because they cannot fail to please the soul and the heart at the same time that they do the eye and the imagination. Let us see if our woodwork of 1508 can still be ranged in this number? We think so in many respects." We must we confess pause before we can admit this particular conclusion, gorgeous, and grand, and elaborate as the stalls of Amiens are. This summing is more favourable than from the tenour of the preceding sections we had expected it to have been. A little further on, talking of the works of the revived pagan school, they say," Regard them, and say if you feel any other emotion but that of sense? Your eye is satisfied by the beauty of all the proportions, by the naturalness of the position, by the movement and the life which reign in all those limbs. You admire, but do you meditate? Does your Christian soul find anything it can call its own in the contemplation of all those marbles, become so luscious-full (moelleux), so living, if you choose? No; because you discover nothing more than physical life, and nothing of the spiritual and holy life, in all those ex voto's consecrated to the Virgin, holy, gentle, benign, heavenly, and where they have sculptured nothing more than handsome women, bear. ing in their arms, in place of the Divine Child, a nice little infant, very human, very terrestrial, At the portal nothing carnal distracts your mind from its sweet elevation towards GoD and the Saints; long robes veil every limb; not a hint even was given of anything beneath; you knew not whether there were bodies under those chaste tunics: here the chisel seems to have studied to draw aside the veils, and to display the humanity of all these personages; and above all, strange perversion, of the most celestial, the most holy, the most incorporeal of all, of GOD." Their summing up of the statuary of the stalls is that there may be found there" a very lively and very practical reminiscence of the mystical art of the ages of faith in the principal portions; the influence, still timid and measured, of the renaissance in the ornaments and the subjects of the second class; a touch sufficiently easy to be recognized of the Flemish school" (as from the position of Amiens might have been expected)" cast over the ensemble of the work, in such sort that we may be permitted to style it a happy attempt at accommodation between two exclusive styles." Note A, at the end of the volume, contains interesting notices of several of the finest sets of stalls still existing in France. This is on the whole, we repeat, a very interesting volume, and the perusal of it must fill all with notions of the stupendous, yet elaborate grandeur of medieval Christian art, when one small portion of one cathedral can be so copious a theme. We see advertised on the wrapper a work by the same authors, descriptive of the portal of S. Honoré, at Amiens, which, we doubt not, is likewise a very interesting work. N 130 History of S. Andrew's,-Episcopal, Monastic, Academic, and Civil. By the Rev. C. J. LYON, M.A., formerly of Trinity College, Cambridge, and now Presbyter of the Episcopal Church, S. Andrew's; in two volumes. TAIT, Edinburgh. 1843. antiquities, written in a CONTRIBUTIONS to ecclesiastical history and good spirit, are in these times most valuable. And none more so than those which, as in the volume before us, relate to the northern portion of our island, whether to its ancient Church, now extinct, or to that second Church, which it owes to us-a Church which, of late so suffering, is now in the sight of all men recovering strength and life, as well in its inward spiritual condition, as in that more external development, of which Trinity College, Perth, and S. John's, Jedburgh, are noble proofs. The contents of Mr. Lyon's work are as miscellaneous as its title indicates. We are however only concerned with the ecclesiological portion (too small we think a part of the book, considering the interest attached to the metropolitical church of Scotland) comprised chiefly in two chapters, the 7th and the 8th. The former, headed the Cathedral, is illustrated by a plan of that once-noble church, pointing out what still remains, and supplying the restoration of the rest. The cathedral, which was cruciform, with a central tower, was partly Norman, partly First Pointed; and of the simplest type of the perfect cathedral with central tower, and south cloister, measuring in extreme internal length three hundred and fiftyeight feet. The east end was flat. The floor of the cathedral was cleaned out in 1826, and several tombs discovered. We cannot resist the pleasure of quoting an eloquent passage from this chapter, premising that one of the objects of Mr. Lyon's book is to trace the avenging curse on sacrilege. "What do we now see on the hallowed spot where they offered up their daily prayers and praises? A roofless church, broken pillars, mutilated monuments, fragments of stone coffins; and rank grass and noxious weeds shooting up their blades through