shall have occasion to notice hereafter more particularly, the mystery
of the Dance had a democratic as well as a religious significance; and
it served to bring to mind, not only the irresistible nature of Death's
summons, but the real equality of all men; and this it did in a manner
to which those of high condition could not object.

The legend was made the subject of a fresco, painted about 1350, by the
eminent Italian painter and architect, Orcagna, upon the walls of the
Campo Santo at Pisa,--which some readers may be glad to be reminded was
a cemetery, so called because it was covered with earth brought from
the Holy Land. It is remarkable, however, that in this work the artist
embodied Death not in the form commonly used in his day, but in the old
Etruscan figure before mentioned. Orcagna's Death is a female, winged
like a bat, and with terrible claws. Armed with a scythe, she swoops
down upon the earth and reaps a promiscuous harvest of popes, emperors,
kings, queens, churchmen, and noblemen. In the rude manner of the time,
Orcagna has divided his picture into compartments. In one of these we
see St. Macarius, one of the first Christian hermits, an Egyptian,
sitting at the foot of a mountain; before him are three kings, who have
returned from the chase accompanied by a gay train of attendants. The
Saint calls the attention of the kings to three sepulchres in which lie
the bodies of three other kings, one of which is much decomposed. The
three living kings are struck with horror; but the painter has much
diminished the moral effect of his work, for this century, at least, by
making one of them hold his nose;--which is regarded by Mr. Ruskin as
an evidence of Orcagna's devotion to the truth; but in this case that
brilliant writer, but most unsafe critical guide, commits an error of a
kind not uncommon with him. The representation of so homely an action,
in such a composition, merely shows that the painter had not arrived at
a just appreciation of the relative value of the actual,--and that he