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growing intemperance. The Syrian Christians creatures take to when the taste has been lighted are cursed with the vice. The Roman Catho- up; and it is certainly a subject for thoughtful consideration, that, while we in this country are rejoicing at the reduction of the excise revenue in Britain, what are we to say of the gradually increasing liquor revenue in India?2

lics are indulging in the same way, "even children learning early to drink, going with their parents and getting a little from them."1 The hill tribes, who are the descendants of the races conquered by the Aryans, and have ever remained more impervious to foreign influence because of their gross life and dense ignorance, are particularly affected by habits of intemperance. The liquors which they drink, and are growing fonder of all the while, kill with astonishing rapidity. The indigenous races have neither self-respect nor the power of self-discipline. They drink until they are drunk. The wayside shop, with the sign-board "Wines and Spirits Sold Here," means certain death to the pre-Aryan. There is no diversity of opinion as to the fatal effects upon these defenseless natives. The missionaries among them, in both the south and the north, declare the effects to be simply devastating. These poor people, more than any others, when once possessed of the demon of the passion, barter any possession for a bottle of liquor.

An army surgeon, of twenty years' intimate knowledge of India, in a paper read before the Colonial Temperance Congress in 1886, wrote

thus:

Twenty years' personal observation in the Northwestern provinces has demonstrated to me the appalling fact that the entire race of hereditary owners of the soil have all been swept off by drink. Brandy or Government rum is what these poor 1 Mateer, "Native Life in Travancore," p. 284. This author furnishes some sad proofs of the invasion of the Travancore congregations by intemperance; and also some beautiful illustrations of the rescue of natives from the habit by becoming Christians. Pp. 284, 285.

What wonder? A penny's worth is all that is needed to intoxicate, madden, and wreck. Even if a poor native has no money, he can manage to get liquor. He can get it on credit, and mortgage his few possessions, if so be he can quaff the intoxicating cup.3 Then the back door-that invention of the saloon-keeper in Great Britain and the United States — is made to do its full work, if the proprietors prevent ingress by the front door.

Now, dark as this picture is which we have unwillingly been compelled to draw, there is no real ground for discouragement. The Gospel has never been carried to a country without at the same time, if not earlier, the transportation of the vices of the land which sends the truth. Already the missionaries are awake to the danger. The English people are becoming aroused to it. The real rulers of India do not hold council in Calcutta, or enact laws in the Westminster Houses of Parliament, but are the vast commonalty of the British Isles—or, rather, are the whole Anglo-Saxon race. India will be conquered for Christ. It will be a complete conquest - alike over the evils of false faiths and over the vices which still grow, as tares among the wheat, in Christian lands. 2 Ridley, "One Aspect of the Present Outcry against Foreign Missions," p. 8.

3 Gregson, "Drinking and the Drink Traffic in India," pp. 45, 48.

John F. Hurst.

SLEEP.

TH

IN MEMORIAM: A. B. P.

HOU best of all, God's choicest blessing, Sleep;
Better than Earth can offer-wealth, power, fame:
They change, decay; thou always art the same;
Through all the years thy freshness thou dost keep;
Over all lands thine even pinions sweep.

The sick, the worn, the blind, the lone, the lame,
Hearing thy tranquil footsteps, bless thy name;
Anguish is soothed, sorrow forgets to weep.
Thou ope'st the captive's cell and bid'st him roam;

Thou giv'st the hunted refuge, fre'st the slave,
Show'st the outcast pity, call'st the exile home;
Beggar and king thine equal blessings reap.

VOL. XXXVIII.— 59.

We for our loved ones wealth, joy, honors crave;
But God, he giveth his beloved-sleep.

Thomas Nelson Page.

GENTILE DA FABRIANO

(1347?-1427-8).

(GENTILE DI NICCOLO DI GIOVANNI DI MASO DA FABRIANO.)

(ITALIAN OLD MASTERS.)

