same way, with subjects taken from Greek and Roman mythology and the historical legends of both nations. In these classical illustrations may be discerned the dawnings of that mythological revival in art which burst out so luxuriantly in the cinque cento and the following century. The illuminations, though of small dimensions, far excelled the mosaics in variety and range of expression. The latter were architectonic in design and effect, and the expression of feeling and emotion was beyond their scope and foreign to their nature. On the other hand, the soul of the cloisterartist, who spent much of his time in meditation and prayer, passed into his work. His purity, his asceticism, his mysticism, were reflected in it. All the noble and tender emotions of the heart, hushed in a divine calm, all the spirituality of the higher life, and of an imagination in habitual communion with the skies, found expression in a goodly number of those monastic productions. One may discern in them the first faint rays of that celestial beauty, the meridian splendor of which beams in Fra Angelico's and Raphael's Madonnas. The uncial letters and majusculæ were such marvellous combinations of curves and colors that caligraphy in the hands of the monastic scribes become also a variety of fine art. The crucifixion as an art theme makes its first appearance in an illumination. Irish miniatures show the pointed arch two hundred years before Abbé Suger of Cluny began to build St. Denis'. Apropos of Ireland, it is impossible to speak of miniature painting without dwelling for a moment on the work of the Irish artists in that line, and in decorative penmanship as exhibited in grotesques, arabesques, borders, majusculæ and uncials. The Irish artists and scribes, often the same persons and in addition workers in gold, silver, bronze, glass and copper, held the foremost place in all branches of the illuminating art during the "Dark Ages," and taught it to the Scots, Anglo-Saxons, Franks, Germans, Switzers, Northern Italians, and, in short, all Christian Europe. Many specimens of their illumination work, bright as ever, and displaying a fertility of fancy in the creation of interlinear combinations and grotesque forms, unrivalled in the whole range of art, and also examples of their unique and inimitable decorated metal work, may be seen in the public collections of Dublin, London, Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Rome. The Irish monks were the principal missioners of the time to the heathen, and practised art as well as preached the Gospel. was then that Ireland won the peerless title of the Isle of Saints and her sanctity flowered in art as well as in missionary enterprise and miracle. The development on the aesthetic side was naturally commensurate with the development on the religious side.'

It

1 MARGARET STOKES: Early Christian Art in Ireland. Miss Stokes's book (1887) is a n invaluable one on the subject of which it treats.

Before quitting the "Dark Ages" let us bear in mind that they bequeathed inestimable legacies to later times. Let us not forget that they synchronised the birth throes of the modern nations and the modern languages, and that the illustrious names of Charlemagne, Alfred, Brian Boroihme and Duns Scotus Erigena belong to them. Along their sombre paths we pass into higher regions, where, though everything is on a grander scale, we find a strong family resemblance to the scenes we have left behind. We enter now on what may be called the world's heroic age. Every nation has its heroic age either in fact or romance, but the mediæval cycle was the actual heroic age of Christendom at large. The thousand years of prophecy had passed, and summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, still returned in regular order. No portents in the skies announced the speedy consummation of the world. The normal condition was one of peace, not of war. Men sowed and reaped, planted and built, started industries and united themselves in communities. The Caliphs were no longer formidable and the Ottoman Sultans had not yet become formidable. The Saxons, Lombards, Danes, Normans, and other Northern nations, following the example of the Franks and Goths, had embraced Christianity, and established settled governments. Political, social and industrial customs and land tenures had solidified into the feudal system, which coincided with the boundaries of the new RomanoTeutonic States, and which was absolute in those immense areas. That system, in conjunction with Christianity, developed a complex and in many respects a noble civilization. Chivalry appeared accompanied by the Muses, "like another sun risen on mid-noon." Woman was idealized and reverenced partly in honor of her native charms and partly in remembrance of the Virgin Mother of God. Her beauty was celebrated by the harp of the minstrel and the sword and lance of the knight. Tournaments, jousts and "courts of love" were the pastime of kings and queens, lords and ladies. On the serious side the manifestations were infinitely more wonderful. Apparently the heart of man never beat so high. Never was his imagination so creative. There was an outpouring of the divine afflatus unprecedented since the days of the Apostles. Miracles ceased to be wonders; saints and saintly warriors were thick as stars in the sky, and their achievements streamed like meteors in the August night. Poetic inspiration was also at the flood, and poets and trouveres, troubadours and bards of high and low degree, trod the dewy lawns and wandered from bower to hall, singing as they went, and knights-errant, bent on righting wrongs, rode through the land; and, lo! the land itself was Arcadia, and the age after all was not the heroic, but the Golden Age! At least so it seems, for the potent spells of its enchantment descend

