Poetry, particularly the latter, are in the highest style of mystic art. The picture named the Dispute of the Sacrament—if that be the name of a picture which is, after all, nameless—covers one of the walls. There is an assemblage of all the doctors of the church, and among them Raffaelle boldly placed Dante, with his laurel crown, and, still more boldly, Savanarola, who ten years before had been publicly burned at Florenee as a heretic.[1] Above these groups, heaven opens, and the Trinity and the Angels are congregated. By the lovers of the mystic school, this picture is preferred to every other; yet I was more struck by that which represents the Vision driving Heliodorus from the Temple. The story, as told in the Apocrypha,[2] is fitted to excite the imagination. Through the relation of Simon, Seleucus sent Heliodorus, his treasurer, to seize on the wealth of the Temple, laid up by Onias, the High Priest, for the relief of widows and fatherless children. When Heliodorus entered the Temple to execute the king’s command, “there was no small agony throughout the whole city. Then, whoso looked the high priest in the face, it would have wounded his heart; for his countenance, and the changing of his colour, declared the inward agony of his mind.” The
