Emperor Alexander determined upon outlawing the Jesuits, the great champion of Ultramontanism protested, by his departure, against what he believed to be an act of unwarrantable authority; he solicited from his own sovereign, and obtained his recall. As an acknowledgment for his valuable services, the King of Sardinia named him, at the same time, minister of state, and first president in the Supreme Court of Chancery.

On the 27th of May, 1817, Count de Maistre bade a final adieu to Russia, and after a few weeks' stay in Paris he arrived at Turin, August 22. His strong constitution was already breaking down, and he was beginning to pay the penalty of the unremitting work, both of mind and of body, which had marked the greater part of his life. It is very probable, besides, that his death was hastened by the intense disappointment he felt at seeing the destinies of the counter-revolution entrusted to those who, according to the strong but just expression of an acute observer, n'ont rien oublié ni rien appris. This disappointment is evident in his correspondence; the following quotations will make it quite clear; to M. de Marcellus he writes: "Other thorns are rending my heart; my mind feels the effects of them; from being small it has become null; hic jacet; but I die with Europe; I am going to the grave in good company." A letter written in 1818, and which has not been published, gives us this curious sentence:

"Several persons have done me the honour to make the same question that I read in your letter. Why do you not write on the present state of things?' I always return the same answer. In the days of the canaillocracy, I could, at my own risk and peril, tell those inconceivable sovereigns the truth, but now those who are in error are too highly born for it to be possible to speak the truth to them. The Revolution is far more terrible now than in Robespierre's time: as it has risen, it has become more refined. The difference is the same as between mercury and corrosive sublimate.”

We shall borrow our account of M. de Maistre's last days upon carth from the biographical sketch which his son Rodolph has prefixed to the posthumous works of our Ultramontane publicist:

"His intellectual labours, his mental fatigues and afflictions of heart had, by degrees, worn out a most robust constitution. The death of his brother Andrew, Bishop of Aoste, a prelate as much distinguished by his virtues as by his talents, and which took place in 1818, was a most severe blow to the count. From that period his health, which had resisted the climate of St. Petersburg as well as that of Sardinia, became precarious; his gait, too, was unsteady; his head alone retained all its vigour and freshness; and he continued to despatch business with his wonted diligence. At the beginning of 1821, when secret rumours prognosticated the revolutionary ferment of that year in Piedmont, Count de Maistre assisted at a council of ministers, when important changes in the legislation were discussed. His opinion was, that the alterations mooted

were useful, perhaps even necessary; but that the moment was unseasonable for their introduction. He warmed by degrees, and pronounced a lengthened speech. His last words were: Gentlemen, the ground is trembling under our feet, and you would fain build.'

·

"On February 26th, 1821, Count de Maistre expired, and the 9th of March following the revolution broke out in Piedmont. He was carried off by a slow paralysis, after a life of sixty-seven years of labour, suffering, and selfdevotion.... His body rests in the church of the Jesuits at Turin. His wife and his grandson have already rejoined him in the cold tomb, or rather in the abode of the blessed."

We do not pretend, of course, to have given in the above sketch a complete analysis of M. de Maistre's works; but enough has been said to enable our readers to form some estimate of his influence and character. Widely as we differ from the view he took both of the Church and of its connexion with politics of a temporal nature, we admire him as an intellectual giant in his generation. Among the Ultramontanist writers of our own days, there is not one that has caught the smallest spark of the fire which glows throughout the pages of the Eglise Gallicane and the Soirées de Saint Petersbourg. Count de Maistre, as we have seen, compared the revolutionists of 1818 to "corrosive sublimate;" this expression is perfectly applicable to our Veuillots, our Cullens, our Nicolardots-those frantic journalists who, although claiming a parentage with the Savoyard writer, have naught in common with him; for "gall and wormwood" are only poor resources to make up for want of faith; and a cause must be very desperate indeed when it can be propped up only by calumny and falsehood.

ART IV. THE MONUMENTS OF ATHENS.

L'Acropole d'Athènes. Par E. BEULÉ, ancien Membre de l'Ecole d'Athènes. 2 volumes. Paris: Firmin Didot Frères. New York: Hector Bossange et Fils. 1854.

The occasion of these volumes-the late recovery of the ancient entrance to the memorable citadel of Athens-has fixed the eyes of Europe anew upon this focus of antique glories. The contents of the publication embrace, however, a good deal more. Besides the narrative of his discovery and a succinct sketch of the Acropolis, historical as well as topographical, the author enters into an artistic interpretation of the chief monuments that were deposited in this grand sanctuary of Grecian statuary and architecture.

We propose to present the public of the New World with a select survey of these revelations, both antiquarian and æsthetical; commencing, however, with what may possibly be no less useful than it seems relevant, a slight account of the foundation of the "French School of Art at Athens."

This undertaking had its origin in the year 1846, and should be, consequently, credited to Louis Philippe or his government. To the same government is also due, we think, a like foundation in the eternal city, existing earlier, and entitled the "French School of Art at Rome." The common object of both establishments was the exploration, archæological and aesthetical, of the antiquities of those two capitals of ancient civilisation. But although this was the true import of the measure in itself, it may be doubted whether it was the motive of the dynasty of professors that composed Louis Philippe's cabinet : : a reminiscence of their former trade, a means of purchasing rebellious students, a mode of flattering the national vanity, may have been elements in the design. Be that, however, as it may, it seems quite certain that the noble project did not receive its philosophic form until 1850, when the President of the Republic organized the two schools, enjoining each to present annually to the Academy at Paris, a careful report of their local studies, explorations, or discoveries. As crowning complement to the whole scheme, a publication to receive those documents, and all such others, has been instituted, called The Archives of Scientific Missions. Few things

more creditable have been done, thus far, by the government of Louis Napoleon.

