ve learned, perhaps, after running through half the galleries
and churches in Europe, to distinguish a few of the attributes and
characteristic figures which meet us at every turn, yet without any
clear idea of their meaning, derivation, or relative propriety. The
palm of victory, we know, designates the martyr, triumphant in death.
We so far emulate the critical sagacity of the gardener in "Zeluco,"
that we have learned to distinguish St. Laurence by his gridiron, and
St. Catherine by her wheel. We are not at a loss to recognise the
Magdalene's "loose hair and lifted eye," even when without her skull
and her vase of ointment. We learn to know St. Francis by his brown
habit, and shaven crown, and wasted ardent features; but how do we
distinguish him from St. Anthony, or St. Dominick? As for St. George
and the Dragon--from the St. George of the Louvre--Raphael's--who
sits his horse with the elegant tranquillity of one assured of
celestial aid, down to him "who swings on a sign-post at mine
hostess's door"--he is our familiar acquaintance. But who is that
lovely being in the first blush of youth, who, bearing aloft the
symbolic cross, stands with one foot on the vanquished dragon? "That
is a copy after Raphael." And who is that majestic creature holding
her palm-branch, while the unicorn crouches at her feet? "That is
the famous Moretto at Vienna." Are we satisfied? Not in the least!
but we try to look wiser and pass on.

In the old times, the painters of these legendary scenes and subjects
could always reckon securely on certain associations and certain
sympathies in the minds of the spectators. We have outgrown these
associations, we repudiate these sympathies. We have taken these
works from their consecrated localities, in which they once held each
their dedicated place, and we have hung them in our drawing-rooms and
our dressing-rooms, over our pianos and our sideboards, and now what
do they say to us? That Magdalene weeping amid her hair, who once
spoke comfort to the soul of the fallen sinner,--that Sebastian,
arrow-pierced, whose upward ardent glance, spoke of courage and hope
to the tyrant-ridden serf--that poor tortured slave to whose aid St.
Mark comes sweeping down from above--can they speak to us of nothing
save flowing lines, and correct drawing, and gorgeous colour? Must
we be told that one is a Titian, the other a Guido, the third a
Tintoret, before we dare to melt into compassion or admiratio