cuted by the hangman, Ambrose Rigge was laid across a hand-barrow, and carried through the streets by two men. He was then placed in a cart, and drawn out of the town in frost and snow. No refreshment was given him, and he was told that if he ever revisited the town he should be whipped a second time, and also branded in the shoulder with the letter R. Soon afterwards, however, he was, as he says, “moved of the Lord" to go to Southampton again; and this time suffered from no molestation, although he held several meetings. But on a subsequent visit the Mayor again threatened him with the utmost rigour of the law, but was prevented by a justice of the peace from carrying out his design.

In 1660 Ambrose Rigge underwent a suffering imprisonment at Winchester, because of his conscientious refusal to take the Oath of Allegiance; and two years later he was, for the same reason, committed close prisoner to Horsham gaol, where he was confined for ten years, and was often sorely abused by cruel gaolers. "I was freely resigned," he writes, "to suffer all the days of my life, if it was the will of the Lord, seeing no way of deliverance from man, in whom I put no confidence; but with a godly confidence was resolved to wait in patience all the days of my appointed time."

It was during this imprisonment that Ambrose Rigge married Mary Luxford, the daughter of a certain Captain Luxford, of Hurstpierpoint, who had become a Friend. Mary Rigge's husband writes of her as "a blessed woman," About a year after his release they went to reside at Gatton, where Ambrose Rigge opened a boarding-school, finding time, however, for much good service in the neighbourhood. Many," he says, "were gathered to the Lord, and established in the faith of the Gospel." It was during his residence at this place that Ambrose Rigge

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addressed an Epistle of Advice to Friends, in which he writes of how his spirit had been grieved by "the uneven walking of many."

He died at Reigate, in 1704, leaving behind him many seals to his ministry. "I am going," he said, "where the weary are at rest!"

Thus, in the face of difficulties the magnitude of which it is hard for us to estimate, did our forefathers in the faith labour for the advancement of the Redeemer's kingdom. Nor surely in these days is there less need of men that have "understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do."

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And yet of the least in His kingdom the Lord of Hosts has need to aid in displaying His banner, and the battle is no sham fight. But Christ has told His disciples that He will give them "power . . . over all the power of the enemy." By His "promised " mercy, by His "Holy Covenant "-nay, by His oath, -God binds Himself to deliver His believing people that they may serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness.' Distrust of God's grace is not humility. Even distrust of any gift that He has bestowed upon us may be the result of an undue shrinking from responsibility. Therefore, however weak we are, let us never fear to pray that "all the good pleasure of His goodness, and the work of faith with power," may be fulfilled in us. Many and varied are the kinds of service to which we are called, that none need fail to make some use, under God's guidance, of "the wonderful power -as it has been termed"with which He has endowed us, as social and sympathetic beings, to impart what we know and love, to pass on from hand to hand the torch we bear, be it of a blazing brightness, or as yet but dimly burning. But, first of all, we must ourselves possess the light.

FRANCES ANNE BUDGE.

ON PAINTING.

AT a time when the historical sciences are receiving such wide attention, and the art of painting its proportionate share, it may not prove uninteresting to some readers of our buff-coloured magazine to give a sketch of the rise, growth, and progress of this creative and forcible mode of expression.

It has been very justly remarked that we moderns are indebted to religious confraternities for the preservation of nearly all knowledge during the dark ages. A popular writer has said: "We know that but for the monks the light of liberty, literature, and science had been for ever extinguished, and that for six centuries there existed for the thoughtful, the gentle, the inquiring, the devout spirit, no peace, no security, no home but the cloister. There learning trimmed her lamp; there contemplation plumed her wings; there the traditions of art preserved from age to age by lonely studious men, kept alive in form and colour, the idea of a beauty beyond that of earth, of a might beyond that of spear and shield, of a Divine sympathy with suffering humanity."

Science and art, then, derived the elements of their new existence from the cloisters, in which retreats written materials could survive even the rudest times. Among the studies which never ceased to be cultivated in monasteries were those of Medicine and the Decorative Arts; the first being of universal interest and utility, whilst the latter were indispensable for the construction of sacred edifices. It is noteworthy that the practice of medicine and the pursuit of painting have, in many cases through long ages, remained inseparably

blended, owing, partially, no doubt, to earliest associations, but more particularly to the common nature of their studies to each.

For a considerable period after the fifth century the knowledge of medicine was almost confined to ecclesiastics, and to their exertions the first schools for its study owe their origin. Subsequently, however, this practising of the healing art was forbidden to the higher orders of the clergy; but the monks continued it, and each monastry had its dispensary, the furnishing of which involved chemical as well as botanical research. Those of the monks who were painters (and for several ages they were the only painters) had thus opportunity of becoming acquainted with the nature and properties of various materials fitted for their art.

Hippocrates complained of the writings of a physician that they had less relation to medicine than to the arts of design; and Pliny remarks that a certain gum (tragacanth) was useful to both painters and physicians; and further, in speaking of the colourless Rhodian glue, he says, "Painters and physicians employ it.

A proof that a still stronger bond of union existed between the two in the Middle Ages is that the pious votaries of these arts believed that their patron, St. Luke, had practised both. The author of a Byzantine manuscript, or painting, after invoking the Virgin, addresses himself to St. Luke as "the learned physician," and as "the artist who had wrought in colours and in mosaic."

The earliest writers who distinctly described mixture of solid colours with oil for painting purposes are Eraclitus, Theophilus, and Peter de St. Audémar, of whom the former two lived north of the Alps. Again we may see how chemistry was the professed auxiliary of painting as well as of medicine from these early times until the seventeenth century. Scarcely any plant

existed, capable of yielding colouring juices, which had not at some period been used for painting in miniature. Eraclitus says, "He who wishes to convert flowers into the various colours which, for the purpose of writing, the page of the book demands, must wander over the corn-fields early in the morning and then he will find various flowers, fresh springing up. Let him make haste and pluck them for himself," then describing the process by which the dry colour may be obtained. be obtained. In writing of the colours and arts of the Romans, Eraclitus says, "Who is now able to show us what these artificers discovered for themselves? He who by his powerful virtue divides the pious hearts of men among various arts." The movable pictures of the ancients were generally on wood, painted with drying oils, though in a somewhat rude fashion. Dioscorides, who is supposed to have lived in the reign of Augustus and whose works were familiar to medieval writers on medicine, mentions some of these oils, as also does Aetius, a medical writer of the fifth century, in connection with works of art. Leonardo da Vinci, writing nearly 1,000 years later, states exactly the same facts. Not until

the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries did the art of painting emerge from the fostering yet rigid tuition of the monasteries. Perugino for some time resided with the monks of St. Gusto, at the demolishing of whose convent three of Perugino's altarpieces were rescued, and are preserved in Florence.

According to Raphael, Pope Leo X. appealed to an aged friar, on account of his valuable knowledge, to help in building St. Peter's.

With regard to this period, it may interest some readers to know that examples of a very crude mode of gilding, peculiar to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, may be seen in some of the decorations in St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster,