desire
for proofs of identity and verification of historical legends, which
are to be extracted from the shape of a garment, from the pattern on
the border, or the lettering on the web of which it is composed;
whence we reverently cut a fragment, and preserve it under glass.

"If studious, copie fair what time hath blurr'd,
Redeem truth from his jawes."[554]

Before closing this chapter, I would wish to observe that I have
entered into the subject of church decoration in no ritualistic
spirit; I do not treat it theologically, but as art; and if these
decorations are to be carried out at all, I feel that I am rendering a
service to those whose duty or pleasure it is to provide them, by
pointing out where they may find the principles which have been the
spring and life of mediaeval art, and the survivals which are now the
best exponents of those principles to guide us in the works of our
day.

FOOTNOTES:

[479] Figure-drawing in early Christian art was for
nearly a thousand years primitively barbarous, with
occasional exceptions. The rapid decline in Europe,
through the art of the Catacombs and St. Clemente at
Rome, and the frescoes and mosaics of Ravenna, down to
the Bayeux tapestries, is very remarkable. In those
inartistic compositions during the early Middle Ages,
the figures were drawn facing the spectator, the head
and feet in profile, differing in nothing from the
Egyptian and Assyrian modes of representation. We can
hardly account for this return to childish ways, from
which Greece and Rome had so long been emancipated,
except by supposing that they came from the imitations
of Oriental textiles, which still retained very ancient
forms; for instance, the motive of the sculptured lions
over the gate of Mycenae. We cannot say that Greek art in
Rome was quite extinct till the eighth century. About
that time there was a remarkable revival in England.

[480] Till very lately we have been entirely dependent
on the frescoes in the Catacombs and in the underground
Church of St. Clemente at Rome, and on monumental art
and illuminations, for our knowledge of the textiles of
the earliest days of Christianity. But Herr Graf'schen's
discoveries in Egypt will, when published, add greatly
to our information on this subject.

[481] The book by Parker on the "Liturgical Use" says
that only the five litur