defies analysis, so is there in wisdom a certain something that is not to be found in knowledge, and which cannot be put therein by any known human agency. We may intercommunicate knowledge, or we may keep it locked away, selfishly, in our own brains. But wisdom cannot be communicated at will, even by a father to a son; although the son of a wise father has a fair chance of obtaining wisdom by spontaneous inheritance, or of gradually catching it by contagion.

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The aggregate amount of knowledge in the world is every day increasing; it is like a rising arithmetic series, whose first term is zero, and whose common difference is a very minute fraction: that of wisdom is probably constant quantity, subject neither to increase nor abatement. A youth of twenty has manifold more of knowledge now-a-days than a youth of twenty could have had in the days of Solon; and for a time the consciousness of knowledge is fraught with danger to his modesty and judgment. But the teaching of time and experience is the same now as in the days of old; and a modern grey beard, if he be wise at all, is probably as wise as any of the patriarchs in Genesis. But alas! we are a generation too prone to slight the teachings of greybeards and the traditions of antiquity. Like Rehoboam, we prefer the counsel of young men. But Rehoboam is a notable instance of a son not inheriting wisdom. His kingdom was rent with chinks and cracks; and the wisdom of old age would have operated like a cement; but the monarch thrust the advice of youth, like a wedge, into the open places, and split his kingdom into fragments.

Let us take a retrospective view of past times, and compare, in a few of its phases, our own civilization with that of the most famous and refined peoples of antiquity.

Of all the arts, it is perhaps in regard to music that modern times may be most favourably contrasted with antiquity. Our system of notation is certainly superior to any ancient system. At all events, we should infer its superiority from the fact that no ancient one has led to the transmission of a single melody; although, by the bye, it is not improbable that melodies have been orally, though unwittingly, transmitted down to our own days from the very remotest antiquity. However, our system of notation is of itself so ancient, that we may dismiss its consideration.

Antiquity, then, had no instruments to compare in sweetness and compass with the piano, the violin, and organ Granting this to be the case, we are only allowing the superiority of the moderns in regard to mechanical ingenuity. The perfection of instrumental mechanism assists a composer very little, if at all. The present century has produced great musicians, but possibly no century will produce musicians to compare with Mozart and Beethoven. And Mozart wrote many of his finest pieces on a tavern-table with boon companions around him; or extemporized them upon a jingling spinette; and Beethoven, towards the end, heard only that inner music of the soul, of which all outer and mechanical instruments can give but the faintest of faint echoes.

The grandest, and almost the only, lyric poetry in

our English language is what we have borrowed from the Hebrews. What must that verse be in the original tongue, that defies comparison in a translation!

The lyrical poetry of Greece is second only to that of the Hebrews, and possesses the anomalous quality of untranslateability. The luxuriant lyric of a Semitic dialect has passed into musical and idiomatic English, while the more chastened lyric of a sister-tongue resists every effort of translation. A passage of Pindar, or a chorus of Sophocles, is a kind of gooseberry; to enjoy it thoroughly you must eat it off the bush.

Now lyric verse is but the result of music operating on the brain; as is dancing of its operation on the nerves. Wherever, in the lyrics of a nation, we detect subtlety, accuracy, and variability of rhythm, it is impossible to resist the inference that the music of such a nation must have been delicate and comprehensive. In the 107th psalm we seem to hear part-singers uniting ever and anon in one great choral swell; in the 137th psalm, we hear the mournful wailings of a most sweet and plaintive lute; in the 104th, we have the verbal record of the grandest of all human songs of praise. If only these little dots of Aretino had been thought of betimes, what a pleasure to have listened really to a chorus from the Antigone, or to one of the sweet songs of Sion? For had not these Greeks and Hebrews souls replete with melody? and is not the human voice the oldest and the best of all instruments of music? older and sweeter than the reed-music of old, immemorial Pan?

It is not impossible, but very probable, that in the

earliest styles of severe church music we have some faint traditionary echoes of the choral music of Greece; and that, allowing for differences of religious feeling, the early Italian painters moved in the traditionary steps of Grecian masters. Indeed, the early painters of Italy belong more to antiquity than to modern times. The secret of their inspiration is lost; and their style is irreproducible. The difficult field of figure-painting, as combined with the embodiment of vast conceptions, has been abandoned in despair; and weaker generations have explored the less difficult ground of historical scene-painting, or the delineations of seascape and landscape, or indulged in the beautiful and transparent effeminacy of water-colours.

With regard to sculpture, we have men of native genius in London and in Rome, who, if patronage were liberal, and competition fairly open, might replace with works of beauty the monuments that at present tend only to vulgarize superfluously the national taste, and to render us ridiculous in the eyes of intelligent foreigners. A traveller through London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, ceases, from habituation, to smile at bare-headed monarchs in the costume of Achilles; mounted generals caracolling upon gateways; obscure M.P.'s catching halfpence or rain-drops in their hats; or heroes and statesmen perched on pillar-tops, as high and ugly, but not as useful, as the chimneys of our factories. From what we see of our groundling statues, we should feel disposed to advocate the hoisting of all coming worthies to the summits of still higher columns. The defects or jokes of posture and of costume would be at least par

tially concealed even a quid or a pipe might be so inserted in the mouth of an exposed admiral as to be discernible only by the use of a telescope.

In regard to architecture, the Egyptians have a column and simple chapter, supporting masses of horizontal stone; and the effect produced is the impression of solemnity and strength. By the Greeks the column. was thinned, and the chapter varied; and solemnity was replaced by lightness, and strength by grace. The Romans borrowed somewhat unskilfully and inharmoniously from their more tasteful subjects and instructors, but furnished their own quota of the floral scroll. The necessities of covered roofing and rain-drainage under inclement skies led to the pointed arch, and the single column was fluted into conglomerate columnulæ by the unknown founders of the Gothic. The necessity of a rain-proof roofing, and the consequent absence of roof-light, led to the use of windows, and the shaping of the windows was determined by the angularities of a sloping roof. The domestic architecture of the chief cities in the middle ages, Italian, Spanish, Venetian, and Flemish, borrowed indiscriminately from Greek, Roman-Greek, and Gothic. Modifications were made at the suggestion of expedience; and a pointed window might be flattened to an oblong for the admission of light. In our own days, Architecture is dead, or worse than dead. So far are we from being able to suggest original ideas or fresh combinations, that we are but seldom successful imitators of past excellence. There is some Gorgon influence that operates upon our modern architects, and metamorphoses them into stone