endeavours to express for themselves, and convey to others, some likeness of the realities of sacred event in which they had been instructed. They differ from every archaic school of former design in this evident correspondence with an imagined reality. All previous archaic art whatsoever is symbolic and decorative-not realistic. The contest of Herakles with the Hydra on a Greek vase is a mere sign that such a contest took place, not a picture of it, and in drawing that sign the potter is always thinking of the effect of the engraved lines on the curves of his pot, and taking care to keep out of the way of the handle;-but a Saxon monk would scratch his idea of the Fall of the angels or the Temptation of Christ over a whole page of his manuscript in variously explanatory scenes, evidently full of inexpressible vision, and eager to explain and illustrate all that he felt or believed. . . .

Quite the deepest-thoughted creatures of the then animate world, it seems to me, these Saxon ploughmen of the sand or the sea, with their worshipped deity of Beauty and Justice, a red rose on her banner, for best of gifts, and in her right hand, instead of a sword, a balance, for due doom, without wrath,-of retribution in her left. Far other than the Wends, though stubborn enough, they too, in battle rank,-seven times. rising from defeat against Charlemagne, and unsubdued but by death-yet, by no means in that

John Bull's manner of yours, "averse to be interfered with," in their opinions, or their religion. Eagerly docile, on the contrary-joyfully reverent -instantly and gratefully acceptant of whatever better insight or oversight a stranger could bring them, of the things of God or man.-Pleasures of England, I., III.

13. NORMAN ART AND CHARACTER.-With far meaner thoughts, both of themselves and their powers, the Normans set themselves to build impregnable military walls, and sublime religious ones, in the best possible practical ways; but they no more made books of their church fronts than of their bastion flanks; and cared, in the religion they accepted, neither for its sentiments nor its promises, but only for its immediate results on national order.

As I read them, they were men wholly of this world, bent on doing the most in it, and making the best of it that they could;-men, to their death, of Deed, never pausing, changing, repenting, or anticipating, more than the completed square, aveù voyou, of their battle, their keep, and their cloister. Soldiers before and after everything, they learned the lockings and bracings of their stones primarily in defence against the battering-ram and the projectile, and esteemed the pure circular arch for its distributed and equal strength more than for its beauty...

I have just said that they valued religion chiefly for its influence of order in the present world: being in this, observe, as nearly as may be the exact reverse of modern believers, or persons who profess to be such,-of whom it may be generally alleged, too truly, that they value religion with respect to their future bliss rather than their present duty; and are therefore continually careless of its direct commands, with easy excuse to themselves for disobedience to them. Whereas the Norman, finding in his own heart an irresistible impulse to action, and perceiving himself to be set, with entirely strong body, brain, and will, in the midst of a weak and dissolute confusion of all things, takes from the Bible instantly into his conscience every exhortation to Do and to Govern; and becomes, with all his might and understanding, a blunt and rough servant, knecht, or knight of God, liable to much misapprehension, of course, as to the services immediately required of him, but supposing, since the whole make of him, outside and in, is a soldier's, that God meant him for a soldier, and that he is to establish, by main force, the Christian faith and works all over the world so far as he comprehends them; not merely with the Mahometan indignation against spiritual error, but with a sound and honest soul's dislike of material error, and resolution to extinguish that, even if perchance found in the spiritual persons

to whom, in their office, he yet rendered total

reverence.

How far the existing British nation owes its military prowess to the blood of Normandy and Anjou, I have never examined its genealogy enough to tell you; *-but this I can tell you positively, that whatever constitutional order or personal valour the Normans enforced or taught among the nations they conquered, they did not at first attempt with their own hands to rival them in any of their finer arts, but used both Greek and Saxon sculptors, either as slaves, or hired workmen, and more or less therefore chilled and degraded the hearts of the men thus set to servile, or at best, hireling, labour.

In 1874, I went to see Etna, Scylla, Charybdis, and the tombs of the Norman Kings at Palermo ; surprised, as you may imagine, to find that there wasn't a stroke nor a notion of Norman work in them. They are, every atom, done by Greeks, and are as pure Greek as the temple of Ægina; but more rich and refined. I drew with accurate care, and with measured profile of every moulding, the tomb built for Roger II. (afterwards.

But, so far as you have indeed the right to trust in the courage of your own hearts, remember also-it is not in Norman nor Saxon, but in Celtic race that your real strength lies. The battles both of Waterloo and Alma were won by Irish and Scots -by the terrible Scots Greys, and by Sir Colin's Highlanders. Your "thin red line" was kept steady at Alma only by Colonel Yea's swearing at them.

Frederick II. was laid in its dark porphyry), And it is a perfect type of the Greek-Christian form of tomb-temple over sarcophagus, in which the pediments rise gradually, as time goes on, into acute angles-get pierced in the gable with foils, and their sculptures thrown outside on their flanks, and become at last in the fourteenth century, the tombs of Verona. But what is the meaning of the Normans employing these Greek slaves for their work in Sicily (within thirty miles of the field of Himera)? Well, the main meaning is that though the Normans could build, they couldn't carve, and were wise enough not to try to, when they couldn't, as you do now all over this intensely comic and tragic town: but, here in England, they only employed the Saxon with a grudge, and therefore being more and more driven to use barren mouldings without sculpture, gradually developed the structural forms of archivolt, which breaking into the lancet, brighten and balance themselves into the symmetry of Early English Gothic.-Pleasures of England, III.

14. CAMPOSANTO OF PISA.-How do you think such a field becomes holy,-how separated, as the resting-place of loving kindred, from that other field of blood, bought to bury strangers in?

When you have finally succeeded, by your gospel of mammon, in making all the men of your own nation not only strangers to each other,