On this same bunar merien street procession 200 ME nothing new to nH SWT WIT man in that fano now go forth m Łarma wn clad in white test: & bably with the vECK——121 vail, that so mair tumes imported into Laugier aus I wish Dr. Newtur a he was born at un pleasing to me are were plenty of chiaro ca giddy, vain tungs

of their eyes that the the Virgin Mary Ve the confessional.

some "sisters." tier own

no end of priest.

in the streets, aut NEVES altar or chapelle

nails, and the line

call devotion, nut we mus

that I fear wout tan. mine, were the inge St P

extant, such a wretched collection of figures. Imagination, unaided, would never picture such. You have observed the wooden heads in a milliner's shop, or, if not, just take a walk out and contemplate one; well, they are handsome, tasteful, compared with what some of these were. A vulgar painted face of wood, black staring eyes, and broad red cheeks, the figure finished off with a crimson skirt this was the Virgin; and the child in her arms was in the like bad taste. Another image, a head only, was carried with great solemnity on a bare deal board a fac-simile of the plank from which the candles toppled over in the church of St. Eustache; the same vulgar expression characterised this face, great crimson cheeks, and round, wide-open black eyes, and coarse/black hair. It was intended to represent that of John the Baptist after his decapitation. But the whole of the faces seemed to have been fashioned after the same bad model, calling up ideas of Bet Bouncer and country bumpkins at a fair. Such thoughts have no business to intrude themselves at any religious pageant, but I should like to see the Englishman that could keep them back and I don't think that Dr. Newman, with all his enthusiasm, would have looked twice. Yet he blessed God that these shows could now be revived in England.

t

I could continue the paper for ever, but to what end? Surely enough has been said and written to make an impression, if you, men of England, are not wholly unimpressible. The public journals teem with this subject not one can be taken up, but it has some corner devoted to it. Keep this mistaken creed to the countries where it has hitherto flourished; let it not acquire sway in ours. What says Punch, who amidst much of nonsense pops out some home truths:

"Freedom of action," Fool,

Wouldst thou grant Romish bigots ? Freedom, but
Freedom of prate and antics: NONE OF RULE.

And there lies the gist of the matter. Let the Catholic priesthood be free to talk and declaim as they will-in the countries where they have solong ruled, let them pursue their antics as much as they like-let them collect relics, discover bleeding statues, hold interviews with miraculous virgins-let them persuade their followers that they can absolve their sins, and that the door of heaven can only be opened through his Holiness the Pope, but beware how you, in your supineness, suffer encroachments that may bring back these ignorant sophistries amongst you. There is a solemn warning of our Saviour's to be found in the Scriptures: "No man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." For what will your earthly kingdom be fit, and what fate will she deserve, if, after having once resolutely thrown off this debasing and delusive creed, she suffer herself to be reimprisoned in its toils? Men of England, bestow upon this subject the consideration it demands. Examine deliberately the storms and threatenings that are scowling around; boldly face them; ponder what precautions can be exercised to repel them; and oh, may the steps you take be so wise, so good, so effectual, that the Reformed Faith shall again reign undisturbed in the land, and your children bask in the sunshine of its peace when you shall be no more.

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4

NEW DISCOVERIES IN ANCIENT ART.*

EXCEPT that Tarsus was the birthplace of St. Paul, and was, in the words of the Apostle, no mean city," the country of which it constituted the capital is little known to English readers. Yet it is a very remarkable territory. Extremely fertile, being chiefly a vast alluvial deposit washed by several goodly rivers; the Sarus, the Pyramus, the Cydnus, the Pinarus, and others; girt on one side by the sea, on the other by a range of mountains so lofty as even in the warm climate of Southern Asia Minor to be clad with snow during a great part of the year, and so rugged as to present great difficulty of ingress or egress : Cilicia is thus isolated as it were between the eastern and western worlds. Hence three several times has the fate of the world been decided on the plain of Issus. First, when the Greeks and Persians met there under Alexander and Darius; secondly, when Severus and Pescennius Niger engaged there in a life-struggle for dominion; and thirdly, when Heraclius and Chosroes contested there for the superiority of the West over the East. There, also, in the time of Bayazid II., the Osmanlis contested with the Mamluk dynasty of Syria the empire of the East. Three times the Christians of the West, as they were rising into power, upon the past civilisation of Greece and Rome, advanced to battle for the empire of the Cross through Cilicia; till fatal experience taught them to take other roads. Cilicia has, in fact, ever been the highway and the battle-field between the nations of the East and West. Tarsus was, also, alike renowned in former times for its commerce and its schools. Many of the great philosophers, poets, and physicians of ancient times were begat or educated in Cilicia.

