Of Elizabeth I must premise a few words, because in many representations relating to the life of the Virgin, and particularly in those domestic groups, the Holy Families properly so called, she is a personage of great importance, and we ought to be able, by some preconceived idea of her bearing and character, to test the propriety of that impersonation usually adopted by the artists. We must remember that she was much older than her cousin, a woman "well stricken in years;" but it is a, great mistake to represent her as old, as wrinkled and decrepit, as some painters have done. We are told that she was righteous before the Lord, "walking in all his commandments blameless:" the manner in which she received the visit of Mary, acknowledging with a glad humility the higher destinies of her young relative, show her to have been free from all envy and jealousy. Therefore all pictures of Elizabeth should exhibit her as an elderly, but not an aged matron; a dignified, mild, and gracious creature; one selected to high honour by the Searcher of hearts, who, looking down on hers, had beheld it pure from any secret taint of selfishness, even as her conduct had been blameless before man.[1] [Footnote 1: For a full account of the legends relating to Elizabeth, the mother of the Baptist, see the fourth series of Sacred and Legendary Art.] * * * * * Such a woman as we believe Mary to have been must have loved and honoured such a woman as Elizabeth. Wherefore, having heard that Elizabeth had been exalted to a miraculous motherhood, she made haste to visit her, not to ask her advice,--for being graced with all good gifts of the Holy Spirit, and herself the mother of Wisdom, she could not need advice,--but to sympathize with her cousin and reveal what had happened to herself. Thus then they met, "these two mothers of two great princes, of whom one was pronounced the greatest born of woman, and the other was his Lord:" happiest and most exalted of all womankind before or since, "needs must they have discoursed like seraphim and the most ecstasied order of Intelligences!" Such was the blessed encounter represented in the Visitation. * * * * *