where there is confusion, which is not justified in a quiet gathering of people.  Another feature which the four reliefs have in common is Donatello’s treatment of narrative.  Ghiberti’s plan was to put several incidents into one relief, forming a sequence of events leading up to the critical episode, to which he usually gave the best place in the foreground.  He consistently followed up his formula in the second gates, and brought the practice to its perfection.  Whether suitable or not for gates, it would have been an intelligible treatment of purely decorative reliefs, like those at Padua.  Donatello, however, confines his plaques to single incidents:  in one case only does he add a second detail, and there only as a corroborative fact.  The narrative is shown in the crowd itself.  Attitudes and expression are made to reflect the spirit of what has gone before, while the actual occurrence suffices to show the final issue of the story.  Thus we have all the ideas of which others would have made a series of subordinate scenes:  incredulity, fear, surprise, mockery, apathy and worship.  The crowd shows everything which has already passed, and the composition of the bas-reliefs thus secures a striking homogeneity.  It is difficult to say which of them is best.  The variety in dress, scene and physiognomy is so remarkable; varying, no doubt, according to the tastes of the garzone responsible for finishing it.  Probably the miracle of the Speaking Babe is the best known.  A nobleman of Ferrara doubted the honour of his wife; St. Anthony conferred the power of speech on her infant child, which proclaimed its mother’s innocence.  Donatello has put an exquisite little Madonna and Child just above the central figures of the legend.  The composition of this group, as in the others, is broken by the architecture, otherwise the length of the bronzes might have tended to a monotonous row of figures.  But the projecting background does not make the episode less coherent.  The mother is just receiving back her baby from the saint; behind her are women, friends and others; whereas the opposite side of the relief is entirely occupied by men, who are around her husband; and the suggested conflict of the sexes is averted by the miracle.  The husband, who wears an odd sort of bonnet tricolore, and several of his comrades are simply dressed in short cloaks open at the sides and ending just below the hip.  The legs and arms, and especially the hands, are very well modelled.  In this relief the actors are quiet and decorous, and where not motionless are moving slowly.  The miracle of the Miser’s Heart is more emotional:  “where thy heart is there shall thy treasure be also.”  The miser having died, St. Anthony said that his heart would be found in his strong box:  this was proved to be the case, and then when the body was opened it was found that his heart was absent.  The scene is nominally inside a church:  in the background is a procession of clergy and choristers with their