who was for some time the chief contributor to the Stimmen aus Maria Laach, has just died in Kirchrath, Holland. After his expulsion from Germany, Father Scheerman resided for a time in England; but he could not bear our climate, and went to Holland, where he taught theology, we believe, in one or more of the Roman Catholic clerical seminaries. MISS FIELD, the daughter of Mr. Cyrus Field, is going to publish a Christmas story, entitled Palermo,' through Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons. The volume is illustrated with five etchings. A SPECIAL interest attaches at present to the reports showing the condition of British Burma. In education, as in other matters, the province may be considered one of the most progressive of our Eastern possessions. The report on public instruction for 1884-5, recently issued, states that during the year the number of schools increased from 4,682 to 5,010, and of pupils from 127,583 to 137,504, the greatest increase being in primary schools. Satisfactory progress has also been made in the training of teachers and in industrial schools. It is stated that the experiment of giving representatives of the townspeople large powers in the management of educational matters has been very successful. THE January number of the Calcutta Review will contain an article by Mr. Henry Beveridge, of the Bengal Civil Service, contesting some important points as to Sir Elijah Impey made by Sir James Stephen in his recent Story of Nuncomar.' THE death is reported of the Nestor of modern Italian authors, Andrea Maffei, who has died at Milan in his eighty-fifth year. Maffei was the most active and prominent interpreter both of English and German literature to his fellow countrymen. At the age of sixteen he translated Gessner's Idylls.' He has since enriched Italian literature with translations of Shakspeare, Milton, and Byron, and of Goethe, Schiller, Klopstock, and others. In 1879 the king His translations ८ nominated him a senator. of form. A WORK by Mr. Andrew Carnegie, entitled The Triumph of Democracy; or, Fifty Years' March of the Republic,' is now in the press. It is intended to show the growth of the United States within the last half century, contrasting it with the progress of Great Britain and other nations. A CORRESPONDENT writes: "I have just heard from Dr. Kohut, one of the rabbis at New York, that the complete lexicon of the Targum, Talmud, and the Midrash by him, boisterously announced by Mr. Townsend MacConn as to appear in eight volumes, and to be obtained by subscription only,' is nothing else but a reprint of the Aruch' by Nathan ben Jehiel, now in course of publication at Vienna. The Imperial Academy allows a subvention for this important work, so ably and critically edited by Dr. Kohut according to MSS., and four volumes of it have already appeared, which make half of the work." WE shall give our usual series of articles on the literature of continental Europe during the year in the first number for 1886, the last number for 1885. Among them will SCIENCE RECENT ENTOMOLOGY. European Butterflies. By W. F. de Vismes Kane, M.A. (Macmillan & Co.) By Theodore Wood. and as the Continent becomes more and more the Hence the author of the first work under notice is somewhat unfair in his introductory remarks about the paucity of works in the English language on the subject, unless he considers-and perhaps justly-that the price of publication is often prohibitory to general study; for whereas the real student must and will have books, whatever the inconvenience, the at an increase of the hotel bill than at an expengeneral tourist would probably look less askance diture of money in butterfly literature. The merits of Mr. de Vismes Kane's book are economy in price, smallness of bulk, a very liberal amount of illustration, and a general accuracy on the lines at present considered sufficient. duction to the subject is given, but here, on some N° 3034, DEC. 19, '85 by the Typo-Etching Company, assisted by the use of isochromatic plates prepared by Attout Tailfer and John Clayton of Paris, can achieve in entomological illustration. The descriptions logy being as a rule discarded, though perhaps are short, popular, and concise, scientific terminolated, varieties and aberrations distinguished at considerable cost; localities are fully tabuand emphasized, dates of emergence collated and compiled, and altogether a handbook produced which will, no doubt, be frequently found in the collector's knapsack, though possibly not attaining a prominent niche in the entomological library. It is pleasant to see that that prolific and popular writer the Rev. J. C. Wood, who has for years been the friend and delight of boyhood, is now assisted and in some cases, as Our Insect Enemies' proves, followed -in the same class of literature by his son. This modest little work is a concise and pleasantly written compilation of facts already British insects who rank as "enemies" by their recorded, supplemented with original observations of the author, relative to a number of our depredations on our food supplies, or by their injuries to our native and cultivated plants One remark, however, is at once prompted, and that is simply that all the insects enumerated of others which might be so described with more are not exclusively "enemies," and that hosts or less limitation are not-for the space forbids - even mentioned. and perhaps the fullest and most comprehenThe first few chapters, sive portion of the book, are devoted to the aphis or green blight," the plant louse or green fly so well known and even more disliked by the rose grower and horticulturist. The tale that can now be told of these extraordinary insects is one of the marvels of entomology, and proves that the romance of natural history can still be maintained by the recital of observed and authenticated facts, without