The discovery of M. Beulé, who was a member of the School of Athens, was presented as the startling subject of one of the aforesaid reports. The author instantly received the rewards which every Frenchman may now be sure of, who contributes somewhat to the mental glory of France. Not to speak of "decorations," his book was issued at the expense, or, as expressed with proper delicacy, "under the auspices," of the government, and he himself was placed in the professional chair of Archæology, left vacant by the recent death of the celebrated Raoul Rochette. He has, moreover, received signal honours from King Otho of Greece, who had the recovered monument inscribed in gold, with a memorial contributed by the discoverer, with French àpropos, as follows. We translate the archaic Greek into common English.

The Acropolis, which was the nucleus of the ancient city of Minerva, arose upon a rock of apparently volcanic origin, protruding in isolation from the plain. The summit of this elevation presents a table land of oval figure, extending in its longest axis to nine hundred feet, while the greatest breadth is not over four hundred. The sides are of inaccessible steepness all round, with the exception of the west, which presents a gentler acclivity, preparing a natural entrance, which was improved by art in after ages.

The first inhabitants were Cecrops and his Egyptian colony, who chose quite naturally, in a foreign and a savage country, this place of refuge. The infant city bore, in fact, the proper name of the alleged founder. It took, moreover, from an Egyptian denomination, the name of Astu, which, while applied to Athens only in an individual sense, became a common appellation for cities generally in the Greek language; a curious proof of the priority of the former city in Grecian annals, as the procession in all naming is from the proper to the common. This foreign origin is also seen, in fine, in its more familiar and actual name; for the word Athens is an inversion of the Egyptian Neith or Netha, who was the goddess adored at Saïs, the native district of the founder, Cecrops.

Athens, then, derived its religion, as well as Greece its civilisation -its rudimental civilisation-from the Delta of the Nile. The Greeks, however, with the habitual pretension of colonial countries, 1 denied all this, and even turned the indebtedness the other way. It is insisted by some of their writers, such as Callisthenes and Apollonius, that it is Saïs that was a Greek colony, and its goddess Neith the Athenian Pallas. Even Plato relates that Solon, in his voyage along the Nile, constrained the priests themselves of Saïs to own that this was the procession, and that Athens was the older of the two cities by a thousand years. But other authors (who, though Greek by origin, had the advantage of being brought up, or of long sojourn, outside the pale of the thicker national delusion, such as Herodotus, Diodorus, and Pausanias, long an exile) proclaim the course of the migration to be to Athens from the Nile. These attestations are more than sufficient to dissipate the misty doubt which has been cast upon this point of history by the puerilities alluded to, and which would offer, if well founded, an objection of perplexing gravity to certain principles of the philosophy of history.

Minerva, who was a symbol of this imported civilisation, was, however, not enthroned on the Acropolis without resistance. Neptune ' was a rival candidate for popular adoration. The contest was decided by the suffrage of the people, including even the women, as was usual in those primitive times. So wisely has De Staël observed,

that "it is liberty that is ancient," and so justly do American women assert their claim to this primeval charter! The ladies, then, too, being more numerous, as is the rule in modern countries, decided the election by a majority of one. But how they voted in a body for a candidate of their own sex is less conformable to their reputed disposition. Could it have been because Minerva represented innovation? or because she was the special patron of the first of female arts, the loom? Interpreters of mythic story do not inform us on these grave questions. Respecting Neptune, they say, however, that he was the type of a Phoenician colony, which had preceded, and was expelled by the Egyptian. But he might better have been the type of the aboriginal fishermen, as being the god of the sea simply, not of the art of navigation. Thus the contest between the two divinities would be symbolical of a transition from the ichthyophagous to the agricultural condition of the primitive Atticans-from the catching of fish to the culture of the olive. Be that, however, as it may, the strange conception of the great Minerva, combining the attributes of man with the sex and form of womanas her prototype Isis also, that ripest offspring of Egyptian theogony, was represented partly woman and partly lion, in the famous sphynx -this confusion, which has confounded all the authorities of our author, contains an import of deep consistency, but not essential to the present purpose. Suffice it that Minerva, having planted on the Acropolis an olive-tree in full bearing, (committed to Cecrops and his followers,) the savage nations of the coast of Attica soon settled on and around the hill.

The situation at this epoch is described by Plato (Critias) as follows:

"The artisans and labourers composed the outer range, on the declivity which faces the Ilyssus. The warrior caste alone were in possession of the summit, within the wall which enclosed the temples of Minerva and of Neptune, [for the latter of these deities was admitted into part protectorship, with the accession of the native population to the new society: a fact that justifies the foregoing comment as to the import of the myth of Neptune.] They [the warriors] resided on the north side of the hill-top, in houses which they occupied in common, exposed to the violence of the winds and watching over their fellowcitizens. About the centre of the table-land of the Acropolis there was a spring, which was afterward, in consequence of earthquakes, almost destroyed, but which at that time afforded plenty of wholesome water both summer and winter."

We note these details as presenting, on a succinct scale, a faithful picture of the primitive formation of the communities of mankind, in both their social and topographical characteristics. A fountain, a fortified stronghold upon an insulated elevation, the artisans on the hill-sides, the serfs or labourers in the plain below, the warriors