X. THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES 361

Virgin going up to the temple; and under the steps of it, a child of ten or twelve with his back to us, dressed in a parti-coloured, square-cut robe, holding a fawn in leash,¹ at his side a rabbit; on the steps under the Virgin’s feet a bas-relief of fierce fight of men with horned monsters like rampant snails: one with a conger-eel’s body, twining round the limb of the man who strikes it.”

196. Now both these pictures are liable to be passed almost without notice; they scarcely claim to be compositions at all; but the one is a confused group of portraits; the other, a quaint piece of grotesque, apparently without any meaning, the principal feature in it, a child in a parti-coloured cloak. It is only when, with more knowledge of what we may expect from the painter, we examine both pictures carefully, that the real sense of either comes upon you. For the heavenly look on the face of Stephen is not set off with raised light, or opposed shade, or principality of place. The master trusts only to what nature herself would have trusted in-expression pure and simple. If you cannot see heaven in the boy’s mind, without any turning on of the stage lights, you shall not see it at all.

There is some one else, however, whom you may see, on looking carefully enough. On the opposite side of the group of old doctors is another youth, just of Stephen’s age. And as the face of Stephen is full of heavenly rapture, so that of his opposite is full of darkest wrath,-the religious wrath which all the authority of the conscience urges, instead of quenching. The old doctors hear Stephen’s speech with doubtful pause of gloom; but this youth has no patience,-no endurance for it. He will be the first to cry, Away with him,-“Whosoever will cast a stone at him, let them lay their mantle at my feet.”²

Again-looking again and longer at the other picture,

¹ [See below, p. 362.]

² [See Acts vii. 58.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]