ed the great invasion of the Visigoths of the
fifth century.

[Illustration: STUDY OF A HEAD]

"The Art of Spain," he said, "was, at the outset, wholly borrowed, and
from various sources; we shall see heterogeneous, imported elements,
assimilated sometimes in a greater or less degree, frequently flung
together in illogical confusion, seldom, if ever, fused into a new,
harmonious whole by that inner welding fire which is genius; and we
shall see in the sixteenth century a foreign influence received and
borne as a yoke"--(that of the Italian Renaissance) "because no living
generative force was there to throw it off--with results too often
dreary beyond measure; and, finally, we shall meet this strange freak of
nature, a soil without artistic initiative bringing forth the greatest
initiator--observe, I do not say the greatest artist--the greatest
initiator perhaps since Lionardo in modern art--except it be his
contemporary Rembrandt--Diego Velasquez."

In his Discourse of December, 1891, we have, rapidly sketched, the
Evolution of Art in France. Touching again on the question of race, the
lecturer adduced the great race of Gauls, submitting first to Roman, and
afterwards to Frankish, or Teutonic, domination and admixture. The main
characteristics of the Gaulish people he judges to be, "a love of
fighting and a magnificent bravery, great impatience of control, a
passion for new things, a swift, brilliant, logical intelligence, a gay
and mocking spirit--for 'to laugh,' says Rabelais, 'is the proper mark
of man,'--an inextinguishable self-confidence." With the reign of
Charlemagne began the development of the architecture of France, but not
until the tenth and eleventh centuries did the "movement reach its full
force; and its development was due mainly to the great monastic
community, which, founded by St. Benedict early in the sixth century,
had poured from the heights of Monte Cassino its beneficent influence
over Western Europe."

Here we have it explained how the principle of Gothic architecture, "the
substitution of a balance of active forces for the principle of inert
resistance," was gradually evolved. This principle once found, Gothic
architecture reached its most splendid period in a wonderfully short
space of time; cathedrals and churches were built everywhere, and before
the end of the thirteenth century, the most splendid Gothic buildings
were begun or completed. With the end of the thirteenth century Goth