jocular at times, even to the verge of profanity. Possibly because gargoyles were outside the sacred edifice, he felt more at liberty to do as he would, so he created wonderful monsters, grinning good-natured-looking demons in place of saints; demons that seemed verily to exist and breathe and struggle in stone; his subtle art contrived to make even the hideous delightful and to be desired. So great was his genius, so cunning his chisel that when I look upon his handiwork, oftentimes I gaze with astonished admiration at his rare skill and inventive faculties, and I sadly wonder whether we shall ever look upon his like again. His art was the outcome of love. Our modern art seems of unhappy necessity imbued with the commercial spirit of the age. Men now paint and sculpture to live, the medieval art craftsman lived to work; the one labours to live, the other loved to labour. The highest art, the worthiest work, cannot be produced for gold, it comes alone from love, love that is unembarrassed with the thought of having to provide the necessaries of life. Where anxiety steps in, art suffers, then withers—and dies! Some years ago I was showing a now popular artist an old picture by Francesco Francia on panel that I possess, and asked him how it was, apart from the almost painful truthfulness of the drawing, that the colours had remained so fresh and pure in tint, after all the years it had existed, whilst so many modern pictures lose so much of their first brilliancy in comparatively so short a time. He replied, after examining the picture, that it had been painted, then smoothed down, and re-painted many
