It was not thus that great works of old were produced; Cimabue's picture of the Virgin was carried in a triumphal procession through Florence, from the artist's studio to the church which was to be honoured by its possession. It was a worthy religious offering to the goddess Mary, a subject of rejoicing to the whole city, and the quarter of the town where it was first seen, amid cries of delight, was called the "Borgo Allegri," a name which it has kept six hundred years. And the sympathy of the people reacted on the artist, and helped him to carry out his great conceptions. They were proud of him, and he worked at his picture as a labour of love to do his nation honour. Now, when a man has spent perhaps years over a religious picture, working with all his heart and soul and strength, instead of its being taken into a church, and seen only with the associations for which it is adapted, it is hung up between a smirking lady, clad in the last abominations of the fashion, on one side, and a "horse and dog, the property of Blank, Esq.," on the other; while the artist is fortunate if the best of the critics, who has just glanced at it as he passes by, does not entirely ignore his meaning and mistake the expression of his idea, only discovering that "the drawing of the toe of the left foot is decidedly awkward." So it may be, and there are probably faults in it still more considerable; yet the picture, with all these faults, may be one of great merit. Is it possible to conceive the Madonna di San Sisto painted under such conditions? The cold chill of the indifferent public would have reacted on the artist, and quenched the fire of his inspiration. The picture was intended to be the incarnation of the religious feeling of the whole Christian world, in the divine expression of the infant Christ gazing into futurity, with those rapt, far-seeing eyes,--in the holy mother, who carries him so reverently, yet with such power and purity in her look and bearing. It was honoured sympathetically by all who had the joy of seeing it borne as a banner through a great city as an act of the highest worship; not cut up into little morsels and set on a fork by every man who can write smart articles for a penny paper, bestowing a little supercilious praise and much wholesome advice on Holman Hunt and Tennyson, on Stevens[2] and Street alike.