or sinew, but the fainting of the
deserted Son of God before his Eloi cry, and yet feeling himself utterly
unequal to the expression of this by the countenance, has on the one
hand filled his picture with such various and impetuous muscular
exertion that the body of the Crucified is, by comparison, in perfect
repose, and on the other has cast the countenance altogether into shade.
But the agony is told by this, and by this only, that though there yet
remains a chasm of light on the mountain horizon where the earthquake
darkness closes upon the day, the broad and sunlike glory about the head
of the Redeemer has become wan, and of the color of ashes.[62]

But the great painter felt he had something more to do yet. Not only
that agony of the Crucified, but the tumult of the people, that rage
which invoked his blood upon them and their children. Not only the
brutality of the soldier, the apathy of the centurion, nor any other
merely instrumental cause of the Divine suffering, but the fury of his
own people, the noise against him of those for whom he died, were to be
set before the eye of the understanding, if the power of the picture was
to be complete. This rage, be it remembered, was one of disappointed
pride; and the disappointment dated essentially from the time, when but
five days before, the King of Zion came, and was received with
hosannahs, riding upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass. To this
time, then, it was necessary to direct the thoughts, for therein are
found both the cause and the character, the excitement of, and the
witness against, this madness of the people. In the shadow behind the
cross, a man, riding on an ass colt, looks back to the multitude, while
he points with a rod to the Christ crucified. The ass is feeding on the
_remnants_ of _withered palm-leaves_.

With this master-stroke I believe I may terminate all illustration of
the peculiar power of the imagination over the feelings of the
spectator, by the elevation into dignity and meaning of the smallest
accessory circumstances. But I have not yet sufficiently dwelt on the
fact from which this power arises, the absolute truth of statement of
the central fact as it was, or must have been. Without this truth, this
awful first moving principle, all direction of the feelings is useless.
That which we cannot excite, it is of no use to know how to govern.

Sec. 21. The Massacre of innocents.

I have before alluded, Sect. I. Chap. XIV., to the