strong new man. He is rather an emotional Christian. The various winds of doctrine sway him. He is wanting in stability, and is a man of moods and tenses. And his donations are affected and reduced by this type of his piety, for the gifts of feeling are but a small per cent. of the gifts of principle. As a man with no creed can have no Christian character, so the less the creed the fewer the Christian graces and forces. A minimum creed produces a miniuum piety.

ARTICLE II.

SCHEFFER'S TEMPTATION OF JESUS.

OUR purpose is not exegetical, but artistic. We have before us Ary Scheffer's picture of this scene on the desert mountaintop - an admirable subject for his strong and severe handling. No artist has exhibited a finer power of compassing great results with the simplest means. There is no crowding of the canvas with subordinate details for the sake of livelier impressions. These devices of inferior genius he austerely refuses; resting his success, in rendering his own profoundly spiritual conception visible to those who have eyes to see it, through what looks at first almost like a poverty of inventive skill, but grows upon our faithful study all the more for the very beauty of its unambitious purity. Like the Dante and Beatrice, the Temptation gains rather than loses under the engraver's hand; for Scheffer derived no assistance from coloring. He either contemned or but feebly felt the witchery of an art which, under the management of so many great masters of the pallet, has achieved such brilliant effects. He seems all but a cynic in this matter. It looks like a wilful fling at the colorists a taunt at their tricks of the trade — to hang a brick-red or dull yellow drapery over the shoulders of his travellers through the Elysian fields, or even yet higher representatives of the invisible worlds. We much prefer this artist's productions, so far as we have yet seen them, in the steel or mezzotint copy. This is certainly a compliment

to the ideal and intellectual power of them, if given at the expense of his supercilious brush. It is more than most even of the nobility of that profession could safely sacrifice, thus to discard the most popular appliance of its triumphs.

As in the better known scene from the "Divina Commedia," there are but two figures in the Temptation. The rocky peak of a mountain shoots up far into the thin air, giving a sense of great elevation above the surrounding country. This rarefaction of the atmosphere is skilfully managed to increase the feeling of height and completest solitude. The jagged summit reminds one who has ever climbed these altitudes of their verdureless, cold repulsiveness. Sublimity at the cost of utter desolation is purchased too dearly, whether on mountain-tops or elsewhere. Satan, in the form of a rather old man (but not decrepit), shows at once his more than mortal make by a pair of dusky pinions thrown backward in repose, and a pair of feet also which clutch the rock with a sort of vulture hold; otherwise he does not reveal the fiend obtrusively. And these indications of his devilhood are carefully restrained from exciting either a ludicrous or disgusting sensation. He is not the Satan of vulgar caricature; nor is he the dapper Asmodeus of the novelists; nor yet the archangelic Lucifer of Milton's stately epic; nor again, the quiet, gentlemanly person of the "Paradise Regained,"—

"Not rustic, as before, but seemlier clad,
As one in city, or court, or palace bred."

Whatever else you feel in his presence, a sentiment of respect and of pity both attest the truthfulness of the conception of this strange and awful being, to whom one would wish no nearer or more real approach.

He is, at this moment, using his utmost persuasion to gain the eye of Christ and to catch his ear, as he points in earnest. gesture to the far-lying kingdoms of the regions beneath and the glory of them no part of which, however, is visible except in dim, suggestive touches, with the passionate proposal, "all shall be thine, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." He is seeking to arouse within Christ's bosom the ambition of a Messiah-conqueror and emperor; to spur him to make good

the prophecies and hopes of the Jewish nation by striking for a throne and sceptre with "shoutings of the captains and garments rolled in blood." He is offering himself as an ally of the grand exploit, if Christ will acknowledge him as a superior Lord.

"That thou may'st know I seek not to engage
Thy virtue, and not every way secure

On no sleight grounds thy safety; hear and mark
To what end I have brought thee hither, and shown
All this fair sight: thy kingdom tho' foretold
By prophet or by angel, unless thou
Endeavor, as thy father David did,

Thou never shalt obtain; prediction still
In all things, and all men, supposes means;
Without means used, what it predicts revokes.
But say thou wert possessed of David's throne
By free consent of all, none opposite,
Samaritan or Jew; how couldst thou hope
Long to enjoy it quiet and secure,

Between two such enclosing enemies

Roman and Parthian? Therefore one of these

Thou must make sure thy own, the Parthian first,

By my advice, as nearer, and of late

Found able by invasion to annoy

Thy country, and captive lead away her kings,
Antigonus, and old Hyrcanus bound,
Maugre the Roman; it shall be my task
To render thee the Parthian at dispose:

