drawings of the _Via Crucis_. There, in the cradle of Umbrian
art, in the presence of Perugino and Raphael, he carried out the scenes
of _The Passion_. In the hill country of Perugia his thoughts turned to
the hills round about Jerusalem, olive gardens spoke of the Garden of
Gethsemane, a land lovely, yet sad, told of Him who trod the Via
Dolorosa. The painter divided the day between the practice of his art,
Church functions, and social intercourse; he revisited the scenes of his
labours at Assisi, and rejoiced the German Sisterhood of St. Francis by
a visit. The next year the picturesque district of Ariccia was chosen
for summer sojourn, with the advantage of Cornelius within the distance
of a walk. The following autumn the two old friends revisited the spot.
Here the water-colour drawings of the _Via Crucis_, or _The Stations_,
were with earnest solicitude brought to completion.

_The Stations_ in "the history of our Lord" have been accustomed to
comprise Christ's last sufferings, and in their symbolic meaning
"represent the way to Calvary through which the believer is typically
supposed to enter into the inner and holier part of the Church." Such
compositions are almost indispensable to every Roman Catholic place of
worship, however humble; therefore Overbeck, desiring that his art
should at all seasons furnish aids to devotion, designed these fourteen
stations on the Via Dolorosa. According to precedent, the series begins
with _Jesus Condemned_, and ends with _The Entombment_. The compositions
were elaborated in two forms, the one as cartoons, the other as
water-colour drawings.[5] The treatment is, of course, traditional, and
the general style does but suggest the line of criticism with which the
reader must by this time be familiar; more than ever we here encounter
sermons for the edification of the faithful rather than works appealing
to the artist. The notes which a few years since I made before the
drawings in the Vatican read somewhat severe, yet I ought hardly to
withhold the impressions left on the mind. Utmost devotion and sincerity
will be taken for granted, but I found that the excessive striving after
religious feeling degenerated into morbid affectation and spiritual
spasm, that sentiment passed into sentimentality, and that simplicity
scarcely escaped childishness. Throughout became painfully apparent the
lack of physical sinew and dramatic force; the characters, not being
modelled on the life, wanted