may gaze at the profusion of gold mixed with gaudy colours with a kind of vague bewilderment, Byzantine art can never appeal to our sense of beauty. A most important branch of Byzantine ornamentation was the treatment of metals. For flat decoration, in the style of embroidery, nothing can excel the use of metal, be it gold, silver, bronze, or steel, or a combination of all these. There was a fantastic originality in these productions which, when combined with an assiduous study of the antique, may aid us in many instances to produce excellent specimens of book-covers, patterns for ornamented salvers, caskets, cups, candlesticks, crosses, &c. Byzantine art, however, is the very opposite of classic art. Repose, as a consequence of the liveliest vibration of forms, and uniformity through a rich variation of patterns, are the real elements of Byzantine and Oriental art; in contradistinction to classic art, which is based on the authority of purpose and a correct subordination of details. This is the reason why the free but well-systematised ornaments of classic Greece were revived at this period with Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian textile patterns in metal, stone, or colours. Nothing could be more appropriate for this mode of ornamentation than leaf-work, flowers, creepers, &c., in the arrangement of which, the stern law of a well-regulated distribution of the repeated forms must be observed, to bring about a thorough balance between rest and vibration, variety and uniformity. Whilst Byzantium was exhausting all its powers, and socially and artistically preparing to fall a prey to iconoclasts and Mahomedans; the movement, next in importance to the establishment of Christianity, viz. the migration of the Northern Teutons, took place.