a consecrated building. We do not gain from representations of even the noblest actions of the lives of saints an equally high sense of the change which has taken place in those who have gone before us as examples, with that which results from their mysterious influence when drawn up, as it were, in inactive, passionless rows, watching ceaselessly and unwearied the devotions of those who are ever less ready to pray than God to hear. These latter teach us more truly the relation between the departed and ourselves.

The Saints are there, the Living Dead,

The Mourners glad and strong;

The sacred floor their quiet bed,
Their beams from every window shed
Their voice in every song.'

Lyra Innocentium (Church Windows).

The terrible details of a martyrdom, for instance, call our thoughts indeed to the sufferer, and awaken a due admiration of his fortitude, a due abhorrence of his persecutors' malice. But the still effigy, divested of all action connected with the events and conduct of life on earth, and shadowing, so far as is lawful, the condition of life in heaven-the face cleared from all emotion and all sense of self-the attitude of benediction or warning concerning those who remain behind all these point with peculiar precision and impressiveness to the preparation we must enter upon for the things to come.

When we have made our determination respecting the adoption of groups or single figures, when we have resolved on the degree of historical action which our figures shall display, there yet remain several questions to be considered either in borrowing from ancient examples or in original design. There is the great question, what the subject of the design shall be, what must be excluded on principles of faith or taste, and what will best serve the highest purposes of the art. We call it a great question, because obviously upon a right decision must depend the worth of the art itself, and its influences for good or evil. At the same time, we believe that both the current feeling and traditionary usage are sufficient to preclude the necessity of very stringent directions on this head; and therefore it is that we could wish omitted from the work such passages as treat the subject in a theological and controversial point of view. We allude chiefly to the chapter On the employment of painted glass as a means of decoration,' in which our author seems to display a less sense of the modesty becoming an amateur in theological matters than he professes as an amateur in glasspainting. His theology is, however, of a very negative character, consisting chiefly of fine-drawn objections, nice distinctions,

and strong protests against rather visionary evils. Protesting, indeed, seems to be his special delight. A painted window, he says, in a Protestant church, should be of a Protestant charac'ter, and accordingly free from those legends and symbols for 'which Protestants have neither reverence nor belief.' If the reverence and belief of a Protestant majority is exacted, the glass-painter's catalogue of legends and symbols is likely to be a limited one indeed. We shall soon obtain our author's limitation of them in a more definite and tangible shape. He justifies the use of portraits of the saints, on the ground that no one 'can suppose that either portraits of saints or other scriptural 'subjects are introduced into a church with any other view than 'for the purpose of ornament, or, possibly, of example and in'struction.' For our own part, we would not give much for an art which professes to serve the church with mere ornament; and that which Mr. Winston regards as a possible object, viz., food for meditation, and a source of example and instruction, seems to us the sole, legitimate, and adequate end for which the subject is worth cultivating, or, we had almost said, Mr. Winston's book worth reading. But even this not very bold concession to the claims of the saints to the services of Christian art is diluted with a further protestation. Against the repre'sentation of unscriptural subjects, there is in Protestant minds a 'general and well-founded objection.' At first we were disposed to quarrel with this restriction, in the fear that it would exclude such subjects as the proto-martyrdom of England from the churches of St. Alban-the dawn of Christianity upon our Saxon ancestors from those of St. Augustine, &c.; but upon further reading we were satisfied that the author's interpretation of a scriptural subject is a liberal one. He advocates a rule which gives free admission to the Protestant martyrs, and the Fathers of the Anglican Church;' though at the same time he prohibits (we presume as unscriptural) certain other objects, which, though not legendary, are hardly of a Protestant charac'ter.' These objects are the instruments of the Crucifixion, such as the nails, the hammer, the ladder, the scourge, the 'crown of thorns, &c.,' to which, he says, Protestants do not allow sufficient importance to justify the affectation of it by giving them a prominent place in our designs. We believe they do not. In the same vein of satire upon his own times, the author declares that his opinion is decidedly hostile to symbols, because to some persons they are offensive, to most they are ' unintelligible, and in very few, perhaps, of those who do under'stand their meaning, are they capable of awakening any senti'ments of piety or veneration;' because, if any interest 'attaches to ancient symbols, it is an antiquarian interest,' and

6

because we know that the modern copies are an unreal mockery, the production not of a congenial mind, but a mere 'mechanical hand.' Severe as this sarcasm is, (and surely we cannot be wrong in regarding this language as no other than a piece of delicate but cutting irony) it is a relief, after the dry technical details which form the substance of this amateur production.

