The back-ground of blue is, however, an exception to the above remarks, and looks really very bright.

The rest of the glass has been so badly placed, especially that in the galleries, that it is impossible to give a correct judgment on work of which no one can obtain a correct view. We all know what very disappointing a thing stained glass is; how, as a general rule, what looks well in the shop is almost sure to look wretched when placed in its proper position, and vice versa. Such is the case here, and therefore the worst glass in many instances looks the best. However, there is some glass which would never look satisfactory in any position, and we are very sorry to say that there is by no means a deficiency of it in the present Exhibition. Looking at the English glass-painters as compared with the French, they may be described as certainly searching out a way for themselves, and not copying the old windows in the slavish manner the French do. Thus some of the latter exhibit glass which it is exceedingly difficult to distinguish from old, but there are all the same faults of drawing, with no end of acid stains and smudging to get the exact tone of ancient work; on the contrary, the English do try to do something better, but, alas! their draughtsmen are not artists, and the result is, what? that one of the largest orders (viz. that for the stained glass of Glasgow Cathedral) has been sent to Munich. This is very sad, for German work is very lifeless, and the style of the Munich drawing and ornament is certainly very dissonant to the severe architecture of the cathedral of St. Mungo. But the English glass painters have only themselves to blame. They will not give their pupils a proper academy education, and they will not get the rising artists to draw for them in the interim. It is very true that one or two of the exhibitors represented in the gallery are artists, e.g. Mr. Clayton, and Mr. Powell, of the firm of Hardman and Co.; but what can one man possibly do in a large firm, where he has to direct all the work as well as do the more important drawings? He never can have time for thinking, and he must sooner or later develope into a machine-a superior machine, if you will, but still a machine.

In this gallery nearly every firm is more or less represented, but they are all so well known that it is needless to point out many names. Marshall, Morris, and Co. have a very beautiful window, representing the parable of the Labourers

in the Vineyard. The grisaille portions are excellently managed, and the bottom panels are very vigorous and good. A Crucifixion, however, above, is anything but a success. Messrs. Powell exhibit a portion of the new east window at Waltham Abbey, from the designs of Mr. E. B. Jones. This window, which in its place looks exceedingly rich and jewel-like, is here simply a mass of confusion. Another design of the same artist is executed by Lavers and Barraud. Clayton and Bell and Hardman have also some fair windows; but those executed by Ballantine and Co., of Edinburgh, are rather examples of what to be avoided than of what to be followed.

A glance at the foreign exhibitors at once tells us that mediæval art has by no means taken that deep root among them that it has with us. It is very true that we hear of churches and cathedrals being restored in every direction, but we do not find that it is applied to domestic purposes as we find it in England, and as it would be more so if our architects were only artists, and could decorate a room with figures as well as design a regulation church. One would naturally expect to find, at all events, a goodly show of medieval art in the French Court, after all we read of the numerous restorations of churches, and the architectural and archæological works published in that country; but when we come to look carefully into the matter, with the exception of certain pieces of jewellery and orfévrerie, our neighbours appear to be obstinately bent upon adopting for their domestic architecture what the advocates of pagan art dignify with the title of the common style of the present day; and very common it is, being a lineal descendant of the rococo of Louis XV. One thing, however, must be acknowledged, viz., that they certainly beat us in goldsmiths' work, bronze-work, and, above all, in enamelling. M. Trioullier has a very fair copy of the chalice of Rheims; M. Poussielque Rusand has some beautiful enamels, where two or more colours are fused together in the same compartment; M. Bachelet has a bronze font designed by M. Viollet-le-Duc, beside two candlesticks, for St. Clotilde; while M. Rudolphi exhibits a large chasse covered with champlève enamels, his blues, however, not being equal to those of the other goldsmiths abovenamed. Add to this that almost all the French jewellery is beautifully executed, a good proportion of it being in what is intended to be medieval art, and the fact can scarcely be

doubted but that our neighbours are rather ahead of us in this matter.

Among other things in the French Court, the colossal statues. in lead and copper for the flèches of the Sainte Chapelle and of Notre Dame should not be forgotten. They are excellently done, having been beaten out on a cast-iron mould. They are, however, soldered together, like silver statuettes would be, and the question naturally arises, whether lead statues executed in this manner, no provision being made for the expansion and contraction of the metal, would not be liable to split under the action of the sun; for we know that the statues on the flèche at Amiens are put together by what plumbers call laps, so that a proper amount of expansion and contraction may be ensured.

