The International Weekly Miscellany - Volume I, No. 3 | Page 7

purple ground; and the
fragments of a Greek MS. of the Eusebian Canons of the sixth century,
preserved in the British Museum, is perhaps a unique example of a MS.
in which both sides of the leaves are illuminated upon a golden ground.
Mr. Owen Jones' illustrations commence with a page from the
celebrated Durham book, or Gospels of St. Cuthbert, in the
Hiberno-Saxon style of the seventh century, which was borrowed
originally from the Romans, and afterward diffused throughout Europe
by the itinerant-Saxon Benedictines. This style is formed by an
ingenious disposition of interweaving threads or ribbons of different
colors, varied by the introduction of extremely attenuated lizard-like
reptiles, birds, and other animals. The initial letters are of gigantic size,
and of extreme intricacy, and are generally surrounded with rows of

minute red dots.
The Coronation Oath Book of the Anglo-Saxon kings is a curious
specimen of the rude state of art in the ninth century. The Lombard and
the Carlovingian styles, of which latter the Psalter of Charles the Bold,
is a fine specimen, prevailed on the continent during the eighth and
ninth centuries. Toward the end of the tenth century, the Anglo-Saxon
school, under the patronage of Bishop Ethelwold, at Winchester,
assumed a new and distinct character, which was not surpassed by any
works executed at the same period. This style, with its bars of gold,
forming complete frames to the text, when enriched with interweaving
foliage of the acanthus and the ivy, became the basis of the latter and
more florid school of illumination, which attained its highest perfection
in the twelfth century, and of which the Arnstein Bible is an example.
This Bible belonged to the Monks of St. Mary and St. Nicholas, of
Arnstein, and the value which was attached to it may be inferred from
the following quaint and mild anathema at the end of the first volume:--
"The book of St. Mary and St. Nicholas, in Arnstein, the which, if any
one shall purloin it, may he die the death--may he be cooked upon the
gridiron--may the falling sickness and fevers attack him--and may he
be broken upon the wheel and hung!"
In the thirteenth century Paris became celebrated for its illuminators,
and the productions of Franco-Bolognese, whose skill in illuminating
manuscripts was then paramount, is mentioned by Dante. Mr.
Humphreys thus graphically describes the style of the fourteenth
century:--
"It was a great artistic era--the architecture, the painting, the
goldsmith's work, the elaborate productions in enamel, and the
illuminator's art, were in beautiful harmony, being each founded upon
similar principles of design and composition; even the art of writing
lending itself to complete the chord of artistic harmony, by adopting
that, crisp and angular feeling which the then general use of the pointed
arch introduced into all works of artistic combination."
* * * * *

THE PHANTOM WORLD.[1]
MR. CHRISTMAS, in his "Twin Giants," attacked the stronghold of
popular superstition by exhibiting the foundations and growth of error
in the early and ignorant ages, and of the progressive dissipation of
these delusions as the light of history and science spread over the world.
The present work is a translation from Calmet. It deals with spectres,
vampyres, and all that tribe of visionary monsters. We have here the
learning and opinion of the enlightened portion of the world a century
ago. M. Calmet traversed all history for his facts, and gives us a mass
of monkish inventions, which prove to what an extent the Romish
church fostered superstition for its own purposes. We have dead men
called from their graves to show the danger of neglecting to pay tithes,
and to rivet on the rich the necessity of building churches, and paying
liberally for masses. At p. 286 of vol. 1 we have a proof that the
"knockings" which have made so much noise in the United States, are
no novelty:--
"Humbert Birk, a burgess of note in the town of Oppenheim, had a
country-house, called Berenbach. He died in the month of November,
1620, a few days before the feast of St. Martin. On the Saturday which
followed his funeral they began to hear certain noises in the house
where he had lived with his first wife; for at the time of his death he
had married again. The master of this house, suspecting that it was his
brother-in-law who haunted it, said to him: 'If you are Humbert, my
brother-in-law, strike three times against the wall.' At the same time
they heard three strokes only, for ordinarily he struck several times.
Sometimes, also, he was heard at the fountain where they went for
water, and he frightened all the neighborhood. He did not utter
articulate sounds; but he would knock repeatedly, make a noise, or a
groan or a shrill whistle,