ypes derived from the Renaissance, pretty and elegant, evidently
imported from the works of the pre-Raphaelites, and strongly recalling
Walter Crane's illustrations.

Thus the ideal at Beuron had developed into an alloy of the French art
of the First Empire and contemporary English work.

Some of these compositions were all but laughable, that of the Ninth
Station, to mention one: Christ lying at full length on His face, and
being pulled up by a rope tied to His bound hands; it looked as if He
were learning to swim. Still, but for feeble and vulgar incidents,
clumsy and obvious details, what strange scenes suddenly rose before his
mind, distinct from the mass: Veronica on her knees before Jesus, was
really distracted with grief, really fine; the borrowed or copied
figures of the other persons represented disappeared; even in the least
original of these compositions the coarse, unsatisfactory utterances of
these monks spoke an almost eloquent language; and this because intense
faith and fervour lurked in the work. A breath had passed over those
faces, and they were alive; the emotion, the voice of prayer, was felt
in the silence of this conventional crowd. This Way of the Cross was
matchless from this point of view: Monastic piety had introduced an
unexpected element, giving evidence of the mysterious power it has at
its command, infusing a personal emotion, a peculiar aroma, into a work
which, without it, would never indeed have existed. These Benedictines
had suggested the sensation of kneeling worship and the very fragrance
of the Gospel, as artists of wider scope had failed in doing.

Their attempt, however, had begotten no following, and at this day the
school is almost dead, producing nothing but feeble prints for old women
designed by the lay-brothers.

How, indeed, could it have been anything but still-born? The idea of
doing for the West what Manuel Pauselinos did for the East, of
eliminating study from nature, imposing an uniform ritual of colour and
line, of compelling every artistic temperament to squeeze itself into
the same mould, shows an absolute misapprehension of art in the mind of
the man who attempted it. The system was bound to end in ankylosis, in
the paralysis of painting, and this, in fact, was the result.

At about the same time with these Religious an unknown artist, living in
the country, and never exhibiting in Paris, was painting pictures for
churches and convents, working for the glory o