very clear cut; but is, Mr Hunt explains, "bewildered to find that his new spiritual body leaves no trace of the fatal wound." This suggestion approaches, unfortunately, near to the grotesque, and shows a fancy so high fantastical that it loses the very sense of that higher imagination which is always sober and within bounds. That the body of the little martyr should show some glorified trace of the blow, some scar big enough for a mother's kiss, some mark of honour Mid signet of high distinction, comes within the possibilities of devout belief; but why should its little shirt, presumably a spiritual garment, as it covers a spiritual body, be cut, and the soft flesh show no mark? We are unable to imagine an answer. We are ready to concede the human dress, in some simulacra of which even respectable ghosts are allowed to walk about; but why should the shirt have the traces of the blow which has disappeared from the body of the child? Is it, after all, only the real little human shirt that has been washed from its bloody stain, and slipped on again? And how does the spiritual body reconcile itself to a profane and earthly garment, if it is so? The conceit is too artificial to have anything to do with art, and is very contradictory of the divine story in which Thomas put – or might have put – "his fingers in the prints of the nails" in the risen body of his Lord.
The central group has but little in common with that sacred ideal which so many painters have represented. The Virgin sits high upon the ass, in full face, a large figure, slightly smiling, as she looks down upon her child. She is not the awed and reverential maiden of the old pictures, herself scarcely out of the vision and wonder of youth – but a largely developed and mature woman quite accustomed to be a mother, and not without traces of the world. The action of the child, who throws himself back upon her arm in a delightful recognition of the little group which is so strangely revealing itself upon the way, is natural and full of life. The pretty wilfulness of the fling aside from the mother's attempt to clothe him, the delightful smile which has broken upon the little face as he perceives the unlooked-for attendants upon his way, would be perfect if the child was but as other children, finding out unexpectedly a delightful novelty in the midst of the journey. But surely it is all inadequate to express the feeling of the Divine infant discovering at his side the little martyrs whose innocent lives have been given for him. When we remember the wonderful children of the San Sisto picture (that picture which an exciting rumour declares to be in the market, and possibly offered to England – a thought which takes away one's breath), the godlike boy in the mother's arms, the infantile faces, grand and majestic in their simplicity, beneath – or when we think of the lovely faces of Botticelli's boyish angels, looking on at the mysterious child whom they watch and try to understand, – it seems like a play on our credulity to ask us, as Mr Ruskin does, and as Mr Hunt, quoting Mr Ruskin, does not seem to hesitate to do, to recognise this as a great religious picture. The curled darling thrown back on his mother's arm, with a laugh of childish delight which shows his little white teeth and curves his rosy lips with pleasure, is a beautiful child, but bears no sign that he is the Son of God. He is an arch and delightful infant, wilful, accustomed to play,
