which are known to have been in the original and oldest form. Thus the much discussed statement born of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary' cannot be doubted as historically correct because of additions which are not parts under dispute in this discussion." Dr. Grau, then proceeds to show that such a Creed as that called the Apostles' was an historical necessity, based upon the fact that the Church needed not only the Canon or measure, the regula fidei, as applied to the Scriptures, but also a Canon of faith of what her members must believe. "That this Creed should put forth as its central thought the person of Jesus Christ, is equally the most natural thing in the world. The content of Christian faith was Jesus of Nazareth; it is He whom the Creed confesses and who forms its centre. Only two brief statements are devoted to God the Father; only four to the Holy Spirit; but of Jesus nine important statements are made in the earliest form of the Creed, and each one of these nine is expressive of great mystery of doctrine and of faith in regard to the person and the work of Christ. These two latter things cannot be separated in Jesus. He is the Son of the Almighty God, and at the same time He is born of the Virgin Mary through the power of the Holy Ghost. This is the earliest confession of the Church. "The Biblical argument is as clear as the historical. It is true that in the Gospel of Mark we have the earliest form of Gospel proclamation; but it is decidedly false that in this Gospel the supernatural birth of Jesus is not taught. It is presupposed throughout by what Christ says and does as reported in Mark. He is the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Saviour of the World, the Physycian of the body and the soul. These facts and others like them teach louder than ex professo statements would have done the Divinity and Eternal Sonship of Jesus. The same is true of St. Paul and of St. John. And our opponents misinterpret these if they do not find these doctrines taught in the writings of these Apostles. True it is that with the exception of the opening chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke the Virgin-birth of Christ is not in so many words explicitly taught; but this great fact forms the basis of the whole New-Testament structure of doctrine and teachings (John i.: 13; 1 Cor. viii.: 6; 1 Cor. xv. : 45, 47; Rom. vii.: 18). The proclamation of the Eternal Sonship of Christ and His supernatural birth belongs to the more advanced stages of Christian proclamation and not to the first stages; here they are not expected, and a historical conception of the New-Testament teaching and New-Testament theology leads us to look for but few explicit statements of this kind in these books, however much the great fact itself may form the foundation of the whole superstructure of New-Testament truth. Thus the traditional views as to the Biblical character and early adherence of the Church to the faith in the birth of Jesus Christ from the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary are fully confirmed by historical and scriptural arguments." IN TWO EPISTLES OF THE MAHDI. 1. N April, 1885, Col. Alfred E. Turner, of Lord Wolseley's British Army in the Soudan, captured several relatives of the Mahdi. A messenger was then sent to the Mahdi, with a letter offering to exchange these persons for a number of Christians who were held captive in Khartoum. (This happened after the fall of Khartoum.) The Mahdi wrote two epistles in reply-one to his unfortunate kinsmen and one to Lord Wolseley's representative. They are very curious documents, illustrating the spirit and pretensions of the Mahdi in a highly characteristic way. Colonel Turner makes them public (with a story of the whole affair) in an article in the National Review, London, for February. The Mahdi flatly refused to agree to the proposed exchange, basing the refusal on the declaration that his Christian captives had voluntarily embraced the Moslem faith, and therefore were more precious to him than the men whom he had lost. To this he added some severe moralizing, which is interesting in itself, and still more interesting in view of the cold facts that Colonel Turner presents. The following is the Mahdi's epistle to his imprisoned relatives: "In the name of God, the clement and merciful: Glory be to God the generous Ruler, and prayers to our Lord Mahomed and His descendants! From the Slave dependent upon his God, in whom he reposes his trust, Mohamed El Mahdi, the son of Abdulla; "To Mohamed Abd El Kadir, El Haj Sherifi, Mohamed Nūr, El Sherif Shāti Ali, Abd El Kadir, Abd El Kārim, Mohamed Ibrahim, Ahmed En Najib, and Haj Sherif, the son of Mohamed the Kādi. "I have received your letter, in which you complain that you are captives in the power of the enemies of God, Lord Wolseley's agent and his English Band; that you are held as hostages for the delivering up of the priests, nuns, Europeans, and Copts who are with me; and that you are cruelly treated for their sakes: and you implore me that they may be sent down to the English, in order that you may be liberated. In reply, I say unto you: O people, fear God and dread the day of His wrath, for His word shall be fulfilled. Deceive not yourselves with delusions, and vanities of earthly existence; but follow the teaching He has sent down from Heaven, and repent before