HE more closely we study the history of the Italian schools of art the more clearly we see that the lines of distinction and demarcation which the critics draw are hypothetical, and often neither distinguish nor delimit, but that, in effect, all central and northern Italy was from 1100 to 1600 in a ferment with the new vitality of awakening political life, and that even in the case of artists of widely separated regions there is a confusion in the attribution of work which shows that the distinctions are so subtle as not always to be traceable. We find pictures credited to one school after another, and the work of one master given to another so often and on such positive grounds that we are obliged to come to the conclusion that the differences were often more personal than territorial, and that as Cimabue did not invent Italian art, so no district of this wide region is entitled to the distinction of having been its cradle. The art of Umbria had as legitimate beginnings as were those of Tuscany, and the names of famous miniature painters (descendants in craft no doubt from the same Byzantines who had kept up the traditions of Greek art) and of famous potters (the elements of whose technic and decoration are to be found as early as the eleventh century) are preserved to us, as Oderisio of Gubbio and Master Giorgio. The latter, we are told, was an ancestor of Gentile da Fabriano, who was on the whole the most remarkable of his generation in the region which was, later, to be the home of Raphael. Dante speaks of Oderisio (as among the dead), as well as of his successor Franco Bolognese; and other painters are known, showing that Umbria was no more dependent on Florence for its inspiration than was Siena.

The artistic genealogy of Gentile indicates a cross of Flemish strain. Lindsay justly notes this, and it is one of the evidences of the immense circulation of the art ideas of that epoch that the influence of Flanders had penetrated

1 A protocol of the notary Giovanni di Ser Federico da Cerreto existing in the archives of Fabriano shows the act of acceptation of the bequest of Master Gentile, dead in Rome, in behalf of his relative Maddalena, daughter of Ser Egidio da Fabriano, with the date 1428, November 22. However, the date of the death may be 1427, Gentile having worked in St. John

into Italy when no other element of civilization can be shown to have done so. The year of Gentile's birth is unknown, but it must have been about 1348; as he is shown by a document lately discovered at Fabriano to have died about 1428, and is said to have died at the age of eighty. (Before the discovery of this document the dates were commonly taken as 1370?-1450.) Of the details of the lives of their great painters the authorities of the day, as of many days before and after, did not concern themselves; artists were craftsmen like all others of any other trade, apprenticed and dealt with like the carpenters and the masons of the time, and no one thought it a matter of interest that the day of the birth or the death of a Gentile or a Giotto should be recorded.1 This obtained as long as the painter was the servant of the commune, so that it is only when he becomes the servant of personal vanity that he appears as a man of any individual importance. Gentile was the pupil of one of the Umbrian successors of Oderisio, Allegretto Nuzi da Fabriano; but his range of study included the Sienese as well as the Florentine and the Flemish, and his work is of wider range than that of any other artist of his day. He was the contemporary of the brothers Van Eyck, the elder of whom, Hubert, was born about 1366, and died in 1426, while John was twenty or thirty years younger, and died not far from the same time as Gentile, probably in 1446. In Venice the works of John Van Eyck were well known, and may well have been familiar to Gentile during his abode in that city. At all events, Gentile exhibits in his work the love of luster and the jewel-like quality of the Flemish brothers, and his pictures seem a prophecy of those of Albert Dürer. But in the essential of the art-spirit of the great Italian schools, the manner of looking at nature, and the subjective treatment of even the details, Gentile remains true to his immediate ancestry. He never falls into the realism of the Flemings; he loves the gorgeous color and the Lateran from the 28th of January till the end of July, 1427, with the salary of twenty-five florins a month, and there being no information of work done subsequent to that date. ["The Year of the Death of Gentile da Fabriano." By Aurelia and Augusto Zonghi. Tipografia Sonciniana; Fano.]

jeweled glitter, and he gets a glimpse of the naturalistic future of art; but this, in his work, is merely seen through the invincible habit due to his idealistic education. The necessity of working on large surfaces in fresco was with Gentile, as with all of his fellow-workers in Italy, a barrier to the adoption of the realistic method, while with the Flemings, whose work was on a restricted scale, the direct study of nature was facile and tempting. Over and above this, the far more conservative nature of the Italian was an impediment to any change of method or type.

