strictly perfect, but perfectible, for He "grew in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man (p. 322).

It may be said of the nature of any rational creature that it is 'perfectible.' Of the human nature of Christ, on the other hand, it should surely be said that it was, at each stage of life, perfect. He was the perfect Child when He was a year old as truly as He was the perfect Man when His sufferings were accomplished and He yielded His Spirit to the Father. The word 'perfectible' lets in ideas of imperfection which, if we are not mistaken, Mr. Gladstone would repudiate as earnestly as ourselves.

Nor may we quite pass by the concluding paragraph in which, after it has been truly said that 'the promise of perpetuity and immortality to the Church, against which the gates of hell are not to prevail, is a promise to the Church at large, and not to its individual members, or even to its particular sections' (p. 330), Mr. Gladstone goes on to suggest that it may be possible for the Christian Church at large' to go' astray in matters not vital to the Christian faith,' in the same way that the 'promise of an indestructible holiness and striving after the image of God does not exclude vast masses of sin from her precincts' (p. 331). It would be impossible at the end of an article on another subject to deal adequately with a matter of so great importance, and involving questions so difficult as the relation of the Church's sanctity and the Church's truth, the meaning of 'going astray,' and the nature of matters not vital to the Christian faith,' and Mr. Gladstone does not attempt to discuss the problem he has thus raised. We must be content to follow his example, and for the present, at any rate, must say no more than record our conviction that some parts of the paragraph to which we have referred are open to criticism from the point of view of the Catholic doctrine of the teaching office of the Church.

We have the greatest admiration for the way in which, throughout a singularly active and busy life, Mr. Gladstone has found time to maintain the study of theology, and for the powers he exhibits of dealing with it; but we should be false to truth we think it a high duty to preserve if we did not express our opinion that the limitations of the article on 'True and False Conceptions of the Atonement' have been dictated by an error of judgment, and our regret that the brilliant writer of it did not use his magnificent abilities in a more complete statement of the true doctrine of the atoning. power of the Death of Christ.

ART. VI. THE LIFE OF CHRIST IN ART.

1. The Life of Christ as represented in Art.

By FREDERIC W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; Archdeacon and Canon of Westminster; Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen and to the House of Commons. Author of The Life of Christ, The Life and Work of St. Paul, &c. (London, 1894.)

2. Raphael's Madonnas and other great Pictures, reproduced from the Original Paintings; with a Life of Raphael, and an Account of his Chief Works. By KARL KARÒLY. (London and New York, 1894.)

THE Archdeacon of Westminster is a well-known writer and controversialist. He is the author of a popular Life of Christ, and of a vast number of other books on the most varied subjects. Sermons and biographies, polemical pamphlets and theological treatises, magazine articles and child's stories, flow from his prolific pen, year after year, in the same amazing quantity. No topic comes amiss to his versatile imagination and facile pen. He carries on a fiery theological controversy in the pages of one periodical, and at the same moment writes a Christmas number for another. One day he publishes a volume of sermons on the Lord's Prayer, and the next he writes a preface to the Imitatio, and once more attacks his favourite bugbears of Romanism and sacerdotalism. None the less we own to a sense of surprise in finding him among the art critics. Yet, strange to say, this is actually the case. A Life of Christ as represented in Art, numbering 500 pages, and copiously adorned with illustrations, is Dr. Farrar's latest achievement in the field of popular literature.

After his usual habit, the Archdeacon has availed himself largely of other men's labours, and careful examination will show how small is the amount of original matter contained in the handsome volume before us. The bulk of the work consists in quotations from the writings of well-known historians and critics of art. As many as seventeen or eighteen pages are borrowed from the works of Mr. Ruskin, besides which, at every turn, we find lengthy paragraphs from Vasari and Waagen, Eastlake and Kugler, Burckhardt and Lübke, Woltmann and Woermann, Crowe and Cavalcaselle, as well as from the series of Lives of Artists edited by Dr. Robert Dohme, and a host of other standard works. Lord Lindsay, Mrs. Heaton, Mr. Gilbert, Mr. Dennistoun, Mr. John Addington Symonds, Mr. Watkiss Lloyd, Dr. Lübke, the Academy speeches

of Sir Frederic Leighton, and, above all, Mr. Edward Cook's popular Handbook to the National Gallery, are among the other authorities who are the most frequently quoted in these pages. There is, indeed, no end to the long list of writers, in English, French, German, and Italian, whose books and magazine articles have supplied Dr. Farrar with descriptions and criticism of pictures for his pages. Unfortunately, he has not devoted enough of his own time and thought to the study of this new branch of history, and not all the vast array of references drawn up in the table at the end of his book have saved him from blunders and inaccuracies of the most dismal type. For instance, at p. 428, he describes Giovanni Bellini's Pietà,' in the Berlin Gallery, and informs us that this picture, one of the most famous masterpieces of the great Venetian's art, is the work of Andrea Mantegna. Again, at p. 202, he tells us that Mantegna's 'Madonna della Vittoria,' now in the Louvre, was painted for the Marquis Francesco Gonzago [sic], of Mantua, after his victory over Charles XIII. at Furnova, in 1485.' Mantegna's splendid altar-piece, as every student of Italian history and Renaissance art is aware, was painted for Francesco Gonzaga, after his victory over Charles VIII. at Fornovo on July 6, 1495. Elsewhere we are told that Raphael painted his 'Transfiguration' and died in 1510, instead of 1520, and that Fra Angelico's 'Madonna of the Star' is 'in the convent of St. Mark's, at Venice'—a mistake which is repeated twice over. On p. 442 he first describes Perugino's well-known Resurrection' in the Vatican, and then informs us that 'the same subject has also been treated by Raphael in the Vatican.' In point of fact, there is in this Gallery only one picture of the subject, which was formerly supposed to be Raphael's work, but is now recognized as that of Perugino. Then, again, Dr. Farrar informs us that Lorenzo Lotto was born at Bergamo, whereas, if he will turn to the list of painters which he has borrowed from Sir Frederic Burton, at the end of his own book, he will see that the painter is there described as a native of Treviso.

