There are still some people, I suppose, who think that mediaeval poetry was all of one kind, cast in one mould, but the truth is that it is of every form and character. It ranges from the bold imaginative realism of the Epic of England, Iceland, Germany, and France, to the exquisite and gracious but somewhat artificial allegory of the _Romance of the Rose_. It includes the first great emotional poetry of the modern world--the sense of the greatness and tragedy of human passion has perhaps never been expressed in more moving terms than in the _Tristan and Iseult_ of Thomas or Beroul--but it also includes the mordant satire of the Renard poetry and of Jean de Meun, and the gross realistic humour of the Fabliaux. The mediaeval drama, in whose complex development we have to trace many strands, probably represents in its oldest forms the coarse farcical buffoonery which may be related to the last fashions of the ancient world; it received a new impulse from the dramatization of scripture history in the twelfth century; but in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, at least in France, it had already become substantially a drama of romantic or contemporary life, as we can see in Jean Bodel's _Jeu de St. Nicholas_, in Adam de la Halle's _Jeu de la Feuillee_ and _Robin et Marion_, and in dramas like the _Empress of Rome_ or the _Otho_. Whatever criticism we might want to make on mediaeval literature, at least we cannot say that it was of one type and of one mood. It is hardly necessary to point out the movement and changes in the other forms of art in the Middle Ages; it is only necessary to remind ourselves that, while we can see that the artists were often hampered by inadequate technical knowledge, they were not conventional or merely imitative. It would be impossible here to consider the history of mosaic painting, and its development from the decadent Graeco-Roman work of Santa Pudenziana in Rome, to the magnificent and living decorations of St. Mark's in Venice, or of the cathedral of Monreale. It is enough to remind ourselves of the immense interval which lies between the rude but living sculpture of the ninth century, and the exquisite grace of Chester or Wells, and of that development of architecture which culminates in the majesty of Durham, and in the beauty of Chartres and Westminster Abbey. It is doubtful if we have yet at all fully or correctly appreciated the nature of mediaeval art; there has been a good deal of foolish talk about 'primitives', which usually goes with a singular ignorance of mediaeval civilization; the one thing which is already clear, and which grows clearer, is that the men of those ages had an instinct and a passion for beauty which expressed itself in almost every thing that they touched; and, whatever we have gained, we have in a large measure lost this. * * * * *