The numerous pictures in Italy which represent parts of the legends of the Virgin render this work incomplete without a full development of the subject. If her forbearance arises from a fear that at this particular time, when mariolatry is dreaded by a large portion of the religious world, we would remind her that the Virgin Mother is still "the blessed" of our own church.
It is a question if the list of sainted martyrs in repute has not been left to the arbitrament of the painters; for we find many deposed, and the adopted favourites of art not found in the early list, as represented in their processions. We find a Saint Reparata, after having been the patroness saint of Florence for six hundred years, deposed, and the city placed under the tutelage of the Virgin and St John the Baptist.
Yet these were early times for the influence of art; but, at a period when pictures were thought to have a kind of miraculous power, it is not improbable that some potent work of art representing the Virgin and St John may have caused the new devotional dedication—as was the case in modern times, when the imaged Madonna de los Dolores was appointed general-in-chief of the Carlist army. Painters were what the poets had been—Vates sacri. Events and the memory of saints may have perished, Carent quia vate sacro. We wish our own painters were more fully sensible of the power of art to perpetuate, and that it is its province to teach. With us it has been too long disconnected with our religion. It will be a glorious day for art, and for the people that shall witness the reunion.
In taking leave of these two fascinating volumes, we do so with the less regret, knowing that they will be often in our hands, as most valuable for instant reference. No one who wishes to know the subjects and feel the sentiment of the finest works in the world, will think of going abroad without Mrs Jameson's book. We must again thank her for the beautiful woodcuts and etchings; the latter, in particular, are lightly and gracefully executed, we presume mostly (to speak technically) in dry point. Mrs Jameson writes as an enthusiast, her feeling flows from her pen. Her style is fascinating to a degree, forcible and graceful; but there is no mistaking its character—feminine. We know no other hand that could so happily have set forth the Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art.
AMERICAN THOUGHTS ON EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS.
Boston, December 1848.
The Year of Constitutions is drawing to its end, to be succeeded, I doubt not, by the Year of Substitutions. I am sorry, my Basil, that you do not quite agree with me as to the issue of all this in France; but I am sure you will not dispute my opinion that this year's work is good for nothing, so far as it has attempted construction, instead of fulfilling its mission by overthrow. Its great folly has been the constitution-fever, which has amounted to a pestilence. When mushrooms grow to be oaks, then shall such constitutions as this year has bred, stand a chance of outliving their authors. Will men learn nothing from the past? How can they act over such rotten farces,—make themselves such fools!
You admit the difference, which I endeavoured to show you, between the American constitution and that of any conceivable constitution which may be cooked up for an old European state. I am glad if I have directed your attention, accordingly, to the great mistake of France. She supposes that a feeble, and debauched old gentleman can boil himself in the revolutionary kettle, and emerge in all the tender and enviable freshness of the babe just severed from the maternal mould. Politicians have committed a blunder in not allowing the natural, and hence legitimate, origin of the American constitution in that of its British parent. They have thus favoured the theory that a tolerably permanent constitution can be drafted a priori, and imposed upon a state. This is the absurdity that makes revolutions. If the silly French, instead of reading De Tocqueville, would study each for himself the history of our constitution, and see how gradually it grew to be our constitution, before pen was put to paper to draft it, they might perhaps stop their abortive nonsense in time, to save what they can of their national character from the eternal contempt of mankind.