I know, with regard to the last-named picture.
The beautiful portrait of " Sigismondo Mala-
testa" (230-lent by W. Drury-Lowe, Esq.) is
generally acknowledged as one of the gems of
the exhibition. It is ascribed to Piero della
Francesca, and this seems to be a unanimous
verdict. But I venture to disagree with it, as
I fail to see, after a close comparison with the
genuine works of this master-for instance, those
in the National Gallery-how this suggestion
can be proved.
J. PAUL RICHTER.

LETTER FROM EGYPT.

Abydos: Dec. 27, 1883.

old ruins have recently been discovered in the desert a day's journey inland.

253-255-lent by H. Willett, Esq.) which, for various reasons, deserve to be studied closely. Originally they belonged to the frieze of a During my stay at Cairo I explored the rockceiling in the castle of San Martino Gusnago, cut tombs in the cliff behind the citadel, and in the district of Asola, between Mantua and found them to be of the Roman age, from Brescia, formerly belonging to the Gonzaga which we may perhaps conclude that the family. This peculiar kind of decorative art, Egyptian town which preceded Cairo was not not hitherto mentioned in art literature, seems older than the time of Augustus. I also spent to have been exclusively in use within the a day in the quarries of Turra, the Troja of territory of a few towns. There are some Strabo, copying Greek graffiti. Another aftersimilar works still to be seen in palaces of noon I devoted to the curious subterranean Cremona, Crema, and Brescia. They appear, passages and chambers that have been dishowever, far inferior in artistic merit to those covered under the Greek convent at Old Cairo. before us. I have of late devoted some time to In one pace two columns with Corinthian the study of the origin of such decorations, and capitals and a cornice similar to that which have come to the conclusion that it is to be adorns the ancient gate of the Roman fortress sought for in palaces of Verona and Padua, are built into the wall; while in another we where artists of the very greatest repute were I HAVE just been making a tour in the Fayûm descend a flight of stone stairs of Roman conengaged in such works. The frieze of a large with two companions, but have found it some-struction, made of beautifully cut blocks of hall in the episcopal palace at Padua is adorned what disappointing at least from an archae- stone. I should advise visitors to Cairo not to with portraits by Bartolommeo Montagna. In ological point of view. The remains of the miss either these old relics of the Egyptian one of the palaces at Verona I had the luck Labyrinth at Howâra certainly do not justify Babylon or the Jewish synagogue, which is not to discover a similar work, probably by the praises bestowed by Herodotos upon the far distant, and which reminded me forcibly of Domenico, if not by Francesco Morone. In building; the broken obelisk at Ebgig is little the well-known "synagogue" at Toledo. both of them the personages were named in more than a curiosity; and the three Roman The Bûlak Museum has undergone quite a inscriptions placed underneath, and I believe temples at Kesr Karûn, destitute as they are of transformation during the last two years. New there can be no doubt that the portraits inscriptions, are not worth the trouble of get-rooms have been added to it, and, what is more, here exhibited are also historical. No. 250, ting to them, even though one of them is in a filled with objects which the indefatigable apparently a Doge, is believed to be Pasquale remarkably perfect condition. The most in-industry of M. Maspero has brought together Malipierio (ob. 1462). It might also be Orio teresting antiquities in the Fayum are the vast from all parts of Egypt. His new Catalogue is Malipierio (ob. 1192): see Elogia Poetica in Seren. mounds of Krokodilopolis, with their streets of about to appear; and, as short descriptions will Venet. (Padua, 1680). The entire series consists ancient brick houses, and the two ruined monu- be attached to the objects named in it, it will of forty-four panels, and Mr. Willett is to be ments which stand side by side at Biahmu. A be a great boon to future visitors to Cairo. congratulated on having secured the whole. corner of one of these still exists, proving that Among the newly collected antiquities some When brought to this country, they were the monument must once have been a pyramid early Greek remains are especially interesting, thickly covered with whitewash. The difficult with an angle similar to that of the pyramid as well as three clay cylinders, inscribed with problem of restoration has been most success- of Medûm. The size and character of the Babylonian cuneiform characters, which M. fully overcome by Prof. A. H. Church. The stones, the mode in which they are cut, and the Maspero has exhumed at Tell Defenneh (the question of the authorship of these fine portraits want of cement to join them together also Pelusiac Daphne of the ancients, according to is not easy to decide. The names of Mantegna, reminded me of Medum, and inclined me to Brugsch), a little to the west of Kantara, on of Beltraffio, of Pollaiuolo, of Piero degli conjecture that, like Medum, they belong to as the Suez Canal. I found that all three were Franceschi, and others have been suggested, early a period as that of the IIIrd Dynasty. records of Nebuchadnezzar, two of them being but none has yet been accepted. In my The two masses of stones which still stand duplicates; and, as they are very badly written, opinion, the master is to be looked for nowhere within the areas enclosed by the two monu- and relate only to the monarch's building but in the school of Milan, from about 1490 to ments once formed part of their cores. I found operations in Babylon, they must have been These heads appear to me to have a fragments of black and red granite-belong-intended merely as memorials of his conquests, striking affinity to the later works of Braman-ing, apparently, to broken statues-strewn over to be left in the countries he overran. They However this may be, they are a their sites, as well as pieces of white stone, are, therefore, curious evidences of his inarkable illustration of that period in Italian which may have formed their casing. I have vasion of Egypt. One of them begins as art in which it was the chief aim of the only to add that the accounts given of them in follows:— Janters to seize and depict character, or those both Murray and Baedeker are alike incorrect. tributes of men and things which flow out of the inner life.

