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distinct. In its sculpture halls are seen several celebrated works of art, among which figure the group of the Laocoon, Venus de Medicis, Apollo Belvedere, Castor and Pollux, and the Dying Gladiator.

If, in narrating and describing the different heads and sections of the educational progress of Seville, I have more than once regretted the small limit allowed me in the columns of your valued Magazine, to give a full extension and the complete detail which the history of this subject merits, I have never felt this regret greater than to-day, when attempting to describe this school, which has done so much to further good taste, refinement, and culture, and which has rendered this city so renowned on account of the number of her sons who have become famous in it. Seville, indeed, can glory that her school was the first, if not the only one, which imparted to painting truthfulness and philosophy. Let us examine the works of this enchanting art executed before and after, and even at the commencement of the fifteenth century, and we shall see a colouring more or less vivid, a drawing more or less graceful, in which the artist endeavoured to depict a form; but we shall not find naturalness-the imagination of the artificer, but not the rules of art for translating to the canvas, or to the marble, the animation and perfection, or defect, of the object and form which he proposed to himself to pourtray or imitate. And when I say that it was reserved to the Sevillian school to win this laurel, it must not be supposed that, in doing so, I confine myself to Spain; the whole artistic world is a debtor to the Spanish school for having taught how to observe and study nature with the object of copying her and of imitating her colouring. Juan Sanchez de Castro was the originator of this school, and among his followers was numbered the famous Gonzalo Diaz; to this school also was due the improvement we perceive in the works of Bartolomé de Mesa and Alejo Fernandez; these were followed by Diego de la Barreda and his disciple Luis de Vargas, who flourished in the sixteenth century, as well as Antonio Arfian, Juan de las Roolas, Francisco Zurbaran, Luis Fernandez, Andres Ruiz Sarabia, Francisco Gonzalez the Carthusian, Francisco de Herrera the Elder, his brother Bartolomé, Francisco Pacheco, the master of the celebrated Don Diego Velasquez, Augustin del Castillo, and his brother Juan, sometime master of the immortal Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.

The admirable progress of the Sevillian school, due solely to the assiduous labours and talent of these geniuses, did not merit during its lengthened career the smallest protection or assistance from Government; the expenses which indispensably occurred were met by a voluntary contribution, as we are told by Señor Cean Bermudez, who transcribed the first list of subscribers in 1660, who bound themselves to pay 6 reals (144d.) per month. This list is headed by F. Herrera, B. Murillo, and a number of other artists, the whole monthly subscription amounting to 138 reals (about 17. 78. 6d.), which sum in our days would barely suffice to defray the expense of keeping the place clean. The Sevillian artists did not need any further means, or protection, or patronage, to attract to their school such celebrated foreign artists as F. Frutel, Pedro de Campana, M. Perez Dalecio, and others, whose works executed in Seville shine among those of the students of this Academy-Hernando Sturucio, Pedro de Villegas Marmolejo, Luis de Morales the divine, Basco Pereira, and many others.

In the seventeenth century flourished many more, but none outshone

Murillo. The death of this famous artist seemed to be the sign of the gradual decadence of the Sevillian school, as one by one death removed the disciples of Murillo, Osorio, Gutierrez, Juan Garzon, Escobar, Joya, Pineda, Jose Lopez, Sarabia, Esteban Marquez the knight, Nuñez de Villavicencio, and Esteban Gomez, known as the Mulatto.

And on a par with painting also flourished sculpture and architecture in the works of Alonso Martinez, Pedro Garcia, Juan Norman, and Alonso Rodriguez in the fifteenth century, and those of Lopez Martin, Lorenzo del Vao, Bartolomé Morel, Luis de Vega, Torregiano, and many other sculptors, whose works, executed in the sixteenth century, are perfect models, and the greater number absolutely inimitable.

Architecture flourished also in those days in such geniuses as Diego Riaño, Minjares, Florentin and many more, too numerous to name here, as well as the renowned Juan de Herrera, names which have become immortalised, for they will subsist long after the sumptuous buildings erected in Seville shall have crumbled away. In 1600 still existed such sculptors as Parrilla, Bernardo Guijon, the celebrated Juan Martinez Montañez, Pedro Roldan and his daughter Luisa, and others; also many architects and artists who became no less celebrated; but in the seventeenth century, that is to say, at the same period as painting began to descend in the scale of excellence, so also did architecture become corrupted with the bad taste evinced in the style introduced by Geronimo Barbas.

