Chapter LXV (1)

So, reader, thou art now at the secret of my heart.

Wonder not that I, a bookman's son, and, at certain periods of my life, a bookman myself, though of lowly grade in that venerable class,--wonder not that I should thus, in that transition stage between youth and manhood, have turned impatiently from books.--Most students, at one time or other in their existence, have felt the imperious demand of that restless principle in man's nature, which calls upon each son of Adam to contribute his share to the vast treasury of human deeds. And though great scholars are not necessarily, nor usually, men of action,--yet the men of action whom History presents to our survey, have rarely been without a certain degree of scholarly nurture. For the ideas which books quicken, books cannot always satisfy. And though the royal pupil of Aristotle slept with Homer under his pillow, it was not that he might dream of composing epics, but of conquering new Ilions in the East. Many a man, how little soever resembling Alexander, may still have the conqueror's aim in an object that action only can achieve, and the book under his pillow may be the strongest antidote to his repose. And how the stern Destinies that shall govern the man weave their first delicate tissues amidst the earliest associations of the child!--Those idle tales with which the old credulous nurse had beguiled my infancy--tales of wonder, knight-errantry, and adventure, had left behind them seeds long latent--seeds that might never have sprung up above the soil--but that my boyhood was so early put under the burning-glass, and in the quick forcing-house, of the London world. There, even amidst books and study,--lively observation, and petulant ambition, broke forth from the lush foliage of romance--that fruitless leafiness of poetic youth! And there passion, which is a revolution in all the elements of individual man, had called a new state of being, turbulent and eager, out of the old habits and conventional forms it had buried,--ashes that speak where the fire has been. Far from me, as from any mind of some manliness, be the attempt to create interest by dwelling at length on the struggles against a rash and misplaced attachment, which it was my duty to overcome; but all such love, as I have before implied, is a terrible unsettler:--

"Where once such fairies dance, no grass doth ever grow."

To re-enter boyhood, go with meek docility through its disciplined routine,--how hard had I found that return, amidst the cloistered monotony of college! My love for my father, and my submission to his wish, had indeed given some animation to objects otherwise distasteful; but, now that my return to the University must be attended with positive privation to those at home, the idea became utterly hateful and repugnant. Under pretence that I found myself, on trial, not yet sufficiently prepared to do credit to my father's name, I had easily obtained leave to lose the ensuing college term, and pursue my studies at home. This gave me time to prepare my plans, and bring round--how shall I ever bring round to my adventurous views those whom I propose to desert? Hard it is to get on in the world--very hard! But the most painful step in the way is that which starts from the threshold of a beloved home.

How--ah, how, indeed! "No, Blanche, you cannot join me to-day; I am going out for many hours. So it will be late before I can be home."

Home!--the word chokes me! Juba slinks back to his young mistress, disconsolate; Blanche gazes at me ruefully from our favourite hilltop, and the flowers she has been gathering fall unheeded from her basket. I hear my mother's voice singing low, as she sits at work by her open casement. How--ah, how, indeed!

ANCIENT PRACTICE OF PAINTING.[9]

[9] _Original Treatises on the Arts of Painting._ Preceded by a General Introduction, with Translations, Prefaces, and Notes. By MRS MERRIFIELD. 2 vols.

We are beginning to find out that the "dark ages" were not so utterly dark as they have been represented. We ascertain that there was not that universal blight upon the human mind which it has been the practice of historians to contrast with the flourishing condition of their own times. Nay, if we are now to take that measure which those historians adopted, we should estimate their own era with as disparaging a comparison with the present. But the inventions of our own days--the great advance of arts and sciences--so far from having a tendency to depreciate, throw a light upon, and acknowledge the value of, those of the middle ages. The appreciation is becoming general. We are old enough to remember the time when it was thought of little moment to block up with low unseemly edifices, or mutilate for any purpose, those amazing works of mediæval genius, our Gothic religious structures. We need but refer to the dates on the mural deformities in most of our old churches and cathedrals. Who, that will turn his eye in disgust from such monstrosities of taste, to the decorations they have misplaced and mutilated, and to the general aspect, of an indestructible character, of our minsters, will not rather ask, which were the dark ages--those of the builders and founders, or those of the obliterators and defilers? It is astonishing that such wondrous magnificence should ever have been viewed with indifference, and still more astonishing that disfigurement and desecration should have been suffered; yet men thought themselves wise in those days, and learned, and ingenious. And so they were; but in respect of arts they were dark enough--and the spirit of Puritanism was indeed a blight infecting that darkness; and the effects of that blight have not yet passed away. It may appear strange that, after a long period of worse than neglect, we not only appreciate, but such is our admiration of those works of past genius, that we imitate them, and study them for a discovery of the canons of the art which we think we cannot with impunity set aside. We here speak of those large and conspicuous monuments of the mind of the middle ages, but the increasing admiration leads to discoveries of yet more hidden treasures. The genius that designed the structures was as busily and as devotionally employed in every kind of decoration; and with a surprising unity of feeling; and as if with one sole object, to carry out the new Christian principle--to make significant a "beauty of holiness" in all outward things, that men might look to with an awe and reverence--and learn. The sanctity of that one religious art--architecture--demanded that nothing without or within should be left "common" or "unclean," but that in the whole and minutest parts this precept should be legible and manifest--"Do all to the glory of God." All art was significant of the religion for which all art, all science was pursued. The workers of those days laboured with a loving and pious toil, and lifted up their works to an unseen and all-seeing eye, and not to the applause of men; for who was there to value, or to understand, even when in some degree they felt the influence of the skill which designed and executed such infinite variety of parts, to the manifestation of one great purpose?

