ideals of youth. He had fixed his aim high; and the sensibility of nature, which had inspired him with that aim, made him too consciously alive to the difficulties and imperfect steps which necessarily preceded its accomplishment. These considerations, however, belong to the speculative order. Turning for a moment to Eastlake's works, the word which, putting technical criticism aside, we most naturally think of in connection with them is distinction. They show throughout a singular refinement of idea and of feeling; they are also completed with the most conscientious care and accuracy; there is no trick, no fancifulness; he has done for his work all he could; it is finished not only lovingly, but caressingly. These qualities would not, however, alone constitute distinction. But his pictures exhibit also a beauty of expression, a grace of line and arrangement, which were, indeed, among the distinguishing merits of English art a century ago, but are now very rare indeed in our school. Largeness of style and tenderness are the special notes of Hellenic art. The largeness, in our judgment, he did not reach; but he has much of the indescribable tenderness. Eastlake may have cultivated the qualities we have specified, through his love of ancient art, and particularly of sculpture; which he judged with a mastery of the rarest occurrence in a painter. At any rate, he set a high value upon them. In one of the very few passages where he alludes to his own work he says: I feel more than ever the importance of graceful arrangement, and never can come up to my wishes on this point. The imitation of nature, however refined, is tolerably safe and secure work in comparison with the arrangement of the masses and lines of a composition. No part of the art, I am convinced, requires more taste than this: it is where a painter can be helped least, and where he must draw most on his own powers. It is, in short, the most creative part of the art, more so than even the expression of the passions; because for these we have a native and common feeling to guide us, and nature in detail to look at. But the elements of beauty, applied to the conduct of a picture so as to produce that effect which attracts and enchants the spectator at the first glance, require more of the artist than any other branch of the art.' The rare and elevated style of beauty here indicated is, indeed, to take the fine figure of Tennyson's poem, rather the Holy Grail of the painter,-something 'seen, but hardly seen,' caught only by flashes and in ecstasy, than a charm which he can hope to grasp and master. Yet it is one which-though far in itself from the qualities which popular taste delights in-has, nevertheless, a strange and durable power of enchaining the spectator. And so far as the painter whose life we have here imperfectly sketched reached his ideal, he rendered a peculiar service to contemporary English art; in which distinction is, probably, the quality of which we are most in need. And, at the same time, Eastlake has secured his hold upon later ages, and that in a manner most congenial to the modest refinement, the admirable sincerity, of his own nature. For grace and charm and repose, their inseparable companion, are never out of date. We may tire of the sublime; we may be provoked by the grotesque; we may feel oppressed by the powerful; we may be repelled by the terrible. But there is no hour which is not the hour of Beauty. Peace!which poor Byron asked in vain might be his epitaph,—is the last word of Art. 1869. ART. V.-1. Prehistoric Times, as illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Savages. By Sir John Lubbock, Bart., F.R.S. 2nd edition. 2. Congrès International d'Anthropologie et d'Archéologie préhistoriques, 2nd Session, Paris, 1867. 3. International Congress of Prehistoric tions of 3rd Session, Norwich, 1868. THE Paris, 1868. HE circumstances under which Flint implements, and other evidences of man's handiwork, have recently been discovered in this country and on the Continent, have all tended to prove that a greater length of time must be allowed for man's existence on the globe than has hitherto been admitted. But assuming this question as settled in their favour, archæologists, like spendthrift heirs who have come suddenly into the possession of unexpected wealth, are willing to squander it with the most lavish hand. So far from questioning the antiquity of anything, thousands and tens of thousands of years are ready to be heaped up on any monument or object that cannot produce a written certificate of its birth, or prove its origin by evidence that would satisfy a jury. It must, however, be confessed, that the temptations to this mode of treatment are great. Once an object is swept into the great dust-bin of prehistoric archæology, we need give ourselves no further trouble about it. The cry now is, it belonged to people who have long passed away: we know nothing of their language or their religion, still less of their manners or customs; and if this be so, it is no use inquiring for what purpose the monument was erected, nor at what period: all that we are now allowed, is to worship, and for this we must have faith, and with this in archæology, as in other matters, we are told we may rest and be thankful. It would be well, however, if the question were allowed to rest there; but like all persons whose new faith has not been generally accepted, the prehistoric antiquarians are particularly jealous of all collateral issues. Any attempt to prove that some at least of the megalithic remains may belong to historic times, is treated as an attack on the antiquity of man, though the connexion between the two subjects is at least as remote as the proverbial assertion that the building of Tenterden steeple was the cause of the Goodwin Sands. The question, for instance, whether Stonehenge or Avebury were erected before or after Roman times, has absolutely no bearing on the age of the Amiens drift implements or the Dordogne cave deposits; and, till the two subjects are kept entirely separate, a correct view of the case cannot be arrived at. Each class of monuments must be treated on its own merits, and examined according to its own lights, but so soon as this is done much of the mist that now enshrouds their history will, if we mistake not, be rapidly cleared away. Although the Danish antiquaries have worked harder in collecting their non-historic antiquities, and have done more to popularize the study of them than those of any other country, they must also be held in a great measure responsible for the very unsatisfactory condition in which the science finds itself placed. There is probably no country