little appreciation of pure-form, beyond geometrical patterns; but they possess the happy instinct of harmonizing colors. Their decoration is of a very primitive kind. The Chinese are totally unimaginative; and their ornamentation is a very faithful expression of the nature of this peculiar people-oddness.

XV. CELTIC ORNAMENT.

The Celts-the early inhabitants of the British Isles-had a style of ornamentation peculiarly their own, and singularly at variance with any thing that can be found in any other part of the world. Celtic ornament was doubtless of independent origin, but it every where bears the impress received by the early introduction of Christianity into the islands.

The chief peculiarities of Celtic ornament consist, first, in the entire absence of foliage or other vegetable ornament; and, secondly, in the extreme intricacy and excessive minuteness and elaboration of the various patterns, mostly geometrical, consisting of interlaced ribbon-work; diagonal, straight, or spiral lines; and strange, monstrous animals or birds, with their tail-feathers, top-knots, and tongues extended into long interlacing ribbons, which were intertwined in almost endless forms, and in the most fantastic manner. Celtic manuscripts of the Gospels were often ornamented with a great profusion of these intricate designs.

What is called the Celtic ornamentation was practiced throughout Great Britain and Ireland from the fourth or fifth to the tenth or eleventh centuries. There was a later Anglo-Saxon ornamentation, equally elaborate, employed in the decoration of manuscripts of the Gospels and other holy writings; but here leaves, stems, birds, etc., were introduced, and interwoven with gold bars, circles, squares, lozenges, quarterfoils, etc.

XVI. MEDIEVAL OR GOTHIC ORNAMENT.

The high-pitched gable and the pointed arch, with a consequent slender proportion of towers, columns, and capitals, are the leading characteristics of medieval or Gothic archi

tecture, which came into general use in Europe in the thirteenth century. Medieval Gothic art, like the Egyptian, was symbolic, deriving its types from the prevailing religious ideas of the period. Thus the churches and the cathedrals of the Middle Ages were built in the form of a cross-the sign and symbol of the Christian faith. The numbers three, five, and seven, denoting the Trinity, the five traditional wounds of the Saviour, and the seven Sacraments, were preserved as emblematical in the nave and two aisles, in the trefoiled arches and windows, in the foils of the tracery, and in the seven leaflets of the sculptured foliage; while the narrowpointed arches, and the numerous finger-like pinnacles, rising above the gloom of the dimly lighted place of worship, symbolized the faith which pointed the soul upward from the trials of earth to the happy homes of the redeemed. The transition from the Romanesque (later Roman) or rounded style to the pointed is easily traced in the numerous buildings in which the two styles are intermingled; but the passage from Romanesque ornament to Gothic is not so clear. In the latter, new combinations of ornaments and tracery suddenly arise. The piercings for windows become clustered in groups, soon to be moulded into a network of enveloping tracery; the acanthus leaf disappears; in the capitals of columns of pure Gothic style, the ornament arises directly from the shaft, which, above the necking, is split into a series of stems, each terminating in a conventional flower-the whole being quite analogous to the Egyptian mode of decorating the capital.

In the interior of the early Gothic buildings every moulding had its color best adapted to develop its form; and from the floor to the roof not an inch of space but had its appropriate ornament, the whole producing an effect grand almost beyond description. But so suddenly did this profuse style of ornament attain its perfection, that it almost immediately began to decline. What is called ornamental illumination, that is, the decoration of writing by means of colors, and, especially, the decoration of the initial letters to pages of manuscript, attained a high degree of perfection under the influence of the Gothic style.

While Gothic ornamentation retained its conventional character, there was a boundless field for development: when it became a mere imitation of natural objects, and represented stems, flowers, insects, etc., true to life, all ideality fled, and there could be no further progress in the art.

XVII. RENAISSANCE ORNAMENT.

The fact that the soil of Italy was so covered with the remains of Roman greatness that it was impossible for the Italians to forget them, however they might neglect the lessons they were calculated to teach, was probably the reason why Gothic art took but little root in Italy, where it was ever regarded as of barbarian origin. When, in the fifteenth century, classical learning revived in Italy, and the art of printing disseminated its treasures, a taste for classic art revived also; and the style of ornamentation to which it gave rise, formed upon classic models, is called Renaissance ornament; and the period of its glory the Restoration, or Renaissance period.

A combination of architecture and decorative sculpture was a distinguishing feature of the Renaissance style. Figures, foliage, and conventional ornaments were so happily blended with mouldings, and other structural forms, as to convey the idea that the whole sprung to life in one perfect form in the mind of the artist by whom the work was executed. To Raphael (early in the sixteenth century), both sculptor and painter, we owe the most splendid specimens of the Arabesque style, which he dignified, and left with nothing more to be desired. (See Arabian Ornament.) Arabesques lose their character when applied to large objects; neither are they appropriate where gravity of style is required.

All the great painters of Italy were ornamental sculptors also. Their sculptured ornaments were ingeniously arranged on different planes, instead of on one uniform flat surface, so as best to show the diversities of light and shade. Much of the splendid painting done by the Italian masters, from Giotto to Raphael—from the year 1290 to 1520—was mural decoration, now generally called fresco. In true fresco,

the artist incorporated his colors with the plaster before it was dry, by which the colors became as permanent as the wall itself. This kind of painting was so clear and transparent, and reflected the light so well, as to be peculiarly suited to the interior of dimly lighted buildings; and it is said that the eye which has been accustomed to look upon it can scarcely be reconciled to oil pictures. It is a wellknown saying of Michael Angelo, that fresco is fit for men, oil painting for women, and the luxurious and idle.

XVIII. ELIZABETHAN ORNAMENT.

The revival of art in Italy soon spread over France and Germany, and about the year 1520 extended into England, where it soon triumphed over the late Gothic style. The true Elizabethan period of art embraced only about a century. It is simply a modification of foreign models, and has little claim to originality.

The characteristics of Elizabethan ornament may be described as consisting chiefly of a grotesque and complicated variety of pierced scroll-work, with curled edges; interlaced bands, sometimes on a geometrical pattern, but generally flowing and capricious; curved and broken outlines; festoons, fruit, and drapery, interspersed with roughly executed figures of human beings; grotesque monsters and animals, with here and there large and flowing designs of natural branch and leaf ornament; rustic ball and diamond work; paneled compartments, often filled with foliage, or coats of arms, etc., etc. : the whole founded on exaggerated models of the early Renaissance school. By the middle of the seventeenth century the more marked characteristics of the Elizabethan style had completely died out.

MODERN ORNAMENTAL ART.

There is, no doubt, a very decided tendency in modern ornamental art to copy natural forms as faithfully as possible for all decorative purposes. We see this, alike, in our floral carpets, floral wall-papers, floral curtains, and in the

floral carvings of our structures of wood, stone, and iron. Yet when perfection shall have been attained in this mode of ornamentation—if it has not been already—and which is but the mere copying of nature, and devoid of all originality of design, how little has the artist accomplished in the development and application of art principles, and what further can he attain to?

But when, on the contrary, the progress of true art shall be acknowledged to lie in the direction of idealizing the forms of nature-giving to them a conventional representation while adhering to the principles of natural growth, in the manner in which art grew up among the Egyptians and the Greeks-the artist will be left free to follow the bent of his genius, and to select from, and conventionally adopt, whatever natural forms he may find best suited to his purposes. Then there may be advance in art beyond the copying and intermingling of those olden styles, which now excite in us but little sympathy; but until then we shall probably rest content in the idea that all available modes and forms have been used by those who preceded us, and that there are no untrodden domains of art left for us to explore.