From Phœnicia, which first carried letters to Greece, let us also pass to Greece. But Greece, in the sense in which I shall use it, includes not only Greece Proper, but many parts of Asia Minor, as well as Sicily and the Great Greece of Italy. And here I must unwillingly be brief, and make the splendid extract from Canon Marsden, quoted before, in some degree do duty for me. But think for a minute first on its architecture, I do not mean its earliest remains, such as the Cyclopian walls and the lion-gate at Mycenæ, and the so-called treasury of Atreus, which ascend to the heroic ages or farther back, but its temple architecture. Before I can name them, images of the Parthenon, the Erectheum, the temple of Jupiter Panhellenius at Ægina, the temple of Apollo Epicurius at Phigalia or Bassæ, that of Concord (so-called) at Agrigentum, the most perfect in Sicily, the three glorious Doric temples of Pæstum, the Ionic ruins of Branchidæ, will, I am confident, have arisen before your eyes. Many of us perhaps have seen some of them; if not, we all feel as though we had. Think of its sepulchral monuments, which are in the form of temples; and first of Queen Artemisia’s Mausoleum, the most splendid architectural expression of conjugal affection that has ever existed, the wonder of the world, with its colossal statue of her husband and its bas-reliefs by Bryaxis and Scopas and other principal sculptors; and remember that we have these in our national museum. Various fine rock-tombs, likewise in the form of temples, occur in Asia Minor, e.g. that of Midas at Nacoleia, the Lion-tomb at Cnidus, the necropolis at Telmessus.

The transition from temples and tombs to statuary is easy, as these were more or less decorated with its aid. Although we still possess the great compositions of some of the first sculptors and brass-casters, for example, the Quoit-thrower of Myron, the Diadumenos of Polycleitus, (i.e. a youth binding his head with a fillet in token of an athletic victory,) and perhaps several of the Venuses of Praxiteles; yet it is needless for me to remind you that these with few exceptions are considered to be copies, not originals. But yet there are exceptions. “The extant relics of Greek sculpture,” says Mr Bunbury, “few and fragmentary as they undoubtedly are, are yet in some degree sufficient to enable us to judge of the works of the ancient masters in this branch of art. The metopes of Selinus, the Æginetan, the Elgin, and the Phigaleian marbles, to which we now add the noble fragments recently brought to this country from Halicarnassus, not only serve to give us a clear and definite idea of the progress of the art of sculpture, but enable us to estimate for ourselves the mighty works which were so celebrated in antiquity^[13].” Of bronzes of the genuine Greek period, which we may call their metal statuary, the most beautiful that occur to my remembrance are those of Siris, now in the British Museum. They are considered by Brönsted to agree in the most remarkable and striking manner with the distinctive character of the school of Lysippus. But most of the extant bronzes are, I believe, of the Roman period, executed however, like their other best works, by Greco-Roman artists.

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.

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].”

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:

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.

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.

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.

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,

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

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.

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].