1520.

After leaving the Fayûm we spent a couple of days at Siût, and while there rode along the The three genuine pictures by Crivelli (189, base of the cliffs southward of the town as far 243) are not superior to those in the as a village called Dronka. Here we found a National Gallery. The later school of Giovanni tomb of the XIIIth Dynasty cut in the rocks Felini is represented by an excellent picture of above the village, with pictures of chariotVirgin and Child and St. Joseph" (264-racing and Babylonian rosettes still traceable at by J. P. Heseltine, Esq.), apparently by on the walls. A little farther to the south the same hand as the "Warrior adoring the Coptic monastery of Dronka, with the mudInfant Christ" (234 in the National Gallery) huts attached to it, is built into a series of , Vincenzo Catena. Giambattista Moroni's ancient tombs half-way up the cliff. The only trait of a gentleman with two children (159- inscriptions I discovered there were Coptic, but beat by the National Gallery of Ireland) is, in not far off is a large double-chambered tomb y opinion, by far the finest Venetian picture with square columns, and the same overhanging this exhibition. Perhaps the light colours cornice of stone supported on a row of stone the children's dresses are in too strong a beams that we meet with at Beni-Hassan. rast to the dark garments of the gentleman, Another half-hour brought us to Dêr Rîfa, a is seated behind them; but that is evidently monastery built, like that of Dronka, into the the fault of the artist. In the course of tombs on the face of the cliff. Four of them, the dark colours have sunk in, while two of them large and two small, are adorned light ones have lost their glazings under with long hieroglyphic inscriptions, and in one hand of cleaners. On a piece of paper I noticed the Greek graffito AIAZ AÑO.. d on the table to the left of the gentleman Southward of the village the cliff is honeyad "Albino," the name of a small place combed with sepulchres, most of which, howSerio Valley, near which the artist was ever, are of the Roman age. But there is one large one, belonging to the period of the We have here two pictures of the early Veronese XIIIth Dynasty, which contains half-obliterated 1-a crucifixion by Caroto (271-lent by pictures of domestic scenes like those of BeniLichmond, Esq.), signed "G. F. Charottus Hassan, beside hieroglyphic texts. As both **2..” and a “Virgin and Child with Saints” here and at Dêr Rîfa the town named in the -lent by Ch. Butler, Esq.), a very interest- inscriptions is Shas-hotep, the modern Satb, 2ture of that still rarer master, Giovanni the tombs of Rifa must have been included in o, the younger brother of Giov. Francesco. the nome of Hypselis rather than in that of None has hitherto been suggested, so far as Lykopolis. While at Siût, I heard that some

"Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, son of Nabo-
polassar, king of Babylon, am I. The temple of
Ziru, the shrine of Nin-ziru, of Anu his god, and
of Merodach, the son of Anu, the shrine of the
supreme daughter of Anu, in Babylon, the city
of my sovereignty, and the temple of Us-us
on the eastern river with brick and cement I
built."
The two other texts are in a similar strain.

