It was a satisfaction to find my reading of this incomparable picture powerfully endorsed by one who, more perhaps than any living writer, has made good his claim to be regarded with the reverence that belongs to a scribe instructed in the things of the spiritual kingdom, bringing forth from his treasure things new and old. I quote the following passage from Canon Westcott's weighty contribution to the discussion of a subject second to none in interest and importance--'The Relation of Christianity to Art:' 'In the _Madonna di San Sisto_ Raffaelle has rendered the idea of Divine motherhood and Divine Sonship in intelligible forms. No one can rest in the individual figures. The tremulous fulness of emotion in the face of the Mother, the intense, far-reaching gaze of the Child, constrain the beholder to look beyond. For him too the curtain is drawn aside; he feels that there is a fellowship of earth with heaven and of heaven with earth, and understands the meaning of the attendant Saints who express the different aspects of this double communion.' (_Epistles of S. John_, p. 358.) I will only add some beautiful words of Mrs. Jameson, which also I had not seen when my verses were written: 'I have seen my own ideal once, and only once, attained: there, where Raffaelle--inspired if ever painter was inspired--projected on the space before him that wonderful creation which we style the _Madonna di San Sisto_; for there she stands--the transfigured woman--at once completely human and completely divine, an abstraction of power, purity, and love, poised on the empurpled air, and requiring no other support; looking out with her melancholy, loving mouth, her slightly dilated, sibylline eyes, quite through the universe, to the end and consummation of all things; sad, as if she beheld afar off the visionary sword that was to reach her heart through Him, now resting as enthroned on that heart; yet already exalted through the homage of the redeemed generations who were to salute her as Blessed.' (_Legends of the Madonna_: Introduction, p. 44.) NOTE B. _Bethlehem Gate._