There is something singularly opportune in the publication of this book at this time. Rome, dear to all men of taste, for its countless treasures in the department of the arts—to all scholars, for its multitudinous associations with relics of classical times—to many a Christian too, for its memories of our holy religion, has just passed into new hands, and is henceforth to be subject to other rulers. We will not affect to regret this. We have long despaired of any substantial improvement under the régime now happily brought to an end; but there can be no reason, in the nature of things, why modern Rome should be the worst drained and dirtiest of Christian cities, and why the Pontine marshes, once so fruitful, should now be a pestiferous waste. We believe that a thorough revolution may be worked, both in Rome itself and all around it, not only without any detriment to those precious relics of the old world with which this volume deals, but with great advantage to them; and we hope to read ere long of the appointment of a commission (we are not sure what is the proper Italian word for it) with some such man as the Cavaliere Rosa at its head, whose business it shall be to guard with jealous care whatever already discovered may interest the student of art or of history, and to watch for new matter of a kindred nature wherever public works or private enterprise may lay open the still unworked mines which underlie in all directions the accumulated rubbish of many centuries in this city of Rome. A board of antiquaries and artists, with two or three practical men amongst them, may earn for themselves the gratitude of the civilized world, by an enlightened and earnest prosecution of this work.
As to the book before us, we can hardly find words to express our sense of its varied excellence. It has evidently been a con amore labour with its author; and he has brought to his work the three qualifications essential to its thorough discharge—learning, sagacity, and zeal. His references to the classical writings of Rome, and to those who have been his pioneers in these researches, prove the first; while the accuracy with which he observes and compares both objects and opinions are sufficient evidence of the other qualities.
Starting with a geological discussion of the soil on which the city is built, we are introduced to the original materials for building in Rome and its immediate neighborhood. There is abundant evidence of volcanic action in the tufaceous rock which is characteristic of the region; and this is associated with the depositions of water—both salt and fresh—and in some cases has been manifestly modified by their action. Indeed, there is proof that the valleys between the famous hills were marshes, frequently flooded by the Tiber, down into the early period of Roman history. There are two sorts of tufa, one more granular, and so lighter than the other, as well as a fair portion of a limestone rock, named travertine, harder than either of the tufas; besides these there is capital clay for bricks, and matter which makes the best mortar in the world. We are not surprised, therefore, to find that not only during the Republic, but in later times, when, under the emperors, the wealth and luxury of the Romans was boundless, the main substance even of the most magnificent of their buildings was brick; and marble 'facings,' columns, and pavements came in to give finish and beauty to their solid brickwork. Indeed, to this fact we owe it that so much is still left to us. The barbarous rapacity of the Middle Ages, which ruthlessly appropriated these enrichments, would no doubt have taken all, had all been marble.
Our author regards the myths which connect the early Romans with the Greeks, and with the Trojans under Æneas, as belonging rather to the domain of poetry than history, and confining himself to the facts as illustrated by these ruins, begins with the Palatine, as the hill originally occupied by the first fathers of the Romans; and he gives us, in chronological order, as far as possible, notices of all ruins now uncovered there. He then passes on to the Capitoline, as having been occupied next in point of time, dealing with it in the same manner; after this we return southward to the Aventine; thence, turning east, we cross the valley of the Circus Maximus to the Cælian Hill, and then proceed northward to the Esquiline, the Viminal, Quirinal, and Pincian, in succession. On all these we are introduced to the remains of ancient buildings; their chronology, their identity, their extent, their present condition, and their associations with such historic matter as has come down to us, are all set before us with great accuracy of detail. Then we cross the Tiber, and visit Janiculum and the Vatican Hill; recrossing into the valleys among the hills, we visit the Circus Maximus, the Campus Martius (now occupied by the modern city), and the Via Lata. The 'Forum' (Romanum) is discussed in the earlier part of the work, and with it the Fora of the emperors, which were meant to supersede it and its associations, and did so. The line of the walls of Servius, built mainly of the tufa already mentioned, in large rectangular blocks, is traced all round the city with ingenious care; and then the more extensive walls of Aurelian, with notices of the fortifications of the present day. Before we have done we take a delightful, though hasty, run through the Campagna. We visit Hadrian, at his villa Tiburtina (Tivoli); Cicero, at Tusculum (Frascati); and dear old Horace, at his Sabine farm. At Laurentum we inspect, in detail, the country seat of our communicative host, the unlucky Pliny, who perished miserably when Pompeii was destroyed.
We would gratefully acknowledge our sense of obligation to our intelligent guide; and shall reckon it henceforward as among our pleasantest reminiscences that we have thus visited with him the spot where Virginia bled, where Cicero spoke, where Cæsar fell; that we have, in his company, trodden the Forum, the Capitol, and the Appian way; and wandered, silent and awe-stricken at their grandeur, in the golden house of Nero, the Forum of Trajan, the Coliseum of Vespasian, and the baths of Diocletian.
