pose or our promptness in resenting an injury. Obviously our first step is to convince the Persians that our aid is worth having, and that it may be relied on. We can only inspire this confidence by far more energetic and consistent action in our relations with the Persian Government than we have shown for the last fifty years; and although a commencement was made in the time of Sir Drummond Wolff, there is reason to fear that the effort has not been properly sustained.

While we seek to inspire the Shah and his Government with fresh courage and hope, we should also lose no time in improving our approaches to Persia from the side of India, with the double view of simplifying the task of assisting that State, or, in the event of its defection or conquest, of taking up the necessary line to neutralise its effect, and to procure for us the voice which we are entitled to have in the decision of the fate of Herat and Seistan. The hands of our executive must be strengthened by any increase of interest which can be produced among the British public in the fate of Persia by well-directed commercial enterprises, and by such works of description and elucidation as these noble volumes of Mr. Curzon's. A large measure of consideration should also be paid to the difficult position into which the Shah has glided, to a great extent, through our own indifference to the most obvious interests. We cannot ask him to play a more heroic part than we are willing to perform when the forfeit to be paid by him might be the loss of his kingdom. The utmost that we can expect is that he will so shape his policy that the Russian Government may have no excuse for interfering in his State, and that the progress of events elsewhere may be such as to cause Russia to hesitate before she adds a Persian question to an Afghan imbroglio. There is some reason to hope that the Shah may, by a continuance of his passive resistance and his good-tempered and conciliatory attitude, succeed in staving off, as he has done in the past, the danger reaching an acute point. He has signed secret treaties surrendering portions of his territory, he has always given way when Russian diplomatic pressure became severe; but, after all, the Persia he rules to-day is almost identical with that which he inherited from his father. If he can only carry on the same policy for a little time longer, the changes in the political chessboard of Western Asia may be such as will enable us to afford him the aid of which he may stand in need.

Of the value to the Government of India of Persia as an

ally there can be no question, especially if Afghanistan were to become useless to us from the hostility of its ruler, or from confusion breaking out in that country through the death or weakness of the Ameer. Persia is so situated in the direct path of communication between Europe and India that even Russia would hesitate to send forward a large army without having first made sure of what the Shah would do. If Russia were to proceed to extremities at an early date the Shah would have no resource left but to give way, unless he took the improbable course of throwing himself on the protection of England, and retiring to Isfahan. Whether we succeed or fail in obtaining the alliance of Persia, its value is equally evident, and it must be remembered that we have it on the high authority of Sir Henry Rawlinson, that the Persian soldier is physically the best fighting man in Central Asia. The Power that directs its policy will eventually control its fighting material, and it will be a bad day for us if we disregard these facts, in the belief that an unfriendly Persia can always be brought to its senses, as formerly, by an expedition to the Persian Gulf. Something has been done to recover our lost ground in Persia, to arrest the slipping away of our influence at Teheran, and to lead the Persian ruler and his Ministers to think that, after all, they may not be left quite so much at the mercy of their powerful and grasping northern neighbour as they had thought. But much more remains to be done, and the time left for doing it is narrowing. If the opportunity is not altogether lost, it will be largely due to the impressive labours of Mr. Curzon, and to the convincing manner in which he has arrayed the facts that bear upon the situation. It is clear that the Central Asian question is again about to be re-opened, that we have a stirring time before us, and that whatever happens elsewhere in Central Asia something must be done, and promptly, to secure our position in Persia. To effect this is not beyond our power, nor does it call for any risky adventure in the first place. Bold and consistent action within the limits of our authority, a railway for the legitimate extension of the trade of India through Beluchistan to Seistan, will suffice for the present, but in carrying out this much there should be no delay.

ART. II.-1. Morelli's Italian Painters. Critical Studies of their Works. By GIOVANNI MORELLI (IVAN LERMOLIEFF). The Borghese and Doria-Pamfili Galleries in Rome.* With an Introduction by Sir Henry A. Layard. London : 1892. 2. Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery, with Biographical Notices of the Painters. By Sir FREDERIC BURTON, Director. London: 1889.

IT T is a significant fact that the criticism of the art of painting and the appreciation of the works of the old Italian masters have undergone a complete revolution in the present century. Many causes have contributed to this result our knowledge of the works themselves has increased with greater facilities of travel and research; our taste has been refined; and in art, as in every other branch of criticism, we have learnt to distrust the authority of tradition. We require now something more than the testimony of the unlearned connoisseur of the past before we can accept as final the assignment of any particular work to any particular hand. As in science so in art, we now demand of our guides knowledge from within as well as from without, and whilst availing ourselves of collateral evidence as an aid to the formation of our opinion, we accept nothing as final but the evidence of the work itself as interpreted by a competent critic who has been able closely to examine it. The nearer acquaintance with the great masters of the Italian schools and their pupils resulting from this searching method of inquiry has brought to light a multitude of able artists whose works can now be identified, although their very names, except in the pages of Vasari, Lanzi, and Baldinucci, were scarcely known some fifty years ago. Hence, to take but one or two typical instances, the Bolognese school and the painters of the seventeenth century-Guido Reni; the Caracci, the Poussins, and even Domenichino and Guercinohave lost the pre-eminence they so long enjoyed, whilst the attention of artist and art-critic is concentrated on the brilliant galaxy of painters who flourished between 1450 and 1550, the golden age of painting, not only in Italy but elsewhere in Europe. Now, everyone with the slightest claim to culture is familiar with the names of Ghiberti, the sculptor in whose school worked the leading painters of the day, Paolo di Dono, who first understood the principles of

