avengers crimsoned with blood. First the pale faces of the trembling crowd, as they gather in the marketplace to hear only of disaster; then the waiting and the watching at the gates of Rome:

Young lads and stooping elders

That might not bear the mail,
Matrons with lips that quivered,
And maids with faces pale.
Since the first gleam of daylight
Sempronius had not ceased
To listen for the rushing

Of horse-hoofs from the east.

The mist of eve was rising,

The sun was hastening down,

When they were aware of a princely pair
Fast pricking towards the town.

So like they were, no mortal

Saw twins so like before;

Red with gore their armour was,

Their steeds were red with gore.

Then burst from that great concourse
A shout that shook the towers;

And some ran north and some ran south,
Crying "The day is ours!"

But on rode those strange horsemen --
They rode to Vesta's door;

Then, like a blast, away they passed,
And no man saw them more.

The poem is English, the legend is Roman; and yet a fragment of Greek sculpture, and that designed to tell a different story, is perhaps the highest rendering of it in Art that the world has ever seen. The highest

because the truest.

Before he had reached the

immortals, the sculptor had reached the limit of his Art-which has but one and the same symbol for gods and men. What may lie beyond this limit we cannot tell. We know only that our ultimate conception of beauty is the human form, and that if a superior intelligence assumes this form it will not be to degrade it. Amongst the friends of Phidias were two philosophers, who differed in their teaching as widely as men differ in their teaching now. The one affirmed that the Supreme Being is a Spirit, working through the visible creation, governing us for our good, but Himself invisible. The other affirmed that of the gods we know nothing. Which did the sculptor believe? Again, we cannot tell. We know only that that which he could not express in any terms of Art he was content to leave as an unknown quantity.

III.

MEN AND ANGELS.

HERE can be no doubt that the representation

THE

of celestial agency is legitimate in Art. From the time of Æschylus the dramatist to the time of Claude the painter there is scarcely an artist or a poet who has not made the gods his theme.

It is true indeed that Æschylus made them so terrible, that when his plays were acted women swooned in the theatre, and children died of sudden fright. It is true that Claude ornamented his landscapes with them, dotting them about, in the clouds, under the trees, in such a manner as to suggest no fear at all, except perhaps a gentle misgiving lest in their very slight attire they should take cold. But it is true also that during the two thousand years that lie between the lives of these men the Supernatural in every form has filled the canvas of the painter and the pages of the poet-filled them with visions of un

dying beauty, with deeds of noble heroism, with passion the most tender and exalted.

And this, not amongst the Hellenic or Latin races alone, but amongst the rude tribes of the North and the mystic Dualists of the East. It is most interesting to trace back the myths of many nations to their common source, and to see how differently the same thought has been manifested, has been developed, has been changed through the varying influences of climate, of national life, or of personal temperament. Wide as is this subject it is necessary for me to refer to it for a moment, if only to point out how, always and everywhere in Art, if there is passion, if there is pathos, it is the passion and the pathos, not of the immortals, but of our lives. The Osiris of the Egyptians is indeed a suffering and a dying god; but it is as a man that he suffers and dies-slain by his brother's hand. If our eyes are blinded with tears as we look upon Calvary, it is not in any sense that we compassionate the Deity. That we might give our sympathy-therefore He became "the Man of Sorrows." And what is true of the greater is true also of the less. We may tremble in the presence of an angel, but we do not weep. There is in the gallery of the Louvre a bas-relief of the best period of Greek Art. It represents Orpheus, Eurydice, and Hermes-three figures only, but are they not a type of all that has been and shall be for ever—a man,

a woman, and a god? * Eurydice has stretched out her hand-if she may but touch her husband! Oh, the infinite tenderness of that touch! Orpheus has turned but for an instant to the dear face, and already "the Inexorable" has laid his hand upon hers. There is no resistance, but there is sadness indescribable. There is no confusion; there is no hope; there can be no delay. The beautiful vision shall dissolve again into the tenebræ of Hades; Orpheus shall go forth once more alone to cry "Eurydice! Eurydice!"

Again I say the pathos of it, the passion of it, lies altogether in its humanity. The god Hermes is there ―he is necessary to complete the story—but he will go back to Mount Olympus, and we shall forget him; while those two, looking into each other's eyes for the last time, when shall they be forgotten?

It is only with thoughts such as these that I can in some measure account for the fact that one of the grandest poems in our language is also one of the least read amongst us. How few there are who have ever read "Paradise Lost"-the book which perhaps more than any other has given to our language the sweet

*M. Charles Blanc, in his "Grammaire des Arts du Dessin " commenting for a different purpose on the same bas-relief, of which he gives a finely drawn illustration, says: "Puissance mystérieuse de l'art! Voilà un dieu, une femme, un poëte." I cannot but think that M. Blanc loses something of the full force of the thought by thus limiting the typical character of Orpheus.