ore than the mere record of changes, the history of art will
allow them to apprehend it almost as the biographies of great persons
who have set their signature upon the age in which they lived.

As each of the fine arts has its own history which moves along divergent
or parallel lines in different countries and periods, and as each
development or check is bound up with the history of the country or
period and bears its impress, the interpretation of one is assisted and
enriched by the other, and both are linked together to illuminate the
truth. It is only necessary to consider the position of Christian art in
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the changes wrought by the
Renaissance, to estimate the value of some knowledge of it in giving to
children a right understanding of those times and of what they have left
to the world. Again, the inferences to be drawn from the varied
developments of Gothic architecture in France, Spain, and England are
roads indicated to what is possible to explore in later studies, both in
history and in art. And so the schools of painting studied in their
history make ready the way for closer study in after years. Pugin's
"Book of Contrasts" is an illustration full of suggestive power as to
the service which may be rendered in teaching by comparing the art of
one century with that of another, as expressive of the spirit of each
period, and a means of reading below the surface.

Without Pugin's bitterness the same method of contrast has been used
most effectively to put before children by means of lantern slides and
lectures the manner in which art renders truth according to the various
ideals and convictions of the artists. It is a lesson in itself, a
lesson in faith, in devotion, as well as in art and in the history of
man's mind, to show in succession, or even side by side, though the
shock is painful, works of art in which the Christian mysteries are
rendered in an age of faith or in one of unbelief. They can see in the
great works of Catholic art how faith exults in setting them forth, with
undoubting assurance, with a theological grasp of their bearings and
conclusions, with plenitude of conviction and devotion that has no
afterthoughts; and in contrasting with these the strained efforts to
represent the same subjects without the illumination of theology they
will learn to measure the distance downwards in art from faith to
unbelief.

The conclusions may carry them further, to