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The old German and Flemish painters, in treating the enthroned Madonna, sometimes introduced accessories which no painter of the early Italian school would have descended to; and which tinge with a homely sentiment their most exalted conceptions.  Thus, I have seen a German Madonna seated on a superb throne, and most elaborately and gorgeously arrayed, pressing her Child to her bosom with a truly maternal air; while beside her, on a table, is a honeycomb, some butter, a dish of fruit, and a glass of water. (Bel.  Gal., Vienna.) It is possible that in this case, as in the Virgin suckling her Child, there may be a religious allusion:—­“Butter and honey shall he eat,” &c.

THE MATER AMABILIS.

Ital. La Madonna col Bambino.  La Madonna col celeste suo figlio. Fr. La Vierge et l’enfant Jesus. Ger. Maria mit dem Kind.

There is yet another treatment of the Madonna and Child, in which the Virgin no longer retains the lofty goddess-like exaltation given to her in the old time.  She is brought nearer to our sympathies.  She is not seated in a chair of state with the accompaniments of earthly power; she is not enthroned on clouds, nor glorified and star-crowned in heaven; she is no longer so exclusively the VERGINE DEA, nor the VIRGO DEI GENITRIX; but she is still the ALMA MATER REDEMPTORIS, the young, and lovely, and most pure mother of a divine Christ.  She is not sustained in mid-air by angels; she dwells lowly on earth; but the angels leave their celestial home to wait upon her.  Such effigies, when conceived in a strictly ideal and devotional sense, I shall designate as the MATER AMABILIS.

The first and simplest form of this beautiful and familiar subject, we find in those innumerable half-length figures of the Madonna, holding her Child in her arms, painted chiefly for oratories, private or way-side chapels, and for the studies, libraries, and retired chambers of the devout, as an excitement to religious feeling, and a memorial of the mystery of the Incarnation, where large or grander subjects, or more expensive pictures, would be misplaced.  Though unimportant in comparison with the comprehensive and magnificent church altar-pieces already described, there is no class of pictures so popular and so attractive, none on which the character of the time and the painter is stamped more clearly and intelligibly, than on these simple representations.

The Virgin is not here the dispenser of mercy; she is simply the mother of the Redeemer.  She is occupied only by her divine Son.  She caresses him, or she gazes on him fondly.  She presents him to the worshipper.  She holds him forth with a pensive joy as the predestined offering.  If the profound religious sentiment of the early masters was afterwards obliterated by the unbelief and conventionalism of later art, still this favourite subject could not