Chapter II: Part 2

With the Greek schools of painting, Attic, Asiatic, and Sicyonian,
no less celebrated than their sculpture, it has fared far worse.
There is not one of their works surviving; no, not one. Of these
schools and their paintings I need not here say anything, as I am
concerned only with the archæological monuments which are now in
existence. But the loss is compensated in some degree by the
paintings on vases, in which we may one day recognise the
compositions of the various great masters of the different schools,
just as in the majolica and other wares of the 16th and following
centuries we have the compositions of Raffaelle, Giulio Romano, and
other painters. “The glorious art of the Greek painters,” says K. O.
Müller, the greatest authority for ancient art generally, “as far as
regards light, tone, and local colours, is wholly lost to us; and we
know nothing of it except from obscure notices and later
imitations;” (referring, I suppose, to the frescoes of Herculaneum
and of Pompeii more especially;) “on the contrary, the pictures on
vases with thinly scattered bright figures give us the most exalted
idea of the progress and achievements of the art of design, if we
venture, from the workmanship of common handicraftsmen, to draw
conclusions as to the works of the first artists[14].” But of this
matter and of the vases themselves, which rank among the most
graceful remains of Greek antiquity, and are found over the whole
Greek world, I shall say no more now, as they will form the subject
of my following lectures. We have also many terra cottas of delicate
Greek workmanship, mostly plain, but some gilded, others painted,
from Athens, as well as from a great variety of other places, of
which the finest are now at Munich. Relief ornaments, sometimes of
great beauty, in the same material, were impressed with moulds, and
Cicero, in a letter to Atticus, wishes for such _typi_ from Athens,
in order to fix them on the plaster of an atrium. Most of those
which now remain seem to be of Greco-Roman times.

Footnote 14:

_Ancient Art and its Remains_, p. 119. Translated (with additions
from Welcker) by Leitch. London, 1852. This invaluable work is a
perfect thesaurus for the student, and will conduct him to the
most trustworthy authorities on every branch of the subject.

Of the art of coinage invented by the Greeks and carried by them to
the highest perfection which it has ever attained, a few words must
now be said. The history of a nation, said the first Napoleon, is
its coinage: and the art which the Greeks invented became soon
afterwards, and now is, the history of the world. Numismatics are
the epitome of all archæological knowledge, and any one who is
versed in this study must by necessity be more or less acquainted
with many others also. Architecture, sculpture, iconography,
topography, palæography, the public and private life of the ancients
and their mythology, are all illustrated by numismatics, and
reciprocally illustrate them.

Numismatics give us also the succession of kings and tyrants over
the whole Greek world. In the case of Bactria or Bactriana, whose
capital Bactra is the modern Balk, this value of numismatics is
perhaps most conspicuous. From coins, and from coins almost alone,
we obtain the succession of kings, beginning with the Greek series
in the third century B.C., and going on with various dynasties of
Indian language and religion, till we come down to the Mohammedan
conquest. “Extending through a period of more than fifteen
centuries,” says Professor H. H. Wilson, “they furnish a distinct
outline of the great political and religious vicissitudes of an
important division of India, respecting which written records are
imperfect or deficient[15].”

Footnote 15:

_Ariana Antiqua_, p. 439. London, 1841. For the more recent views
of English and German numismatists on these coins, see Mr Thomas’s
_Catalogue of Bactrian Coins_ in the Numismatic Chronicle for
1857, Vol. XIX. p. 13 sqq.

Coins are so much more durable than most other monuments, that they
frequently survive, when the rest have perished. This is well put by
Pope in his Epistle to Addison, on his Discourse on Medals:

Ambition sighed, she saw it vain to trust
The faithless column and the crumbling bust,
Huge moles whose shadows stretched from shore to shore,
Their ruins perished and their place no more.
Convinced she now contracts her vast design,
And all her triumphs shrink into a coin.
A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps,
Beneath her palm here sad Judæa weeps;
Now scantier limits the proud arch confine;
And scarce are seen the prostrate Nile or Rhine;
A small Euphrates thro’ the piece is rolled,
And little eagles wave their wings in gold.
The Medal, faithful to its charge of fame,
Through climes and ages bears each form and name;
In one short view subjected to our eye,
Gods, emperors, heroes, sages, beauties, lie.

Regarded simply as works of art the coins of Magna Græcia and
Sicily, more especially those of Syracuse and its tyrants, as well
as those of Thasos, Opus, and Elis, also the regal coins of Philip,
Alexander, Mithridates, and some of the Seleucidæ, are amongst the
most exquisite productions of antiquity. Not even in gem-engraving,
an art derived by Greece from Egypt and Assyria, but carried by her
to the highest conceivable perfection, do we find anything superior
to these. I must, before quitting the subject of numismatics,
congratulate the University on the acquisition of one of the largest
and most carefully selected private collections of Greek coins ever
formed, viz. the cabinet of the late Col. Leake, which is now one of
the principal treasures of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Inferior as gems are to coins in most archæological respects,
especially in respect of their connection with literary history, and
though not superior to the best of them artistically, gems have
nevertheless one advantage over coins, that they are commonly quite
uninjured by time. Occasionally (it is true) this is the case with
coins; but with gems it is the rule. Of course, to speak generally,
the art of gems, whose material is always more or less precious, is
superior to that of coins, which were often carelessly executed, as
being merely designed for a medium of commercial exchange. High art
would not usually spend itself upon small copper money, but be
reserved for the more valuable pieces, especially those of gold and
silver[16]. The subjects of gems are mostly mythological, or are
connected with the heroic cycle; a smaller, but more interesting
number, presents us with portraits, which however are in general
uninscribed. At the same time, by comparing these with
portrait-statues and coins we are able to identify Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, Demosthenes, Alexander the Great, several of the
Ptolemies, and a few others; most of which may have been engraved by
Greco-Roman artists. But the catalogue of authentic portraits
preserved to us, both Greek and Roman, is, as K. O. Müller observes,
now very much to be thinned.

