ing in all his commandments
blameless:" the manner in which she received the visit of Mary,
acknowledging with a glad humility the higher destinies of her young
relative, show her to have been free from all envy and jealousy.
Therefore all pictures of Elizabeth should exhibit her as an elderly,
but not an aged matron; a dignified, mild, and gracious creature; one
selected to high honour by the Searcher of hearts, who, looking down
on hers, had beheld it pure from any secret taint of selfishness, even
as her conduct had been blameless before man.[1]

[Footnote 1: For a full account of the legends relating to Elizabeth,
the mother of the Baptist, see the fourth series of Sacred and
Legendary Art.]

* * * * *

Such a woman as we believe Mary to have been must have loved and
honoured such a woman as Elizabeth. Wherefore, having heard that
Elizabeth had been exalted to a miraculous motherhood, she made haste
to visit her, not to ask her advice,--for being graced with all good
gifts of the Holy Spirit, and herself the mother of Wisdom, she could
not need advice,--but to sympathize with her cousin and reveal what
had happened to herself.

Thus then they met, "these two mothers of two great princes, of whom
one was pronounced the greatest born of woman, and the other was his
Lord:" happiest and most exalted of all womankind before or since,
"needs must they have discoursed like seraphim and the most ecstasied
order of Intelligences!" Such was the blessed encounter represented in
the Visitation.

* * * * *

The number of the figures, the locality and circumstances, vary
greatly. Sometimes we have only the two women, without accessories
of any kind, and nothing interferes with the high solemnity of that
moment in which Elizabeth confesses the mother of her Lord. The better
to express this willing homage, this momentous prophecy, she is often
kneeling. Other figures are frequently introduced, because it could
not be supposed that Mary made the journey from Nazareth to the
dwelling of Zacharias near Jerusalem, a distance of fifty miles,
alone. Whether her husband Joseph accompanied her, is doubtful;
and while many artists have introduced him, others have omitted him
altogether. According to the ancient Greek formula laid down for the
religious painters, Mary is accompanied by a servant or a boy, who
carries a stick across his shoulder, and a basket slung to it. T