the agency of brilliant theories or advanced conclusions. It is but recently that Lichtenstein has lifted the veil that hid the mysteries of aphidian cyclical development, whilst Buckton by issuing his monograph on the British aphides has made a general knowledge of the family possible. It is, however, their wonderful powers of reproduction that Mr. Wood has particularly emphasized, and in doing so he has availed himself of one of those marvellous scientific parables with which the name of Huxley is associated: "He assumes, first, that one thousand aphides weigh collec tively no more than one grain avoirdupois (which is certainly below, rather than above, the mark); and, secondly, that only a very stout man can weigh as much as two million grains, or rather above twenty stones. Then he tells us that the tenth brood alone of the descendants of a single aphis, supposing that the multiplication had been altogether unchecked by the various causes which generally influence it so greatly, would be equivalent in point of actual Imatter to more than five hundred millions of stout men, or one-third of the entire population of the globe, supposing that each individual member were of sufficient corpulence grounds the scale at two hundred and eighty pounds" (p. 23). Small books of this description are capable of doing much useful work in a folded vertically, sometimes expanded hori- to whom a more complex or more rigidly useful manner. They circulate amongst those zontally, and frequently the anterior wings are The classification and nomenclature followed scientific literature would be repugnant, and thus spread that class of general or popular thorities, is tly adoras based on on scientific matters which so the " young collector," and is in the style of still better by far than that intellectual acuity a moderate amount of literary respectability Our third and smallest work is addressed to are with slight exception those of Dr. Staudinger, Mr. Kirby's other publications, of which Farious that of January 2nd, instead of inserting illustrations are exceptionally valuable as show- appear, under diverse titles, and adapted to them, according to our previous practice, in ing what photography by the process employed different classes of readers. It is almost imp with all their merits and with their errors. The abridgments and expansions from time to time le for any but a young collector" to give a oper notice of such a book, as he, or she, aid best describe the amount of assistance rived from its perusal. We ourselves hold at no general information regarding the strucre and anatomy of insects can be given withit illustrations of the same; that the most ele entary teaching in science is only possible rough the possession of the most special and early apprehended knowledge of the subject; d that a multiplicity of publications is often an inverse ratio to a dissemination of sound nowledge. The brochure is nicely bound and ell printed, it costs little, it is illustrated by any woodcuts, and its penultimate section is evoted to a list of "books likely to be useful › beginners," of which one of the author's ablications stands first, and the works of Stainon and Newman follow. ur ASTRONOMICAL NOTES. THE comet discovered by M. Fabry (not 'aber, as the name is inadvertently printed in Notes" last week) at the Paris Obseratory on the evening of the 1st inst. is, accordng to a calculation of its orbit made by Dr. H. Oppenheim, of Berlin, receding from the earth, ut will not arrive at perihelion until the month of March. Its place now is almost exactly midway between a Andromeda and y Pegasi, and next veek it will move nearly along a circle of declinaion parallel to one connecting y and a Pegasi. M. Fabry discovered it in the course of a search for new comets, on which he had been engaged with the equatorial coudé during the preceding three months. At the time of discovery he describes it as having "l'apparence d'une faible nébulosité arrondie (12e grandeur) de l' de diamètre environ, avec un très petit noyau central d'aspect stellaire." Since then the apparent brightness has been slightly increasing. Mr. Latimer Clark has published his 'Transit Tables for 1886,' on the same plan as in previous years. We have already noticed their usefulness in enabling any one to obtain the correct time by the aid of a small portable transit instrument without the necessity of making any calculation whatever, the exact mean time of transit at Greenwich of several of the brightest and most conveniently situated Nautical Almanac stars being given for every day in the year. The positions of the planets, altitude and declination of the sun, and other handy astronomical data are also tabulated. The Nautical Almanac for 1889 has recently been published. The contents and arrangement are the same generally as those of the preceding year, nor does any change appear to have been made in the fundamental data. There will be two total eclipses of the sun, on the 1st of January and the 22nd of December, and an annular eclipse of the sun on the 28th of July. The central line of the total eclipse of January 1st, after passing from Behring's Straits across the northern part of the North Atlantic, will pass over parts of the states of California, Oregon, and Nebraska, where the duration, however, will be but short. More important for its scientific utility will be the total eclipse of the 22nd of December; the central line, after passing over the northern part of the South Atlantic, will cross the whole of the African continent, on the west coast of which, in the northern part of Benguela, the duration of totality will amount to about three minutes and a half. SOCIETIES. ROYAL.-Dec. 10.-Prof. G. G. Stokes, President, In the chair.-The President announced that he had appointed as Vice-Presidents the Treasurer (Dr. J. Evans), Dr. A. Geikie, Sir J. Hooker, Prof. Huxley, and General Strachey.