To recover the actual conditions of the early life of Christ—to reproduce the aspect of a Nazarene cottage eighteen centuries ago—and yet to charge the historic figure with a vitality and emotion that brings it home with irresistible significance to the heart of the spectator of to-day, is perhaps a higher triumph of art than could be achieved by Millais’s neo-realistic method. Rare as is success in this dual effort—the union of archæological accuracy with profound insight into the eternal meanings of the ancient tragedy—it has been attained beyond question by Holman Hunt in his greatest picture, “The Shadow of Death.” Sojourning for four years at Nazareth and Bethlehem (the latter on account of the alleged resemblance of its people to the ancient House of David), the painter equipped himself with knowledge of every detail of domestic life, furniture, custom, and dress that could heighten the literal truthfulness of his work. To that scientific fidelity he added the elaborate symbolism of which he made a studious art, and through that symbolism he poured a wealth of imagination, a dignity of thought and an intensity of feeling which steeped the subject in a moral glow hitherto unknown to English painting. The scene is laid at sunset in the carpenter’s shop. The Christ, whose face and form, now grown to manhood, speak utter weariness of body and soul, seems to stand there for all humanity, confronting the whole problem of labour and suffering and death. There is something more than physical exhaustion, though that is paramount, in the drooping figure of the tired workman as He lifts His arms from the tools and stretches them out in the evening sunlight, all unconscious that as He does so, the slant rays cast His shadow, in the semblance of a crucifix, upon the cottage wall behind, where a wooden tool-rack forms as it were the arms of the cross on which the shadow of His arms is cast; and near it a little window, open to the east, makes an aureole of light around His head. His mother, kneeling on the floor, examining the casket in which she keeps the long-treasured gifts of the Magi—gold, and frankincense, and myrrh, glances up and sees the terrible image on the wall. It is the cross of a daily crucifixion, rather than of the final death, that weighs upon the soul of Christ;—the crucifixion of unhonoured labour in obscurity; the hard, despised routine of toil endured by the uncomplaining workers of all time. He knows both the dignity of labour and its shame;—the dignity, that is, of all honest, healthy, and profitable toil; the shame of that industrial slavery which in any land can make a man too weary to enjoy the sunset glories or to revel in the calm delights of eventide.