We must not close our notice without a word about the maps and ground plans, and the illustrations. All are worthy of the work. Here and there, in the ground plans, we miss the arrow-head, indicating the points of the compass, and this, we hold, should always be put in; and if the illustrations, engraved from photographs, as we are told, are a trifle too sharp and hard, we gain in accuracy what we lose in beauty, and would not have it otherwise. We heartily thank Mr. Burn for his valuable work, and his publishers for the style in which they have put it forth; and shall be only too happy to find it in our portmanteau when we next visit Rome.
The Wonders of Engraving. By Georges Duplessis. Illustrated with Ten Reproductions in Autotype, and Thirty-four Wood Engravings, by P. Selher. Sampson Low, Son, and Marston.
This translation of 'Les Merveilles de la Gravure' will doubtless, in the words of the editor, be 'acceptable to all lovers of this important and deeply interesting branch of art. It traces from its different origins in wood engraving and nielli, this effort of one high art to become the handmaid and herald of another, until the genius of the engraver has developed a comprehensive department of original design and elaborate artistic work of his own. Our author has told the story of this development as it unfolds itself in the different schools of Italian art in Spain, in Flanders, in Holland, in Germany, England, and France. This necessitates brief sketches of distinguished engravers in wood or copper, belonging to all these countries, with some account of their works. As many of these engravers are far better known to fame by their paintings, we have fresh interesting details concerning the life-work of Leonardo da Vinci, Marc Antonio Raimondi, Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Ruysdael, Lucas v. Leyden, Paul Potter, Hogarth, Gillray, Nicolas Poussin, and Claude Lorraine, with very many others. The author rather glories in a clever reference which he made of some anonymous engraving of the early Italian school to the hand of Leonardo himself, and in some interesting and independent confirmation of his guess, which he afterwards derived from other quarters. To those who have not made the art of engraving a practical and prolonged study, many of these chapters may have the appearance of a catalogue of strange names, and of partially comprehended work, rather than of a dissertation to make one wise. The transition is rapid from one great name to another, and the volume will be used as a book of reference rather that as a continuous treatise. The autotype copies of several old engravings, as well as numerous woodcuts, greatly enliven and enrich the pages. It is very interesting to see in this department of human endeavour, how great results have followed accidental discovery. The Italian goldsmiths, who, before running their enamel (nigellum) into the ornamented and engraved gold, tried the effect of their work by staining paper or linen, and by the impressions (nielli) which the engraved surface when first washed with colouring matter would produce, no more anticipated the extraordinary development which their chance trials would receive, than could the early printers have prophesied the marvels of the modern printing-press. M. Duplessis has briefly and clearly enumerated and described all, or nearly all, of the processes of engraving. We are surprised that he has not given some place to the wonderful process of lithography. The volume is a marvel of finish and beauty.
Art in the Mountains. By Henry Blackburn. London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston.
Mr. Blackburn is well-known as a traveller with a special faculty; he has an artist's eye, and his record of wanderings in Algeria, Spain, Normandy, are pages of picture. Hence was he the very man to make a pilgrimage into the Bavarian highlands, and bring back an intelligible account of that strange Passion-Play performed by the peasants of Ober-Ammergau; and excellently well he has done it. There is something strange, something almost weird in the enactment of a mediæval miracle-play in this nineteenth century—by peasants, too, who are some of them before Paris by this time, obeying Bismarck's iron will. Extremes meet in the oddest manner. As to this old-fangled representation, which has come off once a decade for the last two centuries, there seems to be nothing irreverent about it. They are a child-like folk, these Bavarian peasants; they have no Prussian geist; they possess a strong imitative faculty, such as belonged to the first villagers who, in ancient Greece, originated what we now call comedy. Mr. Blackburn's illustrations amply show what sort of people they are. Look at the maiden at page 59, with the mild bovine eye that Homer loves to attribute to Hebe, and the well-shapen yet utterly unlightened face, and the comfortable, unfascinating curves of shoulder and arm, a woman—a dull, good, unimaginative 'young person'—with no tendency towards witchery or ladyhood. Having examined that portrait, you have no difficulty in understanding how it is that a Passion-Play lives alongside the railway and the telegraph. The slow-moving, cow-eyed maiden is typical; that she would heartily and reverently enjoy the show of our Lord's Passion is clear enough. But how long she, and such as she, will crawl on in their snail-like groove, now that our 'own correspondent' has appeared in Ammergau, now that the representatives of Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate have gone together to besiege Paris, is a question not easy to settle. Mr. Blackburn states that there will probably be ten performances of the Passion Play in 1871, and that then it will not be repeated till 1880. We commend anybody who really desires to see it to go to Ammergau next year. We move fast nowadays—that Bavarian village will be quite another sort of place in 1880.