-Dr. J. Anderson (elected 1879) was admitted into the Society. - Prof. A. Baeyer, Prof. F. Klein, Prof. Kowalewski, and Prof. Sven Lovén were elected Foreign Members.-The Following papers were read: Preliminary Results of a Comparison of certain Simultaneous Fluctua tions of the Declination at Kew and at Stonyhurst during 1883-84, as recorded by the Magnetographs,' On the Magnetization of Steel, Cast Iron, and Soft by the Rev. S. J. Perry and Prof. B. Stewart,Iron,' by Mr. J. W. Gemmell, -On the Limited Hydration of Ammonium Carbamate,' by Mr. H. J. H. Fenton, On the Relation of the Reptiliferous Sandstone of Elgin to the Upper Old Red Sandstone,' by Prof. Judd, and Experimental Researches in Cere bral Physiology: II. On the Muscular Contractions which are evoked by Excitation of the Motor Nerves,' by Profs. Horsley and Schäfer. GEOGRAPHICAL.-Dec.14.-The Marquis of Lorne, President, in the chair.-The following gentlemen were elected Fellows: Col. M. Bowie, Major G. L. Cuming, Rev. A. G. Jackson, Rev. C. A. S. M. Senhouse, Rev. J. Troutbeck, Dr. J. Anderson, Messrs. J. Butcher, H. B. Grafton, D. J. Jardine, G. H. Leggett, A. Macartnay, H. P. Malet, F. H. Parker, F. W. Rolfe, G. N. Vickers, and H. A. White. The paper read was 'The Herat Valley and the Persian Border, from the Hari-rud to Seistan,' by Col. C. E. Stewart. ASTRONOMICAL.-Dec. 11.-Mr. E. Dunkin, President, in the chair.-Messrs. J. Hunter, W. C. Johnson, and R. Wilding were elected Fellows. Mr. Knobel read a paper, by Mr. Neison, On the Term of Long Period due to Mars in the Expression for the Longitude of the Moon.' The paper was chiefly an answer to a criticism by a French astronomer who had carried the investigation of the perturbation due to Mars to terms of a higher order than might be neglected, a general conclusion which Mr. Mr. Neison, and had shown that the action of Mars Neison now admitted.-Mr. Ranyard read a paper 'On the Connexion between Photographic Action, the Brightness of the Luminous Object, and the Time of Exposure as applied to Celestial Photoplates to the meeting, which tended to show that, graphy.' He submitted a series of photographic though the eye can detect a difference of onesixtieth in the intensity of the illumination of two adjacent fields when the light is not too brilliant or too faint, a difference amounting to less than onetwentieth of the illumination is all that can be detected by the most sensitive commercial dry plates. Mr. Ranyard also exhibited plates, parts of which had been exposed for different periods to lights of various intensity. His general conclusion was that the intensity of the photographic trace increases regularly with the duration of the exposure, and that with a constant light the intensity of the photographic action varies as the inverse square of the distance of the source of light-that is, that the photographic action is proportional to the intensity of the illumination.-Col. Tupman read received by the Society referring to the meteor extracts from a number of papers that had been shower observed on the 27th of November. From the observations of Padre Denza of Turin, Mr. Denning at Bristol, Prof. Pritchard at Oxford, Prof. Grant at Glasgow, and Dr. Copeland at Dun Echt, Col. Tupman assumed that the maximum of the star shower occurred between 6.15 and 7.15 P.M. English time. The meteors were mostly of the second and third magnitude, with an occasional fire-ball. Mr. Denning determined three radiant points in Andromeda on the 26th, two on the 27th, and one on the 28th.-The Earl of Crawford read a paper from Dr. Copeland, who had turned a directvision prism to a part of the heavens where the meteors were most numerous, and had succeeded in observing the spectrum of seven of them. The spectrum was faint, but there was one relatively bright line, the position of which could not be determined, though it was probably not far from F.-Mr. Common said that he had observed the meteors through a field-glass, and was struck by the time during which he could observe the streaks. In one case the streak left did not disappear for nearly a minute. All the streaks left when viewed with the field-glass appeared to be broken up into isolated patches, and reminded him of the stratified discharges seen in vacuum tubes.-Mr. Ranyard said that it was evident that the meteors did not radiate from a point in Andromeda, but when their tracks were traced backwards they appeared to spring from an elliptic area some ten degrees in diameter. Mr. Ranyard suggested that the meteors might be moving parallel to one another outside the earth's atmosphere, but that their irregular shapes caused them to be deflected from their original course after entering the earth's atmosphere, which gives rise to the appearance of many radiant points clustering about the true radiant.-Col. Tupinan said that he had laid down as accurately as possible the course of some twenty-five meteors observed on November 27th, whose direction and motion he had been able to observe with comparative accuracy. It was evident that the paths did not radiate from a point, but from a distinct area of elliptic shape. MICROSCOPICAL. - Dec. 9. Mr. A. D. Michael, V.P., in the chair.-Eleven new Fellows were elected and proposed.-Mr. Swift's large photo-micrograph of the tongue of the blow-fly was exhibited. The plan adopted was to take an enlarged photograph from a small image obtained by a paraffin lamp by artificially strengthening the image where required. -Mr. Crisp exhibited Prof. Klein's microscope for observing crystals when heated to a high tempera ture, also an apparatus for enabling four photo-micro graphs to be taken of the same object, so as to give a different length of exposure to each or to photograph different parts of an object rapidly. - Dr. Maddox exhibited a series of photographs of inked surfaces covering pencil lines.