Fortunately the school has been re-established, and the Academia of Noble Arts of Santa Isabel, which I mentioned above, organised, and in our days we see painting regenerated by Arangos Gutierrez, Bejarano, Esquivel, Becquer; sculpture by the Astorgas, father and son, worthy competitors of Roldan; and there is no lack of living architects of sufficient genius for erecting buildings of as great artistic merit as any which are seen in our city.

Seville, the mistress of so many artistic glories, did not possess a building bearing the title of Museum, while each and every one of her convents exhibited. works of art in greater profusion than in her cathedral-a wealth of rare objects which suffered a notable detriment during the French invasion at the commencement of the present century, when, under its shadow, a large number of rare gems passed into the possession of private individuals.

The suppression of convents and monasteries later on caused the disappearance, through want of precaution and foresight, of many objects of art which now adorn foreign galleries and museums.

In my next letter I shall give you some account of the Academia of Sciences, and other literary and scientific institutions.

CURRENT LITERATURE.

Judas Maccabæus and the Jewish War of Independence. By Claude Reignier Conder, R.E. London: Marcus Ward and Co. 1870.

How great an advantage it is for any one about to write the history of a nation to have studied the country itself in which that history was transacted may be gathered from the work before us. The motto on the title-page of this recherché little volume consists of the old question, " Can these bones live?" Certainly, Lieutenant Conder has enabled the question to be answered in the affirmative. It is a brief but a pregnant period that saw the rise and fall of the Hasmonean dynasty; the historian has not only got into a small compass and presented with much clearness the important facts of the epoch, but he has drawn in a considerable amount of subsidiary matter, which is interesting in itself, as well as necessary for the proper understanding of the forces at work in the age in question, and subsequently. The sketch forms a most instructive and complete historic monograph, and possesses, moreover, the advantage somewhat rare when the subject is connected with Judea of being treated with as little a bias as if it were a history of Iceland or Japan.

First is given, by way of introduction, a brief abstract of Jewish history from the time of Ezra. The little nation was then established in its country, city, and temple, and remained a century in peace under Persian rule, with its

own high priests as pashas. Then comes the period of Alexander the Great, and Macedonian rule begins, Alexander enlisting a large Jewish contingent for colonisation of the city which yet bears his name in Egypt. At his death Palestine passed over to the ruling family of the Seleucida, Egypt going to the Ptolemies, the first of whom carried off a further number of Jews to Egypt, as prisoners, not as volunteers, like those who populated one quarter of Alexandria. The ancient Hebrew tongue was by this time dead, the vernacular being a variety of Chaldee, into which the interpreters were wont to render the Scripture in the synagogue. For the Egyptian Jews it was more convenient to

have a translation of the whole made into Greek, and in 277 B.C. seventy elders were allowed by the authorities at Jerusalem to proceed to Egypt to execute the translation.

Another quiet century passes, which ends with the death of Antiochus the Great, and the bequest of Palestine to the Egyptian King as his wife's dowry. The younger son of Antiochus sets aside this arrangement, and assumes control over Jerusalem, which is no longer a united and patriotic capital, but is divided between the factions of rival candidates for the high priesthood. A revolution affords Antiochus Epiphanes a pretext for advancing on Jerusalem, and possessing himself of the wealth of the Temple. A massacre

and sack ensue; Epiphanes profanes the Temple and rouses up the latent patriotism and zeal which had been undergoing a gradual softening process under the influence of Hellenism. Of this national revival Judas becomes the hero. An aged priest, named Mattathias, the great-grandson of Hasmon (1 Chron. xxiv. 7), who had retired from Jerusalem to his village of Modin, when a commissioner came to persuade the people to sacrifice to the heathen deities, ran upon him and slew him upon the altar. This man had five tall sons, who now formed the nucleus of a national party, and of whom Judas, by reason of his soldierly capacity, first takes the lead. The next seven years have a remarkable military interest, to which Lieut. Conder has done justice, for they contain the battles between small compact bodies of Jews, led by a native and impetuous leader, and large hosts comparatively ignorant of the ground. After many successful battles, each of which increased his power and following, Judas suffered a bitter defeat and death. He had, however, previously concluded an alliance with Rome, under the protection of whose huge ægis little Judea, after further battles with the Hellenists, and a great power of craft exhibited by Jonathan, the brother who succeeded Judas, obtained comparative freedom and prosperity for a term of years. This prosperity, however, when the primitive Chasidim had developed into the stiff-necked Pharisees, and the Hasmonean princes had become rich and Sadducean, broke up through, civil dissensions; and the end was the destruction of the Temple and of national independence beneath the iron hand of Rome.

