the systematic destruction. But far more survives of mediæval figure-sculpture than is usually assumed. Prof. Prior of Cambridge contributed to the Walpole Society's first volume a documented and well-illustrated introduction to the subject. The 13th century was the finest period of English sculpture, of which Wells Cathedral supplies the richest series for study. To the same century belongs an extremely interesting relic of English art-the figured tiles made at Chertsey or in the neighbourhood. Mr Lethaby published in the second volume a number of tiles originally in Chertsey Abbey, illustrating the Romance of Tristram and Iseult' remarkable documents which have been curiously neglected.' These tiles are in all probability the earliest extant illustrations to the Romance; but, apart from this historical interest, the designs are of real beauty, full of vigour as of grace. Such fragments speak eloquently for much that Time has lost us.

The English style of painting influenced the art of Norway and Sweden in the early Middle Ages. In the 15th century, altar-pieces of alabaster, carved in England, were exported to all parts of the Continent, and are still to be found in France, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Scandinavia. But probably it was in manuscript illumination that our mediæval painting most excelled. From the fifth century, when Irish monasteries began to produce the marvels of pure design which distinguish the Celtic school, till the early 15th century, there is a scarcely interrupted tradition, varied by the adoption of elements and influences from outside, but fused into a style which passed through different phases yet kept a native character. Through Alcuin of York, and his long labours for Charlemagne, it helped to create the Carolingian school in France. And for part of the 13th and 14th centuries the mature Anglo-Norman school displays an excellence excellence scarcely rivalled on the Continent. This field of art, having rich material for study, has become comparatively familiar ground; but Mr J. A. Herbert's article on the illuminations in a Royal Psalter painted in the transitional style of the beginning of the 13th century, will be none the less welcome to students. With the invention of printing, manuscript illumination received its death-blow. With

the Reformation, mediæval art and its traditions perished. And now, with Holbein, began the dominance of the foreigner in the art of England.

'Every old picture,' says Walpole, 'is not a Holbein.' The phrase sufficiently attests the power of Holbein's name; and we know how many smaller reputations have been absorbed by its splendour. Every portrait of Henry VIII is still popularly attributed to Holbein, though he was dead before the great majority of them were painted. Who were the painters who succeeded him? One of the most notable and prolific masters of the time is a painter whose signature H.E. in monogram form is found on a great number of portraits. Vertue suggested that these portraits were the work of Lucas d'Heere of Ghent, painter and poet, who came to England as a refugee from Spanish persecution in 1568 and remained here till 1576. This old attribution, to which Walpole gave currency, has been accepted ever since. The difficulty is that there are portraits signed with this monogram bearing dates ten or more years earlier than D'Heere's arrival in London. If the painter is not D'Heere, who can he be?

The problem has been solved and many of the painter's works have been described in an essay by Mr Lionel Cust (Walpole Society, Vol. II). The Lumley Inventories which have now been printed in the Society's sixth volume, supply the clue. The artist is now identified beyond all doubt as Haunce (or Hans) Eworth, variously spelt Euwouts, Ewottes, or Heward. He came from Antwerp, of which town he was native, and settled in England about 1543. He was still working here in 1574, at which time he was making designs for Masques for Queen Elizabeth's Office of the Revels. Henceforward Eworth's name must take a conspicuous place in the annals of our early portraiture. He was a master of secondary rank, but of no mean talent. Some of his work seems to have passed hitherto under the name of that masculine delineator, Antonio Moro; and who that has seen it can forget that artist's masterpiece in the Prado, the tragic portrait of Mary Tudor? Eworth also painted that queen. At Woburn is a portrait of her with her husband; she sits in a room with brocaded hangings on the walls and a window opening on the river. Philip stands beside

her; and, with Titian's portrait in one's mind, it is curious to note the puny appearance of the man. Titian had given him in some subtle way a melancholy dignity; Eworth's vision reflects him more literally.

The extensive catalogue of portraits by or attributed to Eworth, which Mr Cust has compiled, forms a very solid contribution to the history of Tudor portraiture. It has already enabled other students to add to the list of the painter's works; as witness the notes contributed by Miss Mary Hervey and Mr Richard Goulding to the Walpole Society's third volume. A similar substantial addition to our knowledge is Mr Cust's catalogue of portraits by Marcus Gheerardts the younger in the same volume. Mr Cust's concluding note of warning 'that some of the earlier portraits may be the work of Gower, and some of the later that of John de Critz or Robert Peake,' indicates that there is still plenty of research-work to be done. But Mr Cust's labours make his successors' easier; they form a landmark for the study of painting in England. The profuse illustrations to these catalogues are invaluable. Were all the old pictures in English country-houses photographed and published (portentous enterprise!), many problems now troubling students would automatically solve themselves. Meanwhile the numerous reproductions given by the Walpole Society are the best possible foundation.

