teenth to well on into the eighteenth century. Chief amongst them, and one of the earliest, was Charles le Brun, the director of a whole army of workers for the court of Louis XIV. under the protection of Cardinal Mazarin. In his employ, Jean Bérain, Jean le Pautre, Girardon, Jean Marot and his son Daniel are all names connected in one way or another with our subject. Daniel Marot is of especial interest to us. Exiled into Holland he was the means of disseminating the French style in our own country, where he died, and the indebtedness to him both of Grinling Gibbons and of Chippendale could not be overlooked. One more name amongst those who worked under le Brun must not be forgotten. This is the Italian Philippe Caffieri, who was especially distinguished as a wood sculptor. The fine doors of the great staircase at Versailles are his work.

Wood sculpture in England of the late fifteenth, of the sixteenth and of the seventeenth centuries possesses in its domestic character features of very strong national interest. Probably in no other country is there still existing, outside museums, such a wealth of carved woodwork as is to be found in the almost countless great country-houses throughout the land, where it serves the same purposes of ornament and usefulness, and is in many cases in the possession of the same historic families as in the days when it was erected or made. Not only is it to these great houses that we have to look for our treasures in wood in the shape of cabinets and decorative furniture of other countries, but it is in them that still exist, in situ, the massive carved staircases, doorways, chimney-pieces, panellings of rooms, mirror and picture frames, imposing bedsteads, tables, chairs and a host of other furniture of a period of at least two hundred years, during which the use of wood for decoration was so general. Nor should our interest be confined to these two hundred years only.

In medieval times dense forests of oak abounded throughout the country, and afforded the most easilyworked material for the construction of whole cities. Houses were framed together, necessitating the use of vast posts or gigantic squared pillars-almost treessuch as we find in many a half-timbered church tower. The stories projected one over another, and this method of using large surfaces of exposed wood afforded considerable scope for carved work in the overhanging fronts, gable-ends, piers or corner posts, barge-boards, and hooded doorways. All this was enriched with delicate window tracery, niches filled with sculptured images, hammer-beams and brackets, corbels and pendentives carved, painted, and gilded. The later examples of the half-timbered style that are to be found most commonly perhaps in Yorkshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire, and Suffolk are still evidence of every conceivable diversity of architectural ornament and small figure sculpture. In some cases they show the preservation to a late period of Gothic types and feeling. Others might be cited, but we may take, as one example, a seventeenth-century house in the Market Square, Shrewsbury, which is entirely Gothic, the barge-boards carved with vine-leaf and fruit, and scrolls of branch and leaf work. Or, for another the "Feathers" inn at Ludlow. Earlier ones still exist, even in London: for instance, the fifteenth-century building in Cloth-fair, Smithfield-now the "Old Dick Whittington" public-house-has some grotesque gargoyles still on the walls.

As in the case of medieval screens, we have little knowledge of the actual carvers of this open-air decorative work, which is sometimes of the date of the screens, and of that for interior construction: so strong, so elegant, and yet so different in style and execution from the church work. That a certain amount is due to the foreigner-to the Italians brought over with

Torregiano, and, in the succeeding reigns, to the German and Flemish workmen and to imported goods, we know. We do not forget such examples as the Holbein chimney-piece of Reigate Priory, or Nonsuch House as it was, from which the Reigate chimney-piece came. Yet it is not to be too readily assumed that the uncouth is invariably of native, the refined and graceful of exotic origin. The stalls of Jesus College, Cambridge (1496-1506), of King's College chapel (1509-1528), or the panels of Queen's College (1531), all within the same university, are evidence of fine English work, even if the designs may have been inspired from Italy.