Footnote 16:

This remark however must not be pressed too closely. Certain small
Greek copper coins of Italy, Sicily, &c., are exceedingly
beautiful.

With regard to ancient iconography in general, coins, without doubt,
afford the greatest aid; but no certain coin-portraits are, I
believe, earlier than Alexander[17]. The oldest Greek
portrait-statue known to me is that of Mausolus, now in the British
Museum; but the majority of the statues of Greek philosophers and
others are probably to be referred to the Roman times, when the
formation of portrait-galleries became a favourite pursuit. With the
Greeks it was otherwise; the ideal was ever uppermost in their mind:
they executed busts of Homer indeed and placed his head on many of
their coins; but of course these were no more portraits than the
statues of Jupiter and Pallas are portraits. With regard to the
relation of Greek archæology to the history of Greece, both the
monuments and the literature are abundant, and they mutually
illustrate one another; and the same remark is more or less true for
the histories of the nations afterwards to be mentioned, upon which
I shall therefore not comment in this respect.

Footnote 17:

I am aware that there are reasons for believing that a Persian
coin preserves a portrait of Artaxerxes Mnemon, who reigned a
little earlier.

From Greece, who taught Rome most or all that she ever knew of the
arts, we pass to the contemplation of the mistress of the world
herself. She found indeed in her own vicinity an earlier
civilisation, the Etruscan, whose archæological remains and history
generally are amongst the most obscure and perplexing matters in all
the world of fore-time. The sepulchral and other monuments of
Etruria are often inscribed, but no ingenuity has yet interpreted
them. The words of the Etruscan and other Italian languages have
been recently collected by Fabretti. There is some story about a
learned antiquary after many years’ research coming to the
conclusion that two Etruscan words were equivalent to _vixit annos_,
but which was _vixit_, and which _annos_, he was as yet uncertain.
We have also Etruscan wall-paintings, and various miscellaneous
antiquities in bronze, and among them the most salient peculiarity
of Etruscan archæology not easily to be conjectured, its
elegantly-formed bronze mirrors. These, which are incised with
mythological subjects, and often inscribed, have attracted the
especial attention of modern scholars and antiquaries, who have
gazed upon them indeed almost as wistfully as the Tuscan ladies
themselves.

But Greece had far more influence over Roman life and art than
Etruria.

Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes
Intulit agresti Latio.

Accordingly, Greek architecture (mostly of the later Corinthian
style, which was badly elaborated into the Composite) was imported
into Rome itself, and continued to flourish in the Greek provinces
of the empire. Temples and theatres continued much as before; but
the triumphal arch and column, the amphitheatre, the bath and the
basilica, are peculiarly Roman.

The genius of Rome however was essentially military, and the stamp
which she has left on the world is military also. Her camps, her
walls, and her roads, _strata viaram_, which, like arteries,
connected her towns one with another and with the capital, are the
real peculiarities of her archæology. The treatise on Roman roads,
by Bergier, occupies above 800 pages in the _Thesaurus_ of Grævius.
Instead of bootlessly wandering over the width of the world on
these, let us rather walk a little over those in our own country,
and as we travel survey the general character of the Roman British
remains, which may serve as a type of all. In the early part of this
lecture, I observed that we, in common with the rest of Western
Europe, find in our islands weapons which belong to the stone,
bronze, and iron periods; and here also, as in other places, the
last-named period doubtless connects itself with the Roman. But
besides these, we have other remains, many of which may be referred
to the Celtic population which Cæsar had to encounter, when he
invaded our shores. These remains may in great part perhaps (for I
am compelled to speak hesitatingly on a subject which I have studied
but little, and of which no one, however learned, knows very much)
be anterior to Roman times. Of this kind are the cromlechs at
Dufferin in South Wales, in Anglesey, and in Penzance, of which
there are models in the British Museum; of this kind also are, most
probably, the gigantic structures at Stonehenge, about which so much
has been written and disputed. The British barrows of various forms
and other sepulchral remains may also be referred, I should
conceive, in part at least, to the pre-Roman Celtic period. The
earlier mounds contain weapons and ornaments of stone, bronze and
ivory, and rude pottery; the later ones, called Roman British
barrows, appear mostly not to contain stone implements, but various
articles of bronze and iron and pottery; also gold ornaments and
amber and bead necklaces. Other sepulchral monuments consist merely
of heaps of stones covering the body which has been laid in the
earth. Many researches into this class of remains have of late years
been made, and by none perhaps more patiently and more successfully
than by the late Mr Bateman, in Derbyshire. The archæology of Wales
has also been made the special object of study by a society formed
for the purpose. Some tribes of the ancient Britons were certainly
acquainted with the art of die-sinking, and a great many coins,
principally gold, are extant, some of which may probably be as early
as the second century before Christ. They are, to speak generally,
barbarous copies of the beautiful gold staters of Philip of Macedon,
which circulated over the Greek world, and so might become known to
our forefathers by the route of Marseilles.

With these remarks I leave the Celtic remains in Britain; all
attempts to connect together the literary notices and the
antiquities of the Celts and Druids, so as to make out a history
from them, have been compared to attempts to “trace pictures in the
clouds[18].” Still we may say to the Celtic archæologist,

Θαρσεῖν χρὴ, φίλε Βύττε, τάχ’ αὔριον ἔσσετ’ ἄμεινον.

