with the sculptured figures of the Pisani? Such a supposition would explain his silence, but it flies in the face of all tradition and of all established belief. Is it altogether incredible? Much that not long ago was confidently attributed to Giotto is now almost or quite as confidently attributed to the 'Giotteschi'-to his school. His disciples, we are told, worked at Assisi and Florence, and in those cities we see, so it is now said, the master's influence but not the master's hand. Padua is left to us. And this brings us back to the earlier questions. Did Dante visit Padua? Did he meet Giotto there? Did he see the frescoes in the Arena Chapel? If Giotto had the cry,' did that cry reach Dante only from a distance, too faint to provoke a glowing tribute? To such questions no dogmatic answer can be given, but we have to confront the startling possibility that Dante's apparent indifference to Giotto may have been based on ignorance or rather on lack of opportunity of seeing his work.

Was Dante the man to make many friends or to make them easily? He had forsworn all party ties and stood, he declares, "foursquare.' Men who stand thus towerlike often stand alone.

That Dante and Giotto differed in genius is obvious but not apposite. It is the prerogative of genius to be unique, sui generis, unlike all others. In spite of Dante's saying that between the unlike there cannot be friendship, in the magnetism of the soul as in terrestrial magnetism it may be the unlike that attracts. Charles Lamb and Wordsworth were unlike. So were Mr and Mrs Browning.

Genius may be complementary to genius. Was it so with Giotto and Dante? Giotto, it need hardly be said, is human, or, better still, intensely humane. He accepts the gospel story and the legends of his day with simple faith. He asks no questions. It is his business to give a plain man's history of the Birth and of the human events that preceded and followed it. He ends with a last judgment which also is human in its weal and woe.

Giotto brings down to earth the Love which moves human hearts. Dante raises us to the Love which moves the sun and other stars.

Giotto gives us abundant rest. His angels hover.

Dante's have the speed of light. Giotto's shepherd sleeps. His figures do not move or, as in the Triumphal Entry, hardly seem to move.

Dante is for ever in motion. Lessing found his illustrations of 'progressive action' in the Iliad.' The 'Divina Commedia' would have served his purpose equally well; for neither Homer nor Dante tries to make us see a whole by a mechanical enumeration of its parts. Dante never rests. Haste, he wrote, is the enemy of dignity, but he is often in haste. Whatever his speed, he takes us with him. He does not describe. He makes us see for ourselves. He makes us look upwards to the morning star and downwards to the waters quivering in the faint light of early dawn. Our feet must follow his feet. Our eyes must follow his eyes. In the 'Inferno' he gives us no rest. In the 'Purgatorio,' resting-places are few, and if we pause for a moment to listen to Casella, we are soon compelled to follow Virgil and Dante in their hasty (we had almost written 'schoolboy') flight. In the 'Paradiso' no restingplace is needed. All is in motion and at peace like the eternal motion of the spheres. But with Dante as our leader we need to be alert or we lose.

Giotto has the unquestioning mind of the artist. Dante has the questioning mind of the student-interrogative and exploratory. He sought for knowledge as for fine gold, for knowledge is the final perfection and felicity of the soul (la scienza è l'ultima perfezione della nostra anima nella quale sta la nostra ultima felicità '*). His business is the quest of knowledge or, if of salvation, of salvation through perfect knowledge. He would solve mysteries, and if in his Vision we have little of the Atonement, we are perhaps justified in assuming that he accepted the theory of his day concerning the Atonement as adequate and satisfactory-as a problem that had been already solved. On the other hand, the Incarnation and the Trinity were transcendent mysteries to be pondered over in solitude. He must have been much alone in his studies and in his intense thoughts. He stands alone when he attains his soul's desire-the Beatific Vision. His guides have left him. Beatrice has

* Convivio,' I, 1.

retaken her place among the multitudinous ranks of the Church Triumphant; and if she still smiles, it is from 'so far away.' St Bernard is lost to sight. Dante is alone when he finds the key to the infinite wonders of Deity. He does not enter into fellowship with the Father and with the Son and with the Holy Ghost. The lonely exile from Florence, the lonely wanderer in the dark valley is alone in highest Heaven. He has become the Eternal Solitary-beholding the Godhead but not one with God-satisfied, but alone.