* Translated by Constance Jocelyn Ffoulkes.

perspective, Piero della Francesca, Masolino da Panicale, Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Benozzo Gozzoli, Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, Signorelli, Verrocchio, Squarcione, Mantegna, Antonello da Messina, the Bellinis, Cima da Conegliano, Carpaccio, Marziale, Basaiti, and other immediate forerunners of the mighty masters, Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Titian, and Correggio, who, one and all inspired with the same love of beauty and imbued with the same incomparable gifts, finally raised the art of painting to the highest rank.

But it is one thing to have an historical knowledge of art, quite another to be in personal rapport with its exponents. We may enter a picture gallery primed to the finger-tips with historical lore, our art education already advanced enough to have abandoned belief in the pathetic first meeting of Giotto and Cimabue; we may know that Ghirlandajo's real name was Domenico Bigordi, and that he was called Ghirlandajo because of his master's skill in making garlands; that Paolo di Dono was surnamed Ucelli on account of his love of birds; we may have deplored Raphael's early death and studied the grand career of Michael Angelo, yet be unable to distinguish between the work of Perugino and Raphael or that of Sebastiano del Piombo and Giorgione, Verrocchio and Solario. And although to a very great extent it is true that the art critic as well as the artist is born, not made, yet the help of the experience of a veteran in criticism is of infinite value to the student, however great the acumen with which nature has originally endowed him. To whom, then, should the embryo critic turn in his first introduction to the works of the masters of the past? Surely to some member of the new school of criticism, a school which, with due reverence for true and authenticated tradition, yet sifts with scientific remorselessness every atom of evidence which bears upon the matter in hand. Of this new school one of the most active of the promoters, or we might almost say creators, is without doubt Signor Morelli, the writer of the book before us.

Signor Morelli is in fact the father of what must be termed the analytical or scientific criticism of the arts of design. Disregarding perhaps a little too much that intuitive faculty by which the elder conoscenti were supposed to trace the hand of a master and assign a given work to its real author or authors, and attaching small importance to collateral literary evidence, Morelli's system of criticism is based on a scientific analysis of the picture itself, as

minute as that of a naturalist who examines an insect or a plant. To him the smallest peculiarities of form and technic afford a clue as significant as the minutia which distinguish the lowest germs of animal or vegetable life, or as the unconscious idiosyncrasies which stamp handwriting with the inalienable personality of the calligraphist. He follows these indications with the skill of an anatomist, with the result that he frequently opposes some stubborn fact to reputations based on less demonstrative evidence, and, alas! fatal to the authenticity of many well-known works of art, dispelling many a cherished illusion and forcing us to own with the reason, if not with the heart, the claims of men unendeared to us by early associations.

Sir Henry Layard, who has prefixed a valuable introduction to the translation of this volume, thus describes what Morelli terms his 'principles and method':

'He has himself defined them,' says his biographer, 'in an imaginary dialogue-his favourite mode of expressing his views-between the Russian seeker after knowledge and an aged Tuscan gentleman, with whom he casually makes acquaintance when in the Florence galleries. This gentleman, who, as an amateur," has devoted himself to the study of art, and much despises professors and professional art critics, maintains that, to form an opinion upon the authenticity of a picture, to judge of its merits, and to determine, first, the school of painting to which it belongs, and then by whom painted, it is not merely necessary to collect a number of facts concerning the life of the presumed author, to discover the exact dates of his birth and death, and to point out the mis-statements of Vasari and other writers with respect to him. His identification and the genuineness of the work attributed to him depend upon scientific analysis, upon an accurate knowledge derived from long and careful study of his manner and style, and especially of his delineation of the different parts of the human body, or what Morelli denominates "his treatment of form, and his peculiar sense of colour."'

Or to quote Morelli's own language in a remarkable passage:

'Even long years of practice and constant study do not always enable a man to distinguish an original from a good work of the school; striking proofs of this are afforded in the public galleries of France and Italy, and more especially of Germany. The present writer must, however, disclaim all pretensions to having himself understood the tournure de l'esprit, l'âme of any great Italian painter. Assuredly he would never be so presumptuous, for often enough it has seemed to him as though, after prolonged years of study of the Italian masters, he had scarcely conquered the first principles of the language of art.

'On one point, however, there is not, and cannot be, any longer the