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of certain glorious characteristics of the Christian faith and people, by which it was unconsciously developed.

Struck by its peculiar character, Coleridge calls a Gothic church "the petrifaction of our religion," and the same possessor of many gifts compares Pagan and Gothic architecture in such terms as these: "The Greek art is beautiful. When I enter a Greek church, my eye is charmed, and my mind elated: I feel exalted and proud that I am a man. But the Gothic art is sublime. On entering a cathedral, I am filled with devotion and with awe; I am lost to the actualities that surround me, and my whole being expands into the infinite; earth and air, nature and art, all swell up into eternity, and the only sensible impression left is, that I am nothing."*

That character which has called forth such testimonies may well be admitted now among the recognized symbolisms of church architecture and to descend to particular features, the taper spire "that points to heaven," cannot be without its recognized meaning, since it has inspired Wordsworth to say that spires "point as with silent finger to the sky and stars, and sometimes, when they reflect the brazen light of a rich, though rainy sunset, appear like a pyramid of flame burning heavenward," and to sing,

"Watching, with upturned eye, the tall tower grow,

And mount, at every step, with living wiles
Instinct to rouse the heart and lead the will,
By a bright ladder to the world above."

Such developements of the verticality of Gothic art, are now no longer without a soul of symbolical meaning: they have shot forth into a holy life, like the budding rod of Aaron, which was ever after religiously preserved in the ark of the Covenant, as a testimony.

BRITISH COSTUME.

Costume in England: a History of Dress from the Earliest Period till the close of the Eighteenth Century. By F. W. FAIRHOLT, F.S.A. London: Chapman and Hall. 1846.

IT

It may be worth while, perhaps, to investigate the various causes which combine to render illustrated books of costume so fascinating to readers and so profitable to publishers. That they are such, or at least that the subject of dress in bygone times is one of great and undying interest, needs no proof. Many things attest it. The prominence which monumental effigies have taken among archæological studies, the unquenchable ardour of amateurs in making rubbings of brasses, nay, the attractiveness of Eton Montem or a fancy ball, furnish convincing proofs. The results of the taste * Literary remains of S. T. Coleridge, i. 71.

are such, in most cases, as to make it a subject of congratulation. We are indebted to it for the matchless monumental delineations of Stothard, for a portion of the results of Strutt's life of labour, and for many an exhibition connected with the pursuit, from the Armoury in the Tower down to Madame Tussaud's heterogeneous "happy family" of effigies. At least we do not believe that the lastmentioned spirited proprietor would have extended the "jus imaginum" to so large a class, did not the brilliant variety of costume furnish an attraction which would not belong to a collection of mere phrenological or physiognomical specimens.

The fact thus assumed then might, if we chose, lead us into a very wide field of inquiry. We might, for instance, examine how far the study of dress is a legitimate one in a moral and Christian point of view; to what precise extent it is right to pay attention to personal appearance. But as the profitableness of such inquiries to the reader, and our own fitness to discuss them, are both more than questionable, we shall confine ourselves within a much narrower range. A brief examination of the sources of the taste may lead to some useful consideration of the practical purposes to which it may be turned, and beyond this our province will not extend. A large portion of the purchasers and readers of works on costume have in view, we imagine, no practical end at all. The sumptuous and beautiful publications of Shaw, Stothard, or Fairholt are not very easily surpassed even where the object is merely a pictorial ornament for the drawing-room table. Accordingly they may be found associated with the expiring Annuals, with the Book of Beauty or the Forget-me-not; gradually, indeed, supplanting them, for the fashion in such things has lately set in a mediæval direction, but still occupying the same unpractical position. Or perhaps the quaintness of some antique costumes may simply serve to furnish amusement, and Mr. Fairholt must pocket the affront if some readers, of more wealth than refinement, hesitate in their choice between his "Costume of England" and the Comic Annual.

The existence of such a class as this must, as we have said, be numbered amongst the sources of the popularity of works on costume; however humiliating, the fact must be admitted by both author and public. But it is not for such that the works are written. No author could submit to the toil of compiling from scattered and recondite sources, such a work, for instance, as that at the head of this article, without hoping to gratify a higher curiosity and serve a nobler end. We will suppose this to be either the edification (much needed) of historical painters, or the improvement of pictorial adornment in buildings, or, it may be, the rectifying of ecclesiastical or official costumes, purporting to depend on ancient practice. It is the first of these objects which is professed by Mr. Fairholt, as we shall see from a few sentences of his Preface. "A

knowledge of costume," he says, "is in some degree inseparable from a right knowledge of history. We can scarcely read its events without in some degree picturing, 'in the mind's eye,' the appearance of the actors: while correct information on this point has become an acknowledged essential to the historical painter. As no historian could venture to give wrong dates designedly, so no painter should falsify history by delineating the characters on his canvass, in habits not known until many years after their death; or holding implements that were not at the time invented. Whatever talent may be displayed in the drawing, grouping, and colouring of such pictures, they are but 'painted lies.”” On this head we shall not refuse to share in Mr. Fairholt's indignation, with a reservation, however, in favour of some conventional forms, and such deviations from fact as are rendered legitimate by the end in view. And we will first discuss Mr. Fairholt's proper object, though the services which a knowledge of costume renders to painting as an architectural accessory, and to the solemnity of ecclesiastical and state vestments, hardly stand second in our judgment, and must find their place in the discussion. It is these objects, be it remembered, which have given birth to Pugin's "Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament," the only strictly practical book of the kind, to the translation of Cennino Cennini, and, last not least, to M. Didron's Iconographie Chrétienne.

