like the preceding, was thus originally as much a festival of Christ as of Mary, especially in the Greek Church. It is supposed to have been introduced by Pope Gelasius in 494, though by some said not to have arisen till 542, under Justinian I., in consequence of a great earthquake and a destructive pestilence. Perhaps it was a Christian transformation of the old Roman lustrations or expiatory sacrifices (Februa, Februalia), which from the time of Numa took place in February, the month of purification or expiation. To heathen origin is due also the use of lighted tapers, with which the people on this festival marched, singing, out of the church through the city. Hence the name CANDLEMAS.†

3. The ASCENSION, or ASSUMPTION, rather, of MARY, ‡ is celebrated on the 15th of August. The festival was introduced by the Greek emperor Mauritius (582-602); some say, under Pope Gelasius (†496). In Rome, after the ninth century, it is one of the principal feasts, and, like the others, is distinguished with vigil and octave. It rests, however, on a purely apocryphal foundation.

The entire silence of the Apostles and the primitive church teachers respecting the departure of Mary, stirred idle curiosity to all sorts of inventions, until a translation like Enoch's and Elijah's was attributed to her. In the time of Origen some were inferring from Luke ii. 35, that she had suffered martyrdom. Epiphanius will not decide whether she died and was buried or not: Two apocryphal Greek writings de transitu Maria, of the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century, and afterwards pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Gregory of Tours († 595), for the first time contain the legend that the soul of the Mother of God was transported to the heavenly paradise by Christ and his angels in presence of all the Apostles, and on the following mornings her body also was translated thither on a cloud, and there united with the soul. Subsequently the legend was still further embellished, and, besides the Apostles, the angels and patriarchs also, even Adam and Eve, were made witnesses of the wonderful spectacle.

Still the resurrection and ascension of Mary is in the Roman Church only a matter of "devout and probable opinion," not an article of faith; || and a distinction is made between the ascensio of Christ (by * Februarius, from Februo, the purifying god; like Januarius, from the god Janus; Februare purgare, to purge. February was originally the last month.

t Festum candelarum sive luminum.

† Κοίμησις, oι ἀνάληψις τῆς ἁγίας Θεοτόκου; festum assumptionis, dormationis, pausationis, depositionis B. M. V.

According to later representations, as in the three discourses of John Damascenus on this subject, her body rested, like the body of the Lord, three days uncorrupted in the grave.

The Greck Council of Jerusalem, in 1672, which was summoned against the Calvinists, officially proclaimed it, and thus almost raised it to the authority of a dogma

virtue of his divine nature) and the assumptio of Mary (by the power of grace and merit).

But since Mary, according to the most recent Roman dogma, was free even from original sin, and since death is a consequence of sin, it should strictly follow that she did not die at all, and rise again, but, like Enoch and Elijah, was carried alive to heaven.

In the Middle Ages-to anticipate yet other festivals of Mary arose the NATIVITY OF MARY,* after A.D. 650; the PRESENTATION OF MARY,† after the ninth century, founded on the apocryphal tradition of the eleven years' ascetic discipline of Mary in the Temple at Jerusalem; the VISITATION OF MARY, in memory of her visit to Elizabeth; and, finally, the festival of the IMMACULATE CONCEPTION, § which arose with the unscriptural doctrine of the sinless conception of Mary, and is interwoven with the history of that dogma down to its final official promulgation by Pope Pius IX. in 1854.

PHILIP SCHAFF.

Festum visitationis.

* Nativitas, natalis, B. M. V.; yevioλiov, &c. + Festum presentationis.

$ Festum immaculatæ conceptionis Beatæ Virginis Mariæ.

HIPPOLYTE FLANDRIN.

I.

THE old and well-known saying, "Le style c'est l'homme," finds confirmation in the life and works of Hippolyte Flandrin. Every artist throws into his pictures more or less of his intellect; but the heart of Hippolyte Flandrin sustained and strengthened the labour of his hand and mind. Like Fra Angelico, in the fifteenth century-like Overbeck, perhaps alone, in the nineteenth-his work was entirely in unison with his belief. Faith, undisturbed, unquestioning, was the motive-power of his life. There seems to have been no room for doubt. It is strange and half unaccountable in this time of ours-that spectacle which Flandrin's life presents. The early religious lessons sunk into his heart; and they were never forgotten. He had no "spectres of the mind " to face and fight against. Eager and aspiring in his youth, thoughtful and reflective in his middle age, he was yet able to receive at the moment of his death the consolations of a belief which life's changes had not shaken. His work was the work of an earnest man. His faith was the faith of a little child.