We must no longer speak of the middle ages as a period of universal intellectual darkness. If it were so, it would be a miracle, contrary to the intention of miracle; and the thought has in it a kind of blasphemy, which would weaken the sustaining arm of Providence, and imply an unholy rest. We do not believe in the possibility of the human race universally retrograding. We trust that there is always something doing for the future as well as for the present; something for progression, neither acceptable nor perceived by the present generation--from whose sight it is, as it were, hidden--buried as seed in the earth, to spring up in its proper abundance, and in its due time. We want a history of the human mind, sifted from the large doings--from events which fascinate us to read of, born as we are to be active, taking interest in things of a bold violence, that have really benefited the world but little, at least in the sense in which we have accepted them. The rise of one nation, the subjugation of another; dynasties, the dominion of the sword--these are the themes of histories. But in reality all these historical actions, viewed for their own purpose, are of little value; while out of all the turbulence an unintended good has been the result. There has been throughout some quiet and unobserved work going on, whose influence, felt more and more by degrees, has at length become predominant, showing that the stirring events and characters which had figured the scenes and amused spectators, were but the underplots and subordinate _personæ_ of a greater and more serious drama. Since the overthrow of heathenism, the world's drama, still going on, is the development of Christianity; and doubtless even now, however sometimes with a seeming contrary action, every invention, every extension of knowledge--all arts, all sciences, are working to that end. It is strange, but true, that our very wars have furthered civilisation. The Crusades, worthless and fruitless as regards their ostensible object, have ameliorated the condition and softened the manners of our own and other nations.

In the fall of heathenism, fell the arts of heathenism; not, indeed, to be entirely obliterated--not for ever, but for a time. Their continuance would have been one of imitation: such imitation would have little suited the new condition of mankind; they were therefore removed, and hidden for awhile, that the new principle should develop itself unshackled. The arts had to arise from, and to be rebuilt upon, this new principle: all in them that would have interfered with this great purpose was allowed to be set aside, to be resumed only in after times, when that new principle should be safely and permanently established. It was only by degrees that the old buried art showed itself, and that the new was permitted to resume some of the old perfection. It may be that even yet the two streams, from such dissimilar sources, have not, in their fulness and plenitude, united: the characteristic beauty which they bear is of body and of soul; but they bear them separately, severally. What will the meeting of the waters be? and may we yet hope to see it? If it was required that there should be a kind of submerged world of heathenism, the germs of the true and beautiful would not necessarily perish. The church was, in fact, the ark of safety, to which all that intellect had effected, all arts, all sciences, all learning, fled for refuge. And as was the ark among the dark waters, so was the church and the treasures it bore providentially preserved amid the storms without that darkened and howled around it. What heathenism was to the middle ages, in respect of the hidden treasures, the middle ages are or have been to us. Their arts, their sciences, in their real beauty, have been hidden; they have had, indeed, invisible but effective virtues--the darkness, the blindness, has been ours. We have been doing the work of our age, and are now discovering the good that was in theirs, and how much we are indebted to them for our own advancement. Let us imagine for a moment all that was then done obliterated, never to have been done, we should now have to do the work of the so-called "dark ages." It would be impossible to start up what we are without them. As we reflect, their works present themselves to us in every direction. Look where we will, we shall see that the church has been the school of mankind, in which all knowledge was preserved, and from which new sources of knowledge have arisen. She was the salt of the earth, to rescue it from rankness. The germ of life was in her in the winter of the times. When the wars of the Roses would have made our England a howling wilderness, there were places and persons unprofaned and respected by the murderer, the ravisher, the spoiler. When the nobles, the great barons throughout Europe, were little better than plunderers, and robbers even on the highway--Robin Hoods, without that outlaw's fabulous virtue and honest humanity--what was then doing within the walls of convents and monasteries? What were then the monks about? Embodying laws of peace, and, with a faith in the future improvement of mankind, cultivating sciences; planning and building up in idea new society, foreseeing its wants, and for its sake pursuing the useful arts; inventing, contriving, constructing, and decorating all, and preparing even the outward face of the world, by their wondrous structures, their practical application of their knowledge, more worthily to receive a people whom it was their hope, their faith, to bring out of a state of turbulence into peace. So far as the church was concerned in governments, it is astonishing how, when the body of the state was mutilated and dislocated, she kept the heart sound; so that where it might seem tyranny would have overwhelmed all, she made, and she preserved those wholesome laws to which we now owe our liberty and every social advancement. But it is in the light of the arts and sciences our present purpose directs us to view their doings. Let us take one fact--walk the streets of even our inferior provincial towns, see not only the comforts which, in their dwellings, surround the inhabitants, but the magnificence of the shops with their glass fronts. Whence are they? The first skill, the first invention, arose from the study of ecclesiastics, and was practised by cloistered monks. Monastic institutions grew out of the church; we speak of them as one. It would not be very difficult, in fact, to trace every useful invention, in its first principle, to the same source. But with a great portion of mankind it would not be pleasing so to trace their means of enjoyment. They have been habituated to think, or at least to feel, otherwise. History has been too often written by men either averse to religion itself, or inimical to churchmen. History, such as it has been put into the hands of children, for the rudiments of their education, has taught them to lisp falsehoods against the church, the priesthood. The "rapacity" of churchmen is an early lesson. Nor can we wonder if men so educated grow up with a prejudice, and, when they begin to, scramble themselves for what they can get in the world's active concerns, and know something of their own natures, are little inclined to cast the film from their eyes, and more fairly to unravel the mysteries of historical events. Were they in candour to make the attempt, they would see rapacity elsewhere; and that, in times more irreverent than the middle ages, the churchmen have not been the plunderers, but the plundered. The church has been the nurse, of art, of knowledge, of science. Let those who are accustomed to see light but a little way beyond them, and to think all a blank darkness out of the illumination of their own day, consider how they have often seen, in many a dark and stormy night, little lights shining through a great distance, and hailed them as notices of a warm and living virtue of domestic and industrial peace; and then let them see, if they will have it that the middle ages were so dark, the similitude; when the light in many a monastic cell shone brightly upon the depth of that night, and dotted the general gloom with as living a light; when monks, when churchmen, were making plans for the minsters that we now gaze at with so much astonishment--were transcribing, were illuminating works of sacred use, were registering their discoveries in art, their "secreti"--and at the same time, were not unobservant of the highest office to watch and keep alive in their own and others' hearts the sacred fire, which still we trust burns, and will burn more and more, sending forth its light into surrounding darkness. We would speak of a general character, as we from our hearts believe it to be the true one--not asserting that there were no instances, as examples from which hostile writers might draw plausible inferences to justify their prejudice. The fairest spots are overshadowed by the passing clouds of a general storm, though there may yet be lights of safety in many a dwelling. The history of the arts is the history of civilisation, and these arts were preserved or originated in monastic institutions. If the monks were legislators, were physicians, were architects, painters, sculptors, it was because all the learning of the age was centered in them. "Neither Frederic Barbarossa, John, king of Bavaria, nor Philip the Hardy of France, could read; nor could Theodoric or Charlemagne write. Of the barons whose names are affixed to Magna Charta, very few could write."

