peries were somewhat angular, the lights and shades fairly indicated but leaving by the absence of breadth a certain sense of flatness. The attitude was however still marked by a certain dignity. With the close of the seventh century, old Roman feeling resumed its sway, and the Neo-Greek influence which had penetrated to Rome a century after Ravenna had ceased to yield a single monument of art, — vanished as it had come, leaving as a solitary trace of its passage a certain tendency to slenderness and length of form. It was characteristic indeed of the independence of Roman art that, whilst history tells of iconoclastic struggles and of a general flight of Byzantine artists to Italy; — not only was not a trace of their influence to be found at Rome, but the older Neo-Greek impress had disappeared. — Of the early productions, attributable to the eigth century at Rome, but a fragment remains. Yet this and the mo saics of the time of Leo the third and Pascal the first would alone suffice to show how Roman artists trod the path of decline independent in their weakness. To the faults which had been confirmed by centuries of existence others were superadded. To absence of composition, of balance in distribution and connexion between figures were added slenderness of figure, neglect and emptiness of form, a general sameness of features, and the total disappearance of relief by shadow. Still the reminiscence of antique feeling remained in certain types, in a sort of dignity of expression and attitude, and in breadth of draperies, which, though defined by mere parallel lines, were still massive. The Greek stare had completely dis appeared from the eyes. That art so reduced could still appear imposing to nations of low cultivation, is apparent from the fact that Charlemagne found it useful to take Italian architects and painters to Germany, and that with their means he created schools whose influence was un doubted, though it has probably been exaggerated by the partiality of German writers. Part of an adoration of the Magi — the fragment to which