I am at present occupying the house built by Mariette at Abydos, which M. Maspero has kindly placed at my disposal; and I hope that my next letter will contain the results of my work during the next ten days, which I intend to spend here.

A. H. SAYCE.

CORRESPONDENCE.

SOME PICTURES AT BURLINGTON HOUSE. London: Jan. 14, 1884. In his notice last week of the Dutch and Flemish pictures at the Royal Academy Dr. Richter very justly observes that the picture by Metsu, "Pleasures of Taste," from Buckingham Palace, comes very near to the manner of Terburg. Would it not be better to go a step farther and frankly attribute this charming work to Terburg himself? Great artist and admirable delineator of character as Metsu no doubt was, he surely never approached the delicacy of handling and refinement of colour displayed in the present specimen, more especially in the flesh-tints and the treatment of the

By Julius Köstlin.,
The Life of Luther.
Translated from the German. (Longmans.)
Luther and other Leaders of the Reformation.
By John Tulloch. (Blackwood.)
Martin Luther.
(Ward.)
Lather: a Short Biography. By James
Anthony Froude. (Longmans.)
Martin Luther the Reformer. By Julius
Köstlin. (Cassells.)

By John H. Treadwell.

Luther and Good Works. By John E. B.
Mayor. (Cambridge: Macmillan & Bowes.)
Die schmalkaldischen Artikel vom Jahre 1537.
Hrsg. von Dr. Karl Zangemeister. (Heidel-
berg: Carl Winter.)

(Religious Tract So

Luther: ein kirchliches Festspiel. Von Hans Herrig. (Berlin: Luckhardt.) Luther's Table Talk. ciety.) PROF. KÖSTLIN'S Luthers Leben has already received in Germany an amount of commendaon to which it is fairly entitled, and which aders further encomium on this side the Na almost superfluous. It is a very careful, well-conceived, well-executed piece of literary work. And if we cannot adopt, ithout some qualification, Mr. Froude's erdict in its favour, that "the student who Pas read these pages attentively will have no estions left to ask," we may concede that, if the author's standpoint the standpoint of The Wittenberg-Halle school of theologybe accepted as the right one, the general atment will appear unimpeachable. Prof. Kolde has no easy task before him if his bours are to eclipse those of his brother proessor. As a contribution to historical literare it must, however, rank much lower. Notwithstanding the apparatus of material ted or printed in the two volumes of the iginal work, the information is manifestly trived too exclusively from one side, and the sequent bias is throughout plainly dis

rible.

a truism to say that neither Luther's per-
sonal history nor that of the Reformation
at large can be satisfactorily understood.
without a careful study of the political and
social phenomena of the times. But even
Prof. Köstlin appears not to give adequate
recognition to the fact that the origin of the
great struggle is to be discerned not merely in
the gross abuse of indulgences, but that the
flame was powerfully fanned by the regular
and systematic extortion practised by the
Roman Curia under the guise of annates, and
the oppression exercised through the Roman
He tells us, indeed (p. 231),
law-courts.
that

