troublesome task, soon abandoned it, and let the first person stand wherever it appeared in his original. This explanation, however, has not been favorably received, on account of the difficulty of supposing that an accomplished writer, like the author of the third Gospel and the Book of Acts, could have shrunk from so simple a task as that of converting one personal form into another some half-dozen times consecutively; and accordingly another mode of accounting for this inconsistency has been to refer it to the forgetfulness of the writer. The absurdity of this explanation hardly requires it to be pointed out. Is it to be supposed, asks M. Lekebusch, who has very ably and very fully discussed this part of our subject, that the writer could have been so deeply immersed in the task of copying down what lay before him, as to have inadvertently made himself a companion of Paul into distant lands, though he had really never been anything of the kind? And is it conceivable that such inadvertence should have twice more seized on the unhappy man, and in such a way as to extend the error over still increasing periods of time? It is remarkable, too, how an eyó in the original would seem always to have reminded our author that he was merely transcribing the experience of another, and not giving his own; for the first person singular nowhere occurs in his history, but is always altered into the name of the original writer. But enough has been said to illustrate the inconsistencies involved in this now exploded hypothesis, and we must hasten on to make one or two concluding remarks.

If the Tübingen view of the composition and character of the Acts be just, the authorship of that work must of course remain in obscurity. If it be mistaken, and the position that the writer of the whole book was himself the companion of Paul, who recorded from memory much of the Apostle's later history, can be maintained, then Luke may be regarded as both the earlier companion of Paul and the later historian of the Church. But, in either case, Luke may be the author of the personal narrative embodied in the later work. He may have remained at Philippi, and there again joined the Apostle. He was certainly with Paul in Rome, and may have made the journey thither in his company, following his fortunes and sharing

66 Origin and Composition of the Acts of the Apostles. [July,

his perils. His brief record may have been left as a valuable contribution to the history of those remarkable times, and may have been subsequently worked into the earliest history of the Church by its unknown author, who was content to sacrifice his own fame for the sake of another, while his experienced pen imparted to the rough notes of "the beloved physician" a chaster style and a more classic air than could have been attained amid the fatigues of travel, the fear of persecution, and the duties of a profession. The fact that Luke especially was singled out as the author of the Apostolic history thus rests on some internal ground, and it is easy to conceive that the claim he was known to possess to a part of the work would very soon be extended to the whole; nor is it improbable that from the very first it was assigned to him with the full consent of the real author. This hypothesis, we think, sufficiently explains all the facts of the case, and accepts the testimony of a professed eyewitness, without insisting on the historical character of events which can bring no such evidence in their favor, or denying the conciliatory design traceable through the entire work.

Little space is now left us to enter on the question where the Book of Acts was composed. We will only say that both Zeller and Lekebusch indicate Rome as the most probable seat of its origin, the one founding his belief chiefly on the Pauline tendency of the work, which was most likely to be put forward in a city where Jewish-Christian prejudices prevailed so strongly, and the other on the omission of all particulars regarding Paul's labors there, as though they were already known to the readers of the work. For ourselves, we confess this latter argument has no weight, nor can we feel the difficulty that is generally felt about the conclusion of the Acts. The author's mode of narration here is quite parallel to that which he follows upon other occasions, where he records at length the events of a single day, and then leaves it to the reader's imagination to fill up in a similar manner the remainder of a long space of time during which the Apostle continues in one place." Besides, the arrival of Paul at Rome com

*Comp. Acts xxviii. 17-31 with Acts xviii. 5-11 and xix. 8-10.

pleted the proposed plan of his history, and here he properly concludes. Other indications, however, of a Roman origin have been pointed out, which we cannot here examine. On the whole, the probability may be allowed to be in favor of the capital of the world.

We have now ended our remarks; and, although it has been impossible to accord a full examination to any of the questions on which we have touched, we hope that what has been said may not be wholly ineffectual in drawing some attention to a class of inquiry too much neglected amid the practical life which sometimes threatens to absorb all the mental activity of our times.

ART. IV. - THE STUDY AND PRACTICE OF ART IN AMERICA.

Art Studies: The Old Masters of Italy; Painting. By JAMES JACKSON JARVES. New York: Derby and Jackson. 1861.

