e Giants in the G

re two gigantic brothers taken prisoners in Cornwall fighting against the Trojan invaders, who brought them in triumph to the site of London, where their chief chained them to the gate of his palace as porters. But, unfortunately for this romantic tale, Mr. Fairholt, in his work upon the giants,[5] makes it known that

Great Dragon

cerning Gog and Magog, and attribute them to the poverty of invent

alance. (Bas-relief of

archangels, angels, the countless host of celestial beings, and all the saints on earth and in heaven, while on the devil's side were a vast army of fallen spirits and all the depraved portion of the human race. The simple souls of that period did not accept this explanation in an allegorical sense, but as the most literal statement of facts familiarly known, concerning which no one in Christendom had any doubt whatever. The devil was as composite in his external form as he was in his tradit

of a Soul between Angel and

t weighing. This was an exceedingly favorite subject with the artists of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. They delighted to picture the devil, in their crude uncompromising way, as an insatiate miser of human souls, eager to seize them, demanding a thousand, a million, a billion, all; and when one appeared in the scales so void of guilt th

to Hell. (From Que

the devil with a long three-pronged clawing instrument, which he is about to thrust into the hair of the ascending saint; and no man can tell which is to finally have that soul, the angel or the devil. M. Champfleury describes a capital in a French church which represents one of the minions of the devil carrying a lizard, symbol of evil, which he is about to add to the scale containing the sins; and the spectator is left to infer that fraud of this kind is likely to be successful, for underneath is written, "Ecce Diabolus!" It is as if the arti

tended to excite horror, not hilarity. Queen Mary probably saw in this picture, as she turned the page of her sumptuous psalter, an argument to inflame her bloody zeal for the ancient faith. In the writings of some of the early fath

so many proud monarchs and fancied gods groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates who persecuted the name of the Lord liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against Christians; so many sa

. (Bas-relief on the Port

erate Roman, when at the amphitheatre he doomed a rival's defeated gladiator to death by pointing

Kings and bishops carried things with a high hand during their mortal career, but the

l Christ, with one foot upon a devil, the other foot about to fall upon a second devil, and with his hands delivering from the open mouth of a third devil human souls, who hold up to him their hands clasped as in prayer. In this picture the sympathies of the artist are evidently not on the side of the evil spirits. Their malevolence is apparent, and their attitude is ignominious. The rescued souls are, indeed, a pigmy crew, of woe-begone aspect; but their resistless Deliverer towers aloft in such

empta

Poor People's Bible (Biblia Pauperum), block-printed, in which it forms part of an extensive frontispiece. The book was once the property of George III., at the sale of whos

is the height to which the Lord was taken by the tempter

t truth that the shortness of life was a reason for making the most of it while it lasted. And their notion of making the most of it was to get from it the greatest amount of pleasure. This vulgar scheme of existence vanished at the promulgation of the doctrine that the condition of every soul was fixed unalterably at the moment of its severance from the body, or, at best, after a short period of purgation, and that the only way to avoid unending anguish was to do what the Church commanded and to avoid what the Church forbade. Terror from that time ruled Christendom. Terror covered the earth with ecc

r-"Pray for the S

il about the year 1690, and M. Langlois informs us that in remote

existed, the sense of the ludicrous asserted itself, and saved the human mind from being crushed down into abject and hopeless idiocy. The readers of "

represented the play of the Empire of Death. This young man played Death, and this one an Angel. This woman, who is the wife of the author of the comedy, is the Queen. O

nd the

rim messenger. Art adopted the theme, and the Dance of Death began to figure among the decorations of ecclesiastical structures and on the vellum of illuminated prayer-boo

