grande divinite, appelee tour-a-tour Maia, Bhawani, Isis, Ceres, Proserpine, Persephone.  Reine du ciel, elle est la nuit d’ou sort la vie, et ou toute vie se replonge; mysterieuse reunion de la vie et de la mort.  Elle s’appelle aussi la rosee, et dans les mythes allemands, la rosee est consideree comme le principe qui reproduit et redonne la vie.  Elle n’est pas seulement la nuit, mais comme mere du soleil, elle est aussi l’aurore devant qui les planetes brillent et s’empressent, comme pour Persephone.  Lorsqu’elle signifie la terre, comme Ceres, elle est representee avec la gerbe de ble; elle est Persephone, la graine de semence; comme cette deesse, elle a sa faucille:  c’est la demi-lune qui repose sous ses pieds.  Enfin, comme la deesse d’Ephese, la triste Ceres et Proserpine, elle est belle et brillante, et cependant sombre et noire, selon l’expression du Cantique des Cantiques:  ’Je suis noir, mais pleine de charmes, le soleil m’a brulee’ (le Christ).  Encore aujourd’hui, l’image de la mere de Dieu est noire a Naples, comme a Einsiedeln en Suisse.  Elle unit ainsi le jour et la nuit, la joie avec la tristesse, le soleil et la lune (chaleur, humidite), le terrestre et le celeste.”

This fragment is, perhaps, rather too long; but I think your readers will consider it too beautiful to abridge.  The late G. Higgins, in his Anacalepsis (ii. 100.), has some observations to the same purport, and points out the resemblance of some of the old Italian paintings of the Virgin and Child to Egyptian representations of Isis and the infant Horus.

Many of these ideas have been taken up by the free-masons, and are typified and symbolised in their initiatory ceremonies.

J.B.  DITCHFIELD.

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OUTLINE IN PAINTING.

A correspondent (J.O.W.H.) at p. 318. of Vol. i. asks a question on the subject of outline in painting; instancing the works of Albert Durer and Raffaelle as examples of defined, and those of Titian, Murillo, &c., of indefined outline.  He wishes to know whether there is “a right and a wrong in the matter, apart from anything which men call taste?”

The subject generally is a curious one, and has interested me for some time; as experiments exhibit several singular phenomena resulting from the interference and diffraction of rays of light in passing by the outline of a material body.  As a matter of fact, I believe I may say, that there is no such thing in nature as a perfectly defined outline; since the diffraction of the rays, in passing it, causes them to be projected upon it more or less, according to the nature of the particular body, and the intensity of the light.  And I may remark, by the way, that I believe this circumstance of the projection of a star upon the moon’s disc at the time of an occultation, is to be accounted for on this principle (though with all due deference to higher authority); a phenomenon which is to this day unexplained.