from generation to generation, and we see it still through a faery light and the glamour thrown over it by the Wizard of the North. The period, we may assume, began with the great Hildebrand, Gregory VII., and ended, let us say, with Leo X. What is called the age of the Renaissance—a movement which followed the sun from South to North, and visited one place after another like the spring-finds a place in Italian chronology only, and even there only by figure of speech. The time was really the closing of the mediæval and the beginning of the modern era, between which, no more than between any other two contiguous eras, can a line of demarcation be drawn. The river of time which flows forever cannot be cut in twain. The Medieval Age was the age of the Gregory already mentioned, of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas of Aquin, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Catherine and St. Bernardine of Siena, St. Thomas of Canterbury; of Dante, of Cimabue, of Giotto, of the two Pisanos, of Fra Angelico, of Petrarch, the day-star of the Renaissance, of Peter the Hermit, of Innocent III., of St. Dominic, of St. Louis, of the Cid, of the two Alphonsos, of Joan of Arc, of Savonarola, of Chaucer, of Roger Bacon; it was the age of the great monastic and military orders of knights, of the mendicant orders, of the schoolmen, the age when hospitals, schools and universities were founded in large numbers and richly endowed. It was also, as will appear in the sequel, the age of Perugino, of Raphael, of Bramante, of Michael Angelo, of Francia of Bologna, and of Titian of Venetia. Above all it was the age of the Crusades! Then, but never before or since, did whole nations, acting as one, pour out their blood and treasure for ideas, or rather for an idea. Then were performed such feats of valor and heroism as are rivalled only in legendary lore. Then, and never before or since, did the States of Europe constitute one great confederation, recognizing in the person of the Sovereign Pontiff the authorized expositor of the higher law and the appointed international arbitrator.

It was also the age when artists and artisans, following the example of the monastic orders, who had done great things, and were in the zenith of their repute, organized themselves into guilds, which became powerful agencies for the advancement of art and civilization, and which were in a measure religious confraternities, having many features of the monastic system. The glory of those free Masonic brotherhoods and Knights of Labor was not the observance of mysterious ceremonial rites which have lost their meaning, or the promotion of selfish class schemes, but the erection, equipment and adornment of those great civil and religious edifices to which pilgrimages will be made while religion or civilization endures. In those days the master-mason was also architect and sculptor, and often painter, representing in his own person the

several arts of which the cathedral was the embodiment; and this unity of artistic power in variety, in the mind and hand of the individual, lasted to the time of the great decadence.