Vasari has it that Gentile was the pupil of Fra Angelico; but the spirit of their work is so different that there seems no indication of affiliation between them, if we except the common parentage of the Italian schools in the Byzantine. Moreover, as, according to the latest discoveries, Gentile was born forty years before Fra Angelico, it is in the last degree improbable that he should have seen any work of the latter before his style was as far determined as it ever became, and it is far more likely that the work of Orcagna was the common cause of any similarity there may be in that of the two younger men. A fragment of fresco by Gentile at Orvieto, where he worked in extreme old age, shows, in the opinion of Cavalcaselle, the influence of Siena; but considering the age at which it was done I should be more disposed to regard the Sienese influence as due to subsequent repainting. At Fabriano is the predella of an altar-piecethe other parts of which have been taken to Milan-which recalls work of Taddeo Bartolo's at Siena. The figures in this altar-piece are clumsy in proportion and attitude, their drapery complicated and full of meaningless folds, while the hands and feet are coarse and ungainly. The details are most elaborate and highly finished.

Gentile, on leaving Fabriano, first went to Brescia, where he decorated a chapel for Pandolfo Malatesta. He then went to Venice and painted one wall of the great hall of the ducal palace with a battle scene, a combat between Barbarossa and the Venetians. He also executed two altar-pieces, for the churches of San Giuliano and San Felice. Records recently discovered state that the walls in the ducal palace were undecorated up to 1411, and that the paintings were all completed by 1422, showing that Gentile and Pisano must have worked on them between those two dates. The battle piece above mentioned has disappeared, nor do any of his works executed in Venice survive, with the exception of one madonna in the Venice Academy. We know, however, that Jacopo Bellini, father of Gentile Bellini and Giovanni Bellini, entered his work

shop as pupil, and that a strong friendship existed between master and disciple, Gentile standing sponsor to Jacopo's first child.

In 1422 we find Gentile at Florence; but though he had left Venice, he continued to have many orders from that city, where his style was immensely admired, and where a great number of his works were collected. Says Cavalcaselle :

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From his shop in the Popolo St. Trinità at Florence, Gentile doubtless sent forth much that is undiscoverable at the present day. In 1423, he completed an order for the church of his adopted parish; and the "Adoration of the Magi" is now the ornament of the Florentine Academy of Arts [of which Mr. Cole has engraved a portion]. the introduction of a copious retinue of followers, He enriched the foreground of the composition by grooms, and huntsmen, accompanied by dogs and monkeys, filling the distance with well-arranged episodes and groups. The Saviour, the Virgin, and the angel appear in the medallions of the gables, whilst the predella comprises the Nativity, the Flight into Egypt, and the Presentation in the Temple. Grace in the shape of the females attendant on the Virgin, ease in the motion of the king, whose spurs a page removes, are combined with individuality in heads, which seem portrayed from nature. The harmonies of color are Umbrian in their gayety, but there is no aërial perspective, and giltrelief ornament is luxuriously applied. The profile of a female to the left of the Virgin recalls the types of the old Siennese period, whilst the turbaned king seems impressed with that softness which becomes a more charming feature in Perugino. The figures in the gables are pretty and in fair condition, whilst the principal subject is not free from injury. This is Gentile's best extant effort, proving that his stay in Florence had taught him something more than he had learnt at home, yet, that like his precursor, Nuzi, he could not alter his Umbrian nature, nor forget his primitive education so far as to adopt any of the innovations due to Uccello, Brunelleschi, Masaccio,1 or Donatello. He may have been struck by a miniaturist like Lorenzo Monaco, he may have admired the creations of Angelico; but he remained inferior to the first, and a fortiori at a respectful distance from the second.

With so much disparagement of Gentile I am not disposed to agree. He was unequal in his work and changeable in his temper, with less respect for the conventions of which the art of his day was in great part composed; but if in the vein of Fra Angelico he was not to be compared to him, he was admirable in decorative qualities of which the Dominican had but a faint perception.

