transparent gloom is quite awful; but in this
miraculous picture, the lovely Virgin Mother is metamorphosed into a
coarse Dutch _vrow_, and the divine Child looks like a changeling imp.

In chapels dedicated to the Nativity or the Epiphany, we frequently
find the journey of the Wise Men painted round the walls. They
are seen mounted on horseback, or on camels, with a long train of
attendants, here ascending a mountain, there crossing a river; here
winding through a defile, there emerging from a forest; while the
miraculous star shines above, pointing out the way. Sometimes we have
the approach of the Wise Men on one side of the chapel, and their
return to their own country on the other. On their homeward journey
they are, in some few instances, embarking in a ship: this occurs in
a fresco by Lorenzo Costa, and in a bas-relief in the cathedral of
Amiens. The allusion is to a curious legend mentioned by Arnobius the
Younger, in his commentary on the Psalms (fifth century). He says,
in reference to the 48th Psalm, that when Herod found that the three
Kings had escaped from him "in ships of Tarsus," in his wrath he
burned all the vessels in the port.

There is a beautiful fresco of the journey of the Magi in the Riccardi
Chapel at Florence, painted by Benozzo Gozzoli for the old Cosmo de'
Medici.

"The Baptism of the Magi by St. Thomas," is one of the compartments
of the Life of the Virgin, painted by Taddeo Gaddi, in the Baroncelli
Chapel at Florence, and this is the only instance I can refer to.

* * * * *

Before I quit this subject--one of the most interesting in the whole
range of art--I must mention a picture by Giorgione in the Belvedere
Gallery, well known as one of the few undoubted productions of that
rare and fascinating painter, and often referred to because of its
beauty. Its signification has hitherto escaped all writers on art, as
far as I am acquainted with them, and has been dismissed as one of his
enigmatical allegories. It is called in German, _Die Feldmaesser_ (the
Land Surveyors), and sometimes styled in English the _Geometricians_,
or the _Philosophers_, or the _Astrologers_. It represents a wild,
rocky landscape, in which are three men. The first, very aged, in as
oriental costume, with a long gray beard, stands holding in his hand
an astronomical table; the next, a man in the prime of life, seems
listening to him; the third, a youth, seated and looking upwards,
h