-Mr. Crisp referred to a curious case in which a forger wanted to add some words to a bond which had been originally written with very pale ink; the added words were darker, and he therefore retraced the whole of the original writing to make it look all alike, but examination with the microscope at once detected the forgery. Dr. E. Crookshank read a paper On the Cultivation of Bacteria,' which he illustrated by numerous drawings and by a series of preparations. He also exhibited and described a collection of apparatus of the latest and most approved construction for the cultivation of bacteria and the preparation of the media employed.-Mr. Robertson described a method of preparing a section of spinal cord by soaking in picrocarmine before cutting. Mr. Meates's note on a new highly refractive medium for mounting-sulphide of arsenic-was read.-Mr. Cheshire read a paper On the Pulvillus of the Bee,' calling attention to a notch found upon the leg of the bee, and explaining what he considered to be its function as opposed to the explanations given by some other observers.-Mr. J. W. Groves exhibited some mounted sections cut by the large Barrett microtome to show how large good sections could be made with the machine. MATHEMATICAL.-Dec. 10.-Mr. J. W. L. Glaisher, President, in the chair. Mr. A. E. Haynes was elected a Member.-The following communications were made: 'On the Numerical Solution of Cubic Equations,' by Mr. G. Heppel,- On a Theorem in Kinematics,' by Mr. J. J. Walker,-and 'Note on the Induction of Electric Currents in an Infinite Plane Current Sheet which is rotating in a Field of Magnetic Force,' by Mr. A. B. Basset. SOCIETY OF ENGINEERS. Dec. 14. Annual General.-Mr. C. Gandon, President, in the chair.The following gentlemen were elected as the Council and officers for the ensuing year: President, Mr. P. F. Nursey; Vice-Presidents, Prof. H. Robinson, Mr. A. T. Walmisley, and Mr. W. Schönheyder; Ordinary Members of Council, Messrs. R. Berridge, W. B. Kinsey, W. MacGeorge, A. F. Phillips, M. O. Tarbotton, J. R. Baillie, R. W. P. Birch, and J. Standfield, the three latter gentlemen being new members of Council; Hon. Sec. and Treasurer, Mr. A. Williams; Auditor, Mr. A. Lass. NEW SHAKSPERE.-Dec. 11.-Dr. F. J. Furnivall in the chair.-Mr. H. Sharpe read a paper On the Prose in Shakspere's Plays, the Rules for its Use, and the Assistance that it gives in understanding the Plays.' Mr. Sharpe claimed that certain general and, after going carefully through each play to point rules existed for the employment of prose and metre, out their existence, tabulated them as follows: History is in metre. Tragic, pompous, and sentimental parts are in metre; comic, jovial, and lighthearted parts in prose. Letters, proclamations, and other written documents are in prose. Poor men speak prose. Fools speak prose. Messengers speak metre. Persons who lose the use of their reason speak prose (e.g., Hamlet after the play, Ophelia and Lear when mad, Lady Macbeth when sleepwalking, Lepidus when drunk, Othello when in a fit). Asides are in prose. Volleys of words are in prose. A person using authority over another speaks metre. Some persons speak sometimes prose, sometimes metre, according to their state of mind or the company they are in. Persons speaking together all speak prose or all speak metre (if an educated man who usually speaks metre meets a poor man, both speak prose). Ladies speak prose when alone, or nearly alone, with female relations. The assistance given in understanding the plays was shown in Hamlet, whose natural speech was metre, but who spoke prose with any one he mistrusted.-The Chairman read some notes on the paper by Mr. F. G. Moulton, who differed from Mr. Sharpe as to the principle on which the poet's practice depended. -Mr. W. Poel, speaking as a practical actor, thought that Mr. Sharpe had overlooked the importance of sound from an elocutionary point of view. ARISTOTELIAN.-Dec. 14.-Mr. S. H. Hodgson, President, in the chair.-The President gave an account of Siebeck's view of the Philebus' of Plato. After some introductory remarks on the vital importance, 6 for every philosophical system, of the question where and in what specifically its principle of efficient causation is made to consist-as, for instance, the attraction exerted on the world by the Supreme Being, whose own energy is νόησις νοήσεως, in Aristotle's system; the transcendental agency, phenomenally known as of two kinds, causality by necessity and causality through freedom, of Kant's; the self-differentiation and self-identification of the Begriff in Hegel's; the will in Schopenhauer's; the physical force issuing from the unknowable in Mr. Herbert Spencer's-the President proceeded to read a MS. translation of Dr. Hermann Siebeck's dissertation De Doctrina Idearum qualis est in Platonis Philebo' (reprinted 1872), in which this question is raised with regard to Plato's philosophy. -A discussion followed. LORD SALISBURY will shortly publish, probably in one of the magazines, an essay embodying the results of some recent work in chemical analysis. MR. H. MARSHALL WARD, lecturer of Owens College, Manchester, has been appointed to the vacant chair of botany at Cooper's Hill. MR. EDWIN ORMOND BROWN, assistant chemist to the War Department, died on Saturday, the 5th inst., of pneumonia, following an attack of jaundice, at the age of fifty-nine. Mr. Brown had been actively engaged for thirty years in the chemical department of the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, during which time he contributed to a considerable extent to the improvement of the manufacture of gun-cotton and dynamite. M. LECHIEN, of Mons, brought recently before the French Society for the Encouragement of National Industry a new fire-damp indicator. M. Lechien proposes the use of an indiarubber