Footnote 18:

_Pict. Hist. of England_, Vol. I. p. 59. London, 1837.

One day matters may become clearer by the help of an extended and
scientific archæology.

But of the Romano-British remains it may be necessary to say
something. When we look at the map in Petrie’s _Monumenta Historica
Britannica_, in which the Roman roads are laid down by their actual
remains, we see the principal Roman towns and stations connected
together by straight lines, which are but little broken. So numerous
are they that we might almost fancy that we were looking at a map in
an early edition of a _Railway Guide_. In this county they abound
and have been very carefully traced, and both here and in other
counties are still used as actual roads. In a few instances
mile-stones have also been found. In our own country, cut off, as
Virgil says, from the whole world, we do not expect the splendid
monuments of Roman greatness, yet even here the temple, the
amphitheatre and the bath are not unknown; and in our little Pompeii
at Wroxeter we have, if my memory deceive me not, some vestiges of
fresco-painting, an art of which we have such beautiful Roman
examples elsewhere. But everywhere we stumble upon camps and villas;
everywhere

The tesselated pavements shew
Where Roman lamps were wont to glow.

And of these lamps themselves we have an infinite number and
variety, and on many of them representations of the games of the
circus and of various other things, formed in relief; a remark which
may also be made of their fine and valuable red Samian ware;
fragments of which are commonly met with, but the vases are rarely
entire. Of their other pottery, and of their glass and personal
ornaments, and miscellaneous objects, I must hardly say any thing;
but only observe that the Romans have left us a very interesting
series of coins relating to Britain; Claudius records in gold the
arch he raised in triumphant victory over us: in the same way
Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Septimius Severus, besides building their
great walls against us, have, as well as Caracalla and Geta, struck
many pieces in silver and copper to commemorate our tardy
subjugation. The British emperors or usurpers, Carausius and
Allectus, have also left us very ample series of coins, and indeed
it is by these, much more than by the monuments of letters, that
their histories are known. In the fourth and fifth centuries the
monetary art declined greatly in the Western Empire, and was on the
whole at a very low ebb in the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, and in
the middle ages, generally, throughout Europe.

At Constantinople a new school of Roman art arose, which exercised a
powerful influence on medieval art in general. Soon after the
foundation of Constantinople, Roman artists worked there in several
departments with a skill by no means contemptible, though of a
strangely conventional and grotesque character; and from them, as it
would seem, the medieval artists of Central and Western Europe
caught the love of the same crafts, and carried them to much higher
excellence. I would allude in the first place, as being among the
earliest, to ivory carvings, principally consular diptychs. From the
time of the emperors it was the custom for consuls and other curule
magistrates to make presents both to officials and their friends of
ivory diptychs, which folded together like a pair of book-covers, on
which sculptures in low relief were carved, as a mode of announcing
their elevation. From the fourth and fifth centuries down to the
fourteenth we find them, some of the earliest with classical
subjects, as the triumph of Bacchus, probably of the fourth century;
but mostly with Scriptural ones, or with representations of consuls.
Some of these are enriched with jewellery. The inscriptions
accompanying them are either in Greek or in Latin. In Germany they
occur in the Carlovingian period, though rarely, and in France and
Italy later still. Perhaps it should be mentioned that the ivory
episcopal chair of St Maximian at Ravenna, a work of the sixth
century, is the finest example extant of this class of antiques, and
is doubly interesting as being one of the very few extant specimens
of furniture during the first three centuries of the middle ages.
Various casts of medieval ivories, it may be added, have been
executed and circulated by the Arundel Society.

Another art learnt from Rome in her decline, or from Constantinople,
is the illumination of MSS., which the calligraphers of the middle
ages in all countries throughout Europe carried to a very high
perfection. Perhaps the earliest example to be named is the Greek
MS. of Genesis in the LXX, now preserved in the Imperial Library at
Vienna, probably of the fourth century. The vellum is stained
purple, and the MS. is decorated with pictures executed in a quaint,
but vigorous style. In these, we find (as M. Labarte[19], a great
authority for medieval art, assures us) all the characters of Roman
art in its decline, such as it was imported to Constantinople by the
artists whom Constantine called to his new capital; and “they have
served,” as he adds, “for a point of departure” in the examination
which he has made of the tendencies and destinies of Byzantine art.
Compare the Vatican MSS. of Terence and Virgil. I cannot be expected
to enter into details about illuminations; they occur in MSS. of all
sorts, more or less, in Europe, down to the sixteenth century, but
especially in sacred books, such as were used in Divine service. I
need only call to your remembrance the beautiful assemblage
exhibited in the Fitzwilliam Museum and in the University Library,
to say nothing of the treasures possessed by our different colleges.

Footnote 19:

_Histoire des Arts au moyen âge._ Album. Vol. II. pl. lxxvii.
Paris, 1864.

