This Book List Sectory 19

Once more I must caution the reader against expecting to find highly-finished gems of art in the chapels I have been describing. A wooden figure not more than two feet high clogged with many coats of paint can hardly claim to be taken very seriously, and even those few that were cut by Tabachetti himself were not meant to have attention concentrated on themselves alone. As mere wood-carving the Saas-Fee chapels will not stand comparison, for example, with the triptych of unknown authorship in the Church of St. Anne at Gliss, close to Brieg. But, in the first place, the work at Gliss is worthy of Holbein himself: I know no wood-carving that can so rivet the attention; moreover it is coloured with water-colour and not oil, so that it is tinted, not painted; and, in the second place, the Gliss triptych belongs to a date (1519) when artists held neither time nor impressionism as objects, and hence, though greatly better than the Saas-Fee chapels as regards a certain Japanese curiousness of finish and naivete of literal transcription, it cannot even enter the lists with the Saas work as regards elan and dramatic effectiveness. The difference between the two classes of work is much that between, say, John Van Eyck or Memling and Rubens or Rembrandt, or, again, between Giovanni Bellini and Tintoretto; the aims of the one class of work are incompatible with those of the other. Moreover, in the Gliss triptych the intention of the designer is carried out (whether by himself or no) with admirable skill; whereas at Saas the wisdom of the workman is rather of OberAmmergau than of the Egyptians, and the voice of the poet is not a little drowned in that of his mouthpiece. If, however, the reader will bear in mind these somewhat obvious considerations, and will also remember the pathetic circumstances under which the chapels were designed--for Tabachetti when he reached Saas was no doubt shattered in body and mind by his four years' imprisonment--he will probably be not less attracted to them than I observed were many of the visitors both at Saas-Grund and Saas-Fee with whom I had the pleasure of examining them.

Owing to many natural causes the river may, after a while, cease to flow, leaving enlarged portions of its channel behind as a succession of chambers in a cave. But water would still come trickling in from the tops and sides, and be continuously dripping to the floor, where it speedily evaporates. When such is the case it leaves behind it the limestone it held in solution. So, in process of time, if the deposition is undisturbed, there will be formed over the floor of the cave a more or less continuous layer of limestone matter known as stalagmite. The same formations on the top and sides of the cave are called stalactites. In places where the drip is continuous the stalactite gradually assumes the shape of an immense icicle; while the stalagmite on the floor of the cave, underneath the drip, rises in a columnar mass to meet the descending stalactite. A union of these is not uncommon, and, we have pillars and columns presenting the strange, fantastic appearance on which tourists delight to dwell in their notes of travel.

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