But before we draw to a conclusion, there are some points remaining which seem to deserve discussion, although there is little to suggest them in the volumes before us, perhaps because they seem to approach too nearly the question of composition and design, which Mr. Winston considers that an amateur is bound to relinquish. In the case of figures, for instance, the disposition and character of the drapery are worth considering, since on them will greatly depend the solemnity and propriety of the painting. Now, while we agree with our author that we are under no obligation to follow closely the drawing of ancient glass-paintings, we must be careful to distinguish between peculiarities founded on principle, and those which are the result of accident or imperfect knowledge and manual skill; and therefore we should be sorry to consider as an open question the proportion which drapery should bear to the figure in extent. It may be said, perhaps with truth, that the long flowing draperies of saints are purely conventional, and such as were not and could not be worn under the circumstances represented. But like the unnaturally tall figures in very elevated early English windows, this was no result of ignorance or want of skill. The reverential spirit of ancient painters revolted from an arrogant display of the limbs, from any unnecessary obtrusion of the humanity of their subjects. The same, in almost the same degree, is exhibited in the more devotional pictures of Raffaelle, and who can charge him with ignorance or want of skill? Majestically draped as many of his figures are, every limb was first drawn naked in the painter's studio, nay, every muscle was assigned to its place with consummate anatomical knowledge; and when the figure stood veiled before the vulgar eye, no defective drawing was hidden, no negligence excused by that reverential treatment of the subject. In our own times, the painter who brings a smattering of anatomy to his aid, is uneasy if all are not reminded of the accomplishment thus accessory to his fame, and burns for naked subjects. There is a nauseous profanity in certain painters who choose a saint as a field for the play of a prurient imagination, and love to employ their pencil on reiterated forms of the humbled Magdalene, because it enables them to show their skill in imitating flesh. Those who have frequented the exhibitions of late years will not be at a

loss for an illustration of what we mean. But, setting aside the claims of religious veneration, as a mere act of policy, the glasspainter will clothe his figures in long and ample draperies, for he will scarcely meet with any greater mechanical difficulty in his art than the proper representation of flesh of large extent on glass. We trust, therefore, that this conventionality will never cease to be observed.

But the mere length of garments, though it may secure propriety, will not produce dignity. And it is the modern artist's province, by study and experiment, to attain to a majestic disposition of the folds of drapery. We cannot venture to suggest any rule on this head. Of course, something of severity will be acknowledged as required in an ecclesiastical painting; but this may be effected by the most opposite treatment. Let any one, for instance, set side by side some of Albert Durer's woodengravings and the designs of Flaxman. In the former, (as in the German and Italian painters who preceded A. Durer), the folds are numerous, strongly marked, and angular. In Flaxman's figures the drapery is defined by very few bold but undulating strokes; yet in both of these there is a common element of severity. The same fact is displayed by a comparison of early ecclesiastical paintings with classical sculpture; yet, the study of the latter was greatly cultivated by the early painters, and their choice of a different method to produce somewhat the same effect is as difficult to be traced to a motive as it certainly commends itself in the result. One point in which the experience of the artist will be brought to bear upon this question will be, the distribution of light and shade. The sharp, small, frequent folds of ancient drapery would tend to scattered and unvaried light. How far this would be an evil in a transparent material we are not prepared to say.

The demand for memorial windows (happily an increasing one) suggests some difficulties which the glass-painter has to overcome peculiarly in this case. He will be expected to introduce at least some characteristic symbol of the person commemorated; and he ought to be well acquainted with all the ancient methods of accomplishing this by monograms, rebuses, merchants' marks, badges of trades and professions, patron saints, &c. But it is not improbable that he will also have occasion to pourtray the person of the deceased, and, perhaps, that of the donor of the window. In this case an immediate difficulty presents itself in the unsightliness of modern costume. It is true that the difficulty is not peculiar to this branch of art. It has evidently been the enigma of sculptors, painters, and artists in general for centuries past, that is, ever since the revival of pagan art in England. Hence it is that, whereas our statesmen

and generals have invariably argued or fought their way to distinction in swallow-tailed coats and trousers, their friends commonly consider them best commemorated in a bare neck, flowing toga, and sandals. Half of our metropolitan public statues, if they were gifted with a little more of the spirit and accuracy of classical sculpture, would seem likely to delude future generations into the belief that their originals were among the adventurers who came over, not, like our old English gentry, with William the Conqueror, but, somewhat earlier, with Julius Cæsar. And yet in the only case in which a conventional dress could be adopted with full propriety, that of ecclesiastics, to whom belongs of right an attire more solemn and picturesque than they commonly assume, this method of solving the problem seems never to have entered into the heads of artists. Chantrey, for instance, who clothes Mr. Pitt and the Duke of Wellington, so far as he clothes them at all, in a foreign and unmeaning garb, makes exertions, not less obvious than unsuccessful, to give dignity to the real costume of Bishop Heber and other bishops whom he has transmitted to posterity, as types of what a bishop is, externally at least, in our days. The mitre and staff, and all those vestments whose symbolical propriety is as inseparable from the episcopate now as when they were its ordinary garb, seem never to have occurred to him as materials ready to his hand for the due and decent representation of his subject. In the case of secular persons, however, the painter has still to grapple with the difficulties of modern costume. We need hardly protest against the unreality of returning to a more picturesque but inappropriate and exploded dress. On the other hand the colourless and shapeless vestments in which our limbs are commonly clad form no ornamental feature in a painted window. Where royalty, nobility, any office of state, or an academical position or degree, offers a peculiar and less vulgar costume, the difficulty is comparatively small; but very often these facilities will be withheld. In this case the figure should occupy a very subordinate position in the window, so as not to challenge notice, and a devotional attitude will go far to dignify any inevitable vulgarity.

Having noticed some unfavorable points in Mr. Winston's book, we will not withhold the great praise to which some parts of it are entitled. The care with which the illustrations have been executed is very praiseworthy. Nearly all are copied from actual tracings of the originals, either reduced or precise facsimiles. The author has not commonly availed himself of the labours of others, but examined, traced, and coloured, expressly for the work in hand. Even the quality of the material is often expressed in his illustrations, as, for instance, the streaky