famous altar-piece at Cologne, the angel kneels; he bears a sceptre, and also a sealed roll, as if he were a celestial ambassador delivering his credentials about the same period we sometimes see the angel merely with his hands folded over his breast, and his head inclined, delivering his message as if to a superior being.

I cannot decide at what period the lily first replaced the sceptre in the hand of the angel, not merely as the emblem of purity, but as the symbol of the Virgin from the verse in the Canticles usually applied to pre-eminence, and, approaching, saluted her with admiration and respect. Though accustomed to the lustre of the highest heavenly spirits, yet he was dazzled and amazed at the dignity and spiritual glory of her whom he came to salute Mother of God, while the attention of the whole heavenly court was with rapture fixed upon her."

her: "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valley." A lily is often placed in a vase near the Virgin, or in the foreground of the picture of all the attributes placed in the hand of the angel, the lily is the most usual, and the most expressive.

The painters of Siena, who often displayed a new and original sentiment in the treatment of a subject, have represented the angel Gabriel as the announcer of "peace on earth;" he kneels before the Virgin, crowned with olive, and bearing a branch of olive in his hand, as in a picture by Taddeo Bartoli. There is also a beautiful St. Gabriel by Martin Schön, standing, and crowned with olive. So Dante

"L'angel che venne in terra col decreto

Della molt' anni lagrimata pace."

Another passage in Dante which the painters seem to have had before. them shows us the Madonna as queen, and the angel as adoring:

It is in seeking this baldezza e leggiadria in a mistaken sense that the later painters have forgotten all the spiritual dignity of the Angel Messenger.

Where the angel bears a lighted taper, which the Virgin extends her hand to take from him; or, kneeling, bears in his hand a palmbranch, surmounted by seven or twelve stars (44), the subject represented is not the announcement of the birth of the Saviour, but the death of the Virgin, a part of her legendary history which is rarely treated and easily mistaken; then the announcing angel is not Gabriel, but Michael.'

The Annunciation and the Death of the Virgin, and the office and character of the announcing angel in both subjects, are fully treated and illustrated in the "Legends of the Madonna," pp. 179. 334.

44

Angel announcing the death of the Virgin. (F. Filippo Lippi.)

In old German Art, the angel in the Annunciation is habited in priestly garments richly embroidered. (42) The scene is often the bedroom of the Virgin; and while the announcing angel enters and kneels at the threshold of the door, the Holy Ghost enters at the window. I have seen examples in which Gabriel, entering at a door behind the Virgin, unfolds his official "Ave Maria." He has no lily, or sceptre, and she is apparently conscious of his presence without seeing him.'

But in the representations of the sixteenth century we find neither the solemnity of the early Italian nor the naïveté of the early German school; and this divine subject becomes more and more materialised and familiarised, until losing its spiritual character, it strikes us as shockingly prosaic. One cannot say that the angel is invariably deficient in dignity, or the Virgin in grace. In the Venetian school and the Bologna school we find occasionally very beautiful Annunciations; but in general the half-draped fluttering angels and the girlishlooking Virgins are nothing less than offensive; and in the attempt to As in a very curious print by "Le Graveur de 1466;" and there are other instances.

vary the sentiment, the naturalisti have here run the risk of being much too natural.

In the Cathedral at Orvieto, the Annunciation is represented in front of the choir by two colossal statues by Francesco Mochi: to the right is the angel Gabriel, poised on a marble cloud, in an attitude so fantastic that he looks as if he were going to dance; on the other side stands the Virgin, conceived in a spirit how different!-yet not less mistaken; she has started from her throne; with one hand she grasps it, with the other she seems to guard her person against the intruder: majesty at once, and fear, a look of insulted dignity, are in the air and attitude,"par che minacci e tema nel tempo istesso "- but I thought of Mrs. Siddons while I looked, not of the Virgin Mary.

This fault of sentiment I saw reversed, but equally in the extreme, in another example-a beautiful miniature.' The Virgin seated on the

1 Chants Royales. Paris Bibl. Nat. MS. No. 6989.

side of her bed sinks back alarmed, almost fainting; the angel in a robe of crimson, with a white tunic, stands before her, half turning away and grasping his sceptre in his hand, with a proud commanding air, like a magnificent surly god-a Jupiter who had received a repulse.

I pass over other instances conceived in a taste even more blamable -Gabriels like smirking, winged lord chamberlains; and Virgins, half prim, half voluptuous - the sanctity and high solemnity of the event utterly lost. Let this suffice for the present: I may now leave the reader to his own feeling and discrimination.

ST. RAPHAEL.

Lat. Sanctus Raphael. Ital. San Raffaello. Fr. Saint Raphael. Ger. Der Heilige Rafael. “I am RAPHAEL, one of the Seven Holy Angels which present the prayers of the Saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the HOLY ONE."-Tobit, xii. 15.

I HAVE already alluded to the established belief, that every individual man, nay, every created being, hath a guardian angel deputed to watch over him: Woe unto us, if, by our negligence or our self-will, we offend him on whose vigilance we depend for help and salvation! But the prince of guardian spirits, the guardian angel of all humanity, is Raphael; and in this character, according to the early Christians, he appeared to the shepherds by night "with good tidings of great joy, which shall be for all people." It is, however, from the beautiful Hebrew romance of Tobit that his attributes are gathered: he is the protector of the young and innocent, and he watches over the pilgrim and the wayfarer. The character imputed to him in the Jewish traditions has been retained and amplified by Milton: Raphael is the angel sent by God to warn Adam:

"The affable archangel

Raphael; the sociable spirit that deign'd

To travel with Tobias, and secured

His marriage with the seven times wedded maid.”

And the character of the angel is preserved throughout; his sympathy