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.

253-255-lent by H. Willett, Esq.) which, for various reasons, deserve to be studied closely. Originally they belonged to the frieze of a ceiling in the castle of San Martino Gusnago, in the district of Asola, between Mantua and Brescia, formerly belonging to the Gonzaga family. This peculiar kind of decorative art, not hitherto mentioned in art literature, seems to have been exclusively in use within the territory of a few towns. There are some similar works still to be seen in palaces of Cremona, Crema, and Brescia. They appear, however, far inferior in artistic merit to those before us. I have of late devoted some time to the study of the origin of such decorations, and have come to the conclusion that it is to be sought for in palaces of Verona and Padua, where artists of the very greatest repute were engaged in such works. The frieze of a large hall in the episcopal palace at Padua is adorned with portraits by Bartolommeo Montagna. In one of the palaces at Verona I had the luck to discover a similar work, probably by Domenico, if not by Francesco Morone. In both of them the personages were named in inscriptions placed underneath, and I believe there can be no doubt that the portraits here exhibited are also historical. No. 250, apparently a Doge, is believed to be Pasquale Malipierio (ob. 1462). It might also be Orio Malipierio (ob. 1192): see Elogia Poetica in Seren. Venet. (Padua, 1680). The entire series consists of forty-four panels, and Mr. Willett is to be congratulated on having secured the whole. When brought to this country, they were thickly covered with whitewash. The difficult problem of restoration has been most successfully overcome by Prof. A. H. Church. The question of the authorship of these fine portraits is not easy to decide. The names of Mantegna, of Beltraffio, of Pollaiuolo, of Piero degli Franceschi, and others have been suggested, but none has yet been accepted. In my opinion, the master is to be looked for nowhere but in the school of Milan, from about 1490 to 1520. These heads appear to me to have a striking affinity to the later works of Braman-ing, LO. However this may be, they are a arkable illustration of that period in Italian in which it was the chief aim of the anters to seize and depict character, or those bites of men and things which flow out of the inner life.

LETTER FROM EGYPT.

Abydos: Dec. 27, 1883.

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

During my stay at Cairo I explored the rockcut tombs in the cliff behind the citadel, and found them to be of the Roman age, from which we may perhaps conclude that the Egyptian town which preceded Cairo was not older than the time of Augustus. I also spent a day in the quarries of Turra, the Troja of Strabo, copying Greek graffiti. Another afternoon I devoted to the curious subterranean passages and chambers that have been discovered under the Greek convent at Old Cairo. In one pace two columns with Corinthian capitals and a cornice similar to that which adorns the ancient gate of the Roman fortress are built into the wall; while in another we I HAVE just been making a tour in the Fayûm descend a flight of stone stairs of Roman conwith two companions, but have found it some-struction, made of beautifully cut blocks of what disappointing at least from an archae- stone. I should advise visitors to Cairo not to ological point of view. The remains of the miss either these old relics of the Egyptian Labyrinth at Howâra certainly do not justify Babylon or the Jewish synagogue, which is not the praises bestowed by Herodotos upon the far distant, and which reminded me forcibly of building; the broken obelisk at Ebgig is little the well-known "synagogue" at Toledo. more than a curiosity; and the three Roman The Bûlak Museum has undergone quite a temples at Kesr Karûn, destitute as they are of transformation during the last two years. New inscriptions, are not worth the trouble of get-rooms have been added to it, and, what is more, ting to them, even though one of them is in a filled with objects which the indefatigable remarkably perfect condition. The most in-industry of M. Maspero has brought together teresting antiquities in the Fayûm are the vast from all parts of Egypt. His new Catalogue is mounds of Krokodilopolis, with their streets of about to appear; and, as short descriptions will ancient brick houses, and the two ruined monu- be attached to the objects named in it, it will ments which stand side by side at Biahmu. A be a great boon to future visitors to Cairo. corner of one of these still exists, proving that Among the newly collected antiquities some the monument must once have been a pyramid early Greek remains are especially interesting, with an angle similar to that of the pyramid as well as three clay cylinders, inscribed with of Medûm. The size and character of the Babylonian cuneiform characters, which M. stones, the mode in which they are cut, and the Maspero has exhumed at Tell Defenneh (the want of cement to join them together also Pelusiac Daphne of the ancients, according to reminded me of Medûm, and inclined me to Brugsch), a little to the west of Kantara, on conjecture that, like Medûm, they belong to as the Suez Canal. I found that all three were early a period as that of the IIIrd Dynasty. records of Nebuchadnezzar, two of them being The two masses of stones which still stand duplicates; and, as they are very badly written, within the areas enclosed by the two monu- and relate only to the monarch's building ments once formed part of their cores. I found operations in Babylon, they must have been fragments of black and red granite-belong- intended merely as memorials of his conquests, apparently, to broken statues-strewn over to be left in the countries he overran. They their sites, as well as pieces of white stone, are, therefore, curious evidences of his inwhich may have formed their casing. I have vasion of Egypt. One of them begins as only to add that the accounts given of them in follows:both Murray and Baedeker are alike incorrect.