But the 16th-century painter who claims our warmest interest is a true-born Englishman, and, as seems specially to befit an Elizabethan worthy, a man of Devon. Nicholas Hilliard did not compete with the panel-painters of portraits, since he confined himself to miniature. In this art he is the first great English master. Something of the old tradition of the illuminators, who made the vellum pages of manuscripts so rich and comely, seems to revive in Hilliard; he has a singular delicacy, a fine decorative sense, and a love of his materials such as the old monks had. What a refreshment it is, after the rather wooden presentments of Elizabethan men and women so frequent on the walls of old country-houses, to take into one's hands a miniature by Hilliard! It is not only that his portraits are so intimate and alive, so free from pose and pomposity, and the painter's interest

in his sitter so keenly engaged; it is the sensitive fineness of the man's art. His drawing for the Seal of Queen Elizabeth in the British Museum shows what a firmly modulated line his pen could trace. In the little portrait of a young man leaning against a tree at South Kensington, could anything be more beautiful than the rose-leaves and rose-blossoms on the tall briars that seem to embower this curly-headed youth, and make a pattern light on his dark short cloak, and dark on the white hose that encase the slender elegance of his legs? Beside Hilliard's art, the Flemings' robust journeyman's work seems of an altogether coarser world. Hilliard betrays a fastidious temperament, a constant choiceness, a love of fine persons and fine manners, a sympathy with aristocratic youth and its passion for distinction. Fundamentally, we find in him an affinity with Gainsborough.

A few of Hilliard's delightful miniatures are reproduced in the Walpole Society's first volume, others are reproduced in the volume which consists of an annotated catalogue of the famous collection of miniatures at Welbeck. But the first volume also contains a very important document for the history of English painting, Hilliard's treatise on the 'Art of Limning,' here published for the first time. It is surprising that no one should have thought of printing this treatise before. It is interesting not only for its account of the technical method pursued by Hilliard, but for its opinions, personal touches, and reminiscences. Hilliard has much to say in praise of Albert Dürer, the most exquisite man that ever left us lines to view for true delineation'; but he holds it a defect in his art that he had only German models to draw from, and not the 'faire creatures' that the Italians had seen; and such 'rare beauties,' he maintains, 'are more commonly found in this isle of England than elsewhere.' Raleigh once posed Hilliard with a problem off portrait painting, and Hilliard showed him how it was possible to draw a tall man and a short man on two tablets of the same size and yet make it plain to the eye that one was short and the other tall. He has some shrewd remarks on light and shadow; for, allowing that strong light and shade help a picture which is to be seen at a distance, he points out that there is no such necessity for a miniature held in the hand. He is all for what he

calls the truth of the line,' for 'line without shadow showeth all to a good judgment, but the shadow without line showeth nothing.' In this preference for a draughtmanship which suggests modelling by expressive lineso to shadow as if it were not at all shadowed is best, shadowed'-and in his disdain for the easy method of getting relief and roundness by hard, strong shadows, he is at one with Holbein and with the Oriental masters. And he recalls how he discussed this matter with Queen Elizabeth when he first drew her portrait. The Queen agreed with his view, but wanted his reasons, which he gave; and she chose to sit for him in the open alley of a goodly garden, where no tree was near.' In short, the 'Art of Limning' (carefully transcribed and edited by Mr Philip Norman) shows Hilliard not only as a thorough craftsman but as a thoughtful student of art who was well acquainted with the work of Continental masters.

Hilliard's treatise is the earliest of a group of similar treatises still extant in manuscript. The most important of these other tracts is the Miniatura,' by Edward Norgate, in the Bodleian Library. This was quite recently edited by Mr Martin Hardie for the Clarendon Press. Norgate originally wrote his treatise about 1630, and revised it about 1650. It is delightfully written and full of interesting things, and has lively comments on contemporary European artists, besides elaborate technical instructions. For both Norgate and Hilliard painting was not a profession but a pastime. Perhaps it was not an uncommon accomplishment in Elizabeth's day. John White, the Govornor' of that First Colonie' of Virginia, sent out by Raleigh, which disappeared before it could be firmly settled, was a good draughtsman and painter in water-colour. A book of his drawings, made in Virginia and the West Indies, is in the British Museum, and is of extreme interest from the geographical and ethnographical point of view; it has considerable interest also as art.

Exquisite as is the art of Hilliard, it is a rather isolated flower, a form of painting which has little relation to the other arts. There was no general movement in England, and no single master capable of flooding the old traditions of competent craftsmanship with the