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sweetness and richness of effect one would compare them with neo-Attic rather than with Pheidian examples.

Of Indian painting it is almost impossible for us to form at present any idea. The great examples for all the earlier centuries (100 B.C.-700 A.D.) are the frescoes in the caves of Ajanta, and until these are adequately reproduced we can form no judgment. The reproduction given by Mr Havell is too fragmentary. On the other hand, the reproductions of frescoes from Sigirya in Ceylon have singular beauty and make one wish that further study of these should be undertaken. They have a strange and disquieting charm, at once noble and perverse, as of some one who should combine the arts of Fra Angelico and Felicien Rops. For the later periods of Indian painting it is impossible to share Mr Havell's enthusiasm; the Thibetan art which he includes is essentially provincial Chinese, and the Mogul art is debased Persian. To any one who has once familiarised his eye with Persian originals these can make but a feeble appeal. Nor does he strengthen his case by including the efforts of certain modern artists. Such pictures as that of the 'Siddhas of the Upper Air' show that, however anxiously these artists strive to adopt the formulæ of their ancestors, the spirit that comes to expression is that of the American magazine illustrator. Nothing indeed could provide a stronger proof of the profound corruption which contact with European ideas has created in Oriental taste than these well-intentioned but regrettable drawings. Mr Havell has done a much-needed work in putting before English readers the serious claims of Indian art; the fact that he puts them in a rather needlessly provocative manner may perhaps delay their acceptance, but such righteous indignation is doubtless excusable in one who has watched close at hand the substitution of European commercial products for those of an ancient and respectable craftsmanship.

It is entirely from this point of view indeed that Mr Coomaraswamy's book is conceived. Himself a Cingalese (or, as he no doubt correctly calls it, Sinhalese), he writes in a far more restrained tone than Mr Havell, but his criticism of English influence on Sinhalese art is quite as severe. For he is not concerned with the history of the great masterpieces; his work is almost as much

sociological as aesthetic; he seeks to investigate and explain the methods of Sinhalese craftsmen, to fix the outlines of an artistic industry and education before it finally disappears. The interest of such an attempt is great, for the tradition of craftsmanship which survived in full force until the English occupation, and vestiges of which still linger in remoter districts, was closely akin to that which obtained in Europe in the Middle Ages.

We ourselves, ever more and more disgusted with the effects upon art and life of machinery under commercial competition, have, since Ruskin pointed the way, turned with eager curiosity to the study of medieval craftsmanship and organisation of labour. In this direction Mr Coomaraswamy's record is likely to be of great value, for although, as he himself admits, the works which he discusses are not masterpieces, are in fact the ordinary utensils of daily life, still they bear upon them the stamp of individual care and sound craftsmanship.

We have so far left out of account the art of Persia. To this Mr Binyon devotes a brief chapter. No doubt the time has not yet come to write a history of Persian art, or to trace all the influences from China, from Syria, and from Egypt which were brought to bear on the earlier Sassanian tradition. Mr Binyon, no doubt, rightly remarks on the Chinese influence, though he underestimates, I think, the indigenous tradition and speaks of the conquests of Ghengis Khan and Tamerlane as a quickening influence. Now perhaps the finest pottery and some of the noblest draughtsmanship and design which we know at all was produced at Rakka and Rhages before the Mongol conquests. Indeed that particular art was brought to an end by the devastations they caused. Mr Binyon seems scarcely to give sufficient weight to this essentially Persian tradition-a tradition of drawing unsurpassed in certain respects even by the finest Chinese art. Nor was figure art confined to the decoration of this marvellous lustred pottery. In the Bibliothèque Nationale there is an illuminated manuscript dating from the early part of the thirteenth century in which the same great and purely indigenous figure drawing is seen; moreover, we know that the Fatimite rulers of Egypt had the walls of their palaces covered with frescoes in which, judging from the descriptions which

have survived, the human figure was represented on a large scale. Finally, the discoveries at Kosseir-Amra, published by MM. Riegl and Karabacek, show that as early as 860 the artists of the Nearer East were able to cover the whole interior of a building with frescoes. All this points to the existence of a great artistic tradition in early Mohammedan times extending from Egypt to Persia. But for the real history of this great efflorescence of Mohammedan culture we must await the results of researches such as those carried on by Dr Martin. No doubt Chinese influence may have come in earlier— and certain pieces of pottery of the Yuan dynasty which have lately come to Europe point to this conclusion; but the great period of Chinese influence in Persia was the sixteenth century, when already Persian design was over-ripe. Almost everything that survives of Persian art of the thirteenth century shows such impeccable taste, the drawing has such nobility and freedom, the decoration is so largely conceived, that it is difficult, after seeing specimens of this period, to tolerate the sixteenth and seventeenth century work which once stood as typically representative of Persian art.

