ward of the ancient games; nor the chaplet of earthly revelry, which, when placed upon the heated brow soon fell in withered garlands to the feet; but the crown, starry and unwithering, which shall never fade away, the immortal wreath of glory which the Saints shall wear for ever at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

able symbol may be explained by its mystical and anagrammatic character. When the age of persecution passed away there was no longer need to use a tessera whose meaning was known only to the initiate, to express those religious truths which were openly proclaimed on every hand. This emblem derives its peculiar significance from the fact that the initial letters of the name and title of our Lord-Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς Θεοῦ Υἱὸς Σωτὴρ, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour, make up the Greek word 'IX®Y, fish. The same words also occur in certain Sibylline

Another exceedingly common symbol is that of the believers as sheep or lambs and Christ as the good Shepherd. Calling up the thought of that sweet Hebrew Idyl,* of which the world will never grow tired; which, lisped by the pallid lips of the dying throughout the ages, has strengthened their hearts as they entered the dark valley; and to which the Saviour lent a deeper pathos by his parable of the lost sheep: small wonder that this figure was a favorite type of the unwearying lovet that sought the erring and brought them to his fold again. With reiterated and varied treatment, to which we can here only allude, the tender story is repeated over and over again, making the gloomy crypts bright with sweet pastoral scenes, and hallowed with sacred associations.

One of the most ancient and important symbols of this primitive cycle was the Fish. It was exceedingly common in the second and third centuries, but in the fourth gradually fell into disuse, and had almost, if not altogether, disappeared by the beginning of the fifth. The abandonment of this remark* Ps. xxiii.

+ Compare the exquisite line of the Dies Ira, Quærens me sedisti lassus.

which have been thought to be of Christian origin, and as such were chanted at Christmas in the Church of France. This symbol is first mentioned by Clement of Alexandria,* and probably had its origin in the allegorizing school of Christianity that there sprang up. It also contained an allusion to the ordinance of baptism. "The fish," says Tertullian, "seems a fit emblem of Him, whose spiritual children are, like the offspring of fishes, born in the waters of baptism.”+ This sacred fish is sometimes represented as bearing a basket of bread on its back, and sometimes a loaf in its mouth, which is probably a symbol of the bread of life which Christ breaks to his children, or possibly of the holy Eucharist.

But our space forbids the attempt to describe the whole range of sacred symbols, which for the most part point to the person and work of the Redeemer. Besides these there are others illustrating the character and duty of Christians; as the stag drinking at the water brook, the emblem of the soul panting after the living God; the hunted hare, the emblem of the persecutions of the saints; and the cock, suggesting the duty of unsleeping vigilance. The olive tree indicates the fruitfulness in good works of the Christian character; and the vine, the intimate union of the believer and Christ. Pædag., lib. iii., c. xi.

*

+ De Baptism. c.i.

Another class refers to the hopes of future blessedness: as the peacock, the emblem of immortality, and the phoenix of the resurrection.

The cycle of Biblical paintings in the catacombs, comprising representations of the principal events in Scripture history, both in the Old Testament and the New, though of exceeding interest, is too vast a field to be here entered upon. It has been treated in detail by the present writer and copiously illustrated elsewhere.* We can We can only enumerate here some of its more striking characteristics. It is remarkable for the absence of those gross anthropomorphic representations of the Deity into which later art degenerated. All who are familiar with the subject will recall many painful examples of this offence against purity and good taste, to which not even the majestic genius of Michael Angelo can reconcile us. The writer remembers one picture in which the Almighty, in ecclesiastical garb, with a triple crown upon his head and a lantern in his hand, is extracting a rib from the sleeping form of Adam. In Germany, according to Didron, the Supreme Being was generally represented as Emperor; in England and France as King, and in Italy as Pope. The daring artists of the middle ages even attempted to represent the incomprehensible mystery of the Trinity by a grotesque head with three faces joined together, somewhat after the manner of the three-headed image of Brahma in the Hindoo mythology. According to M. Emeric David, the French artists of the ninth century claim the "happy boldness" (heureuse hardiesse) of first representing the Almighty under human form. We find nothing of this in the catacombs.

*In a volume now in course of preparation by Messrs. Carlton & Lanahan, New York, entitled "The Catacombs of Rome, and their Testimony Relative to Primitive Christianity."

Iconographie Chrétienne, pp. 216–227.

A single apparent exception is examined in Withrow's Catacombs, Book ii., chap. v.

The nearest approach thereto is a single hand stretched out to arrest the knife of Abraham about to offer up Isaac; and a hand encircled with clouds, as if more strongly to signify its symbolic character, giving the tables of the law.

The entire absence of the slightest approach to anything indicative of the cultus of the Virgin is a striking characteristic of this early art. The Virgin Mary nowhere appears other than as an accessory to the Divine Infant, generally in paintings of the adoration of the Magi.*

Another of the most striking circumstances which impresses the observer in traversing these silent chambers of the dead, is the complete avoidance of all those images of suffering and sorrow, or of tragic awfulness, such as abound in sacred art above ground. There are no representations of the sevenfold sorrows of the Mater Dolorosa, or cadaverous Magdalens accompanied by eyeless skulls-a perpetual memento mori. There are no pictures of Christ's agony and bloody sweat, of his cross and passion, his death and burial, nor of the flagellations, tortures and fiery pangs of martyrdom, such as those that harrow the soul in many of the churches and galleries of Rome. Only images of joy and peace abound on every side. These gloomy crypts are a school of Christian love, of gentle charity, of ennobling thoughts, and elevating impulses. "To look at the catacombs alone," says Raoul Rochette, + "it might be supposed that persecution had no victims, since Christianity has made no allusion to suffering." There are no sinister symbols, no appeals to the morbid sympathies of the soul, nothing that could cause vindictive feelings even towards the persecutors of the church, only sweet pastoral scenes, fruits, flowers, lambs and doves; nothing but what suggests feelings of innocence and joy.

