orsehair for hair, as at
Varallo. The effect of the whole composition is better than we have
a right to expect from any sculpture dating from the beginning of
the eighteenth century.

The ninth chapel, the Annunciation, presents no feature of interest;
nor yet does the tenth, the Visit of Mary to Elizabeth. The
eleventh, the Nativity, though rather better, is still not
remarkable.

The twelfth, the Purification, is absurdly bad, but I do not know
whether the expression of strong personal dislike to the Virgin
which the High Priest wears is intended as prophetic, or whether it
is the result of incompetence, or whether it is merely a smile gone
wrong in the baking. It is amusing to find Marocco, who has not
been strict about archaeological accuracy hitherto, complain here
that there is an anachronism, inasmuch as some young ecclesiastics
are dressed as they would be at present, and one of them actually
carries a wax candle. This is not as it should be; in works like
those at Oropa, where implicit reliance is justly placed on the
earnest endeavours that have been so successfully made to thoroughly
and carefully and patiently ensure the accuracy of the minutest
details, it is a pity that even a single error should have escaped
detection; this, however, has most unfortunately happened here, and
Marocco feels it his duty to put us on our guard. He explains that
the mistake arose from the sculptor's having taken both his general
arrangement and his details from some picture of the fourteenth or
fifteenth century, when the value of the strictest historical
accuracy was not yet so fully understood.

It seems to me that in the matter of accuracy, priests and men of
science whether lay or regular on the one hand, and plain people
whether lay or regular on the other, are trying to play a different
game, and fail to understand one another because they do not see
that their objects are not the same. The cleric and the man of
science (who is only the cleric in his latest development) are
trying to develop a throat with two distinct passages--one that
shall refuse to pass even the smallest gnat, and another that shall
gracefully gulp even the largest camel; whereas we men of the street
desire but one throat, and are content that this shall swallow
nothing bigger than a pony. Everyone knows that there is no such
effectual means of developing the power to swallow camels as
incessant watchfulness for opportunities of straining