A more curious and anot easily explicable feature belongs to Ciliciait is its fatality to crowned heads.

It is doubtful if Sardanapalus, notwithstanding certain not very authentic statements to the contrary, did not die in this province; the river Cydnus, which had nearly proved fatal to Alexander, was certainly so, nearly a thousand years afterwards, to the Emperor Frederic, surnamed Barbarossa. Šeleucus VI. was burned to death in a palace at Mopsuestia; Labienus and Vonones were slain in the same province; Pescennius Niger was killed on the ever-memorable battle-field of Issus; Trajan died at Selinus; Florianus was killed by his troops at Tarsus; Maximianus died in agonies in the same city; Constantius: perished at Mopsuestia; and Julian, the Apostate, was buried at Tarsus; the best and wisest of the Khalifs, Almaamun, died in Cilicia; and the pride of the Comneni, Kalo Joannes, lost his life in a boar-hunt at Anazarba.

The discovery by Mr. W. B. Barker of a very large number of works of art, more especially figures of the household gods of the Cilicians of old, and which were very probably broken up by them on their con version to Christianity, will not, however, fail to attach quite a new inte

* Lares and Penates: or Cilicia and its Governors; being a Short Historical Account of that Province from the Earliest Times to the Present Day: together with a Description of some Household Gods of the Ancient Cilicians, broken up by them on their Conversion to Christianity, first discovered and brought to this Country by the Author, W. B. Barker, M.R.A.S. Edited by W. F. Ainsworth, F.R.G.S &c. London: Ingram, Cooke, and Co.

rest to this territory. The success of Sir Charles Fellows in Lycia, and of Botta and Layard in Assyria, in restoring to us works of ancient art, have opened quite a new field of research; and we have now every reason to hope that the mounds, tells, or teppehs of the East, will, one after another, be ransacked by travellers and archæologists, and made to yield their buried treasures. The number of these earth-covered museums up is very great. They existed in Babylonia and Assyria 400 years B.C.; for Xenophon describes the Persians, at the battle of Cunaxa, as retreating to a tell or mound of earth (gelophos), and Nimrud, which has since been so prodigal to Layard, was a ruin at the time of the Katabasis ; mounds of a more or less similar description are met with throughout Western Asia. These remarkable discoveries of Mr. Barker show that the mythology of Tarsus was, as indeed might have been anticipated, from what is known of its history-its supposed Assyrian origin-its mercantile renown-its connexion with Greece and Rome, and its celebrity as a school of philosophy, science, and religion, of such a mingled character-Assyrian, Egyptian, Indian, Syrian, Greek, and Roman, as to possess quite a peculiar interest, and to throw a new light on the progress of mythological art-an art which Mr. Payne Knight has justly observed was idealised by a religion which neither itself nor the art that it engen dered, may ever occur again.

The positive domestic and public deities (says the editor, in the preliminary chapter on the "Lares and Penates") selected by a country or province and its inhabitants were, perhaps, never before so fully illustrated as in the instance of the remarkable collection now brought to light, discovered also in a country of great antiquity, and which, perhaps, more than any other in the East, forms the connecting link between Assyrian and Greek mythology, and with Lycia between Assyrian and Greek art. The light they may yet be made to throw upon these relations will, in all probability, be found to be very considerable, and to present a field of investigation as yet almost untouched.

The Assyrians of old recognised in the stars of heaven golden chariots of heavenly hosts. Zeus or Baal, as the most perfect leader of the most perfect chariot, was drawn by the finest and largest horses of Asia; while the god of the sun had only one single Nisæan horse, or was represented upon a winged horse, whose image Layard found embroidered upon the garment of the king. Like the tradition of Bellerophon and Perseus, whom, according to Herodotus the Persians declared to be an Assyrian, the designation of this horse by the name of Pegasus seems to be of Assyrian origin, especially since Tarsus, whose inhabitants, according to Dio Chrysostomus, worshipped Perseus, together with Hercules or Sandon and the tridented Apollo, is said to have been built by an Assyrian king.

