Dormi cor, et meus thronus; Dormi matris jubilum; Aurium caelestis sonus, Et suave sibilum! Millies tibi laudes canimus Mille, mille, millies. Dormi fili! dulce, mater Duke melos concinam; Dormi, nate! suave, pater, Suave carmen accinam. Millies tibi laudes canimus Mille, mille, millies. Ne quid desit, sternam rosis, Sternam foenum violis, Pavimentum hyacinthis Et praesepe liliis. Millies tibi laudes canimus Mille, mille, millies. Si vis musicam, pastores Convocabo protinus; Illis nulli sunt priores; Nemo canit castius. Millies tibi laudes canimus Mille, mille, millies. Everybody who is in Rome at Christmas-tide makes a point of visiting Santa Maria in Ara C[oe]li, the church which stands to the right of the Capitol, where once the temple of Jupiter Feretrius is supposed to have stood. What is at that season to be seen in the Ara C[oe]li is well enough known--to one side a "presepio," or manger, with the ass, the ox, St Joseph, the Virgin, and the Child on her knee; to the other side a throng of little Roman children rehearsing in their infantine voices the story that is pictured opposite.[1] The scene may be taken as typical of the cult of the Infant Saviour, which, under one form or another, has existed distinct and separable from the main stem of Christian worship ever since a Voice in Judaea bade man seek after the Divine in the stable of Bethlehem. It is almost a commonplace to say that Christianity brought fresh and peculiar glory alike to infancy and to motherhood. A new sense came into the words of the oracle-- Thee in all children, the eternal Child ... And the mother, sublimely though she appears against the horizon of antiquity, yet rose to a higher rank--because the highest--at the founding of the new faith. Especially in art she left the second place that she might take the first. The sentiment of maternal love, as illustrated, as transfigured, in the love of the Virgin for her Divine Child, furnished the great Italian painters with their master motive, whilst in his humble fashion the obscure folk-poet exemplifies the selfsame thought. I am not sure that the rude rhymes of which the following is a rendering do not convey, as well as can be conveyed in articulate speech, the glory and the grief of the Dresden Madonna: Sleep, oh sleep, dear Baby mine, King Divine; Sleep, my Child, in sleep recline; Lullaby, mine Infant fair, Heaven's King All glittering, Full of grace as lilies rare. Close thine eyelids, O my treasure, Loved past measure, Of my soul, the Lord, the pleasure; Lullaby, O regal Child, On the hay My joy I lay; Love celestial, meek and mild.