ring, the internal circumference of which is pierced with holes. This is allowed to become inflated in a suspected locality, and when it is placed round a safety lamp, a very slight compression sends the gas into the interior, and its character is indicated by the alteration produced in the flame. M. JOSEPH BERTRAND was on Thursday, the 10th inst., received into the Academy of Sciences of Paris as successor to M. J. D. Dumas. Amongst the savants present was the venerable M. Chevreuil, who in a few months will complete his hundredth year. M. A. POTIER brought before the Académie des Sciences on November 16th a 'Theory of Freezing Mixtures.' We direct attention to this communication, as it explains in a satisfactory way the various changes which take place as the temperature falls, and the paper does not admit of abstraction. Introductory Studies in Greek Art. By Jane (Fisher Unwin.) There is said to be "a look in the face Hermes as of a man sunk in reverie, whe does not, cannot, perhaps will not, face the reality of life." The reader is told to note his sweet kindliness to the child Dionys whom but a few hours hence he will give up the charge of the nymphs of Nysa; already the child is half forgotten, and the god is sunk in brief soft reverie." If this is really the case the sooner the nymphs of Nysa find themselves in sole charge of the nursling the better. But the babe is safe; there is nothing more at stake than an interpretation of Overbeck's or theory of Prof. Brunn, “that this Hermes was one of the early works of the master, when he was apt to project his own personality into that of his subject, when his own personal mood hampered the perfection of his artistic utterance." the reader to appreciate the most perfect works of human genius. Here, as in volumes far more pretentious, deformity and ugliness are thrust upon the reader without even an apology. In some cases there is much reason to think that these examples of new modes of reproduction give only too true a measure of the competence of the author as an expounder of beauty in art; when this is not the case the public will be apt to infer that they indicate the author's measure of what respect it is worth his while to entertain for the taste of his readers. Within living memory woodcuts of classical subjects were common enough which, however they may have failed to catch distinctive styles and the proper charm of the antique, were still curiously accurate in detail and definite in outline. Nor is the fact that novel processes are resorted to any excuse for the deterioration. Nothing Whatever may have been the case with can be more admirable and satisfactory than Praxiteles, it is too much the practice the photographic illustrations of the catacritics of ancient art at present to project logues and treatises on Greek coins which their own personalities into their theme we owe to the labour and the learning of Hence it is that the claim for the Greeks of the officers of the British Museum Medal originality, as their especial and distinguish Room. But blots and smudges like those ing gift, is said in Miss Harrison's preface in this volume make Phidias and Praxi- to belong "to the bygone days of art criti teles hideous, and do much to rob the cism"; now "the historic instinct is wide author of fair hearing or fair play. Yet a awake," and "the first duty in speaking of great deal can be said in favour of this little Greek art can be said to be to show by the book of three hundred pages. It is the light of recent discoveries its relation to the work of a lady who has made herself familiar art of Egypt, Assyria, and Phoenicia which with the monuments of ancient art, and preceded it." In conformity with this view, moreover is imbued with the associations half of this little book is devoted to the of the social conditions, history, and lite- earlier art of these to the Greek-barrature of antiquity. The book in con- barian countries. These chapters may be sequence is free from pretentious dis-read with interest and with instruction on play of accomplishments. Again, though their own account; but as regards satisfac the author refers to her "five years of tion of the "new-won earnestness to know archaeological teaching at the British Mu- the genesis, the origines of whatever we study seum," she is, on the whole, but a sparing about Greek art," the outcome is nil. The votary of the idols of the cave. She seldom study of contrasted styles no doubt assists makes such a mistake as that she commits the appreciation of what is most admirable when she so far misapprehends the comand most peculiar in Greek genius, but quite monplace elaboration of the Mausoleum independently of any historical relation. frieze as to believe that she sees in it hints Assistance of this kind might be derived as even of "something of the wild pathos of well, or perhaps better, from a comparison the genius of Scopas, its stir and movement, of the quality of Greek art with Chinese, its life and intensity, with something of its with medieval or modern. melancholy." To appreciate the genius of Scopas we must go to the daughter of Niobe in the Vatican, and shall scarcely care to come back afterwards to the frieze of the ONCE again we are called on to complain Mausoleum. The besetting temptation of the exclusively historic school of criticism is to assume that every new development of art may be explained by antecedent and concurrent supposed to be quite within critical ken. But the mos important circumstances are many by inevitable accident, many by the still more inevitable nature of things-withdrawn from circumstances which are The time apparently is not yet when an English writer on Greek art can make use of the inestimable services of the Germans to the archæological side of the study without entirely renouncing his independence, and our knowledge. The works