pure line swerved, ever more and more influenced by
the Orient, for Rome, always successful in war, had established
colonies in the East. Soon Byzantine art reached Rome, bringing its
arabesques and geometrical designs, its warm, glowing colours, soft
cushions, gorgeous hangings, embroideries, and rich carpets. In fact
all the glowing luxury that the _new_ Roman craved.

The effect of this _mesalliance_ upon all Art, including interior
decoration, was to cause its immediate decline. Elaboration and
_banal_ designs, too much splendour of gold and silver and ivory
inlaid with gold, resulted in a decadent art which reflected a
decadent race and Rome fell! Not all at once; it took five hundred
years for the neighbouring races to crush her power, but continuous
hectoring did it, in 476 A.D. Then began the Dark Ages merging into
the Middle Ages (fifth to fifteenth centuries).

Dark they were, but what picturesque and productive darkness! Rome
fell, but the Carlovingian family arose, and with it the great nations
of Western Europe, to give us, especially in France, another supreme
flowering of interior decoration. Britain was torn from the grasp of
Rome by the Saxons, Danes and Normans, and as a result the great
Anglo-Saxon race was born to create art periods. Mahomet appeared and
scored as an epoch-maker, recording a remarkable life and a spiritual
cycle. The Moors conquered Spain, but in so doing enriched her arts a
thousandfold, leaving the Alhambra as a beacon-light through the ages.
Finally the crusades united all warring races against the infidels.
Blood was shed, but at the same time routes were opened up, by which
the arts, as well as the commerce, of the Orient, reached Europe. And
so the Byzantine continued to contend with Gothic art--that art which
preceded from the Christian Church and stretched like a canopy over
Western Europe, all through the Middle Ages. It was in the churches
and monasteries that Christian art, driven from pillar to post by
wars, was obliged to take refuge, and there produced that marvellous
development known as the Gothic style,--of the Church, for the Church,
by the Church, perfected in countless Gothic cathedrals,--crystallised
glorias lifting their manifold spires to heaven,--ethereal monuments
of an intrepid Faith which gave material form to its adoration, its
fasting and prayer, in an unrivalled art.

There is one early Gothic chair which has come down to us,
Charlemagne's, made of gi