nated in a
Christian art, such as is seen in the splendid forms and adornments in
stone, gold, silver, glass, and embroideries of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. Such splendours as the windows of Bourges, the
Sainte-Chapelle at Paris, or those of the Cathedral of Toledo, or
King's College Chapel at Cambridge. Such sculptures and traceries as
those of the Puits de Moise at Dijon, and the Chapter House at
Southwell in Nottinghamshire. Such embroideries as the Syon cope, and
the Borghese triptych. These are types worthy of all praise, and they
are full of instruction to the student of ecclesiastical art.

The Kensington Museum offers us endless help and suggestions in its
very interesting collection of liturgical vestments of every date and
school; and its textiles, illustrated by the inventory of their
learned collector, Dr. Rock, are most instructive.[553]

In the library of that museum are to be found many of the learned
works on these subjects by French and German _savants_. The
exhibitions in the English counties are never without a case or a room
full of embroideries, collected from the treasure-chests of the
neighbouring churches and country houses, and especially from those of
the ancient Roman Catholic families. The colleges of Oscott and
Stoneyhurst have collected, by purchase or by gift, many fine relics
of the craft, which are most liberally granted for exhibition.

For those who can go further afield there is instruction in almost
every Continental town. Rome, Florence, Milan, Toledo, Sens, Rheims,
Aix-la-Chapelle, Berne, Vienna, Halberstadt, Berlin, and Munich--each
and all have stores of beautiful liturgical objects carefully
preserved; of many dates, and many styles, and showing endless
varieties of design, which can be employed on new works by careful
selection and adaptation. Most of these belong to the eleventh and
succeeding centuries; any earlier examples are fragmentary, and have
generally been taken from the tombs of kings and bishops.

It seems to savour of desecration, this opening of shrines and
disturbing the ashes of the illustrious dead, if only for the
satisfaction of archaeological curiosity. But except where it has
hitherto been protected by the sanctity of the tomb, there is so
little that remains to us,--so few textiles have survived the friction
of use, or even that of the air, through as many as a thousand years
or more, that we may plead the hunger for truth, and the eager