THE BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW. OCTOBER 1, 1854. ART. I.-The Handbooks of the Crystal Palace. 1854. (2.) Lectures on Architecture and Painting. By JOHN RUSKIN. 1854 (3.) The Stones of Venice. Vol. III., "The Fall.' By JOHN RUSKIN. 1853. (4.) Gothic Ornaments, drawn from existing Authorities. COLLINGS. 1850-1854. By J. K. By C. R. (5.) Iconography of the West Front of Wells Cathedral. COCKERELL, R.A. 1851. (6.) Fresco Decorations, and Stuccoes of Churches and Palaces in Italy in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. By LEWIS GRÜNER. 1854. WHEN in July 1850 the arrangements for the Great Industrial Exhibition in Hyde Park, were made, and the plan for that Crystal Palace in which its priceless collection was to be enshrined, finally determined, how little did we think that within four years, four exhibitions similar in object, though of various merit, should have been witnessed. New York, Dublin, the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, and Munich, have all put in their claim to notice, while a stately building is being reared at Paris, to which the world has been summoned for the year 1855. That vast Exhibitions, and Crystal Palaces, are the fashion just now, there can be little doubt; and so judged the projectors of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, when they planned the spacious building, with its beautiful grounds, but which unlike the others, is destined for permanent service;' indeed, as the general guide book informs us, as 'an institution intended to last for ages, and to 'widen the scope, and to brighten the path of education throughout 'the land.' As much attention has of late been paid to the question of the artistic education of the masses, and as the Crystal Palace claims to aid largely in this movement by its Fine Art Courts; it is to them that we shall exclusively devote our notice, waiving for the present the questions which might arise as to the expediency of placing the arts and the sciences in such close juxtaposition, and of endeavouring to assemble all and everything within the compass of one building. The scope taken in these Fine Art Courts is wide indeed. Beginning with Egypt, and ending with the schools of modern sculpture, the mind has to range over a space of almost three thousand years, from the tomb of Aboo Simbel to the latest statue of Wellington, from the sands of Nubia to the plains of Northern Europe. Much however of this extensive collection is already well known. The casts from the antique have long claimed a place in every gallery of art, and the Egyptian and Assyrian remains have attracted their thousands of visitors to the British Museum. Many of the specimens of modern sculpture, too, found a place in the original Crystal Palace, and many more are familiar to us. Glancing therefore as we proceed, at the Egyptian, Assyrian, and Greek Courts, we shall reserve our chief notice for the courts of Christian art; which include the Byzantine school, until now, almost unknown, together with the Gothic and Renaissance schools, whose respective merits and demerits are so bitterly contested by their partizans, and which, viewed as representatives of antagonistic principles in religion as well as art, are attracting such wide attention. Let us enter the Egyptian Court, where, to use the words of a clever contemporary, the great folio of Egypt is brought out in uodecimo parts to suit the times.' A mighty folio truly is Egypt! much suggestive reading does it present to us, and much care have the constructors of this court bestowed upon many of its more striking pages. Here are colossal kings of the earliest day standing calmly with hands crossed on the breast; here are colossal kings of a later period, seated in quiet majesty, and here are huge lions, but not eager to spring on their prey, not eyeing with roused and angry look the crowds that press and jostle around them; but solemnly couchant,-warders who have nought to do but to watch, and wait, until the mighty cycle of years shall have revolved, and the new world spring forth. And here are pictured walls with long ranges of gaily coloured figures, variously employed, but all, whether occupied in peace, or in war, in the field, or in the temple, calm and solemn; and here are the idols before whom they bow, stiff and angular, but inspiring a sensation of awe, and marked like all the rest by deep repose. Then here is the later court, illustrating the period when the Greek artist moulded the lotus into more graceful forms, and gave light The Egyptian Court-its Deities. 303 ness to the massive column, and height to the low browed roof, and strove to reproduce for the Ptolemies and Arsinoes, somewhat of the matchless elegance that marked the buildings of his own fair land. Would that these representations of a far off antiquity, almost lost in clouds and darkness, had been presented through a similar medium; that a dim religious light' had been diffused over all! But the bright positive colours, the dazzling white, the glare of the fresh gilding, wholly do away with the solemn mysterious feeling, which the relics of Egyptian art, whether in their ancient resting places, or in the national Museum, always awaken. Perhaps no monuments are so dependent on site, as the elder Egyptian. Just as every ornament, every symbol, is strictly and exclusively of Egypt, so in every portion of his design the architect who reared the temple and pyramid, or the sculptor who smote the huge image out of the granite rock, never forgot that it was for the plains of Egypt their works were intended. It is this strict adaptation of the figure, or the building, to the locality, that has won a tribute of admiration from every traveller, whether he has beheld the Pyramids rising lone in the purple distance, or the solemn avenue of sphynxes, stretched out in measureless extent; or stood spellbound before the stupendous hall of Karnak. How then did it come to pass that the monument which claims from its size, and its high antiquity, to be perhaps the most important in the whole series, the tomb of Aboo Simbel should be placed where it is? It would be difficult we allow to find a suitable place at all in the Crystal Palace for a temple hewn in the living rock, and surmounted by giant figures; but surely, far away from the Egyptian court, to which alone it belongs, pressed upon by the Assyrian court on the one hand, and by the gaudy Alhambra court on the other, with marble-edged basin