ulars.

Dress, ceremony, occupation, caste, rules of inheritance, all were regulated by custom. Individual liberty would have been only license, a recurrence to the old savage anarchy, most dangerous to the hard won discipline of government. A man was born into a certain place in the world, and was expected to fill it, as his father had filled it before him. The idea of progress was utterly unknown.

In all but a few nations, whose geography was peculiar, this stress of customary law has been too rigorous for progress. It has so moulded the minds of the people, that their only desire is to live like their forefathers. China, India, Persia are arrested civilizations. They reached a certain point and then stopped. The law which brought them out of anarchy caught them in its net. That which has been their blessing is now their curse.

How, then, did a few European nations escape from the petrify. ing influence of custom? The answer lies in a fact whose own explanation is not clear. Greece, Rome, and our Teutonic forefathers inherited from their ancestors a polity, in which the supreme power was to some extent divided. Each State had a king, a council, and a popular assembly. How this form of government arose it would not be easy to say; but to it probably is due that we have escaped the fate of China. For the division of power brought on "government by discussion;" affairs of state were talked over, reason and common sense were appealed to; in other words, the deadliest foes to unreasoning custom were in constant activity. The habit of discussion is contagious. Men who had been thinking for themselves on politics, came also to think for themselves on Art, on Science, on Religion.

There was a certain amount of luck in the preservation of the ew States in which this government by discussion existed. They were few and small, and existed at the same epoch with powerful and despotic empires. But Greece was saved by the stupendous mismanagement and folly of the Persian generals; and Rome grew up at such a distance from any great kingdom, that before she was called on to contend with any Asiatic power, she became strong enough to protect herself. Doubtless many small communities, in whom freedom was just beginning, were thus trodden down by compact autocracies. But Greece and Rome were not trodden down. They finally lost their power; but not until the

spirit of discussion had been shown to confer an inestimable advantage upon the nations who practiced it. The Germans, who brought from their forests the same polity, spread over Western Europe. To them, and to the descendants of the classic nations, is due that spirit of progress which we, who have it, are so apt to imagine has been the universal tendency of man, but which history shows to be the inheritance of a favored few.

We have followed only the main current of Mr. Bagehot's thought. His account of the formation of national character, of the origin of caste nations, of the use of conflict in the propagation of military virtues all these we are compelled to pass over. Yet without these and a thousand corroborating details, we are doing great injustice to the author's argument. The strength of that argument is not to be estimated from an insufficient outline. Yet we believe that so far as was consistent with our limits, we have fairly presented Mr. Bagehot's theory. That theory seems to us logical, convincing and complete; in accordance with the best thought of the time, and clearly explaining a multitude of facts apparently inconsistent.

We cannot close the book without feeling how wonderfully modern science has changed the outlook from every department of human affairs. These facts were assumed undoubtingly by every mediæval thinker-that the earth was the centre of the solar system, and that the solar system was the principal fact of the universe; that this earth was constructed as the abode of man, and all its inhabitants created for his service; that man's life upon the globe had endured less than six thousand years, and would soon terminate. These assumptions admirably accorded with the current theology, and with the natural pride of the race. Where the drama was so tremendous, and the time for its exhibition was so short, a deus ex machina was in perfect keeping. When the very conception of Law in nature had scarcely been reached, the violation of that law excited no surprise. But now the slow progress of scientific research has utterly changed our apparent relations to the universe. A new heaven is over our head, and a new earth under our feet. We see our globe a subordinate member of an insignificant system. We see man one animal among many; hardly able at the outset of his career, to cope with the fiercer carnivora, and even now the helpless prey of a legion of parasites.

We see him, subject to the operation of inevitable laws, and living or dying according to his knowledge of the properties of matter. We see him through the lapse of interminable centuries, slowly progressing in this physical knowledge. In its train come civilization, comfort and the arts of life. Far behind it follow Government and Religion. The rapidity of their advance depends upon the pace of the leader. When slow-footed Science begins to run, the motion will be transmitted all along the line; and she is moving now so fleetly, that we of this generation may live to see the beginning of that mighty change in our creeds and our institutions, the rumor of whose coming is already on the air. R. S. H.

