&c. inscribed with huge characters, but really a small square wooden box, bound round the head by a leathern belt, and containing the written promises of the old dispensation. Such is the phylactery the second rabbi holds in one hand, while he presses the other upon the wrist of his neighbour, and seems to be asserting that, whatever might be the nature of the reasonings of Christ, they at least had these promises that were written within the phylactery upon which they might both rely.

Next comes another, in the prime of life, who, having entered eagerly into the dispute with the Saviour, unrolls the book of the prophecies of Daniel, whereby to refute the argument. He is interested, disputatious, and sceptical; leans forward to speak passionately, half impatient of the interruption caused by the entrance of Joseph and Mary, to which the attention of several of the other rabbis is given. His feet are drawn up close beneath him upon the dewân, a characteristic action of such a temperament when excited: those of the elder rabbis are placed at ease upon the floor, but with varying and appropriate attitudes. There is a hard look upon this man's face-set passion in his mouth, resolute anger in his eye, and a firm, sharp gripe of the hands upon the roll he holds; this is finely in keeping. Over his shoulder, from the second row, leans a musician, one of the house of Levi, speaking to him, and with pointed finger making a comment on the words of Christ, at whom he is looking. The fourth rabbi, who is also concerned in this dialogue, wears a phylactery on his forehead. We presume Mr. Hunt intended by this to indicate a supererogation of piety in this individual, the phylactery, in strict propriety, being only worn at time of prayer. He recounts the arguments, and, holding a reed pen in one hand, presses its point against a finger of the other, as one does who is anxious to secure the premises before he advances further. The overweening character of this man is thus indicated; let the observer note how the artist makes the action of each person to be with an

entire consent of the attitude of his whole body, by this man's assumption of repose and dignity shown in his leaning back on the dewân. The fifth rabbi, an old, mild-visaged man, whose long white beard, divided in two parts, falls nearly to his girdle, sits more erect; his feet, drawn up beneath him, are planted flatly before. He holds a shallow glass vessel of wine in his hand that has been poured out by an attendant behind. He looks at the reunion of the Holy Family, and suspends his drinking to observe them. A sixth elder leans forward to look also, placing his hand. upon the back of the dewân. The seventh and last is as distinct in character and action as all the rest are. Like the fifth, he has an ink-horn in his girdle; he is corpulent, self-satisfied, and sensuously good-natured; he raises his hand from his knee to express an interest in the transaction before him; he sits crosslegged, and quite at ease, nevertheless. This individual completes the semicircle of the rabbis, and brings us again to the figure of Christ.

Returning now to the other side of the picture: Immediately above the disputatious rabbi, and leaning against one of the gilded columns, is a youth holding a sistrum in his hand-one of the rings strung upon its wires about to drop from his fingers. He is handsome, supercilious-looking, and fair-complexioned. Leaning upon his shoulder is another youth, also a musician, bearing a four-stringed harp; the face of the last is quite in contrast to that of his companion, having an ingenuous sweetness and gentleness of character about it that is almost fascinating. Eagerly thrusting his face against the column, and peering over the head of the last, is a third youth, whose large, well-open eyes, broad features, and inquisitive look, support his active anxiety to see what is going forward, admirably.

In the extreme distance of the vista of columns, a money-changer is seen weighing gold in a balance. A father bas brought his firstborn to the Temple, accompanied by his wife, who bears the child in her arms; the husband has

across his shoulder the lamb of sacrifice, while a seller of lambs, from whom this has just been purchased, counts the price in the palm of one hand, and with the other presses back an anxious ewe that would follow her offspring. In another part, a boy is seen with a long scarf driving out the fugitive doves that have entered the Temple. At the door, a lame and blind beggar is chanting a prayer for alms.

Thus far we have spoken of the incidents of the design, the character and expressions of the personages, and general appearance of this marvellous picture. We have endeavoured also to indicate what have been the artist's purposes and motives, and the difficulties of its execution. It remains now to speak of the manner in which he has carried this out, especially in regard to the noble qualities of colour and drawing. For the last, let it suffice that the minutest detail has been wrought out; the very hands of the men are a perfect accompaniment to their eyes and physical aspect; those of the oldest rabbi are pallid, full-veined, and slow pulses seem to circulate in them. Mary's are elegantly slender-a little sunken, but very beautiful. Each fold in every garment is "accounted for," and duly studied from nature. The Virgin's dress is grey, dust-stained with travel. She has an under-garment of white, and a girdle, whose red fringes show at the open side, tossed up with the eagerness of her actions. An elegant head-dress of white, striped with red, falls back on her shoulders. Joseph's body-coat is like that of Christ, crimson and purple in very narrow stripes; over this is a brown and white burnoose, such as the Arabs wear to this day. The provision for a journey, a row of figs, is strung to his girdle. The rabbis have all the over

garment proper to Pharisees, of pure white, except that worn by the chief, which is barred with broad and narrow bands of black upon the sleeves; a dress styled the "Tillith," worn only when bearing the Torah, or rolls of the law. The most removed has his under-garment amber-coloured, striped with blue, and a deep-blue robe beneath all. He that is about to drink wears an exquisite turquoise green-blue vest of sheeny texture, that gathers brightness in the shade; this is girt to him by a girdle of white and red. The young musicians wear green garments and turbans of rich crimson, and purple and green, harmoniously blended so as to create exquisite elour. The roof of the Temple is gilt like the columns, elaborately decorated with alternate pines, vine-branches, and pomegranates, and lighted from without by small openings, filled with stained glass. The door of the Temple, visible over Joseph's head, bears plates of hammered gold riveted upon it; upon these is discernible a great circle, from whose centre radiates an ornament of papyrus plant, the intersections filled with the unopened buds of the same: guttæ of gold are drawn on the flat surface of the door. The pavement of the Temple is of a deep-tinted marble, in broad veins. of a palish blood-colour and white.

