Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/494

484 digging, and Eve sitting beside him with a child on her knee and a distaff in her hand. The passage of the Jordan is represented by two men in very Israelitish hats bearing a tabernacle or shrine like those wherein the Host is kept in Roman Catholic churches. David wears a crown when slaying the Philistine champion. A vine, rising from the bosom of the sleeping psalmist—amid the branches of which crowned cherubs perch like sparrows, while the Virgin and Child are seen on its topmost branch—represents the root of Jesse; a fancy which recalls Spanish paintings similarly representing the growth of a monastic order and the saints it has produced. Our Lord, bearing a bannered cross, delivers the souls of the patriarchs from Hades, which is depicted as a monstrous maw—a fancy derived probably from Dante. The traditional physiognomy of Christ is uniformly preserved. Trees are suggested rather than depicted, the palm appears not at all, but the vine invariably is accurately drawn. The representations of animals proper to Europe is good, but reference to the annexed illustrations will show that the idea of an elephant must have been evolved from the artist’s own self-consciousness, being as vaguely incorrect as that of the military costume of the Dorians.

In his proem the author states it to be his purpose to adduce for each event in the History of Redemption three instances from general history prefiguring it; and after giving a brief outline of his plan, closes with the observation that this proem had been compiled for the sake of preachers lacking matter for their discourses, but without means to purchase the entire work; which, while showing the rarity of books and the apostolic poverty of the lower clergy, also suggests the threadbare character of the teaching founded on such “skeletons of sermons.” Those parallels drawn from sacred history are often legendary, or founded on singular misconstructions of the text; and those selected from profane history fabulous; such as adducing the self-devotion of Codrus as typifying the sacrifice of Christ, or twisting the dream of Astyages, that a vine springing from his daughter overshadowed his kingdom, into a type of the Miraculous Conception—Christ delivering men from sin as Cyrus liberated the captive Jews.

Sharing the tendency to mysticism of his day, the writer is disposed to allegorise all historical events, finds “sermons in stones and words in running brooks,” and his fancy riots in extravagances only comparable to the dreams of