The cruel tyranny of the cold-blooded despot, remembered, but execrated, in Sicily as Charles of Anjou, extinguished the last _scintilla_ of native art, and when the Italian revival of the thirteenth century took place, it was confined entirely to the North, except when such patrons as Robert or Ferdinand or Alfonso encouraged Tuscan artists by inviting them to Naples. Palermo was no longer of importance, though a capital, and Sicily existed merely as a portion of the kingdom of Naples. Let us pass, then, to the great German capital. Changes here, too, have taken place. It is not Bamberg but Prag, for the Imperial crown has passed from the House of Suabia through the Hapsburgs to that of Luxembourg, and among its territories is the picturesque old city with its historic bridge and gate-towers, a Slavonic not a German city in its origin. The ten German circles of Suabia and Franconia, Westphalia, Bohemia, and the rest did not as yet exist--they were the later creation of Maximilian; the Fatherland consisted of some two or three hundred dukedoms, counts, marquisates, and lordships, all absolute sovereignties, but all pledged to support the Holy Roman Empire. Very thinly, perhaps, but still the Imperial sceptre meant a real supremacy, and in the hands of such emperors as Henry of Luxembourg, a supremacy maintained with real and becoming dignity. Prag, as we have said, is in a Slavonic country, and one sometimes hostile to the Empire. It was the capital of Bohemia. In 1310 its King was John, the restless son of the new Emperor Henry VII. of Luxembourg. Hence we find it at the moment we begin the study of its art a nominally German city. Shortly before this time were produced several examples of German work; as, for instance, the "Minnelieder," with more than a hundred miniatures of hunting scenes and similar outdoor amusements, which are useful as studies of costume, but otherwise of little interest. But it is not until 1312--the new King being then, for the sake of acquiring the crown, though only, it is said, thirteen years of age, already the husband of the Princess Elizabeth, the late King's second daughter, yet neither a favourite with his wife nor with her father's people--that the Abbess of St. George's in Prag, the Princess Cunigunda, composed a Passionale, richly illustrated with interesting miniatures. The saints, histories, and allegories are painted in tender water-colours, the architectural details being in Gothic taste. It is still preserved in the University Library at Prag, No. xiv., A. 17.[48] The Emperor Charles IV., son of the valorous but impracticable John (born 1316, died 1378), and who has already been spoken of in connection with English illumination, was the founder of the Bohemian school, or, rather, of the school of Prag. Owing probably his fine tastes and many accomplishments rather to his mother than his father, he devoted himself to art and literature, inviting painters and scholars from other