that day in which His vengeance shall overtake you unawares, when you shall exclaim, in the bitterness of remorse, 'Had the Lord guided us in the right way, we had been Believers.' Ye Hypocrites and rebellious of heart, hath not God Almighty said, 'Nay; but My word came to you, and you refused to listen, and perished in your infidelity'? Know that those whom (you demand) should be sent down to redeem you from captivity are more precious in the sight of God than you; for they have listened to His words, and obeyed His call, and quitted darkness for light, and are now of those elect who fight in the cause of the Lord; they are of His holy Band, under His divine care, and near Him. He says, in His Word, They who come to Me, and believe, are My chosen ones: I will lead them from darkness into light.', As to you: I summoned you; but you heeded not my call: you persisted in your perversity, and put your trust in Infidels. They who are led from light into darkness are the really wicked and evil of heart. Whatever they may do to you is a much less punishment than you deserve, and does not affect me in the least. I have no connection with you or interest in you, for you yourselves are the authors of the evil which has overtaken you, and between you and the English there is no difference in my sight. Pray, what is your value? that I should exchange you for those whom God Almighty has chosen for His own, guided in the right way, and made joyful with the light of His salvation? I marvel at your conceit and credulity! Were you possessed of common sense, you would know that to exchange the precious for the worthless is not the way of the wise. 'God forbid that I should act thus, or commit so unworthy a deed; for He hath said, 'Those people cannot believe in Me and My prophet who love those who go astray from their God and His Apostle, even should they be their Fathers, their Children, their Brethren, or their Tribesmen.' If, therefore, you rely upon the ties of relationship with me, this verse will be sufficient to prove to you how complete is the separation between us. In short, I refuse to comply with your request, nor do I pity you in the slightest degree for whatever punishment the Infidels inflict on you-yea: even if they torture you to death and tear you limb from limb,-whilst you are in league with, and subservient to them, and fear them rather than your God. "Let them do what they please with you. The Prophet of God hath said, 'Those who aid the wicked shall fall into their power. Your fate is due to your love of the world; and in you is fulfilled the proverb, He who would seize the carrion must risk the bite of the dogs.' "Be sure that if you and your allies do not quit your evil ways and repent and turn to God, you shall soon, by the will and power of the Almighty, be in my grasp, and taste the bitter reward of your wickedness in quitting the path of the Lord; but if you repent you shall be accepted, and receive from me the security and peace of God and of His Prophet, and of me, His chosen servant. " "Signed and sealed: "There is but one God, and Mahomed is His prophet.' MAHOMED EL MAHDI IBN ABDULLA. Khartoum, 13th of the month Shaban, 1302." The plain truth (according to Colonel Turner) is, that the Christian captives at Khartoum not only did not beconie Mohammedans, but were so true to their faith that, when offered the choice of embracing Islam or suffering death, they refused to change their religion. One of the captives (Father Luigi Buonomi), who subsequently escaped, told a very thrilling story of the cruelties practiced upon the Christians in the Mahdi's camp, and of the courage and steadfastness of the prisoners. THE DESTINY OF THE JEWS. Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper in TH Quarterly Review, London, January. HREE ways, each traversing a period of more than eighteen hundred years, lead down from the dead old world into our modern time-the Roman Empire, the Christian Church, and the Nation of Israel. But the Empire, which was in succession Italian, Byzantine, Frankish, and German, has vanished like a ghost at the cock-crowing of the French Revolution. Its place knows it no more, and the dwellers in the Judengasse at Frankfort-on-Main would have had a cheap bargain in the worn-out robes aud gilded sceptres of Kaiser Redbeard, who sleeps in Kyfhäuser beyond all chance of waking. Not such has been the fortune of Christendom or Israel. These two, the New Testament and the Old, seem to be moving forward in battle array towards the future, their hosts divided by ravines which they do not attempt to cross. With their faces set toward the rising sun, Jew and Christian maintain that it is their mission to conquer the world. Yet they are always antagonists in spirit, and not seldom open enemies. Israel has been charged with lying in wait for the heel of the Christian; nor does the Christian feel any scruple, for the most part, in crushing Israel's head. Their feud is intensified by the appeal which they make to the same inspired pages, and the one Lord who has called them both His people. From the prophets who wrote six-and-twenty centuries ago, they derive their witness,-Israel that he is the covenanted Nation, and the Christian that to him has been given the inheritance of Jacob, and neither modern science nor the outbursts of revolutionary change have made a durable impression upon these