Doges, commanders, and statesmen hardly seemed to crystallize in their own characters enough of that constructive policy which one must feel lay at the base of Venetian influence; perhaps that was the reason why, exactly a thousand years after it was established, the Venetian Republic was destroyed by Napoleon. Another seemingly strange characteristic of the rulers of Venice was their apparent distaste for colonization. Venice did possess colonies on the Bosphorus and elsewhere, but the Venetians find their modern counterpart rather in the unsuccessful efforts of France at colonization than in the more practical and the more successful efforts of England and Germany. A third impression which Mr. Hazlitt does well to bring out is that it is quite poss ble, despite much personal hardihood, for men to be very luxurious in their tastes and thoroughly materialistic in their ideas. These elements are borne in upon one more and more by every new visit to the picture galleries at Venice. In the immortal canvases of Titian, Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese we see the faces of noble Venetian citizens-faces betokening high intellectual power, but with a certain narrowness which makes us think that their statesmanship covered only party despotism, with a certain hardness of gaze which makes us feel that, no matter how formally pious, their real love was that of worldly aggrandizement and of dazzling brilliance. It is no wonder that the Venetians had come to feel great confidence in their power to hold a commanding position among nations, and that secretly many of them believed their city to be, as the Veronese depicts it, "Venice, Mistress of the World, between Justice and Peace." The wonderful situation of Venice, the still more wonderful power of its architects in developing a unique architecture, have made many a traveler feel that it was the City of the Soul; those who study into its history, however, some times feel differently.

The excellences of Mr. Hazlitt's work would have been emphasized had he the charm of literary style. He is evidently a man of prodigious industry, but the reader will turn from his portly volumes to the smaller ones of Mr. Howells's "Venetian Life," for instance, with a sigh of relief. If Venice is worth anything to the reader,

its chief worth lies in its communication of romantic emotion, and that cannot be communicated by a mechanical writer.

The revised edition of a book rarely calls for such notice as is due in the case of the revision of Mr. Stearns's "Midsummer of Italian Art," a capital work, published five years ago. It quickly took rank as a book of acute and scholarly criticism. The revision of the "Midsummer" is particularly important in that Mr. Stearns now gives us an analysis of the paintings of Raphael, Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Correggio, brought up to the present date, thus offering to his readers the fruits of a half-decade's accomplishment by students in critical estimate of the works of these four immortal painters, the greatest representatives of the midsummer of Italian art.

Mr. Stearns is not entirely unconscious of the worth of his product. A reviewer in the London "Spectator," having referred to the first edition of the "Midsummer" as an excellent one to interest beginners in the study of Italian art, is now reminded by that author, in his second edition, that his book is intended rather as a post-graduate course, and as a supplement to Lübke or Woltmann. As establishing this claim, Mr. Stearns complacently calls our attention to a comparison of his criticisms with those by Symonds (which the printer spells without the final "s"), or with those by Crowe and Cavalcaselle! Respecting Michael Angelo, Mr. Stearns hardly admits as worthy of the confidence of students the criticisms by Grimm or by Symonds in their well-known biographies of that great master; he says, "There is no thoroughgoing criticism of Michael Angelo's work that I can hear of in any language, and my own statement would seem to be the first attempt in that direction."

Some time since Mrs. Bell gave us a good, small biography of Raphael, and the other day Miss Hurll published an admirable book on Raphael for beginners in art. The world has not lacked for large biographies of Raphael--such magiste rial volumes as those by M. Müntz, by Professor Grimm, by Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, or that more recent and altogether delightful volume of criticism on "Raphael's Madonnas" by Mr. Karl

Károly. Mr. Strachey's book differs from the above in bringing out more clearly certain fields of criticism. Especially to be noted are his replies to those critics of Raphael who are always preferring the individual to the type, who deem Raphael defective in creative faculty, who declare him rhetorical or at least academic, and, finally, those who, like John Ruskin, complain that in early times art was employed for the display of religious facts, but that in Renaissance times religious facts were employed for the display of art.

