Virgin," by Raphael, where the old bearded priest in his tiara, with his robes girt precisely about him, casts an inquiring look on the pair, as Joseph, a worn, majestic figure, puts the ring on the Virgin's finger. Some of it was hard and formal enough; the flowers on Joseph's rod might have been made of china; the slim figure of the disappointed suitor, breaking his staff, had an unpleasing trimness; and the companions of the Virgin were models of feeble serenity. But the great new octagonal temple in the background,--an empty place it seemed--for the open doors gave a glimpse of shadowy ranges--the shallow steps, the stone volutes, the low hills behind, with the towered villa--even the beggars begging of the richly dressed persons on the new-laid pavement--all these had a sudden appeal for him. The other picture was the "Communion of Jerome," by Domenichino--a stiff, conventional design enough. The cherubs hanging in air might have been made of wax or even metal--there was no aerial quality about them--they cumbered the place! But the wistful look of the old worn saint, kneeling so faintly, so wearily, the pure lines of the shrine, the waxlights, the stiff robes of the priest, the open arch showing an odd, clustered, castellated house, rising on its steep rocks among dark brushwood, with a glimmering pool below, and mysterious persons drawing near--it all had a tyrannical effect on Hugh's mind. Probably a conventional critic would have spoken approvingly of the Raphael and disdainfully enough of the Domenichino--but the point to Hugh was not in the art revealed, but in the association, the remoteness, the suggestiveness of the pictures. The faults of each were patent to him; but something in that moment shone through; one looked through a half-open door, and saw some beautiful mystery being celebrated within, something that one could not explain or analyse, but which was none the less certainly there.