esent, we may meet with instances of bad taste; for vulgarity belongs
to no age or station, and may be visible in the costly decoration of a
rich mansion, whose owner is uneducated in art, and insists on having
only what he comprehends.

The decadence of the better-class Renaissance design was a natural
consequence of the licence its features might assume, and in the
progress of the sixteenth century it became thoroughly vitiated. The
troubles which distracted Europe in the later part of that century, and
which led to the devastating wars and revolutions of the earlier part of
the following one, completed the debasement of art-workmanship. Louis
XIV. had the glory, such as it was, of its resuscitation; but his taste
was merely that of an over-wealthy display, which not unfrequently
lapses into positive vulgarisms. The style known distinctively by the
name of this monarch--with all its heterogeneous elements, its scrolls
of the most obtrusive form, fixed to ornament having no proper cohesion,
and overlaid with festoons of flowers and fruit--is more remarkable for
the oppressive ostentation which was the characteristic of the monarch
and his age, than for good taste or real elegance. What a very little
exaggeration could make of this style may be seen in the productions of
the era of his successor, and which the Italians stigmatised by the term
_rococo_.

[Illustration: Fig. 40.]

[Illustration: Fig. 41.]

The examples of Renaissance given in our pages exhibit a fair average of
its applicability. The pendent ornament (Fig. 40) includes details
adopted by jewellers. The shield, with the sacred monogram (Fig. 41), is
such as appeared in wood-panelling. The handle (Fig. 42) exhibits as
much freedom of design as the style could admit; it is quaint and
peculiar, but not without elegance in the mode of bringing the classic
dolphin within the scope of the composition.

[Illustration: Fig. 42.]

The distinctive features of the style may be more readily comprehended
by contrasting it with a few specimens of the so-called "Gothic style,"
a style which possesses the strongest original features, and one which
will yield to none in peculiar beauty and applicability. We give two
examples--the one German, the other French; they are both wood panel,
filled with tracery which bears the distinctive characteristics of the
two schools. The German (Fig. 43) is remarkable for the sudden
termination of its flowing lines, which occasional