REVIEWS— THE DANCE OF DEATH. 213 



class of ideograpliic moralitieSj executed chiefly in the 15th and l6th 

 centuries. 



This solemn and yet satirical pageant was often painted on the 

 church-yard walls, and even in the Church itself, as at Hexham, in 

 Northumberland, where the choir screen of the Abbey Church is 

 adorned with a painting of the " Dance of Death," executed in the 

 reign of Richard the Third, or early in that of his immediate succes- 

 sor. In other examples it is preserved in a more enduring form by 

 means of the sculptor's art, as in the celebrated and beautiful Roslyn 

 Chapel, near Edinburgh. Among the eccentric and bewildering 

 variety of ornaments pertaining to that gorgeous specimen of the arts 

 of the fifteenth century, (A. D., 1446,) the plurima mortis imago pre- 

 dominates, in some cases, with ludicrously incongruous adjuncts, but 

 in others, with gentle and more suggestive symbols, as when flowers 

 are seen sprouting from the empty sockets of a skull. Within the 

 mouldings of two of the arches, or rather stone beams of the north 

 aisle, the sculptor's allegories expand into more elaborate and coherent 

 detail. There are two series of clustered figures in relief, the one repre- 

 senting the ancient allegory of " the Seven Deadly Sins," and the 

 other " the Dance of Death." 



The majority of these singular representations of death's universal 

 sway ; these 



" Lessons for every heart, a Bible for all eyes," 



are replete with satirical assaults against the clergy and the priest-craft 

 of the times ; constituting in this respect an echo of the contemporary 

 satires of the poets, just as Michael Angelo's altar-piece in the Sistine 

 Chapel reproduces the satirical picturings of Dante's " Inferno." 



Doubtless the poets in like manner reproduced the pictorial scenic 

 moralities which appealed to their eyes, and suggested with fresh evi- 

 dences the quaint incongruities of life and death which form so inex- 

 haustible a theme for the satiric muse. 



The Scottish poet Dunbar, who must have looked upon the rich 

 devices of Roslyn Chapel when fresh from the sculptor's chisel, repro- 

 duces one of its " sermons in stone " in his " Dance of the Seven 

 Deidly Synnis ;" and it may not be thought improbable that the more 

 popular "Dance of Death," either as represented in the Roslyn aisle, 

 or in the same style of art, with an angel playing on the bagpipes 

 bringing up the rear, as figured over the entrance to the cemetery of 

 the ancient Collegiate Church of St. Giles at Edinburgh, may have 



