Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 099.djvu/481

Rh in woman the religious feeling in a quite other aspect, in its utmost depth and purity, "refined from that gross, intellectual alloy with which every masculine theologist—save only One, who merely veiled himself in mortal and masculine shape, but was, in truth, divine—has been prone to mingle it." A writer who had composed such a work as the "Characteristics of Woman," and such another as "Sacred and Legendary Art," was right aptly qualified to undertake such a third as "Legends of the Madonna."

"I could never," says Sir Thomas Browne, "hear the Ave-Mary bell without an elevation, or think it a sufficient warrant, because they erred in one circumstance, for me to err in all—that is, in silence, and dumb contempt. Whilst, therefore, they directed their devotions to her, I offered mine to God"—a practice worthy of the devout philosopher (for such was the author of "Religio Medici"), who, stanch Protestant as he was, could dispense with his hat at the sight of a cross or crucifix, and weep abundantly at a solemn procession, while his "consorts, blind with opposition and prejudice, fell into an excess of scorn and laughter." In such a matter, antipodean as we are to Rome, we would rather err with Sir Thomas (not the sort of man to fall in with "vulgar errors"), than be in rigid right (without curve or flexibility in its Protestant spine) with the over-righteous. Wordsworth, too, we can quote on the same side:Even so extreme a dissentient from aught that is Romish in faith or practice as Mr. W. J. Fox, the free- thinking member for Oldham, has emphatically pronounced the very worship of the Madonna to be "this least objectionable of all idolatries," the "most lovely and, in its tendencies, most useful of all superstitions." Now, Mrs. Jameson is no rash zealot in anything she handles—critical, theological, or æsthetical. Be it true or not, that the way to Rome is through Geneva, she, at least, abides at a salubrious distance from both. So far is she from blindly venerating every phase of Madonna art, that she sees fit to ask for the generous construction of those to whom every aspect of the subject is sacred—alleging that, in her investigations, she had had to ascend most perilous heights, and to dive into terribly obscure depths; and that although not for worlds would she be guilty of a scoffing allusion to any belief or any object hallowed by sincere and earnest hearts, yet was it not possible for her to write in a tone of acquiescence, where her feeling and opinion were shocked. On the other hand, she stands up womanfully for what there is of elevating and refining influence, or of historical and ecclesiastical value, in Madonna portraiture. She holds that if, in the old times, it was a species of idolatry to regard these beautiful representations as endued with a specific sanctity and power; so, in these days, it is a