The Atlantic Monthly, page 89 by Various Authors
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no reason why the graceful drawing of the human figure should not have been transmitted, as well as the technical procedures and the pigments. Nor was effort wanting: these pictures were often very elaborate and splendid in execution. But it is clear that grace and resemblance to anything existing, so far from being aimed at, were intentionally avoided. Even as late as the thirteenth century we find figures with blue legs and red bodies,--the horses in a procession blue, red, and yellow. Any whim of association, or fanciful color-pattern, was preferred to beauty or correctness. Likeness to actual things seemed to be regarded, indeed, as an unavoidable evil, to be restricted as far as possible. The problem was, to show God's omnipresence in the world, especially His appearance on the earth as man, and His abiding presence in holy men and women as an inspiration obliterating their humanity. But so long as the divine and the human are looked upon as essentially opposed, their union can be by miracle only, and the first thought must be to keep prominent this miraculousness, and guard against confusion of this angelic existence with every-day reality. The result is this realm of ghosts, at home neither in heaven nor on earth, neither presuming to be spirit nor condescending to be body, but hovering intermediate. But the more strongly the antithesis is felt, the nearer the thought to end this remaining tenderness for the gross and unspiritual,--to drop this ballast of earth, and rise into the region of heavenly realities. Upon a window of Canterbury Cathedral, beneath a representation of the miracle of Cana, is the legend,--"Lympha dat historiam, vinum notat allegoriam." But if the earthly is there only for the sake of this heavenly transmutation,--if the miracle, and the miracle alone, shows God's purpose accomplished,--then all things must be miraculous, for all else may be safely ignored. Henceforth, nothing is of itself profane, for the profane is only that wherein the higher and truer sense has not yet be