Upon the Essenes, the Hellenists, the Mizraimites, the Sadducees, the Zealots, the various Messiahs,

or anointed leaders-priest and war chief-there is much incidental information, which makes the volume before us of a value which the title by itself would scarcely lead the reader to expect.

Sketches and Studies in Italy. By J. A. Symonds. Smith, Elder, and Co. 1879.

It is difficult in a short space to do justice to a series of more or less disconnected essays. The connecting link in Mr. Symonds's articles is, that they all treat of Italian themes; but they cover various historical epochs, and various portions of the country. Mr. Symonds is at his best when he is critical, at his worst when he is descriptive; because, though he has an exquisitely keen feeling for scenery, he carries to excess the florid style of writing that has for some time past been popular with our æsthetic school, and which is as vicious as it is unsuited to the genius of our language. If Mr. Symonds remembered the rules laid down by Lessing in the "Laokoon," he would not thus allow his pen to infringe upon the boundaries of the sister art of painting. This attempt at word-painting spoils what would otherwise be charming accounts of Paestum, Amalfi, Capri, Como, &c. Redundance of epithets, duplications of meaning, do not conduce to ease and perspicuity. We quote a sentence selected at random:

"The whole (aspect of Amalfi) is white and wonderful: no similes suggest an analogue for the lustre, solid and transparent, of Amalfi, nestling in moonlight between the grey-blue sea and lucid hills."

This sentence is a fair specimen of Mr. Symonds's fine writing. How about its grammatical accuracy? Can a simile suggest an analogue? How can a lustre be solid and transparent? How can hills be lucid? A little more reticence and

sobriety would eliminate faults that seriously impair the excellence of all Mr. Symonds's writings.

An elaborate

A critical study on Lucretius is marked by a just appreciation of the poet's powers and of his relation to modern science. Mr. Symonds points out how in Lucretius the Roman genius found its literary interpreter, and proves from the "De Rerum Natura" how Positivism and Realism were qualities of Roman as distinguished from Greek culture. essay upon "Antinous," full of archæological details and ingenious surmises, fails in every respect to solve the enigma concerning the hapless favourite of Hadrian. Our author is happier in pointing out the debt of English to Italian literature, and his translations of some of the popular Italian poetry of the Renaissance and of the " Orfeo" of Poliziano are admirable in their fidelity and musical skill. The whole book is pervaded with a true love of and appreciation for Southern scenery, colour, and beauty, while the rare scholarship and wide reading of its author make it only too rich in suggestive illustrations.

The Rights of an Animal; a New Essay in Ethics. By Edward Byron Nicholson, M.A., late Scholar of Trinity College, Oxford. C. Kegan Paul and Co. 1879.

Perhaps the rights of a fellowcreature would have been, as a title to this book, more explanatory of its purpose. Men, of course, are animals; but that word is so often used as if it meant another order of beings, and did not include men, that in a question of "rights" it may lead to confusion. Besides that, a Creator is everywhere in this book not merely taken as a fact, which nowadays it is not always, but the ethical principle which underlies the whole the

rights of a fellow-creature-imposes mutual limitations and shuts out, by mutual rights, at once on the one hand barbarous torture, and on the other, extremes of, e.g., antivivisection doctrines.

This is a book original in character, written in an original manner, and with an original style of its own. "The author," as he yet calls himself-though, to be consistent, it should have been the maker-in his "Forewords," commonly called the preface, does "not claim to have found a new truth; Lawrence, Bentham, Helps, have each laid down the principle that feeling"-i.e., the power of feeling pleasure and pain-" gives rights; and this principle was clear enough to anyone who would look straight at it, and into it." Herbert Spencer, by his definition of happiness, has done much to form the theory of the book, and is so acknowledged; i.e., the theory of right and wrong as to animalrights, which we therefore need not say is not that of "might is right."

But the ethical claim of the essay is to have started from a still earlier principle in morals than any evoked by Mr. Spencer, or either of the writers named-the first principle; and to have strengthened that first principle by an argument from moral evolution : see Forewords, p. ix. This principle, too, is enunciated as the "something we English call conscience; what it bids us do we call right, what it forbids is wrong." Now, without space to go fully into the matter, we are very much afraid conscience is too elastic as a principle, or at least as a guide, for the purpose for which it is evoked; an educated conscience, and equally a conscience uneducated, may be found to "bid" what most, we trust, still "call wrong," and to "forbid" what we hope most will

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