How much ancient and domestic art in the form of bronze or other metal furniture, such as chairs, thrones, tripods, &c., whole or in fragments, survived the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II. we cannot conjecture. Perhaps the royal palaces, or still more possibly the mosques which have been the banks and depositories of family treasures under Mahometan rule, may contain valuable bronzes, ivories, and carved wood, relics of the luxurious life of the latter days of the Greek empire, and such evidences may some day come to light. No doubt, however, much antique art and much that belonged to the first eight centuries of our era survived the ordinary shocks of time and war, only to be destroyed by the quiet semi-judicial action of a furious sect protected by imperial decrees, after the manner in which mediæval art suffered under the searching powers of fanatical government commissioners in our own country, in the sixteenth century. It is to the impulse which the Lombard and Frankish monarchs gave to art in western and northern Europe by the protection of Greek refugee sculptors and artists that we should trace the beginnings of the northern school called Rhenish-Byzantine. CHAPTER V. THE MIDDLE AGES. We cannot easily determine on a date at which we can assign a beginning to mediæval art. It differs from the art that succeeded it in the sixteenth century in many respects, and from the late classic art that preceded it still more widely. That peculiar character which we call romantic enters into the art of mediæval times, as it does into the literature and manners of the same ages. It took a living form in the half religious institution of chivalry. The northern nations grew up under the leadership of monks quite as much as under that of kings. They lived in territories only partially cleared from forests, pushed their way forward to power pioneered by the great religious orders, and their world was one surrounded by opportunities of endless adventures. But this romantic standard, though it took its rise from the times in which the Christians carried their lives in their hands, under the persecuting emperors, did not pervade Europe for many centuries. Classic art, in its decay, still furnished both forms and symbols, such, _e.g._, as that of Orpheus, to the new societies, and the names of Jupiter, Mercury, and Saturn, have survived as the titles of days of the week. The two art traditions overlapped each other for a while. Mediævalism grew very gradually.