Of course we each form to ourselves some notion of what we require; and these requirements will be as diverse as our natures and our habits of thought. For myself, I have seen my own ideal once, and only once, attained: _there_, where Raphael--inspired if ever painter was inspired--projected on the space before him that wonderful creation which we style the _Madonna di San Sisto_ (Dresden Gal.); for there she stands--the transfigured woman, at once completely human and completely divine, an abstraction of power, purity, and love, poised on the empurpled air, and requiring no other support; looking out, with her melancholy, loving mouth, her slightly dilated, sibylline eyes, quite through the universe, to the end and consummation of all things;--sad, as if she beheld afar off the visionary sword that was to reach her heart through HIM, now resting as enthroned on that heart; yet already exalted through the homage of the redeemed generations who were to salute her as Blessed. Six times have I visited the city made glorious by the possession of this treasure, and as often, when again at a distance, with recollections disturbed by feeble copies and prints, I have begun to think, "Is it so indeed? is she indeed so divine? or does not rather the imagination encircle her with a halo of religion and poetry, and lend a grace which is not really there?" and as often, when returned, I have stood before it and confessed that there is more in that form and face than I had ever yet conceived. I cannot here talk the language of critics, and speak of this picture merely as a picture, for to me it was a revelation. In the same gallery is the lovely Madonna of the Meyer family: inexpressibly touching and perfect in its way, but conveying only one of the attributes of Mary, her benign pity; while the Madonna di San Sisto is an abstract of _all_.[1] [Footnote 1: Expression is the great and characteristic excellence of Raphael more especially in his Madonnas. It is precisely this which all copies and engravings render at best most imperfectly; and in point of expression the most successful engraving of the Madonna di San Sisto is certainly that of Steinla.] * * * * * The poets are ever the best commentators on the painters. I have already given from the great "singers of high poems" in the fourteenth century _their_ exposition of the theological type of the Madonna. Now, in some striking passages of our modern poets, we may find a most beautiful commentary on what I have termed the _moral_ type. The first is from Wordsworth, and may be recited before the Madonna di San Sisto:--