There are many other objects of medieval art not unworthy of being
enlarged upon, which I intentionally pass over lightly, lest their
multiplicity should distract us; thus I will say little of its
pottery, its coins, or of its sculptures and bas-reliefs in stone.
With regard to the first of them, M. Labarte observes: “It is not
until the beginning of the fifteenth century that we find among the
European nations any pottery, but such as has been designed for the
commonest domestic use, and none that art has been pleased to
decorate.” These are objects which the middle ages have in common
with others; and they are objects in which a comparison will not be
favourable to medieval art. Still, we must take care that a love of
art does not blind us to the real value of such things; they are
always interesting for the _history_ of art, whatever their rudeness
or whatever their ugliness; and, moreover, they are often, as the
coins of various nations, of high historical interest. For examine,
on our own series of barbarous Saxon coins we have not only the
successions of kings handed down to us, in the several kingdoms of
the so-called Heptarchy and in the united kingdom, but also on the
reverses of the same coins we have mention made of a very large
number of cities and towns at which they were respectively struck.
For example, to take Cambridge, we find that coins were struck here
by King Edward the Martyr, Ethelred the Second, Canute, Harold the
First, and Edward the Confessor; also after the Conquest by William
the First and William the Second. We are thus furnished with very
early notices, and so in some measure able to estimate the
importance of the cities and towns of our island in medieval times;
though great caution is necessary here in making deductions; for no
coins appear to have been struck in Cambridge after the reign of
William Rufus. And this seems at first sight so much the more
surprising when we bear in mind that money was struck in some of our
cities, as York, Durham, Canterbury, and Bristol, quite commonly, as
late as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But, in truth, from
the twelfth century downwards, the number of cities and towns in
which lawful money was struck became comparatively small.

But I must not wander too far into numismatics. The art of
enamelling, peculiarly characteristic of the later periods of the
middle ages, is very fully treated of by M. Labarte, from whom I
derive the following facts. The most ancient writer that mentions it
is the elder Philostratus, a Greek writer of the third century, who
emigrated from Athens to Rome. In his _Icones_, or _Treatise on
Images_, the following passage occurs. After speaking of a harness
enriched with gold, precious stones, and various colours, he adds:
“It is said that the barbarians living near the ocean pour colours
upon heated brass, so that these adhere and become like stone, and
preserve the design represented.” It may, therefore, be considered
as established that the art of enamelling upon metals had no
existence in either Greece or Italy at the beginning of the third
century; and, moreover, that this art was practised at least as
early in the cities of Western Gaul. During the invasions and wars
which desolated Europe from the fourth to the eleventh century
almost all the arts languished, and some may have been entirely
lost. Enamelling was all but lost; for between the third and the
eleventh centuries the only two works which occur as landmarks are
the ring of King Ethelwulf in the British Museum, and the ring of
Alhstan, probably the bishop of Sherburne, who lived at the same
time. These two little pieces, however, only serve to establish the
bare existence of enamelling in the West in the ninth century. But
in this same century the art was in all its splendour at
Constantinople, and we possess specimens of Byzantine workmanship of
even an earlier date. I cannot enter into the various modes of
enamelling, which are fully described by M. Labarte; but merely
mention, without comment, a few of the principal specimens,
independently of the Limoges manufacture, which constituted the
chief glory of that city from the eleventh century to the end of the
medieval period. “This became the focus whence emanated nearly all
the beautiful specimens of enamelled copper, which are so much
admired and so eagerly sought after for museums and collections.”
The principal earlier examples then are these; the crown and the
sword of Charlemagne, of the ninth century, now in the Imperial
Treasury at Vienna; the chalice of St Remigius, of the twelfth
century, in the Imperial Library at Paris; the shrine of the Magi in
Cologne, and the great shrine of Nôtre Dame at Aix-la-Chapelle,
presented by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in the latter part of
the same twelfth century. Also the full-length portrait (25 inches
by 13) of Geoffrey Plantagenet, father of our Henry II., which
formerly ornamented his tomb in the cathedral, but is now in the
Museum at Le Mans. The British Museum likewise contains two or three
fine examples; and among them an enamelled plate representing Henry
of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, and brother of King Stephen.

Very fine also are the extant products of the goldsmith’s art in the
middle ages; which date principally from the eleventh century, when
the art received a new impulse in the West; those of earlier date,
with very few exceptions, now cease to exist. They are principally
chalices, reliquaries, censers, candlesticks, croziers and
statuettes.

Nor can I pass over in absolute silence the armour of the middle
ages. Until the middle of the ninth century it would appear to have
resembled the Roman fashion, of which it is needless to say
anything; but in Carlovingian times the hilts and scabbards of
dress-swords were very highly decorated; and about this period, or
rather later, the description of armour used by the ancients was
exchanged for the hauberk or coat of mail, which was the most usual
defensive armour during the period of the Crusades. The first
authentic monument where this mail-armour is represented is on the
Bayeux tapestry of Queen Matilda, representing the invasion of
England by William Duke of Normandy in 1066; the most famous example
of medieval tapestry in existence, though other specimens are to be
seen at Berne, Nancy, La Chaise Dieu, and Coventry. The art of the
_tapissier_, however, in the eleventh century, when the Bayeux
tapestry was made, would appear to have been on the decline. In the
beginning of the fourteenth century plate-armour began to come into
use; and by and by this was decorated with Damascene work, a style
of art applied to the gate of a basilica in Rome, which was sent
from Constantinople, as early as the eleventh century, but which did
not become general in the West till the fifteenth. To this I may
just add, that sepulchral brasses, on which figures in armour are
often elaborately represented by incised lines, are a purely
medieval invention of the thirteenth century. Sir Roger de
Trumpington’s brass at Trumpington is one of the very earliest
examples. But time forbids me to say more of sepulchral brasses, a
class of antiquities almost confined to our own country, of which we
have some few specimens as late as the seventeenth century, or to do
more than allude to the beautiful sepulchral monuments in stone of
the medieval period, with which we are all more or less familiar.

