The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 — John Shaqi
The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879Various
History
The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879
Various
Arts -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals
[19] A "spore" is a minute reproductive particle.
[20] See CONTEMPORARY REVIEW for July, 1879, p. 714.
[21] Some botanists think that yeast is no true and definite kind of
plant, but that it is only a conglomeration of fungoid spores of divers
sorts.
[22] This motion is that referred to at the bottom of page 696, in the
CONTEMPORARY REVIEW for July, 1879, as _Cyclosis_.
[23] Some readers may be startled at the mode here adopted of primarily
dividing the Phanerogams, and may object to it as opposed to usage; but
reasons will be given later for the mode of division here adopted.
[24] The above-named plants may for our purpose be thus conveniently
grouped together, according to the older fashion of botanists. Strictly
speaking, however, they should be divided amongst several
orders--_e.g._, hazel and hornbeam (_Corylaceæ_), the oak, beech, and
chestnut (_Capuliferæ_), the birches (_Betulaceæ_), the willows
(_Salicaceæ_), &c.
[25] Containing upwards of 2500 species.
THE ARTISTIC DUALISM OF THE RENAISSANCE.
I.
Into the holy enclosure which had received the precious shiploads of
earth from Calvary, the Pisans of the thirteenth century carried the
fragments of ancient sculpture brought from Rome and from Greece; and in
the Gothic cloister enclosing the green sward and dark cypresses of the
grave-yard of Pisa, the art of the Middle Ages came for the first time
face to face with the art of antiquity. There, among pagan sarcophagi
turned into Christian tombs, with heraldic devices chiselled on to their
arabesques and vizored helmets surmounting their garlands, the great
unsigned artist of the fourteenth century, be he Sienese or Florentine,
be he Orcagna, Lorenzetti, or Volterra, painted the typical masterpiece
of mediæval art, the great fresco of the Triumph of Death. With
wonderful realization of character and situation he painted the
prosperous of the world, the dapper youths and damsels seated with dogs
and falcons beneath the orchard trees, amusing themselves with
Decameronian tales and sound of lute and psaltery, unconscious of the
gigantic scythe wielded by the gigantic dishevelled Death, and which, in
a second, will descend and mow them to the ground; but the crowd of
beggars, ragged, maimed, paralyzed, leprous, grovelling on their
withered limbs, see and implore Death, and cry stretching forth their
arms, their stumps, and their crutches. Further on, three kings in long
embroidered robes and gold-trimmed shovel caps, Lewis the Emperor,
Uguccione of Pisa, and Castruccio of Lucca, with their retinue of ladies
and squires, and hounds and hawks, are riding quietly through a wood.
Suddenly their horses stop, draw back; the Emperor's bay stretches out
his long neck sniffing the air; the kings strain forward to see, one
holding his nose for the stench of death which meets him; and before
them are three open coffins, in which lie, in three loathsome stages of
corruption, from blue and bloated putrescence to well-nigh fleshless
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