The faces are without thought, the limbs without proportion, and the draperies without variety.

Among them there is one which merits notice, chiefly, because it is one of the earliest of our attempts at historical portraiture which can be authenticated. It is a painting on wood; the figures are less than life, and represent Henry the Fifth and his relations. It measures four feet six inches long, by four feet four inches high, and was in the days of Catholic power the altarpiece of the church of Shene. An angel stands in the centre holding in his hands the expanding coverings of two tents, out of which the king, with three princes, and the queen, with four princesses, are proceeding to kneel at two altars, where crosses, and sceptres, and books are lying. They wear long and flowing robes, with loose hair, and have crowns on their heads. In the back-ground, St. George appears in the air, combating with the dragon, while Cleodelinda kneels in prayer beside a lamb. It is not, indeed, quite certain that this curious work was made during the reign of Henry the Fifth, but there can be little doubt of its being painted as early as that of his son. The monarch was not more fortunate than the apostles of the church; for neither his heroic character, nor the presence of princesses of the blood royal, could animate the conception, or raise the artist above the usual cold level of barbarism.

Painting, nevertheless, may be said to have advanced a step or two during that period of blood and confusion, and the love of art was gaining a little ground. The demand for saints and legends was sensibly diminishing; a more rational taste in all things was dawning; men's sympathies, national and social, mingled freely in literature, and moderately in art. Portraits were frequently attempted; but they are grim and grotesque-present an image of death rather than of life, and show but glimpses of that feeling and truth of character which distin

guish true works of art. But though the draperies seem copied from the winding sheet rather than from the robe, and the faces from death rather than from life; still it was something to attempt to follow nature, and showed a spirit willing to be freed from the shackles of imitation, and a desire to escape from the thraldom of the church.

At this period the character of an English artist was curiously compounded; he was at once architect, sculptor, carpenter, goldsmith, armourer, jeweller, saddler, tailor, and painter. There is extant, in Dugdale, a curious example of the character of the times, and a scale by which we can measure the public admiration of art. It is a contract between the Earl of Warwick and John Rag, citizen and tailor, London, in which the latter undertakes to execute the emblazonry of the earl's pageant in his situation of ambassador to France. In the tailor's bill, gilded griffins mingle with Virgin Mary's; painted streamers for battle or procession, with the twelve apostles; and "one coat for his grace's body, lute with fine gold," takes precedence of St. George and the Dragon.

The superstition of the church formed a grotesque union with the frivolities of heraldry and the follies of courtiers and kings. The baron who patronised in his youth the gilded pomps and painted vanities of the court and camp, entertained other feelings as he approached the grave, and at once soothed a timorous conscience, and appeased a rapacious church, by benefactions to abbeys of painted saints and profitable manors. This was the true age of barbaric splendour; mankind wanted the taste to use their wealth wisely, and knew no way to estimate excellence save by price. The quantities of silver and gold, precious stones, and expensive colours, employed in works of art, were immense. Art, unequal to the task of touching the heart by either action or sentiment, appealed to our sense of

what is costly, and trusted to her materials. The taste and genius of the Greeks enabled them to use rich materials, and perhaps to use them wisely; but our fathers acted as if all the charm lay in abundance of costly things. We had gilded kings with golden crowns; gilded angels with golden halos; and gilded virgins sitting nursing golden children on golden clouds: the heaven above was gold, and so was the earth beneath.

Yet art, in what was conceived to be a far humbler pursuit, made some atonement for all this. Before, and some time after, the invention of printing, literature was diffused over the land by means of the pen, and a skilful transcriber had more than the reputation which a clever printer enjoys now. Of the volumes thus produced, many were eminently beautiful: a single volume was the subject of a dying bequest, and the works of a favourite author were received as pledges for the repayment of large loans, and even for the faith of treaties. The hand of the painter added greatly to the value of those volumes. The illustration of missals, and of books of chivalry and romance, became a favourite pursuit with the nobles and a lucrative employment to artists. Illustrations on this scale required a de licate hand which excelled in miniature resemblances, and a fancy in keeping with the ge nius of the author. Many of those performances are beautiful. But their beauty is less that of sentiment than of colour. In some of the most re markable there is a vivid richness and delicacy of hue, approaching the lustre of oil-painting. They are valuable also for their evidence of the state of art-for the light which they throw on the general love of mankind for literature; and for the information which they indirectly convey concerning the condition of our courts and nobles.

The subjects of those illustrations are very various. They represent the dresses, ceremonies, and

portraits of the chief men of the times, while they imbody the conceptions of the author. They were richly bound, and clasped with silver or gold, and deposited in painted cabinets and in tapestried rooms. They were exhibited on great occasions, and their embossed sides and embellished leaves were submitted to nobles, and knights, and poets. They were the pride, and formed part of the riches of their possessors. The art of printing, and the Reformation, which that art so greatly served, threw those illuminated rarities first into the shade, and afterward into the fire. The zeal of the reformers was let loose upon the whole progeny of the church of Rome, and wooden saints and gilded missals served to consume one another. The blunt rustics and illiterate nobles, who composed the torrent which swept away the long-established glories of the papal church, confounded the illuminated volumes of poets and philosophers with the superstitious offspring of the Lady of the Seven Hills. Over this havoc there has been much lamentation. I grieve for the literature-for the illuminations my sorrow is more moderate. Into the latter the true genius of art had not ascended, as sap into the tree, to refresh it into life and cover it with beauty. They looked like I processions of lay-figures rather than groups of breathing beings.

The art of tapestry as well as the art of illuminating books, aided in diffusing a love of painting over the island. It was carried to a high degree of excellence. The earliest account of its appearance in England is during the reign of Henry the Eighth, but there is no reason to doubt that it was well-known and in general esteem much earlier. The traditional account, that we were instructed in it by the Saracens, has probably some foundation. The ladies encouraged this manufacture by working at it with their own hands; and the rich aided by purchasing it in vast quantities whenever regular

practitioners appeared in the market. It found its way into church and palace-chamber and hall. It served at once to cover and adorn cold and comfortless walls. It added warmth, and, when snow was on the hill and ice in the stream, gave an air of social snugness which has deserted some of our modern mansions.

At first the figures and groups, which rendered this manufacture popular, were copies of favourite paintings; but, as taste improved and skill increased, they showed more of originality in their conceptions, if not more of nature in their forms. They exhibited, in common with all other works of art, the mixed taste of the times-a grotesque union of classical and Hebrew history-of martial life and pastoral repose of Greek gods and Romish saints. Absurd as such combinations certainly were, and destitute of those beauties of form and delicate gradations and harmony of colour which distinguish paintings worthily so called-still when the hall was lighted up, and living faces thronged the floor, the silent inhabitants of the walls would seem, in the eyes of our ancestors, something very splendid. As painting rose in fame, tapestry sunk in estimation. The introduction of a lighter and less massive mode of architecture abridged the space for its accommodation, and by degrees the stiff and fanciful creations of the loom vanished from our walls. The art is now neglected. I am sorry for this, because I cannot think meanly of an art which engaged the heads and hands of the ladies of England, and gave to the tapestried hall of elder days fame little inferior to what now waits on a gallery of paintings.

During the reign of Henry the Seventh, painting rendered Italy the most renowned nation of the earth; but till near his death our island continued, as of old, in gross ignorance of all that genius, beauty, or grandeur give to art. Now and then the effigy of a prince or an earl was painted