ocents,--poor little unblest
creatures, "martyrs by the pang without the palm,"--yet dare to call
ourselves Christians.

* * * * *

The Massacre of the Innocents, as an event, belongs properly to the
life of Christ: it is not included in a series of the life of the
Virgin, perhaps from a feeling that the contrast between the most
blessed of women and mothers, and those who wept distracted for their
children, was too painful, and did not harmonize with the general
subject. In pictures of the Flight into Egypt, I have seen it
introduced allusively into the background; and in the architectural
decoration of churches dedicated to the Virgin Mother, as Notre Dame
de Chartres, it finds a place, but not often a conspicuous place;[1]
it is rather indicated than represented. I should pass over the
subject altogether, best pleased to be spared the theme, but
that there are some circumstances connected with it which require
elucidation, because we find them introduced incidentally into
pictures of the Flight and the _Riposo_.

[Footnote 1: It is conspicuous and elegantly treated over the door of
the Lorenz Kirche at Nuremberg.]

Thus, it is related that among the children whom Herod was bent on
destroying, was St. John the Baptist; but his mother Elizabeth fled
with him to a desert place, and being pursued by the murderers, "the
rock opened by a miracle, and close upon Elizabeth and her child;"
which means, as we may presume, that they took refuge in a cavern,
and were concealed within it until the danger was over. Zacharias,
refusing to betray his son, was slain "between the temple and the
altar," (Matt, xxiii. 35.) Both these legends are to be met with
in the Greek pictures, and in the miniatures of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries.[1]

[Footnote 1: They will be found treated at length in the artistic
subjects connected with St. John the Baptist.]

From the butchery which made so many mothers childless, the divine
Infant and his mother were miraculously saved; for an angel spoke to
Joseph in a dream, saying, "Arise, and take the young child and his
mother, and flee into Egypt." This is the second of the four angelic
visions which are recorded of Joseph. It is not a frequent subject
in early art, but is often met with in pictures of the later schools.
Joseph is asleep in his chair, the angel stands before him, and, with
a significant gesture, points forward--"arise and flee!"

There