The authoress has wisely abstained from all controversial matters.  In her preface she begs that it may be clearly understood, “that she has taken throughout the aesthetic and not the religious view of these productions of art; which, in as far as they are informed with a true and earnest feeling, and steeped in that beauty which emanates from Genius inspired by Faith, may cease to be religion, but cannot cease to be poetry; and as poetry only,” she says, “I have considered them.”  In a word, Mrs. Jameson has done for them what schoolmasters and schoolboys, bishops and Royal Academicians, have been doing for centuries, by Greek plays and Greek statues, without having incurred, as we said above, the slightest suspicion of wanting to worship heathen gods and goddesses.

Not that she views these stories with the cold unbelieving eye of a Goethe, merely as studies of “artistic effect;” she often transgresses her rule of impartiality, and just where we should wish her to do so.  Her geniality cannot avoid an occasional burst of feeling, such as concludes her notice of the stories about the Magdalene and the other “beatified penitents.”

Poets have sung, and moralists and sages have taught, that for the frail woman there was nothing left but to die; or if more remained for her to suffer, there was at least nothing left for her to be or do—­no choice between sackcloth and ashes and the livery of sin.  The beatified penitents of the early Christian Church spoke another lesson—­spoke divinely of hope for the fallen, hope without self-abasement or defiance.  We, in these days, acknowledge no such saints; we have even done our best to dethrone Mary Magdalene; but we have martyrs—­“by the pang without the palm”—­and one, at least, among these who has not died without lifting up a voice of eloquent and solemn warning; who has borne her palm on earth, and whose starry crown may be seen on high even now amid the constellations of Genius.—­Vol. ii. p. 386.

To whom the authoress may allude in this touching passage our simplicity cannot guess in the least.  We may, therefore, without the suspicion of partiality, say to the noble spirit of purity, compassion, and true liberality which breathes throughout this whole chapter, “Go on and conquer.”

Nor again can Mrs. Jameson’s English honesty avoid an occasional slip of delicate sarcasm; for instance, in the story of St. Filomena, a brand-new saint, whose discovery at Rome, in 1802, produced there an excitement which we should suspect was very much wanted, which we recommend to all our readers as an instance of the state into which the virtues of honesty and common sense seem to have fallen in the Eternal City—­of humbugs.

No doubt there are many such cases of imposture among the list of saints and martyrs; yet, granting all which have been exposed, and more, there still remains a list of authentic stories, sadder and stranger than any romance of man’s invention, to read which without deep sympathy and admiration our hearts must be callous or bigoted indeed.  As Mrs. Jameson herself well says (vol. ii. p. 137):