The most remarkable art to which the middle age gave birth was
oil-painting, the very queen of all the fine arts, though it was to
the age of the Medici that its immense development was due.
Previously painting had been subordinated to architecture; but now,
while mosaics, frescoes, and painted glass remained still
subservient to her, the art of painting occupies a distinct and
prominent rank of its own. It used commonly to be said that the
invention of painting on prepared panel was due to Margaritone of
Arezzo, who died about 1290, and in like manner that John van Eyck
invented oil-painting in 1410. Both these errors have been
propagated by the authority of Vasari. But it is now well known, and
has been conclusively proved, both by M. Labarte and by Sir C.
Eastlake, that these modes of painting are mentioned by authors who
lived more than a century before Margaritone, in particular by the
monk Theophilus, who in the twelfth century composed a work entitled
_Diversarum artium schedula_. Paintings in oil either are or lately
were in existence anterior to John van Eyck; for example one at
Naples, executed by Filippo Tesauro, and dated 1309. We must ascend
to much earlier times to discover the true origin of portable
paintings, and we shall find it in the Byzantine Empire. The Greeks,
about the time that the controversy respecting images was rife,
multiplied little pictures of saints; these were afterwards brought
over in abundance by the priests and monks who followed the
crusades, and from the study of them, schools of painting in tempera
arose in Italy, in the twelfth century, at Pisa, Florence and other
places. The Byzantine school, M. Labarte tells us, reigned paramount
in Italy until the time of Giotto, _i.e._ the beginning of the
fourteenth century, and also in the schools of Bohemia and Cologne,
the most ancient in northern Europe, until towards the end of the
fourteenth century. In this country we have two very early
paintings, one of the beginning and the other of the end of the same
fourteenth century, in Westminster Abbey. The former, probably a
decoration of the high altar, is on wood; it represents the
Adoration of the Magi and other Scriptural subjects, and is declared
by Sir C. Eastlake to be worthy of a good Italian artist of the
fourteenth century, though he thinks that it was executed in
England. The latter is the canopy of the tomb of Richard II. and
Anne, his first wife, representing the Saviour and the Virgin and
other figures. The action and expression are declared by Sir C.
Eastlake to indicate the hand of a skilful painter. In 1396, £20 was
paid by the sacrist for the execution of the work. These remarks
must suffice for a notice of medieval painting; the glorious period
of its history belongs rather to the Renaissance, or post-medieval
age.

The only archæological monuments of great importance which remain to
be mentioned are those of architecture, in connection with the
accessories of mosaics, frescoes, and painted glass. The two former
descended from classical times, the last is the creation of the
middle age. Mosaics having been originally used only in pavements,
at length were employed as embellishments for the walls of
basilicas, and, by a natural transition, of churches. Constantine
and his successors decorated many churches in this manner, and in
the East a ground of gold or silver was introduced below the glass
cubes of the mosaics, and a lustre was by this means spread over the
work which in earlier times was altogether unknown. Thus the
tympanum above the principal door of the narthex of the Church of St
Sophia, built by the Emperor Justinian at Constantinople, is adorned
with a mosaic picture of the Saviour seated, the cubes of the
mosaics being of silvered glass; it is accompanied by Greek texts.
This and other later mosaics are figured by M. Labarte, in his last
and most splendid work, entitled _Histoire des Arts au moyen âge_;
among the rest a Transfiguration of the tenth century. The Byzantine
art, with its stiff conventionality, prevailed every where till
Cimabue, G. Gaddi, and Giotto imparted to its rudeness a grace and
nobleness which marked a new era. In the vestibule of St Peter is a
noble mosaic, partly after the design of Giotto, representing Christ
walking on the water, and the apostles in the ship. But the very
masters who raised the art to its perfection brought about its
destruction. Painting, restored by these same great men, was too
powerful a rival; and after the sixteenth century, when it still
flourished in Venice under the encouragement of Titian, we hear
little more of mosaics on any great scale.

Passing over frescoes, which were much encouraged by Charlemagne,
and by various sovereigns and popes during the middle ages, because
the ravages of time have either destroyed them altogether or left
them in a deplorable condition, as for example in some
parish-churches in England, I will make a few remarks on painted
glass, so extensively used in the decoration of the later churches.