high preternatural institutions, which have stood above Europe from of old, portentous, and unlike all others, in their weakness as in the grandeur of their achievements. But one thing, at least, is certain. Those who imagine, as perhaps George Eliot did, that Israel is to be absorbed in a new cosmopolitan race, neither Asiatic, European, nor American, but distilled from all three, are preparing themselves no small disappointment. Israel is the prophet among the nations, and its day is not yet over. The history that no theories can explain away, which binds us with the past, and looks on to the future, will not end less miraculously than it began. As Heine says with entire truth, the Jews who decline to practice any form of idolatry, and have followed after a Law during more than three thousand years, are the people of the spirit," and even their worship of wealth, for which not they but their Christian persecutors must answer, cannot destroy the passion or the hope with which their teachers are still inspired. Yet again they may be spoiled and scattered; but enlightenment,' civilization, and the growth of democratic equality have in them no elements, so far as we can discern, which will absorb Israel. He remains, as in harder times than our own, "the everlasting Jew." What we could desire for him is that he should fling aside his delusive Kabbala and his armor of the Talmud, and recognize in the New Testament such a law, embodied in a perfect and divine life, as will set him free from casuistry, and reconcile obedience with the inward light of love and reason. It is strange, indeed, that he should hesitate to claim as his greatest inheritance the Christ who has established above Greek wisdom and Roman law an order of things which the prophets beheld in vision, but which only a divine strength could have made victorious and a present reality. Nor need the Jew renounce, in acknowledging his true Master, anything which the noblest of his race would, at all events in these days, insist upon preserving. To "modern thought," as it is called, his other sacred books, Talmud, Yetsira, Zokar, and the rest, will doubtless yield; but not the Bible. He has learnt so much from Mendelssohn. Let him learn from "Chozari," that the olive and the wild olive, when Providence grafts them into one stem, will flourish together; and that the two covenants, which have a common past, were intended to work out between them, in friendship and not by antagonism-in love and not in hate-the future of mankind. MISCELLANEOUS. SIGN-WRITING OF THE GYPSIES. Translated and Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper in THE HE true gypsies trace their wanderings from the banks of the Indus, and are a branch of the Indo-Germanic stock; they are hence our cousins. Nevertheless, between them and us there is a great gulf fixed, a gulf which can be bridged over only by one who has mastered the gypsies' language and won their confidence. Such a man is Dr. H. von Wlislocki, who, in his "Aus dem inneren Leben der Zigeuner," affords a variety of information such as no other living writer, not a born gypsy, could have accumulated. Wlislocki enjoys a complete mastery of the Zigeuner language, acquired during long years of wandering with the gypsies in the Danube lands and in Germany, and by familiar intercourse with the most distinguished men and women of the race. From the ample material concerning gypsy manners and customs which he furnishes, we content ourselves here with a short notice of the sign-writing by which the wandering tribes communicate with those of their brethren who follow in their tracks. For an uneducated, half-wild, and justly mistrusted people like the gypsies it is almost a necessity of existence that the several tribes should have some means of communicating with each other, which would attract very little attention on the part of outsiders: information, warnings, direction, etc. Let us give an example. In the beginning of September, 1890, a gypsy family passed through the village of N. Not far from the point at which they left the village the road divides into three branches, and any other gypsy or tribe of gypsies following their tracks would look for a "sign" here. There is a tree at the fork of the roads, and the gypsy's eye is quick to detect four long, flat stones piled one on the other. They are so covered with dirt that the ordinary traveler would hardly disturb them, and it would most likely escape his notice that each stone has a horse-hair tied round it. Near at hand, a little branch with three twigs is stuck into the ground, and the middle twig points in the direction of the right-hand road. A small piece of leather is nailed on the tree, and is seen on inspection to have several stitches of red wool, a square hole, and two round holes. A small charred elder-stick with a straw and two red threads looped together are stuck behind the leather, along with a small birch twig with two loose red threads. A little cow-dung dashed over the whole, quenches the curiosity of the casual traveler whose glance may fal! on it. The gypsy, however, in search of a "sign" reads the message without difficulty, and thus interprets it for the benefit of his comrades. The chief of the tribe of our predecessors informs us that his wife is dead, his son arrested, and that we must all be on our guard as the authorities charge us with