close in front and waving palm trees and crowded flower beds, around, that solemn old temple, excavated from amid the sands of Nubia, is as much out of place as Stonehenge would be,-grey mysterious Stonehenge, if its huge stones were taken from their lone resting place, and set up on one of the fairest slopes in the garden for holiday folk to gaze at. Those huge sphynxes too,how solemn would they look, two and two, on the wide plain, or on the verge of the sandy desert. Even those twin overgrown monsters which, seen close at hand, suggest the mere idea of huge idols from some barbarous land, how awful would they look seen from afar,-giant forms looming through the distance, in dim outline, steadfastly keeping watch through thirty long centuries. That the Egyptian deities offer no claim to beauty of form, and scarcely any to mere beauty of feature, is a recognised fact; and yet we think few can deny their peculiarly solemn and impressive character. There is repose in some, a placid, dreamy repose, as though they had banqueted on the lotus-but in most the repose is that of power, self-sufficing power, the repose of deep thought, of far seeing wisdom, and we recognise the deity, despite of the angular form and the harsh outline. We shall not readily forget the dim November morning when passing from one part of the British Museum to the other, we unconsciously pushed open the door of the great Egyptian Hall, and met the calm gaze of the young Memnon, and stood alone in the presence of those huge bolt upright figures that keep watch there. There they sat, solemn, stern, unyielding, with no beauty that should stay the passer-by lovingly to gaze on them; there they sat, rigid and unchangeable,-just as they sat ere the first coracle had been moored on the shores of unknown, untrodden Britain, ere the first huts of future Rome had been thatched, while Nineveh was in her first glory, and Egypt and Assyria battled for the mastery of the ancient world! And then, as we passed along with hushed footstep, and with hushed breath, we felt there was a strange impressiveness in these relics of an early world. How weak and inadequate is mere beauty to shadow forth those qualities which the mind clings to in its time of need!-how earnestly will human helplessness look up to power, and human weariness to repose; and amid the ceaseless change and decay of all earthly things, how will man seek with intensest yearning, after that which is unchangeable! And thus among the earliest nations, those in whose minds still dwelt the dim traditions of a lost Eden, how did they rear the colossal figure, type to untold ages, of power and steadfastness; and how, when more widely separated from the one great family, did the Celt set up the huge grey stone, ruder symbol indeed, but still emphatic symbol of the Changeless One! Here is the Assyrian court; and here, as in the Egyptian, the eye rests upon symbols of power and permanence. It is worth while to linger here, and mark the distinction between the power embodied in the Egyptian remains, and that which looks forth from those relics of forgotten Nineveh. There is power in both, there is grandeur in both, but the maneless lions and the sphynxes that guard the doorways at the Egyptian temple are couchant, and the deities within are seated,-all is calm watching; while the winged bulls are standing, with feet firmly planted on the portal, and with outspread wings; and the giant warders stand, ready to advance against the intruder, clutching the lion cubs as though they would strangle them. And on the walls, the same indications of active power meet the eye. The Egyptian procession is solemn Assyrian Sculpture-its Characteristics. 305 and slow, but the Assyrian, whether it be for peace, or war, is full of life. How the monarch is hurrying onward his war chariot, how eagerly the men are fording the river, how vigorously they drag the huge bull up to the platform, above all, that wonderful lion fight! what energy in the spring of the lions, how fine the recoil of the horses, and how spiritedly are they executed. Elgin frieze with the battle of the Centaurs, rose to our minds, when we first saw it, for no conventional forms were studied here, but the Assyrian sculptor, just as the Greek, long after, sought his models from nature alone. The The conventionalism that unquestionably checked the progress of Egyptian art, never seems to have shackled the Assyrian sculptor. Indeed, the freedom and the spirit of his style would appear almost incompatible with the stern despotism beneath which he was crushed. It may be, that the Assyrian worship allowed greater scope to the fancy. We have sometimes thought we perceived indications of this in the varied expression of countenance which those gigantic winged bulls and lions present. Looking at the originals,-for the casts here, bright with fresh paint and varnish, are true only to the general character, we can trace a progress from the placid gaze of the Egyptian type, to the steadfast look of the early Greek. Those two mighty symbols of the mysterious living creatures,' which on their first arrival were placed at the foot of the great staircase at the Museum, how often have we looked up as the afternoon sun shone on them,the one, with its strongly marked features, its intent and steadfast look; the other, the lion, with its calm wide forehead, and placid eyes, and delicate mouth and chin, almost Grecian, until the belief grew into certainty, that it was from Assyria that Greece herself derived her first knowledge of the arts-and that from the plains of Shinar came not civilization, not science alone, but art itself. Thus in the Xanthian marbles and in those of Egina, we trace the still westward progress of art, ere she sat down triumphant in Athens. In each school the outline becomes less rigid, the features soften into more positive beauty; but in each the impression of power is fainter and fainter, and the sense of awe, which if it sometimes checked the sculptor's hand, gave sometimes a nameless solemnity to his touch, is no longer visible. In the lapse of ages, in the wider dispersion of the human race, every remnant of the solemn old traditionary faith at length faded away. Men felt after God, if haply they might find him; and baffled in their search, and dwellers in a beautiful land, and surrounded by beautiful forms, the Greek gave up the task to body forth by symbol the vast and incomprehensible, and contented himself with his heritage of beauty. And |