expression, holding up its hands as in prayer, and looking to a hand
which is extended towards it out of sunbeams. In the Renaissance copy
this hand does not appear.
Of all the virtues, this is the most distinctively Christian (it could
not, of course, enter definitely into any Pagan scheme); and above all
others, it seems to me the _testing_ virtue,--that by the possession of
which we may most certainly determine whether we are Christians or not;
for many men have charity, that is to say, general kindness of heart, or
even a kind of faith, who have not any habitual _hope_ of, or longing
for, heaven. The Hope of Giotto is represented as winged, rising in the
air, while an angel holds a crown before her. I do not know if Spenser
was the first to introduce our marine virtue, leaning on an anchor, a
symbol as inaccurate as it is vulgar: for, in the first place, anchors
are not for men, but for ships; and in the second, anchorage is the
characteristic not of Hope, but of Faith. Faith is dependent, but Hope is
aspirant. Spenser, however, introduces Hope twice,--the first time as the
Virtue with the anchor; but afterwards fallacious Hope, far more
beautifully, in the Masque of Cupid:
"She always smyld, and in her hand did hold
An holy-water sprinckle, dipt in deowe."