ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ARCHITECTURE. 187 



ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ECCLESIASTICAL 

 ARCHITECTURE.* 



By ANDEEW D. WHITE, 



EX-PRESIDENT OF CORNELL TJNIVEESITT. 



PROF. EDWARD P. EVANS is already well known to the 

 readers of the Popular Science Monthly as a contributor 

 of historical and psychological articles especially valuable and 

 interesting. 



His position upon the editorial staff of one of the most im- 

 portant European journals gives him extraordinary opportunities 

 to discern events having a real bearing upon contemporary 

 thought. As a scholar deeply interested in the most important 

 modern questions, he has for several years past interpreted to 

 Germany the significance of current American history and liter- 

 ature, and at the same time he has kept thoughtful Americans 

 informed regarding various important political and philosophical 

 developments in the New Germany, and in Europe generally. 



This latest of his works is one for which every student of 

 history, in its largest and best sense, should be grateful to him. 

 Under the title of Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Archi- 

 tecture he has thrown a bright light into the evolution of 

 thought during the middle ages, and at the same time into the 

 whole course of human development ; and his book is not only 

 learned but interesting ; so that it will not only prove profitable 

 to scholars but attractive to the general reader. 



Many a ponderous and voluminous work on mediaeval history 

 and art, requiring months for its study, is really far less valuable 

 than this little book, which can be read delightfully by the fire- 

 side during the winter evenings of a single week. 



The great majority of thinking Americans who travel abroad 

 are naturally attracted and impressed by the mediaeval cathe- 

 drals. Representing the most profound and brilliant phase of 

 architecture, these great creations attract even those who have 

 little feeling for art in general. Among all structures reared by 

 man they take strongest possession of thoughtful minds. 



Yet few, even of the most attentive, see in them their full 

 depth of meaning. Even the most scholarly traveler has been 

 wont to give up some of the most interesting cathedral problems 

 in despair. By the side of some sculptured group of heavenly 

 beauty he sees masses of carving, grotesque, and not infrequently 

 profane and even obscene. He can not understand why a sculp- 



* Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Architecture. By E. P. Evans. With a Bibliog- 

 raphy and seventy-eight Illustrations. New York: Henry Holt k Co., 1896. 



