Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/480

 354 NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. tions, and that prior to the eleventh centiiry the figure was always clothed. During the darkest period of the Church's history, when ignorance and irreverence went hand in hand, the custom of representing the naked figure of Christ on the cross was first introduced ; such images were then rapidly multiplied, and took a fast hold on the imagination of the people. Chapter 8, On the Images of Christ, and on the different forms of the cross used at different periods, is valuahle and interesting ; we could have wished that the plates which illustrate it had heen better executed and less crowded. Chapter 26, On the Virtues and Vices, and the various modes of representing them, is highly useful ; the same may be said of nearly the whole book. The illustrations are chiefly from examples in the south and middle of France, selected because less generally known than those of the north, the district to which illustrated works have hitherto been principally confined. The author states that, although led to take an interest in the subject, and instructed in its leading principles by the works of M. Didron and others, his own work is the immediate result of an archaeological tour in the south of France, in company with the bishop of Nevers, and expresses warmly his obligations to M. Bourasse. " His object was to present a complete manual of the subject, to remove the difficulties and facilitate the study. His plan was, in studying the ancient churches, to endeavour to penetrate the thoughts of faith which guided the artists in ornamenting them, to consider them as a great book continually open to the eyes of the learned and the ignorant. This book originally presented to all clear and precise notions of the truths they were to believe, the duties they had to fulfil, and the rewards promised them : and although time and revolu- tions have torn the precious pages of this book, there remains enough for us to make it the subject of our meditations. We thus find all that can interest us the most ; our origin, the nature of our souls, our end, the' means of arriving at that end, the sacrifices which the Man-God imposed upon Himself to conduct us there, the establishment of His Church, the numerous heroes who have been born to her, the struggle of evil against good, the champions of the two armies, the virtues and the vices, finally, ' the end of this struggle, when the Sovereign Judge, who has already come as Redeemer to give the first blow to the genius of evil, will come again at the end of time to destroy altogether his empire." This extract will serve at the same time as a fair specimen of the work, and to explain its object and plan. The author considers all these images as so many helps to the preacher, objects for the people to fix their eyes and their attention upon, and instruction the more valuable to a people who could not read, and had no other mode of learning than the teaching of their pastors, which these images helped to enforce on their memory. The vocabulnry, to which we have alluded, gives many of the character- istic symbols of saints, the knowledge of which is so essential in the study of medieval art, displayed in painting, sculpture, or illuminated MSS.