-through all its phases, as reflected in its visible local center, the papacy-is alive still as of old, one and continuous, and still true to itself. Ah! what is local and visible, as you know, counts for so much with the artistic temper.

Old friends or old foes, with but new faces, events repeating themselves, as his large, clear, synoptic vision can detect, the invading King of France, Louis XII, appears as Attila: Leo X as Leo I: and he thinks of, he sees, at one and the same moment, the coronation of Charlemagne and the interview of Pope Leo with Francis I, as a dutiful son of the Church: of the deliverance of Leo X from prison, and the deliverance of St. Peter.

I have abstained from anything like description of Raphael's pictures in speaking of him and his work, have aimed rather at preparing you to look at his work for yourselves, by a sketch of his life, and therein especially, as most appropriate to this place, of Raphael as a scholar. And now if, in closing, I commend one of his pictures in particular to your imagination or memory, your purpose to see it, or see it again, it will not be the Transfiguration nor the Sixtine Madonna, nor even the "Madonna del Gran Duca," but the picture we have in London-the Ansidei, or Blenheim, Madonna. I find there, at first sight, with something of the pleasure one has in a proposition of Euclid, a sense of the power of the understanding, in the economy with which he has reduced his material to the simplest terms, has disentangled and detached its various elements. He is painting in Florence, but for Perugia, and sends it a specimen of its own old art-Mary and the babe enthroned, with St. Nicolas and the Baptist in attendance on either side. The kind of thing people there had already seen so many times, but done better, in a sense not to be measured by degrees, with a wholly original freedom and life and grace, though he perhaps is unaware, done better as a whole, because better in every minute particular, than ever before. The scrupulous scholar, aged twenty-three, is now indeed a master; but still goes carefully. Note, therefore, how much mere exclusion counts for in the positive effect of his work. There is a saying that the true artist is known best by what he omits. Yes, because the whole question of good

taste is involved precisely in such jealous omission. Note this, for instance, in the familiar Apennine background, with its blue hills and brown towns, faultless, for oncefor once only-and observe, in the Umbrian pictures around, how often such background is marred by grotesque, natural, or architectural detail, by incongruous or childish incident. In this cool, pearl-grey, quiet place, where color tells for double-the jeweled cope, the painted book in the hand of Mary, the chaplet of red coral-one is reminded that among all classical writers Raphael's preference was for the faultless Virgil. How orderly, how divinely clean and sweet the flesh, the vesture, the floor, the earth, the sky! Ah, say rather the hand, the method of the painter! There is an unmistakable pledge of strength, of movement and animation in the cast of the Baptist's countenance, but reserved, repressed. Strange, Raphael has given him a staff of transparent crystal. Keep, then, to that picture as the embodied formula of Raphael's genius. Amid all he has here already achieved, full, we may think, of the quiet assurance of what is to come, his attitude is still that of the scholar; he seems still to be saying, before all things, from first to last, "I am utterly purposed that I will not offend."

EDWARD JOHN PHELPS

THE SUPREME COURT AND POPULAR

SOVEREIGNTY

[Address of Edward J. Phelps, lawyer, diplomatist, Minister to Great Britain, 1885-89 (born in Middlebury, Vt., July 11, 1822; died in New Haven, Conn., March 9, 1900), delivered at the centennial anniversary of the organization of the Supreme Court of the United States, February 4, 1890, held at the Metropolitan Opera-House, New York City, under the auspices of the New York State Bar Association. Grover Cleveland, as Chairman of the Executive Committee, presided.]

GENTLEMEN:-But few words remain to be added to those so well spoken by my distinguished brethren in concluding, on the part of the bar, the expression which this occasion calls for. We have thought it well to mark in a manner thus significant and conspicuous, the centennial anniversary of our highest and greatest tribunal; to review so far as the flying hour allows, its eventful and interesting history; to recall some of its memories, cherished and imperishable; and to consider in the light of a century's experience, what has been, and what is like to be hereafter, its place and its influence as an independent constitutional power in the Federal government of this country.

We cannot forget that in its origin it was an experiment, untried and uncertain. Judicial history has not furnished another example of a court created by an authority superior to legislation and beyond the reach of executive power, clothed with a jurisdiction above the law it was appointed to administer, and charged, not merely with the general course of public justice, but with

the limitation of the powers of political government, and the adjustment of the conflicting claims of sovereign States. The hundred years that now terminate have tested the value of all American institutions. Fortunate as they have been for the most part, it will yet be the judgment of dispassionate history that no other has so completely justified the faith of its authors, or fulfilled with such signal success the purpose of its foundation.

What was that purpose? Not the limited original jurisdiction of the Court, dignified and important, but rarely invoked. Not chiefly, even, its ordinary appellate jurisdiction, extensive and beneficent as it is, most desirable, yet perhaps not indispensable. Not for these objects, great though they are, was it placed, or did it need to be placed, on the singular eminence it occupies. Its principal and largest function was designed to be, as it has been, the defence and preservation of the Constitution that created it as the permanent fundamental law on which our system of government depends. Had that instrument been left only directory to the legislature, to be construed and given effect as the exigencies of party or the purposes of the hour might demand; had it been referred to the conflicting determination of various courts, with no supreme arbiter to correct their mistakes, or to harmonize their disagreements, so that its meaning might depend upon the State or the tribunal in which the question happened to arise, it would speedily have become but the shadow of an authority that had no real existence, fruitful in a discord it was powerless to allay. American experience has made it an axiom in political science that no written constitution of government can hope to stand without a paramount and independent tribunal to determine its construction and to enforce its precepts in the last resort. This is the great and foremost duty cast by the Constitution, for the sake of the Constitution, upon the Supreme Court of the United States.

The jurisdiction of the Court over questions of this sort, and the dual sovereignty so skilfully divided between the States and the Federation, as they are the most striking are likewise the only entirely original features in the Constitution. All else found a precedent or at least a prototype, in previous institutions. In its other branches

it is mainly the combination and adaptation of machinery that was known before. It was to be expected, therefore, that the earliest and most critical exercise of the new power conferred upon the Court would be displayed in dealing with the new form of sovereignty at the same. time devised, and bringing into harmony those opposite forces that might so easily have resulted in conflict and disaster. The questions that have arisen in this field have been usually the most delicate, often the most difficult, always the most conspicuous of all that have engaged the attention of the Court. While it has been charged with the limitation of many other departments of governmental authority, here have been found hitherto its most permanent employment, and the most dangerful emergencies it has had to confront. Here have taken place its most celebrated judgments, the most signal triumphs of its wisdom, its foresight, as well as its moral couragerarest of human virtues. It is to this sagacious judicial administration of the Constitution that we are principally indebted for the harmonious operation that has attended the Federal system, each party to it made supreme in its own sphere and at the same time strictly confined within it, neither transgressing nor transgressed. Looking back now upon this long series of determinations, it is easy to see how different American history might have been, had they proved less salutary, less wise, and less firm. The Court did not make the Constitution, but has saved it from destruction. Only in the one great conflict, generated by the single inherent weakness of the Constitution, and unhappily beyond judicial reach, has the Court failed to maintain inviolate all the borders and marches of contiguous jurisdiction and keep unbroken the peace of the Union.

But it still remains to be observed that the service of preserving, through the Constitution, the Union of the States, great and distinguished as it is, and vital as it is, has been wrought upon the machinery of government, not upon its essence. Beyond and above the question how a political system shall be maintained, lies the far larger question, Why should it be maintained at all? The forms of free government are valuable only as they effect its purpose. They may defend liberty, but they do not