hem. At the beginning of the thirteenth
century, the French miniature was influenced in no small degree, both
in technique and in colour, by glass painting. Towards the end of the
century this influence yielded to the prevailing enthusiasm for
architecture and sculpture, and in Bibles and Psalters alike there
appear scenes with figures as in bas-relief, with architectural
backgrounds and decorative details. The same spirit that evolved
tender foliage out of the hard stone of cathedral and church evolved
also the delicate hawthorn-leaf enriching the initial letter of the
MS. It mattered little whether the material worked on was stone or
parchment. Each was but a means for giving expression to a newly
discovered scheme of beauty--the beauty of Nature. In the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries a renewed impetus had been given to the arts
of writing and illumination. This was partly because a demand had
arisen for a secular literature to supersede the tiresome and
time-worn recitations of minstrels, and partly because, in the
fourteenth century, Books of Hours, instead of the Psalter alone as
had hitherto been customary, came into general use in private
devotion. This created a fresh want, and at the same time supplied a
number of new subjects in which the artist could reveal his skill.
Arras was one of the chief centres of this new movement, a movement
which Mahaut continued and stimulated. She employed artists to
illuminate both sacred and secular works for her own use as well as
for gifts--gifts counted beyond compare and beside which even precious
stones were deemed of less worth. To Mahaut this desire for beauty was
a very lode-star. To glance at a list of the gold- and silver-smiths'
work--the jewelled and enamelled chaplets of gold, the jewelled
girdles, and buckles, and braids for the hair, and the cups, some of
silver with crystal covers or wrought with enamel and precious stones,
and others of jasper mounted with silver work--reads like a fantasy of
hidden treasure in some fairy tale. Even her chess-boards--and she was
a devotee of the game--were of silver or ivory, and one, we read, was
of jasper and chalcedony mounted with silver and gems, the chess-men
being of jasper and crystal.

For the younger folk about her there was tennis, and also games of
hazard with forfeits of girdles and coifs to the ladies. In the Castle
garden were certain mechanical contrivances which, by their sudden and
unexpected action, wer