apparent imitation of natural forms "it will be found to give a conventional rendering of a much more subtle kind than is commonly met with in medieval work, and, therefore, of a higher class of art workmanship" (Colling). Among the favourite designs we especially find the hawthorn, the oak, the maple, the ivy, the potentilla, arum and mallow. We do not mention the rose, lily, vine, &c., since there is no question as to the reason of their use, nor need we repeat again what we have already said as to the thorn and arum, The oak is continually found, and very suitable it seems in this land, where it is preeminently the tree of England. Its old Druid associations had made it regarded with veneration; the illustrious savant Bauhin quotes a tradition from Goropius that it was thought to have been the Tree of Life in Paradise on account of its living to such a great age, while the holm-oak was one among several others to which the legend was attached of having furnished the Saviour's cross, but which since then has never grown a decent log for use. The Gospel oaks of the Rogation processions, beneath which stations were made, and St. Augustine's preaching beneath an oak when he landed in Thanet, may all have made the tree regarded as suitable to the Christian designer.

The maple, Dr. Prior says, was used in the sacred dramas of the Middle Ages to represent the "fig-tree" into which Zaccheus climbed on the first Palm Sunday to see our Lord pass by. The great maple has the name commonly of sycamore, although really quite a different genus to the sycamore-fig of the East. There is an Italian name Zaccheo, given to the false sycamore, which shows a similar alliance of thought. The maple or bastard sycamore has a German name Engelköpfchen baum and in Denmark of Korsbaer, which need some fuller explanation than we possess. The ivy we have already stated to be the Vulgate rendering of the "gourd" of Jonas: it bears also the name in France of L'herbe de St. Jean, as connecting it with the Beloved. Disciple, a very favourite English saint, and possibly this connection originated the use of its leaf as the badge of friendship.

The potentilla or cinquefoil, which is so beautiful in leaf and blossom, with its dark green foliage and large five-petalled orange flower, abounds in the summer months, and was called St. Martin's hand in Germany according to Ulrich, but in Spain and its neighbouring parts it is known as the Pié de Cristo or Foot of Christ, while Irish and Welsh names for it were Cuig mhear Mhuire or Blysiu'r pump, Mary's five fingers. We are not sure what species of mallow was intended, but they all seem to have been connected with St. Simeon or Simon, while those which grow with upright stems, like the marsh mallow or the vervain mallow, had the name of St. James's pilgrim-stock in all parts of Europe.

There followed upon this wonderful thirteenth century work the

i

Decorated period, as we usually call it, of the fourteenth, which, lovely as it is, seems to typify all human things in that as it attains to the perfection of beauty it shows signs of decadence. Like the leaves of a noble tree become swollen with the crimson which tells of death when some insect has impregnated them with that which poisons their life, so in the architectural leafage of this time there developed a fashion of making the surfaces excessively undulating, overlading them with protuberances in order that the artist's skill in producing effects of light and shade might be the more striking. The hand of the craftsman was so skilful that it was no longer under stern restraint of thought; the beauty of stems was lost in the importance bestowed upon the leaf, and this latter became so exaggerated in form that the natural type is often scarcely traceable. The lobes of the leaf were drawn out and deeply cut down to the rib, the upper edges were made to range in lines, marking the beginning of that squareness and uniformity which we reach in the next century. This period has left us as great a puzzle as the Early English dogtooth" ornament in what is known as the "ball-flower." It is a berry or ball, enclosed in a triple-petalled flower, in which some have seen a free rendering of the bursting pomegranate, or the anemone or lily of Scripture, while others conceive it to be but a hawk's bell. It is strangely local, for although abounding in the west of England, it is scarcely ever met with in the eastern counties. The exuberant vegetation they now employed is enriched with every kind of pleasing detail-birds and animals are intermingled to open out and give life to the leafage; the hawthorn will have its blossom and its haws, the rose its buds, the ivy its berries, the oak its galls and acorns. For the angular decoration of pinnacles and spires an ornament very like the Cypripedium calceolus, Our Lady's slipper, or the iris, is employed, and the bryony and its berries, and the hazel with its nuts, are frequent amidst the herbage of previous mention.