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 Elini 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 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 yopinion, 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 AIA Añoлa. d on the table to the left of the gentleman Southward of the village the cliff is honeyad 66 Albino," ," the name of a small place combed with sepulchres, most of which, howthe Serio 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 ".." 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, ture of that still rarer master, Giovanni the tombs of Rifa must have been included in the younger brother of Giov. Francesco. the nome of Hypselis rather than in that of Noe 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

LAST Saturday afternoon the only concert of importance was the Saturday Popular, so that have been well filled. But Mr. Maas was the under ordinary circumstances the hall would vocalist, M. de Pachmann the pianist, and the programme contained only well-known and favourite works-Mendelssohn's Quintett (op. THE forthcoming number of the Magazine of 87) for the twenty-eighth time, the "Moonlight" Art will contain an illustrated article on the Sonata for the nineteenth, and Beethoven's new Institute of Painters in Oil, with engrav- Pianoforte Trio in D for the twenty-first. ings of Mr. Hacker's “ Fatima," Mr. Brewt- St. James's Hall was, therefore, crowded. Of nall's "The Mother," Mr. Morgan's "Meadow the Russian pianist's rendering of the "MoonSweet," and Mr. Waller's "A Letter of Intro-light" we have already spoken: the first movement he plays best, and the reading of it on Saturday was even more satisfactory than that at his recital a few weeks back.

JAN. 26, 1884.-No. 612.]

SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 1884.
No. 612, New Series.

THE EDITOR cannot undertake to return, or
to correspond with the writers of, rejected
manuscript.

It is particularly requested that all business letters regarding the supply of the paper, fc., may be addressed to the PUBLISHER, and

not to the EDITOR.

LITERATURE.

LUTHERAN BOOKS.

The Life of Luther. By Julius Köstlin.,
Translated from the German. (Longmans.)
Luther and other Leaders of the Reformation.
By John Tulloch. (Blackwood.)
Martin Luther.
(Ward.)

By John H. Treadwell.

Martin Luther the Reformer. By Julius
Köstlin. (Cassells.)

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.)

a truism to say that neither Luther's personal 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