theft. We have taken the road to the right, and passing through the next town to the second village beyond, we purpose remaining there until the 16th of September." Each tribe has its own distinctive mark or totem, which in the case in point was the horse-hair. The four stones bound with horse-hair signified that the communication was intended for members of the communicant's own tribe and no other. The direction of the middle twig indicated the road taken; the long stones, too, were so laid as to indicate the direction of route. The charred elder twig with straw signified death; the red color is the sign of the chief, and the two knotted threads signify the chief's wife. The birch branch denotes an arrest, and the two separate red threads signify that it is the son of the chief who has been arrested. Three threads would signify a grandson. The employment of skin or leather signifies a request to meet for communication on important matters. The stitches give the time. Time is reckoned from the three high feastdays, and from St. Michael's Day as follows: The long stitches show the number of Sundays since the last great feast, and the square stitches the week days. The piece of leather in this case had sixteen long stitches and two square stitches. It is, therefore, the Tuesday following the sixteenth Sunday after Easter, that was the 16th September, which was fixed as the limit of stay. The square holes in the leather signify towns, the round holes villages. Beyond the next town a similar piece of leather will be found attached to a tree, but there will be no square hole in it, and the reader knows that the second village on the road will be the meeting-place. The cow-dung signifies prosecution for theft. Any kind of filth is employed to prevent the signs being molested. As a charred elder-stick signifies death, so a green one signifies sickness. Several notches in the twig, with straw, signifies a broken arm; without straw, a broken leg. A fir twig signifies an engagement, a willow twig with a red or white thread the birth of a boy or girl; an oak twig the return of a messenger to his family. A bunch of dog's hair is an intimation to those following to change their course. Small glass fragments announce the death of some domestic animal of the tribe; large fragments that a domestic animal has been stolen, or strayed away. Clean fragments denote a horse, dirty fragments a pig. Of the charcoal marks made by gypsies on buildings, a cross intimates "nothing to be got here"; a double cross that you may look out for harsh treatment; a cross within a circle intimates a desire for revenge on the occupants of the house; a circle alone, that presents were received there; a triangle that money may be had for fortune-telling; two serpentine lines that the mistress of the house would like children; a triangle including a serpentine line that the master of the house is dead. In this manner the wanderer manages to communicate a great deal of information to those who come after, which the fortune-tellers of the second group can utilize to the astonishment of the people who little suspect that their affairs are published on their house walls. On the march, two whistles and two owl-hoots intimate to the approaching gypsy that he is near a suitable resting-place; a whistle alternating with a cuckoo call is a signal of danger. Rapid waving of both arms is equally a signal of danger. Raising the left arm signifies "The road is open," raising the right warns to caution. In the presence of a stranger, the movement of the little finger of the right hand informs the others that the stranger is looking for stolen goods. The betrayal of these signs by gypsies to non-gypsies is very rare. Even excommunicated gypsies are very careful neither to betray the secrets of their people nor to destroy their signwriting, being convinced that they would thus render themselves liable te evil demons and misfortunes. THE SMITH IN PRIMEVAL TIMES. Translated and Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper in THE HE metallic age was inaugurated neither by one stroke nor simultaneously among all people. The earliest evidence we possess of the employment of metals affords no reliable data for fixing its origin with any approach to chronological exactness, nor does humanity as a whole exhibit such progress in the art of working in metals that we can trace its evolution step by step. As regards a knowledge of metals, we find the race divided into groups, each pursuing its own course of independent development, until migratory movements, peaceful or violent, became a fruitful means for the general diffusion of culture. There is no lack of iron remains. We find lance points, and picks, and iron money. This latter was much sought after as a medium of exchange, and the smiths who fabricated it were regarded by the people with mingled hate and respect. We find evidences of this on all hands, and even to this day the village smith commands a more than ordinary consideration. He is regarded now, as he always has been, as a living remnant of the past, gifted with exceptional powers; a halo surrounds him. Even in the most remote antiquity he was a stranger in the land of his labors. The people of his own race had wandered afar or the invader had driven them out, but the smith was tied to the place where he found his ore. There he forged his metal, a marked