Mr. Strachey's most important contribution, however, seems to us to be his discussion of Raphael as a space-composer. He says:

Imagine a window in a room looking out upon a lawn, and consider the opening of the window as the picture, and the window-frame as the picture's frame. Now imagine three persons, whose figures have to be composed into a group in this window-opening. Firstly, let us arrange them standing in a row, side by side, and all in the same plane. This I should call composing the figures in "breadth." Now make one of the figures stand on a chair (always in the same plane), and we get composition in height as well, for upon the difference in the heights of the figures will the composition or pattern depend. Whether the appearance of the picture so far will be good depends upon the skill displayed in the arrangement. If the distances between the figures and the sides of the window are well planned, the composition will be good; if the various altitudes of the figures are harmoniously disposed, the composition will satisfy us in height. But now comes depth. To compose in the third dimension, the figures must be no longer in the same plane. Let one of the figures stand by the window and let the others go out on to the lawn behind at different distances from the window. Wherever the figures stand, we shall have the effect of depth; but we shall only have compositionthat is, harmonious arrangements-in depth if the figures are placed at well-ordered distances. But this is not all. The figure at the far end of the lawn makes me able to mark off mentally and realize the space between it and the one nearer to my eye, so that it is not only the arrangement of the figures themselves that has to be considered, but the disposition of the spaces between them.

It will be seen from this analysis that space-composition and the mere rendering of distant objects are two totally different things, and that distance may be faithfully expressed in a picture without any attempt at space-composition. Almost for the first time, this particular development of art is shown to consist, not only in depicting objects behind one another, but in so

arranging them that the spaces between are disposed with that regard for rhythm which is the basis of the whole art of composition. Regard for rhythm is, beyond anything else, the secret of Raphael's charm for us and of his power over us. This subtle quality Mr. Strachey illustrates in a clever parallel between Raphael and Mozart, men singularly alike, not only in wonderful productivity, but also in that clearness of thought and in that placing of the whole above the parts without which there can be no true harmony. It is safe to say that no critical estimate of Raphael has ever done fuller justice to his rhythm and to his lyricism than does Mr. Strachey's life. Students of art in general, as well as of Raphael in particular, may well be grateful to Raphael's latest biographer for this illuminative book.

From such writing one turns to the well-expressed appreciation of Mr. and Mrs. Blashfield in their two volumes on "Italian Cities." We are sorry that there are only two volumes, and we hope for another two describing certain interesting towns left undescribed in these. Most travelers to Italy and most sojourners in Italy provide themselves, first of all, with Baedeker and then with Hare. After this they are apt to have recourse to the volumes by Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, or those by Mr. Karl Károly or by Mr. Berenson, and then a few will read certain books which describe the land and people-such historical novels as "The Marble Faun" and "Romola" and "The Improvisatore." In the present volume travelers and sojourners will find a mixture of art criticism and descriptions of Italian cities, much to the point, and giving in fairly small compass exactly that sympathetic and quickening touch which is needed by every one, for no one knows too much about Italy. Mr. and Mrs. Blashfield know more than most people do, and they can tell many an observer in that country just what to see. They do not tell their readers just what they ought to think, as did John Ruskin in his "Mornings in Florence" and other books; they rather muse aloud, and then leave the reader to judge for himself. For instance, our authors find themselves in Umbria, a too little visited province, but they seem to be almost the first to point

child as the child an undeveloped man. At present the development of the individual shows a sudden checking of growth and failure of the promise of the child which it must be the work of future training to prevent. "If the education of the centuries to come be cast in the spirit of wisdom, the child will not, as now, lose so much in becoming a man, the man or woman lose so much through having been a child, but the childlike elements necessary to the race's full development will persist to the greater glory of the individual and the perfection of mankind."

The discussion of the recapitulation and "culture epoch" theories furnishes one of the most interesting and timely portions of the book. That the child in his embryonic life repeats the history of the race development, and even in mature age retains many of the records of his physical past, is beyond question; that the sports and interests of childhood in like manner are faint echoes of the barbaric past is equally certain; but that there is a fixed series of stages through which the child must pass, and in which we can read the history of the race, is a theory unsupported by the facts. The child may indeed be a nomad, a fisher, a hunter, and a savage, but his passage through these periods by no means takes place with the machine-like regularity implied in many of the schemes of the modern educator. The child develops in constant contact with higher forms of culture which modify his conduct to a degree which makes comparison with race development extremely difficult and unsatisfactory. Granted, however, that in general the stages of development are parallel, it is yet true, as the author concludes, that "the power of environment to shape humanity, irrespective of the 'necessity' for recapitulation, has not been taken into full account by the extreme advocates of the culture epoch' theory. And nature seems even now endeavoring to make the recapitulation' less and less in the mental, as she has already done in the physical, world. . . . As the higher and more essentially human traits of a mental and moral order permit with increasing stability the formation of character and its utilization in the evolutionary process, such recapitulation as now exists is bound, like the struggle for existence, to be pro