of the nuns

not committed to paper until after a considerable lapse of time) on the part of one deeply interested chief actor, that the someformer source of information may times be the more trustworthy. Such a conclusion 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 reservathe impost levied by Rome on ecclesiastical swallowed up enortions, we can feel no difficulty in pronouncing benefices and fiefs 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 prolation also deserves commendation as a pains- tests from Rome, for these purposes. Lather: a Short Biography. By James taking and careful rendering, although it But this important phase of the question is Anthony Froude. (Longmans.) would have gained in vigour if the pleonastic only just glanced at in passing, although, dochs," and 'auchs," as 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 Luther: ein kirchliches Festspiel. Von Hans which the German work supplied the basis. whom the efficacy of "works" was urged as Of the other volumes before us, Mr. Tread- a plea for continually and remorselessly deHerrig. (Berlin: Luckhardt.) Luther's Table Talk. (Religious Tract So-well's sketch is a spirited and appreciative priving them of their hard earnings. The (Religious Tract So- though somewhat imperfect outline; Dr. whole contest," says Prof. Köstlin, "turned ciety.) Tulloch's is a reprint of a volume already ultimately on the question as to who should PROF. KÖSTLIN'S Luthers Leben has already well known to the English public, but with determine disputes about the truth, and where received in Germany an amount of commenda- the portion relating to Luther enlarged, and to seek the highest standard and the purest tion to which it is fairly entitled, and which his many-sided character more fully described source of Christian verity" (p. 104). It is renders further encomium on this side the and illustrated from the rich material afforded at least possible that, if Leo X. and his emisNa almost superfluous. It is a very in the Tischreden. Prof. Mayor's little tractate saries could have been induced to deal more careful, well-conceived, well-executed piece represents a sermon preached in the chapel considerately with the pockets of the German of literary work. And if we cannot adopt, of St. John's College, Cambridge. It is full of people, the German conscience would have ithout some qualification, Mr. Froude's deep and suggestive thought, and bears on been found less tender, and the whole contest erdict in its favour, that "the student who every page the impress of genuine and exten- would never have assumed its "ultimate Pas read these pages attentively will have no sive learning; the burden of the discourse is form. There are other points on which much estions left to ask," we may concede that, if to show how Luther's renouncement and sub-fuller information might advantageously have the author's standpoint the standpoint of sequent energetic denunciation of the monastic been given, as, for example, on the relations the Wittenberg-Halle school of theology- Vows has been completely justified by later of the Empire to the Papacy and the merits of The former subject is, howbe accepted as the right one, the general Church history and is corroborated by the Luther's Bible. reatment will appear unimpeachable. Prof. testimony of Old Catholicism. The edition of ever, so much better understood in Germany Kolde has no easy task before him if his the Smalkaldic Articles, which comes to us than in England that the cursory bours are to eclipse those of his brother pro- from Heidelberg, is a photographic reproduc- it here receives in a work not primarily dessor. As a contribution to historical litera- tion, in forty-seven pages, of Luther's auto- signed for English readers is more readily ture it must, however, rank much lower. graph there preserved in the university explained. Notwithstanding the apparatus of material library. Dr. Zangemeister, the librarian, has ted or printed in the two volumes of the prefixed to it an interesting Introduction. riginal work, the information is manifestly The MS., like its writer, appears to have had erived too exclusively from one side, and the some narrow escapes. After Tilly had taken sequent bias is throughout plainly dis- Heidelberg, in 1622, it was sent by Duke mible. Some of the statements, resting Maximilian of Bavaria to Rome, as a present ely on Luther's own authority, clash singu- to the Pope. In 1798 it was carried by rly with those which we find on official Napoleon from the Vatican to Paris. From record-for example, in the recently published Paris it went back to Rome, and finally, in sciculus of the Monumenta Reformationis 1815, was restored, along with many others, Istheranae. Most unprejudiced persons will by Pope Pius VII. to its original depository. Probably look upon Luther as a far more Herr Hans Herrig's Festspiel is a commendchest man than Aleander or Caietanus; but able attempt to dramatise the most striking "has encountered death bravely for a cause * is difficult not to conclude, where dis- episodes of Luther's career; the caution, how-which he knows to be just, when he is sustained repancies occur between a record of proceed-ever, with which he has restricted his imagi- by the sympathy of thousands, of whom he is at the moment the champion and the repreand events made by official authorities nation to the mere embellishment of recorded sentative. But it is one thing to suffer, and ecially designed to convey to others an fact is more apparent than the spirit of his another to encounter face to face and singleat impression of what actually took Pegasus. handed the array of spiritual and temporal e) and personal reminiscences (sometimes authorities which are ruling supreme.”

To most students of history it will appear

treatment

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,

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.

Portraits of Places. By Henry James. (Macmillan.)

A NOVELIST like Mr. Henry James shows to a disadvantage in a book of simple observation. 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 As regards Luther's language and de- expect to be charmed and carried on by the meanour at Worms, all the writers before us author of Portraits of Places as he may have concur in ascribing to him language which it been by the novelist is likely to be disnow seems probable he did not use. The appointed; but the book is interesting in its somewhat theatrical but, under the circum-own mild way, and, though extremely slight, stances, grand and striking words "Here I is worth having and keeping, like the slightest stand, I cannot do otherwise," have, as Mr. sketches of a good painter. It is a collection Karl Pearson has already noted,* no place in of papers which first appeared "in various the official report. While the "Gott helff American magazines and journals." The writer mir," which has usually been regarded as a fears that the impressions he received during touching expression of Luther's sense of his the early months of a residence in England are defenceless and isolated condition, is really " very superficial." The record of them was nothing more than the "Ita me Deus adjuvet" entirely addressed to an American public; and (often with the addition "et sancta Dei Evan- Mr. James thinks that they "can have but a gelia") which was the ordinary conclusion in limited interest for English readers, familiar, those times of every formal declaration in a naturally, to satiety with many of those minor court of law. 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. Docs 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.

