at Rome, and having gone thither, probably in 1482, he executed the beautiful composition of the Calling of St. Peter and St. Andrew. In this, as Mr. Layard observes, the influence of Masaccio is very visible. The figure and attitude of Christ are most striking, and the grouping admirable, whilst the landscape background shows a great advance in the treatment of the other portions of the picture. The death of St. Francis,' and the other frescoes in the Sassetti Chapel in the church of the Santa Trinita, give a complete idea of Ghirlandaio's powers in this species of decoration. They have a nerve and force worthy of the master of Michael Angelo, whilst the beauty of the forms and the straightforward simplicity with which each story is told, contrast most favourably on the one hand with the less graceful productions of the earlier Florentine masters, and on the other with the artificial and studied compositions of the late eclectic schools. That portraits are introduced, and that the costume of the day is used, are no drawbacks in our eyes; on the contrary, these circumstances add to the reality and vigour of work. He afterwards decorated the choir of Santa Maria Novella, and it is perhaps in these frescoes that the beauty of his architectural backgrounds and his accessories is especially visible. The Birth of the Virgin,' engraved in the work which we are reviewing, affords an excellent example of these qualities. The painter died before the year 1498. Mr. Layard says, I know of no genuine work entirely 'by the hand of Ghirlandaio in England, although several pic'tures in private collections are attributed to him. The beau'tiful picture of " The Virgin and Child between two Angels," in the National Gallery, assigned to him, is undoubtedly by another and very different painter.' In this judgment of Mr. Layard's our authors concur.

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In the course of this article we have often had to refer to some of the pictures in our own National Gallery. We hope we may be allowed to add a few words with reference to this collection, its past history and its future prospects.

In the first place, we are convinced that all lovers of art will agree with us in thinking that the thanks of the nation are due to Sir Charles Eastlake for the good sense and discrimination which he has shown in his selection of pictures purchased for the nation. A National Gallery ought to be formed upon the double principle of acquiring such masterpieces as are beautiful and interesting in themselves, and of securing by degrees specimens of each school, and of each important painter, sufficient to illustrate the history of the art. Both these objects have been kept in view by Sir Charles Eastlake. But the collection

of works of art for this double purpose is a gradual process. If our progress has been slower than some sanguine persons may have hoped, the fault has been rather in the system pursued than in the representatives of the nation, who have not been backward in affording funds for the purpose, but whose liberality has occasionally been succeeded by a fit of parsimony or mistrust. We sincerely hope that there will be no hesitation in providing the means by which our treasures of art may be for many years to come enlarged, and their utility increased. We should like to see a fair and liberal sum voted annually, to be applied as occasions present themselves, under a proper responsibility to Parliament for its judicious expenditure. But there is no use in concealing the fact that if first-rate works are to be bought, first-rate prices must be paid. The history of art can be learnt only by a study of the productions of the old masters, and this is not one of those cases in which the demand for an article will produce an increased supply, for the minds which conceived and the hands which executed these masterpieces are past and gone. The stock is a limited one, whilst the spread of civilisation and taste for art will cause its value to be enhanced from day to day. A private person who lays out a large sum on a picture or a statue, knows that he can live but a few years, and his heir or personal representative may care nothing for art, and may disperse the collection which he has laboriously made. It is not so with a great nation. The life of the community is presumed to be without an end which we can foresee; and may reasonably hope that among our sons and successors there will always be a certain proportion who will estimate such acquisitions at their true value.

It is, however, of little use to buy pictures or excavate statues, if we have no place in which to show them to the people, with whose money they have been purchased. Whilst the interminable quarrels on the subject of South Kensington and Trafalgar Square are going on, and whilst the treasures of the British Museum lie year after year in underground vaults or in wooden sheds, men begin to despair of any satisfactory conclusion being arrived at. But we hope better things.

We will conclude by expressing a hope that the remaining portion of Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle's great work (for such it is) will be executed with the same care and judgment as the two volumes now in our hands. We shall be rejoiced to welcome their account of the great epoch of Michael Angelo and Raphael, and thus to trace the consequence of that earlier progress which has been so diligently examined in this commencement of their labours.

ART. IV.-1. Novum Testamentum Græcè: antiquissimorum Codicum Textus in ordine parallelo dispositi: accedit Collatio Codicis Sinaitici. Edidit EDVARDUS H. HANSELL, S.T.B., Lector Theologiæ in Collegio S. Magdalenæ Oxon. Vol. III. Oxonii e Typographio Clarendoniano, 1865. Londini apud Alexandrum Macmillan.

2. Discussions on the Gospels, in Two Parts. Part I. On the Language employed by our Lord and His Disciples; Part II. On the Original Language of St. Matthew's Gospel, and on the Origin and Authenticity of the Gospels. By ALEXANDER ROBERTS, D.D. Second edition, revised and enlarged. Cambridge and London: 1864.

3. Novum Testamentum Græcè ex Sinaitico Codice omnium antiquissimo, Vaticanâ itemque Elzeviranâ Lectione notatâ. Edidit NOTH. FRID. CONST. TISCHENDORF. Cum Tabulâ. Lipsia: 1865.

4. The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, illustrated by a plain Explanatory Comment, and by Authentic Views of Places mentioned in the Sacred Text from Sketches and Photographs taken on the spot. Edited by EDWARD CHURTON, M.A., Archdeacon of Cleveland and Prebendary of York; and WILLIAM BASIL JONES, M.A., Prebendary of York and of St. David's. In two vols. London: 1865.

