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FOURTH BAY OF VAULTING.

NORTH side. Eight circles, with stories beginning with the call of Abraham, who is in a field hawking, and ending with Esau bringing a fowl on a spit to his father.

EAST side. Eight circles. Two are devoted to Noah, who plants the vine, and gets drunk; the rest continue the story of Jacob, and Joseph, who is sold to the Egyptians.

SOUTH side. Eight circles. Story of Joseph. Here again the artist deviates from the Bible, and illustrates exactly the same variations that we find in Royal MS. 2 B. VII. in the British Museum, and also in the sculptures in the chapter-house at Salisbury. The story runs thus:-Joseph is carried away by the Egyptians (the MS. 2 B. vII. tells us that he was bought by the seneschal of the king of Egypt); he is repurchased by Pharaoh; Pharaoh delivers to him bags of money and keys; he neglects the advances of Pharaoh's wife; he is put in prison; his jailer gives him his own upper garment h; he explains Pharaoh's dream.

WEST side. Eight circles, containing the rest of Joseph's history. The artist has, however, left out the incident of Joseph throwing straw into the river Nile, so that Jacob seeing it pass his castle might know that there was corn in Egypt.

shews to Noe how the people were to be saved, and gives to him his tools for making a ship in such a shape that it may float upon the water, and all things safely carry; and that he should do it so privately that no one should know it.How the devil came in form of man to the wife of Noah, and asked where her husband was? And she said that she knew not where. He is gone to betray thee and all the world; take these grains and make a drink, and give it to him, and he will tell thee all;' and she did so.-Here Noah begins to carpenter; and the first blow that he struck, all the world heard it.-Then came an angel to him, and he cried 'Mercy.' The angel said to him, 'You have ill done, but take these rods and nails and finish your ark as quickly as you can, for the flood is coming.-How Noah fills his ark, and carries his children and his wife into the ark by a ladder, and of each thing male and female, as by the angel of God he had been commanded, to save the world.-How Noah sends forth a raven and a dove to see if they could find any land. The raven has found here the head of a horse, on which it stays; and the dove has returned bearing an olive-branch in its beak, shewing that it has found land. And Noah at the entrance of the ark cried Benedicite,' where he sits at the rudder. And the devil fled through the bottom of the ark, and the serpent drove his tail through the hole." The inscriptions in the original are in old French; the above is from the translation accompanying the fac-similes of a portion of this MS. by N. Westlake, Esq., published by J. H. and J. Farker, Oxford.

In the present instance Pharaoh's wife has no crown, although Pharaoh has one himself. St. Helena has likewise no crown in the former bay of the vaulting. h This scene is neither in the MS. nor the sculpture.

This part of the story is in both the MS. and in the chapterhouse.

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The church, or rather chancel, at Kumbla is a small edifice, with two bays of vaulting. From certain coats of arms occurring among the paintings, it is most probable that the decoration of it at least must be referred to about the year 1480. The annexed figure will give some idea of the disposition of the figures as well as of the arrangement of the vaulting.

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EAST. (AA) These spaces are occupied in both the bays with angels bearing scrolls inscribed with portions of the Te Deum. It may also be observed that all the spaces at EE have no figures, but simply a scroll pattern; (B) The Holy Trinity; (C) St. Luke with the bull; (D) St. Mark with the lion; (FF) Scrollwork. In all the other instances these spaces (FF) are filled with half-figures, holding scrolls inscribed with prophecies.

SOUTH. (B) Two seated figures of sainted kings. One bears an axe, and is doubtless St. Olave; the other bears the orb and sceptre. There are no inscriptions. (C) St. Olave about to land from a ship. He is opposed by devils or savages, one of whom wears a female head-dress, and carries a baby in swaddling clothes. The figure in the foreground has claws to his feet, and the additional ornament of a bushy tail. (D) Death of St. Olave at the battle of Sticklarstad.

WEST. (B) St. Michael in armour fighting the devils. Two

of them are pulling at his cloak. (C) St. Matthew with the angel. (D) St. John with the eagle.

NORTH. (B) Coronation of the Blessed Virgin. (C) Death of the Virgin. (D) Her burial, with the attendant circumstances.

SECOND BAY.

EAST. (B) Virgin and Child in an aureole. (C) St. Gregory. (D) St. Jerome. (F) Under St. Gregory is Abel holding a lamb in flames; and under St. Jerome is Cain, wearing a high-peaked hat, and holding a sheaf of corn. Attached to the back of his girdle we see the jaw-bone of an animal, the instrument of his fratricide.

SOUTH side. (B) St. Justina, (St. Margaret), and St. Dorothea. (C) Moses receiving the Law. (D) Enoch carried up into heaven.

WEST side. (B) St. Michael enveloped in a mantle. (C) St. Ambrose. (D) St. Augustine.

NORTH side. (B) St. Katherine of Egypt, with her wheel, and St. Barbara. (C) The Ascension of our Lord. (D) The Descent of the Holy Spirit.