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. But
the fact is that there were two John Ecks,

* 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.

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

December 8, 1883.

J. BASS MULLINGER.

British home." This is as it should be; we do not look upon Americans as foreigners, but as a sort of Englishmen who live upon a great estate of their own at a distance from the mother-country. However, though not

a foreigner, Mr. James is not a complete Englishman after all. It is grievous to see that he does not find the proper degree of sober satisfaction in English Sundays and

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,
Mr. James lets us into the secret of his
own delicate reflectiveness in a description of

"I have never been in a country so unattractive

The lady

This

"trots up the spring-board-which projects over the waves with one end uppermost, like a great see-saw-she balances a moment, and then gives a great aerial dive, executing on the way the most graceful of somersaults. performance the star of the Palais Royal repeats during the ensuing hour at intervals of five minutes, and leaves you, as you lie tossing little stones into the water, to consider the curious and delicate question why a lady may go so far as to put herself into a single scant, clinging garment and take a straight leap, head downward, before three hundred spectators, without violation of propriety, and why impropriety should begin only when she turns over in the air in such a way that for five seconds her head is upwards. The logic of the matter is mysterious; white and black are divided by a hair. But the fact remains that virtue is on one side of the hair and vice on the

other."

too much on the Continent. About Christmas able to purchase the most considerable house it church-going, perhaps because he has been that it did not seem a peculiar felicity to be how he saw a French actress bathe at Etretat. time he arrived in London and encountered contained. In New England and other portions three British Sundays in a row-" a spectacle of the United States I have coveted the large to strike terror into the stoutest heart." The mansion with Doric columns and a pediment of explanation of this extraordinary phenomenon white-painted timber; in Italy I have made is that a Sunday and a Bank-holiday had imaginary proposals for the yellow-walled villa joined hands with a Christmas Day. Surely with statues on the roof. In England I have rarely gone so far as to fancy myself in treaty a Bank-holiday is not so sad a spectacle as for the best house, but, failing this, I have the terrible Dimanche de Londres" that rarely failed to feel that ideal comfort for the makes Continentals shudder. There is a time would be to call oneself owner of what is capital bit, too long to quote, about the fine denominated here a 'good' place." state of social discipline in England which drives all respectable people regularly to He has a keen appreciation of old-fashioned church on Sunday mornings. A real English-English county houses in parks, and the man would hardly have ventured to write oldest ones delight him most with their this passage, but he will read it with a quiet reminiscences of the past. After a charming smile, and afterwards obey the custom as description, too long to quote, of an abbey before. The book treats of three countries which has preserved many of its old features England, France, and Italy. The author is in becoming a private residence, he speaks very susceptible of impressions received of the "entertainment of living in a ci-devant through the eyes. He is rather like a painter priory. This entertainment is inexhaustible, in this respect, but not quite, the difference for every step you take in such a house being that he always takes social matters into confronts you in one way or other with the remote past. consideration, which a painter easily forgets. You feast upon the His feeling about the ugliness of London is a pictorial, you inhale the historic." It case in point. The hideousness of the place does not appear that Mr. James has any strikes him very forcibly, but his mind re- special knowledge of architecture. Readers bounds from this instantaneously to the social who have made architecture a study will soon consideration of home-loving English ways. perceive, by his way of writing about certain remarkable edifices, that he is not a real “London is ugly, dusky, dreary, more destitute student, as he offers no remarks of the kind than any European city of graceful and decora- which close, intelligent study leads a man to tive incident.... As you walk along the make. I have noticed this particularly with streets, having no fellow-pedestrians to look at, you look up at the brown brick house-walls, regard to Chartres, but it is true of all the corroded with soot and fog, pierced with their great edifices known to me which are mentraight, stiff window-slits, and finished, by tioned in the volume. Still, Mr. James way of a cornice, with a little black line re- admires architecture and enjoys it to a certain mbling a slice of curb-stone. There is not degree, as an outsider. As a novelist, his real accessory, not a touch of architectural study is human nature and manners, and here fancy, not the narrowest concession to beauty." he is always delicate and worth reading. This is true of the particular kind of London Being in London, he is told at a certain season street described, and very well put, but Mr. that all the washerwomen are intoxicated, James can also see the pictorial side of and that, as it would take them some time to revive, he is not to count upon a relay "of fresh things." This leads him at once to think of his Parisian blanchisseuse, a reflection by which we are the gainers, as Mr. James treat us to the following bit of description, which is really much better than anything in Sterne :

