COMI-AHATIVK .\\.\TOMY. 



1-15 



are borrowol from those of Memphis. Or if we depict 

 iiml Aii -<..:,- \vo go back for guidance to the monuments of 

 it. Hut the mediaeval Italian artist WUH troubled with 

 'i Horuples. He boldly and frankly transferred the scene 

 to his own time and place. He represented the apostles or the 

 : ho Florentine costume of the fifteenth century, and 

 he dressed St. Elizabeth or St. Mary Magdalen in the robes of 

 tln> i.i.i whom he saw about him. In other words, he chose 

 iilar sitter who seemed to his fancy best to repro- 

 Hi-nt St. l';iul r St. Cecilia, and then he painted the sitter, 

 clutln's and all, without any alteration. Thin frank habit of 

 L,' the past as present at least secured thorough natural- 

 ness and fidelity to life, instead of the stiffness and meaning- 

 lessness of the previous epoch. 



There was another way, too, in which Italian art advanced 

 greatly during this period, and that was in what is called 

 "composition" the grouping and arrangement of pictures. 

 In the older style, the figures were for the most part stiff and 

 solitary, in symbolical attitudes, not forming part of an 

 action, or telling any story of their own. Giotto began to 

 represent scenes from the New Testament and the lives of the 

 saints in something like natural and speaking arrangement ; 

 he grouped his figures so that one could see at once what sort 

 of story he wished to impress upon spectators. His successors 

 carried out this tendency still further, and they also made 

 great advances in the art of so disposing the personages as to 

 produce a pleasing artistic effect. 



Among the great painters of this transitional period, one of 

 the most familiar names is that of Fra Angelico (1387 1455). 

 A monk of Fiesole, he seems to have begun his artistic career 

 as an illuminator of books, and to the last his style retained 

 much of that careful, minute, elaborate workmanship which is 

 characteristic of illuminations. He painted at Florence anc! 

 Borne, and some of his best works are the frescoes in the 

 convent of St. Mark, in the former town, and those in the 

 chapel of Nicholas V. in the Papal palace of the Vatican. Our 

 own National Gallery has two or three of his paintings, which 

 very well exhibit the miniature-like character of his art. Fra 

 Angelico, however, must be regarded as to some extent a 

 survivor of the older school in its spirit, if not always in its 

 technical detail. He was above all things a religions painter. 

 He worked even as if under special inspiration, regarding his 

 art as a gift from heaven, to be used for the glory of God ; and 

 his subjects are generally saints and angels, treated in an 

 intensely devotional spirit, with much minute delicacy of 

 drawing, bat with a somewhat conventional use of gilding 

 and halos. The evident earnestness of his work, and the 

 intense beauty of his faces, redeems them from any tinge of 

 earlier stiffness. 



His younger contemporary, Masaccio (1402 1429), painted 

 in a very different and much more modern style. While Fra 

 Angelico was a conservative in his tendencies, clinging to the 

 old decorative traditions of illumination, Masaccio was an 

 innovator who went rather to nature herself for his ideas, 

 endeavouring to represent scenes more as they might be 

 conceived to have really occurred. His chief works are frescoes 

 at Borne and Florence, representing Biblical scenes with much 

 freedom alid spirit, and with singularly little trace of con- 

 ventionalism. He was also a great master of perspective, 

 which he understood better than any of his predecessors, and 

 his use of colour is good and effective. 



Fra Filippo Lippi, another friar (1412 1469), and probably 

 a student of Masaccio's works, carried on the movement 

 started by his predecessors, and was one of a numerous school 

 springing up about the middle of the fifteenth century in 

 Florence and the other Tuscan towns. For though it is only 

 possible to mention briefly the principal names, it must be 

 borne in mind that painters, good and bad, abounded in Italy 

 during all this period, and that most of them were gradually 

 progressing onward towards the great ideals of the Benaissance. 

