be essential to the supremacy of the former.

III.

Whatever light the treatment of the Madonna subject may throw upon the ages in which it is uppermost in men's thoughts, the common judgment is sound which looks for the most significance in the works of Raphael. Even those who turn severely away from him, and seek for purer art in his predecessors, must needs use his name as one of epochal consequence. So many forces of the age meet in Raphael, who was peculiarly open to influences, that no other painter can so well be chosen as an exponent of the idea of the time; and as one passes in review the successive Madonnas, one may not only detect the influence of Perugino, of Leonardo, of Michelangelo, and other masters, but may see the ripening of a mind, upon which fell the spirit of the age, busy with other things than painting.

Of the early Madonnas of Raphael, it is noticeable how many present the Virgin engaged in reading a book, while the child is occupied in other ways, sometimes even seeking to interrupt the mother and disengage her attention. Thus in one in the Berlin museum, which is formal, though unaffected, Mary reads a book, while the child plays with a goldfinch; in the Madonna in the Casa Connestabile, at Perugia, the child plays with the leaves of the book; in the Madonna del Cardellino, the little S. John presents a goldfinch to Jesus, and the mother looks away from her book to observe the children; in that at Berlin, which is from the Casa Colonna, the child is held on the mother's knee in a somewhat struggling attitude, and has his left hand upon the top of her dress, near her neck, his right upon her shoulder, while the mother, with a look of maternal tenderness, holds the book aside. In the middle

period of Raphael's work this motive appears once at least in the St. Petersburg Madonna, which is a quiet landscape-scene, where the child is in the Madonna's lap: she holds a book, which she has just been reading; the little S. John kneels before his divine companion with infantine grace, and offers him a cross, which he receives with a look of tender love; the Madonna's eyes are directed to the prophetic play of the children with a deep, earnest expression.

The use of the book is presumably to denote the Madonna's piety; and in the earlier pictures she is not only the object of adoration to the worshiper, who sees her in her earthly form, yet endowed with sinless grace, but the object also of interest to the child, who sees in her the mother. This reciprocal relation of mother and child is sometimes expressed with great force, as in the Madonna della Casa Tempi, in the Pinacothek at Munich, where the Virgin, who is standing, tenderly presses the child's head against her face, while he appears to whisper words of endearment. In these and other of the earlier Madonnas of Raphael, there is an enthusiasm and a dreamy sentiment which seems to seek expression chiefly through the representation of holy womanhood, the child being a part of the interpretation of the mother. The mystic solemnity of the subject is relieved by a lightness of touch, which was the irrepressible assertion of a strong human feeling.

Later, in what is called his middle period, a cheerfulness and happy contemplation of life pervade Raphael's work, as in the Bridgewater Madonna, where the child, stretched in the mother's lap, looks up with a graceful and lively action, and fixes his eyes upon her in deep thought, while she looks back with maternal, reverent joy. The Madonna of the Chair illustrates the same general sentiment, where the mother appears as a beautiful and blooming woman, looking out of the picture in the tranquil

of the world by humanity finds its finest expression in the hope which springs in the lovely figures of Luca della Robbia. It is significant of this Renaissance it is significant, I think we shall find, of every great new birth in the world — that it turns its face toward childhood, and looks into that image for the profoundest realization of its hopes and dreams. In the attitude of men toward childhood we may discover the near or far realization of that supreme hope and confidence with which the great head of the human family saw, in the vision of a child, the new heaven and the new earth. It was when his disciples were reasoning among themselves which of them should be the greatest that Jesus took a child, and set him by him, and said unto them, "Who

soever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me." receiveth me." The reception of the Christ by men, from that day to this, has been marked by successive throes of humanity, and in each great movement there has been a new apprehension of childhood, a new recognition of the meaning involved in the pregnant words of the Saviour. Such a recognition lies in the children of Raphael and of Luca della Robbia. There may have been no express intimation on their part of the connection between their works and the great prophecy, but it is often for later generations to read more clearly the presence of a thought by means of light thrown back upon it. The course of Christianity since the Renaissance supplies such a light. Horace E. Scudder.

XIII.

THERE came a change in the weather. A vagueness fell upon the landscape. The farthest mountains receded into invisibility, and the horizon was marked by an outline of summits hitherto familiar in the middle distance. The sunshine was languid, slumberous. A haze clothed the air in a splendid visible garb of translucent, gold-tinted folds, and trailing across the dim blue of the ranges invested them with many a dreamy illusion. Athwart the sky were long sweeps of fibrous white clouds presaging rain. Since dawn they were thickening; silent in the intense stillness of the noontide, they gathered and overspread the heavens and quenched the sun, and bereaved the vapors hanging in the ravines of all the poetic glamours of reflection. A raincrow was huskily cawing on the trough by the roadside where he had perched. Dorinda heard the guttural note, and

went out to gather up the fruit spread to dry on boards that were stretched from stone to stone. Dark clouds were rolling up from the west. She paused to see them submerge Chilhowee, its outline stark and hard beneath their turbulent whirl; toward the south their heavy folds broke into sudden commotion, and they were torn into fringes as the rain began to fall. The mist followed and isolated the Great Smoky from all the rest of the world.

