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designed, but which was completed by Lorenzetto, with whom he was working, makes it probable that it was actually finished by Raphael himself, while there is every reason to believe that the terra-cotta model for this statue in the Kensington Museum is from his hand. Michael Angelo's principal pupils were Raffaello da Monte lupo and Montorsoli, who, though they both produced original works, were chiefly occupied in carrying out those designs of their master which his various and harassing engagements did not permit him to execute or personally superintend.

One of the most agreeable chapters in Mr. Perkins's book is perhaps that which treats of Benvenuto Cellini. His varied life and accomplishments, the times in which and the people with whom he lived, his vices, his virtues, his crimes, his inordinate conceit, and his autobiography, furnish excellent materials to an author. His artistic productions were so celebrated and so numerous, that though but few authenticated examples now remain, every fine piece of cinque cento goldsmith's work is attributed to him. This class of work is unfortunately the most perishable of all that art produces. The intrinsic value of the metals and stones have brought to the melting pot or the jeweller in times of distress hundreds of pieces, the beauty of which was really in their workmanship and design, while the worthlessness of canvas and marble has preserved nearly all the pictures and statues now extant; those that are lost have perished from violence, accident, or neglect. The despotic requirements of fashion have also done much towards destroying works of art in jewellery. However much real old' ornaments may be admired, old-fashioned' ones are not tolerated, so they are altered over and over again to suit the prevailing taste, and we only wonder how any ever contrive to reach the age at which they are again valued.

Cellini's reputation as a sculptor rests chiefly upon the statue of Perseus, at Florence, of the casting of which he gives so lively an account in his autobiography. In spite of certain defects of proportion it is a noble and spirited statue, and though not as he thought superior to anything that had been or could be made, may fairly claim a place in the first class of modern imitations of the antique. Cellini, after finishing the Perseus, proposed, with remarkable assurance, to make two bronze gates for the Duomo, and expressed his willingness to receive nothing for them if they did not surpass those of Ghiberti. Unless he had also been appointed to judge of their merits, he would have been sadly out of pocket by the transaction, for the specimen he has left us of his work in bas-relief on the pedestal of the

Perseus, though beautifully executed, is deficient in all those high qualities which distinguished the panels of Ghiberti.

The only other Tuscan sculptor of real talent among the successors of Michael Angelo was John of Bologna, a Fleming by birth, who owed his artistic education to Florence. His best work, the Mercury, is known to everybody from copies and casts. His marble group of the Rape of the Sabines is also celebrated. It was originally a mere study in marble of a man carrying off a woman, and was named after its completion. John of Bologna's bas-reliefs upon the doors of the cathedral at Pisa show his great inferiority to the earlier Tuscan masters in that branch of sculpture. He was assisted in his very numerous works by a large number of pupils, and being superior in talent and purer in style than most of his contemporaries, may have done something to retard the decline of Art, but nothing could have then stopped it. A decline of Art caused by ignorance or barbarism may be checked at any moment by the appearance of some commanding genius; but that which springs from false principles and technical vanity must run its course till the world, sick of pedantry, affectation, and display, seeks an agreeable change in simplicity, feeling, and truth.

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With this artist, Tuscan sculpture may be said to have come to an end, and we will take our leave of it with the hope which Mr. Perkins expresses, that the future which seems to ' promise so much for Italy, the second country of all who love Art, has regeneration in store for sculpture also, and that with laws, letters, and other arts, it may again rise to the level of its former glory.' We cannot, however, conclude this article on Tuscan Sculpture without once more mentioning the collection in the Kensington Museum, to which we have had frequent occasion to allude. It is, we believe, chiefly to the knowledge and industry of Mr. J. C. Robinson that we owe the numerous and valuable specimens of this style of art which have there been got together, and which enable Englishmen to study it better than can be done in any other country than Italy, and more easily and conveniently than can be done even there. His illustrated catalogue, the title of which we have placed at the head of this article, contains short notices of the various sculptors and their principal works, and thus forms not only an excellent handbook to the sculptural portion of the Museum, but also a most useful book of reference. Let us hope that this book, and Mr. Perkins's more extended work, may lead our sculptors to the study of their Tuscan predecessors both here and in Italy.

ART. IX.-Méditations sur l'Essence de la Religion Chrétienne. Par M. GUIZOT. Paris: 1864.

IF any one, fifty years ago, had hazarded the prediction that during the latter half of the century then just begun, Theology, of all subjects in the world, would form the most interesting matter for discussion, even among the laity; that it would be treated with respect even by that supercilious class whom it was then the fashion to term philosophers, and would be written upon with warmth and earnestness by men of distinction in various departments of practical life,- such a prediction would unquestionably have been received with derision, and its author accounted a victim of some peculiar kind of pious imbecility. Yet the prediction would have been a true one. For, not to mention innumerable theological laymen of inferior calibre, who have been tempted by the supineness of the armies of Israel to take sling and stone against the common foe, we have lately seen men of such mark as the Duke of Argyll in politics and literature, Sir Roundell Palmer in law, Mr. Froude in history, M. Renan in language, Dr. Daubeny in physical science, Mr. Gladstone in classics and finance, M. Guizot in statesmanship, and Mr. Disraeli in rhetoric, all displaying unmistakeable interest in the theological problems of the day, and bearing a part in the efforts made to solve them. And the appearance of such combatants upon the field should, we think, form no subject of apprehension or regret to the clergy. It is from without that the impetus must always come, which shall give proper motion to a merely rotating body; such as every profession alike is liable to become, if a busy and conscientious activity within its own traditional limits remain, for any length of time, undisturbed by the influence of other bodies moving in orbits of their own. It is not well that any class should be so far a privileged class, or any profession so far an established one, as to be shut off from currents of thought and life external to itself; nor can any greater misfortune befall either persons or communities, than to be shielded from criticism and saved the healthy pain of hearing what others have to say of them and their affairs.