The art of painting glass was unknown to the ancients, and also to
the early periods of the middle ages. “It is a fact,” says M.
Labarte, “acknowledged by all archæologists, that we do not now know
any painted glass to which an earlier date than the eleventh century
can be assigned with certainty.” Two specimens, and no more, of this
century, are figured by _M. Lasteyrie_. The painted windows of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries are nearly of the same character.
They consist of little historical medallions, distributed over
mosaic grounds composed of coloured (not painted) glass, borrowed
from preceding centuries. Fine examples from the church of St Denys
and La Sainte Chapelle at Paris, of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, are figured by M. Lasteyrie, and also by M. Labarte, who
has many beautiful remarks on their harmony with the buildings to
which they belong, on the elegance of their form, the richness of
their details, and the brilliancy of their colours. In the
fourteenth century, when examples become common, the glass-painters
copied nature with more fidelity, and exchanged the violet-tinted
masses, by which the flesh-tints had been rendered, for a reddish
gray colour, painted upon white glass, which approached more nearly
to nature. Large single figures now often occupy an entire window.
The improvement in drawing and colouring is a compensation for the
more striking effects of the brilliant yet mysterious examples of
the preceding centuries; and the end of the fourteenth century is
one of the finest epochs in the history of painted glass. Painting
on glass followed the progress of painting in oils in the age which
followed; and artists more and more aimed at producing individual
works; and in the latter half of the fifteenth century buildings and
landscapes in perspective were first introduced. The decorations
which surround the figures being borrowed from the architecture of
the time have often a very beautiful effect. But the large
introduction of _grisailles_ deprives the windows of this period of
the transparent brilliancy of the coloured mosaics of the earlier
glass-painting. In the sixteenth century, however, glass was nothing
more than the material subservient to the glass-painter, like canvas
to the oil-painter. Small pictures very highly finished were
executed after the designs of Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, and the
other great painters of the Renaissance. “But,” as M. Labarte truly
says, “the era of glass-painting was at an end. From the moment that
it was attempted to transform an art of purely monumental decoration
into an art of expression, its intention was perverted, and this led
of necessity to its ruin. The resources of glass-painting were more
limited than those of oil, with which it was unable to compete. From
the end of the sixteenth century the art was in its decline, and
towards the middle of the seventeenth was” almost “entirely given
up.” Our own age has seen its revival, and though the success has
been indeed great, we may hope that the zenith has not yet been
reached. “It is,” says Mr Winston, “a distinct and complete branch
of art, which, like many other medieval inventions, is of universal
applicability, and susceptible of great improvement.” I have been a
little more diffuse on glass-painting than on some other subjects,
as it is a purely medieval art, and one which has now acquired a
living interest. Various examples of the different styles will
easily suggest themselves to many, or, if not, they may be studied
in the splendid work of M. Lasteyrie, entitled _Histoire de la
Peinture sur Verre d’après ses monuments en France_, and on a
smaller scale in Mr Winston’s valuable _Hints on Glass-painting_.

With regard to the architectural monuments of the medieval world, I
may, in addressing such an audience, consider them to be
sufficiently well known for my present purpose, which is to give an
indication, and little more, of the archæological remains which have
come down to our own days. Medieval architecture is in itself a
boundless subject; and as I have not specially studied it, I could
not, if I would, successfully attempt an epitome of its various
forms of Byzantine, Saracenic, Romanesque, Lombardic, and of
infinitely diversified Gothic. For a succinct yet comprehensive view
of all these and more, I must refer you to Mr Fergusson’s _Handbook
of Architecture_. Yet when we let our imagination idly roam over
Europe, and the adjoining regions of Asia and Africa, what a host of
architectural objects flits before it in endless successions of
variety and beauty! Think of Justinian’s Church of St Sophia, which
he boasted had vanquished Solomon’s temple, and again of St Mark’s
at Venice, as Byzantine examples. Think next of the mosque of the
Sultan Hassan, and of the tombs of the Memlooks mingled with lovely
minarets and domes at Cairo; of the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem;
of the Alhambra in Spain, with all the witchery of its gold and
azure decorations. Float, if you will, along the banks of the Rhine
or the Danube (as many of us have actually done), and conjure up the
majestic cathedrals, the spacious monasteries and the ruined
castles, telling of other days, with which they are fringed. Let the
bare mention of the names of Milan, Venice, Rome; again of Paris,
Rheims, Chartres, Amiens, Troyes, Rouen, Avignon; and in fine those
of Antwerp, Louvain, and Brussels, suggest their own stories. Yet
the magnificent structures, secular and ecclesiastical, which I have
either named or hinted at, need not make us ashamed of our own
country. We are surrounded on all sides by an archæology which is
emphatically an archæology of progress, and we may justly be proud
of it as Englishmen. In this University and its immediate
neighbourhood we have fine specimens of Saxon, Norman, Early
English, Decorated, and Perpendicular styles of Gothic architecture;
and as regards the last of them, one of the most splendid examples
in the world. In the opinion of competent judges the English
cathedrals, while surpassed in size by many on the Continent, are in
excellence of art superior to those of France or of any country in
Europe. “Nothing can exceed the beauty of the crosses which Edward
I. erected on the spots where the body of Queen Eleanor rested on
its way to London.” Some of these, Waltham for example, are quite
equal to anything of their class found on the Continent. “The vault
of Westminster Abbey” (says Mr Fergusson, on whose authority I make
almost every statement relating to medieval architecture) “is richer
and more beautiful in form than any ever constructed in France;” the
triforium is as beautiful as any in existence; and its
appropriateness of detail and sobriety of design render it one of
the most beautiful Gothic edifices in Europe.

I thus conclude my sketch, such as it is, of the archæology of the
world. Its aim has been to bring under review the rude implements
and weapons of primeval man; the colossal structures of civilised
man in Egypt and India; the strangely-compounded palace-sculptures
of Assyria and Babylonia; the exquisitely ornamented columns of
Persian halls; the massive architecture of Phœnicia; the Gothic-like
rock-tombs of Lycia; the lovely temples, and incomparable works of
art of every kind, great and small, of Greece; the military impress
of Roman conquest; the medieval works of art in ivory, in enamel, in
glass-painting, as well as its glorious architectural remains,
connecting the middle ages with our own times. It has been drawn, as
I observed at the outset, under very adverse circumstances, and must
on that account venture to sue for much indulgence. It is open, no
doubt, to many criticisms: I expect to be charged with grievous sins
of omission, and perhaps of commission also: nor do I suppose that I
could entirely vindicate myself from such charges. Worse than all
perhaps, I have exposed myself to the unanswerable sarcasm that I
have talked about many subjects of which I know but little. If,
however, I have been able to compile from trustworthy sources or
manuals so much respecting those particular branches of archæology
which I have not studied, as to bring before you their salient
features in an intelligible manner, that is enough for my purpose. I
want no more, and I pretend to no more; and I am conscious enough
that even this purpose has been but feebly accomplished.
Tediousness, indeed, in dealing with numerous details could hardly
be altogether avoided; but this is so much lighter a fault than an
indulgence in mere platitudes, running smoothly and amusingly, but
emptily withal, that I shall hear your verdict of _guilty_ with
composure.