The consideration of costume as an element in historical painting, and of the errors of a past age, forces on our attention some singular inconsistencies connected with the practice of conventional painting. It is remarkable that the very persons who scoff at the conventionalities so frequent in the mystic designs of the middle ages, have been the most presumptuous in their deviations from truth and reality. The only difference between them and the most mystical of monkish painters has been, that the moderns forsook reality just when there was no reason or excuse for so doing, and found fault with conventionalities only when their use served some high and holy purpose. Still the practice of the last century was sufficient to show that conventional representations correspond to some principle in nature or art. There seems to be a yearning after something of the kind, a claim on the part of the imagination for room to play, and when the legitimate way of gratifying these is missed, they are gratified none the less, but illegitimately. Thus, in the midst of their outcry against mediæval anachronisms and offences against nature or probability, our fathers were acting Coriolanus in bag-wigs and laced cravats, high heels and hoops, and were disguising their own statesmen and soldiers in the costume of classic Greece or Rome. However, it is enough to have slightly remarked on this. These tasteless and unmeaning departures from truth belong rather to a past age; and as Mr. Fairholt observes, "the reign of imaginary costume is

rapidly reaching its close." And our own appreciation of conventional painting need not, as we have said, deter us from joining in his anathema against historical painters who will not avail themselves of the opportunities now afforded of verifying the costumes of their subjects. Historical painting, strictly so called, is, of course, a matter of fact, not imagination; its office is to represent, not to suggest; and here unquestionably works like the one before us, may serve a highly practical purpose. Either ignorance or carelessness, of no inconsiderable amount, have led most of our modern designers into flagrant errors. This is perhaps less to be noticed in the case of professed historical painters, a sufficiently small class, by the way, if we number them by those who reach distinction, than in the crowd of clever and prolific artists whose productions in illustrated books form so considerable a branch of modern art. These artists do not deliberately or intentionally clothe their figures in the garb of a different period, but in these days of slow conception and rapid execution they have no time to study proprieties or refine details, and consequently, by mere accident, there will often be a variation of a century or two between the date of their subject and the costume adopted. Thus, with them, a medieval subject is pronounced correct enough if there is no article in the attire of the figures which may not be found among the disjecta membra of medieval costumes ranging, it may be, from the Saxons to the Stuarts. So long as their warriors

are

"Sheathed in steel,

With belted sword, and spur on heel;"

So long as their "Old English Gentleman" does not lack his "doublet and trunk-hose," they judge it impertinent to carry their researches more closely into the secrets of mediæval wardrobes. These gentlemen Mr. Fairholt has undertaken to chastise and reform.

We will proceed to another part of our subject, the service of a knowledge of costume in architectural decoration. Now, whether the species of decoration be statuary, fresco, glass-painting, embroidery, enamel, paving, or engraving, the study of costume is indeed essential to the artist, but not, we imagine, the study of such books as the one we are considering. His lore must be drawn from tradition rather than from history, his art has a language of its own, and in that language it must be expressed. By long conventional usage, to speak of nothing more, certain forms have come to stand for certain things, altogether independently of historical association, and common knowledge, if it sets aside instead of aiding these, strikes one with the repulsiveness of vulgar profanity. Who would thank a modern artist for his assiduity in exploring forgotten features of Oriental costume, that he might clothe in a new garb the familiar forms of the Three Kings? Who would

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commend his sharp-sightedness who criticises mediæval details in the respectful approaches of a mediæval painter to a subject of remote Bible History? Who would not rather be Fiesole than Rubens? The one seems invited, as a recompense for his veneration, to see in his subjects what is unintelligible to vulgar eyes; the other tries in vain to defeat by mechanical and anatomical skill, the chilling power of that "noli me tangere" with which pure things turn away from him who has courted impure. To the architectural painter, especially if the decoration of churches be his province, M. Didron's work is a store-house of treasures; and while he relies on this and such practical works as Mr. Pugin's for technical details, it should be no affront to his power of original design to send him for ideas to the early Italian masters-Giotto, Perugino, and Fiesole; or even to the modern German school, the productions of Steinle at Cologne, or of Deger at Dusseldorf. It will be seen that in what we have hitherto said, we are supposing the province of this branch of art to lie chiefly in the representation of very remote subjects, either the ideal and unseen, or such as obscure antiquity, and a reverence distinct from this, lead us to clothe in conventional rather than historical costume. But it must not be forgotten, that there are occasional demands for delineations of the recently past or even the present. Thus, a memorial-window may require portraits of the person or persons commemorated, recently, we may suppose, deceased, and also of the donor or donors still living. In this case, if we grant, what some perhaps will not, that such persons are to be represented at all, it becomes a question whether they are to appear in their own proper costume, that of the day, and so be unsightly, or in a dress borrowed and foreign to them, and so be unreal and absurd. In some cases, it is true, this embarrassing alternative is avoided, where, for instance, the person represented holds some official post, of which the proper costume is sufficient to disguise the ugliness of the common garb of the age. Such is the good fortune of Priests, judges, aldermen, heralds, graduates, &c., &c., but there must be a large class left, who, if they wear their proper attire, will rather disfigure than adorn the building with their shapeless and colourless effigies. The most sturdy champion of reality cannot deny, and it must be a dexterous artist to overcome the difficulty. That it may be done in some degree by tact and skill in arrangement is true. For instance, a memorial-window of exquisite feeling and beauty in S. Mary's Church, Oxford, contains figures of the deceased, an undergraduate member of the University, and of his parents-the donors, all clad with the most marvellous precision, in the ordinary domestic dress of the day, the undergraduate, of course, having his academic dress in addition. The deceased and his parents occupy different compartments of the window, all in a kneeling posture, the former at a

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