Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/702

696 enchanted with the pretty sight; but it would have been strange indeed – stranger than anything else in the marvellous story – had this been all that was in the face of the child-Christ as he saw the infant saints suddenly on his way.

The child on his mother's arm recognises them but the innocents seem, on their part, to take no notice of their little Lord. They do not crowd about him to share his look, but hold apart entangled in the wreath which is so distinctly what we call in Scotland "gum-flowers," not one of them raising his face to the Divine wayfarer. We are not told whether there is any meaning in this, or why the celestial children should be preparing this little masque upon the road if they do not care to look up and see the object of their martyrdom and of their presence here. They are leading back the colt, Mr Hunt informs us, which has lagged from the side of its mother, – which is kind of them, but not a satisfactory motive. No secondary office, though one of service and benevolence, could have kept these little brethren from gazing upon the Divine child and seeking his notice, if human probabilities are to be considered. No party of children but would do so with one of their natural comrades; how much more the new denizens of heaven, conscious that it was their Lord who was passing by, and of their own glorious position in his immediate train?

This is too much, perhaps, about one picture; but Mr Holman Hunt's position is not an ordinary one. He takes upon him that office of a teacher which, when asserted with sufficient boldness, has a quite marvellous effect upon the imagination of the mass of a man's contemporaries. And he is a painter who has done enough to make every work he produces of interest to his countrymen. He who has given us that one noble, sorrowful, tender image, the face full of love and patience, and all gentleness and greatness, of Him who stands at the door and knocks, deserves great things at our hands: even though he has put the light of the world in a medieval lantern, as if it had been wanted to show the door of our hearts, and the steps thereto. That and a great deal more can be forgiven him in grateful recollection that he stands among the few – how few! – who in all the ages have been able to gain a glimpse of such a countenance as might, without scorn, be attributed to the Son of God. But Mr Hunt has fallen into the error, apparently congenial to his mind, of abstracting himself from common life in order to produce with infinite labour and absorption of his entire soul in every detail a picture which shall be more than a picture, which shall be a new gospel, a prophetic message, such as it has never been given, let Mr Kuskin say what he will, to any painter to give forth to the world. Let us grant that Carpaccio meant a great deal more than he knew in that manful story of stout St George, and that with the help of such a skilled interpreter as Mr Ruskin (and prompt renunciation as of the devil and all his works of Mr Buskin's disciples and co-interpreters, who would make us, if that was possible, detest Carpaccio), we may learn, many things therefrom: yet the old Venetian was no secluded soul, and had no thought that, like Elijah, he, only he, was left to make the world aware that there was a greater than Baal. On the face of the thing it is grand to spend seven years of life or more upon a single picture – to caress its every detail – to let im-