78 DANIEL WILSON ON THE ARTISTIC 



satire wliich miugled, iu qiiaiut iiicougruity, with the devout aspirations inwrought 

 into medieval architecture. With the revival of learning, and the introduction of the 

 printing press, came the Renaissance. Europe renounced medieval art as " Grothic." 

 Classic, or what passed for classic art, ruled for the next three centuries. Architecture 

 became more and more mechanical ; while cesthetic taste sought elsewhere, and more 

 especially in the novel arena of the printing-press, for avenues where it could sport in 

 unrestrained freedom. 



The ingenious skill of the palfcolithic artists and tool-makers, who wrought in their 

 rock-shelters and limestone caves, in that remote era when the climate along the northern 

 sloije of the Pyrenees resembled that of our own Labrador coast at the present day, has 

 naturally awakened a lively interest. The rigour of the climate during a greatly prolonged 

 winter prevented their obtaining stone or flint for purposes of manufacture. They 

 wrought, accordingly, in bone, iu mammoth-ivory, and in the horn of the reindeer, fashion- 

 ing from such materials their lances, fish-spears, knives, daggers and bodkins ; turning to 

 account the deer's tynes for tallies ; and carving out of the larger bones what are assumed 

 to have been maces or official batons, elaborately ornamented with symbolic devices 

 designed for other purposes than mere decoration. 



The Eskimo are recognised as presenting the nearest type to the cave-men of Europe's 

 post-glacial era. It is even possible that, like the natives of Labrador, the latter may have 

 occupied winter snow-huts ; and only resorted to their cave-shelters during the brief heat of 

 a semi-arctic summer. This, however, is rendered doubtful by the occurrence of reindeer 

 horns and bones of young fawns, along with others of such varying age as to indicate the 

 presence of the hunter during nearly every season of the year. Among a people so situa- 

 ted the industrial arts are called into constant requisition, alike for clothing and tools ; 

 and the experience of the hunter directs him to the produce of the chase for the easiest 

 supply of both. The pointed horn of the deer furnishes the ready-made dagger, lance- 

 head, and harpoon ; the incisor tooth of the larger rodents supplies a more delicately-edged 

 chisel than primitive art could devise ; and the very process of fracturing the bones of the 

 larger mammalia, in order to obtain the prized marrow, produces the splinters and pointed 

 fragments which an easy manipulation converts into daggers, bodkins, and needles. The 

 ivory of walrus, narwhal, or elephant is readily wrought into many desirable forms, and 

 is less liable to fracture than flint or stone ; and all those materials are abundant in the 

 most rigorous winters, when the latter are sealed up under the frozen soil. Implements of 

 horn or bone may therefore be assumed to have preceded all but the rudest flint celts and 

 hammer- stones or unwrought missiles; and although, owing to the nearly indestructible 

 nature of their material, it is from the latter that our ideas of primeval tool-making are 

 chiefly derived, enough has been recovered from contemporary cave-deposits to confirm the 

 analogy of their arts to those of the hyperborean workmen of our own continent. 



The necessity which, to a large extent, determined the material of the ancient workers 

 in bone and ivory, was favourable to the development of the imitative faculty. The in- 

 genious ivory and bone carvings of the Tawatins and other tribes of British Columbia, 

 the Thlinkets of Alaska, and the Eskimo, equally suffice with the examples of European 

 palaeolithic art, to show how favourable siich material was to the development of artistic 

 feeling, which must have lain dormant had the artificers been limited to flint and stone. 

 The same influence may be seen in operation in many stages of art : as in the massive bilt 