London.

London is pictorial in spite of details-from dark-green, misty parks, the way the light eptes down leaking and filtering from its dead-ceiling, and the softness and richness tone which objects put on in such an atmosphere as soon as they begin to recede. Nowhere 13 there such a play of light and shade, such a struggle of sun and smoke, such aerial grada-"I shall not forget the impression made upon tions and confusions. To eyes addicted to such contemplations this is a constant diversion, and et this is only part of it. What completes the ct of the place is its appeal to the feelings, ade in so many ways, but made, above all, by gglomerated immensity. At any given point London looks huge; even in narrow corners have a sense of its hugeness, and petty places acquire a certain interest from their being parts of so inighty a whole."

Mr. James confesses, in an amusing way, that he is always wanting to purchase houses. We heartily wish him wealth enough to make ny such purchases, and that they may out satisfactorily. Such is the difference A tastes, that his present reviewer never ept in one instance where affection was cerned) desired to purchase a house in his , but he has often dreamed of building one to surpass all existing domestic edifices in

me by this statement; I had just come from
Paris, and it almost sent me spinning back.
One of the incidental agréments of life in the
latter city had been the knock at my door on
Saturday evenings of a charming young woman
with a large basket covered with a snowy
napkin on her arm, and on her head a frilled
and fluted muslin cap, which was an irresistible
advertisement of her art. To say that my
admirable blanchisseuse was not in liquor is
altogether too gross a compliment; but I was
always grateful to her for her russet cheek, her
frank, expressive eye, her talkative smile, for
the way her charming cap was poised upon her
crisp, dense hair, and her well-made dress was
fitted to her well-made waist. I talked with
her; I could talk with her; and as she talked

she moved about and laid out her linen with a
delightful modest ease. Then her light step
carried her off again, talking, to the door, and
with a brighter smile and an Adieu, mon'
sieur!' she closed it behind her, leaving one

This is excellent, and it is exactly the author's
He likes to find
way of observing manners.
some point of divergence, and take note of it;
he likes to see what a very fine line-a line
thin as a hair-divides one thing from another.
He is pleased with his own clear discernment
of the fact, without pretending to account for
it: "the logic of the matter is mysterious."

Mr. James is accurate in describing the
care the French take about food and bedding,
and their easy tolerance of wretched lodging;
but I notice one or two slight omissions. He
seems to judge of things too much from
the hotel point of view, and not to be
very familiar with private life. In hotels
the déjeuner and dinner are almost equally
heavy affairs, and a great many dishes
are produced to suit the differing tastes of
strangers. In private life, one of the two
meals is generally the more important, and
that is often the déjeuner, in which case it
becomes nothing but a very early dinner
under another name, and the dinner is a light
early supper.
by foreigners, that a good many French people
It is also a fact, little noticed
impose upon themselves relative abstinence
at one of the two meals.

There are cases

of steady total abstinence from one of them. As for reiteration " it is true that the dinner is too much like the déjeuner, but so many French people only take two meals a day that it is natural for both to be more substantial than if they sat down to table four times, as the middle classes often do in England. Still, after all deductions, the fact remains that the French live extremely well, that their food is generally varied, well-cooked, and judiciously served in well-ordered meals. I remember hearing an English lady declare that the French "lived on air." That seemed to me a fine piece of patriotism, the truth being, as Mr. James says, that they feed very substantially, and show the result in corresponding corporeal development, especially in women.

that so light and superficial a volume would I began this review rather with the idea hardly afford material for one, and now I find that there are many more quotable passages than a reviewer has room for. The book