is
father Herod, he was afraid to go thither; and being warned of God
in a dream, he turned aside into Galilee," and came to the city of
Nazareth, which was the native place and home of the Virgin Mary.
Here Joseph dwelt, following in peace his trade of a carpenter, and
bringing up his reputed Son to the same craft: and here Mary nurtured
her divine Child; "and he grew and waxed strong in spirit, and the
grace of God was upon him." No other event is recorded until Jesus had
reached his twelfth, year.

* * * * *

This, then, is the proper place to introduce some notice of those
representations of the domestic life of the Virgin and the infancy
of the Saviour, which, in all their endless variety, pass under the
general title of THE HOLY FAMILY--the beautiful title of a beautiful
subject, addressed in the loveliest and most familiar form at once to
the piety and the affections of the beholder.

These groups, so numerous, and of such perpetual recurrence, that they
alone form a large proportion of the contents of picture galleries
and the ornaments of churches, are, after all, a modern innovation in
sacred art. What may be called the _domestic_ treatment of the history
of the Virgin cannot be traced farther back than the middle of the
fifteenth century. It is, indeed, common to class all those pictures
as Holy Families which include any of the relatives of Christ grouped
with the Mother and her Child; but I must here recapitulate and
insist upon the distinction to be drawn between the _domestic_ and
the _devotional_ treatment of the subject; a distinction I have been
careful to keep in view throughout the whole range of sacred art,
and which, in this particular subject, depends on a difference in
sentiment and intention, more easily felt than set down in words. It
is, I must repeat, a _devotional_ group where the sacred personages
are placed in direct relation to the worshippers, and where their
supernatural character is paramount to every other. It is a _domestic_
or an _historical_ group, a Holy Family properly so called, when the
personages are placed in direct relation to each other by some link
of action or sentiment, which expresses the family connection between
them, or by some action which has a dramatic rather than a religious
significance. The Italians draw this distinction in the title "_Sacra
Conversazione_" given to the first-named subject, and that of "_Sacra
Famiglia_" given