of art als without bowing down to their authority when which happen to be preserved are apt they venture on interpretations for which include conspicuously what are utterly false refined sensibility and taste are indispens-representatives of their epoch. It is well for able. It was from Germany that Miss Har- Phidias and his school and age that, thanks and she will to the tenderness of time, his reputation has be wise to send it back again-that the not been left at the mercy of unprejudiced Hermes of Praxiteles, with his face inclined judgment on one or two of the metopes to front that of the baby Dionysus on his the Parthenon now in the British Museum arm, is not really looking at it-nay, is not If bad sculpture could be associated with even attending to it. looking at Dionysos, he is the very best at Athens, on the Parthenon rison derived the notion Hermes E. Harrison. With Map and Illustrations. not thinking of him. Dionysos, placing one tiny disproportions of the Gorgon metope o attract his attention, but in vain. hand on the shoulder of the elder god, tries to Selinus as a fair type of the state of con of the illustrations, not merely inadequate, is little but a mere appendage......The artist has sisted on as a link in the closely connecte the main motive of the group, the child Dimes is temporary art. It has no claim to be t art-on Greek art, on Greek sculpture passing moment of pathetic expression; he looks There were bad artists in the best period but actually repulsive, which a writer on interleaves in chapters which claim to teach caught the reflex of the glory of Hermes in a away with soft dreamy eyes.' and good artists in some which we for specific instructions how to grapple with his "condition of England question." early, and but for such exceptions would political history the most important vents are moulded by those qualities of ading men the spirit of a Chatham, the ilitary genius of a Bonaparte-which no nalysis can predict or account for, and in le case of the arts the most important irection of study is not to search for an npossible explanation of the existence of enius on the scheme of historical evolution, ut to attain to a perfect appreciation of all herein it was most excellent, wherein it ominated circumstance. The best Greek rt is the art of all time, and has even more mportant relations to universal humanity han to the history of its particular epoch. The author states in her preface that er chapter on Phidias and the ideality f the Parthenon marbles was written rst, the other chapters being only subidiary. "The meaning of the term ideality have sought to explain by reference to he teaching of Plato. Greek literature 3 the best and only sound comment on treek art: what is expressed, but undefined, n Pheidias, becomes clearly articulate in Plato." Does it? we are inclined to ejacuate after reading this sentence; then we nust revise our very positive impressions as o Plato's enunciations. To expound the nature and bearings of ideality in art-to xpound it in terms of articulate definition - is a noble design; it is unaccomlished at present in English literature, and t is high time that our professors of fine rt should justify themselves by coming to our relief with a matured system of æsthetic. In the mean time it is surely vain to refer us o Plato. To Plato, artist though he is himelf, can we least of all apply for a close haracterization of the ideal even in poetic, nd much less in plastic, art. The author her comments has relied too implicitly n a popular, but somewhat loose transation. The votary of the beautiful whom Plato brackets with the philosopher in the irst degree is not an artist in the modern ense; it is as low down as the sixth Legree, after financiers and trainers of ymnasts, that Plato finds a place for the poet nd those who like him are occupied with mitation—that is, with the mimesis which Aristotle also assumes to be the essential quality of art. Plato would have declined o rank sculptor or painter in the same line with the philosopher at least as eagerly as e was ever prompt to disparage the enLowment of an inspired poet. "Still, is candidly admitted, so complex is Plato's thought, so foreign to our modern anner, that a strong effort of historical magination is necessary to our right undertanding." It is well if, thanks to the strain, magination does not break loose and leave 11 historical obligation behind it. The rtist who is sent to Plato for guidance to he ideal will fare neither better nor worse han the politicians who applied to Carlyle CHRISTMAS BOOKS. Rudder Grange (Nimmo), Mr. F. R. Stockton's popular book, lies on our table, with a hundred capital illustrations on wood, designed with abundance of spirit, and drawn with neatness and tact by Mr. A. B. Frost, who has just sense of the humour of the book.-The new edition of The Water Babies, by C. Kingsley (Macmillan & Co.), is enriched with a hundred cuts designed by Mr. L. Sambourne. The volume is nicely printed, and, but for a certain figure of a baby in a landscape, tastefully bound. Mr. Sambourne's cuts are carefully and skilfully drawn. Many of them are at once elegant and realistic. If they lack some of the fancy and playful grace which Kingsley's story demands, they excel in prosaic characterization.-Puff the Pomeranian, ledge & Sons), contains, besides fairly agreeable with other Tales, by Mrs. Sale-Barker (Routletterpress, numerous animals, by Messrs. Coleman, Harrison Weir, capital woodcuts of and others. Except some very pretty initials, the figure designs are not so good. The coloured plates, by Mr. A. W. Cooper, are pretty and bright-in fact, they are superior to the average of such things.-Birds, Beasts, and Fishes, by the same writer and publishers, contains a large proportion of first-rate cuts of animals by Mr. H. Weir, whose vigour knows no diminution, e. g., A Shetland Pony' and 'Rooks.' A Day's Pleasure for Little People (same publishers) has a number of very unequal cuts, few of which are so good as those in 'Birds,' &c.