The stained glass of all countries in Europe, indeed, belonging to the good times, is a feast of colour which none of the modern work can approach. There is a "Last Judgment," said to be from designs by Albert Dürer, which was taken in a sea-fight on its road to Spain, and put up in a little church at Fairford, in Gloucestershire, which dazzles us with its splendour; and the scraps which are still to be found all over England in village churches (many of which are now believed to be of home manufacture) are as beautiful as the great Flemish windows thirty feet high. At the present day the pigments used, we are told, are finer; the glass is infinitely better rolled, all the manufacturing processes have made wonderful progress, as we proudly declare; only the results of it are utterly and simply detestable--the colours of the great modern windows in Cologne Cathedral and Westminster Abbey set one's very teeth on edge--the temptation to use a stone (if it had come under one's hand) would be frightfully great in front of that at the east end of Ripon. There lies before me an old Persian rug, all out of shape and twisted in the weaving, but full of subtle quantities in colour, perfect in the proportions of its vivid brilliancy, and a grand new Axminster carpet alongside, of faultless construction, with a design as hideous as its colours are harsh. It is not only now with productions destined for the English market, but the degradation of art is beginning to spread all over the world--the standards of "instructed" European taste are vitiating the very well-springs of beautiful old work. The "mantilla" of Seville, and the "tovaglia" of the Roman peasant, are supplanted by frightful bonnets; the striking old costumes are disappearing alike in Brittany and in Algiers; in Athens and in Turkey they are giving way to the abominations of Parisian toilettes for the women, while the chimney-pot hat is taking the place of the turban and the kalpac for the men. The picturesque quaintness of the narrow Egyptian streets dies away, as under a frost, under the hand of Western architects; the delicate pierced woodwork of their projecting balconies is changed for flat windows with red and green "jalousies;" and the Khedive builds minarets, it is true, but like enlarged Mordan pencil-cases. The harmony of the lines in an ancient Arabian fountain or mosque at Cairo, the interlacing patterns of fretwork in the Saracenic buildings at Grenada, are marvellous in their exquisite variety; yet the secret of their construction in their own land is nearly gone, the very tradition of the old work seems to have perished in the race--they cannot even imitate their own old creations. "Oh for a touch of a vanished hand!" we say over the ruined tombs of the Memlook Sultans in their desolate beauty, standing lonely in the desert near Cairo, or the wonderful mosques of the deserted city of Beejapore in the Bombay Presidency, whose photographs have lately been printed.