Dr. Farrar quotes largely both from Morelli's Italian Painters and from a still more recent work, Mr. Berenson's Essay on Venetian Painters. But he has not apparently studied these admirable critics to much purpose, since he persists in ascribing to Raphael such inferior works as the 'Madonna del Divino Amore' at Naples, and the Madonna del Passeggio,' which last picture we may as well remind him is not at Vienna, but at Bridgewater House. He might also, if he chose, have learned from Dr. Anton Springer, whom he

quotes repeatedly, that there is no trace of Raphael's hand in Lord Windsor's predella of Christ bearing the Cross,' while the best critics now recognize the 'Spasimo di Sicilia and the Madonna della Perla' to be the work of Giulio Romano. But it is still more puzzling to read, at p. 329, that Raphael, Fra Bartolommeo, and Titian all painted pictures of the 'Raising of Lazarus.' We cannot conceive in what gallery of Europe these works are to be found, and have a shrewd suspicion that they exist only in Dr. Farrar's imagination. In her chapter on the Miracles of Our Lord, Mrs. Jameson particularly remarks that there is no example of the 'Raising of Lazarus' among the works of Raphael, or Fra Bartolommeo, or Titian. He might also have learnt from Mrs. Jameson that Dürer's print of 'Christ taking Leave of His Mother' is by no means the only representation of this incident in art. Veronese and Caroto both painted the scene, and it is, as the Archdeacon might have known, the subject of one of Correggio's finest works in London, the picture belonging to Mr. R. H. Benson, which was exhibited at the rooms of the Burlington Fine Arts Club during the whole of last summer.

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Such a tissue of blunders and mis-statements can only be the result of lamentable ignorance or inexcusable carelessness on the part of the writer. They are the more to be deplored, since the book wili probably, from the nature of its contents, fall into the hands of persons who know but little of art history. The intelligent boys and youths of the working-class, in whose interests, Dr. Farrar tells us in his preface (p. vi) this handbook is written, will be sorely puzzled if, on some trip to Berlin, they find that no Pietà' by Mantegna is to be seen in the gallery, and will turn over the pages in the catalogue in vain to find any mention of the picture. And they will certainly discover no fresco of The Last Judgment,' by the hand of Giotto, on the walls of Santa Maria Novella of Florence. In a word, Dr. Farrar's knowledge of art is of the most shallow and superficial kind, and the book which he has produced is thoroughly untrustworthy. This is much to be regretted, since Mrs. Jameson's excellent and scholarly History of Our Lord in Art is now out of date, and a good book on the subject, by some competent person would have been of great value. But Dr. Farrar, it is plain, is not the man for the task. He might, one would have thought, have been able to learn something of the historical evolution of Italian art from Morelli. But there is absolutely no method, no attempt at chronological arrangement in his treatment of the separate schools. He jumps from one period and country to another, in the most puzzling way, and jumbles Correggio and

Overbeck, Edwin Long and Bonifazio, and Dürer, Francia, and Vandyck, and the Carracci, all up together in the most wonderful confusion. Rembrandt, we notice, is an artist whom he utterly fails to appreciate, and he repeatedly informs us (pp. 247, 335, &c.) that the great Dutchman's masterpieces are mere studies of light and shade.

Another defect which seriously impairs Archdeacon Farrar in his new capacity is his inability to approach any subject excepting from a controversial point of view. The whole book is written, as might indeed be expected from Dr. Farrar's recent utterances, with a strong Protestant bias. He drags modern controversy into his descriptions at every turn, speaks of idolatry, forsooth, as a very real danger at the present time, gives extracts from the devotional books which he dislikes, and condemns the tone of the addresses delivered by Anglican preachers at the so-called Three Hours' Services' (p. 374). The introduction of the crucifix is to him a sign of deep corruption in the Church, and he quotes Dr. Dale in support of his contention, 'that the late unscriptural, unprimitive, irreverent introduction of the crucifix into the ordinary emblems of Christianity involved a failure in all true apprehension of the aspect in which we should habitually regard our Risen, Glorified and Ascended Lord' (p. 392). Under this head he proceeds to declaim in turn against 'the crude materialism of cardiolatry' (p. 405), by which he means the Devotion of the Sacred Heart, the delusions of stigmatics and convulsionaires, the hideous Calvaries and roadside crosses of cretinous Swiss-Italian valleys.' Has Dr. Farrar, we are inclined to ask, ever visited the Sacro Monte of Varallo, or is that famous sanctuary one of the ghastly 'Calvaries,' which he includes in this sweeping denunciation ? On this point we should like to refer him to Dr. Arnold, who looked with such deep interest and sympathy at the wayside shrines raised by the piety of the natives in Tyrolese and Alpine valleys.

This unhappy turn of mind is a serious drawback in a writer on Italian art, and renders him inaccessible to the pathos and beauty of its noblest creations. Bellini's wonderful

'Pietà' at Milan, which has been justly called one of the most profoundly moving works of art ever painted, is described by Dr. Farrar as one of the master's least successful pictures, and Mantegna's Cristo in Scurto' is a 'vulgar

This spelling is retained in a Florentine edition (1849) of Vasar (v. 195), and in Crowe and Cavalcaselle (History of Painting in North Italy, i. 415). In modern Italian it would of course be 'in scorto,' i.e. ` en raccourci, with reference to the violent foreshortening of the Sacred Figure.