ld almost as shadows on the golden background brightly reflecting
the sun, must have been even more glorious than the imagery of their
interiors.

Painted books were hardly different in their style from the paintings on
the walls. Of the MSS. the Cottonian Genesis, now only a collection of
charred fragments, was an early example. The great _Natural History_ of
Dioscorides of Vienna (c. 500) and the Joshua Roll of the Vatican, which
have both been lately published in perfect facsimile, are magnificent
works. In the former the plants are drawn with an accuracy of observation
which was to disappear for a thousand years. The latter shows a series of
drawings delicately tinted in pinks and blues. Many of the compositions
contain classical survivals, like personified rivers.

In some of the miniatures of the later school of the art the classical
revival of the 10th century was especially marked. Still later others show
a very definite Persian influence in their ornamentation, where intricate
arabesques almost of the style of eastern rugs are found.

_The Plastic Art._--If painting under the new conditions entered on a fresh
course of power and conquest, if it set itself successfully to provide an
imagery for new and intense thought, sculpture, on the other hand, seems to
have withered away as it became removed from the classic stock. Already in
the pre-Constantinian epoch of classical art sculpture had become strangely
dry and powerless, and as time went on the traditions of modelling appear
to have been forgotten. Two points of recent criticism may be mentioned
here. It has been shown that the porphyry images of warriors at the
southwest angle of St Mark's, Venice, are of Egyptian origin and are of
late classical tradition. The celebrated bronze St Peter at Rome is now
assigned to the 13th century. Not only did statue-making become nearly a
lost art, but architectural carvings ceased to be seen as _modelled form_,
and a new system of relief came into use. Ornament, instead of being
gathered up into forcible projections relieved against retiring planes, and
instead of having its surfaces modulated all over with delicate gradations
of shade, was spread over a given space in an even fretwork. Such a highly
developed member as the capital, for instance, was thought of first as a
simple, solid form, usually more or less the shape of a bowl, and the
carving was spread out over the general surface, the background being sunk
into s