And now the little house was as lonely as the ark on Ararat. The mists possessed the universe. They filled the forests and lay upon the corn and hid the "gyarden-spot," and came skulking about the porch, peering through the vines in a ghostly fashion. Presently they sifted through, and whenever the door was opened it showed them lurking there as if wistfully waiting or with some half humanized curiosity. Night stole on, and the ruddy flare of the fire

entered profoundly into Raphael's work, and determined powerfully the direction which it took. When he was engaged upon purely classic themes, it is interesting to see how frequently he turned to the forms of children. His decorative work is rich with the suggestion which they bring. One may observe the graceful figures issuing from the midst of flower and leaf; above all, one may note how repeatedly he presents the myth of Amor, and recurs to the Amorini, types of childhood under a purely naturalistic conception.

The child Jesus and the child Amor appear side by side in the creations of Raphael's genius. In the great Renaissance, of which he was so consummate an exponent, the ancient classic world and the Christian met in these two types of childhood: the one a childhood of the air, unmixed with good or evil; the other a childhood of heaven and earth, proleptic of earthly conflict, proleptic also of heavenly triumph. The coincidence is not of chance. The new world into which men were looking was not, as some thought, to be in the submersion of Christianity and a return to Paganism, nor, as others, in a stern asceticism, which should render Christianity an exclusive church, standing aloof from the world as from a thing wholly evil. There was to be room for truth and love to dwell together, and the symbol of this union was the child. Raphael's Christ child drew into its features a classic loveliness; his Amor took on a Christlike purity and truthfulness.

Leslie, in his Handbook for Young Painters, makes a very sensible reflection upon Raphael's children, as distinguished from the unchildlike children of Francia, for example. "A fault of many painters," he says, "in their representations of childhood is, that they make it taking an interest in what can only concern more advanced periods of life. But Raphael's children, unless the subject requires it should be otherwise,

are as we see them generally in nature, wholly unconcerned with the incidents that occupy the attention of their elders. Thus the boy, in the cartoon of the Beautiful Gate, pulls the girdle of his grandfather, who is entirely absorbed in what S. Peter is saying to the cripple. The child, impatient of delay, wants the old man to move on. In the Sacrifice at Lystra, also, the two beautiful boys placed at the altar, to officiate at the ceremony, are too young to comprehend the meaning of what is going on about them. One is engrossed with the pipes on which he is playing, and the attention of the other is attracted by a ram brought for sacrifice. The quiet simplicity of these sweet children has an indescribably charming effect in this picture, where every other figure is under the influence of an excitement they alone do not partake in. Children, in the works of inferior painters, are often nothing else than little actors; but what I have noticed of Raphael's children is true, in many instances, of the children in the pictures of Rembrandt, Jan Steen, Hogarth, and other great painters, who, like Raphael, looked to nature for their incidents."

There was one artist of this time who looked to nature not merely for the incidents of childhood, but for the soul of childhood itself. It is impossible to regard the work of Luca della Robbia, especially in that ware which receives his name, without perceiving that here was a man who saw children and rejoiced in their young lives with a simple, ingenuous delight. The very spirit which led this artist to seek for expression in homely forms of material, to domesticate art, as it were, was one which would make him quick to seize upon, not the incidents alone, but the graces, of childhood. Nor is it straining a point to say that the purity of his color was one with the purity of this sympathy with childhood. The Renaissance as a witness to a new occupation

of the world by humanity finds its finest expression in the hope which springs in the lovely figures of Luca della Robbia. It is significant of this Renaissance it is significant, I think we shall find, of every great new birth in the world—that it turns its face toward childhood, and looks into that image for the profoundest realization of its hopes and dreams. In the attitude of men toward childhood we may discover the near or far realization of that supreme hope and confidence with which the great head of the human family saw, in the vision of a child, the new heaven and the new earth. It was when his disciples were reasoning among themselves which of them should be the greatest that Jesus took a child, and set him by him, and said unto them, "Who

soever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me." The reception of the Christ by men, from that day to this, has been marked by successive throes of humanity, and in each great movement there has been a new apprehension of childhood, a new recognition of the meaning involved in the pregnant words of the Saviour. Such a recognition lies in the children of Raphael and of Luca della Robbia. There may have been no express intimation on their part of the connection between their works and the great prophecy, but it is often for later generations to read more clearly the presence of a thought by means of light thrown back upon it. The course of Christianity since the Renaissance supplies such a light.

