Cultural and Artistic Antecedents 335 



spersed animals and birds. We need to find precedents for the 

 subjects of the figure-sculpture in this period, and, if possible, for 

 the pecuhar modes of treatment ; and to show that these subjects 

 were not handled in sculpture, or not handled in this way, at an 

 earlier period. We must find precedents for the use of the sundial, 

 of chequers, and of knotwork, in stone. We must account for the 

 use, at this period, of any pecuhar forms of letters in the Latin 

 inscriptions. Finally, we must account for the employment of runic 

 characters on stone monuments, and, in particular, of stone monu- 

 ments devoted to Christian uses. 



Having considered the precedents or parallels for the various feat- 

 ures of the carving, we must then see by what artists such carving 

 might be designed and executed, from what countries, districts, and, 

 if possible, schools, such artists may be conceived as proceeding ; 

 whether they would be hkely to come to so remote and barbarous 

 a region ; and by what inducements, if any, they may have been 

 determined to sojourn there and accomplish these works. Among 

 such inducements might be reckoned the existence, not far away, 

 of works of art of a similar character, due to similar influences, and 

 produced by workmen of similar antecedents ; the hospitality and 

 liberality of their patron or patrons ; and the assurance that their 

 labors would be appreciated by competent, or at least well-disposed, 

 observers. 



Beginning, then, with such faces of obelisks as are divided into 

 panels filled with figure-sculpture, it is easy to see that these, Hke 



every pilgrim to St. Peter's, from before the days of King Alfred, must have 

 seen that wliich still adorns the Piazza between the colonnades of Bernini. 

 This, according to Gregorovius, is ' the only obelisk in Rome whicli has not 

 at some time or other been leveled with the ground ' ( Rome in the Middle 

 Ayes 1. 53 ; 3. 27 ; cf. 6. 722, note 3 ; 7. 240, note 2). Every such pilgrim 

 from the North would of course have been impressed by an object so strange, 

 and by figures so enigmatic. Alexander Gordon (Itinerarium Septentrionale, 

 1726, p. 160) says of the Ruth well Cross that it ' is, in Form, like the Egyptian 

 Obehsks at Borne ' ; and Bishop Nicolson, in his Scots Historical Library 

 (1702), p. 64, says of the monuments of northeastern Scotland : ' Hector 

 Boetius [d. 1536], in one of his particular Fancies, thinks them relicks of 

 the ^Egyptian Fashions.' 



It is indeed strange, on the supposition that the Ruthwell and Bewcastle 

 crosses both had cross-pieces, that no fragment of either has been preserved, 

 and that the stone sent from Bewcastle to London could not possibly have 

 been the cross-piece, nor, so far as can be seen, a head-piece above it. It is 

 well known that the cross-piece now to be seen at Ruthwell is modern, and 

 of no authority whatever, while the top-stone seems authentic. 



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