to a given series of scenes, and to a given mode of representing them.
Giotto gave it partial liberty and incipient life; by the artists who
succeeded him the range of its scenery was continually extended, and
the severity of its style slowly softened to perfection. But the range
was still, in some degree, limited by the necessity of its continual
subordination to religious purposes; and the style, though softened,
was still chaste, and though tender, self-restrained. At last came the
period of license: the artist chose his subjects from the lowest
scenes of human life, and let loose his passions in their portraiture.
And the kingdom of art passed away.

As if to direct us to the observation of this great law, there is a
curious visible type of it in the progress of ornamentation in
manuscripts, corresponding with the various changes in the higher
branch of art. In the course of the 12th and early 13th centuries, the
ornamentation, though often full of high feeling and fantasy, is
sternly enclosed within limiting border-lines;--at first, severe
squares, oblongs, or triangles. As the grace of the ornamentation
advances, these border-lines are softened and broken into various
curves, and the inner design begins here and there to overpass them.
Gradually this emergence becomes more constant, and the lines which
thus escape throw themselves into curvatures expressive of the most
exquisite concurrence of freedom with self-restraint. At length the
restraint vanishes, the freedom changes consequently into license, and
the page is covered with exuberant, irregular, and foolish
extravagances of leafage and line.

It only remains to be noticed, that the circumstances of the time at
which Giotto appeared were peculiarly favourable to the development of
genius; owing partly to the simplicity of the methods of practice, and