The bryonies, both black and white, are charmingly employed as a moulding in Rouen Cathedral; beneath a bracket at Hawton Church, Notts; in a capital at Guisborough, York, and in numerous other places; its beautifully cut leaves covering the bushes in tawny festoons in autumn, and its decorative red fruit, make it eminently attractive to the artist's eye. Moreover, throughout Europe it bears the name of Our Lady's vine, or sigil, and it may be seen growing around her home at Nazareth, as well as about

Jerusalem.

The hazel, whose catkins are sometimes called "palm "-as about Berwick they term its fruit "palm-nuts"-has many a claim to be among the trees which decorate the sanctuary. Out of its wood were made those divining rods called "Moses'" or "Aaron's Rod," " Ja

staff," &c., used to indicate the presence of minerals, water, and so forth. In Rabbinical lore it was the rod given to Adam when banished from Eden wherewith he was to gain anything he needed. In Christian legend it gained its mysterious virtue from sheltering the Blessed Virgin on her way to visit St. Elizabeth and the Holy Family on their flight into Egypt, and hence was used to bind the Christmas faggot together. It is thought that pilgrims' staves were made of hazel, since several of them have been found in Hereford Cathedral and elsewhere, as if deposited upon the palmer's return. The nuts are called St. Lambert's nuts in German and Scandinavian folklore, although a Norman dedication seems to have originated our word Filbert," and St. Phillibert's Day comes a month earlier.*

It was during the Decorated period that we have those lovely "Jesse trees," illustrating the genealogy of our Lord from the "root of Jesse." They are usually vines which spring from the loins of the patriarchs, bearing for blossom certain of the Kings of Judah who showed types of our Lord. Instances in glass and in fresco are very frequent, while at Dorchester, Oxon., there is one which forms in stone a rich and glorious setting for a window, and at Christ Church, Hants, another for the high altar's reredos.

Rose-windows, too, now attained their greatest richness. They are also called Mary-gold windows, the spoke-like rays of one kind resembling the latter flower, while the intricate interlacing of the more elaborate designs often are like the edging of the petals of the double rose. They were developments from the oculus or circular hole with which the tympana of the basilicas were pierced and which were employed commonly in Norman eleventh century work, and the meaning they now seem to convey was not their primary intention; but it is quite possible, as is so frequently the case, that when once the symbol was attained and its appropriateness recognised, it became consecrated to all time by the consent of christened hearts. It would seem that, having lighted upon the sweet form and influenced by the mystic meaning which rose and Mary-gold embodied, the Christian sculptor lavished upon this form of window the gold and frankincense and myrrh of his labour, his love, and his genius, making them the chefs d'œuvre of all his endeavour, and leaving them to gladden us for all time in such ideal visions as are afforded us by those at Rheims, Chartres, and Amiens.

With the close of the fourteenth century and the advent of Perpendicularity, the canker-worm has done its work, simplicity gives way to pride, and nature and grace to artifice. Science and luxury breathe their hardening breaths upon the artist, technicality is the aim of the

sixteen nuts of St.

* In 1324 "Wm. de la Zouche sent for the royal table Phillibert" to Edward II. when visiting Battle Abbey, which looks as if they were great rarities, although another presents a basket of them ("Nuces de Sto. Phileberto "— Sussex Archæol. Collect. vi. 46, 49). .

architect, masonic excellence and constructive skill absorb all the powers of his mind, self-consciousness banishes freedom, the desire to show how clever they can be deadens the soul, and the joy and freshness of the meadow and the exuberant delight in the woodland, which were the inspiration of their noble predecessors, give way to the hardness which tells of the joylessness of the toiler. Geometrical straightness and squareness set in, liberty goes, restraint and coerced uniformity prevail. We might easily trace the signs in architecture of the decay of Christianity and the restoration of pagan thought which ensued, but such is not the object we have in view; we began with the hope of attracting botanists and those who care for flowers to the symbolic use made of their pleasing study by the masons of the best periods of Gothic work, and we would conclude with the effort to attract true architects to botany and historic symbolism.