*The development of the cultus of Mary is traced in the book last cited. Book ii., chap 3.

+ Tableau des Catacombes, 194.

With the age of persecution, this child-like and touching simplicity of Christian art ceased. Called from the gloomy vaults of the catacombs to adorn the churches erected by Constantine and his successors, it gradually developed to the many coloured splendour of the magnificent frescoes and mosaics of the basilicas. It became more and more personal and historical, and less abstract and doctrinal. The technical manipulation became less understood, and the artistic conception of form more and more feeble, till it gradually stiffened into the formal and immobile types which characterize Byzantine art. It is of importance, however, as enabling us to trace the development of religious ideas, and the introduction of additions to primitive belief, and as showing the slow progress toward the veneration of images. It demonstrates the non-apostolicity of certain doctrines, the beginnings of which can be here detected. It utters its voiceless protest against certain others which are sought for in vain in the place where, according to medieval theory, they should certainly be found. It is to this period that most of the condemnations of art, or rather of its abuse, in the writings of the primitive Fathers, must be referred. Towards the close of the fourth century, Augustine inveighs against the superstitious reverence for pic

tures, as well as the growing devotion to the sepulchres, which he says the church condemned and endeavored to correct.* In the beginning of the century the Council of Elvira, as if with prescience of the evil consequences that would follow their toleration, prohibited the use of pictures in the churches, "lest that which is worshipped and adored should be painted on the walls."+

Where still employed in the catacombs, art shared the corruption and degradation above described, which became all the deeper with the progressive debasement of the later empire. Amid the gathering shadows of the dark ages, it became more sombre and austere, filling the mind of the spectator with gloom and terror. Thus art, which is the daughter of Paganism, relapsing into the service of superstition, has corrupted and often paganized Christianity, as Solomon's heathen wives turned his heart from the worship of the true God to the practice of idolatry. Lecky attributes this degradation of art to the latent Manicheanism of the dark ages, to the monkish fear of beauty as a deadly temptation, and, later, to the terrible pictures of Dante, which opened up such an abyss of horror to their imagination.

Aug. de Morib. Cathol., lib. i., c. 34.
+ Concil. Elib. c. 36.

IT

T has often been said that the style is the man; we might also venture to add that the dress is the woman and, in many lamentable instances, that the woman is the dress and nothing more. Without entering upon any intricate discussion about the expediencies, proprieties or improprieties of fashion, or prophesying that better future, when every one shall be a fashion to himself, we would venture a few remarks on the prevailing mode of dressing, and its moral effects on the rising generation.

It were hard to determine what is absolutely beautiful and absolutely ugly; the significance of these terms being altogether relative; but it were well to study when a thing is ugly and when it is beautiful, and apply the rule to our style of dress.

Accidents in nature are very often beauties. A deformed weather-beaten tree in an otherwise pleasing landscape may prove a necessary discord in its harmony, and hence pass for a beauty; but discords and concords have their established laws, their raison d'être, and as the world is supposed to travel towards an æsthetic as well as moral excelience, we would fain maintain that dress, considered in the light of art, becomes a vital question the moment it affects the education of taste.

Our own moral rectitude and innate sense of the beautiful, in a great measure, regulate our taste; yet in new countries where art is still in its infancy, and the public mind still unschooled in that direction, the eye takes in all forms and shapes with but little discrimination; and the extravagance of dress, the Bohemian taste of a certain class of women whose very irregularities of life have often dictated a fashion, are thus intro

duced into otherwise pure-minded communities; and, like the sensation novel, prove as subtle a poison in corrupting their sense of the beautiful, as the former their minds and hearts.

Our fashions, with a few exceptions, come from France. Every country has its speciality. The natural good taste of the French, their tact, their quick sense of appropriateness have given their styles the grace, the fitness and the usefulness society admires in them. Germany, with all its profundity, and with all its solidity and honesty of character, could not turn out a graceful hat—such a moral, philosophical, scientific, literary hat for example, as used to be found at the Paris Emporium of "Vital, successeur de Finot, fabricant de chapeaux." trious hatter, by giving certain inflections to certain lines, formed from the same model an infinity of variations, which became, as occasion required, physicians', grocers', dandies', artists', fat men's, lean men's hats. He once followed up a man's political career in the modifications he made in his hat, and when the former had reached the desired position, he presented him with a hat, in every way expressive of the juste-milieu of his sentiments.

This illus

The Berlin costume "faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null," is "dead perfection, nothing more"; it lacks the life, the (to use a very pedantic word, and seemingly out of place here) spontaneousness which characterizes all French workmanship from the simplest to the most elaborate. Berlin may claim the goddess—the Venus perfection of every limb-but France is in possession of the girdle, and it is by the puissance of this girdle that she rules the will