not committed to paper until after a con-
siderable lapse of time) on the part of
one deeply interested chief actor, that the
former source of information may some-
times be the more trustworthy. Such a con-
clusion must appear still more justifiable if
we bear in mind Luther's intense subjectivity.
Apart from the evidence, it would be perfectly
natural to suppose that an imagination which
could so far gain the mastery over its possessor
as to lead him to believe that he had periodical
bodily conflicts with evil spirits would not
fail also to lend a powerful colouring to his
conception of his own past career, and even to
exercise its creative faculty in the shape of
definite incident. With these general reserva-
"the impost levied by Rome on ecclesiastical
tions, we can feel no difficulty in pronouncing benefices and fiefs
swallowed up enor-
the volume before us the best existing treatment mous sums; while the Empire hardly knew how
of the subject to which the ordinary English to scrape together a miserable subsidy for the
reader can refer. It is lavishly illustrated with newly organised government and the expenses
admirable reproductions of genuine contem- of justice, and men talked openly of retaining
porary documents or works of art. The trans- these Papal tributes, notwithstanding all pro-
lation also deserves commendation as a pains- tests from Rome, for these purposes.'
taking and careful rendering, although it But this important phase of the question is
would have gained in vigour if the pleonastic only just glanced at in passing, although,
"dochs," and "nuns" of the as
"auchs,"
a potent factor in bringing about the
original had been more systematically disre-national impatience of the Papal supremacy,
garded. We cannot but note, too, the omission it was deserving of considerable illustration.
of an index as a serious defect.
Without in any way under-estimating the
A condensed outline of the work has been religious convictions of those times, it is easy
published by Messrs. Cassell for popular circu- to see that the doctrine of justification by
lation, while Mr. Froude has reprinted from faith must have come home with peculiar
the Contemporary Review the two articles for force to an industrious, thrifty people, upon
was urged as
which the German work supplied the basis. whom the efficacy of "works"
Of the other volumes before us, Mr. Tread- a plea for continually and remorselessly de-
well's sketch is a spirited and appreciative priving them of their hard earnings. "The
though somewhat imperfect outline;
though somewhat imperfect outline; Dr. whole contest," says Prof. Köstlin, "turned
Tulloch's is a reprint of a volume already ultimately on the question as to who should
well known to the English public, but with determine disputes about the truth, and where
the portion relating to Luther enlarged, and to seek the highest standard and the purest
his many-sided character more fully described source of Christian verity" (p. 104). It is
and illustrated from the rich material afforded at least possible that, if Leo X. and his emis-
in the Tischreden. Prof. Mayor's little tractate saries could have been induced to deal more
represents a sermon preached in the chapel considerately with the pockets of the German
of St. John's College, Cambridge. It is full of people, the German conscience would have
deep and suggestive thought, and bears on been found less tender, and the whole contest
every page the impress of genuine and exten- would never have assumed its "ultimate
sive learning; the burden of the discourse is form. There are other points on which much
to show how Luther's renouncement and sub-fuller information might advantageously have
sequent energetic denunciation of the monastic been given, as, for example, on the relations
vows has been completely justified by later of the Empire to the Papacy and the merits of
Church history and is corroborated by the Luther's Bible. The former subject is, how-
testimony of Old Catholicism. The edition of ever, so much better understood in Germany
the Smalkaldic Articles, which comes to us than in England that the cursory treatment
from Heidelberg, is a photographic reproduc- it here receives in a work not primarily de-
tion, in forty-seven pages, of Luther's auto-signed for English readers is more readily
graph there preserved in the university explained.
library. Dr. Zangemeister, the librarian, has
prefixed to it an interesting Introduction.
The MS., like its writer, appears to have had
some narrow escapes. After Tilly had taken
Heidelberg, in 1622, it was sent by Duke
Maximilian of Bavaria to Rome, as a present
to the Pope. In 1798 it was carried by
Napoleon from the Vatican to Paris. From
Paris it went back to Rome, and finally, in
1815, was restored, along with many others,
by Pope Pius VII. to its original depository.
Herr Hans Herrig's Festspiel is a commend-
able attempt to dramatise the most striking
episodes of Luther's career; the caution, how-
ever, with which he has restricted his imagi-
nation to the mere embellishment of recorded
fact is more apparent than the spirit of his

Some of the statements, resting ely on Luther's own authority, clash singurly with those which we find on official cord-for example, in the recently published Siculus of the Monumenta Reformationis Istherande. Most unprejudiced persons will Probably look upon Luther as a far more nest man than Aleander or Caietanus; but * is difficult not to conclude, where' dispancies occur between a record of proceed22 and events made by official authorities ally designed to convey to others an at impression of what actually took Pegasus. e) and personal reminiscences (sometimes

To most students of history it will appear

Mr.

The narrative given of the proceedings of the Diet of Worms, and the circumstances under which that memorable assembly was convened, can hardly be looked upon as sufficiently satisfactory to be accepted as a final rendering of that memorable event. Froude, who gladly hails the opportunity it affords for picturesque writing, pronounces Luther's appearance before the Diet "perhaps the very finest scene in human history. Many a man," he goes on to say,

"has encountered death bravely for a cause which he knows to be just, when he is sustained by the sympathy of thousands, of whom he is at the moment the champion and the representative. But it is one thing to suffer, and another to encounter face to face and singlehanded the array of spiritual and temporal authorities which are ruling supreme.”

and the one at Worms ("Joannes de Acie,"
as he termed himself in Latin) was previously
scarcely known to the Reformer. The mis-
take has been made before, and is by no means
inexcusable in an ordinary reader; but it
comes rather awkwardly from one who, while
affecting to sit in judgment on the whole
question and to pat Prof. Köstlin on the head,
shows that he himself has not bestowed on
the Professor's pages that" attentive" perusal
which he recommends to others.