Horace E. Scudder.

XIII.

THERE came a change in the weather. A vagueness fell upon the landscape. The farthest mountains receded into invisibility, and the horizon was marked by an outline of summits hitherto familiar in the middle distance. The sunshine was languid, slumberous. A haze clothed the air in a splendid visible garb of translucent, gold-tinted folds, and trailing across the dim blue of the ranges invested them with many a dreamy illusion. Athwart the sky were long sweeps of fibrous white clouds presaging rain. Since dawn they were thickening; silent in the intense stillness of the noontide, they gathered and overspread the heavens and quenched the sun, and bereaved the vapors hanging in the ravines of all the poetic glamours of reflection. A raincrow was huskily cawing on the trough by the roadside where he had perched. Dorinda heard the guttural note, and

went out to gather up the fruit spread to dry on boards that were stretched from stone to stone. Dark clouds were rolling up from the west. She paused to see them submerge Chilhowee, its outline stark and hard beneath their turbulent whirl; toward the south their heavy folds broke into sudden commotion, and they were torn into fringes as the rain began to fall. The mist followed and isolated the Great Smoky from all the rest of the world.

And now the little house was as lonely as the ark on Ararat. The mists possessed the universe. They filled the forests and lay upon the corn and hid the "gyarden-spot," and came skulking about the porch, peering through the vines in a ghostly fashion. Presently they sifted through, and whenever the door was opened it showed them lurking there as if wistfully waiting or with some half humanized curiosity. Night stole on, and the ruddy flare of the fire

had heightened suggestions of good cheer and comfort, because of these waifs of the rain and the air shivering in chilly guise about the door. The men came to supper and all went again, except Pete. He was ailing, he declared, and betook himself to bed betimes. The house grew quiet. The grandmother nodded over her knitting, with a limp falling of the lower jaw, occasional spasmodic gestures, and an absorbed, unfamiliar expression of countenance. Dorinda in her low chair sat in the glow of the fire. As it rose and fell it cast a warm light or a dreamy shadow on her delicately rounded cheek and her shining eyes. One disheveled tress of her dense black hair fell over the red kerchief twisted around her neck. Her blue homespun dress lay in lusterless folds about her. The shadowy and rude interior of the room the dark brown of the logs of the wall and the intervening yellow clay daubing; the great clumsy warping-bars; the pendent peltry and pop-corn and strings of red pepper swaying from the rafters; the puncheon floor gilded by the firelight; the deep yawning chimney with its heaps of ashes and its pulsating coalsall formed in the rich colors and soft blending of detail an harmonious setting for her vivid, definite face, as she settled herself to work at her evening "stent." Her reel was before her ; the spokes, worn smooth and dark and glossy by age and use, reflected with polished lustre the glimmer of the fire. She had a broche in her hand, just taken from the spindle. For the lack of the more modern broche-holder she thrust a stick through the tunnel of the shuck on which the yarn was wound, placing the end of it, to hold it steady, in her low shoe; catching the thread between her deft fingers she threw it with a fine free gesture across the periphery of the reel. And then the whirling spokes were only a rayonnant suggestion, so swiftly they sped round and

round in the light of the fire, and a musical low whir broke forth. Now and then the reel ticked and told off another cut, and she would bend forward to tie the thread with a practiced, dextrous hand.

The downpour of the rain had a dreary, melancholy persistence, beating upon the roof and splashing from the eaves into the puddles beneath. At intervals a drop fell down the wide chimney and hissed upon the coals.

Suddenly there was another splash, differing in its abrupt energy; a foot had slipped outside and groping hands were laid upon the wall. Dorinda sprang up with a white face and tense muscles. The old woman was suddenly bolt upright in her corner, although not recognizing the sound.

"Hurry 'long, D'rindy," she said peremptorily, "you-uns ain't goin' ter reel a hank ef ye don't mosey. What ails the gal?" she broke off, her attention attracted to her granddaughter's changed expression.

"Thar's suthin' out o' doors," said Dorinda, in a tremulous whisper. "I hearn 'em step whenst ye war asleep."

"I ain't batted my eye this night," said her grandmother, with the force of conviction. "I ain't slep' a wink. An' ye never hearn nuthin'."

There was a bolder demonstration outside; a foot-fall sounded on the porch and a hand tried the latch.

"Massy on us! Raiders!" shrieked the old woman, rising precipitately, her knitting falling from her lap, the ball of yarn rolling away and the kitten springing after it.

Dorinda ran to the door-perhaps to put up the bar. But with sudden courage she lifted the latch. Outside were the ghostly vapors, white and visible in the light from within. She peered out doubtfully for a moment. A sudden rush of color surged into her face; she made a feint of closing the door and ran back to her work, looking over her