lower and lower depression of the pointed arch-and independently too of the successive proscriptions of the Freemasons, to which I attach little importance, as they had outlived their usefulness-I cannot but think that an innate physical and intellectual distaste dictated the abandonment of Gothic Architecture in Italy.

I have written this letter with much diffidence, and with the full consciousness that the study of a life would scarcely justify me in speaking on the subject. But the little I have said is essential to my purpose of tracing Christian art in the origin and connection of its distinct departments-for it is a fact, that I hope to establish in the course of these Sketches, that Sculpture and Painting, both in the South and in the North, revived in strict alliance with Gothic Architecture-and that Painting, in par ticular, reached perfection in Italy long indeed after the extinction of that style South of the Alps, but still in the succession of a line of artists, few but faithful, whose sympathies induced them to stand apart from the throng that followed in the triumph of the comparatively anti-Christian Cinquecento. have sketched, in a word, a bold architectural background; I shall now proceed to introduce group after group till the picture of this opening period of Christian Art be complete.

I

CHRISTIAN ART OF MODERN EUROPE.

PERIOD I.

ARCHITECTURE.

Development of the Christian Element, Spirit-Lombard and Gothic, or Pointed Architecture-Rise of Sculpture and Painting-Expression.

II. SCULPTURE OF THE LOMBARDS, AND ITALICOBYZANTINE REVIVALS IN SCULPTURE, MOSAIC AND PAINTING, ANTERIOR TO THE ASCENDANCY OF NICCOLA PISANO.

SECT. 1. Sculpture.

SECT. 2. Mosaics.

SECT. 3. Painting.

LETTER II.

SCULPTURE OF THE LOMBARDS,

AND

ITALICO-BYZANTINE REVIVALS,

IN SCULPTURE, MOSAIC AND PAINTING, ANTERIOR TO THE ASCENDANCY OF NICCOLA PISANO.

FROM the conclusion of the preceding letter you will naturally expect an introduction in the present to Niccola Pisano, the parent of modern Sculpture and Painting, as developed in alliance with Gothic Architecture. But a transition period must first be noticed, during which the artists of Italy endeavoured to express the new life which stirred in their veins through the types and traditions, and in the style and spirit of the Menologion and the Dalmatica, and in association, for the most part, with that elder Lombard Architecture, which maintained such close affinity and deep sympathy with that of Byzantium. These efforts were, with few exceptions, insulated, and however laudable in themselves, would merit little notice had the mind which conceived, expired in giving them birth. But such was not the case, and the period in question may be not unaptly

compared to that which usually intervenes in the life of a poet, between the hour when he first becomes aware of his vocation, and that in which he walks abroad in the conscious might of originality -a period of Imitation, during which he endeavours to invest the bright images and daring thoughts that visit his solitude with the measure, cadence and peculiar phraseology of his most admired predecessors in song,-like a young eaglet gazing on the sun long ere its unfledged pinion enables it to rise from the ground. The productions of that immature period are in later life looked back upon with a smile, yet to the critic and biographer they have their value as documents witnessing to the intellectual growth of their author.-It is under shelter of this analogy that I propose to devote the few following pages to a brief review of the Sculpture, Mosaics and Painting of Italy, immediately antecedent to the new and peculiarly original style introduced at Pisa, Siena and Florence during the latter half of the thirteenth century.

SECTION 1-Sculpture.

THE Sculpture of this period falls naturally into two subdivisions, strictly correspondent with the two periods, the earlier and the later, of Lombard Architecture. The earlier is the more original. It may be seen in full development on the façade of S. Michele at Pavia-rude indeed to a degree, but full of fire and a living record of the daring race that created it. The archangel trampling down the