ect, had been unknown till
this time: it became popular, and Paolo afterwards repeated it several
times. The most beautiful of all, to my feeling, is that in the
Dresden Gallery, where the "ruler of the feast," holding up the glass
of wine with admiration, seems to exclaim, "Thou hast kept the good
wine until now." In another, which is at Milan, the Virgin turns round
to the attendant, and desires him to obey her Son;--"Whatsoever he
saith unto you, do it!"

As the Marriage at Cana belongs, as a subject, rather to the history
of Christ, than to that of the Virgin his mother, I shall not enter
into it further here, but proceed.

* * * * *

After the marriage at Cana in Galilee, which may be regarded as the
commencement of the miraculous mission of our Lord, we do not hear
anything of his mother, the Virgin, till the time approached when he
was to close his ministry by his death. She is not once referred to
by name in the Gospels until the scene of the Crucifixion. We are
indeed given to understand, that in the journeys of our Saviour, and
particularly when he went up from Nazareth to Jerusalem, the women
followed and ministered to him (Matt. xxvii. 55, Luke, viii. 2): and
those who have written the life of the Virgin for the edification of
the people, and those who have translated it into the various forms
of art, have taken it for granted that SHE, his mother, could not have
been absent or indifferent where others attended with affection and
zeal: but I do not remember any scene in which she is an actor, or
even a conspicuous figure.

Among the carvings on the stalls at Amiens, there is one which
represents the passage (Matt. xii. 46.) wherein our Saviour, preaching
in Judea, is told that his mother and his brethren stand without.
"But he answering, said to him that told him, 'Who is my mother?
and who are my brethren?' And he stretched forth his hand toward
his disciples, and said, 'Behold my mother and my brethren!'" The
composition exhibits on one side Jesus standing and teaching his
disciples; while on the other, through an open door, we perceive the
Virgin and two or three others. This representation is very rare. The
date of these stalls is the sixteenth century; and such a group in a
series of the life of the Virgin could not, I think, have occurred
in the fifteenth. It would have been quite inconsistent with all the
religious tendencies of that time, to exhibit Christ as preac