We suspect that Mrs Merrifield has fallen into a common error, propagated by historians such as Robertson, with regard to this ignorance of letters. It was not only "usual for persons who could not write to make the sign of the cross, in confirmation of a charter," but for those who could. If a little more had been accurately ascertained of the feelings and manners of the periods in question, it would have been seen that the signature of the cross, instead of the name, was more according to the dignity of the signing person and the sanctity of the act--in fact, a better security for the full performance of the contract. We are not quite sure that "pro ignoratione literarum" implies so much as an inability to write a name; for, writing being then not the kind of clerkship which it now is, but in documents of moment, especially an artistic affair, it may not be very wonderful if "persons of the highest rank" were unable to compete with the practised hands, and were unwilling to show, and to the deterioration of the outward beauty of the documents, their inferiority in caligraphy. But, after all, the "innumerable proofs," between the eight and twelfth centuries, amount only to four.

That of Tassilo duke of Bavaria, by its wording, may express the ornamental character, "Quod manu propriâ, ut potui, characteres chirographe inchoando depinxi coram judicibus atque optimatibus meis." If, however, this Duke of Bavaria was so poor a scribe, he was at least the founder of a convent that made full amends for his deficiency--one of whose nuns, Diemudis, was the most indefatigable transcriber of any age. An amazing list of her caligraphic handicraft is extant, almost incredible, if we did not know the patient zeal of those days of fervent piety. Those who are desirous to obtain better information than is commonly received on the subject of the learning, as well as the piety of the middle ages, will be amply repaid by consulting Mr Maitland's "Dark Ages," in which the historians are refuted to their shame, and the charge of ignorance is most fairly retorted. In his very interesting volume, this list of Diemudis may be seen. The works copied are indeed religious works, which some of our historians may have looked upon with a prejudice, and as proofs of the darkness of the times. Mr Maitland's book will undeceive any who are of that opinion, containing, as it does, so many proofs, in original letters and discourses, of erudition, perfect acquaintance with the sacred Scriptures, of eloquence and intellectual acuteness. Whatever books these "ignorant" monks and ecclesiastics possessed, there is one invention of a time included by most censurers of the "dark ages" in that invidious term, the absence of which would have deprived this "enlightened" age of half the books it possesses, of half the knowledge of the "reading public," and of we know not how many other inventions to which it may have been the unacknowledged parent: we are grateful enough to acknowledge that, without it, we should not be now writing these remarks, and should certainly lose many readers--the invention of spectacles. There are notices of them in A. D. 1299. It is said on a monument in the church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, at Florence, that Salvino degli Armati, who died in 1317, invented them. "Indeed P. Marahese attributes the invention of spectacles to Padre Alesandro," (a Dominican and miniature painter;) "but the memorial of him in the Chronicle of St Katherine, at Pisa, proves that he had seen spectacles made before he made them himself; and that, with a cheerful and willing heart, he communicated all he knew."