It is now time to announce our conviction that Mr. Holman Hunt, who has ever been the steadfast centre of the Pre-Raffaelite movement, has in this noble work successfully laid down his idea of art; that by so doing he has put a crown on to his previous labours; and that the result is likely to be a great extension of those principles-now, perhaps, for the first time fairly elucidated-to which is mainly due the remarkable and inestimable advance that has of late years taken place in English art.

THE future historian of the literature of the nineteenth century will have considerable difficulty in ticketing M. Michelet according to his proper class and order. Is he to rank among the historians? He has written many volumes of so-called histories, but which are generally valuable and interesting precisely by that in them which is not really historic. Is he a naturalist? He has taken to natural history in later life; but his two pleasant volumes on "The Bird," and "The Insect," contain the blunders of a tyro, nor should I advise any student to assert anything as a fact in nature, because M. Michelet has stated it.

Is

he a pure physiologist? His latest productions turn largely on physiological considerations; yet I suspect that a real physiologist will be as little disposed to admit him for such, as a lawyer would deem him a jurist in virtue of his volume "On the Origins of French Law." Is he a political writer? His lectures had to be stopped by command of Government; yet I doubt if even his invocation to the "Holy Bayonets of France ever raised him in any one madcap's mind to the rank of a political leader. Is he a philosopher? He certainly has translated the "Scienza Nuova" of Giambattista Vico; but I pity the man who should seek to evolve

a connected philosophy from his writings. Is he a theologian? a religious innovator? He has seemed everything by turns-at one time writing "Luther's Memoirs;" at another professing his attachment to the " poor old Catholic Church;" at a third attacking Jesuitism in the name of Voltaire; at last setting up Egyptian mythology as the most perfect of religious symbols.

"Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel." Reuben's lot seems to have been his. With marvellous gifts of style, an imagination of singular vivacity, active faculties of observation, occasional keen flashes of insight, very considerable and varied acquirements, quick sympathies at once with the beautiful and with the good, and the most sincere desire for the welfare of his fellow-creatures,—with powers, in a word, sufficient for the creation of half-a-dozen masterpieces, and much of that universal aptitude which, if it be not genius itself, seems yet as it were the bulb out of which it springs,-M. Michelet has not produced, and I believe will not leave behind him, one single great work -one really beautiful-one really good one; although he will leave few which are not replete with interest; not one which does not present us with beautiful thoughts, attractive pages, often chapters at a time.

Yet M. Michelet's influence over his generation in France has been considerable, and has not ceased to be such. Not a little, probably, on this account, that few men have opened a greater number of new paths, for the time being, to their countrymen. He brought back to them, from Italy, the great Neapolitan thinker, Vico. He was for France one of the first discoverers of modern Germany. He first, in his Roman History, popularized some of the Niebuhrian views as to Roman origins. Older professors stood aghast; the book and its fellows were for a time nearly as much tabooed in the history classes of French colleges as a novel, or were only used in otherwise desperate cases, to kindle an interest in the subject. Learned men, the very pillars of the

universities those survivors of an earlier age, trained either by Jesuit or Jansenist, before the first Revolution and Empire had deprived Frenchmen, for a time, of the leisure to learn Greek, -stood utterly aghast at the pranks of a young professor of the Normal School, who talked of Sanscrit poetry and Welsh triads; quoted at first hand the legendary romances of the middle ages; gave extracts from Dante; referred to Walter Scott; and constantly mixed up the experiences of the present with the narratives of the past. Still Michelet's works, although of course read with avidity wherever they were treated, or supposed to be treated, as forbidden fruit, did not bear their full effect at the comparatively early age at which the ordinary French college is usually frequented. The school-boy in all countries is in general an essentially practical creature. He soon found that for scholastic purposes for the cram of examinations-Michelet's works were of far less use to him than much duller ones, but better stored with the right facts, and more methodically treated. It was at a later age, and in that much higher theatre of the "College de France," where the vulgar stimulus of competition disappears, and the student learns for the sake of learning, that the brilliant eloquence of the man really took hold of the Parisian youth. the variety at once, and the mobility of Michelet's mind-which will preserve for him a kind of youth even in his dotage-seemed exactly to correspond with the like qualities in his hearers. Here was a man who appeared to have handled everything, looked into everything, thought about everything, sympathized with almost every human tendency; who brought up the past into pictures as living as those of the present; who yet was essentially a Frenchman, and a Frenchman of the nineteenth century, full of national prejudices and national vanities, carried away with all the dominant impulses of the day. Who can wonder that when he came to deliver, simultaneously with his colleague, M. Quinet, his famous course

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