II.

Hippolyte Flandrin was born at Lyons on the 23rd of March, 1809. He was the fourth of seven children: the second of three brothers. His father had been intended for commerce, but had forsaken it,

and had taken to miniature painting. But miniature painting brought him only the scantiest of livelihoods, and he was therefore anxious that his sons should pursue a trade, and be spared the uncertainties and the disappointments of a life devoted to art. But in the three young Flandrins the artistic instinct was strong; and, in spite of the efforts that were made to prevent it, they all became painters. Hippolyte Flandrin was to have been apprenticed to a silk manufacturer, but he did his best to dissuade his parents from their intention, and after a considerable effort he was successful. The father yielded easily; but the mother, who had known an artist's struggles, and had never-like her husband—experienced their reward, was more difficult to influence. At last, however, the point was gained; and Hippolyte Flandrin entered a studio which Magnin the painter, and Legendre Héral the sculptor, shared between them. Here he began the study of the antique, and of the living model; and all went well with him until that early school was broken up by the departure of Magnin for Italy. He was only fourteen years old when he sought and found admission to St. Peter's School-the Fine Arts' Academy of Lyons. Here he passed more than six years-not alone, however, in the studies that were required of him, but in supplemental work of his own choice. Horses were at this time the favourite subjects of his pencil; an extraordinary facility in the representation of animals would, he knew, be valuable to him when he should come to paint great battlepieces, like those for which Horace Vernet was famous. Vernet, during all the years of his provincial training, was the model that Flandrin desired to follow. How, upon the young artist's arrival in Paris, the old hero was displaced, and a new one set up in his stead, shall be told in the proper place; but that is not here.

While Flandrin was a youth, at Lyons, it was necessary for him and for his younger brother Paul-who was also to be a painterto do something to save a little money. But the proceeds of slight vignettes and of stones which might be sold to a publisher of lithographs, when a dozen subjects had been traced upon them, were after all but small; and it needed a strict economy, and an economy long and wearily exercised, before the brothers Flandrin could scrape together money enough to go to Paris, there to enter on wider studies and compete with more practised hands. Had they allowed themselves the luxury of a couple of places in the diligence, the journey alone would have cost them half their savings. They therefore determined to undertake it on foot. They were accompanied a part of the way by a third brother; but at Dijon they separated— Hippolyte and Paul sitting down by the roadside, and watching, with tears in their eyes, the retreating figure of Augustus, who

would take to his parents the last news and the last message of the Paris-bound travellers.

In the first letter Hippolyte addressed from the capital, he spoke at some length of the journey. At one place, late at night, they knocked at the door of a lonely inn, and found there was not room to lodge them. At another place they were inconvenienced by gusts of wind and rain; but they bore these evils philosophically, taking shelter for some hours under a tree, and waiting till the weather mended, quite patiently; "for," says Hippolyte to his mother, "we were talking of you." On the seventh day of their journey they arrived at Sens, where the fatigues of the march began to tell on Hippolyte. But they pressed on. The night of the eighth day was spent at Moret, on the outskirts of the forest of Fontainebleau. On the ninth day they saw, by the number of villages, by the many villas, and by the carriages that passed them so often, that Paris was not far off. They slept at Rys; and were up early next morning, "hoping soon to see the capital." But they walked five leagues without any sign of it, on that dull April day. "At last, from the top of a hill, the great town was spread before our eyes." There were the domes of the Invalides and the Panthéon; the towers of Notre-Dame! The clouds began to break; the sun shone out; and "it was fine weather when we entered Paris."

III.

The brothers Flandrin had intended to enter the studio of M. Hersent, to whom they had a letter of introduction; but they had only been two or three days in the capital before they changed their minds. "These are the reasons," says Hiypolyte, in the second letter of that collection which we owe to the industry of the Vicomte Delaborde, "firstly, at Paris, M. Ingres is thought to have greater ability than M. Hersent; secondly, his school is quieter and better regulated." But the Flandrins would not apply to M. Ingres until they were sure of their father's approval. When the expression of it came, they called upon M. Foyatier, to whom they had an introduction.

"He recommended M. Ingres to us as the best master we could find; and, like several other persons, he advised us to take an unfurnished room, and to surround ourselves with our own things. He even accompanied us in a search for one; and we found an apartment opposite his own. . . . We are now at M. Ingres', who has given us much encouragement. We showed him our compositions, with which he was very pleased. We offered him one; and he gladly accepted it. We work much, and are thoroughly en train."

Thus early were laid the foundations of that affection for M.