the shattered tesselated pavement; in a word 'the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not.' It is the vulgar fashion of the present day to abuse the unfortunate monks, and to charge their memory with every species of calumny. But let us remember that such charges arise, in the first instance, from those who benefitted by their spoils, and who had therefore a positive interest in disparaging them, from men whose sins were of a seven-fold deeper die than were the sins of those whom they first reviled, and then plundered..... When we calmly reflect on the unfeigned piety of the great majority of those men, who departed not from the Temple, but served GOD with fastings and prayers night and day,'-their assiduous cultivation of learning, their diligence in keeping their registries and chronicles, and transcribing their manuscripts, a great part of which we have wantonly destroyed; their charity to the poor; their disinterested hospitality to strangers; their liberal encouragement of education, architecture, and horticulture; their transmission to us of our Bible uncorrupted; and finally when we contrast with all this the profane use that has since been made of the funds solemnly bequeathed for the most holy purposes; we shall be forced to admit that the sin of sacrilege has entered our vitals; and that if a reformation were necessary in the sixteenth century, a more searching one is required for the nineteenth." Chapter IX. is entitled "S. Regulus Church and Tower," and describes what Mr. Lyon says "is supposed to be the most ancient edifice" (he must of course mean ecclesiastical edifice)" in Scotland, perhaps in Great Britain." The church is conjectured to be of the seventh or eighth century. It was originally apsidal, and without aisles, and had its tower situated centrically. The arches of the tower were of the horse-shoe shape. This church formed the original cathedral of S. Andrew's. A curious sculptured stone coffin was lately discovered near the tower. The 11th chapter contains a melancholy description of the present condition of the College chapel of S. Andrew's. We here take leave of Mr. Lyon, expressing our thankfulness to him for his enterprise in opening the unexplored ways of Scottish Ecclesiastical Antiquities; an appropriate task for a Scottish priest, and one the more incumbent on the present Churchmen of that land, as they have to strive against the imputation of exoticism. We are convinced that the ecclesiology of Scotland is a field which would repay its cultivators. And why of Scotland only? Ireland has cathedrals and churches which ought to be better studied than they have hitherto been. We trust more may soon be done in both these quarters. Fresques du Couvent de S. Marc à Florence. Livraison I Paris: L. CURMER. THIS is the first number of a series, which will contain chromolithographed copies of the exquisite frescoes remaining in the Dominican convent of San Marco, Florence, by the illustrious brother of that house, the chief of Christian painters, the Beato Angelico da Fiesole. The drawings are made by M. Henri de Laborde, and are copied on stone by MM. Colette and Moulin. We hail with the greatest joy the appearance of this work, both because its need was very great in the present revival of Christian art, and because it is gratifying to see that France is imitating Germany in appreciating that holy school of painting in which the Blessed Angelico is the acknowledged master. Our own country is very far behind; but it must be allowed in justice that no specimen of this painter is accessible in England, even if there be one in the country; while the Louvre possesses a most choice example of his favourite subject, the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin. We have heard, however, that it is intended before long to purchase an Angelico for England. The parts of this series (which will be completed in twenty numbers) are sold at two prices-ten and five francs. We may here remark that Messrs. Hering and Remington have asked seven shillings and sixpence for the lowest price; while the proper sum in England ought to be five shillings, at the ordinary proportion of a shilling for a franc; for which sum the number now before us was actually purchased at another shop in London. It is much to be lamented that foreign works of art cannot be obtained generally at a more fair and reasonable price in this country. The subjects of the two plates given in the first livraison are the Transfiguration of our LORD, and the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin. In the first, our LORD is represented in an aureole of pale light, contrasted with a golden ground. His attitude is symbolical: His sacred Arms being extended-as upon the Cross-embracing the whole world. His vestment, most majestically draped, is, as is usual with the Blessed Angelico, at least when representing our LORD as glorified, pure white. The nimbus is cruciform. The heads of Moses and Elias are