man, speaking another language, worshiping other gods, possibly inimical to the people among whom he lived; a survival of a people which had vanished into the unknown. The new-comers bore with his peculiarities because they needed him, but they regarded him with a measure of awe, as a magician who rendered good service, but whose illwill it would be dangerous to incur. In Northern Africa, even beyond the Soudan, as far as foreign conquerors have pushed forward into Negro territory, the smiths, as representatives of the primeval occupants, constitute a distinct caste. Among the Indo-Germanic peoples, too, the heroes of hammer and anvil look down upon us from a hoary antiquity. As in Old-Testament history Tubal Cain is the father of all those who work in iron and brass, so in the Rig-Veda we find a Vashtâ who forged the thunderbolt for the bloody Indra; the Greeks, too, had in their Hephaistos, the primeval forger of weapons, and of costly vessels of bronze; the Romans, too, had their Vulcan. So different are the terms with which the IndoGermanic peoples signify the smith, that it would appear that the principal stocks had separated, while working in metals was still unknown. In Albanian, Modern Greek, and Spanish the name is derived from the gypsies, who were formerly, and are still to some extent, cold smiths. The smith's implements, too, are known by names derived from many diverse sources. A great many, however, are derived from the old IndoGermanic word signifying stone, leaving it to be inferred that the earliest tools for fashioning metal were made of stone. Hephaistos is the fire-god of the Greeks, and being chained and lame, he is, as smith, the direct antithesis of the wandering gypsy tinkers. Tied to one place, the imagination of the restless nomadic peoples pictured him as lame. It was not without a purpose that the gods threw him down from heaven. Similarly in the old German legend we have the smith, Wieland, cut through the tendon of the heel by a northern king; and when he, too, like the Greek Dedalus, is said to have made himself wings and escaped through the air, it signifies the triumph of artistic skill over the accidents of fate. It is such an emancipation as we, too, shall experience when, on spiritual wings, we shall rise above the bonds in which the culture of the age has enthralled us. In the North German, as in the antique classic legends, the discoverers and distinguished workers in metals are all strange, superhuman beings. In the North, dwarfs and mountain spirits are the natural guardians and artificers of the subterranean treasures. In the South, Cyclops, who forged the thunderbolts for Zeus; or the mythic metallurgical demons, Dactyles, Rabires, and Corybantes, so distinctive of the isles between Greece and Asia Minor. The high esteem in which the smith was held, notably among the Germans, is rendered evident by the fact that distinguished heroes, as Siegfried, Alboin, and others, wielded swords which they themselves had forged. The Vandal leader Genserich elevated a smith to an earldom. But even where the smith remained a simple thrall, the killing of one constituted a more grievous offense than the killing of any other handicraftsman. Books. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WASHINGTON ALLSTON. By Jared B. Flagg, N.A., S.T.D. With Reproductions from Allston's Pictures. Royal 8vo, pp. 435. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1892. [Washington Allston has waited long for a biography, for he has been in his grave all but fifty years. There have been sketches of him by Washington Irving, Mrs. Jameson, and others, but none of these delineate with any sort of com. pleteness the artist and the man. The accomplished author of this work has rare qualifications for his task. A clergyman of the Episcopal Church, a painter whose works have made him a National Academician, the master of an excellent style, and a nephew of Allston, Doctor Flagg has had at his disposal a large amount of material gathered by Richard H. Dana, Sr., the brother-in-law of Allston. The biographer, a very modest gentleman, from whose pages it is impossible to ascertain that he is any relation to his subject, never, except in his Preface, so far as we have observed, alludes to himself by the pronoun 1, preferring to use the newspaper we," a custom not unusual nowadays. This modesty leads the author to deplore that Mr. Dana did not live to use the material collected for a life he proposed to write of Allston. We venture to think, however, that the material las fallen into better hands. Mr. Dana stood much too near to his brother-in-law to get any just perspective of the latter. Allston cannot be said to be more than a name to the present generation in the United States. Nearly all his best works are in England, the very few good ones in this country being in private collections or out-of-the-way places. There are those who depreciate Allston as an artist, calling the department of art to which he devoted himself out of date, his drawing indifferent, and his composition mechanical. It is doubtful whether these captious critics have ever seen a good, completed work of Allston. Most persons will place more reliance on the opinions of Horatio Greenough, W. W. Story, Mrs. Jameson, and Doctor Flagg, given below, who speak whereof they know. The book throws as much light as can ever be shed on