"The proof," says Mrs Merrifield, that Europe is indebted to religious communities for the preservation of the arts during the dark ages, rests on the fact that the most ancient examples of Christian art consist of the remains of mural pictures in churches, of illuminations in sacred books, and of vessels for the use of the church and the altar, and on the absence of all similar decorations on buildings and utensils devoted to secular uses during the same period--to which may be added, that many of the early treatises on painting were the work of ecclesiastics, as well as the paintings themselves. A similar remark may be made with regard to architecture, many of the earliest professors of which were monks." We believe Mrs Merrifield here is short of the fact; and that, where the monks were not the builders, they were in almost all instances the designers. Their architecture, indeed, and all that pertained to it, was a Christian book to teach; their designs contained Christian lessons, which the knowledge of ecclesiastics could alone supply. "Painting was essentially a religious occupation; the early professors of the art believed that they had an especial mission to make known the works and miracles of God to the common people who were unacquainted with letters:--'Agli uomini grossi che non sanno lettere.' Actuated by this sentiment, it is not surprising that so many of the Italian painters should have been members of monastic establishments. It has been observed that the different religious orders selected some particular branch of the art, which they practised with great success in the convents of their respective orders. Thus the Gesuati and Umiliati attached themselves to painting on glass and architecture, the Olivetani to tarsia work, the Benedictines and Camaldolites to painting generally; and the monks of Monte Casino to miniature painting; while the Dominicans appear to have practised all the various branches of the fine arts, (with the exception of mosaic,) and to have produced artists who excelled in each." Their devotion to the arts was, indeed, a religious devotion; their treatises commence with most earnest prayers, and solemn dedication of themselves and their works to the Holy Trinity; and not unfrequently with a long exordium, introducing the creation and fall of man, as we see in the prefaces of Theophilus and Cennino Cennini.

Whilst the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries saw the erection of magnificent cathedrals, (our own York, Salisbury, and Westminster were built in the thirteenth,) the manners of the people were yet rude: one plate served for man and wife; there were no wooden-handled knives; a house did not contain more than two drinking-cups. There were neither wax nor tallow candles; clothes were of leather, unlined. Had the middle and lower classes, in our day, no better dwellings than were the houses belonging to those conditions so late as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, we dare not to conjecture how much worse would be their moral condition. "In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the houses of the English, of the middle and lower classes, consisted in general of a ground-floor only, divided into two apartments--namely a hall, into which the principal door opened, and which was their room for cooking, eating, and receiving visitors; and a chamber adjoining the hall, and opening out of it, which was the private apartment of the females of the family, and the bed-room at night. The greater part of the houses in London were built after this plan." The more wealthy classes were not very much better lodged; the principal difference, being an upper floor, the access to which was by a flight of steps outside. As arts advanced, manners refined: the Crusades had their domestic as well as warlike effects; they induced a taste for dress, and general luxury; and the Saracens were ready examples for imitation. It was then, and when commercial enterprise enriched a few cities, the arts of the monks began to be appreciated; but they did not readily assume a secular character--painting and other decorations were in design either religious, or historical with a religious reference or moral. It is curious that clocks were not found in convents after they had been among the articles of domestic furniture in castles and palaces. Perhaps, this may be an instance of a devotional spirit of the monks, who may have thought it an impiety to relax the discipline of reckoning time by the repetition of Ave Marias, Paternosters and Misereres. They were, however, generally adopted about the latter half of the fifteenth century.

To those who are at all advanced in life, and who must themselves remember a very different state of society from the present, and the introduction of our present luxuries and comforts into houses, and alteration of habits and manners, it must seem but a step backwards into comparative barbarism. A very few centuries take us back to paper windows; and even they were removable as furniture, not attached to the house. We have ourselves heard an old person say, that he remembered the time when there were only two carriages kept in a city, the second in importance in England--who now in that city would task himself to count the number? Nor was our own country singular in the deficiencies of the luxuries of life. The changes were general and simultaneous; and this is extraordinary, that the revival of arts and literature was not confined to one country or one place, but arose as it were from one general impulse, and simultaneously, among people under varieties of climate, circumstances, and manners.

