Page:Suggestions on the Arrangement and Characteristics of Parish Churches.djvu/45

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45

APPENDIX.

The revival of Christian art, in latter years, has not been limited to England, although in that country architecture has progressed more than in any other. In France, Italy, Belgium, and Germany great zeal for the study of the works of the great artists of the middle ages—“the era of anonymous celebrities”—has been manifested. Not only has architecture been made the object of revival, but the attendant arts of painting, sculpture, glass painting, &c., have been elucidated by the works of distinguished scholars and antiquaries, and, in many instances, successfully practised by artists. In France, the writings of the Jesuit Fathers, Martin and Cahier, of Montalembert, Rio, and several other eminent clergymen and laymen, have been attended with the most salutary results. Nearly all the bishops of France have made the study of the remains of Christian art, and the propriety of its revival, a subject of pastoral recommendation; and it is well known that, so great has been the influence of these recommendations, more Churches were restored and decorated during the reign of the Orleans family than for upwards of a century preceding. In Belgium, the decree of the Cardinal Archbishop of Malines, forbidding the enlargement of the ancient Churches in any style not conformable with the original, and commanding that, when any new Church is to be erected, or a picture or statue placed in an old one, the design for such Church, picture, or statue must be