those natural objects and effects which were required as accessories, to greater skill in grouping the figures, and to a higher development of historic art.

But of all the influences on Italian art in that wonderful fourteenth century, Dante was the greatest. He was the intimate friend of Giotto. Through the communion of mind, not less than through his writings, he infused into religious art that mingled theology, poetry, and mysticism, which ruled in the Giottesque school during the following century, and went hand in hand with the development of the power and practice of imitation. Now, the theology of Dante was the theology of his age. His ideas respecting the Virgin Mary were precisely those to which the writings of St. Bernard, St. Bonaventura, and St. Thomas Aquinas had already lent all the persuasive power of eloquence, and the Church all the weight of her authority. Dante rendered these doctrines into poetry, and Giotto and his followers rendered them into form. In the Paradise of Dante, the glorification of Mary, as the "Mystic Rose" (Roxa Mystica) and Queen of Heaven,—with the attendant angels, circle within circle, floating round her in adoration, and singing the Regina Coeli, and saints and patriarchs stretching forth their hands towards her,—is all a splendid, but still indefinite vision of dazzling light crossed by shadowy forms. The painters of the fourteenth century, in translating these glories into a definite shape, had to deal with imperfect knowledge and imperfect means; they failed in the power to realize either their own or the poet's conception; and yet—thanks to the divine poet!—that early conception of some of the most beautiful of the Madonna subjects—for instance, the Coronation and the Sposalizio—has never, as a religious and poetical conception, been surpassed by later artists, in spite of all the appliances of colour, and mastery of light and shade, and marvellous efficiency of hand since attained.

Every reader of Dante will remember the sublime hymn towards the close of the Paradiso:—

  "Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio!
  Umile ed alta più che creatura,
  Terrains fisso d'eterno consiglio;

  Tu se' colei che l'umana natura
  Nobilitasti si, che 'l suo fattore
  Non disdegno di farsi sua fattura;

  Nel ventre tuo si raccese l'amore
  Per lo cui caldo nell' eterna pace
  Cosi è germinato questo fiore;

  Qui se' a noi meridiana face
  Di caritade, e giuso intra mortali
  Se' di speranza fontana vivace:

  Donna, se' tanto grande e tanto vali,
  Che qual vuol grazia e a te non ricorre
  Sua disianza vuol volar senz' ali;

  La tua benignita noa pur soccorre
  A chi dimanda, ma molte fiate
  Liberamente al dimandar precorre;

  In te misericordia, in te pietate,
  In te magnificenza, in te s' aduna
  Quantunque in creatura è di bontate!"

To render the splendour, the terseness, the harmony, of this magnificent hymn seems impossible. Cary's translation has, however, the merit of fidelity to the sense:—

  "Oh, Virgin-Mother, daughter of thy Son!
  Created beings all in lowliness
  Surpassing, as in height above them all;
  Term by the eternal counsel preordain'd;
  Ennobler of thy nature, so advanc'd
  In thee, that its great Maker did not scorn
  To make himself his own creation;
  For in thy womb, rekindling, shone the love
  Reveal'd, whose genial influence makes now
  This flower to germin in eternal peace:
  Here thou, to us, of charity and love
  Art as the noon-day torch; and art beneath,
  To mortal men, of hope a living spring.
  So mighty art thou, Lady, and so great,
  That he who grace desireth, and comes not
  To thee for aidance, fain would have desire
  Fly without wings. Not only him who asks,
  Thy bounty succours; but doth freely oft
  Forerun the asking. Whatsoe'er may be
  Of excellence in creature, pity mild,
  Relenting mercy, large munificence,
  Are all combin'd in thee!"

It is interesting to turn to the corresponding stanzas in Chaucer.
The invocation to the Virgin with which he commences the story of St.
Cecilia is rendered almost word for word from Dante:—

  "Thou Maid and Mother, daughter of thy Son!
  Thou wel of mercy, sinful soules cure!"

The last stanza of the invocation is his own, and as characteristic of the practical Chaucer, as it would have been contrary to the genius of Dante:—

  "And for that faith is dead withouten workis,
  So for to worken give me wit and grace!
  That I be quit from thence that most dark is;
  O thou that art so fair and full of grace,
  Be thou mine advocate in that high place,
  There, as withouten end is sung Hozanne,
  Thou Christes mother, daughter dear of Anne!"

Still more beautiful and more his own is the invocation in the
"Prioress's Tale." I give the stanzas as modernized by Wordsworth:—

  "O Mother Maid! O Maid and Mother free!
  O bush unburnt, burning in Moses' sight!
  That down didst ravish from the Deity,
  Through humbleness, the Spirit that that did alight
  Upon thy heart, whence, through that glory's might
  Conceived was the Father's sapience,
  Help me to tell it in thy reverence!

  "Lady, thy goodness, thy magnificence,
  Thy virtue, and thy great humility,
  Surpass all science and all utterance;
  For sometimes, Lady! ere men pray to thee,
  Thou go'st before in thy benignity,
  The light to us vouchsafing of thy prayer,
  To be our guide unto thy Son so dear.

  "My knowledge is so weak, O blissful Queen,
  To tell abroad thy mighty worthiness,
  That I the weight of it may not sustain;
  But as a child of twelve months old, or less,
  That laboureth his language to express,
  Even so fare I; and therefore, I thee pray,
  Guide thou my song, which I of thee shall say."

And again, we may turn to Petrarch's hymn to the Virgin, wherein he prays to be delivered from his love and everlasting regrets for Laura:—

  "Vergine bella, che di sol vestita,
  Coronata di stelle, al sommo Sole
  Piacesti sì, che'n te sua luce ascose.

  "Vergine pura, d'ogni parte intera,
  Del tuo parto gentil figliuola e madre!

  "Vergine sola al mondo senza esempio,
  Che 'l ciel di tue bellezze innamorasti."

The fancy of the theologians of the middle ages played rather dangerously, as it appears to me, for the uninitiated and uninstructed, with the perplexity of these divine relationships. It is impossible not to feel that in their admiration for the divine beauty of Mary, in borrowing the amatory language and luxuriant allegories of the Canticles, which represent her as an object of delight to the Supreme Being, theologians, poets, and artists had wrought themselves up to a wild pitch of enthusiasm. In such passages as those I have quoted above, and in the grand old Church hymns, we find the best commentary and interpretation of the sacred pictures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Yet during the thirteenth century there was a purity in the spirit of the worship which at once inspired and regulated the forms in which it was manifested. The