It is time we should say something of the book which has led us to make this somewhat long introduction. It consists of two volumes, containing original treatises, dating from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries, on the arts of painting in oil, miniature, mosaic, and on glass; of gilding, dyeing, the preparation of colours and of artificial gems, by Mrs Merrifield, whose valuable translation of Cennino Cennini has been reviewed in the pages of Maga. Mrs Merrifield is likewise the authoress of an excellent little volume on fresco painting, very opportunely published. The present work is the result of a commission from the Government to proceed to Italy, to collect MSS., and every possible information respecting the processes and methods of oil-painting adopted by the Italians. As the Original Treatises discovered, and now published, contain much other matter besides that which relates to painting in oil, the work is more comprehensive than the first purpose of the commission would have made it. The introduction, which occupies nearly two-thirds of the first volume, is a very able performance; in it is a comprehensive view of the history of the fine arts. The conclusions drawn from the documents, the result in detail of her search and labours, are so clearly laid before the reader, with ample proofs of each particular fact and inference, as greatly to facilitate the reader in his inquiry into the documents themselves. He will find that Mrs Merrifield, by her arrangement of the parts, and bringing them to bear upon her purpose, has saved him that trouble which the nature of the work would otherwise have necessitated. Besides that her introduction contains a separate and complete treatise on each branch of art, the preliminary observations, heading each document, render its contents most tangible. At the end of the second volume is an index, which in a work of this kind it is most desirable to possess--the want of which in Mr Eastlake's excellent _Materials for a History of Oil-painting_ we have often had occasion to regret; and we do hope that, in his forthcoming work on the Italian practice, he will make amends for this defect by an index which will embrace the contents of the "Materials." We have ourselves spent much time, that might have been saved by an index, in turning over the pages for passages to which we wished to refer, for that work is one strictly of reference, although interesting in the first reading.

The documents consist of the following MSS.--the manuscripts of Jehan Le Begue, of St Audemar, of Eraclius, of Alcherius, in the first volume. In the second--the Bolognese, Marciana, Paduan, Volpato, and Brussels manuscripts; extracts from all original manuscript by Sig. Gio. O'Kelly Edwards; extracts from a dissertation read by Sig. Pietro Edwards, in the academy of fine arts at Venice, on the propriety of restoring the public pictures.

As these several MSS. open to us new sources of information, most important in establishing certain facts, from whence the art of painting among us may enter upon great and important changes, it may not be altogether unprofitable to give some short account of them in their order.

The manuscript of Jehan Le Begue, "a licentiate in the law, and notary of the masters of the mint in Paris," was composed by him in the year 1431, in his sixty-third year. It is, however, professedly a compilation from works of Jehan Alcherius, or Alcerius, of whom little is known, nor is it certain that he was a painter. His work probably preceded Le Begue's about twenty years. Alcherius himself was a collector of recipes, from various sources, during thirty years, and twenty years afterwards his MSS. came into the hands of Le Begue.

The manuscript of Petrus de St Audemar, according to Mr Eastlake, may be of the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century. He is supposed to have been a native of France, (Pierre de St Omer.) Some of the recipes are found in the "Clavicula," attributed to the twelfth century; but this is no argument against the date, for it was at all times the practice to make selections from former "secreti."

The manuscripts of Eraclius consist of three books--the first two metrical, the third in prose. Nothing is known of the author. "Two ancient copies only of the MS. of Eraclius have been hitherto discovered, and it is somewhat singular that both are bound up with the MSS. of Theophilus." It is not easy to fix a date to Eraclius. Mrs Merrifield thinks "that the metrical parts only constituted the Treatise '_de coloribus et artibus Romanorum_' of Eraclius, and that this part is more ancient than a great part of the third book."

Manuscripts of Alcherius.--These are of two dates, 1398, and again corrected 1411, after his return from Bologna, "according to further information, which he subsequently received by means of several authentic books treating of such subjects, and otherwise." These are the Le Begue manuscripts.

"The Bolognese manuscript is of the fifteenth century. It is a small volume in duodecimo on cotton paper, and is preserved in the library of the R. R. Canonici Regolari, in the convent of St Salvatore in Bologna." There is no name of the author--it is written sometimes "in Italianised Latin, and sometimes Italian, with a mixture of Latin words, as was usual at that period." It has no precise date. It is an interesting notice of all the decorative arts practised in Bologna at that period, and contains a systematically arranged collection of recipes.

The Marciana manuscript is of the sixteenth century, in the library of St Marco at Venice. The recipes are in the Tuscan dialect, and some are but little known. They appear to have been compiled for the use of a convent, by some monk or lay brother, who, in his capacity of physician to the infirmary, prepared both medicaments, varnishes, and pigments. Names of artists are mentioned which show that the author lived at the beginning or middle of the sixteenth century.

The Paduan manuscript, Mrs Merrifield asserts to be Venetian. It is in quarto, on paper, without date; but the handwriting is of the seventeenth century. It shows a manifest deviation from the practice established in the Marciana MS.--the introduction of spirit of turpentine as a diluent, and mastic varnish, instead of the hard varnishes of amber and sandarac. In it we find that "oil-paintings had begun to suffer from the effects of age; and that they required, or it was believed that they required, to be washed with some corrosive liquid, and to be revarnished. Directions, or rather recipes, for both these processes are given." Some of the recipes are in Latin, supposed "secreti," and therefore given in that language.

The Volpato manuscript.--The author, a painter, Giovanni Baptista Volpato, of Bassano, was born 1633--a pupil of Novelli, who had been a pupil of Tintoretto. A work from a MS. of Volpato was announced for publication at Vicenza in 1685, but it is believed that it has not been published. The MS. now first brought to light by Mrs Merrifield was lent to her, with permission to copy, by Sig. Basseggio, librarian and president of the Athenæum of Bassano. There is good reason to believe that it was written during the latter end of seventeenth, or beginning of eighteenth century.