It now only remains that I should very briefly point out what
qualifications are necessary for an archæologist, and also the
pleasure and advantage which result from his pursuits.

With regard to the first of these matters, the qualifications
necessary for an archæologist, they are to some considerable extent
the same as are necessary for a naturalist.

Like the naturalist, the antiquary must in the first place bring
together a large number of facts and objects. This is, no doubt, a
matter of great labour, but believe me, ‘_labor ipse voluptas_.’ The
labour is its own ample reward. The hunting out, the securing, and
the amassing facts and objects of antiquity, or of natural history,
are the field-sports of the learned or scientific Nimrod. In a
certain sense every archæologist _must_ be a collector; he must be
mentally in possession of a mass of facts and objects, brought
together either by himself or by others. It is not absolutely
necessary that he should be a collector, in the sense of being owner
of a collection of his objects of study; in some departments indeed
of archæology to amass the objects themselves is impossible: who,
for instance, can collect Roman roads or Gothic cathedrals? models,
plans, and drawings, are the only substitutes possible. But, with
the facts relating to his favourite objects, and also as much as
possible with the objects themselves, he must be familiar.

Yet this familiarity will not be enough to make him an archæologist.
Such knowledge may be possessed, and very often is possessed, by a
mere dealer in antiquities. The true antiquary must not only be well
acquainted with his facts, but he must also, when there are
sufficient data, proceed to reason upon them. He puts them together,
and considers what story they have to render up. We saw a beautiful
illustration of this in the joint labours of the Scandinavian
antiquaries and naturalists. The order and sequence of the stone,
bronze, and iron ages, were distinctly made out; and even their
chronology may one day be discovered. The antiquary is enabled to
form some judgment of the civilisation, the arts, and the religion
of the nations whose remains he studies. Very often, as in the Roman
series of coins, he makes out political events in their history, and
assigns their dates. He determines the place of things in the
historical series, much as the naturalist does in the natural
series.

Like the naturalist also he must be a man of learning, _i.e._ he
must be acquainted with what has been written by his
fellow-labourers in the same branch of study. Few know, prior to
experience, what a serious business this is. The bibliography of
every department of archæology, as well as of natural history, is
now becoming immense.

But besides a knowledge of facts, and objects, and books, there are
one or two other qualifications necessary for many departments of
archæology, the want of which has been very prejudicial to some
distinguished writers. Exact scholarship is one of these
qualifications. I do not merely mean that if a man be engaged in
Greek archæology, he must be aware of the passages of Greek authors,
in which the vases or the coins he is talking about are alluded to,
though he must certainly be acquainted with these, and possess
sufficient scholarship to construe them correctly; but he must also
be able to interpret his written archæological monuments, such as
his inscriptions and the legends of his coins. This is oftentimes no
easy matter, and it requires a knowledge of strange words and
dialects. Moreover, if an inscription or a legend be mutilated (and
this is very frequently the case), unless the archæologist has an
accurate knowledge of the language in which it is written, whatever
that may be, Greek, Latin, Norman-French, or any other, what hope is
there that he will ordinarily be able to restore it, and having so
done interpret it with security or satisfaction? As one illustration
of many, I will cite Prof. Ramsay’s remark on Nibby’s dissertation
_Delle vie degli Antichi_: “In the first part of this article (on
Roman roads) his essay has been closely followed. _Considerable
caution, however, is necessary in using the works of this author_,
who, although a profound local antiquary is by no means an accurate
scholar[20].” Mr Bunbury, while pointing out the advantages which
scholars would derive from some acquaintance with archæology, points
out by implication the advantage which archæologists would derive
from scholarship. “In this country,” says he, “the study of
archæology is but too much neglected; it forms no part of the
ordinary training of our classical scholars at the Universities, and
is rarely taken up by them in after life. It is generally considered
as the exclusive province of the professed antiquarian, who has
seldom undergone that early training in accurate scholarship, which
is regarded, and we think with perfect justice, by the student from
Oxford or Cambridge, as the indispensable foundation of sound
classical knowledge[21].” I think he is a little over-severe on us;
living men like Mr C. T. Newton, Mr Waddington, Mr Vaux, Mr C. W.
King, Mr C. K. Watson, and, last, but not least, like himself, to
whom others might be added, prove that his assertions must be taken
_cum grano_; even if it be true that this country has produced no
work connected with ancient art which can be compared with the
writings of Gerhard, or Welcker; of Thiersch, or Karl Otfried
Müller[22].

Footnote 20:

See Smith’s _Dict. Gr. and Rom. Antiq._ s. v. Viæ.

Footnote 21:

_Edinburgh Review_, u. s.

Footnote 22:

I feel a little inclined to dispute this: Stuart, one of the
authors of the _Antiquities of Athens_, which have been continued
by other very able hands, and have also been translated into
German, may, perhaps, take rank with the authors named in the
text. K. O. Müller himself calls Millingen’s _Ancient Unedited
Monuments_ (London, 1822) “a model of a work;” and though without
doubt Millingen is inferior to Müller in scholarship and in
acquaintance with books, he is probably at least his equal as a
practical archæologist. Colonel Leake’s _Numismata Hellenica_
(London, 1856) may also be cited as an admirable combination of
learning with practical archæology.