If, however, the visitor wishes to see the real Middle Ages, he must visit the Japanese Court, for at the present day the arts of the Middle Ages have deserted Europe, and are only to be found in the East. Here in England we can get mediæval objects. manufactured for us with pain and difficulty, but in Egypt, Syria, and in Japan you can buy them in the bazaars. Even at Constantinople we have seen damascened work, translucid champlève, and painted enamels all placed side by side in the same shop, and all modern. But in the Japanese Court we see still rarer articles; there are cases filled with the most wonderful little groups of men and animals carved in ivory, and just as much colour and gold delicately applied as relieves the tone of the ivory. These little groups are, we believe, to hang at the end of a girdle or purse, for they have all a hole through them. Other objects of attraction are the bronzes, most marvellously cast and of different colours. And here it may be remarked that the Japanese seldom use one coloured gold in their gilding; on the contrary, whenever this metal is employed it is always done so in differently coloured alloys, or else a toning answers the same purpose: but with all this the Japanese colouring is never gaudy, and when compared with the Chinese it is much lower in tone. Among other curiosities we find a rope made of human hair, and a coat of mail, the links not riveted. In the Indian department there are also some pieces of mail, but of a most curious description, the principal links being in the form of a circle with a bar across it, whereas the connecting ones are very small, (a little more than one-eighth of an inch,) and carefully riveted. As to the

Japanese mail, one would be curious to know whether it was a coat of this description which resisted the pistol bullet in the late attempt to assassinate the Ambassador or his attachés. The ingenuity of the Japanese is still further illustrated by specimens of paper made to imitate cloth, by a numerous collection of surgical instruments, and by the egg-shell china, to say nothing of the many specimens of lacquer cabinets and other pieces of furniture. Truly the Japanese Court is the real mediæval court of the Exhibition.

The

If we turn to China we see at once the difference. Chinese likes glaring colours, although he manages to make them harmonious to a certain degree. He likes angles in his ornaments, and his monsters have no relation to nature, as Leonardo da Vinci says they should have. The enamels, however, are very fine; one vase alone must measure at least four feet in diameter: it is one of the spoils of the Summer Palace, as is also the skull, or rather the upper part of one, set in pure gold, ornamented with chased foliage; concerning which the policeman on duty will tell you that it is the skull of Confucius.

India, again, presents us with most exquisite gold filagree; and, indeed, so does Egypt: indeed, it may be observed that this mode of working the precious metals obtains in almost every country. Very often its use is confined to the lower orders, as in Norway and Sweden, but it is always beautiful, and there are always a number of patterns which have been handed down from generation to generation. Egypt and India also exhibit most beautiful stuffs woven with gold thread, some of the kinkhab of the latter country strongly reminding us, by the fineness of the work and the comparative smallness of the pattern, of those few tissues of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which have been rescued from the shrines of the saints or the sepulchres of the rich. Turkey has some few ornaments in silver filagree, but her Oriental civilization is evidently dying out. It is much to be regretted, however, that there is no Persian department, for, with the exception of the Japanese, they of all nations have most preserved the medieval feeling. When, however, we leave the Asiatic departments and enter the European, an immediate change comes over us; we have left the Middle Ages, and are in the midst of the worst rococo style. Nothing can possibly be more dreary than a walk through the rubbish GENT. MAG, VOL. CCXIII.

forming the Austrian and Zollverein departments, bad taste and perverted ingenuity culminating in a monster album offered by the city of Vienna to the city of London. The ornamental borders of natural foliage on the covers of this big book are actually in imitation of Berlin wool-work, only executed in minute tessera of leather-a material of all others which admits cutting into all sorts of curves, and staining all sorts of colours and shades. The mention of tesseræ reminds one of the very excellent life-size mosaic in the Italian (not Roman) Court. Icre the glass tesseræ all present the broken or conchoidal surfaces to the spectator, and the result is a most brilliant and sparkling effect, very different from the equally large mosaic in the Russian department, where all the surface is elaborately polished, giving the effect of a highly-glazed inferior oil painting. The authorities of Brompton would appear to have lost sight of this circumstance of getting life by means of a rough surface, for we read that the earthen tesseræ of their so-called British mosaic are to be made by machinery, and must therefore have a smooth surface. The Russian painted and gilt glass for domestic uses has a good deal of the old Byzantine spirit in it, and some of their goldsmiths' work covered with small ornaments is remarkably good, particularly the coffee and tea-pots which puzzle so sorely our modern silversmiths. Russia is also the country where niello is still most successfully practised on.

The other European countries have little interest to the mediævalist; it is true that here and there an object or two may be found after a long search, such as the drinking-horn in the Danish department, but as a general rule there is very little to notice, and that little is hardly worth the trouble of finding out. There can be but little doubt but that England is the country where the revival of the arts and architecture of the Middle Ages is, if not the most advanced, at least the most generally spread; and it is only to be hoped, should there be another Exhibition at the end of the next eleven years, that there will then be as great an advance over 1862 as the latter shews over 1851.