The monks of a certain monastery at Messina, exhibited, with great triumph, a letter written by the Virgin Mary with her own hand.  Unluckily for them, this was not, as it easily might have been, written on the ancient papyrus, but on paper made of rags.  On some occasion, a visiter, to whom this was shown, observed, with affected solemnity, that the letter involved also a miracle, for the paper on which it was written was not in existence till several hundred years after the mother of our Lord had ascended into heaven.

In the church of St. Zacharia, at Venice, is the picture of a Virgin and Child, whom an angel is entertaining with an air upon the violin.  Jean Belin was the artist, in 1500.  So, also, in the college library of Aberdeen, to a very neat Dutch missal, are appended elegant paintings on the margin, of the angels appearing to the shepherds, with one of the men playing on the bagpipes.

There is a picture in a church at Bruges that puts not only all chronology, but all else, out of countenance.  It is the marriage of Jesus Christ with Saint Catherine of Sienna.  But who marries them?  St. Dominic, the patron of the church.  Who joins their hands?  Why, the Virgin Mary.  And to crown the anachronism, King David plays the harp at the wedding!

Albert Durer represented an angel in a flounced petticoat, driving Adam and Eve from Paradise.

Lewis Cigoli painted a picture of the Circumcision of the Holy Child, Jesus, and drew the high priest, Simeon, with spectacles on his nose; upon a supposition, probably, that, in respect of his great age, that aid would be necessary.  Spectacles, however, were not known for fourteen centuries afterwards.

In a picture painted by F. Chello della Puera, the Virgin Mary is placed on a velvet sofa, playing with a cat and a paroquet, and about to help herself to coffee from an engraved coffee-pot.

In another, painted by Peter of Cortona, representing the reconciliation of Jacob and Laban, (now in the French Museum), the painter has represented a steeple or belfry rising over the trees.  A belfry in the mountains of Mesopotamia, in the time of Jacob!

N. Poussin’s celebrated picture, at the same place, of Rebecca at the Well, has the whole back-ground decorated with Grecian architecture.

Paul Veronese placed Benedictine fathers and Swiss soldiers among his paintings from the Old Testament.

A painter, intending to describe the miracle of the fishes listening to the preaching of St. Anthony of Padua, painted the lobsters, who were stretching out of the water, red! probably having never seen them in their natural state.  Being asked how he could justify this anachronism, he extricated himself by observing, that the whole affair was a miracle, and that thus the miracle was made still greater.

In the Notices des MSS. du Roi VI. 120, in the illuminations of a manuscript Bible at Paris, under the Psalms, are two persons playing at cards; and under Job and the Prophets are coats of arms and a windmill.