I found both angels and demons treated in a style quite peculiar and poetical. The angels are here gigantic, majestic, Jove-like figures, with great wings. The demons are also majestic graceful winged figures, but painted of a dusky grey colour (it may originally have been black). In one scene, where Julian the Apostate goes to seek the heathen divinities, they are thus represented, that is, as _black angels_; showing that the painter had here assumed the devils or demons to be the discrowned and fallen gods of the antique world. * * * * * These are a few of the most striking instances of angels employed as ministers of wrath. Angels, as ministers of divine grace and mercy, Of all those arts which Deity supreme Doth ease its heart of love in. occur much more frequently. The ancient heresy that God made use of the agency of angels in the creation of the world, and of mankind, I must notice here, because it has found its way into Art; for example, in an old miniature which represents an angel having before him a lump of clay, a kind of _ébauche_ of humanity, which he appears to be moulding with his hands, while the Almighty stands by directing the work.[39] This idea, absurd as it may appear, is not perhaps more absurd than the notion of those who would represent the Great First Cause as always busied in fashioning or altering the forms in his visible creation, like a potter or any other mechanic. But as we are occupied at present with the scriptural, not the legendary subjects, I return to the Old Testament. The first time that we read of an angel sent as a messenger of mercy, it is for the comfort of poor Hagar; when he found her weeping by the spring of water in the wilderness, because her mistress had afflicted her: and again, when she was cast forth and her boy fainted for thirst. In the representation of these subjects, I do not know a single instance in which the usual angelic form has not been adhered to. In the sacrifice of Isaac, ‘the angel of the Lord calls to Abraham out of heaven.’ This subject, as the received type of the sacrifice of the Son of God, was one of the earliest in Christian Art. We find it on the sarcophagi of the third and fourth centuries; but in one of the latest only have I seen a personage introduced as staying the hand of Abraham, and this personage is without wings. In painting, the angel is sometimes in the act of taking the sword out of Abraham’s hand, which expresses the nature of his message: or he lays one hand on his arm, and with the other points to the ram which was to replace the sacrifice, or brings the ram in his arms to the altar; but, whatever the action, the form of the angelic messenger has never varied from the sixth century. [Illustration: 19 The Angels who visit Abraham (Raphael)]