"Of the heaven which the great artist wished to infuse into his works, there was but little in painting, when it rose to aid religion in Italy. The shape was uncooth, the coloring ungraceful, and there was but the faint dawn of that divine sentiment, which in time elevated Roman art to the same eminence as the Grecian. Yet all that Christianity demanded from Art, at first, was readily accomplished: fine forms, and delicate hues, were not required for centuries, by the successors of the Apostles; a Christ on the Cross; the Virgin lulling her divine Babe in her bosom; the Miracle of Lazarus; the Preaching on the Mount; the Conversion of St. Paul; and the Ascension--roughly sculptured or coarsely painted, perhaps by the unskilful hands of the Christian preachers themselves--were found sufficient to explain to a barbarous people some of the great ruling truths of Christianity. These, and such as these, were placed in churches, or borne about by gospel missionaries and were appealed to, when words failed to express the doctrines and mysteries which were required to be taught. Such appeals were no doubt frequent, in times when Greek and Latin ceased to be commonly spoken, and the present languages of Europe were shaping themselves, like fruit in the leaf, out of the barbarous dissonance of the wild tongues which then prevailed. These Christian preachers, with their emblems and their relics, were listened to by the Gothic subverters of the empire of art and elegance, with the more patience and complacency, since they desired not to share in their plunder or their conquests, and opened to them the way to a far nobler kingdom--a kingdom not of this earth.