The Brussels manuscript.--This now published is a portion of a MS. preserved in a public library of Brussels, written by Pierre Le Brun, contemporary with the Caracci and Rubens; its date is 1635.

Sig. Edwards's manuscript is written by the son of Sig. Pietro Edwards, who was employed by the Venetian and Austrian governments in the restoration of the pictures in Venice. He died in 1821. His son, Sig. O'Kelly Edwards, wrote an account of the method of restoration, with interesting matters respecting the public pictures generally. Mrs Merrifield has taken extracts, the work not being permitted to be published without the permission of the Academy of Venice, which was refused.

There follow also extracts from a dissertation read by Sig. Pietro Edwards to the Academy of Fine Arts at Venice, on the propriety of restoring the public pictures.

Besides these documentary papers, Mrs Merrifield extended her inquiries among the best modern painters, copiers, and restorers, and has recorded their opinions: we cannot call them more than opinions, for there is no certain conclusion, on any one point of inquiry, to be drawn from her conferences with these persons. They give, indeed, their information, such as it is, clearly and decidedly enough, but they are at disagreement with each other. It is creditable to foreign artists to add, that only in one instance was any reluctance shown to be communicative.

It will have been observed that these documents go back far enough in time, and down to a sufficiently late date; it should be presumed, therefore, that in them will be found every particular of practice from the change of method, from the tempera to painting in oil--such as it was after "the discovery" of Van Eyck. But if we are to conclude that the discovery of Van Eyck is actually contained in these documentary "secreti" it must be admitted to have been rather a discovery of application than of material.

There is no positive distinct statement to the effect that this and this did Van Eyck, or where is the identical recipe which he introduced into Italy. This is perhaps no proof, nor cause of reasonable conjecture, that the materials of his method are not set forth in some of these MS.,--on the contrary, it may have been the cause of their not being set down as Van Eyck's, upon the assumption that a new practice and application only was introduced. Indeed it will be scarcely thought, now that so much has been brought to light, that any vehicle for pigments has been kept back by the several writers of the MSS. If it then be asked what is the conclusion to be drawn--what the really valuable result of these commissions, and the indefatigable research of such able persons as Mr Eastlake, Mr Hendrie, and Mrs Merrifield--it may be answered that they all conclude in one and the same view--that the practice of the best masters of the best time consisted in the use of olio-resinous varnishes. We should have said _an_ olio-resinous varnish, and that amber--were it not for the proof that sandarac and amber were chiefly the _two_ substances--that they were frequently synonymous the one for the other, and that they were not unfrequently both used together. Nor can it be denied that there were occasionally other additions. Mr Eastlake places great confidence in the _olio d'abezzo_, which, not without a fair show of evidence, he concludes (and we think in this Mrs Merrifield agrees with him) to have been the varnish used by Correggio, according to Armenini. But we are nowhere as yet assured that it was used by Correggio as a vehicle.

If we remember rightly, there is a passage in Mr Eastlake's book which has a tendency to alarm our modern painters, and perhaps make some abstain from the use of the old olio-resinous medium. He speaks somewhere of its liability to crack, to come away in pieces, but after a long lapse of time. We could have wished he had been more explicit on this point: it would have been well to have shown the difference, if there be any, as we feel somewhat confident there must be, between the effect of olio-resinous varnishes used over the surface of a picture, and as mixed with the colours in the painting. If we are not mistaken, he refers to some of the old tempera paintings before Van Eyck's time, covered with the varnish, and particularly to those of the old Byzantine school. We do not ourselves remember to have ever seen on old pictures such changes, though we have seen them to a lamentable and obliterative degree on pictures painted within the last fifty years in oil and mastic varnish. We throw out these observations because it may attract the notice of Mr Eastlake, before his long-expected volume on the Italian practice comes from the press. It may be doubtful if Van Eyck had himself, at first, that entire confidence in his materials which time has shown they deserved--for parts of his most elaborate and famous picture were put in in distemper and varnished over--yet we are led to believe that the peculiar effect of his medium was the preservation of colours in their original purity. It should be mentioned, also, that one improvement supposed to have been introduced by Van Eyck, or rather the Van Eycks, was the dryer--the substitution of white copperas for lead: and this appears to have been adopted from chemical knowledge, it having been shown that, whereas oils take up the lead, no portion of the copperas becomes incorporated with the oils, that substance only facilitating the absorption of oxygen.

Although these MS. treatises do not go farther back than the twelfth century, assuming that to be the date of the one by Eraclius, yet there is reason to suppose that the earliest treatises are compilations of the recipes, the _secreti_, of still earlier ages. They become thus more interesting as links which, though broken here and there, indicate the character of the chain in the history of arts, which may be still left to complete without any material deviation from the original pattern. That character was undoubtedly religious, but it is not true that every other show of art was held in contempt, as some maintain. The goldsmith, the jeweller, the workers in glass and all kinds of metal, whose recipes may be found in these volumes of Mrs Merrifield, showed as much skill, (and a far better taste in design) somewhat out of the line of religious ornament, as any of the last two centuries. Even in the ninth century, among the gifts of the King of Mercia to a monastery, we find a golden curtain, on which is wrought the taking of Troy, and a gilded cup which is chased over all the outside with savage vine-dressers, fighting with serpents. We can imagine it a work of which a Benvenuto Cellini need not have been ashamed.

