nutive figures, more masterly
and finished than the execution, more magical and lustrous than the
effect of the whole. The work of Albertinelli, in its large and solemn
beauty and religious significance, is worthy of being placed over an
altar, on which we might offer up the work of Rembrandt as men offer
incense, gems, and gold.

As the Visitation is not easily mistaken, I have said enough of it
here; and we pass to the next subject,--The Dream of Joseph.

* * * * *

Although the feast of the Visitation is fixed for the 2d of July, it
was, and is, a received opinion, that Mary began her journey to the
hill country but a short time, even a few days, after the Annunciation
of the angel. It was the sixth month with Elizabeth, and Mary
sojourned with her three months. Hence it is supposed, by many
commentators, that Mary must have been present at the birth of John
the Baptist. It may seem surprising that the early painters should not
have made use of this supposition. I am not aware that there exists
among the numerous representations of the birth of St. John, any
instance of the Virgin being introduced; it should seem that the lofty
ideas entertained of the Mater Dei rendered it impossible to place her
in a scene where she would necessarily take a subordinate position:
this I think sufficiently accounts for her absence.[1] Mary then
returned to her own dwelling at Nazareth; and when Joseph (who in
these legendary stories is constantly represented as a house-carpenter
and builder, and travelling about to exercise his trade in various
places) also came back to his home, and beheld his wife, the
suspicion entered his mind that she was about to become a mother,
and very naturally his mind was troubled "with sorrow and insecure
apprehensions; but being a just man, that is, according to the
Scriptures and other wise writers, a good, a charitable man, he would
not openly disgrace her, for he found it more agreeable to justice to
treat an offending person with the easiest sentence, than to render
her desperate, and without remedy, and provoked by the suffering of
the worst of what she could fear. No obligation to justice can force
a man to be cruel; pity, and forbearance, and long-suffering, and
fair interpretation, and excusing our brother" (and our sister), "and
taking things in the best sense, and passing the gentlest sentence,
are as certainly our duty, and owing to every person who _does_ of