We know that Gentile remained in Florence till 1425, when he was called to Orvieto to decorate a part of the cathedral. Vasari speaks of work of his at Siena, and a Virgin and Child supposed to be by him, and stated to have been

1 As Gentile was fifty-four when Masaccio was born, the latter is not likely to have influenced him much. They died at nearly the same time.

painted in 1425, is much praised by Facius, but there is no record of his having been in Siena. During his abode of three years in Florence he painted several pictures. Vasari praises much a Virgin and Child in the church of San Niccolò, of which only the side panels are now extant, very gracefully and richly designed. A panel has lately been discovered in the same church, representing the Holy Ghost in the shape of a dove descending from God upon Christ and the Virgin, who kneel below on a rainbow. At the sides are the figures of various saints and the resurrection of Lazarus.

Vasari tells us of a saying of Michael Angelo's, referring to Gentile: "Aveva la mano simile al nome" ("His touch was like his name "), Gentile meaning delicate, graceful. Van der Weyden, after seeing the frescos in the Lateran, declared that Gentile was the greatest man in Italy, and no doubt the Flemish artist found much that was sympathetic and interesting to him in Gentile's work.

Gentile did other work for Pope Martin, all of which has disappeared; and he was probably at Perugia at some time of his life, judging from the fragments of a fresco in San Domenico. There are some works at Città di Castello attributed to him, but their authorship is doubtful.

Gentile was called from Orvieto to Rome by Martin V. to decorate the newly restored church of St. John Lateran, and he worked on the frescos until the time of his own death.1 Gentile died at Rome, according to the Most unfortunately all have perished, though lately discovered document mentioned above, one still remained in the sixteenth century. in 1427-28. W. J. Stillman.

NOTES BY TIMOTHY COLE, ENGRAVER.

LORENCE, January 13, 1888.— The detail sent is wealth of ornament there ingrained. The color of the

FLORENCE, 18 Kings," by Gentile da Whole is very rich the Madonna's robe being a mid

Fabriano, in the Academy of Fine Arts, Florence. It is in the long gallery leading off from the Tribuna del David, where are arranged in chronological order examples from the earliest period of Italian painting down through the decline of art. The picture is about nine feet square, including the frame, which is architectural in design and highly ornamented. It is filled with figures, and the kingly procession which has come to pay homage to the Child winds away off into the distance through a picturesque and hilly landscape. There is a variety of gay and cheerful life-neighing horses, barking dogs, chivalric men and graceful women, with dwarfs, monkeys, asses, camels, and tigers. Doves circle in the air above and play at mating, at which the men look up in smiling interest. The guiding star rests above the Child. The ornamentation of the garments and halos is indescribably rich and delicate, being both embossed and incised, and in places in exceeding high relief, as, for instance, in the crown of the figure behind the one kneeling and in the curious upon the ground. The details are worked out with the greatest possible minuteness; every individual pebble on the ground is separately painted, and if you get near enough you can see the grain of the wood in the manger delicately and beautifully laid in. I did not discover this until after I had engraved it, which I did on a dull day; but when upon a bright day I again viewed it through my glass I discovered to my mortification- the delicate graining and the knots in the wood, which only a few feet distant appeared a flat, smooth color as in my engraving; for though the details are so carefully worked in, the effect is broad. The halos of gold around the heads are especially rich and delicate. I could make no attempt to get in the 1 Lindsay makes Gentile appear at Orvieto in 1423, and go from there to Florence (as the date 1425 is on a picture in San Niccolò), and supposes that he went to Rome

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dle tone of blue; that of Joseph an agreeable yellow of a lighter tone; that of the maid next him a rich deep purple; that of the kneeling figure a rich purplish-brown, with gold worked through it and the whole incised, which gives depth and softness, while the other portion of the garment of this figure is worked in the same way with whitish tints mingled with gold. This is very curious and beautiful work. In the gold border of the garment colored stones were inset, which are now broken off. Over the arches which frame the picture - three in number- - are three medallions, built in with the frame and forming a part of it, one over each arch. These are busts of prophets, except the middle one, which repre. sents God the Father. On each side of the medallions are reclining figures, similar in position to the "Night and Day" of Michael Angelo, and above each one is a sitting figure, so that a triangular form is given to the space above each arch; and finally the separate parts of the frame terminate above each in an ornamental point. The predella, or base of the picture, comprised "The Nativity," 24 by 10 inches; "The Flight into Egypt," 36 by 10 inches; and "The Presentation in the Temple," 24 by 10 inches. The last of these is now in the Louvre at Paris. "The Flight into Egypt "is the central panel. The Madonna is seated upon the ass and conducted by Joseph; a servant follows; it is evening, and the sun is setting in a clear blue sky over a rich and charming landscape. The sun is a golden ball in relief. This, being burnished, shines where the light touches it. The leaves of the burdened fruit-trees, and the hills, are illumined with touches of gold mingled with delicate tones of yellow and orange, with cooler shades interspersed, and the realistic effect of sunlight is delightful. A city in sunlight rises in the distance. in the following year. Cavalcaselle, on the contrary, believes the Orvieto madonna to have been painted later, and that he went to Rome immediately after.

