any reader has had patience with me until now, he or she may like to
know the books which were of most use to me in my apprenticeship. There
is no pleasanter instructress than Mrs. Jameson, although she is
superficial and sentimental, a little lackadaisical indeed: her _Early
Italian Painters_, _Sacred and Legendary Art_, and the supplementary
volumes on the _Legends of the Madonna_ and of the _Monastic Orders_,
and on those relating to the life of our Lord, have all been
republished in this country. There is a finer book of the same order,
Lord Lindsay's _Christian Art_, now out of print, but to be found in
public libraries. M. Rio's work, _De l'Art Chretien_ (let the purchaser
beware of two volumes of _Epilogue_, which are autobiography), is a
full and admirable history of religious art: it is written from a
purely Roman Catholic point of view, and his opinions are deeply imbued
by prejudice. The reader will soon perceive this, however, and be upon
his guard, remembering that, after all, the Roman Catholic view is the
true one whence to contemplate art from the twelfth to the seventeenth
century, but that art and theology are not one, nor even akin. M. Rio
does not mention the Spanish school, perhaps with reason, as the
Virgins of Murillo, the saints of Zurburan and Ribera, scarcely belong
to the realm of religious art: this deficiency is supplied by
Stirling's _Annals of the Artists of Spain_. Kugler's _Handbuch der
Kunstgeschichte_ (translated, I believe) is a capital and comprehensive
work, including ancient as well as modern art; and the knowledge of the
one is as necessary for the understanding of the other as an
acquaintance with ancient history is for the comprehension of modern
history. I cannot recommend Vasari's _Lives of the Italian Painters_
entertaining as it is, for so much of each page is taken up by notes of
different editors and commentators denying flatly the assertions of the
text that to read him for information seems waste of time. Messrs.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle's _New History of Painting in Italy_ is the
latest English authority. Mr. Charles Perkins's _Tuscan Sculptors_, of
which we have reason to be very proud, is already the accepted standard
work everywhere. Kugler's _Handbook of the German and Dutch Schools_,
edited by Sir Edmund Head, has not been superseded, I think. It is with
great hesitation that I name Mr. Ruskin in the catalogue of
guidebooks: he is so arbitrary and paradoxical, lays dow