258. The number of British and American travelers who take unaffected interest in the early art of Europe is already large, and is daily increasing; daily also, as I thankfully perceive, feeling themselves more and more in need of a guidebook containing as much trustworthy indication as they can use of what they may most rationally spend their time in examining. The books of reference published by Mr. Murray, though of extreme value to travelers, who make it their object to see (in his, and their, sense of the word) whatever is to be seen, are of none whatever, or may perhaps be considered, justly, as even of quite the reverse of value, to travelers who wish to see only what they may in simplicity understand, and with pleasure remember; while the histories of art, and biographies of artists, to which the more earnest student in his novitiate must have recourse, are at once so voluminous, so vague, and so contradictory, that I cannot myself conceive his deriving any other benefit from their study than a deep conviction of the difficulty of the subject, and of the incertitude of human opinions. 259. It seemed to me, on reading the essays collected in this volume, as they appeared in the periodical[18] for which they were written, that the author not only possessed herself a very true discernment of the qualities in mediaeval art which were justly deserving of praise, but had unusually clear understanding of the degree in which she might expect to cultivate such discernment in the general mind of polite travelers; nor have I less admired her aptitude in collation of essentially illustrative facts, so as to bring the history of a very widely contemplative range of art into tenable compass and very graceful and serviceable form. Her reading, indeed, has been, with respect to many very interesting periods of religious workmanship, much more extensive than my own; and when I consented to edit the volume of collected papers, it was not without the assurance of considerable advantage to myself during the labor of revising them.