s" with weapons borrowed from "the armoury of the
invincible knights of old." The book is learned, though unsystematic and
discursive, but its most interesting feature is its curiously personal
note, its pure spirit of honour and Catholic piety. The enthusiasm of
the author extends itself from the institutes of chivalry and the Church
to the social and political constitution of the Middle Ages. He is
anti-democratic as well as anti-Protestant; upholds monarchy, nobility,
the interference of the popes in the affairs of kingdoms, and praises the
times when the doctrines of legislation and government all over Europe
rested on the foundations of the Church.

A few paragraphs from "The Broad Stone of Honour" will illustrate the
author's entrance into the Church through the door of beauty, and his
identification of romantic art with "the art Catholic." "It is much to
be lamented," he writes, "that the acquaintance of the English reader
with the characters and events of the Middle Ages should, for the most
part, be derived from the writings of men who were either infidels, or
who wrote on every subject connected with religion, with the feelings and
opinions of Scotch Presbyterian preachers of the last century." [16] "A
distinguishing characteristic of everything belonging to the early and
Middle Ages of Christianity is the picturesque. Those who now struggle
to cultivate the fine arts are obliged to have recourse to the despised,
and almost forgotten, houses, towns, and dresses of this period. As soon
as men renounced the philosophy of the Church, it was inevitable that
their taste, that the form of objects under their control, should change
with their religion; for architects had no longer to provide for the love
of solitude, of meditation between sombre pillars, of modesty in
apartments with the lancet-casement. They were not to study duration and
solidity in an age when men were taught to regard the present as their
only concern. When nothing but exact knowledge was sought, the undefined
sombre arches were to be removed to make way for lines which would
proclaim their brevity, and for a blaze of light which might correspond
with the mind of those who rejected every proposition that led beyond the
reach of the senses. . . . So completely is it beyond the skill of the
painter or the poet to render bearable the productions of the
moderns, . . . and so fast are the poor neglected works of Christian
antiquity falling to