PRESENTIMENTS, VISIONS, AND APPARITIONS.

One question more than others all

Of thoughtful minds implores reply: It is, as breathed from star and pall, "What fate awaits us when we die?"

F these words are true, certainly next in importunate demand is whether men shall direct their conduct by practical wisdom and right motives, or look for and follow occult intimations which may either confirm or contradict the judgment.

Exclusive of the sphere of true religion, which does not claim to be an infallible guide except to repentance, purity of motive, and the life beyond,-omens, premonitions, presentiments, visions, and apparitions have exerted the greatest influence over the decisions and actions of mankind.

Omens are extraordinary events which, on account of the opinions held of them, are thought to presage disaster. They are not true presentiments, but generalizations from imperfect data. Astrology and divination exhibit on a large scale the fallacies underlying such conclusions, belief in them being sustained by the observation of occasional coincidences between events and preceding actions or conditions that could have had no causal connection with them. Dreams often afford similar materials for erroneous reasonings, but as they originate in the mind, they are sometimes so similar to presentiments that it is impossible to decide whether a presentiment caused the dream, or the dream the presentiment.

A presentiment in the strictly etymological sense is a previous conception, sentiment, opinion, or apprehension; but its secondary meaning, which has almost supplanted the primary, both in the French and English use of the word, is an antecedent impression or conviction of something about to happen. Though presentiments of good are common and often fulfilled, as their results are not tragical they are seldom remembered or attributed to supernatural causes; and for this reason the word presentiment is confined almost exclusively to inward premonitions of evil, and is practically the equivalent of "foreboding" in such passages as Dryden's, "My heart forebodes I ne'er shall see you more."

Few would consider general forebodings of evil worthy of special investigation. To some

temperaments they are peculiar, and prosperity, however great, cannot dissipate them. They may arise from overwork, old age, or from prolonged sickness of any kind except consumption; and as evil overtakes the majority of mankind, such general forebodings are certain of general fulfillment. It is only when time and events concur with the presentiment that it becomes a phenomenon requiring scientific treatment; and being a product of the mind allied to many other experiences, it is a philosophical problem of the first magnitude.

A writer in the "Cornhill Magazine" for October, 1886, attempts to lay down the essence of a true presentiment. He says that "it must be spontaneous; it must come at a time when you have no reason to look for it." He explains these conditions by saying that you must not be ill and think you have a presentiment that you will not recover; you must not be away from home and think that some calamity has happened there; you must not know that a friend is in danger and have a presentiment of his death; you must not have reason to suspect a man and have a presentiment that he will cheat you.

In laying down these conditions he justifies himself by saying that they are necessary, "because in all these instances there is a simple natural cause for fear or uneasiness." I cannot admit that all these conditions are exact. The person may indeed be sick, yet the illness may be slight, and its seat removed from any fatal possibility; and if in opposition to every indication he have a foreboding that he will not recover, which persists in defiance of reason, and does or does not end in death, it has the mental and emotional characteristics of a presentiment. Of course if a person have yellow fever, and a presentiment of his death, it is in harmony with popular belief; though, according to the statistics of the epidemic in Jacksonville, the proportion of deaths is but about one to ten cases, and the rational expectation would be that an ordinary person attacked had nine chances in ten for recovery. Again, if a person leave his family in perfect health, knowing no cause of danger either to them or to his property, and have a presentiment impelling him to go back, and on arriving find his worst fears realized, although his peculiar state of mind arose during an absence from home, it has the characteristics of a presentiment, both in its origin and in the relation of time and events.

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