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their companions, pupils, and imitators, who are known and now only known as Old Masters. A fine generalisation of the characters pervading all these schools, leads him to the conclusion that each of them based itself from the first on a peculiar Christian dogma, and that in general Italian art, born of Christianity, flourished or decayed, waxed or waned, as the Christian ideal held its ground in the artist's mind against the tendencies to naturalism, which continually beset it, and which were encouraged by some of the reigning houses, but particularly by the Medici. It was against this hardly disguised heathenism that Savonarola preached such a zealous crusade at Florence-a service to Christian art, which M. Rio acknowledges in two chapters of singular eloquence and originality.

There are none, perhaps, in the three volumes which will be read with such intense interest. The character of the austere and great-hearted monk, who lived and died so heroically, is one which becomes more interesting the more it is investigated. As the favourite English idea that he was a sort of Italian Protestant Reformer, put to death by the Pope for preaching against the Inquisition and the College of Cardinals, becomes dispelled by candid investigation, the great qualities which the Dominican possessed, and the influence which he exercised, grow more and more apparent. M. Rio has studied him, not in the confused traditions of contemporaries who are unable to understand him, but in his own words and deeds; and wonderful is the fertile beauty of those words, even as we read them after the lapse of so many centuries. This passage is quoted by M. Rio as one specimen of the spirit in which he formed the artists of his age :

"Your notions are stamped with the grossest materialism. Beauty in things which are compound results either from proportion in the parts or harmony in the colours; but in that which is simple, beauty is in the transfiguration, in the light; it is by reason of this that in visible objects one seeks the supreme beauty in its essence. The more created things participate in and approach the beauty of GOD, the more beautiful they are, as the beauty of the body is then in harmony with the beauty of the soul; so that if you were to take any two women, equally beautiful in form, of this congregation, she, who is the more holy would excite the greater admiration among the spectators, and the palm would not fail to be decreed to her even by carnal men.'

Preachings like these did much for the rescue of Christian art from the Epicurean grossness which was fast settling upon its chaste and noble features. They reached both the artists and the public; and their proofs are found in the wonderful purity and the light that is like the light of grace, which we find in the pictures of the Florentine artists, who were proud to be reckoned as disciples of the great preacher. And they are many enough to make

a school of themselves-with some names among them which are the greatest in Italian art; Michel Angelo, Perugino, Fra Bartolomeo, Sandro Botticelli, Lorenzo di Credi. Such was their love for him that some flung away their brushes when he fell a martyr to the misers and libertines of Florence. One lost faith in GOD and man thereafter; but one also lived to paint his visage among Saints and Doctors, even in the halls of the Vatican, when time and the curse which descended upon Florence made all men feel the abominable injustice of his execution. If since the age of the great monk's influence Italian art has not sustained the glory of its prime, it is perhaps from the causes that he designated; nor are the lessons he preached to the artists of the sixteenth century at Florence less applicable to those of the nineteenth in London.

REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

Mourning and Praise. Two Sermons preached at Canterbury Cathedral. By H. ALFORD, D.D., Dean of Canterbury. Rivingtons.

THESE two Sermons do not appear to have much connection, beyond the circumstance that the funeral of the late Prince Consort, when the first of the two was preached, occurred in the week before the last Sunday in the year, when a review of the use made of Church privileges could not but be apposite. Concerning the first it is sufficient to say, that it selects for admiration the really good points of the Prince's character, and does not exaggerate their benefit. The second is both generally more important, and as far as our experience goes, much more novel. It is a defence-we do not say of the Cathedral, but of the Church Service; for no one has yet been able to show why the Cathedral should differ from the Parochial Service, save as being celebrated on a more dignified scale-as respects the Intonation of the Prayers, the Chanting of the Psalms, and the use of Anthems; and the sermon ends with some words of solemn warning both for choir and people. It is very refreshing at length to find a few Deans like those of Canterbury and Ely, and we hope we may add York, rising to an appreciation of the glorious Temples over which they have been called to preside, and striving to render the services performed there in some degree worthy of the building, and of Him in whose honour it was originally constructed.

Our best thanks are due to the editors and printers-amongst whom we presume that Mr. G. H. FORBES is chief-for the very handsome reprint of the Missale ad usum insignis et præclaræ Ecclesiæ Sarum. (London: Stewart.) The present volume contains the "Proprium de Tempore;" a second will give us the " Proprium de Sanctis." We trust that there may be a large and remunerating sale of so important and costly a work.

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Letters from Rome to Friends in England. By the Rev. JOHN W. BURGON, M.A., Fellow of Oriel College. London: Murray.

MR. BURGON's name is already familiar to Churchmen. His plain Commentary on the Gospels is, as it deserves to be, a household book. The genial sympathy, which he displayed in his treatment of "the Portrait of a Christian Gentleman," would also be sufficient of itself to lead us to regard with interest another work proceeding from his pen. Lately, however, we have had occasion to charge him with injuring a good cause by the flippancy with which he meets the arguments of his opponents in his Sermons on Inspiration; and now it is with no little regret that we feel ourselves compelled to denounce without reserve the way in which he treats our controversy with Rome. Surely our cause would be a bad one, if it needed the use of such ill-tempered and contemptuous language as that which he continually employs.

Some years ago, Mr. Hobart Seymour, of known repute in a certain religious circle, went to Rome, and wrote two books on his return, which had a large circulation at the time, " A Pilgrimage "A to Rome," and "Mornings with the Jesuits." His feelings with respect to the Church of Rome were so well known, that the manner in which he contrived to obtain his morning interviews with the Jesuits, furnished some curious questions of casuistry at home. He must evidently have represented himself as an inquirer, and if any of his Jesuit friends may chance to have read the result of his inquiries, they must doubtless have been reminded of the words of the Scottish bard, and wondered that they did not occur to them at the time,

"A cheild's amang you, taking notes,
And, faith, he'll prent it."

