is his wound, which gives him a constant excuse. If it were well and he fit for service, nothing on earth would keep him from going back into the army; but he is not fit, and the claim of his boys, or my wish to return, seems not to have the slightest value." I see it now. was true, quite true. “Well, I think I understand it; but just as you were leaving, to say such a thing! And what did you reply?" "I told him that it was a very nice theory, and true, but that he never would "You were very brave to make the have stood it, and that is also true. I voyage without him," said Alice. "Was I? That was a trifle. It had to come. When I told him that I must go home and see my boys, he said that was quite natural, and in fact was as sweet and helpful about all my arrangements as he could be. Really, he wondered I had not thought of it before." "Where did you leave him, Helen?" "At Dijon. He came that far with me. Do you know, Alice, he said such an odd thing to me when we parted. I had said, 'You will come home soon, John?' To this he answered, 'I dare say, soon enough. You won't want me when you have those boys;' and then he said he had been very irritable, and at times outrageous, which, dear Alice, we must admit to have been the case. Of course, I answered, Oh, no,' and that I did n't mind it, and all that sort of thing we women always have on hand to say; and then what did he add but : this that it was largely my fault, and that if I had exacted my own rights more sharply we would both of us have been happier." "How brutal, Helen!" have no idea that he will ever come home. He will discuss it, as he does everything unpleasant, but when the time comes he will find some excuse to remain." "And you will go back to him, Helen?" returned her friend. "I don't know. I suppose so. I do not see how I ever can unless I take Ned, and for him to be with his father is one long misery. But there are worse things in life, I suppose." But it is "I am very, very sorry. late, and I must go to bed, and I have n't asked you a tithe of the questions I had ready. Promise me that you will do nothing hasty about Arty." "I will do nothing in haste. Here is your candlestick; but I have brought you a charming one from Holland, so odd, with an angel for a holder and a devil for an extinguisher. I am told that it is very old Dutch silver. John found it in Leyden." "What a quaintly unpleasant notion!" murmured Alice to herself, as she went up the staircase to bed. "I wonder if John Morton knew that she meant to give it to me. It would be rather like "No, John Morton is never that. It him." S. Weir Mitchell. CARPE DIEM. How the dull thought smites me dumb, "It will come!" and "It will come!" But to-day I am not dead; Life in hand and foot and head Made of morning, noon, and night, Let it come, when come it must; Pluck it with unclouded will From the great tree Igdrasil. E. R. Sill. THE TWILIGHT OF GREEK AND ROMAN SCULPTURE. IN the gallery of the Vatican may be seen a statue which for more than three centuries and a half has been considered one of the most precious products of the ancient chisel. The greatest artists have made it an object of study, archæologists and historians of sculpture have written of it with enthusiasm, critics of every nation have come to view it, and all have united in regarding it as one of the noblest works of those master spirits of the past, whose feelings, struggling irresistibly for expression, found utterance in the enduring language of marble and bronze. It is of colossal proportions, and represents a man at the zenith of his strength. Although everything about the figure indicates a state of the most profound and peaceful repose, the broad and massive shoulders, the expanded and powerful chest, the strongly developed limbs, the muscles lying in huge masses beneath the integument, all speak of that period of life when, for sturdy vigor, toughness of fibre, and ability for powerful achievement, the forces of the body have reached the highest point. But the work has been abused and injured to the last degree short of entire destruction. The head is wanting, the arms have been broken off at the shoul ders and the legs at the knees, and these precious fragments have never been found. Only the grand torso remains to indicate to modern eyes what the full beauty of the perfect statue must have been. A reposing Herakles we call it, a deified Herakles many of the highest authorities prefer to say; but beyond this general understanding of its character the mutilation renders it impossible to go. We may look upon this figure as an epitome and brief chronicle of the vicissitudes through which ancient art has passed. In its battered and disfigured form is wrapped up the history of ages of change and desolation. In gazing upon it we seem to see unfolded, as in a most vivid panorama, the events of more than twenty centuries, events which have shaken the structure of society to its centre, and have moulded the plastic substance of human institutions from ancient to modern ideals. In this wonderful alembic, as in the magic cauldron of Medea, have been mingled elements of the most dissimilar nature. Among them, cast in by the hand of that greatest of sorceresses, whose influence is felt in the insatiable cravings of mankind for power, progress, and change, were the precious products of Greek and Roman art. That they were in part consumed need cause us no surprise. From the entire mass the son of humanity has come forth restored to youthful strength, and like the youth of that old heroic age has entered once more upon the career of