
direct interposition of miraculous power. In one sense or the other,
it enters into every scheme of ecclesiastical decoration; but
chiefly it is set before us as a great and awful mystery, of which
the two figures of Gabriel, the angel-messenger, and Mary the
"highly-favoured," placed in relation to each other, became the
universally accepted symbol, rather than the representation.

THE ANNUNCIATION AS A MYSTERY.

Considering the importance given to the Annunciation in its mystical
sense, it is strange that we do not find it among the very ancient
symbolical subjects adopted in the first ages of Christian art. It
does not appear on the sarcophagi, nor in the early Greek carvings and
diptychs, nor in the early mosaics--e