A woodcut in page xxx. of the introduction, and which Mrs Merrifield has adopted to ornament the cover, represents "a writer of the fifteenth century." It is taken from a manuscript in the Bibliothèque at Paris. It is not only curious as showing what an important and laborious art writing was in those days, and what machinery it required, but for the religious mark which designates the character of the writing--in the corner is a painting of the crucifixion. Mrs Merrifield had told us, that, in a catalogue of the sale of "furniture of Contarini, the rich Venetian trader, who resided at St Botolph's in London in 1481, or in that of a nobleman in 1572," neither looking-glasses nor chairs are mentioned! Yet in this woodcut there is not only a chair, but exactly the one which has been recently reintroduced in modern furnishing. Surely the date 1572 would throw some excuse upon that of 1481--and offer a fair conjecture that there must have been some peculiar cause for the omission. We must have sufficient proof of chairs at the later date. Does the writer in this cut sit alone?--the room is not even indicated--or was he one of many sitting together in the Scriptorium? Mr Maitland thinks that, in later times, the Scriptorium was a small cell, that would only hold one person--not so in earlier times. We quote a passage from his book upon the subject: "But the Scriptorium of earlier times was obviously an apartment capable of containing many persons; and in which many persons did, in fact, work together in a very business-like manner, at the transcription of books. The first of these points is implied in a very curious document, which is one of the very few extant specimens of French Visigothic MS. in uncial characters, and belongs to the eighth century. It is a short form of consecration, or benediction, barbarously entitled '_Orationem in Scripturis_,' and is to the following effect, 'Vouchsafe, O Lord, to bless this Scriptorium of thy servants, and all that dwell therein, that, whatsoever sacred writings shall be here read or written by them, they may receive with understanding, and bring the same to good effect, through our Lord,'" &c. We can imagine that we see the impress of this prayer in the representation, in the corner of the woodcut of which we have been speaking. Mrs Merrifield enumerates to a large extent the works of such writers: many of them must have been extremely beautiful. "The choral books belonging to the cathedral of Ferrara are thirty in number, twenty-two of which are twenty-six inches long, by eighteen in breadth, and the remaining eight smaller. They were begun in 1477, and completed in 1533. The most interesting of these books, for the beauty of the characters, as well as for the miniatures, were executed by Jacopo Filippo d'Argenta, Frate Evangelista da Reggio, a Franciscan, Andrea delle Veze, Giovanni Vendramin of Padua, and Martino di Georgio da Modena. The parchment on which these books are written is in excellent preservation. It is worthy of remark, that great part of the parchment or vellum for these books was brought from Germany, or at least was manufactured by Germans. There is an entry in the records of the cathedral, for the year 1477, of a sum of money paid to M. Alberto da Lamagna, for 265 skins of vellum; of another sum paid in 1501, for 60 skins, to Piero Iberno, also a German; and to Creste, another German, for 50 skins, furnished by them on account of these books." Caligraphy and miniature-painting were sister arts: so highly were both esteemed, that the right hands of the writer and miniature-painters, who completed the choral books of Ferrara, and those of the monastery degli Angeli in Florence, are preserved in a casket with the utmost veneration. "The best miniature-painter of the tenth century was Godemann, who was chaplain of the Bishop of Winchester, from A.D. 963 to 984, and afterwards Abbot of Thornley. His Benedictional, ornamented with thirty beautiful miniatures, is in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire. In the eleventh century, schools of painting were formed at Hildesheim and Paderborn, and the art was exercised by ecclesiastics of the higher rank." Francesco dai Libri, so called from his constant employment in illuminating MS., was one of the most eminent _miniatori_ of the fifteenth century. What Vasari says of him is quite delightful, whether it conveys the sentiment of Vasari himself or of Francesco--that, having lived to a great age, "he died contented and happy, because, in addition to the peace of mind which he derived from his own virtues, he left a son who was a better painter than himself." We doubt if this total absence of jealousy is a very general parental virtue. The passage reminds us of the noble-hearted Achilles, whose ghost in the shades below anxiously inquired respecting his son if he excelled in glory, and being answered in the affirmative, stalked away rejoicing greatly. It may not be universally known, that the word miniature is derived from minium, red lead, with which the initial letters were written, or perhaps more commonly painted: hence our Rubrics.

Mosaic painting was for some time the rival of oil-painting. It was much esteemed at Venice, where the damp affected other kinds of painting. It was introduced unquestionably by the Greeks. It afforded work for several centuries in the decoration of the church of St Mark, commencing from the eleventh century.

