possessions and prejudice, to use his own eyes. He had the right, but does not seem to have transmitted it to the gentry who so affect the style of "I know nothing about Art, but I do know what pleases me, and am not to be humbugged out of my opinion by any universal admiration." This book is free from that detestable affectation which will put in its glib word about the ill-composition of the Sistine Madonna, and waxes bold over the ill-drawing in the frescos of the Holy Field in Pisa. It is modest, and so far is a wise and safe guide.

The illustrations form so marked and interesting a feature of "Art Studies," that a notice of the book would be incomplete without a reference to them. They are excellently well drawn and engraved. And they are truer to their originals than many of the illustrations in English art-publications of the same class. In them the mannerism of the designer is often more plain than the character of the picture illustrated. Note, for example, how, in many, Mr. Harvey's peculiarly disagreeable style of drawing gives a very free and very lame translation of the work in hand. All such outlines must, of course, be mere memoranda, but it is gratifying to see that, in this publication, the Italian engraver has given with the composition something of the manner and even the spirit of the originals.

But the great merit of these originals is what gives to the illustrations special value and interest, above any excellence which they have of their own. We had the good fortune, a little while ago, to see Mr. Jarves's collection in New York. We have not space here to speak of it as we would like. And the look we had was too short to speak of it as it deserves. At first, the propriety and good-taste of Mr. Jarves's illustrating his book from his own collection seemed dubious. It would have been better, we thought, to illustrate the history of painting and the biography of artists rather from world-famous and approved characteristic works. But the pictures vindicate the step. And if "Art Studies" were much less interesting and valuable on its own merits, it should still be greatly prized as the herald of the pictures from which its illustrations are engraved. It is for this that we are most ready to greet it

and send it on with a good word, as introducing these works of early Italian Art to the study and criticism which, if earnest and just, must result in a generous reception of them, and a more than favorable regard.

When, some time ago, we read what Mr. Trollope and other capable men had to say in praise and authentication of them, we thought, and took occasion to say in this review, that the owner of them would be held as a benefactor and lover of his country more on their account than for his books. Having seen them, we repeat it with emphasis. What we need here is experience and instruction in noble Art. And there is no collection in the country equal to this, not only as a teacher of the history of painting, but also as a guide to point out where the supreme inspiration of the art lies, the secret of its greatest power and the mover of its most beautiful works.

In judging these pictures, they who have been abroad have an advantage in being able to decide, by comparison with renowned works in Europe, how far these are characteristic of the master or school to which they are attributed. For that we have to pin our faith, in the main, upon the documents in the Appendix; and the names there are worthy of credence. But they who have not seen Rome, and Dresden, and Florence have this advantage, that therefore they are perhaps all the better judges of what is needed here for the student of Art who cannot go where it is studied to the most profit and pleasure. No city will so surely help its sons and daughters who are studying either the practice or the theory and history of Art, as that which secures for itself these pictures, collected by Mr. Jarves with equal care and good fortune. And none will so benefit its people at large, the lay as well as the clerics of Art, with the pure pleasures and fine instructions of which it is the generous spring. If Boston be the centre of intellectual and moral life, as its citizens claim for it, then Boston is the one fit place for them. They will be studied there as they ought to be. And there they will be valued with that just esteem and fair judgment which faithful study must bring.

To write justly of them demands a better opportunity than we have yet had, and time not merely to look at, but to study them. We do not belong to that class of apt learners for whom

