Apropos of the death of the great German archeologist Stark, M. George Perrot, of the French Institute, furnishes to the Revue des Deux Mendes (Ist August), a critical and biographical sketch of the works and life of the deceased savant, and reviews the progress made since the days of Winckelmann by the science with which his name is identified. Stark's reputation is world-wide. Wherever there is a classical student sufficiently acquainted with German to read his memoirs, but few of which, unfortunately, have been translated into English or French, there his name is held in honour, But his aims were too lofty. Instead of re-editing some standard work such as Miller's Handbuch der Architologie der Kunst, of which the last edition dates from 1848, and enlarging it to include the acquisitions made by Hotta and Layard in Assyria, by Burnouf in Persia, by Renan, Hamilton and many others in Phcenicia, by Perrot in Asia Minor, and by Schliemann in Greece and the Troad, Stark undertook to re-write from the beginning the history of art, with the result that he was overtaken by death before he had completed more than a sixth part of his task. The main interest of the article lies, therefore, not so much in its review of Stark's labours, as in , the history it offers of the progress of research since 1764, when Winckelmann's Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthumes laid the foundations of scientific archzology.
France, England, America and Germany and very funny, never dull and seldom|have alike contributed enthusiastic ex- to embitter the estrangement. Extracts respectable.—The gun of the future," blorers, and funds drawn from both public are given from Mile. Necker's diary and private sources. The mass of accumu-Inted materials, documentary, monumental, decorative, domestic and commercial is now far too unwieldy to be dealt with by one man, or to be used otherwise than as and letters which will interest those who love to trace the earliest stirrings of genius in those destined to become literary celebrities.—Still in the historical mood, we next encounter a continuation of M. illustrative of different departments of history, or as commentary and explanation through which alone, when reading classical authors, we can transport ourselves back into their times and surroundings. An exhaustive history of ancient art is more impossible now than it ever has been.
The increasing light is daily rendering the remaining darkness more visible. Thus Layard's discovery of ivory panels adorned with hieroglyphies proves an unsuspected relation between Egypt and Assyria, while the resemblances traceable between the Maury's Assemblées clu Clergé en France sous Vancienne monarchic, which now that it is completed, forms a connected history of the relations of the Gallican Church with the French crown on the one hand, and with the Roman court on the other, from the middle of the thirteenth to the end of the eighteenth century. It is interesting to note how close to a rupture with Rome the French Church seemed on various occasions tobe. Happily or unhappily, such rupture never occurred, the clergy contriving to reconcile their often-tried and well-proved earliest specimens of Greek art and some of the Nimroud antiquities, and the likeness in style which archaic Greek coins bear to Assyrian cylinders and clay seals, not only betray unlooked-for intercourse between the Assyrian, Phoenician and Greek races at a period before the dawn of history, commonly so-called, but suggest an Eastern origin for the whole art of coinage. Facts and speculations such as these had never dawned on Miller, whose treatment of Greek art is based on an arbitrary isolation of it from all external creative influences. In truth, Greece, where he studied what he considered the infancy of art, was the scene of its lusty adolescence and perfected prime. The impossible task which we have indicated was that set before himself by Stark, and his disappearance from the field of labour renders the chances ofa renewal of his attempt more unlikely than ever.—M. Paul Janet, of the Institute, pursues his researches into the history of Socialism, a dry subject rendered all the more arid by its association in this particular article with names such as those of Mably, Mercier de la Rividre, Morelly and others hardly known outside of France, or even within it, We doubt that one person out of a thousand has ever heard of the once notorious Babeuf, agitator, author, journalist, forger, and conspirator, in whose eyes Robespierre was criminally mild and indulgent, and who was at length happily guillotined by the Directory, before his plans for establishing the Commune were sufficiently matured to be put in operation.—'The present instalment of Lo Salon de Mme. Necker introduces us neither to old friends nor to uew acquaintances. It is, however, none the less interesting, as it gives much infurmation about the early life of Aune-Louise-
Germaine Necker, Mme. Necker's only child, destined to fill so large a place in the world's estimation as Mme. de Staél.
The mother's devoted attachment to her husband went so far as to render her jealous of the large share which her daughter held in his affections. It was not until a severe illness threatened Mme.
Necker's life, that full confidence was restored between her and her daughter, who was then in her nineteenth year, and whose repugnance to an English marriage, even one so brilliant as that patriotism with an at least external obedience to the Roman pontiff. How truly national the French Church was under the fourteenth and fifteenth Louis is proved alike by the tenacity wherewith it resisted the encroachments of the Crown, and by the readiness with which it suspended its claims when dangers from outside threatened the kingdom, Oddly enough, when, after mutual concessions, the relations between the French clergy and the Pope Decame less strained, it was in deference to the will and example of Louis the Fourteenth that a formal reconciliation was effeted. The great majority of the bishops accepted the famous bull Unigenitus, though it must be noted that the inferior rgy were by no means in accord with the fathers of the Church. This was in 1716.
Ten years later, the assembly of the clergy invoked the aid of the secular arm against those who still disputed the validity of the pontifical constitution, and to such good effect that while on the one hand dissent was momentarily crushed out, and the throne and altar were tightly united in bonds of mutual interest, the independence of the Gallican Church was destroyed, and its ability to resist exorbitant claims on its pecuniary resources, weakened and almost abolished. Meanwhile, the law courts threw every difficulty in the way of the orthodox clergy, and rigorously prosecuted such cures as refused the sacraments to dissenters. In 1754, Louis the Fifteenth had sided against the clergy, and the Courts were all the more instant in their persecutions of the orthodox. Benedict the Fourteenth interposed with a brief counselling the bishops to moderation in their opposition,—but in fact the knell of clerical ascendancy had sounded, and the world was more anxious to listen to the authors of the Encyclopedia than to mingle in ecclesiastical disputes. Power had passed into lay hands and in those hands it was destined to remain. Thenceforward to the Revolution the exclusive privileges of the clergy went on rapidly melting away, to disappear altogether in the general cataclysm.—Under the title of Une religieuse excommuniée, by M. G, Valbert, readers of Miss Lonsdale's mendacious Sister Dora will find a temperate record of a truly noble life devoted to works of charity, and marked, as indeed all such lives are, by a total absence of that bustle and splash which Miss Lonsdale calls on an proposed with William Pitt, had helped imbecile public to admire in her heroine.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.