Gothic architecture, with the painting and sculpture kindred to it which accompanied it, was the expression in form of this Dadal epoch. The loftiness of its pointed arches and ribbed ceilings, of its shooting spires, pinnacles, finials, triangular gables and massive towers, typified and were made to typify the exalted religious feeling and heroic temper of the time. The cathedral or minster was a translation into stone of the spirit of the age. The vast translucent windows, emblazoned with lustrous images, commanded vistas of heaven, so to speak. The light that carpeted the intercolumnar spaces of the broad nave with "sky robes woven of Iris's woof," and dimly lighted the shadowy aisles, streamed through the glorified bodies of the saints. The painted glass, with its jewel-sheen, reproduced in brighter colors than ever the timehonored familiar scenes and personages of sacred history, now a larger volume. Nor was the painting confined to glass. Every vacant wall-space (there was but little left) was covered either in fresco or mosaic. Nor was even this enough. The new style called imperatively for plastic art, to articulate its ideas, and emphasize its symbolism. The spirit that laid the solid foundation, and soared in spire and tower, generously responded. The building within and without was peopled with marble figures and faces. The stone everywhere started into life, assuming human shape, or burgeoning into leaf, flower and fruit. Grand visages looked out from the corbels, crockets and capitals. Angels' heads, smiling with the exhaustless naïveté of childhood, spread their tiny wings. continuously along the cornices and mouldings. The richly carved pulpit rested on the backs of lions. The wood-work of the choir and stalls was also covered with carved panels. The domain of church sculpture and painting was extended into the fields of science. The artists passed from the Bible and the Lives of the Saints, from St. Thomas Aquinas and Dante, into allegory and the personification of the virtues and vices, and thence into profane learning. Astronomy especially furnished them with numerous themes. The whole constituted an encyclopædia writ large in signs and figures, and blazing with richest color, for all the sculpture was brightly tinted after the manner of the Greeks. The exterior also teemed with statues and reliefs, the façade especially, and the portals more especially. There all the might of the

1 Jules Simon says: "La religion Catholique est la seule qui ait parfaitement compris la nécessité d'avertir les âmes et de les arracher à la matière par des signes matériels. Elle ne laisse pas une place dans ses temples sans les couvrir de tableaux, de statues, d'images, de sentences tirées de l'Ecriture, ou d' ex-votos."

mædieval chisel was seen and still may be seen, where the work has escaped the Iconoclasts of the "Reformation" and subsequent revolutions. Immense compositions of the Resurrection and Last Judgment and other scenes in Revelation overhang the doorways and climb the front. And high up on the eaves, where the prince of the powers of the air has dominion, the weird fancy of the north has found a realm which it has peopled with creatures of its own. There, jutting from the wall, squat the monstrous gargoyles -brutish forms of vampires, ghouls, goblins damned and other low-caste denizens of the nether world. They serve the Church as water-spouts, for devils also must serve, however unwillingly, in carrying out the great plan. One other thing was yet wanting. The finished structure yearned for a voice to translate its sublimity into sound, and utter its aspirations in accents commensurate with the architecture, painting and sculpture. The bell-chimes from the tower, sweet and far-reaching though they might be, were not prayer-only a call to prayer. The organ, for centuries the favorite instrument of the sacred choirs, now enlarged its proportions and multiplied its powers. From its size, columnar front and lofty height, it became one of the architectural features of the interior. Vaulted roof and clustered column, and storied wall, and crypt and tomb below soon resounded, matin and vesper, with divine strains -psalms, litanies and hymns. On fete days, which were many, when ten thousand voices intoned the Gloria or in penitential seasons the Dies Ira, and the stringed instruments and the organ mingled in the song, which rose as on the wings of the winds through the overarching forest of pillars and curved mouldings to the stone ribs of the roof, the symphony of sweet sound was mightier than the mingled anthem of ocean and tempest in Staffa's pillared cave or where the Atlantic breaks in loudest diapason on the basaltic colonnades and cliffs of Antrim.

Once more we see that all the arts harmoniously worked together to produce the effect sought; all united in one "cosmic" expression, if we may be permitted to use the term. The cathedral with all its accessories and contents constituted an organic whole, though adapted to the performance of various functions. In its infinite. diversity of detail the Gothic cathedral was a miniature representation or microcosm of heaven, that is, of the heaven of the mediæval imagination. On special occasions, when it was temporarily converted into a theatre, for the performance of the awful tragedy of the Passion, or some other Mystery or Miracle Play, before a rapt and tireless audience, it became a representation of both worlds. Heaven, hell, earth and purgatory were the shifting intermingling scenes of that tremendous and tumultuous drama, which, transcending the boundaries as well as the unities of time