With the legends of St. Francis thus indelibly stamped on the inhabitants, and with the finest specimens of religious painting preserved at Assisi, it need scarcely be matter of surprise that devotional art, which we have endeavoured to describe, should have found in Umbria a fostering soil, even after it had been elsewhere supplanted by naturalist and pagan novelties; for the feelings which it breathed were those of mystery and sentiment--its beauty was sanctified and impalpable. By a people so trained, its traditional types were received with the fervour of faith; while to the limited range of its themes the miraculous adventures of the saint were a welcome supplement. The romantic character of these incidents borrowed from the picturesque features of the country a new but fitting element of pictorial effect, and for the first time nature was introduced to embellish without demeaning religious painting. But let us hear Rio, the eloquent elucidator of sacred art, upon this subject. "To the Umbrian school belongs the glory of having followed out the leading aim of Christian art without pause, and without yielding to the seductions of example or the distractions of clamour. It would seem that a peculiar blessing belongs to the spots rendered specially holy by the sainted Francis of Assisi, and that the odour of his sanctity has preserved the fine arts from degradation in that mountain district, where so many pious painters have successively contributed to ornament his tomb. From thence rose to heaven, like a sweet incense, prayers whose fervour and purity ensured their efficacy: from thence, too, in other times, there descended, like beneficent dew upon the more corrupt cities of the plain, penitential inspirations that spread into almost every part of Italy." Since these pages were written I have met with a passage in the introduction of Boni's Italian translation of the work just quoted, which I subjoin, at the risk of some repetition, as a fair specimen of the ideas on Christian art now entertained by many on the Continent, but as yet little known to English literature.