sympathy for the mother of Christ by convulsive weepings, with perchance the accessory of a pocket-handkerchief! In pictures of this class, corporeal sufferings were rendered with horrible truth, muscular energy was substituted for mental woe. Living in times which needed fresh subjects as well as added powers, these painters laid aside such themes as treated of the mysteries of faith, the legends of primitive times, but especially such as, demanding spiritualised feelings in the author and the spectators, were uncongenial to both. To a contemplative religion, untroubled by sectarian movements, had succeeded a church militant, armed by bigotry, and struggling for existence. The revived Catholicism of Caraffa and Ghislieri required art of a character as gloomy as itself, and commissioned works wherein the terrors of the Inquisition replaced the promises of the Gospel, earthly martyrdoms supplanted celestial hopes, and pure faith was clouded by priestcraft. Henceforward, religious representations were reserved chiefly for church decorations, and even there they assumed an historical character, as in the miracles of our Lord, or the acts of his apostles. Alexander VI. had decorated the pontifical palace with incidents from the Gospel; but those which Paul III. and his successors selected for the Sala Regia commemorate the triumphs of an aggressive church in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the naval action of Lepanto. Michael Angelo, in depicting the Last Judgment, the chief glory of that pontificate, introduced Charon as a prominent personage; and, with inconsistency, if possible, more glaring, Poussin has painted Moses, the type of Christ, watched in infancy by a river-god, in classical allusion to his preservation from the perils of the Nile. [Footnote *213: Art does not desire more than nature, but more than an imitation of nature. The artist should create life, not imitate it.]