Mrs. Jameson here speaks in the name of a large and rapidly-increasing class.  The craving for religious art, of which we spoke above, is spreading far and wide; even in dissenting chapels we see occasional attempts at architectural splendour, which would have been considered twenty years ago heretical or idolatrous.  And yet with all this there is, as Mrs. Jameson says, a curious ignorance with regard to the subject of medieval art, even though it has now become a reigning fashion among us.

We have learned, perhaps, after running through half the galleries and churches in Europe, to distinguish a few of the attributes and characteristic figures which meet us at every turn, yet without any clear idea of their meaning, derivation, or relative propriety.  The palm of victory, we know, designates the martyr, triumphant in death.  We so far emulate the critical sagacity of the gardener in “Zeluco,” that we have learned to distinguish St. Laurence by his gridiron, and St. Catherine by her wheel.  We are not at a loss to recognise the Magdalene’s “loose hair and lifted eye,” even when without her skull and her vase of ointment.  We learn to know St. Francis by his brown habit, and shaven crown, and wasted ardent features; but how do we distinguish him from St. Anthony, or St. Dominick?  As for St. George and the Dragon—­from the St. George of the Louvre—­Raphael’s—­who sits his horse with the elegant tranquillity of one assured of celestial aid, down to him “who swings on a sign-post at mine hostess’s door”—­he is our familiar acquaintance.  But who is that lovely being in the first blush of youth, who, bearing aloft the symbolic cross, stands with one foot on the vanquished dragon?  “That is a copy after Raphael.”  And who is that majestic creature holding her palm-branch, while the unicorn crouches at her feet?  “That is the famous Moretto at Vienna.”  Are we satisfied?  Not in the least! but we try to look wiser and pass on.

In the old times, the painters of these legendary scenes and subjects could always reckon securely on certain associations and certain sympathies in the minds of the spectators.  We have outgrown these associations, we repudiate these sympathies.  We have taken these works from their consecrated localities, in which they once held each their dedicated place, and we have hung them in our drawing-rooms and our dressing-rooms, over our pianos and our sideboards, and now what do they say to us?  That Magdalene weeping amid her hair, who once spoke comfort to the soul of the fallen sinner,—­that Sebastian, arrow-pierced, whose upward ardent glance, spoke of courage and hope to the tyrant-ridden serf—­that poor tortured slave to whose aid St. Mark comes sweeping down from above—­can they speak to us of nothing save flowing lines, and correct drawing, and gorgeous colour?  Must we be told that one is a Titian, the other a Guido, the third a Tintoret, before we dare to melt into compassion or admiration?