CARTOON III. PETER AND JOHN HEALING THE THE third Cartoon brings us to a different period in the history of the promulgation of the gospel. We have no longer Christ presenting in his own person the chief point of interest, to which the eye is involuntarily directed at the first glance, and from which by degrees, slowly and not without reluctance, it passes to contemplate, in the countenances and figures of the apostles, an imperfect reflection, more and more faint and scattered, in proportion as they recede from him, of those exalted qualities by which he is himself distinguished. But while we miss his Divine person, we perceive the present evidences of his Spirit:-"I will not leave you destitute-I will send my Spirit to you, who shall dwell with you and be in you." In every one of Raffaelle's delineations of the chief apostles, subsequent to the descent of the Holy Ghost, we may trace the fulfilment of this promise. As represented in The Charge to Peter, they have already lost the impress of their original stations and employments: we no longer see the fisher, the tribute-collector, or the handicraftsman, but the grave and gowned teacher: only as yet the divine afflatus has been breathed but faintly on them, softening but not suppressing their native tempers and dispositions. In that most beautiful of groups therefore we find, depicted in the various fine countenances which it presents, not only love, reverence, admiration, but marks of selfish and dark passions not yet wholly subdued to the proper sentiment of their commission-discontent, impatience, perhaps even envy. Now, however, all is changed-their transformation is complete. These various passions now agitate only the people who are witnesses of their deeds and hearers of their discourses: from henceforth we invariably find, in the apostles themselves, the moral and intellectual dignity which results from their divine endowments--the fearless unaffected demeanour of persons conscious of acting under an authority with the ultimate purposes of which nothing human can interfere. The Cartoon of Peter and John healing the cripple is the richest in the whole series, with respect both to design and execution. A few sentences will suffice to recall the subject of this remarkable composition to the reader's mind. At the customary hour of prayer, when the approaches to the temple are thronged with groups of worshippers, the two apostles are arrested in their way thither by the supplications of this miserable being, deformed and lame from his birth, whom his friends bring daily, and place where he may most conveniently solicit alms from the persons who pass to and from the consecrated edifice. Having, in answer to his request, desired the poor cripple to give particular attention to what he was about to say, Peter assures him, that to give "silver or gold" is not in his power; adding, however, that he is willing to confer such a benefit on him as he is able: " In the name of Jesus of Nazareth," continues the apostle, "rise up and walk.” This was the first time the apostles had essayed to perform any miraculous work, since their Lord's departure. The unhesitating language of this command, and the previous reference to the G |