to be examined by the light then enjoyed, not by that shed upon them in after times of gospel freedom. Neither ought we to forget the impressionable qualities of a southern people, when disposed to question the tendencies of religious instruction through the senses and the imagination. And, granting that it is well to employ such means, the mute eloquence of an altar-picture, or a reliquary, though less startling than impassioned pulpit appeals, less thrilling than choral voices sustained by the organ's impressive diapason, had the advantages of being accessible at all hours to devout visitors, and of demanding from them no sustained attention. * * * * * Such was Christian art in Italy during the fourteenth century, when it was destined to undergo very considerable modifications. As yet it had been exercised almost exclusively for decorating churches and monastic buildings with extensive works intended to nourish or revive devotion in the masses who resorted to them. In ages when the intelligence capable of ordering these works was almost limited to convents, and when it was only from such representations that the unlettered eye could convey impressions to the mind of the laity, Christian paintings were an effective adjunct to Christian preaching and devotional exercises. But, as the dark cloud began to roll away before the dawn of modern cultivation, mankind awoke to new wants. No longer content with the pittance of religious knowledge which their spiritual guides doled out to them, they sought to secure a store for their own uncontrolled use. Those who could vanquish the difficulties of reading, found in their office-books a continuation of the church services; the less educated placed by their bed, or in their domestic chapel, a small devotional picture, as a substitute for the larger representations which invoked them to holy feelings in the house of God. Thus there arose a general desire for objects of sacred art. The privilege assumed by all who wished for such, of ordering them in conformity with their individual feelings or superstitions, quickly introduced greater latitudinarianism as to the selection and treatment of the subjects. The demand so created exceeded the productive powers of such painters as had been regularly initiated into the language of form, according to the settled conventionalities of their sanctified profession. The chain of pictorial tradition was snapped, when a host of new competitors entered the field, free from its trammels. But the public taste had been too long and thoroughly imbued with a uniform class of religious compositions to relish any great innovations; and although historical painting began to find a place in the palace-halls of the princes and republics of Italy, works commissioned by private persons continued almost exclusively of a sacred cast. Thus for a time was the new path little frequented. Artists felt their way with caution, unaware of the direction