The broad arch between the two bays has a large scroll, from the flowers of which issue half figures of the prophets. In all the paintings the ground is left white, and slightly powdered with red stars, the masses of colour being reserved for the figures and for the ribs.

The next four plates are devoted to the four bays of vaulting of the north aisle at Floda. It would be waste of time to go through all the subjects, inasmuch as they are very much the same as those of the preceding church. The execution and composition are also exceedingly alike, and would lead to the conclusion that the same artist was employed on both works. Of course we find additional subjects at Floda, as it is the larger edifice. Some of them are very curious, such as the fable of the fox and the stork, and the story of the children who were eaten by bears for mocking the Prophet. In the narrow spaces formed by the transverse ribs and tiercerons of the western bay, we find armed figures fighting each other. Thus Diderik van Baran (Didrik of Bavariai) is blowing with his

So explained by M. Mandelgren; most probably Dietrich of Bern, one of the heroes of the Nibelungenlied. Bern is considered by most commentators of the GENT, MAG. VOL. CCXIII,

38°

hot breath upon an armed figure labelled as Wideke Welandson; Ogier the Dane fights Burman, a naked man armed with a club; David is slinging a stone at Goliah; and a combat between two figures on horseback, one of which is marked Trullat, finishes the series.

The church at Tegelsmora presents us with the usual subjects on its three bays of lierne vaulting, the most noticeable additions being, 1. Our Lord crucified to a tree, which divides into two branches, in the convolutions of which are placed half figures of His ancestors; 2. Our Lord standing in an aureole, the outside of which has a border of roses, the ground of the aureole being occupied by rays; on His right hand are the wise virgins crowned, and on His left the foolish ones, but they hold their lamps reversed, and their crowns are falling from off their heads; 3. A very curious piece of symbolism occurs as a sort of pendant to the Annunciation-the Blessed Virgin, crowned, is represented seated in a garden; a unicorn, pursued by dogs, flees to her for protection, while an angel in cope and alb, and armed with a hunting-spear, blows a horn to encourage the dogs.

The church at Torpa has simply quadripartite vaulting, with scenes from our Lord's Passion, and is far less interesting than the porch of the church at Solna, which finishes the book. At the east end is a half figure of our Lord holding a globe. There is also an imperfect inscription, beginning "Venite omnes qui.” The middle of the barrel-vault which covers the porch is occupied by a running ornament, but the sides are devoted to a series of pictures shewing alternately the death-bed of the good and bad man. In the case of the bad rich man the devil points to a sort of house, in the lower part of which we see first of all a horse's head, then two chests, and thirdly, something which looks very like a coat of mail.

Such are the contents of M. Mandelgren's collection, every plate of which will be found to contain something interesting to the student of the Middle Ages. If we compare these paintings with those of the Campo Santo at Pisa, we must confess that the early Italians were greater masters of drawing and colouring than their contemporary Northern artists. At the

poem to be another name for Verona. On either side of the western doorway of the latter cathedral are statues of Roland and Oliver.

same time, there can be no doubt but that, while we imitate the grace and beauty of the former, we may learn very much from the latter as to iconography and arrangement of paintings with regard to our architecture; but we should be indeed blind and foolish if we neglected to take every advantage of our improved knowledge of anatomy, and of our modern. lights generally, for it is only by these means that the nineteenth century can ever hope to have a living art.

THE STONE AGE-ONE OR TWO?

IN the May number of this Magazine, pp. 547-549, will be found an outline of the opinions then lately propounded by Professor J. J. A. Worsaae on this important and interesting subject. We there endeavoured to make clear his "idea, if not discovery," that the Stone Age has at least two periods, and that the earlier one goes back hundreds or thousands of years before any historical period. But we also announced that his colleague Professor Steenstrup, the great Danish paleontologist, naturalist, and archæologist, had given the weight of his authority against it. Since then this distinguished savan has published a paper, in the Transactions of the Danish Academy of Sciences, " Against Professor Worsaae's Division of the Stone Age; a Contribution towards understanding the Civilization of the Stone Age in the Northern Lands a," in which he gives his reasons for dissenting from the views of Professor Worsaae, answers him on every point, and gives the question an entirely new aspect.

As this branch of archæology has Scandinavia for its home, and as its details, for very good reasons, local and geographical, historical and scientific, can and will best be fought out there, a sketch of this valuable essay cannot but be acceptable. It will be both pleasant and profitable for us," sitting at home at ease," to be for a moment lookers-on while these giants

"Tread the hard rock under them
To sand and softest clay."

Professor Steenstrup lays it down, then, as an axiom, that there were not two periods, two civilizations, the one shewing excessive barbarism and still more excessive antiquity, whose proofs and examples we find

"Imod Hr. Professor Worsaae's Tvedeling af Stenalderen. Et Bidrag til Forstaaelsen af Stenalderens Kultur her i Norden. Af J. Jap. Sm. Steenstrup." (Kjöbenhavn, 1862. 8vo., 74 pp.)-Reprinted from "Det Kgl. Danske Vidensk. Selsk. Forhandl." for November, 1861.

GENT. MAG, VOL. CCXIII.

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