—In Topsy and Clever Master Jack (same publishers) the cuts are not so good as those of A Day's Pleasure.'The coloured plates in Aunt Louisa's Nursery Book (Warne & Co.), a babyish book, are in general moderately good; some are flabby in design and gaudy in colour. It is extremely difficult to produce a cheap book with coloured illustrations which are not worse than none. -There are some very pretty vignettes by Miss E. Scannell in the same publishers' Sylvia's Daughters, by F. Scannell. They seem to have been printed too heavily, and some of the figures (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge) are weakly drawn. În The Child's Pictorial there is a figure of Purity which would make Mr. Horsley blush. The pages are crowded with slight cuts drawn with spirit and skill, in a German manner. Others are differently executed, but are good in their way.-The Ogre, by M. Cunnington (Marcus Ward & Co.), has a number of trivial and some ill-drawn illustrations, by an artist who judiciously omits to give his name. THE SOCIETY OF BRITISH ARTISTS. THE Society of British Artists has taken Arrangement in Black,' a portrait of Mrs. Cassati (362), and Nos. 535, 549, 566, and 570. The student will find each of these to be a variation of great delicacy upon almost differences in Mr. Whistler's painting will never a single theme in colour and tone. The subtle be fairly appreciated until he exhibits en masse his best pictures of all sorts. We hope some day soon to see such a collection of curious and delicately varied instances as would supply a sensation after Mr. Whistler's own heart. We may name in the order of the catalogue 'Le Repos du Soir' (17), by Mr. P. Sturdee; 'The Yellow Boy' (25), by Mr. M. L. Menpes; the Reverie' (35), by Mr. Gogin; 'Little Jane at the Seaside' (48), by Mr. J. E. Blanche ; M. Dannat's 'Study' (87); Mr. Stott's Whistlerian portraits (107), peculiarly quaint and ugly, ill composed, but well toned; Mr. W. H. Weatherhead's clever and Faed-like 'Lass who loved a Sailor' (118); Mr. T. C. Gotch's fine, broad, and artistic Portrait' (129); Miss R. Magnus's Chrysanthemums' (156); He Cometh Not' (191), by Mr. W. A. Breakspeare, a lady in a wood where the dead leaves match her feuille morte dress; Mr. E. Ellis's 'Entrance to Peel Harbour' (212), a somewhat crude, but very vigorous picture; Mr. W. H. Trood's Divided Attentions' (242); the 'Drying Day' and black; Mr. G. Macculloch's quaint and (247) of Mr. M. E. Kindon, an exercise in white (258), which has the merit of being spontaneous; mercilessly ugly Caliban and tricksy Ariel' Mr. A. Harrison's 'Bathing Scene' (271), representing sunlit dunes; Mr. Glindoni's slight, but clever For England's Glory' (276); Mr. T. C. Gotch's lady amid ruins, called 'The Lovers' Letter-Box' (280); Mr. T. B. Kennington's clever, but ill-proportioned nude 'Wood Nymph' (313); 'Our Old Pier,' by Mr. J. R. Reid (316); by Mr. M. L. Menpes. Mr. Stott's very effecToby No. 1' (421) and 'A Moosmie' (423), both tive 'Moonrise' (292), a cheaply got success, seems to us not to be new. The gallery also contains works by Messrs. J. Aumonier, W. Bayliss, G. and A. de Bréanski, H. Fisher, D. Law, T. N. MacLean, and S. J. Solomon. Fine-Art Gossip. SIR FREDERIC LEIGHTON has made considerable progress with the decorations for the ceiling of the Music Room in the New York mansion of Mr. Marquand, for which apartment the beautiful furniture designed by Mr. Alma Tadema (which we described some months ago), as well as his picture representing a the Academy this year, are intended. The ceilGreek rhapsodist reading Homer, which was in ing is divided into three oblong compartments, of which the central is the largest. In them nearly life-size figures will be painted in full colours on a gold ground, representing the arts associated with music. In the centre of the composition Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses, sits in an attitude of deep thought. Poetic rapture is supposed to be indicated by her abstracted expression. Her knees are crossed, and she leans forward, resting her head upon one hand. Her brows are overshadowed by a large wreath; her ample draperies cover, without shrouding, her form, and are disOn posed in a fine, broad, and massive manner. either hand of Mnemosyne is a slender tripod Against one tripod leans a palm wand, a serpent twines about the other tripod. On either side, externally to the tripods, are Euterpe and Thalia. The wings, or side panels, of bronze. contain similar illustrations of the motive of the entire work, beautiful allegories and perfectly appropriate. Ir is proposed to arrange Sir John Millais's pictures in the Grosvenor Gallery so that the more important examples will be hung in the large room, the smaller and earlier paintings in the room generally appropriated to such works. Drawings, including a limited number of book illustrations, some of which are of great beauty, will be exhibited, together with a selection of fine impressions of woodcuts. A complete collection. of choice proofs of engravings made by Mr. T. O. Barlow, Mr. S. Cousins, and others, will be inIcluded in the exhibition. We should have preferred a strictly chronological arrangement of the pictures to a decorative one, and we trust that as much as is possible will be done to approximate to this obviously instructive plan of showing the works. minating in two gold tigers' heads, 201. 