Death, noted by Horace in the familiar passage; and the other the incongruity between the summons to depart and the condition of the person summoned. When these two aspects of the subject had become hackneyed, artists pleased themselves sometimes with a treatment precisely the opposite, and represented Death dancing gayly away with the most battered, ancient, and forlorn of

nd the

would imagine even the rest of the grave welcome. But the peddler, too, makes a very wry face when he recognizes who it is that has interrupted his

nd the

nd the

hilosopher holding a clock; upon a miser who has thrust his body deep down into a massive chest he shuts the heavy lid; he shows himself in the mirror in which a young beauty is looking; to a philosopher seated in his study he enters and presents an hour-glass. A pope on his throne is crowning an emperor kneeling at his feet, with princes, cardinals, and bishops in attendance, when a Death appears at his side, and another in his retinue dressed as a cardinal. Death lays his hand upon an emperor's crown at the moment when he is doing justice to a poor man against a rich; but in another picture of the same series,

d bridge at Lucerne to give naturalness and charm to the conversation of Elsie and Prince Henry while they are cross

hat is th

a young man s

her devotions,

look at him; an

t the candles

a pity 'tis that

ngs, when in

eard in heaven t

has stolen a jest

es with

A fool

the heart of the

hurch with he

ith the rattl

is sad! And yet

die with all the

enedictions o

affluence of

to a cold and

nto da

Under it

ath shall separ

is this that foll

th playing o

with these caricatures of human existence, until the girl hurries wi

luminated prayer-books (pp. 44, 46). The device, however, seldom rises above the ancient one of investing animals with the gifts and qualities of men. Monkeys

omen in 1490. That quaint reformer of manners dealt mild rebuke to men who gathered great store of books and put them to no good use; to women who were ever changing the fashion of their dress; to men who began to build without counting the cost; to "great borrowers and slack payers;" to fools "who will serve two lords both together;" to them who correct others while themselves are "culpable in the same fault;" to "fools who can not keep secret their own counsel;" to people who believe in "predestinacyon;" to men who attend closely to

ed in the Balance. (Fr

ve charm. We learn from it that while the Christian people of Europe were on their knees praying in church they were liable to be disturbed by the "mad noise and shout" of a loitering crowd; by knights coming in from the field, falcon upon wrist, with

paynyms within

moche more de

ore incisive than Brandt's amiable remonstrance. The usurer, hurrying away to church, tells his wife that if any one com

church, where I can gain nothing. Hallowed be thy name. It's too bad I have a servant so expert in pilfering my money. Thy kingdom come. I have a mind to go home to see what my wife is about. I'll bet she sells a chicken while I am away, and keeps the money. Thy will be do

o be conceded. In touching upon the Church manners of the Middle Ages, M. Champfleury makes a remark that startles a Protestant mind accustomed only to the most exact decorum in churches. "Old men of to-day" (1850), he says, speaking of France, "will recall to mind the gayety of the midnight masses, when buffoons from the country waited impatiently to send down showers of small torpedoes upon the pavement of the nave, to bar

English record offices, executed apparently by idle clerks for their amusement when they had nothing else to do. One

ure of an Irish

ght not to be allowed in time of peace to use "that detestable instrument of destruction which by an ancient but accursed custom they constantly carry in their hands instead of a staff." The modern Irish shillalah, then, is only the residuum of the ancient Irish broad-axe-the broad-axe with

versation, then there is usually in that country a less refined, stronger class, who do comply with natural law, who do live in that virtuous, frugal, and orderly manner by which alone families can be perpetuated and states established. In several communities during the centuries preceding the Reformation, when the nobles and great merchants wasted their substance in riotous living or in insensate pilgrimages and crusades, the Jew was the virtuous, sensible, and solvent man. He did not escape the evil influe

Record Office in London, the work of some idle clerk 642 years ago, and recently tran

he Jews in Engl

from some lavish Christian by a money-lender's wiles-the Jew Isaac stands above all the other figures, and is blessed with four faces and a crown, which imply, as Mr. Pike conjectures, that, let him look whichever way he will, he beholds possessions over which he holds kingly sway. Lower down, and nearer the centre, are Mosse Mokke, another Jewish money-lender of Norwich, and Madame Avegay, one of many Jewesses who lent money, between whom is a horned

how a Jew ought to be baptized, he replied, "You must fill a large tub with water, and, having divested a Jew of his clothes, cover him with a white garment. He must then sit down in the tub, and you must baptize him quite under the water." He said further to Dr. Menius that if a Jew, not converted at heart, were to ask baptism at his hands, he would take