in France and Germany, every poem was set to music, and
thus, simultaneously with the lyrical art, secular music was evolved.
J.B. Beck, the greatest authority on the music of the troubadours,--the
music of the minnesingers has been studied very little,--says, "The
poetry of the troubadours and trouveres represents in its totality a
collection of songs which in their frequently amazing naivete and
melodiousness, their spontaneity and sound music, intimate congruity of
melody and text and extraordinary originality, have been unparalleled to
this day." All these songs are distinguished by graceful simplicity; but
the ear of the non-musician can hardly perceive the originality on which
Beck lays such stress. In any case, the music is inferior to the
frequently perfect text. This same period saw the inception of our
present system of musical notation.

The new poetry created a desire for "literature," thus giving impetus to
the already existent art of illuminated manuscripts. Every prince kept a
salaried army of copyists and illuminators, producing the manuscripts
to-day preserved and studied in our museums. Studios where this work was
carried on existed at various art centres, especially--as far as we are
able to tell to-day--at the papal courts at Avignon--that meeting-ground
of French and Italian artists--in Paris and at Rheims. These workshops
were the birthplace of miniature painting, which reached perfection in
the famous Burgundian "Livres d'Heures."

To-day the science of aesthetics is attempting to trace the influence
which emanated from the French and even from the earlier English
workshops, and spread over the whole continent. It is very probable that
the French art of miniature painting of the first half of the thirteenth
century was mother of the later North-European art of painting. It was
in Northern Europe that, independently of Hellenic and Byzantine
influence, a new art originated, of which Max Dvorak says: "It would
hardly be possible to find an external cause for the quick and complete
disappearance of the elements of the Neo-Latin art. The past was simply
done with, and an absolutely new period was beginning. Thus the new art
was almost without any tradition." Dvorak calls this complete change the
most important in the history of painting since antiquity. George, Count
Vitzthum, has proved that the famous Cologne school of painting modelled
itself on Northern-French, Belgian, and a quite independent Eng