in Europe-not even excepting Franceso rich in primæval antiquities as Denmark; and besides this, that State has had the exceptional advantage of kings and a court sufficiently enlightened to encourage the study of them, and, what is next in importance, a law of treasure trove, which is not only intelligible but effective. With these advantages the museums at Copenhagen early became crowded with treasures, and luckily found also a curator in the late Professor Thomsen prepared to grapple with the problem of their classification. In 1836 he propounded his system, and set to work to arrange his museum in accordance with it. All the ancient history of Denmark was divided into three distinct and successive periods. First came an age when the country was inhabited by savages ignorant of the use of metals, and only employing stone and bone for all the purposes for which tools were necessary. And as a corollary to this, every monument which contained no metal, or in which any flint implements were found, was at once relegated to these remote ages. Next came a period when men had attained to a knowledge of a mixture of tin and copper, which, strange as it may seem, did apparently precede the knowledge of iron and other useful metals in that country. This was called the age of bronze, and is variously estimated to have lasted from 1000 to 2000 years. Then came an age and a people who knew how to smelt iron ore, and to fabricate implements of that metal. This took place about, or shortly after, the Christian era in that country, and continued till about the year 1000 A.D., when it is assumed that written history sufficed to supply the place of diggings for the elucidation of human events. There was a delightful simplicity about this system that made it instantly popular. Every one could distinguish between stone, bronze, and iron implements, and as this was all the knowledge required to determine the relative age of any "find," or of any monuments, it was universally adopted. It was also eminently logical, and if Denmark had always been inhabited by the reasonable and progressive race of Aryans who now form the bulk of the population of that country, it might have been unassailable. Where it fails is, that it takes no account of the fact that some races of mankind are as unprogressive as the Negro or the Red Indian. It forgets that the inhabitants of the south of Franceno one knows how many years ago—were almost identical with the Esquimaux of the present day in most of their habits, and that their tools and implements can hardly be distinguished from those now in use within the Arctic circle. It forgets that there are other races, like the Egyptian, the Etruscan, or 'the Mexican, who rise rapidly to a certain stage of sensuous but unintellectual civilization, but cannot advance beyond, and, when brought into contact with higher races, disappear and leave no written record of their existence. It overlooks, in fact, the existence of different races of mankind endowed with different qualities and capabilities, and assumes that they were at all times governed by the hard logic of the nineteenth century in the Teutonic countries of Europe. The Danish system also fails, inasmuch as it takes no account of the perpetual ebb and flow that controls the destinies of savage tribes in remote periods of their history. It forgets their migrations and their wars; their periods of prosperity, alternating with famine and distress; that at one time a particular tribe may have attained a certain amount of civilisation only to sink again to a state of misery and starvation; sometimes displaced, sometimes isolated, at others overwhelmed by other races, and their customs sometimes permanently, sometimes only temporarily, obliterated. All these and fifty other accidents may, and many must have occurred, to disturb the quiet sequence of events which the Danish classification presumes, and may have led to phenomena very different from the peaceful progress which the the industry of Copenhagen or Manchester presents at the present day, but which is the standard now applied to these long forgotten times. Where, however, the system most fatally breaks down is, that it takes no account of the survival of customs, which is one of the most prevalent as well as one of the most perplexing phenomena we have to deal with in treating of matters of this class. Two familiar examples will explain what is meant by this. The Greeks in their great age are assumed to have been a purely Aryan people, speaking a language closely allied to Sanscrit; yet their religion is not that of the Vedas or the Zend Avesta. Far from it. Their gods are anthropic, and belong to an ancestral worshipping people. Their oracles, their ceremonies, all the external forms of their faith, are antagonistic to Aryan principles, and must have survived from some earlier Turanian people whom they had obliterated, so far at least as outward appearances are concerned. Or, again, no one can doubt how much of the ceremonial and how many of the forms, and even some of the beliefs, of ancient Pagan Rome exist in the churches of the South of Europe, and will not, cannot, be eradicated from the soil in which they have once flourished. So, too, it appears to have been in the North. The Paganism of Scandinavia in the tenth century, just before its supercession by Christianity, was not the Paganism of an Aryan people, though the blood of the inhabitants at that period was at least mainly derived from that stock. It seems composed of survivals from the religions of the various races who preceded them, and which it would require a steady head and infinite learning and patience to unravel. So it is with their antiquities. The conflicting currents of human history, especially in barbarous ages, cannot be measured by an evenly graduated foot-rule, nor its depths be gauged by a plumb and line. We shall never, indeed, arrive at any satisfactory conclusion till we acknowledge this, and till we cease to flatter ourselves with the idea that because we have succeeded in arranging some thousands of bits of stone or bronze in rows in glass cases, that therefore we understand the history and the manners and customs of long vanished races of mankind. Notwithstanding all this, it would be unfair not to admire, at least, the tentative merits of the Danish system. Its very simplicity made it advantageous. It was as easy as A, B, C. Any one could learn it; as many did, who worked earnestly and well, and advanced our knowledge considerably, but who would have been deterred from attempting it had a more complicated arrangement been presented to them. Nor was it in a certain sense un true. |