The field is scarcely less extensive in post-Reformation church wood sculpture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Such churches as Croscombe alone are mines for illustration, and without pretending even summarily to cover the whole subject, it will suffice to call attention to that which is involved in the numberless examples of screens, bench-ends, and pews. Some of the latter-known as squires' pews pews-are huge enclosures in themselves, covered with characteristic carved work. Amongst them there are, for instance, those at Stokesay (Salop), Whalley (Lancs.), Herriard (Hants), the Bluett pew at Holcombe Rogus, the Dropmore pew at Burnham, and-to take but one morethe superb work at Lavenham, Suffolk.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there must have been enormous activity in the use of carved wood for interior decoration. Whole forests of oak would have been required to supply even one great house, such as Aldermaston or Haddon Hall. A bare list of notable country-houses abounding in carved woodwork would fill, with their names alone, several pages. Many prominent examples occur at once to the mind. First of all there is Abington Hall, inexhaustible in interest, with its panels, often of the misericord style, the spoil, no doubt, of churches. Then there are Aldermaston

Court (Berks) and its noble stairway, with much evidence in its figure-work that English sculpture was not, at times, behind the rest of the world in delicacy of treatment, knowledge of anatomy, treatment of drapery, and power of execution. Or, as at Castle Ashby (Northants), again a remarkable staircase of the early seventeenth century, a most original treatment of treetrunks intertwined with ivy, trailing vines, and other vegetation. Then, we have Burghley, built and ornamented by Germans (1577-1587) yet of English inspiration, for it would be difficult to find a prototype on the Continent, or anything like it. And, once more, Bradfield (Devon), where there is no end of quaint Elizabethan and Jacobean figure-work, in which the grotesque runs riot: barbaric, perhaps, but full of interest for costumes, and illustrative of the magnificence of a Tudor mansion. Again, we have Layer Marney and its linen pattern panels, Godinton, Burton Agnes, Longleat, Hardwicke Hall, Haddon Hall-the list is endless. All abound in panellings and majestic figure-work, especially in the characteristic giant terminal figures and other caryatid monsters so frequently used as jambs for the chimney-pieces. Uncouth though the latter may be-perhaps no better art sometimes than that of the sculptor of ships' figure-heads or of the Gog and Magog type-still, however open to criticism, they look well enough in the general scheme of decoration, and we cannot help but feel a national pride in it all. As an example of the houses of wealthy city merchants-numbers of which still exist in such towns as Exeter-the South Kensington Museum is able to show a complete room from the latter place.

An epitome of some of the most salient points in the history of English wood sculpture of the periods now in question could not, of course, avoid some mention of Grinling Gibbons, upon whom so much extravagant praise has been lavished, of Cibber, of Marot, of

Inigo Jones and of the influence of Sir Christopher Wren. But there is no place here to discuss the question of the position of Gibbons as a sculptor or of his art as a decorator. That the latter is highly decorative and pleasing from a certain point of view it would be impossible to deny, nor that amongst the profusion of work attributed to Gibbons there is to be found both the mediocre and the exceptionally fine. We may class among the very best such an example as the decoration over the dining-room mantelpiece at Keele Hall. Charming in their simplicity are the trails of foliage, the pendent drapery tasselled and looped, the floral frame of the portrait in the centre panel. We need not cavil at the imitative art. All is in harmony with the tone and details of the white marble mantelpiece, with the added ornaments which stand on it, and with the colouring of the adjacent panels. That is the whole secret of this style. Gibbons or some other may supply lengths of mechanically-cut work, more or less faithful, clever, admirable imitations of animal or vegetable life: not a little of the art lies in the man who selects and applies them, and who has studied the effects of light which their position and environments require. It is curious to observe that the art of Grinling Gibbons is altogether ignored by foreign critics. by foreign critics. I know no

reference to it whatever.

No more has been intended or could have been done within the limits of a short chapter than to give some general indication of the wealth of material which still awaits the student. Much more remains to be said in order even briefly to summarize the extensive range which the story of wood sculpture covers from the time of the triumph of the Renaissance to our own day. All with which we may connect it may not be art of the purest and highest kind perhaps, but all presents points of historical interest at least, and some may lay claim to distinction equal to any other sculpture.