dauntless and magnanimous achievement. The external changes through which art has passed form one of the most interesting and striking episodes in the transition from ancient to modern society. Here, as in so many other departments of history, it is revolution rather than evolution which meets the eye of the investigator. Of statues of the classic era there is not one, perhaps, which stands to-day upon its ancient base. Carried from city to city and from land to land; transported across seas; set up this year in Athens, the next in Antium, Tibur, or Rome; removed from temples to porticoes, from porticoes to theatres, from theatres to imperial villas, palaces, or baths, they were at last thrown from their pedestals to lie shattered and forgotten, till the dust of centuries gradually covered them from sight. Art in antiquity flowed in two distinct channels, the religious and the secular. Originating in an attempt to represent to the eye the divinities men had been taught to adore, it passed by a natural transition to those half-fabulous ancestors who, springing from the union of gods and mortals, were scarcely more human than divine. But the æsthetic impulse was too strong to stop here. Once awakened, it sought similar expression for the entire range of feelings and ideals, whether patriotic, domestic, social, or superstitious, and also extend ed over a considerable realm in which beauty seemed to be cultivated merely for its own sake. This twofold aspect of art should be constantly kept in mind. It bears an important relation to the subject under consideration. those works which were connected with the worship of the gods would by the sacredness of their character be protected from violence. Such to a great degree was the case. In the nobler periods of Grecian history, indeed, the principle was never disregarded by the different states in their dealings with each other. This was due to the fact that, whatever hostilities might exist between them, they all possessed the same gods in common. The Zeus, Here, and Athene of Athens were the Zeus, Here, and Athene of Thebes, Argos, and Sparta, and an insult offered to these deities in the conquest of one city was sure to be visited upon the heads of the offenders in their own land. The statues of the gods, therefore, were never considered a proper object of plunder. So strong was the feeling in this regard that when the destruction of a town was decided upon it was customary to carry them away to a place of safety, after first addressing them with prayers and suppl cations to avert their wrath for what would ordinarily be an act of sacrilege. Demetrios Poliorketes, in the siege of Rhodes, even abstained from attacking the city on the most favorable side, for fear of injuring the works of Protogenes, whose studio was situated there. An instance of nobler regard for art it would be difficult to find. In conflicts between nations of different religious beliefs, however, such restraints were little felt. Accordingly in the Persian wars multitudes of statues were plundered or destroyed, both in Greece itself and in the Ionic cities of Asia Minor. In the latter, indeed, there was not a temple, except that of the Ephesian Artemis, which Xerxes did not sack and demolish. The second social war, which broke out in 220 B. C., presents a new phase of Hellenic feeling toward art. Statues carved by the hands of Greeks now be gan to be destroyed by the degenerate It might naturally be supposed that offspring to whom their name, but not their finer instincts, had descended. The war was carried on between two states which, neither in art nor in literature, had ever won a place in the bright firmament of Grecian genius. On the one side were the Ætolians, a race of contemptible freebooters, who lived chiefly by depredations committed against their neighbors; on the other, the Achæans, a people brave and hardy, but lacking those high mental and spiritual qualities which had won immortality for the Athenians. With the former were allied the Lacedæmonians, with the latter Philip V. of Macedon. The Etolians, taking possession of Dion in Macedonia, leveled a portion of it to the ground, burned the porticoes of the temple, destroyed the votive offerings and all the statues of the kings. The sacredness of its oracle did not preserve the ancient Dodona from a similar fate. Its colonnades were set on fire, many of its consecrated gifts were consumed, and the fane itself was razed to its foundations. The Etolians also laid waste the temple of the Itonic Pallas, of Poseidon at Tanarum and Mantinea, of Artemis at Lusi, and of Here at Argos. The other army was not slow in retaliating. Marching into Thermon on two different occasions, Philip vented his rage upon the offerings, burned the porticoes of the temple, and tore down the ruins. He spared the statues of the gods, however, and those which bore inscriptions consecrating them to any deity. All others, not less than two thousand in number, were mutilated and overthrown. At Nikephorion he demolished the temples and images of the gods alike. At Pergamos not only were the sacred edifices and altars prostrated, but even the stones were broken into pieces, that the buildings might never again be erected. The Athenians, also, were destined to suffer from the malicious violence of Philip. Having quitted his alliance for that of the Romans in the war which broke out between him and the latter nation in 200 B. C., they found their territory invaded by the Macedonian monarch, who plundered the temples and ravaged the gardens, the tombs of the Attic