 Filippo's pupil, Filippino Lippi (14601505), almost brings us 

 down to the time of Lionardo and Baffael ; indeed, they were 

 to a great extent contemporaries. His paintings mark the 

 gradual increase of naturalness, and also the predominance of 

 what may be called a portrait style, in which the individual 

 features of the model were copied with a certain hard fidelity 

 to life a want of idealisation, which makes the saints too 

 closely resemble the more commonplace Florentines of his own 



time. This peculiarity in, perhaps, even more marked in 

 Botticelli (14471515), who may be regarded as the hut of 

 the pre-Baffaelites. Originally, it it said, tho apprentice of a 

 goldsmith, he retained always something of that rather me- 

 chanical workmanship, which might be expected from hu early 

 training. Though his portraits have ftingnlar power and 

 truthfulness as mere representations of human head*, they 

 are wanting in ideality. The mediaeval school had now done 

 all that it could effect, and it needed to be waked up in some 

 new direction by another fresh impulse, such M that which 

 it had received from Giotto. This fresh impulse was given it 

 by the great Benaissance painters, Baffael, Lionardo, and 

 Michael Angelo ; but the consideration of their work moat be 

 postponed till another paper. 



COMPARATIVE ANATOMY. V. 



ACTINOZOA (RAYED ANIMALS). 



So much was written about the radial arrangement of parts 

 when treating of Cuvier's sub-kingdom Badiata, that it is un-' 

 necessary to dwell upon this plan of structure now that we 

 have to describe tho animals which best exhibit it. This 

 arrangement, it will be seen, gives the name to the animals 

 which are the subject of this lesson. It is, however, equally 

 characteristic of the Hydrozoa. The Ccelenterata, which 

 embraces both classes, are always radial in all their organs, 

 and although it is not difficult to find a right and left side 

 in many of these animals, this arrangement never entirely 

 obliterates that pattern which we conventionally call star-like. 



It is perhaps well to make some remarks here with regard to 

 the places where, and the conditions under which these animals 

 live. Technically, the place and conditions are called the 

 habitat and station of a species. All the Ccelenterata, as 

 we have observed, are inhabitants of the water, and all the 

 Actinozoa are confined to the sea. Until we become acquainted 

 with the lower and the lowest animals, we are apt to conclude 

 that the conditions under which we live are those most favour- 

 able to life. Admirably adapted as the human body is to per- 

 form all the functions of life, man treads the solid earth and 

 breathes the fluid air, furnished with senses and powers which 

 enable him to escape the manifold dangers and to provide 

 against the constant changes of aerial life, and he does this 

 with such ease that he forgets entirely that he is living under 

 difficult conditions, over which it is only his superior organism 

 gives him the mastery. Whenever the most experienced 

 swimmer or diver takes a "header" into the sea, he leaves 

 behind him the better part of all his perceptive and locomotive 

 powers. The eyes and ears seem muffled, and locomotion 

 becomes a struggle in which he is conscious of wasted power, 

 producing insignificant results. Helpless when thrown upon 

 the ocean, he succumbs at once when plunged beneath its 

 surface. Hence it is not at all unlikely that he should 

 consider the air as the vital fluid and the water the abode 

 of death. The landsman thinks of the continent as abounding 

 with life, and rich with the forms of beauty to which life gives 

 origin, but he thinks of the ocean as a waste, desolate and 

 void. Of course the slightest reflection and knowledge would 

 remove this extreme idea. Our fisheries, maintaining their 

 ground as sources of wealth and means of employment, when 

 the chose of all land animals has ceased to be remunerative, 

 proclaim to the economist, though he be no naturalist, that the 

 water, rather than the land, gives shelter to living beings. 

 Nevertheless, few people sufficiently recognise that the converse 

 of the common notion is correct. Life is far more easily 

 maintained in water than in air. Structures which could nof 

 support their own weight in air may bo locomotive organs in 

 water, urging the body to which they are attached slowly, 

 it is true, but effectively through a medium which, though of 

 greater resistance, presses equally on all parts. Delicate and 

 feeble organs, which would collapse in air, are floated forth 

 in water to subserve the touching, or even the seizing function. 

 Moisture, which is so necessary to almost all the organs, and to 

 the performance of almost all functions, has not to be retained 

 and husbanded with care and contrivance, but hives the whole 

 body. As a striking instance of the importance of this last 

 consideration, it may be stated that the respiration of any 

 animal can only be maintained by having a moist membrane 



