In our author’s representation of the Court of Heaven we already find, completely developed, that idea of the subject which was perpetuated long afterwards by the masters of Italian art. His picture of the enthroned Deity, with the Virgin beside Him, the Saints standing round about Him, and the celestial choirs surrounding the whole, might well be taken for the description of some painting by Fra Angelico; nor are the gem-like radiancy of the angelical painter’s works, nor the august blitheness which pervades them, entirely absent. Indeed, writings of this class are not without value as a preface to the history of sacred art, as indicating the origin of the stereotyped fashion in which the masters treated certain religious subjects--which fashion was not created by the arbitrary choice of the primitives, and perpetuated through any want of inventive power on the part of their followers, but represented their attempt to portray these subjects in accordance with the traditional form with which legend had already invested them. One very striking image, and, so far as I know, the offspring of our author’s imagination, is the symbol whereby he has endeavoured to represent the Divine Omnipresence--‘a majestic countenance, seven times as radiant as the sun,’ gazing from out a fiery mass, and facing the spectator, from whatever side he might regard Him. The _naïveté_ of this attempt to represent the Inconceivable reminds us of the triple orbs of iridescent fire in canto 33 of the _Paradiso_, whereby Dante symbolised the Trinity. For pictorial effect, however, the preference must, I think, be awarded to the Irish writer, whose image, at once quaint and grandiose, might be the subject of some design by Blake. At the same time, the author does not neglect the stores of imagery contained in the national traditions, though he does not conform blindly to his precedents; for he differs from the great majority of his predecessors and successors alike in selecting his materials from whatever source appears preferable to him, instead of heaping together a greater or less quantity of matter taken at haphazard from the common stock. The circle of fire which surrounds the midmost Heaven is a familiar object in both the celestial and the infernal regions, and is largely represented in Irish legends dealing with the Otherworld, or with occurrences of a supernatural order. Besides the striking instance in the Voyage of Maelduin, and other cases to which reference has already been made, legends of the Finn cycle mention wizard warriors who surrounded their camp every night with a rampart of fire.[163] The crystal veil which partly hides the Throne in chapter 5 may be a modification of the veil which often enshrouds a mystical island in the _Imrama_; or, again, it may have been suggested by the veil hanging before a shrine in a Christian church, or by the veil of the Temple, which curtained off the Holy of Holies.