AD THALIARCHUM.

HORAT. CARM. I. IX.

You see Soracte's towering height

In winter's garb stands shining;

And how the woods beneath the weight

Of snows are low declining;

And how, still at the touch of the magical wand
Of the spirit of frost, the rivulets stand.

With faggots blazing on the hearth

Drive out of doors the biting cold;
And, drawing forth with cheery mirth
The Sabine wine now four years old,

With copious draughts of the joy-giving bowl
Let us drown in its richness all cares of the soul.

Let other things the gods ordain,

Whose might the elements obey,

Who calm the storms, the surging main,
And by whose will's resistless sway

The cypress no longer is bowed by the gale,

And the quivering ash is at rest in the vale.

Seek not to know the morrow's lot,
But, in the present, count as gain
Whatever fate has kindly brought;

Nor, when a youth, in cold disdain

Shun, moodily, pleasures of music and dances,
Nor the girl who invites you with amorous glances,

Old age will come full soon, amain,

With hoary locks and aspect stern;
But now the Campus' spreading plain,
The streets well filled at every turn

With maidens and youths, who, with low-whispered
greeting,

The twilight's calm hour each a lover is meeting.

The gleeful laugh that now discloses

In the dark corner's welcome shield
The fair one, who but half opposes

Her lover's ardor, and will yield

The pledge taken off from her arms or her finger,
Should allure you while young 'mid such pleasures to

linger.

J. ANDREWS HARRIS.

NOTES ON THE USE OF GLAZED TILES FOR MURAL DECORATION.

A

N art, which dates from a very early period, spreading rapidly at times, fluctuating, sometimes almost entirely disused, this art of decorating wall surfaces with glazed tiles, again bids fair to play no unimportant part in the history of "late 19th century art of western Europe, even of America. We feel that a volumeno pamphlet either-might easily be written on this subject, full of readable, memorable matter; but its time has not yet come. Meanwhile, to us it seems strange that an art of this kind should, at any time, have been neglected by a people who had previously practiced it. Its cleanliness, the wonderful effects capable of production through its means, and its almost indestructibility are so

self-evident that its short-lived popularity when most widely spread can only be accounted for by the restless, feverish love of change which characterizes the human race. From this last I except the Chinese, with whom polychromy is an essential part of architecture; and it is probably owing to the fact of color being with them more essential than form, that the art survives among this people so famed for the production of specimens of it. Although in these notes I intend to avoid mentioning instances, as far as possible, I cannot pass by in silence the celebrated Temple of Gratitude, at Nankin, built from the designs of the architect Hoang-li-tæ, at a cost of $3,750,000, the nine stories of which (aggregating 236 feet) are cased with tiles in five colors, viz., blue, green, white, red and brown.

It is to their commerce with China that the Persians and Egyptians owe their first knowledge of wall tiles; for the Chinese traded with these people as far back as the time of the Romans. And thus it was that the walls of the most ancient mosques, not only of Persia and Egypt, but of India, Syria, Algeria, Arabia and Turkey, are adorned with them, either painted or stamped. In some of these mosques they cover not only the external and infernal wall surfaces, but (as at Medina, built 707 A. D.) the columns for half their height. They are in all colors, bright green, azure and gold predominating, are painted with moresco work, and covered with an enamel varnish. So beautiful does this render the mosque at Tabreez that James Ferguson tells us1 "Europe possesses no specimen of ornamentation comparaable with this," that "even the mosaic painted glass of our cathedrals is a very partial and incomplete ornament compared with the brilliancy of a design pervading the whole building and entirely carried out in the same style."

Wherever the Mohammedans carried their arms we find this art spreading itself. The Spaniards owe their knowledge of its beauties to the Moorish conquest. As these Moors were debarred from drawing natural objects, the harmonious use of rich and varied coloring was their chief delight, and in this they have attained a wonderful excellence. With their expulsion at the close of the fifteenth century, after eight centuries of dominion, the harmony of their coloring is lost to Spain, and by degrees the 1 Hist of Archt., vol 2, p. 436.