the connection between Allston's picture of "Belshazzar's Feast" and the last twenty-five years of his life, which were clouded in a remarkable manner by that painting. In the admirable arrangement of his topics, in which, by the way, Allston's letters are left as much as possible to tell their own story, the author reserves a chapter for the literary works of the painter, who was admirable with his pen as well as with his pencil. Several of his poems are printed in full, among others his noble lyric, "America to Great Britain," which has long been recited by schoolboys and quoted on both sides of the Atlantic. It is rather an amusing commentary on the theme of this poem, Great Britain and the United States "are one," that Allston's mother was three-parts French as to blood, and he is supposed to have derived his talent for painting from a Holland ancestor, Vanderhost, a distinguished artist and a contemporary of Rubens. Not the least merit of the book is that it puts in bold relief the beauty of Allston's life, which is as worthy of deep admiration as his paintings. Mention should be made of the making of the volume, which is very handsome in paper, print, and presswork.] HORATIO GREENOUGH. do justice to Allston, one should be familiar with the history of art at the time he began its study in Rome. He should see the color with which David achieved his fame to appreciate Allston's worship of the Venetians. He should know how extensively Roman history occupied public attention as a subject of art to feel Allston's unwavering adherence to the neglected poetry of the Bible. He should be aware how fully Michael Angelo had fallen into disrepute, how the simpler and earlier masters were laughed to scorn, in order to do justice to the mind of the American painter, who, without once failing to pay his tribute of admiration to the cleverness and executive vigor of the reigning artists, kept his eye and his heart unenthralled, daily absorbing from all that had gone before its most varied and precious results. Like all artists who have received a literary education, Allston began his studies by theory, by books, and amateur efforts. Like all artists who so begin, he was forced to unlearn what he had thus acquired. "When I first went abroad I groped for five years in the dark"; these were his words to me. They show his sense of what was wanting in his earlier means of instruction. In Rome Allston mastered painting as a language, proved his idea of the scope and object of his art, planned his processes and marked out his career. The Germans, who have raised so noble a school upon a philosophic study of the early painters, and who are said to owe to Allston their first clear idea of the means as well as the end of a modern school of art, they, and they alone, can do justice to that portion of his career. No artist ever felt the beautiful more keenly than Allston;, none ever gave it more exactly its due place in his heart. It was, with him always.a means, not an end. Moral beauty was his idol, if so it can be called; religious truth his main inspiration. Through all his higher efforts there breathes the same spirit, and a voice comes from them that fills the mind with awe. Whether in " 'Jeremiah," in Miriam," "in Saul," or in Belshazzar," we have the same dreadful words, "I will repay." Allston's style was extremely varied, as were the subjects he treated. His was no formal manner, operating with the regularity, fecundity, and swiftness of a machine. Who would assign to the same hand the landscapes at Boston and the" Desert," purchased by Mr. Labouchere? When I reflect upon the character of his works and the immense labor bestowed upon them, I am surprised that this age, so prone to regard art as a handmaid of luxury, should have employed him as it did. When I remember the astonishing rapidity of his execution, the ease with which his hand and eye mirrored the beauty before him, when I remember that his will alone stood between his poverty and the most prolific order of production, with all the renown and emolument that accompany it, then I form a clear idea of the character of his genius. WILLIAM W. STORY. Allston was, as we all know, extremely fastidious in his work, always aiming at the highest, and never satisfying himself. What he did, however, was in its quality of a most rare and exquisite character, showing an extreme refinement of sentiment, a grace of fancy, a harmony of composition, and a beauty of color in his best works that have seldom been surpassed, and in some qualities never reached. The figures of the angels, outlined by himself from his picture of 'Jacob's Dream," are in spirit, design, and sentiment worthy to be placed in the best work of Raphael. The composition of "Titania's Court" is exquisite in grace and harmony, and produced by the most delicate fancy; so, too, his "Fairies on the Seashore" have the same "" His refined and elegant charm. Ship in a Storm," though merely sketched in white chalk, has the power and mastery of a finished work by a great hand. I know nothing finer than the sweep of the waves, and the large feeling for nature there shown. Yet these are mere sketches, which probably no eye save his own saw till after his death, and which he seems to have considered of little importance. In his paintings his color is perhaps their greatest attraction. They have the best characteristics of