But the order in which, in theological Art, these symbols are placed, is not the same as the order of the Gospels according to the canon. Rupertus considers the Four Beasts as typical of the Incarnation, the Passion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension; an idea previously dwelt upon by Durandus, who adds, that the man and the lion are placed on the right, because the incarnation and the resurrection are the joy of the whole earth; whilst the ox is on the left, because Christ’s sacrifice was a trouble to the apostles; and the eagle is above the ox, as suggestive of our Lord’s upward flight into heaven: according to others, the proper order in the ascending scale is thus—at the lowest point on the left, the ox; to the right, the lion; above the ox, the eagle; and above all, the angel. So in Raphael’s Vision of Ezekiel, the angel gazes into the face of the Holy One, the others form his throne. I have dwelt on these fanciful interpretations and disquisitions, because the symbols of the Evangelists meet us at every turn; in the mosaics of the old Italian churches, in the decorative sculpture of our old cathedrals, in the Gothic stained glass, in the ancient pictures and miniatures, on the carved and chased covers of old books; everywhere, in short, where enters the idea of their divine mission—and where is it not? The profound thought, as well as the vivid imagination, exercised in some of these early works of art, is beginning to be appreciated; and we should lose the half of what is poetical, and significant, and venerable in these apparently arbitrary and fanciful symbols, if we merely seized the general intention, and not the relative and appropriate meaning of each. I will only add (for I have restricted myself to the consideration of the mysteries of faith only so far as they are carried into the forms of Art) that these symbols of the Four Evangelists were in their combination held to be symbolical of the Redeemer, in the fourfold character then universally assigned to him, as man, as king, as high-priest, and as God; according to this Latin verse: Quatuor hæc Dominum signant animalia Christum: Est _Homo_ nascendo, _vitulus_ que sacer moriendo, Et _Leo_ surgendo, cœlos _aquila_ que petendo; Nec minus hos scribas animalia et ipsa figurant. This would again alter the received order of the symbols, and place the angelic or human semblance lower than the rest: but I have never seen them so placed, at least I can recollect no instance. A Greek mosaic, existing in the Convent of Vatopedi, on Mount Athos, exhibits an attempt to reduce to form the wild and sublime imagery of the prophet Ezekiel: the Evangelists, or rather the Gospels, are represented as the tetramorph, or four-faced creature, with wings full of eyes, and borne on wheels of living flame (49).