Afterwards, as Gothic architecture becomes dominant, and at last beyond question the most wonderful of all temple-building, St. Barbara's Tower is, of course, its perfected symbol and utmost achievement, and whether in the coronets of countless battlements worn on the brows of the noblest cities, or in the Lombard bell-tower on the mountains, and the English spire on Sarum plain, the geometric majesty of the Egyptian maid became glorious in harmony of defence, and sacred with precision of symbol.

2

As the buildings which showed her utmost skill were chiefly exposed to lightning, she is invoked in defence from it; and our petition in the Litany, against sudden death, was written originally to her. The blasphemous corruptions of her into a patroness of cannon and gunpowder, are among the most ludicrous, (because precisely contrary to the original tradition,) as well as the most deadly, insolences and stupidities of Renaissance Art.

98. (IV.) St. Margaret of Antioch was a shepherdess; the St. Geneviève of the East; the type of feminine gentleness and simplicity. Traditions of the resurrection of Alcestis perhaps mingle in those of her contest with the dragon; but at all events, she differs from the other three great mythic saints, in expressing the soul's victory over temptation or affliction, by Christ's miraculous help, and without any special power of its own. She is the saint of the meek and of the poor; her virtue and her victory are those of all gracious and lowly womanhood; and her memory is consecrated among the gentle households of Europe; no other name, except those of Jeanne and Jeanie, seems so gifted with a baptismal fairy power of giving grace and

peace.

I must be forgiven for thinking, even on this canonical ground, not only of Jeanie Deans, and Margaret of

[Compare Ethics of the Dust, Vol. XVIII. pp. 316, 366.]

2["St. Barbara, as protectress against thunder and lightning, firearms and gunpowder, is also invoked against sudden death; for it was believed that those who devoted themselves to her should not die impenitent, nor without having first received the holy sacrament" (Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, 2nd ed. p. 293).]

XL.

MINIATURE OF ST CECILIA.

From an Antiphonaire of 1290 which belonged to the Abbesse of Beau Pré

Size of original 19 in. x 13.11.