lives of the saints, and with the arts and sciences that would appear to do away with the quaint superstition that the Middle Ages were a time of intellectual ignorance. The men who carved these statues were not of the æsthetically elect; they were not a few highly trained, well-dressed, and supercilious specialists, working in the confidence born of years in Paris and Rome; they were stone-masons, members of their own self-respecting union, who had worked their way up a little higher than their fellows and so could carve each his group of statues to the satisfaction of bishop or abbot or master mason and--which was even more to the point--to his own satisfaction and in accordance with the jealous standards of excellence of his guild. He had to know what he was doing and what he had to express; there was no ubiquitous architect to instruct him, no “committee on symbolism” to show him the way, and so if he could not read well enough to enjoy a modern “yellow journal,” or write well enough to forge a name or draft a speculative prospectus, he did know far more about religion, theology, philosophy, history, and the contemporary sciences and arts and romances than the modern workman with his years of public school behind him, or many an architect or sculptor with his high school, preparatory school, and university training behind him as well. They knew and felt and enjoyed, these sculptors of Reims, whose work endured for six centuries and might have lasted six more. Perhaps the quality of enjoyment was more clearly expressed than anything else. Life was worth living to them and they made the most of it, and with much laughter. These carved figures at Reims and Amiens and Paris show in every line the good human joy of doing a thing well, just as so much of the output of so much of modern industrialism shows the dull indifference or the weary disgust for doing a thing ill. No sculptor then would have contented himself with making a clay model and a plaster cast and then turning the execution over to a gang of ignorant day-labourers working like banderlogs, only with the intelligent assistance of mechanical devices. The artist was the craftsman and the art was a craft, just as the craft was an art, and the work shows it all to those who still can see. Great work, the greatest work, if you like; but so far as Reims is concerned it is now fire-scorched débris, and for its loss we are consoled by the offer of--another Sieges Allee, perhaps. The world may be forgiven for thinking that the game is not worth the candle.