What will be the effect upon Western art of the amazing revelations of these last twenty years? One can scarcely doubt that it will be almost wholly good. When once the cultivated public has grown accustomed to the restraint, the economy of means, the exquisite perfection of quality, of the masterpieces of Eastern art, it will, one may hope, refuse to have anything more to say to the vast mass of modern Western painting. And then, perhaps, our artists will develope a new conscience, will throw over all the cumbrous machinery of merely curious representation, and will seek to portray only the essential elements of things. In thus purifying pictorial art, in freeing it from all that has not immediately expressive power, Western artists will be merely returning to their own long forgotten tradition. The greatest practical value of Eastern art for us lies in the fact that those essential principles which, in our thirst for verisimilitude, we have overlaid, have been upheld with far greater constancy by the artists of the East.

ROGER FRY.

Art. 11.-BEFORE AND AFTER THE DESCENT FROM

ELBA.

1. Le Revirement de la Politique Autrichienne. Négocia tions secrètes, Novembre 1814-Mars 1815. By Commandant Weil. Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1908.

2. Letters from originals at Welbeck Abbey. Roxburghe Club, 1909. (Appendix 1в is a sketch of Lord William Bentinck's Life, by Mr Richard W. Goulding.)

3. MSS. in possession of the Duke of Portland at Welbeck Abbey.

4. Unpublished Letters from Paris of March 1815, from Sir Charles Bagot to Mr Hammond, in the possession of the Honourable Misses Hammond. 5. Public Record Office. Admiralty: (Letters of admirals.) Vols 429 (Mediterranean, 1814), 430 (Mediterranean, 1815). War Office: Vols 283 (Secretary of State, Letters), 284 (Army in Mediterranean, Lieut-General Lord William Bentinck, 1815), 315 (Sicily, 1814). Foreign Office: Vols 9 (Congress of Vienna. Drafts to Ministers and Consuls), 21 (Tuscany), 6 and 62 (Italian States), 71, and Bundles (Sicily), 111 and 114 (France), 142 (Miscellaneous), and 299 (Précis). Foreign Office Archives (1815), Portfolio 129, 130, 131.

6. La Rivoluzione Lombarda del 1814 e la Politica Inglese. Secondo nuovi documenti. By Giuseppe Gallavresi. Milan: Archivio Storico Lombardo, 1909.

7. Joachim Murat. La Dernière Année de Règne, Mai 1814-Mai 1815. Vols i, ii, iii, and iv. By Commandant Weil. Paris: Fontemoing, 1909, 1910. 8. Lettres et Documents, Joachim Murat. By Prince Murat. Vols ii and iii. Edited by M. Paul Le Brethon. Paris: Plon, 1909.

9. Report, Historical Manuscripts Commission, on the Manuscripts of J. B. Fortescue, Esq., preserved at DropVol. vi, 1908.

more.

10. Lettres et Papiers du Chancelier Comte de Nesselrode. Vol. v. Paris: Lahure, 1907.

THE revelations, in and since 1908, of secrets of the years between 1800 and 1815, as well as recent publications upon the period between Waterloo and the foundation of the new German Empire, present features of

extraordinary interest. Documents of 1814 and 1815 upset our history, as do three letters of the autumn of 1870 contained in 'The Bernstorff Papers.' The archives of the Austrian political police, and of Piedmont, are yielding rich material to the historian. Our own are still subject to a reservation concerning our secret agents, from which records in private hands are free. Already, in 1905, Mr Walter Fitzpatrick's painstaking work at Dropmore had produced, in the fourth volume of the Historical Manuscripts Commission on Lord Grenville's papers, letters from Stanforth calculated to set that mysterious figure even higher than it had appeared in the previous volume. The sixth volume, published in 1908, shows Grenville-who controlled for Pitt, in 1800, our relations with the Continent-despising Austria, presenting to the Minister a suggestion of alliance with Bonaparte, made by another of our secret agents, and adding argument in conflict with the avowed policy on which history has been based.

It is the bearing of the new documents of 1814-15 upon the relations of the Allies with the Bourbons, and upon the descent from Elba, that concerns us most. Popular beliefs, based as they are on the Wellington despatches, the Castlereagh correspondence, and the State papers, will be shaken by complete publication of records as yet but little known and not, up to this moment, fully searched.

Mr Fitzpatrick, in his introduction to the Dropmore volumes, says that Lord Grenville's letters would 'obviously have furnished valuable material' to historians, but were 'unknown' until Mr Fortescue allowed their use. The connexion of Fouché with the British Cabinet was, indeed, suspected here, as was in France our financing of conspiracies against Bonaparte. The price of Barras and of Montgelas was newer and forms interesting scandal. Still newer is the evidence as to the part played on our side by the sister of Queen Louise of Prussia, and the reports of our representative at Berlin, replacing the

* 'Stamfort' in the indexes. George III writes 'General Stamford.' The Governor of the Princes of Brunswick and agent of the Prince of Orange made use of the French tongue, and signed Comte de Stanforth.' He is divided into two German poets, both 'Stanforth,' though with different initials, in German works of reference.

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