Choose which thou wilt, by conquest or by league,
By him thou shalt regain, without him not,
That which alone can truly reinstall thee
In David's royal seat, his true successor,
Deliverance of thy brethren, those ten tribes
Whose offspring in his territory yet serve,
In Habor, and among the Medes dispers'd;
Ten sons of Jacob, two of Joseph lost
Thus long from Israel, serving, as of old
Their fathers in the land of Egypt served,
This offer sets before thee to deliver.
These if from servitude thou shalt restore
To their inheritance, then, nor till then,
Thou on the throne of David in full glory,
From Egypt to Euphrates, and beyond,
Shalt reign, and Rome or Cæsar not need fear."

Paradise Regained, Book III.

So speaks the Tempter. Power, mental and physical of a superior grade, ambition, determination, malice and incipient wrath, all are revealed in the strong lines of his pain-furrowed, fire-scathed countenance, and even in the firm and eager attitude with which he keeps his sliding footing on the shelving rock. The earnestness of his purpose starts forth from every fold and ridge of his muscles strained to utmost tension, and in the clutching of his bony hands. He bears himself as if resolved on victory while already half conscious of defeat; for his utter discomfiture is written as distinctly in the silent majesty of the Redeemer as if the last emphatic denial had been already spoken from those guileless lips.

The figure of Jesus is one of the master-strokes of purest idealization. He stands on the very apex of the mountain, a step or two higher than his companion, with hand upraised to the calm heavens as if conscious of the nearness of some seraphform or a convoy of them just outside the line of vision. The facial expression is full of serenest contentment with his present lot. It is most evident that no flame of earthy ambition can be enkindled in that bosom by all the rich-sounding names which the wily plotter can pour upon him, —

"From Arachosia, from Candaor east,
And Margiana, to the Hyrcanian cliffs

Of Caucasus, and dark Iberian dales;
From Atropatia, and the neighboring plains

Of Adiabene, Media, and the south

Of Susiana, to Balsara's haven."

Equally impervious is his breast to "the pomp and circumstance of glorious war," although in the distance he might have seen

"The field all iron cast a gleaming brown:
Nor wanted clouds of foot, nor on each horn
Cuirassiers all in steel for standing fight,
Chariots or elephants indors'd with towers
Of archers, nor of laboring pioneers

A multitude;

light armed troops

In coats of mail and military pride;

In mail their horses clad, yet fleet and strong,
Prancing their riders bore, the flower and choice
Of many provinces from bound to bound."

He can be attracted by nothing of this. The idea of individual, sustained power, of self-centred mastery of every outside aggressive or seductive influence the proper supremacy of his nature and will over Satan and his entire resources of evil - stands out in life-like vigor from the canvas. Yet it is not a Gabriel or a Michael who thus foils his brother angel apostate. He is one of us, a thoroughly human brother of our race who is thus defeating the common adversary; a fellowspirit winning a human, albeit a divine victory also in the flesh over the powers of spiritual revolt. Just here we realize that He was in all things tempted like unto his brethren, yet without sin. Just now we know that, in a moment, those calm eyes will frown upon the Arch-Liar, and that a soft, slow, mournful accent will paralyze his soul—

"Get thee behind me; plain thou now appear'st
That evil one, Satan forever damn'd!"

Hardly could any subject give finer scope for that play of contrast of which the painters have been so fond of availing themselves, in the combinations of Vulcan and Venus, and other classical myths; the biblical studies of the mother and child, the aged Joseph and the rugged John Baptist and other hermit-saints of the Holy Families, and the Madonna pictures. The same favorite device is found in the Dante and Beatrice. But in the Temptation, it is not the contrasted beauty or power of manly strength with feminine or infant loveliness; not the delicate opposition of the two latter styles of gracefulness, as in the Mary and Jesus of Raphael and Corregio and a host of the old masters. A higher conception pervades this canvas, of the contrary natures and histories and destinies of beings celestial and infernal, clearly imaged in the bold contrasts of the physical forms before us. Two kingdoms here are suspended in the balance that vibrates on its beam, but with no uncertainty how it will give answer. Keble's sweet verses interpret

the thought.

"See Lucifer like lightning fall,

Dash'd from his throne of pride;

While answering Thy victorious call,
The Saints his spoils divide;

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