monuments of an intrepid Faith which gave material form
to its adoration, its fasting and prayer, in an unrivalled art...."

"Crystallised glorias" (hymns to the Virgin) is as concise a defining of
the nature and spirit of this highest type of mediaeval art--perfected in
France--as we can find. Here we have deified woman inspiring an art
miraculously decorative.

Chartres Cathedral and Rheims (before the German invasion in 1914) with
Mont Saint Michel, are distinguished examples.

If the readers would put to the test our claim that woman as decoration
is a beguiling theme worthy of days passed in the broad highways of
art, and many an hour in cross-roads and unbeaten paths, we would
recommend to them the fascinations of a marvellous story-teller, one
who, knowing all there is to know of his subject, has had the genius to
weave the innumerable and perplexing threads into a tapestry of words,
where the main ideas take their places in the foreground, standing out
clearly defined against the deftly woven, intelligible but unobtruding
background. The author is Henry Adams, the book, _The Cathedrals of Mont
St. Michel and Chartres_. He tells you in striking language, how woman
was translated into pure decoration in the Middle Ages, woman as the
Virgin Mother of God, the manifestation of Deity which took precedence
over all others during the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries;
and if you will follow him to the Chartres Cathedral (particularly if
you have been there already), and will stand facing the great East
Window, where in stained glass of the ancient jewelled sort, woman, as
Mother of God, is enthroned above all, he will tell you how, out of the
chaos of warring religious orders, the priestly schools of Abelard, St.
Francis of Assisi and others, there emerged the form of the Virgin.

To woman, as mother of God and man, the instrument of reproduction, of
tender care, of motherhood, the disputatious, groping mind of man agreed
to bow, silenced and awed by the mystery of her calling.

In view of the recent enrolling of womanhood in the stupendous business
of the war now waging in Europe, and the demands upon her to help in
arming her men or nursing back to life the shattered remains of fair
youth, which so bravely went forth, the thought comes that woman will
play a large part in the art to arise from the ashes of to-day. Woman as
woman ready to supplement man, pouring into life's caldron the best of
herself,