the crowd of beggars, ragged, maimed,
paralyzed, leprous, grovelling on their withered limbs, see and implore
Death, and cry stretching forth their arms, their stumps, and their
crutches. Further on, three kings in long embroidered robes and
gold-trimmed shovel caps, Lewis the Emperor, Uguccione of Pisa, and
Castruccio of Lucca, with their retinue of ladies and squires, and
hounds and hawks, are riding quietly through a wood. Suddenly their
horses stop, draw back; the Emperor's bay stretches out his long neck
sniffing the air; the kings strain forward to see, one holding his nose
for the stench of death which meets him; and before them are three open
coffins, in which lie, in three loathsome stages of corruption, from blue
and bloated putrescence to well-nigh fleshless decay, three crowned
corpses. This is the triumph of Death; the grim and horrible jest of the
Middle Ages: equality in decay; kings, emperors, ladies, knights,
beggars, and cripples, this is what we all come to be, stinking corpses;
Death, our lord, our only just and lasting sovereign, reigns impartially
over all.

But opposite, all along the sides of the painted cloister, the Amazons
are wrestling with the youths on the stone of the sarcophagi; the
chariots are dashing forward, the Tritons are splashing in the marble
waves; the Bacchantae are striking their timbrels in their dance with the
satyrs; the birds are pecking at the grapes, the goats are nibbling at
the vines; all is life, strong and splendid in its marble eternity. And
the mutilated Venus smiles towards the broken Hermes; the stalwart
Hercules, resting against his club, looks on quietly, a smile beneath
his beard; and the gods murmur to each other, as they stand in the
cloister filled with earth from Calvary, where hundreds of men lie
rotting beneath the cypresses, "Death will not triumph for ever; our day
will come."

We have all seen them opposite to each other, these two arts, the art
born of Antiquity and the art born of the Middle Ages; but whether this
meeting was friendly or hostile or merely indifferent, is a question of
constant dispute. To some, mediaeval art has appeared being led,
Dante-like, by a magician Virgil through the mysteries of nature up to a
Christian Beatrice, who alone can guide it to the kingdom of heaven;
others have seen mediaeval art, like some strong, chaste Sir Guyon
turning away resolutely from the treacherous sorceress of Antiquity, and
pursuing solitarily t