WE may not be ready to be as polite as that lover of Art who used to take off his hat to every Italian image-seller he met. But the spirit of his courteous action is dear to every one who thinks that Art has something to do at present in this country, to adorn the people's homes and thoughts, and give them outlooks from work-day concerns, and also something in future, to educate them into a wiser appreciation of its benefits and a more generous allowance of its claims. He is a benefactor who, by furnishing, in some form of Art, ever so little of beauty, is nurturing the sense of the beautiful, and starting a feeling for Art in the American bare homes and unadorned life. We ought not quite despise even those mild-featured but fierce-spotted cats which our Italian friend hawks about the country, nor those plaster pyramids of very yellow lemons and very red tomatoes, for they are the fetiches of Art, prophetic of better things, by and by, to answer a more refined and intelligent want. For, as the savage presently gives up his black stone and Mumbo-jumbo for a more

shapely symbol and more orderly worship, so the Yankee will not rest long content, in Egyptian darkness, to reverence cats, or to feed his sense of beauty with plaster vegetables. The way is long from these to Phidias, but the journey is sure, if not for individuals, then for generations. Therefore in just sequence follow casts of firemen, fisher-boys, infant Samuels, guardian angels, and the like, which, by natural selection, are preserved on the parlor-mantel or spare-room bureau, while those first rude symbols of Art perish, the yellow and red of the fruit-piece growing dull, and the gentle-truculent puss changing her spots on the kitchen-dresser,- taking their fated road to the "dumb forgetfulness" of the rubbish-heap.

They are, however, but leading the way thither for their supplanters. Mr. Darwin's principle is all-powerful here, however it may be in physiology, and it is inexorable. Finer and stronger specimens of Art-development carry the day. The hawker of casts has to bear about on his board much finer things, which both satisfy and create finer wants. How common, for example, those bas-reliefs of Thorwaldsen are becoming, the Night, the very plumes of whose wings look full of sleep as they lie along in quiet, level lines, and the Morning, whose lifted and swift pinions seem full of the life and joy of the coming light. We now buy for a song that bust of Clyte, with the bending, languid grace of some superb flower about it, which people make pilgrimages to the British Museum to see in the original marble, and remember there how the enthusiastic owner was wont to call it his wife, and saved it first of all his goods when his house was on fire. A trifle will get the Venus, too, which Clive Newcome calls "our sovereign Lady of Milo," and sundry women slanderously affirm to be, for her intellectual dignity, woman's own type of womanly beauty, as the Medicean, for her soft, sensuous charm, is man's. It costs but little to own also the wonderful beauty of that head-called by the critics both an Ariadne and a Bacchus which some hold to be the very type-head of all Grecian Art, so admirably are joined in its exquisite lines the characteristic graces of lovely male and female youth. Whoever has these in his house is rich. And we rejoice that such things are common and within the

reach of those who care for them. Even those who get them simply because their friends and neighbors own them, unwittingly bring home delight to their eyes and wisdom to their minds. We cannot quite go along with Mr. Ruskin, in the fear which he expresses, in one of his Manchester lectures, that noble Art may be made too common by multiplying its works among the people. At any rate his arguments do not fit this time and region.

When such things are sold in the city streets and country roads, then the enthusiast must be pardoned who, in intention if not in deed, takes off his hat to their dark-faced, plasterstained, picturesque vender. For he sees in him what Mr. Emerson finds in the flowers, the proud assertion that one ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. The suspicious constable or smug trader may call him lazy rogue. But how various his employment whom the world calls idle! Besides, this Bohemian business is not the less important because the thrifty frown upon it, and the political economist counts it out of his calculations. This foreign loafer, to whom an inscrutable Providence has denied the native American speech and the anxious look and nervous ways of New England, is the softener of our manners, emollit mores,· and is our teacher in those ingenuous. arts whose knowledge and practice befit the free-born. Therefore, whether prudently yielding to Yankee prejudice, and, against his better sense, compromising beauty with use, by making his Floras and Cereses hold candlesticks in lieu of the symbolic flowers and sheaves, or leading popular taste and anticipating its desire with the incorrupt and single beauty of the Apollo and Psyche of Naples, this exile should be held in honor. Though his strident cry of "eemagees" is a bore and torment, and there is reason to fear his fine Southern rectitude may have been bent near the trickish level of Northern pedlers, yet let it be borne in mind that the round and sweet quality peculiar to the American voice is not the equal boon to all nations, and that there are none so good manners that communication with evil may not corrupt them. So let him be saluted, if not by hat, yet in thought, as he passes with his board of casts. For may we not see in him the handy repre