existed in the Middle Ages, was different in essence from that of our times; one piece of evidence alone forces this conclusion upon us the Middle Ages were essentially the epoch of Popular Art, the art of the people; whatever were the conditions of the life of the time, they produced an enormous volume of visible and tangible beauty, even taken per se, and still more extraordinary when considered beside the sparse population of those ages. The "misery" from amidst of which this came, whatever it was, must have been something totally unlike, and surely far less degrading than the misery of modern Whitechapel, from which not even the faintest scintilla of art can be struck, in spite of the idealising of slum life by the modern philanthropic sentimentalist and his allies, the impressionist novelist and painter.

We have thought it necessary to meet objections as to over-valuing the importance of the Middle Ages, but it must be understood that we do not stand forward as apologists for them except in relation to modern times. The part which they played in the course of history

was not only necessary to the development of the life of the world, but was so special and characteristic that it will leave its mark on future ages in spite of the ignorant contemplation of them from which we are slowly emerging. They had their own faults and miseries, their own uses and advantages, and they left behind them works to show that at least happiness and cheerful intelligence were possible sometimes and somewhere in them, even amongst that working class, which now has to bear the whole burden of our follies and mistakes.

CHAPTER VI

THE END OF THE MIDDLE

BY

AGES

Y about the year 1350 the craft-guilds received all the development possible to them as societies of freemen and equals; and that date may conveniently be accepted as the end of the first part of the Middle Ages.

By this time serfdom generally was beginning to yield to the change introduced by the guilds and free towns: the field serfs partly drifted into the cities and became affiliated to the guilds, and partly became free men, though living on lands whose tenure was unfree. This movement towards the break-up of serfdom is marked by the Peasants' War in England, led by Wat Tyler and John

Ball in Kent, and by John Lister (dyer) in East Anglia, which was the answer of the combined yeomen, emancipated and unemancipated serfs, to the attempt of the nobles to check the movement.

But the development of the craftguilds and the flocking of the freed serfs into the towns laid the foundations for another change in industrialism with the second part of the mediaval period appears the journeyman, or so-called free labourer. Besides the craftsmaster. and his apprentices, the workshop now has these "free labourers" in it-unprivileged workmen, that is, who are nevertheless under the domination of the

guild, and compelled to affiliation with it.

But so completely was the idea of association innate in medieval life that even this first step towards disruption came for a time under the guild-influence: in Germany especially, the guilds of journeymen were so important as to form a complete network through all central Europe. The journeyman if he presented himself before the guild in any town was taken charge of, and livelihood and employment found for him. In England

the attempt at founding journeymenguilds had little success, probably because it came too late.

After this the guildsmen began to be privileged workmen; and with them began the foundation of the present middle-class, whose development from this source went on to meet its other development on the side of trade which was now becoming noticeable. In 1453 Constantinople was taken by the Turks, and as a consequence Greek manuscripts were being discovered and read; a thirst for new or revived learning outside the superstitions of the mediaval church, and the quaint, curiously perverted, and halfunderstood remains of popular traditions, was arising. The new art of printing began to spread with marvellous rapidity from about the year 1470; and all was getting ready for the transformation of mediaval into modern or commercial society.

Before the beginning of the sixteenth century the craft-guilds had gradually reduced the others to insignificance, but the spirit in which they were founded was dying out in the meantime. They