Mr. Seymour, however, much as he may have betrayed confidence, did not, as far as we remember, for it is some years since we read his book, forget the gratitude due to his informants; for considering his well known bias, his work was remarkably free from the "odium theologicum." This cannot be said for Mr. Burgon, whose book would have been far more valuable, if he could have divested himself of the prejudice through which all objects are viewed. At the same time, as the acting English Chaplain at Rome, he was in a fair position for observation; and the charge of want of candour, which has been brought against Mr. Hobart Seymour, can in no way apply to him.

VOL. XXIV.-APRIL, 1862.

Y

The majority of Mr. Burgon's letters appeared a few months since in the pages of the Guardian, and are now republished with the addition of some others. The additions consist of an introductory letter addressed to his nieces, just such an epistle as a goodnatured uncle would write to two little girls; and three more at the end of the book, written as an angry controversialist would write to an adversary, when he had forgotten that Truth is strong enough in itself without the support of ill-tempered declamation. These additions we regret, the first as unnecessary, and the last as injurious to our position through the vehemence of the language. The other letters are for the most part of very considerable interest, and therefore we most sincerely wish that the blots had never been there. Mr. Burgon's ability, his varied information, and ease of diction, led us to expect that a book produced by him would be of great value in showing Italian Christians the erudition of which the English Church was possessed, and the calmness with which we could survey the points of difference and agreement which exist between the two Communions. We believe that Roman Catholics generally misunderstand us more than we misunderstand them; and such a book as Mr. Burgon's, if it had been written in calmer and more dignified language, might materially have assisted in removing the prejudice with which we are regarded. We must however do Mr. Burgon the justice to say that his prejudices are not one-sided, but he has allowed himself to speak with a flippant impertinence of all who differ from him on one side as well as on the other. If the "pervert" to whom the last three letters are addressed is an ignorant fool, a Protestant friend, who objected to some verses in the Times, is an ass (p. 238), and the Prior General of the Convent of S. Onofico must have been rather surprised to hear the sacristan designated as a donkey by Mr. Burgon (p. 267). Mr. Burgon may perhaps complain that we have deduced more than he meant from some of his expressions, but this is his own fault, as we shall see in the following instance. "Rather a longea-, I mean rather a lynx-eyed friend immediately inquired whether there was not a prayer for the dead." (P. 238.) If he meant he was a lynx, why did he call him an ass? Such expressions are not only, we think, an offence against good taste, but a breach of Christian courtesy.

Perhaps the most interesting letters in the book are those devoted to the Codex Vaticanus. To inspect this had been Mr. Burgon's chief object of desire during his sojourn at Rome, and it is certainly a matter of regret that he had not opportunity of making more extensive collations than his short inspection permitted. The difficulty of obtaining access to it evidently made him very angry. The circumstances he forbears to explain. We can form no judg ment on circumstances which Mr. Burgon forbears to explain, but must remind him that he is not the first whose forbearance has

thus been exercised. For some reason, satisfactory no doubt to themselves, Codex B has always been jealously guarded by the curators of the Vatican Library. In this case the Church has certainly been in a most literal sense the guardian of Holy Writ, but evidently from no desire of withholding it from the world, but rather of preserving it for the labours of men who could be safely trusted with the work of collation. For this purpose Tischendorf was only allowed a few hours on the 25th of July, 1843, and Muralto with difficulty obtained access to the MS. for three days in 1846. Whether the curators of the Vatican Library were judicious in preserving the monopoly for Cardinal Mai is not a question for us to decide, but we fully agree with Mr. Burgon, that an exact reprint of the Codex Vaticanus, similar to that which has been made by Mr. Baber of the Codex Alexandrinus in the British Museum, still remains a desideratum. Cardinal Mai appears to have been too much occupied with other affairs to bestow more than leisure hours on the work; and although he was engaged in it for many years, all he did was to correct the proof sheets of another text by comparing them with the Vatican MS. Consequently, when completed, the text was no more that of Codex B than Muralto's had been, which had placed between brackets words omitted in the Codex and given various readings in foot-notes. Cardinal Mai's labours were interrupted by his death in 1854, and Vercellone took up the work at the point where Mai had left it. Although he corrected many inaccuracies, reverence for his friend appears to have prevented any alteration in the plan; but it is probable that if the work had been commenced ab initio by Vercellone, it would have been of greater value. A second edition had been commenced by Mai before his death, which was also given to the world by Vercellone. The texts of these two editions were compared by Mr. Burgon with the Codex in as many instances as his hasty review rendered possible, and he inclines to the opinion that the second edition is by far the most correct.

The fact of marginal references in the Codex, directing the reader to a system of sections wholly diverse from those of Eusebius, is in Mr. Burgon's opinion the greatest proof of its antiquity. He assumes that its date may be placed not later than the fourth century; and here by the way we may remark, that the paragraphs in the recently edited Codex Zacynthius coincide with those of Codex B, and thus each affords to the other a mutual evidence of antiquity. Not only a date, but a birthplace also may be assigned to the MS. Its provincialisms afford some evidence that it was written at Alexandria, and the remarkable correspondence of the text with that used by S. Cyril of Alexandria in his commentary on S. John supports this view. Vercellone is of opinion that it is one of the fifty codices which Eusebius procured at the command of Constantine for the use of the Church at Constantinople.

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