Such terms as 'purity of taste,' 'sound perception,' etc, suggest that opinion on art, like digestion, may be modified by habit and culture, and as we know that in art, as in food, 'likes and dislikes' depend on the assimilative power, it is clearly unreasonable to expect everyone to agree. No two people see the same thing quite alike: the lens of the eye itself changes with years, becoming less sensitive to certain colours: certain sides of beauty, as of truth, appeal to certain minds, and the cut-and-dried credo we are taught as to schools and rules is therefore sometimes a serious hindrance to our confessed enjoyments as it has been to many new developments of genius. Every code of laws becomes obsolete in time.

It ought to be admitted that taste is free: then none of us would be afraid to be happy, and buds of originality would break the sheath of precedent.

Some persons enjoy nearly all the art of the Renascence, whilst others enjoy very little of it, caring chiefly for the Gothic, and both have just reasons, for the fitness of a school lies less in its theories than in the emotions it is able to wake in the spectator. Inspired works are to be found in all schools; a face or a flower carved or painted with such vital force of emotion that it comes to life as we look at it, high and pathetic thoughts which reach and stir us, even (sometimes) through the most imperfect expression, because the spirit is stronger than the letter.

In the Dresden Gallery, how often we find one man stricken dumb before the Sisiine Madonna, and blind to the Madonna of Holbein, whilst his neighbour sees nought in the eyes of Raphael's Child nor Mother save the stare of peasants, but is startled, awed, choked by the gesture of Holbein's Babe, too young to know that He is blessing men, or to direct his own divine impulses. Who shall say which mind is wise or foolish for being complexioned this way or that? Like a closed chamber, the heart has its resonant note, and taste (which means culture of feeling) should be educated, not treated like the 'comprachicots ' that Victor Hugo romances about. I must confess to often enjoying early art more than advanced art when simplicity has given place to self-consciousness; and I prefer Gothic in all stages to pure classic in England, where the classic is always out of its element, whether in architecture or domestic art, whether simple or what is called grotesque. The great names in the Renascence are balanced by many mediaeval names, little, if at all, less great, considering the conditions under which they worked - artists whose knowledge of design, nay, of anatomy, seems as complete and facile as any to be found in classic or in Renascence art.

FIG. 5. - Florentine Figure in terra-cotta, fifteenth century.

In the fourteenth century, when Gothic art had reached its highest development of elastic loveliness, sympathique, variable, free, with no laws rigid enough to pinion the artist's individuality, relics still remain in wood and stone and clay to attest the real eminence of the art standard, not only magnificent towers and flower-wreathed arches, but bits of statuary in wood and stone and terra-cotta, such as may be studied in the Cluny (fig. 5 is an instance), wherein the mature treatment is worthy of the later, or even the older, days.

In Italy, when the Renascence cannot be said to have begun, though it was quickening into life, in the fourteenth century, we have the works of Andrea Pisano, Antonio Veniziano, and the Gaddis, in bronze, marble, and fresco, and presently Jacopo della Quercia, Signorelli, Brunelleschi, Dello the furniture maker and decorator, Luca della Robbia, Donatello, the Canozzi, and a multitude of geniuses who dared to apply themselves simultaneously to architecture, sculpture, painting, decorating, and goldsmith's work, and felt it no shame to be able to master more than one branch of art. In England, though she was considerably behind Italy, we have many scarcely remembered names: William of Wykeham directing the building of Windsor Castle, Winchester Cathedral, and New College, Oxford; John of St. Omer, Torregiano, Toto, Trevigi, William the Florentine, foreign settlers teaching many pupils; Torell the goldsmith, who worked in metals, from Queen Eleanor's chased tomb in Westminster Abbey down to bell-founding, and the obscure artist, William Austin, of London, of whom Flaxman, speaking of Richard Beau-champs'monument in St. Mary's Church, Warwick, writes, 'The figures are so natural and graceful, the architecture so rich and delicate, that they are excelled by nothing done in Italy of the same kind at the same time, although Donatello and Ghiberti were living when this tomb was executed, in the year 1439.'

Mutilated fragments of beautiful sculpture, full of feeling and skill, are yet visible in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral in the statuettes carved under the Episcopate of Bishop Gray, 1331 to 1349, by men who studied in Italy under Guarini the younger. Most delicate tarsia and inlaying like Benedetto da Maiano's, embroidery like Paolo da Verona's, inlaid work for banners like Botticelli's, jewellery like Francia's, before Francia died of amazement at Raphael's greatness (it is said), vindicate the excellence of what were once laughed at as Gothic 'Congestions,' by the arrogant Renascence masters. But when art had attained this point she had nothing more to learn, nothing more to struggle and blunder after; the goal was won, and henceforth Art became a toy rather than a religion, and sought rather to magnify man than a higher thing. In architecture, the Florid Gothic tore fancy to tatters for a brief spell, and now, when skill and appreciation were both ripe for a new object, waifs from the buried old world struck the art-lovers with delight. The grandeur of simplicity (when simplicity is grand) was refreshingly manifest.

Thus came the reaction.

It is only when the journey has ceased to be a struggle that we can afford to turn and look back at the road we have traversed, and at the far-off scenery behind. This leisure to rest a little marked the transition from the wild exuberance of Gothic art to the refined vagaries and Pagan self-sufficiency of the Renascence, as of one who quits the open fields for a gorgeous and well-kempt garden. It was as though the morning's work was ended with the morning's freshness, and the playtime of afternoon was at hand.

The playtime began very happily, and full of enthusiasm.