VIII. THE REQUIEM 297

And the four mystic Evangelists, under the figures of living creatures, are not types merely of the men that are to bring the Gospel message, but of the power of that message in all Creation-so far as it was, and is, spoken in all living things, and as the Word of God, which is Christ, was present, and not merely prophesied, in the Creatures of His hand.

115. You will find in your Murray, and other illumined writings of the nineteenth century, various explanations given of the meaning of the Lion of St. Mark-derived, they occasionally mention (nearly as if it had been derived by accident!), from the description of Ezekiel.* Which, perhaps, you may have read once on a time, though even that is doubtful in these blessed days of scientific education;-but, boy or girl, man or woman, of you, not one in a thousand, if one, has ever, I am well assured, asked what was the use of Ezekiel’s Vision, either to Ezekiel, or to anybody else: any more than I used to think, myself, what St. Mark’s was built for.

In case you have not a Bible with you, I must be tedious enough to reprint the essential verses here.

116. “As I was among the Captives by the River of Chebar, the Heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.”

(Fugitive at least,-and all but captive,-by the River of the deep stream,-the Venetians perhaps cared yet to hear what he saw.)

“In the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity, the word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel the Priest.”

(We also-we Venetians-have our Pontifices; we also our King. May we not hear?)

“And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of

* Or, with still more enlightened Scripture research, from “one of the Visions of Daniel”! (Sketches, etc., p. 18.¹)

¹ [Smedley’s Sketches of Venetian History, vol. i.; for another reference to the book, see above, p. 209.]

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