AT

T no time since the promulgation of the Christian religion has the prophecy of Daniel, that many should run to and fro, and knowledge should be increased, appeared nearer its fulfilment than at the present moment. If we withdraw our gaze from secular and confine it to theological matters, we find it still the same; new manuscripts have year after year been discovered or collated, new editions of the whole or portions of the Scriptures are put forth, fresh explanations of old difficulties proposed, in some cases ancient statements and views have received remarkable confirmation, while in others rude and unceremonious assaults have been made upon cherished theories of the most venerable antiquity. All betokens life, energy, and movement, both in the world of sense and in the world of intellect; and it is but those who live in and for the past only who will look, on the whole, otherwise than with hope upon the phenomena that are so freely and vigorously developing themselves around them.

are

Yet, when we come to inquire what practical use has been or is being made by the Church of England, in her official

capacity, of all that has been or is being done in theology, we are shocked to find it absolutely nothing. In former days a translation of the Scriptures, intended and authorised to be read in churches, was considered a thing to be amended and improved with the increase of knowledge and materials; nor was it otherwise even with the Liturgy and Articles. But a spirit of finality-a kind of water-colour copy, on a small scale of that infallibility claimed by the Church of Rome-appears for the last two hundred years or thereabouts to have taken possession of the dominant party in the Church of England, and to have caused it to stop its ears altogether to the voice of Truth, lest haply the siren Falsehood should prove too attractive to the unstable, the froward, or the unlearned.

A writer in one of our most orthodox contemporaries * has counted up no less than 1,237 places in the single Gospel of St. Matthew, and 1,089 in that of St. Mark, in which the Authorised Version falls short of the original. Yet the same writer at the same time endeavours to stem the current which is setting with more or less of steadiness in the direction of demanding a new or revised translation of the Scriptures corresponding to the present accumulation of materials and increase of knowledge, in the first place by adding the very partially applicable limitation: 6 as every translation must do;' and in the second place by inquiring whether the time has yet arrived when we can venture to undertake the work; whether sufficient materials have been accumulated; whether any one of the three sources from which the Greek text of the New Testament must be derived―manuscripts, versions, and quotations-has been adequately examined, and so forth. But the fact is, that these pseudo-conservative theologians always take good care never to admit that the time has come and the labourers are prepared for such a work, and to place every obstacle in the way of its ever being accomplished. There will always be some unhappy' book or writer to render the present moment unfit in the eyes of many for even the most urgent and necessary corrections or improvements.

It would be very easy to bring forward a considerable list of important passages with regard to the true meaning of which adhuc sub judice lis est,' and for the satisfactory solution of which divines of the stationary school will profess themselves desirous to wait. They find themselves too busily engaged in crying up the wisdom of our reformers, our translators, or our forefathers, to take practical example by it. Yet the existence

Quarterly Review for Jan. 1863, p. 90.

of such difficulties cannot but be felt by them as a most grievous slur upon the finality which they to all intents and purposes demand for both the Authorised Version and the existing Prayer-book, which is to a certain extent dependent upon it, though not so much so as many people appear to imagine.

The fact of the existence of such questions as the old and undecided strife between the words 'covenant' and 'testament for the post of honour on the title-page of the Christian Scriptures; the dispute whether the Last Supper was or was not a strictly Paschal meal, and if so, of what nature; the controversy whether our Lord and His disciples habitually conversed in Greek or Aramaic, or used either language indifferently, which Dr. Roberts has discussed at great length and with great learning in one of the works which we have placed at the head of this article *—-questions which may some day be decided, and towards the solution of some of which it may possibly be given to our own times to make a nearer approach-is decisive at once, we freely admit, against the finality of a revision of the present Authorised Version, while it is no argument whatever against such a revision itself. Indeed, no revision and no translation, in our present state of imperfection and change on earth, can ever be more than provisional, or can have a right to claim more for itself than to be and to be considered a

*So far as Dr. Roberts maintains in general that the inhabitants of Palestine were bilingual, using Greek and Aramaic more or less indifferently, we consider that his reasoning is satisfactory. We are not, however, prepared to put entirely aside the statements of ancient writers as to the existence of an original Aramaic Gospel. If St. Paul addressed the Jews at Jerusalem (Acts xxi. 40) év 'Eßpaidi diaMÉKT, in order to gain their ear, it would have been but ordinary prudence in the disciples to put forth as soon as possible a Gospel in the same language. The Aramaic would have occupied the position of a translation as regards what passed between our Lord and His disciples in Greek, and the Greek as regards what passed between them in Aramaic. In Acts xxii. 1-21, we have an undoubted specimen of a translation from Aramaic into Greek, which does not present phenomena greatly differing from the records of what unquestionably passed in the Greek language.

Dr. Roberts vouchsafes but little notice to the fact of our Lord's quotation from the Psalms being made in Aramaic (Matt. xxvii. 46), 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.' And the suggestion that a 'rude Egyptian might possibly have been unable to speak Greek, by no means meets the difficulties of Acts xxi. 37-39; for Egypt was undoubtedly the stronghold of Hellenism, and if an Egyptian Jew could not speak Greek, it is difficult to imagine what language he could have spoken.