THE STATE of decorative work which a workman of those days used to put into his beautiful work of art, as well as into the simplest thing of domcdc life-a railing, a candlestick, an article of pottery-and you will see at once that he did not know the. pressure, the hurry, the overwork of our times; he could forge, sculpture, weave, embroider at his. leisure-as few artist-workers can do nowadays. If we glance over the donations to the churches and to houses which belonged to the parish, w the guild or to the city, be it in works of art-in decorative panels, sculptures, cast or wrought iron and even silver works--or in, simple mason's or carpenter's work, we understand what degree of well-being those cities had realized in their midst. We can conceive the spirit of research and invention that prevailed, the breath of liberty that inspired their works, the sentiment of fraternal solidarity that grew in thosi guilds in which men of a craft were united, not only by the mercantile and technical sides of a trade but also by bonds. of sociability and fraternity. For it was the guild-law that two· brothers should watch at the bedside of every sick brother, and that the guild should take care of burying the dead brother or sister (a custom which called for devotion, in those times of contagious diseases. and plagues) follow him to the grave, and take care of his widow and' children. Black misery, depression, the uncertainty of to-morrow for the greater number, which characterize our modem cities, were unknown in those "oases sprung up in the twelfth century in the middle of the feudal desert." In those cities, under the shelter of their liberties acquired under the impulse of free agreement and free initiative, a whole new civilization grew up and attained such expansion, that the like has not since been seen. All modem industry comes to us from those cities. In three centuries, industries and arts developed to such perfection that our century has been able to surpass them only in rapidity of production, but rarely in quality, and very rarely in beauty of the produce. In the higher arts which we try in vain to revive to-day, have we surpassed the beauty of Raphael, the vigour and audacity of Michel Angelo, the science and art of Leonardo da Vinci, the poetry and l::1:page of Dante, or the architecture to which we owe the cathedrals of Laon, Rheims, Cologne ("the people were its masons"·as Victor Hugo said so truly), the treasures of beauty of Florence and Venice, the town halls of Bremen and Prague, the towers of Nuremberg and Pisa? All these great conquests of art were the product of that period. Do you wish to measure the progress oi that civilization at a glance? Compare the Dome of St. Marc in Venice with the rustic arch of the Normans, Raphael's pictures with the naive einbroideries and carpets of Bayeux, the mathematical and physical instruments and clocks of Nuremberg with the sand clocks of the preceding centuries, Dante's sonorous language with the barbarous Latin of the tenth cen23 I Biblioteca Gino Bianco
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