In their fortunes as in their genius the two men widely differed. Giotto prospered. He had a home. In the fullness of years and honour he was buried in his own city. Dante's days were fewer and many of them were evil. He found many cities of refuge. Did he often find a home? His very tomb is alone, near where he heard the wind sighing through the pines; and his Florence, like his Beatrice, smiles from 'so far away.' Had he many friends? Was Giotto one of them?

W. J. PAYLING WRIGHT.

Art. 8.-THE RULE OF LAW.

THE modern theory of the absolute sovereignty of Parliament is as inimical to the interests of the United Kingdom as it is to those of the British Empire and of International relations. In the struggle between King and Parliament in the 17th century the theory of the Divine Right of Kings was supplanted by that of the Supremacy of Parlia ment. The former had been propounded in order to meet the claims of Papal supremacy, and it may be, as has been said, that 'a doctrine of sovereignty vested by Divine Right in the King was the indispensable handmaiden of a national Reformation.'* The insistence on this doctrine by the Stuarts led to the dissolution of the Tudor organic state,' which was so clearly defined by Henry VIII himself when he declared to Parliament 'we at no time stand so high in our estate royal as in time of parliament; when we as head and you as members are conjoined and knit together into one body politic.'† In this 'body politic' King and People were regarded as component parts, each dependent on the other, although the King was recognised by the People as the proper centre of the commonwealth. With the claim of the Stuarts to absolutism these component parts inevitably flew apart. The bond between them was irretrievably shattered. But just as the Tudors had no intention of establishing the theory of Divine Right, so the Parliamentarians had no intention of establishing Parliamentary supremacy. They had no intention of substituting for a King legibus solutus a Parliament equally legibus solutum. No doubt this was the inevitable consequence of their action, but the fact was established long before the theory found expression. The fact was established by the Declaration of Parliament of May 27, 1642, in answer to the King's Proclamation forbidding his subjects to obey the Parliament's order for mustering the militia. By this memorable declaration,' says Mr John Allen, 'they assumed to themselves the supreme power of the State, retaining nothing of monarchy but the name.' The theory, however, of legislative supremacy was only fully developed by Bentham and * Figgis, 'Divine Right of Kings,' p. 92. + Parl. Hist.,' vol. I, p. 555.

་

'Royal Prerogative,' pp. 83-4.

his successor, Austin, and only generally accepted in the 19th century. The men who destroyed the theory of the Divine Right of Kings had no idea of surrendering the fundamental principles of the Constitution to Parliament. They were for the most part imbued with the traditional medieval conception of a law superior to any sovereign power. It is true that under the Stuarts, both before and after the Civil War, the theory of legislative supremacy was asserted in the debates on Bills of Attainder and carried by small majorities in both houses. It is also true that it was upheld by Chief Justice Rolle in Streater's Case, during the Protectorate, but this was an abnormal period, and in later proceedings the Act or Order of Parliament was declared by the Court not to be a Judgment of Parliament. As Prof. McIlwaine justly observes, 'even after legislative sovereignty had become a generally accepted fact, the essential injustice of these Acts caused men to revolt.' It was aptly said in a debate in the House of Commons in 1675, when supremacy and impunity go together there is no remedy.' Whilst they bowed to the necessities of the time, they clearly perceived the danger of the theory. It was by insisting upon this theory, when its necessity had passed, that the New England Colonies were lost to the Empire. The Colonies were quite prepared to accept Self-Government under the Crown. This theory was also responsible for the Irish trouble. Dominion status was only granted when coercion and civil war had failed.

The full-blown theory of the omnipotence of the King in Parliament is quite modern-indeed it is scarcely a century old. Parliament, as the tag goes, can do anything except make a woman into a man. From the first the Whigs noted the weakness of the theory under which a majority in the House of Commons may impose its will upon the nation regardless of all considerations of existing rights. To-day a chance majority in the House of Commons, perhaps representing only a small minority in the country, has the power, according to this theory of Parliamentary omnipotence, to deprive the subject of all or any of his fundamental rights. And there is no appeal. To-day the judges deem themselves bound by the provisions of an Act of Parliament, however contrary they may be, to fundamental rights or natural justice.