into a great silence!

* * * * *

A few evenings afterward, as they were all sitting together in the
library, and Howard with them, Mr. Sumner, knowing that the young people
had been reading and talking of Ghirlandajo and Botticelli, said that
perhaps there would be no better time for talking of these artists than
the present.

"With Masaccio," he continued, "we have begun a new period of Italian
painting,--the period of the Early Renaissance. All the former great
artists,--Cimabue, Giotto, and Fra Angelico, whom we have particularly
studied,--and the lesser ones, about whom you have read,--Orcagna,
Taddeo Gaddi, and Uccello, the bird-lover (who gave himself so
untiringly to the study of linear perspective),--belong to the Gothic
period, literally the rude period; in which, although a steady advance
was made, yet the works are all more or less very imperfect
art-productions. All these are wholly in the service of the Church, and
are painted in fresco on plaster or in _tempera_ on wood. In the Early
Renaissance, however, a new impulse was seen. Artists were much better
equipped for their work, nature-study progressed wonderfully, anatomy
was studied, perspective was mastered, the sphere of art widened to take
in history, portraits, and mythology; and in the latter part of this
period, as we shall see, oil-painting was introduced."

"Can you give us any dates of these periods to remember, uncle?" asked
Malcom.

"Roughly speaking, the Gothic period covers the years from about 1250 to