foundly modified, if not practically abo!ished." Nature herself seems thus striving to efface the traces of the long process by which man has been brought to his present degree of culture, as if she were in haste that the individual should enjoy the fruit of her labors without undergoing the toil through which the race has passed. It can hardly be the part of an enlightened educator, therefore, especially of those whose only guide is nature, to force the child through all those culture epochs which the race has left behind. Natural enough these barbaric instincts may be, and useful in adapting the human animal to his physical environment, but, on the basis of their mere existence, to assume them as essential elements in the ideal end of education is to mistake the whole purpose of education. We must, indeed, go to nature for an understanding of the material with which we work, but our end is the transformation of the nature from which we start.

Oddly enough after his position on the culture epoch question, in his study of language origins and its application to education the author accepts the naturalistic position as to the teaching of reading and writing. This should be postponed until about the tenth year, when the physical and mental faculties are in a condition justifying the attempt to acquire the

art. "The ear and tongue of the child, as was the case with the race, should be given a good deal of exercise and training before the serfdom of the eye and the hand to the alphabet, the copybook, and the dictionary begins." Only one who has forgotten or never experienced the delights of these first four or five years of reading could thus ruthlessly sacrifice them to a theory or lament the serfdom of the eye and hand; nor need any one fear lest the ear and tongue of a child be deprived of their necessary exercise and training.

In the chapters on The Child as Revealer of the Past, The Child and the Savage, The Child and the Criminal, and The Child and the Woman, most valuable data are presented for an understanding of the moral character of childhood. Neither a criminal nor a savage, the child is pictured as the non-scientific mind has usually conceived him, as an undeveloped but normal human being. Nay, more, together with

woman, he presents the purest type of humanity-the humanity of the future. Most significant have been the results of recent investigations into woman's share in primitive culture, showing as they do that man's superiority has been a temporary phase of evolution, made necessary by the peculiar conditions of the physical struggle for existence, and that the normal development is toward the femininization of the human ideal. The future humanity lies more in woman than in man, and the child is full of its prophecy." Most important for a sound theory of moral education are the facts presented bearing upon the faults and so-called crimes of children. The subject is one in which there is special need in our times of great sanity of judgment, in view both of the older theological conceptions of sin, which, insensibly perhaps, still dominate our thought, and also of the scientific reaction which would, if it were possible, destroy the very basis of the distinction of good and evil. In particular, the whole sphere of the sexual instincts and their perversion is one in which there is pressing need of just such a study as this. In no other field is there a stronger necessity that a scientific understanding of the causes and meaning of these early moral phenomena. should precede our moral judgment upon them. The author's discussion is eminently sane and illuminative.

In view of the wealth of information which this small volume contains, it is perhaps ungracious to venture upon any criticism of it, especially upon one directed toward its faults of omission; and yet the fact that it is an instance of a tendency which has been very detrimental in recent American scholarship calls for a word of comment. The book is an example of both the strength and weakness of the modern method of research which we have imported from Germany: it shows a patient accum. lation of facts and theories, but a tolerance so great as to indicate a serious impairment of the critical and selective powers. One is bewildered by the variety of opinions and theories quoted on every topic, and looks in vain for adequate criticism and reconstruction. It is the note-book and questionnaire method— a good and well-used note-book, it is true, but a note-book none the less. To be sure, there is a brief concluding chapter summarizing the discussion, but it altogether fails to take the place of a judicious criticism applied at relevant points throughout the work. Were it not put forth in popular guise, we might accept it with unreserved gratitude as a dictionary of ideas about the child, but as it is we are forced to see in it one more evidence of the chaotic condition of the sciences of things human and the pressure of American life.