There is so much earnest seeking after truth amongst the architects of to-day, that they will not consider it presumption if a layman state considerations which to him appear deductions from a contemplation of the past. It is hard to see why the architecture of our time should be deemed worthy of the rank of an art, for what artists are allowed to copy the work of other brains? Would not poets and painters be dubbed impostors if they did so? Think what a chorus of condemnation greets a work in literature which is sent forth as original, and which is found to be composed of unacknowledged filchings from another's hard toil. And yet we not only tolerate but applaud a work in stone which is made up of piecing together fragments from a notebook. Beyond all the arts architecture ranks when it is true; it is the most divine of all; none other shows such a shadow of the Creator in His creature man. But how few men show forth any sign even of their masculinity? The secret of the perfection and progress in past ages lay, no doubt, in the fact that all were working in one style, not putting up imitations of a past one; if they had been as divided as our modern craftsmen are, we never should have witnessed such results as they have left us. Is there not to us an example for regenerating the art of our day in the lesson read us by those men in the Isle of France in the twelfth century, who retired into the green woods and fields, like the prophets of old into the wilderness, and wooed from nature the secret inspiration which she alone can give? That soft low voice will not come to those who do not wait for it, nor will it be heard amidst the weltering garboil of our cities; but to reverent hearts, in the quiet places of this land where still she dwells, the great mother is waiting for her worshippers, waiting with her hands full of undreamt-of treasure, to lavish in gracious guerdon upon those who seek her. She will lead them by ways of pleasantness to her school of design, and opening to them her volumes on "Parallels " and "Styles," will show what countless

new combinations and motives there are drawn with unerring proportion of figure and unsurpassable beauty in the structure of her forests and in the moulding of her flowers; she will demonstrate her geometrical problems worked out without one sign of stiffness or formality, and from such contemplation, as sure as day follows night, suddenly it may be, the flash will come which will illuminate the mind of some earnest suppliant at her shrine, rewarding all the long groping in dark ways, and once again we shall learn the joyousness of some new revelation in design like that which broke upon the thirteenth century.

But to those who have no such ambition as to be the pioneers in this nobler quest after a new style, there remains the duty of making the development in other respects. We hear men decry the naturalism of the foliage sculpture of one period and the conventionality of another, and Mr. Ruskin has said that the "exact degree in which imitation should be attempted under given circumstances is one of the most subtle and difficult in the whole range of criticism. We have no intention to rush in where that great art-student himself has feared to tread, but it seems to us that our aim to-day, with such magnificent instruction by examples before us, should be to carry on the work from the point before the relapse of the Later Decorated times. All agree that to lose nature in conventional form is destructive of truth in teaching and meaning; natural form, unrestrained and unmodified, is not ornamentation, any more than mere writing is literature, or mere verse poetry, and unless language, like leafage, be brought "under control," it can lay no claim to being artistic. Practical experience probably alone can solve the question whether greater closeness to nature may be possible than in the transition from Early English while obtaining greater architectural fitness.

May we not hope, however, that a school will arise both in architecture and painting in which we may have, at least in sacred art, not only the perfection of execution, but also a historic lesson in tradition, one which will satisfy not only in the superficial aspects of utility, form, and colour, but also in the deeper quality of intellectuality? How we admire, with never-wearying delight, the earnest work of an artist who has carefully thought out and elaborated every detail of his design, one to whom not only the main subject of his task has been a care, but who has gathered from the storehouse of the sister art of literature illustration for the enforcement of the tale he tells. There is an ever-recurrent freshness in the work of such men; the only condition necessary is that in this elaboration imagination be employed to adorn facts not fancies, so that the light of genius may re-set old truths. The highest form of art is "that which conveys the most truths," not only in form, but also in meaning, and Gothic art "aims at making art expressive instead of curious, valuable