alone seen. The three Apostles are in attitudes of awe and veneration. At the side are mystically introduced the Blessed Virgin and S. Dominick (the founder of the painter's order), in adoration. The letterpress given in the work, of which we cannot speak very highly, points out some particulars in which Raffaelle may be supposed to have imitated this painting in his own Transfiguration. In the second plate, our LORD, vested in white, with cruciform nimbus, and seated on clouds, is represented as placing a crown on His Blessed Mother, who vested also in white, with plain nimbus, and hands crossed on her breast, most meekly inclines towards him to receive it. Below in adoration are seen S. Dominick, and S. Francis of Assisium, and S. Benedict; S. Thomas Aquinas and S. Peter Martyr, both Dominicans; and one other saint, whom the letterpress, without giving authority, describes as S. Jerome, although he is not vested as is usual with that Doctor of the Church. We are not prepared to give very high praise to the chromolithographs, although these seem to be unusually well struck off. There is however a haziness about the plates which most successfully recalls to our mind the peculiar effect of the priceless original frescoes on the walls of the humble cells of the convent. Fra Giovanni da Fiesole L'Angelico. Debost et Des Mottes. Rue de Vaugirard, 55, à Paris. UNDER this title there has just appeared in very beautiful lithography a collection of six half-figures from the famous picture by the Blessed Angelico of the coronation of the Blessed Virgin in the Louvre. The first plate is an angel with a rebeck: the next an angel with a mandoline: the third an angel with a viol: the fourth S. Agnes: the fifth S. Augustine: the sixth S. Lawrence: the next the Blessed Virgin Mary and the last our LORD. They are all extremely beautiful. A sheet of letter-press comprises an abbreviated life of the painter from Vasari, with additions from Bottari, and an extract from Lanzi; and also a very interesting abridgement of William Schlegel's description of the celebrated picture from which these subjects are taken. Albert Dürer's Passion of our Lord JESUS CHRIST. Edited by Ir will not be deemed foreign to the subject of our magazine to notice a work bearing so directly upon ecclesiastical art as the republication of Albert Dürer's wood-cut "Small Passion," engraved by himself, and now struck off from the original blocks, which have lately been deposited in the British Museum. They are rude enough, but very vigorous and stern: and so make a good counterpoise to Rubens-like Scriptural pieces, and Annualesque engravings. It seems to us also that they may be serviceable as studies of grouping to future Christian painters; the attitudes being universally superior to the expression, which is always coarse, often grotesque. As an antiquarian work it is very interesting; and we are glad to see Mr. Cole coming forward without his jocose alias. Designs for Churches and Chapels in the Norman and Gothic styles. By various Architects. Part I. Oxford: J. H. Parker. Part I. contains 66 a Design for a small church in the Decorated Gothic style, by Stephen Lewin, architect, member of the Yorkshire Architectural Society," &c. &c. 66 We are compelled in justice to condemn this publication. The plan of the proposed series, as we have said elsewhere, is highly suspicious and unsatisfactory: and the working out of it in this number realizes all our fears. We hope the Oxford Architectural Society will take care that the future parts of this work shall not be put forth in the same colour, size, and general appearance as their own publications. We think they have great reason to find fault with the publisher for making this book look uniform with their accredited works: we are not surprised that many have blamed that society unjustly for a work which has assumed their colours. It appears to be the resource of architects now, if they cannot build churches, to publish fancy" designs: with the hope, we suppose, of thus advertising their capabilities. Happily the present "small" church is to cost £9,000: so that we may indulge in a reasonable hope that it will never be built. We profess ourselves unable to discover any merit in this design. It is a very ambitious attempt at an original half-foreign striking church. The plan is bad, with an inadequate chaneel, and that improperly arranged; with a wrongly placed vestry; with an unsatisfactory tower; and a western projection for " singers" "lobby" and "organ" utterly without precedent; without a porch, and with a perfectly original position for a second set of "singers" at the east end of the south aisle. The west elevation seems to us to display a most injudicious disposition of ornament: some parts are mean, others elaborately decorated: the whole is neither rich, nor on the other hand severely simple. We might point out many faults in detail. The south elevation exhibits the mean size of the tower and spire very |