a glance around the gallery is enough to bring in the verdict of "old things" or "humbug." The short time we gave to them was full of genuine delight. Other galleries have pleased us as much, but never in so fine a fashion. It was a most choice and lofty pleasure. When we entered the little "Tribune," where the elect pictures are hung, we at once felt that it was a new world of Art opening to us. Here was a loftier region and a purer air. We had expected dull, archaic pictures, whose mystery was to be plucked out with much painstaking, and whose value was largely antiquarian, as historic documents and relics. But the little room, on that dark, gray day, shone and flashed as if set with gems. It was no painful, mousing search which they required, no near-sighted and intent quest after remote beauty and significance. There was no difficulty about them, but an immediate and genial invitation to the eye and to the mind. We did not have to get down to them with prying investigation. But they came down to us, with a presence of exceeding dignity and grace, with the offer of rare gifts and the allurement of an uplifting power. It was coming true, what we had dreamed, over our books, of Giotto, Francia, Gozzoli, Fra Angelico, and the rest. It was as though we had been studying the grammar of Art without examples, and now they were given, and rules and principles were made plainer. It was the self-same experience which the first sight of what is grandest or most lovely in nature gives, as though a new sense were born, or the eyes had opened more widely, and, so to speak, more deeply. The holy feeling, simple truthfulness, and fine purity of early Italian painting were to be henceforth a fact, and not a story. We were to know by experience, and not by hearsay, what power is in Art when it works under its highest inspiration, a pure religious sentiment and faith. We now understood how it is divinely gifted with appeals to which the best and noblest in thought and feeling spontaneously and sympathetically respond. What had been conviction in the mind was now sight to the eye, that, at its truest and best, it is the form and representative of the spiritual. We knew that we had stepped within the vestibule of the temple in whose remote and sacred adyta hang for us the Sistine Madonna and the Prophets and Sibyls of the Papal chapel.

Nothing could more decisively establish their worth than to have them exhibited, as in New York, in the same gallery with the popular Düsseldorf collection. There seems something rather providential than lucky in such a conjunction of Art which appeals to the higher faculties and deeper feelings, and is almost unknown among us, with that, well known and expressly popular, which seduces the roving eye and pleases the coarser and superficial tastes. The contrast is one in which things quickly take their level. It was with a strange feeling, the blank sense of separation and remoteness, that we tried to find in the German pictures what our younger and cruder judgment had found so admirable. It was, to be sure, a test somewhat of the hardest, and not quite fair, to come to them at once upon the first delightful taste of the old Italian religious art. It was the poor wine after the good. Academic mannerism, the commonplace of a school, caricature for characterization, vulgarity for humor, and breadth of canvas for depth of feeling and height of thought, obstinately obtruded themselves. And, at the best, it was shrewd facility and knowing cleverness, pretty fancy and delicate finish, power of effective grouping and impressive composition, which caught the eye. But there was a genuine inspiration in the motif and sentiment of the others, which detained the heart. Here was a lavish and precious display of simplicity and truth, of self-forgetfulness and surrender to the sacredness of the theme, of the spontaneity of religious devotion and faith. The very pigment seemed a different and nobler thing, so gemlike and pure it showed beside the dull and muddy tints of the new pictures. If color be the exponent of the artist's temper and character, there is little room to doubt in which age the noblest intellectual and moral tendency was present and active. As if to challenge comparison, an "Adoration of the Magi" by Steinbruck hung quite near a painting of the same subject by Luca Signorelli. The latter, though far less attractive than many of the pictures of an earlier date, at once asserted its superiority. Yet the former is esteemed a masterpiece of its school, and with reason, because free from many of the disagreeable qualities of the Düsseldorf style. It is a most ambitious picture, marked with patient labor and mas

terly skill. It is fifty times as big as the Italian picture, and probably attracts fifty times as many people to look at it. But it lacks the absorbing and imperative earnestness which fills the 20×24 canvas of the other with commanding pictorial power and effect. That is full of the strong and healthy sentiment of piety; this is touched with the weakness of pious sentimentalism. This has the unity of studied composition, is of the order and limitation of modern ecclesiastical art, and is formally religious. That has the unity of spirit and the freedom of true sacred art, and is really religious.

In the genial and modest close of the Preface to "Art Studies," the writer commends to the reader's "kindly regard Introduction, Body, and Appendix, omitting nothing. For," he goes on," he hopes it will be for your good to read all, as it has been for his to write; while he wishes you, like himself, thorough enjoyment in Art." We have to say, that it was for our special good and thorough enjoyment to read the Appendix. For it contains the catalogue of the collection, and while we read it the pictures were before us. They instruct the student, as hand-books and the like never can, in the history of painting, unfolding its course from the stirring of new life in Cimabue's time, through its quick growth and blooming fruitful season in the sixteenth century, to the fatal decadence and fall after Michel Angelo. But, what is more, they bring him under the influences of the strength and beauty of that Art which is of the highest kind, as the inspiration of pure religious sentiment and faith is the highest impulse that can move the soul and guide the hand, and which, of all Art, is most truly satisfying to the mind and most surely ennobling to the spirit of those who reverently and affectionately study it.