Another thing very desirable for the successful prosecution of some
branches of archæology is an appreciation of art. Without it we
cannot judge of the value of many antiques, or enter into their
spirit or feeling; we neither discern their excellencies nor their
deficiencies. Mr King, who has made the province of ancient gems
peculiarly his own, justly calls them “little monuments of perfect
taste, ... only to be appreciated by the educated and practised
eye[23].” Moreover, this is the very knowledge often so requisite
for distinguishing genuine antiquities from modern counterfeits. The
modern forgers, who fabricate Greek coins from false dies, do not
often reach the freedom and beauty of the originals; though it must
be confessed that some of them, as Becker, have carried their
execrable art to a very high perfection. It is but rarely that these
men meet with the punishment they deserve; yet it is satisfactory to
know that Charles Patin, great scholar and great antiquary as he
was, was banished by Lewis XIV. from his court for ever, for selling
him a false coin of Otho; and that a manufacturer of antiques in the
East, near Bagdad I believe, lately received by order of the Turkish
governor a sound bastinado on the soles of his feet for reproducing
the idols of misbelievers of old time.

Footnote 23:

_Antique Gems_, Introd. p. xxiii. London, 1860.

A knowledge of natural history in fine is occasionally very useful
to an antiquary. I will give two instances, not at all generally
known, one taken from zoology, one from botany. On the reverse of
the splendid Greek coins of Agrigentum a crab is commonly
represented. To an ignorant eye the crab looks much like the crab in
our shops here in Cambridge; the zoologist recognises in it the
fresh-water crab of the regions of the Mediterranean; the
numismatist, profiting by this knowledge, sees at once that the type
of the coin symbolizes not the harbour of Agrigentum, as he had
supposed, but its river. Again, on the reverse of the beautiful
Greek coins of Rhodes occurs a flower, about which numismatists have
disputed since the time of Spanheim, whether it was the flower of
the rose or of the pomegranate. Even Col. Leake has here taken the
wrong side, and decided in favour of the pomegranate; the divided
calyx at once shews every botanist that the representation is
intended for the rose, conventional as that representation may be,
from which flower the island derives its name.

These are, I think, the principal qualifications which are necessary
or desirable for the archæologist. It only remains that I should
point out briefly some of the pleasures and advantages that result
from his pursuits. For I shall not so insult any one of you, who are
here present, as to suppose that this question is lurking secretly
in your mind, “Is there any good in archæology at all? To what
practical end do your researches tend?” My learned predecessor well
says that “this question is sometimes put to the lover of science or
letters by those from whom nature has withheld the faculty of
deriving pleasure from the exercise of the intellect, and he feels
for the moment degraded to the level of such.” It is not so clear
however that the fault must be put to the account of nature. Rather,
we may say,

Homine _imperito_ nunquam quidquam injustius,
Qui nisi quod ipse facit, nihil rectum putat.

“No one,” says a Swedish scholar of the seventeenth century, “blames
the study of antiquity without evidencing his own ignorance; as they
that esteem it do credit to their own judgment; so that to sum up
its advantages we may assert, there is nothing useful in literature,
if the knowledge of antiquity be judged unprofitable[24].” It is
doubtless one of the many charms of archæology that it illustrates
and is illustrated by literature; indeed, some knowledge of
antiquity is little less than necessary for every man of letters.
Unless we have some knowledge of the objects whose names occur in
ancient literature, we lose half the pleasure of reading it. In
reading the New Testament, I can certainly say for myself, that I
derive more pleasure from the narrative of the woman who poured the
contents of the alabaster box over the head of Jesus, now that I
know what an _alabastron_ is, and how its contents would be
extracted; and in the same way I appreciate the remark made by the
silversmith in the Acts, that all Asia and the world worshipped the
Ephesian Diana, now that I know her image to be stamped not on the
coins of Ephesus only, but on many other cities throughout Asia
also. Here, I think, we have pleasure and profit combined in one.
Instances are abundant where monuments illustrate profane authors.
The reader of Aristophanes will be pleased to recognise among the
earliest figures on vases that of the ἱππαλεκτρυών, the cock-horse,
or horse-cock, which cost Bacchus a sleepless night to conceive what
manner of fowl it might be. “The Homeric scholar again,” it has been
said, “must contemplate with interest the ancient pictures of Trojan
scenes on the vases, and can hardly fail to derive some assistance
in picturing them to his own imagination, by seeing how they were
reproduced in that of the Greeks themselves in the days of Æschylus
and Pindar[25].”

Footnote 24:

Figrelius, quoted in the _Museum of Classical Antiquities_, Vol.
I. p. 4.

Footnote 25:

_Edinburgh Review_, u. s.

Further, not only is ancient literature, but also modern art, aided
by archæology. It is well known how, in the early part of the
thirteenth century, Niccola Pisano was so attracted by a bas-relief
of Meleager, which had been lying in Pisa for ages unheeded, “that
it became the basis of his studies and the germ of true taste in
Italy.” In the Academy of St Luke at Rome, and in the schools
established shortly afterwards at Florence by Lorenzo de’ Medici,
the professors were required to point out to the students the beauty
and excellence of the works of ancient art, before they were allowed
to exercise their own skill and imagination. Under the fostering
patronage of this illustrious man and of his not less illustrious
son a galaxy of great artists lighted up all Europe with their
splendour. Leon Batista Alberti, one of the greatest men of his age,
and especially great in architecture, was most influential in
bringing back his countrymen to the study of the monuments of
antiquity. He travelled to explore such as were then known, and
tells us that he shed tears on beholding the state of desolation in
which many of them lay. The prince of painters, Raffaelle,

timuit quo sospite vinci
Rerum magna parens et moriente mori,