As regards Luther's language and de-
meanour at Worms, all the writers before us
concur in ascribing to him language which it
now seems probable he did not use. The
somewhat theatrical but, under the circum-
stances, grand and striking words "Here I
stand, I cannot do otherwise," have, as Mr.
Karl Pearson has already noted,* no place in
the official report. While the "Gott helff
mir," which has usually been regarded as a
touching expression of Luther's sense of his
defenceless and isolated condition, is really
nothing more than the "Ita me Deus adjuvet"
(often with the addition "et sancta Dei Evan-
gelia ") which was the ordinary conclusion in
those times of every formal declaration in a
court of law.

We are not at all sure that, supposing Luther
o have become convinced that he himself was
in error, it would not have required a
greater effort to have retracted what he had
written than to have acted as he did. Even
impostors, like Peregrinus, have preferred a
terrible death to the admission of humiliating
failure. But, in fact, everything conspired to
nerve and encourage Luther in his heroic
defiance. He went to Worms with a safe-
conduct from the Emperor couched in the
most explicit and reassuring terms, and his
journey thither from Wittenberg was, as Mr.
Treadwell truly describes it, "a perpetual
ovation." Even George von Frundsberg,
while he marvelled at the rare courage of the
man, clapped him on the shoulder and said,
"If thou art sure of the justice of thy cause,
then forward in the name of God, and be of
good courage-God will not forsake thee."
Luther's staunch friend, the Elector Frederic,
was a member of the tribunal; von Sickingen,
the famous warrior, whom Aleander himself
describes as "terror Germaniae," loudly de-
clared his determination to avenge the
"solitary monk," as Mr. Froude terms Luther,
should he meet with foul play. We have
only, indeed, to read the letter by Aleander,
printed in the Monumenta (pp. 152-58), But there is little need to exaggerate
written on April 5, a fortnight before Luther's Luther's merits, or the character of his
appearance at Worms, to see the impression genius, in order to establish his title to the
produced on his enemies by the forces of the admiration and remembrance of posterity.
opposition. Mr. Froude represents the Em-"Putting aside," says Prof. Mayor, "his
peror as arriving at the Diet "with a fixed position in the Church, Luther's services to
purpose to support the insulted majesty of the the language, literature, sacred poetry, and
spiritual sovereign of Christendom." It is education of Germany are so unique as to
now perfectly clear, from the Monumenta, that entitle him to undying gratitude." "Luther,"
the edict for the destruction of Luther's books says Ranke, "is the patriarch of the severe
was not issued until Charles had obtained the and devout domestic discipline and manners of
vote for the troops to be employed against the family in Northern Germany." As a
France; but Ranke long ago pointed out theologian, indeed, he recedes more and more
that the feelings of the Emperor towards from our view into the background; and the
Leo (who had opposed his election) had manner in which the subscription to the
been, up to this time, far from friendly. splendid edition of his works-now appearing
Everything, in fact, turned upon the under imperial patronage in Germany-
question whether the former was to be has fallen flat in this country is a notable
allowed to have his way at Milan and Venice, sign. It is the Luther of the Table Talk and
and Luther had been dexterously used by the Letters who survives; and the patriot, the
him as an instrument for bringing Leo to singer, the husband, and the father lives per-
terms:-"la verità fu," says Vettori, "che haps as strongly as ever in the memories of
conoscendo che il papa temeva molto di his countrymen. His grand impulsive nature,
questa doctrina di Luthero, lo volle tenere his love of truth, reality, and justice; his
con questo freno." We may be quite wide and generous sympathies, ranging from
sure that Charles did not wish to see so the domestic hearth and the grave of child or
serviceable a schismatic disappear altogether friend to the bird on the tree and the hunted
from the scene. Mr. Froude, again, leveret in the forest, visible even in his super-
recognises in the John Eck who acted stition and his cheery combats with the devil
as interrogator at the Diet, Luther's "old-such are the qualities which, taken in con-
enemy," thereby, it is to be presumed, in-
tending to identify the Professor of Theology
at Ingolstadt with the civilian, the "artium
et juris utriusque doctor," who discharged the
duties of official notary in the diocese of
Treves. There would, of course, have been a
peculiar malignity in bringing Luther's old
fellow-student at Wittenberg, who had already
challenged his theses, and with whom he had
that tremendous encounter at Leipzig, from
the banks of the Danube to the Rhine to in-
terrogate him on this critical occasion.
the fact is that there were two John Ecks,