the Venetian school, and beyond this a refinement and fastidious beauty specially belonging to Allston. It would be difficult to find in any school anything more exquisite in tone and color than, for instance, the group in the middle distance in "Belshazzar's Feast "; more dreamy and perfect in sentiment than "Rosalie Listening to the Music," with its twilight, too, so perfectly Isaac in accord with the theme of the picture; more masterly than " the Jew," and especially the hand in the subdued light with its sparkling ring; more inspired in character and expression than the Jeremiah"; more large and broad in style, and delightful in composition than his Italian and Swiss landscapes. MRS. JAMESON. The subject in Allston's "Jacob's Dream," is very sublimely and originally treated, with a feeling wholly distinct from the shadowy mysticism of Rembrandt and the graceful simplicity of Raphael. Instead of a ladder or steps with a few angels, he gave the idea of a glorious vision, in which countless myriads of the heavenly host are seen dissolving into light and distance, and immeasurable flights of steps rising, spreading above and beyond each other, till lost in infinitude. THE REVEREND DOCTOR FLAGG. At an artists' dinner in London, at which were present some of the most distinguished painters of the time-Royal Academicans and others-" Jacob's Dream" was discussed. The praises it received were profuse. There was no dissent from the most exalted opinion of its merits. It was regarded as possessing, in a remarkable degree, all the elements required to produce the best effects in the highest range of ideal art. It was declared to be not only the star of the Exhibition, but, in its sphere, the greatest picture of modern times. In conception the picture was really unique. There was in it the selfassertion, the calm assurance of power-power to tread untried fields, to disregard high precedent, and to explore for himself the way of the ascending and descending angels of the patriarch's vision. No one who sees it can fail to observe the peculiar sublimity of Allston's conception. It is remarkable in its departure from the common conventional ladder, without violence to the textual authority and without unduly straining a poetic license. The expanse of golden steps melting into the supernal; the grace of the celestial beings rendered congruous and natural by the easy ascent; the amplitude of space illimitable, the repose of beauty-the lofty expression in every line of the angel figures; the poetry of movement; the spiritualization of familiar forms into images immaculate and heavenly, combine to make it a singularly impressive and beautiful picture. He Allston was a man who represented, and may be regarded as the last great exemplar of the art of the sixteenth century. He manifested in his work the spirit and power of the great Italian masters. copied none, but mingled indications of Titian and Veronese in color, Michael Angelo in form, and Raphael in graceful delineation of the affections. He engrafted upon his own style great qualities from the best examples of the past, but never so as to obscure his individuality. Precedents stimulated and assisted in the development of himself. His style was not that of any master, Roman or Venetian, German, Spanish, or French; it was his own, invigorated and inspired by the good in all. We claim only special gifts for Allston, or rather gifts special in degree. He was a man in whom truth and conscience were uncompromising. Honor, the outflowing of these, was as pure as a ray from the moon. We cannot suspect him of insincerity in his confession of moral defects; when he says, "I know I have faults enough and to spare," we take him at his word; but, we think, we have prepared the way justly to claim for Allston, without fear of being misunderstood, certain qualities and capabilities that entitle him to consideration as a genius, using the word in its highest and most inclusive sense. He is a benefactor who ministers to a love of the beautiful through painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, or music. Along the track of the world's history great men, like mountain peaks, rise and reflect upon the masses below their higher, purer light; of these is he who transfixes on canvas thoughts, emotions, beauties-visions caught from that loftier communion with nature whereunto natural powers have lifted him. Emotions have, by their visible effects, a potentiality in ethical development; by contemplation and by experience of them morality is evolved. The highest art is that which makes visible to the eye the emotions in their various incitements and consequences-which touches and makes apparent the affections and sensations embraced between the poles of love and hate. Such attainment presupposes mastery of artistic methods by extraordinary intellectual activity and mechanical aptitude. The man in whom the greatest intelligence and -constructive power are associated with a strong sense, whether painter, sculptor, architect, poet, or musician, is, in the fullest sense of the word, a genius. Such a man was Washington Allston. With a THE ENGRAVED GEMS OF CLASSICAL TIMES. [This book, by the author of "The Remains of Ancient Rome," is both a summary of the numerous works-nearly all in the Italian, French, and German lan. guage on the subject, and, besides, a hand-book for those whose taste