10s. A by love for art as well as by a sense of what runes WE regret to record the death, on the 11th inst., of Mr. James Fahey, member of the Institute of Painters in Water Colours, and its secretary for more than forty years. Born April 16th, 1804, at Paddington-then called " a village in Middlesex containing many beautiful rural spots" (many years later Linnell painted a large landscape in oil which showed that much of the beauty of the district still remained) - James Fahey began to study art under his uncle, Mr. Swaine, an engraver, whose profession he intended to follow. He afterwards became the pupil of Scharf of Munich and at an atelier in Paris, where he worked principally from the It is proposed to shelter the runic monument figure, and at human anatomy, making life-size-which is gradually effacing its interesting at Ruthwell, near Annan, from the weather studies of dissected parts, which he afterwards legends, especially the more lightly chiselled drew on stone for surgeons. He in 1825, for the first time, exhibited at the Academy 'A Portrait church, in which it formerly stood. The cost in a building adjoining the parish of a Gentleman'; this was followed, until 1836, of the building is estimated at about 250l., by contributions to the same gallery, the British towards which the Earl of Mansfield has Institution, and "Suffolk Street." In course of time the charms of a country life induced mised. given 25l., and other donations have been proFahey to devote himself exclusively to landscape should the minister of Ruthwell call it the "ProThis is a laudable project, but why painting. This was some time before 1831, posed Restoration of the Runic Monument"? when the only gallery for the exhibition of Dii omen avertant. drawings belonged to the close Society of Painters in Water Colours. Our artist, therefore, in 1834 joined other practitioners of this branch of art, who in 1832 had started the "Associated Painters in Water Colours," whose three exhibitions were held at No. 16, Old Bond Street, about four hundred examples being shown on each occasion In 1835 the best of these artists, including Fahey, formed the "New Society of Painters in Water Colours," which, after holding three exhibitions in Exeter Hall, settled in 1838 at No. 53, Pall Mall, with our painter as secretary-a post he filled with the most zealous devotion, tact, and success until 1874, when, the society having meanwhile renamed itself The Institute of Painters in Water Colours," he resigned. The Institute had not the grace to bestow on him a vote of thanks. He contributed to its gallery with scarcely a break from its foundation. Appointed teacher of drawing to Merchant Taylors' School in 1856, he continued in that office for twentyseven years, at the end of which period he retired with honourable recognition and a full pension. His kindly, upright, and helpful nature was recognized by all his friends, who profited by it at every turn. His son, Mr. E. H. Fahey, is well known to our readers. THE Art Journal for next month will make a new departure by the introduction of an article on the scenic display (of Goethe's 'Faust') at the Lyceum. Mr. Irving, Mr. Telbin, and Mr. Craven having granted the use of sketches made for them in Germany, our contemporary has employed the studies made at Nuremberg, the Brocken, and elsewhere to illustrate an article written by Mr. Joseph Hatton. MESSRS. SOTHEBY, WILKINSON & HODGE sold a fortnight ago a collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, for the chief part excavated in Rhodes. An Archaic Jar, decorated with geometric patterns, realized 281. 10s. A Panathenaic Amphora, 301. cidian style, decorated with Ajax killing CasA Cylix of early Chalsandra, Heracles before Zeus and Hera, and the warriors fighting, 551.; another, not so perfect, 271. 10s. A Hydria, grotesque bearded the Dionysus and in Thiasus, 36l. 15s. of A bronze open armlet ter MR. LOWES DICKINSON has very nearly While Ir is reported that M. Cousin, Conservateur M. MEISSONIER has, it is reported by the surmounting the portal of the Hôtel de Ville st THE death is announced of Heinrich Heinlein, to the Munich school. THERE has been much excitement in Paris about the pictures which we mentioned some time ago had been purchased by subscription for the Louvre. The authorities of the museum hare rejected some of them, among them the Bottition, if he did not suggest it, has been questioned celli. M. Turquet, who sanctioned the subscrip in the Chamber. It is said that M. Turquet was deceived by a ring of picture dealers, who wished to get rid of their unsaleable rubbish, and took advantage of the Under Secretary's weakness for posing as a connoisseur. MUSIC THE WEEK. ST. JAMES'S HALL-The Popular Concerts. M. de Pach mann's Recital. THE present season of the Popular Concerts has been noteworthy so far for the number of additions to the repertory, at least one novelty being included in almost every programme. Last Saturday the words "first time" were only attached to a very pleasing little 'Berceuse Slave' by Herr Franz Neruda, originally composed, it is said, as a violoncello solo, but played on this occasion by Davies gave an exquisitely finished renderMadame Néruda on the violin. Miss Fanny ing of Mendelssohn's Andante with Variations in E flat, Op. 82. Volkmann's concise and musicianly, though by no means original Quartet in a minor, Op. 14, and Schumann's Quintet in E flat, Op. 44, were included in the programme; and Miss Carlotta Elliot contributed songs by Franz, Godard, and Alice Borton. On Monday the first work was a Piano- fresco for the Panthéon. The subject is to be Brussels, is dead, aged seventy years. THE a Fortuny of the first class. THE Belgian sculptor M. Séverin van Aerschodt died at Louvain lately, aged eighty years; he worked in Paris under Etex. He produced No. 1. Ꭺ as a repre Popper in masterly style, the concert ending with Beethoven's String Trio in G, Op. 9, Mr. Santley was the vocalist, but his Propoleon L., the statue of God that the be s the tomb of selections do not call for remark. It may, the major altar of St. Quentin; and the statues concert on the 11th prox. will Miss |