This department of art was not without its jealousies. The Zuccati were charged by their rivals with having filled up deficiencies in their work with other painting, and though Titian vindicated them, and is supposed to have assisted them in designs, the Venetian government decreed that they should re-execute the work at their own cost, which nevertheless was not done. Mosaic workers did not always work from the designs of others; some, and these not inconsiderable, painters applied themselves to this art. There were great "secreti" in the working in mosaic, which even now may be useful. The most important of these of working in mosaic was that of Agnolo, the son of Taddeo Gaddi, who, in 1346, repaired some of the mosaics executed by Andrea Tafi in the roof of St Giovanni at Florence. He fixed the cubes of the glass so firmly into the ground, with a stucco composed of wax and mastic melted together, that neither the roof nor the vaulting had received any injury from water from the period of its completion until the time of Vasari. May not our slate and mortar system be happily superseded? Mrs Merrifield takes occasion to redeem from his prison, to which, in her preface to the translation of Cennino Cennini, she had condemned, that earnest old man, upon the authority of the subscription from the prison of the Stinche--showing that it was the domicile of the transcriber, not the author. Vasari asserts that Cennino Cennini, to whom the secret of mosaic work was transmitted from Agnolo Gaddi, left a treatise on the subject. No such work has been yet found; but as there are other MSS. of the author, the treatise may be yet forthcoming. There is an anecdote which shows there may be better gold than comes from the mint. Alesso Baldovinetto, who spared no pains to learn the best methods of working in mosaic, learned much of the art from a German traveller to whom he had given a lodging. Thus, having been well informed, he worked with great success. At eighty years of age, feeling the natural infirmities fast approaching, he sought a retreat in the hospital of St Paul. "It is related that, in order to insure himself a better reception, he took with him to his apartments in the hospital a large chest, which was thought to contain money; and, in this belief, the officers of the hospital treated him with the greatest respect and attention. But their disappointment may be imagined, when, on opening the chest, after the decease of the aged artist, they found nothing but drawings on paper, and a small book which taught the art of making the mosaics, (_Pietre del Musaico_) the stucco, and the method of working. At the present time, we should have considered this little book a greater treasure than the money which was so much desired." We here have another delightful passage from Vasari, which will readily be accepted as the old man's excuse. "It was no wonder that they did not find money, for Alesso was so bountiful, that everything he possessed was as much at the service of his friends as if it had been their own." The introductory remarks on mosaic may be well worth the builder's and architect's attention, now that great improvements have been made in the making of glass, and that it is rendered so cheap; whilst duty was according to weight, the great art was to make it as thin as possible, hence the greater nicety and expense in the manufacture. To make thick, strong, or, in the language of mosaic art, cubes of glass for ornamental purposes, and as a preservative from weather, is a desideratum of the present day.

Few people will interest themselves about Tarsia work, of which Vasari speaks slightingly, that it was fittest for those persons who have more patience than skill in design. An art, however, of some antiquity may yet be very commonly seen in the inlaid work of various woods in our Tunbridge ware. Indeed, the art is even now becoming more important in its application to furniture: our fashionable tables are a kind of Tarsia work.

The history of painting on glass is extremely interesting, and has engaged the attention of many writers. France and Germany have taken the lead in this art, particularly the former; less attention has perhaps been paid to its rise in Italy than the subject deserves. The art itself is so exquisitely beautiful, and its application as a religious ornament so impressive, that we rejoice to see its revival. Mrs Merrifield enlarges much upon the subject, and very happily, though her commission to Italy did not send her to a country where the best materials may be collected. Specimens of painted glass in our own country, both as to design and colour, are so admirable--some, indeed, may vie with painting in oil of the best time, with regard to drawing and effect--that we could wish a commission to collect and publish the coloured specimens that are now unknown, excepting to the curious in the art. Glass painting had attained great perfection in France in the eleventh century. It was likewise much cultivated in our own country; the windows of Lincoln cathedral show early specimens of great beauty. Glass windows were introduced into England as early as A.D. 674, by ecclesiastics, for decoration of their churches. In private houses, glass was extremely rare in the middle ages; it was not in common use till the reign of Henry VIII. It was the custom to remove windows as furniture. Before the introduction of glass, thin parchment stretched on frames, and varnished, and not unfrequently painted, protected the interior of the houses from the weather. We have always understood that, for the great improvement in glass-painting, and that which rendered the cinque-cento style so beautiful, we are indebted to John Van Eyck: before his time every variation in colour required a separate piece. The painting on glass, as on canvass, and burning in different tints and on colours on one surface, has been generally considered the discovery of the inventor of oil-painting. Mrs Merrifield rather thinks that at least a portion of this improvement is to be ascribed to Fra Giacomo da Ulmo, who found out that a transparent yellow might be given to the glass by silver--the origin of the invention being the letting fall from his sleeve a silver button into the furnace, which being closed, and the silver fused, a yellow stain had been imparted to the glass. Pottery and glass-making are nearly allied; it would be curious, if there be a fair ground for the supposition that the manufacture of glass was brought from Tyre to Venice. "In the fourteenth century the Venetians had still a colony at Tyre." The Venetian glass, however, was deficient in transparency; hence probably the Venetian practice of using black glass, which, by juxtaposition in small pieces, would certainly tend to give the appearance of greater transparency to the coloured.