leads them to study or collect engraved gems of classical times, some of which, as those of Egypt, go back to a remote antiquity. Scarab-signets made in that country have been found, dating about 3700 years B.C. The Fitzwilliam Museum of Cambridge University, England, of which Professor Middleton is Director, possesses a very fine collection of engraved gems purchased by the University from the widow of Colonel Leake, whose works on the "Topography of Athens," and kindred subjects, are well known. A catalogue of Colonel Leake's gems, with comments on them, the result of immense erudition, was published in 1870 by the late Charles William King, Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. In the present work, which is dedicated to the memory of Mr. King, are two pages of autotypes of the principal gems in the Fitzwilliam collection. Mr. King himself made an admirable collection of gems, consisting of 330 examples of various dates. The King *See THE LITERARY DIGEST, Vol. V., p. 327. gems were bought by Mr. John Taylor Johnston and presented by him to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where they now are. How difficult it is to distinguish a real antique gem from an imitation can be learned from what follows.] CERT ERTAIN rules have been laid down for detecting forgeries of ancient gems. Yet all these rules are quite useless for distinguishing between ancient and modern gems, when the work of a clever forger is in question, a man who has carefully studied and copied the characteristics of the genuine antique. The fact is that in no other class of art is it so difficult to distin. guish the genuine from the false; partly because age makes no alteration, gives no patina to a hard-polished gem; and, secondly, because, owing to the hardness of the material and the laborious method of working it, there is necessarily something mechanical in the process of engraving a gem, which diminishes the prominence of the artist's personal peculiarities and touch. Moreover, many of the cleverest forgeries are copies of some antique gem or paste, so there is nothing in the design to betray a modern origin. Copies made by the most skillful engravers of the last century, such as Natter, Pichler, and Burch, are often quite indistinguishable from antiques, especially when we remember that a highly polished, fresh-looking surface is not always a proof that the gem is modern. The skillful forger is careful to use such tools only as were in use among the ancients, and there are often no means of deciding whether a wheel cut or a drill cavity in a hard gem was made yesterday or more than two thousand years ago. A great number of different tests have been suggested for the recognition of genuine and forged gems; but the imitation of none of these criterions presents any real difficulty to a skillful and intelligent forger. The more obvious signs of age, such as a worn surface covered with fine scratches, are given to modern gems in many different ways. The most deceptive appearance of long wear is produced by cramming the newly cut gem down a turkey's throat, and leaving it for a few days to be shaken up with the bits of stone and gravel which are con tained in the turkey's craw. Freshly cut cameos readily take the marks of age, first by the use of the ordinary rubbing and scratching processes, and secondly by the use of a mixture of iron filings in acid, which rapidly gives to the white layer of an onyx the dead, glossless look which is frequently the result of great age. The outcome of all this is that, in many cases, no archæologist, however learned, can attain to real certainty about the age of a gem-a quite trustworthy criterion has yet to be discovered. Fortunately, however, in most cases, imitations of antique gems are not the work of a forger who combines sufficient knowledge with the requisite skill; and a careful study of ancient gems will save the student or collector from being deceived by any except forgeries of the most skillful kind. Among the most difficult cases to distinguish are those gems, which, though originally antique, have been partially or wholly re-cut by a modern hand. In the last century, and even more recently, this was a very common trick of the Italian dealers, especially in the case of cameos. LITTLE COMRADE MINE. By Martha Burr Banks. New York and St. Paul: D. D. Merrill Company. 1892. MARTHA BURR BANKS is already known as a story-teller for young folks, through her "Princess Dandelion's Secret." The present story is dedicated to "Two Dear Comrades, My Little Niece Selleck, and My Little Horse Dixie," but is of course designed for a much wider circle of readers. There is a great deal of story in it, and a great deal of moral teaching; a nice little girl without any faults to speak of, a bad little boy who is very good at the core, but who found it very hard to reform "along o' Miss Giles"; a doctor who was comrade of the nice little girl, and several little folks and grownup folks, all pretty good on the whole, besides Bibabutzeman, who might have been a heathen idol, but who really was only Polly Poppenjoy's rag doll, rendered ferocious-looking by a coat of paint. What they all did and suffered, and how they made comrades of each other, and tried to find out what the wild waves are saying, is all in the story, which makes very interesting, as well as very instructive, reading. |