"The angel (who came down to earth With tidings of the peace to many years Wept for in vain, that op'd the heavenly gates From their long interdict) before us seem'd In a sweet act so sculptur'd to the life, He look'd no silent image. One had sworn He had said 'Hail!' for SHE was imag'd there, By whom the key did open to God's love; And in her act as sensibly imprest That word, 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord,' As figure seal'd on wax." And very beautifully has Flaxman transferred the sculpture "divinely wrought upon the rock of marble white" to earthly form. * * * * * The presence of the Holy Spirit in the historical Annunciations is to be accounted for by the words of St. Luke, and the visible form of the Dove is conventional and authorized. In many pictures, the celestial Dove enters by the open casement. Sometimes it seems to brood immediately over the head of the Virgin; sometimes it hovers towards her bosom. As for the perpetual introduction of the emblem of the Padre Eterno, seen above the sky, under the usual half-figure of a kingly ancient man, surrounded by a glory of cherubim, and sending forth upon a beam of light the immaculate Dove, there is nothing to be said but the usual excuse for the mediæval artists, that certainly there was no _conscious_ irreverence. The old painters, great as they were in art, lived in ignorant but zealous times--in times when faith was so fixed, so much a part of the life and soul, that it was not easily shocked or shaken; as it was not founded in knowledge or reason, so nothing that startled the reason could impair it. Religion, which now speaks to us through words, then spoke to the people through visible forms universally accepted; and, in the fine arts, we accept such forms according to the feeling which _then_ existed in men's minds, and which, in its sincerity, demands our respect, though now we might not, could not, tolerate the repetition. We must also remember that it was not in the ages of ignorance and faith that we find the grossest materialism in art. It was in the learned, half-pagan sixteenth and the polished seventeenth century, that this materialized theology became most offensive. Of all the artists who have sinned in the Annunciation--and they are many--Nicolò Poussin is perhaps the worst. Yet he was a good, a pious man, as well as a learned and accomplished painter. All through the history of the art, the French show themselves as the most signal violators of good taste, and what they have invented a word for--_bienséance_. They are worse than the old Germans; worse than the modern Spaniards--and that is saying much. In Raphael's Annunciation, Mary is seated in a reclining attitude, leaning against the side of her couch, and holding a book. The angel, whose attitude expresses a graceful _empressement_, kneels at some distance, holding the lily. * * * * *