of a long period of night watches. To him and to Wiclif, who greeted the day dawn, and reflected it as from mountain tops, we owe the English language and the glorious beginnings of its literature, in prose and poetry. But on the greater scale of Continental progress, Dante had already created the Italian language, and from him and his brilliant successors, Petrarch and Boccacio, Chaucer's genius had caught the spark that soon burst into flame in his Canterbury Tales. John Gower, his contemporary, lived a few years in the age we are reviewing. 16. THE MEDICI. The illustrious family of the Medici had been growing up in Florence, in the preceding century, and now Cosmo enters on his great career; making merchandise tributary to letters, founding a university, and ransacking the East for manuscripts, which came with spices and taffetas from the Levant in every argosy that enriched his coffers.1 His grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent, succeeds to his great power and influence in the Florentine republic, and largely augments his work, as the patron of scholars and of artists. Cimabue and Giotto had created pictorial art in Italy; but now the invention of oil colours by the brothers Van Eyck, at Ghent, proves that the fogs of Flanders as well as the sunbeams of the South presaged the wonderful development of painting about to be realized. This art reached its acme at a bound. 1 See Note N". Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Perugino's great pupil, Raffaelle, all start up in this century, though they lived also into the next, and they have never been surpassed. Exploring the treasures of the Pitti Palace, in Florence, I saw an insignificant bit of marble, which I recognized at once as a link in a great history. Michael Angelo, a mere youth, was carving that head of an old faun, in the Medicean gardens, when Lorenzo observed its merits. He casually criticised it, "You must not give an old faun such fair teeth," and he walked on. Soon, after, however, he encountered the young man again, and saw that his hint had been taken. Michael had, with admirable skill, contrived to give the mouth and teeth an appearance of age, without disfiguring what was attractive in those features. This secured Lorenzo as his patron; and so grew up that unrivalled master of the three domains of sculpture, painting, and architecture, who moreover was no contemptible poet. Не lived to embellishish Florence with his Titanic statues; to paint "The Last Judgment" on the walls of the Sistine Chapel, and to lift the Pantheon to the clouds in the dome of St. Peter's. The Middle Ages expired in glory, if only for this outburst of the fine arts; but in the nobler realms of intellect, of the useful arts, and of faith, it saw greater things than these. 17. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. The link between the fine arts and those too often scorned as merely utilitarian is Architecture. If we go back to the Middle Ages and trace the rise and development of the pointed architecture (to which Wren applied the nickname of "Gothic "), we cannot but acknowledge that even the Dark Ages brought some goodly things to light. We may justly call it the "Christian Architecture," and, while admitting its great defects, we must admire some of its characteristic ideas. Whether designedly or not, it imitates nature: the forest has naves, and aisles, and arches, with which its spirit strikingly coincides. Again, its aspiring vaults and lofty spires, its clustered columns uplifting its aerial clere-stories, and its abounding vertical lines, all spring heavenward, and lift the eye and the mind, if not the heart, to God. In the decorated examples at Lincoln we see its perfection; but even the "Academic Gothic," as I prefer to call "the perpendicular," retains these features, and in its Tudor debasement we find much that harmonizes with the faith. How notable, too, its reality! It adorns what other styles of the art, with awkward makeshifts, strive to conceal; it turns every prop, every stay, every beam and joint, into an augmentation of beauty. It does not hide its very crutches, for such are the flying buttresses which it so triumphantly elevates into graces; and down in its crypts, and where only the eye of the Omniscient penetrates, it covers no deformity; it builds for the Master-builder above. I fear "the dim religious light" that so fascinates us is nevertheless a striking symbol of the ages in which this architecture was created. It is not enlightened art in any practical sense. Michelet1 has severely remarked upon its feebleness; it is ever crumbling and needing repairs; it is clamped and tied together by corroding bands of iron; it calls in a thousand artifices and expedients to supply its lack of strength; its very buttresses announce the inadequate massiveness of the walls; and when, as in the chapter-house, it erects a central pillar, like the handle of an umbrella, to uphold a canopy of stone, it proclaims its inability to erect a vaulted dome that shall stand by itself. 18. THE NEW CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE. This was the humiliating defect exposed by Brunelleschi when he "broke the egg"; a feat which has no force as told of Columbus.2 The Florentines were ambitious of erecting a cathedral with an unrivalled dome. The Teutonic architects came over the Alps to do the work, and proposed to uphold it by the central pillar, which is but the symbol of decrepitude, the old man bowed upon his staff. "I would make it stand by itself," said Brunelleschi. "But how?" was the inquiry. "Like that egg," said he; and there, indeed, like an egg-shell, light and perfect in its own fabric, it stands to this day, and may stand forever. It is the only perfect dome in Christendom. Michael Angelo would not consent to imitate it, but confessed his inability to rival it, when he designed the dome of St. Peter's. more of Gothic art. 1 See Note O". The Italians would have no 2 See Note P". Alps, in the fairy decorations of that Milanese cathedral of snow. The recent façade of Santa Croce at Florence proves that such art belongs not to the sunny South; it is feeble beyond expression. But the works of Brunelleschi and of Bramante and of Angelo will last, and may supply to practical ages a more enduring Christian architecture. 19. NAVIGATION. We may well look on in breathless wonder as we follow this age of miracles in its fertility of invention, and its arts of progress. Under John I., who founds a new line of kings, and under the patronage of his son Henry, Portugal takes the lead in maritime adventure, The Azores are discovered in A. D. 1432, and Cape Verde about ten years later. In 1460, they have discovered the isles off the coast of Guinea; the next year an expedition is sent, overland, to India; in 1486, Diaz reaches the southern extremity of Africa; in 1496, Vasco de Gama doubles the Cape; the next year he arrives at Calcutta; he founds the Portuguese empire in India; the highways of commerce are revolutionized, and Venice declines. But, more and better, in 1442 is born, at Genoa, Christopher Columbus. In 1484, he pleads in vain with John II. of Portugal to give him the means of exploring the Atlantic. It is not till 1492 that he sails from Palos, with his wretched little fleet, for regions unknown; but (October 12) he sights the first shore of a new world; he presses on to Cuba and Hayti, and in 1493 introduces the |