But although the Assyrian Hercules-Nimrod-Dayyad "the Hunter," or Sandon, is not found in Cilician art as in Assyrian, combating lions and bulls; still we have Nisroch or Asarac, the same as Horus and Harpocrates, viewed as the incarnation of a deity through a female divinity— Ashtaroth, Isis, or Mylitta, one of the oldest traditions of the East, and one which in another form has been destined more than any other to sway mankind. We have the lion of Hera, Rhea or Cybele; Abrerig riding the Polar Bear, the Indian Bacchus carrying his Thyrsus, the cone of the pine borne by the great eagle-headed, and other Assyrian divinities afterwards succeeded by the Lotus, representing the same order of ideas; we have also the Ras Majusi, or head Magus of the Persians, transmitting an original Babylonian and Assyrian form, just as Mithra affects the transi

tion of Nergal to Apollo; we have also the Fish God, and other emblems of rites, which Layard has shown to have been not unknown to the Assyrians.

In connexion with Syria, we have the Apollo of Tarsus winged-a cluster of grapes hanging on the wing, as they hung round the neck of the images of Baal at the great temple of Baalbec-showing the Syrian cast of the mythology of Tarsus, and identifying its Apollo with Baal, as another figure representing Apollo crowned with the symbol of fecundity -the Nelumbium-connects him with the Osiris of Egypt.

In connexion also with the mythology of the inhabitants of the long banks of the Nile, we have beautiful figures of Horus, or Harpocrates, son of Isis, as well as of Isis herself, bearing the Lotus on her head; heads of bulls, representing either Mnevis or Apis; Anubis represented by the dog, and Typhon by the hippopotamus; as also the Axio-Kersian mysteries by the crocodile. We have, also, Phree the hawk, or Egyptian sun. Upon the connexion of Assarac, Horus, and Harpocrates, as the incarnation of Deity through a female divinity, Isis; and, from the abundance of youthful heads with the same Egyptian symbol on them, he must have been one of the most popular divinities at Tarsus, Mr. Abington suggests.

It may be asked, when the Roman Empire began to resound with the testimony of the Apostles, that the long-expected Messiah of the Jews was incarnate, did the priests of the old mythology bring out more fully to popular notice, and in opposition to the Christians, their ancient mystery of the incarnation of the son of Isis? If this policy was resorted to-and it would seem, under the circumstances, very natural-it would explain the fact of the representation of Horus being so multiplied at that period.

It would be their policy to persuade the people, that the wonderful tales respecting the birth of the Messiah were but stolen from the system of religion maintained by them and their fathers, and therefore an innovation to be rejected.

After the figures and busts which record the prevalence of the Isiac worship, which divided with that of the Ephesian Diana, the Samian Juno, and the Phrygian Cybele, the Pantheism of Asia Minor, and two other very interesting and remarkable deities-the Phrygian Atys and Cybele-the latter turreted to represent the city of Tarsus; we have numerous examples of the usual Hellenic divinities of Olympus, such as Chronos, or Saturn, Jupiter, Juno, Hero, Venus, and Mercury, under various forms. Of the Delian deities, Apollo and Diana, figures are more rare, but very instructive. Among the demi-gods, we have Bacchus, Pan, the Sileni and Bacchantes, Hercules, Esculapius, Victory, Somnus, Perseus, Adonis, and a host of other subjects, favourites in plastic art. Among these may be particularly noticed some remarkable illustrations of the story of Marsyas actually being flayed alive; of that of Leander, represented in the act of swimming; of the stories of Arion, of Laocoon, and of Europa, besides a whole host of Sybils, dolphins and their riders, and of deified boys.

Of Divi, or deified human beings, as distinguished from Dei, we have fine heads of Commodus, as Hercules; of Otho, or Titus, of Domitian, and of Caius Caligula; also a head of Messalina; and heads of other ladies, with the head-attire seen on the coins of Julia, the sister of