rived, it is said, from the little lay figures dressed in crumpled garments of paper, applied in a wet state and afterwards dried, which formed the models of the day.

Passing now from the anonymous masters we approach the first well-known name of the century; Israhel Van Mecken, or Meckenen. This artist flourished probably at Malines between 1440 and 1503.

His treatment of his subjects is plain and unimaginative, but he has drawn the ungainly Flemish figures of the period with scrupulous fidelity, and his portrayal of scenes of domestic life carries us back with vivid feeling to the homes of the artist's century. Among the well-known prints of this artist the series of the "Passion" strongly illustrates the artistic skill and spirit of the age. The weak figure of the Christ, devoid of all nobility and betraying only an overcharged expression of anguish, is surrounded by soldiers in strained attitudes of exertion; the contortion of their features being apparently intended to represent the atrocity of their conduct.

An interest attaches to this early artist from our possession of his portrait engraved by his own hands. The lines of his face indicate the dull mind but earnest and patient purpose which has left to us about 270 separate products of his burin. We next meet with a name which reveals to us a new personality, Martin Schongauer of Colmar.

As an engraver he is the best of his time. He exhibits a mastery of his art and a freedom with its instruments theretofore unknown. The harsh outlines and rough shadings of his predecessors are now mellowed by a facile practice, and he impresses us with the delight with which he imitates nature even in her smallest details; the curling leaves of the lily, and the rough bark and feathery sprays of the palms are depicted with pleasure, and we can not but feel that the animated and expressive gestures of the little angels who flutter in interested action in his religious pieces suggests a firm and loving belief in the tending care of ministering spirits. Thus we may note the grace with which the lower cherub in the "Flight into Egypt" bends the palm and peers around to see if Joseph reaches the fruit, or again the rapt expression of devotion in

the "Crucifixion" with which some of the angels catch the drops of sacred blood from the sufferer upon the cross.

There is in Schongauer a tone of mystic spirituality which moves us like that of the early school of Cologne. The gentle sweetness of St. Agnes, the patient nobleness of the Virgin in the "Flight" convey to us ideas of calm and sincere devotion as does no other art, north of the Alps, in this pre-reformation century.

But Schongauer still retains many of the defect of his age. His total failure in perspective and his mannered attitudes in the "Charge of St. James of Compostello" remind us that art is still in its swaddling clothes, and that even its best professors are children learning its rules. The lengthened and emaciated figures with awkward feet and long bony hands tell us that the Renaissance is but dawning, and that traditional types have not yet given way before the accurate study of nature. But we feel that the spirit that impelled Schongauer was not that of display of personal skill, but rather that of sacrifice, and as in his well-known print of the "Tribute of the Kings," he pictures the offering of gold and frankincense and myrrh to the infant Christ, we feel that it is Schongauer himself who consecrates his best endeavor to the Holy Child. The spirit of the Giottesque school seems to have crossed the Alps and Fra Angelico's calm and yet ecstatic fervor glows in the plates of the master of Colmar.

But we must pass on to a still greater name, greater in bold and original invention, and according to the latest research as great in technical skill-Michael Wolgemuth of Nuremberg— forever immortalized in his still greater pupil, Albert Durer.

Wolgemuth's fame has till recently rested chiefly on his wood-cuts, and notably on his illustrations of the "Schwatzbehalter" and the "Nuremberg Chronicle."

In these, notwithstanding the sometimes primitive grotesqueness of the designs, and clumsy cutting, there is, as has been said, "an immense progress in freedom and aptness of expression.

The learned keeper of the Cambridge prints thus vigorously describes what he terms "the singular and moving mixture of the noble and the grotesque" in a subject, which is explained