heroes, the Academy, and other buildings in the suburbs. In a second incursion he broke in pieces a large number of statues, and demolished the shrines which he had previously desecrated, here also, as at Pergamos, reducing the stones to fragments, that the edifices might not be rebuilt. The Athenians, enraged at this wantonness, passed an ordinance that the statues of Philip and all members of his family should be destroyed, and the places containing. inscriptions in his honor regarded as unholy and infamous. For more than two hundred years works of art seem to have suffered little beyond the losses and breakages occasioned by transporting them from place to place, and by the wear and tear to which fragile marbles would naturally be exposed in public thoroughfares, baths, theatres, circuses, and marketplaces. But darker days were coming. The night which settled over the Roman world during the ghastly period of imperial crime was not less disastrous to art than to humanity. Scarcely twentyfive years had elapsed after the death of Augustus when Caligula ordered the statues of eminent Romans, which had been removed by that emperor from the overcrowded Capitol to the Campus Martius, to be thrown down and broken to pieces. Subsequently he struck the heads from the finest images of the gods, and replaced them with his own repulsive features. He even wished to convert the Olympian Zeus of Pheidias into a likeness of himself, but, failing to remove it from Greece, did not carry out his intention. After his death his statues were destroyed by order of the Senate, and it is probable that many antique works, then regarded merely as imperial portraits, were demolished with the rest. Claudius cut out the head from two paintings of Alexander the Great, and substituted that of Augustus instead. Nero, who personally took part in the public games of Greece and aspired to be the most skillful charioteer of his day, threw down the figures of former victors at Olympia, and according to Suetonius cast some of them into the sewers. His reign, however, witnessed a still more serious disaster to art in the great conflagration at Rome in 64 a. D. Of the fourteen sections of the city only four escaped injury. In this fire numberless statues must have perished, the tract burned over being that in which many of the finest works were collected. In the conflicts that took place in the time of Vitellius, Sabinus, the brother of Vespasian, shut himself up in the Capitol and protected himself with a barricade of statues. Being besieged by the imperial party, he defended himself by breaking in pieces the ancient marbles and hurling them down on the heads of his assailants. At length Vitellius ordered the Capitol to be set on fire, and burned in it Sabinus and his followers. Among the works thus consumed was Lysippos' bronze figure of a dog licking its wounds, which stood in the cella of Juno, and was considered such a miracle of art that the custodians were responsible for it with their lives. Domitian, like Caligula, made himself so odious to all classes that after his assassination the Senate ordered his likenesses to be utterly destroyed. Those of bronze were therefore melted and sold, and those of marble were reduced to fragments, only one or according to some authorities three remaining. The torso of one, all battered, cut, and hacked, was discovered near Frascati in 1758, showing the violence with which the sentence against him had been executed. His wife, Domitia, seems to have been treated with similar indignity. Other portraits of the emperor, however, were subsequently made. It was no uncommon thing to treat in this way the effigies of eminent persons who had forfeited the good-will of the people. The Athenians in a single year erected three hundred and sixty statues, mostly equestrian, to Demetrios Phalereus, but on the loss of his popularity destroyed them all in a single day. The same fate befell those of Marius Gratidianus, which had been set up in all the public places of Rome. Commodus converted the colossus of Nero into a likeness of himself, and according to an improbable story by later chronographers even placed his head upon that of Rhodes, which was reputed to have been set up by Vespasian or Hadrian after lying prostrate for three hundred years. The inhuman Maximin not only stripped the temples of their gold and silver offerings, but melted alike the statues of gods, heroes, and emperors, coining them into money to satisfy his own avarice and the greed of his soldiers. At length, in the fourth century, it became the common practice, whenever a tyrant was overthrown, for the victor to strike off the heads of all his statues and substitute his own, leaving the other portions of the figure untouched. The reign of Constantine, however, marks a new era in the mutilations of ancient art. The conversion of the emperor to Christianity resulted in an immense development of the power of the clergy, who for the most part saw in the representations of ancient deities only the symbols of an abominable idolatry. Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Augustine had written with severity against both painting and sculpture. The influence of the councils, beginning with that of Illiberis about the year 300 A. D., was especially bitter against the latter. So long as the statues, or, as they were regarded, the idols, of the gods remained, they would be worshiped; and so long as they were worshiped, men would go thronging to perdition. To those who cherished such a belief, the path of duty could not be doubtful: destroy the idols, |