Non tali auxilio is, we are well aware, the thought, if not the uttered protest, of some among the clergy who take what are called very high views, but what are really very low views, of the clerical functions and character. We are told, in spite of many years' American experience to the contrary, that the presence of laymen would ruin Convocation; we are

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warned that Theology, in spite of its name, is no science* in the proper acceptation of the word; and we are taught that the grand function of the clergy, with their careful training and their vast endowments, is to keep charge of and maintain a hedge around'† a certain deposit of unalterable truths' once delivered to the saints.' If so, a strong iron chest might as effectually and less expensively meet all the requirements of the case. But the fact is, that the clergy, so far from overrating, sadly underrate the loftiness and difficulty of their task. If the New Testament is to be believed, it is not a book, but a certain type of teaching' which forms the sacred deposit entrusted to their safekeeping. And its safekeeping is to be secured, not by timid concealment in a napkin, but by a bold exposure to the risks of trade. And surely the guardianship of a certain type of teaching, the loyal maintenance of a certain direction of thought once for all imparted by the original preachers of Christianity, is a very different thing from the mere obstinate and mechanical retention of a fixed body of doctrine supposed (like Jupiter's image) to have fallen down from heaven, and leads to very different prac tical results. The one theory of clerical duty leads to a bold and energetic adaptation of Divine truths to modern wants; the other to a timid acquiescence in the traditions of the past about them. The one is the elasticity of vigorous life; the other is the rigidity of death. The one, full of exulting faith in the expansive forces of the germ it is commissioned to plant and water, welcomes all aid, employs all materials of growth, however unpromising they may seem at first sight, and however little in accordance with preconceived ideas; the other, trembling for the completeness of its dead but elaborately articulated system, naturally betakes itself to a policy of indiscri'minate resistance,' regards every novelty with suspicion, and often, in its panicstricken rashness, repels with anathemas the advancing auxiliaries of its own cause.

Now, strange to say, the latter and not the former is the policy to which several of the leaders of opinion in the Church of England at the present day seem to have given in their adhesion. The authorities of the Roman Court are only following long-established precedent and obeying the instincts of men trained from childhood jurare in verba magistri,' when they

* Mansel, Bamp. Lect., p. 257.

This was the favourite phrase of the Jewish scribes, when their rational respect for their Scriptures was gradually degenerating into that senseless superstition about them which led eventually to the rejection of Christ.

hunt down the author of Le Maudit,' silence their Döllingers, Montalemberts, and Newmans, discountenance the Munich Congress, extinguish the Home and Foreign Review,' and crown the work by an Encyclical brief. But how the members of

any Protestant Church, and, above all, how the clergy of the most highly educated and hitherto the most unfettered Church in Christendom, can quietly acquiesce in a similar policy, follow so obviously false a lead, and (strangest of all) co-operate in forging gyves and fetters for their own hands and feet, is to us perfectly inconceivable. If there is any truth which the long course of the Church's history has unequivocally determined, it is this: that fairness and generosity in dealing with ecclesiastical questions are not clerical but lay virtues; and that whenever some disastrous schism has been successfully warded off, and the limits of the Church have been kept extended by a farseeing toleration, the benefit has been due to lay interference, and not to the exercise of clerical brotherly love.

As an instance of the way in which religious laymen are likely to approach these important theological problems, we invite attention to the work of M. Guizot, the title of which stands at the head of the present article. We do not mean to say that it is by any means a perfect specimen of theological discussion. It betrays--as might reasonably be expecteda certain unfamiliarity with theological weapons, and a want of acquaintance with the previous stages of the controversy which at present mainly vexes the Church. The writer sometimes treads unsuspectingly over very hollow and dangerous ground. He is obliged to appeal to others (sometimes in a way that provokes a smile) for his critical and grammatical data; and his citations from the Bible and reviews of well-known periods of Jewish history often run to such a length as to produce a sense of weariness in the reader. Still, with all these faults, no one can open this book, and recollect the circumstances which produced it, without feeling that it is a valuable contribution to the literature of the present controversy, and without gathering from it two or three most important lessons, of no less practical utility on this side the Channel than on the other.

M. Guizot, it is well known, is a Protestant. But perhaps it is not equally well known in this country, that the Protestant community in France is feeling the surges of the same storm of controversy about the Inspiration of the Bible, which is raging here, and indeed in every other Protestant country; nay, which is even creating flaws and breaches in the compact and massive ice-crust, which seemed to guarantee the

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