But

* See the Monumenta Reformationis Lutheranae (pp. 1204 121), where it is printed at length-a very different document, as the editor observes, from that given in Luther's Works, vol. ii.

junction with his intellectual power and
splendid achievements, have won for him the
admiration of thinkers of almost every school,
from Giordano Bruno to Julius Hare. And the
writers of the several volumes before us, which
we have endeavoured thus briefly to notice, are
one and all to be thanked for the labour and
the skill (though of varying degrees) which
they have devoted to bringing these traits of
the great Reformer once more home to our
recollection.
J. BASS MULLINGER.

Portraits of Places. By Henry James. (Mac-
millan.)

A NOVELIST like Mr. Henry James shows to
a disadvantage in a book of simple observa-
tion. There is, no doubt, much that may be
called simple observation in all novels of
modern life; but, when they are as good as
those which Mr. James has given us, there is
also much more than that, and the novelist
cannot put his power of invention into a book
of travel. The reader, therefore, who should
expect to be charmed and carried on by the
author of Portraits of Places as he may have
been by the novelist is likely to be dis-
appointed; but the book is interesting in its
own mild way, and, though extremely slight,
is worth having and keeping, like the slightest
sketches of a good painter. It is a collection
of papers which first appeared in various
American magazines and journals." The writer
fears that the impressions he received during
the early months of a residence in England are

very superficial." The record of them was entirely addressed to an American public; and Mr. James thinks that they "can have but a limited interest for English readers, familiar, naturally, to satiety with many of those minor characteristics to which the author has ventured to call the attention of his less initiated countrymen." Well, the interest is certainly not very intense; the book is not one to keep us up till two in the morning; and, if it happened to be mislaid, the privation would not be insupportable; still, one is not sorry to have met with it. Mr. James is a quiet, rational, and shrewd observer, whose delicate appreciation notices many things that would escape most people. He is also a person of very real refinement, so that he sees things in a way not possible to a vulgar mind. He tells us that since these papers were written his impressions have been modified and enlarged, and he would not to-day have the temerity to write letters about England. Surely it is a wrong arrangement by which those who know little of foreign nations should write books about them, and those who know much should keep silence. Mr. James did right in publishing his first impressions, giving them for what they were, and he would do right still if he published his later impressions. Many things strike us at first in a foreign country which are hidden from those who know it so intimately, while intimate knowledge leads to discoveries of a different kind. We never can get really to the bottom of things. No man understands a foreign country. Does any man ever understand his own? Distance and difference make the foreigner blind to many things, or they make him attach an exaggerated importance to them; familiarity and old habits blind the native.

It is pleasant to find that Mr. James does not consider himself a foreigner in ou country. He says, at p. 193, speaking of the ugliness of London: "If I were a foreigner it would make me rabid; being an Anglo Saxon, I find in it what Thackeray found in Baker Street-a delightful proof of Englis * See review of the Monumenta in ACADEMY of domestic virtue, of the sanctity of th December 8, 1883.

British home." This is as it should be; w do not look upon Americans as foreigners, bu as a sort of Englishmen who live upon great estate of their own at a distance fro the mother-country. However, though no

the delightful charm of its architecture. think how stupid is prejudice, and how poetic a Mr. James is not difficult to please. For creature a washerwoman may be." myself,” he says,

“I have never been in a country so unattractive that it did not seem a peculiar felicity to be able to purchase the most considerable house it contained. In New England and other portions of the United States I have coveted the large mansion with Doric columns and a pediment of white-painted timber; in Italy I have made imaginary proposals for the yellow-walled villa with statues on the roof. In England I have for the best house, but, failing this, I have rarely gone so far as to fancy myself in treaty rarely failed to feel that ideal comfort for the time would be to call oneself owner of what is denominated here a 'good' place."