reach of several ports from which torpedo craft might have been expected to issue. The state of the sea, which, whilst allowing a decisive artillery combat, prevented for a time the use of destroyers and torpedo-boats, made clearly apparent the liability of craft of the kind to be restricted in their action. As it was, some at least of the damaged Russian vessels which were sunk by the torpedo craft, might have been added to the Japanese navy had the torpedo not been used; and there is little reason for thinking that any of the torpedoed Russians would have escaped had not a single torpedo been launched.

6

In training, intelligence, and experience the Japanese crews were indisputably superior to their enemy. In courage there was nothing to choose between them. The unswerving fortitude with which the Russian seamen continued to play a game which, from an early period, they must have seen that they could not hope to win, deserves our highest admiration. Togo's signal was addressed to ships' companies of which every man knew what victory or defeat would mean for Japan, and felt confident of the devoted gallantry and consistent support of all his shipmates. Amongst the Russian crews, knowing what we do now of the incidents on board the 'Kniaz Potemkin' and Georgi Pobiedonosetz' and at Revel, we cannot but feel sure that there was, if not a mutinous spirit, at any rate much disaffection. There must have been but little heart for the work in hand, and much suspicion of neighbours. In a statement published in Japan, and referring to the prisoners taken in the Sea of Japan and elsewhere, we read that, 'Hitherto 'the Russian prisoners have been quartered regardless of race, and this was the cause of frequent quarrels amongst them. 'Our authorities have now grouped the men into Poles, Finns, ' and pure Slavs, and given them separate rooms according to 'the grouping. This procedure has been the means of restoring 'harmony amongst the prisoners.' Knowledge of the moral condition of the Russian ships' companies carries with it the conviction that in his expedition Admiral Rojdestvensky was, in the circumstances, sent by his superiors on a duty impossible of execution. Had he been better equipped, morally and materially, than he was, Togo-of whose brilliant qualities as an admiral all must be convinced-and his veteran seamentrained and hardened by nearly a year and a half of unremitting and serious hostilities-would have still been victorious. The Japanese navy, reflecting as it does all the best characteristics of the nation, has been, because it deserved to be, invincible in war.

6

CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE

ART. III.-EARLY

ART AND ARCHEOLOGY.

1. The Golden Age of Classic Christian Art. By J. P. RICHTER and A. CAMERON TAYLOR. London: Duckworth. 1905.

2. Byzantinische Denkmäler. Vol. III.: Ursprung und Sieg der Altbyzantinischen Kunst. By JOSEF STRZYGOWSKI, E. DIEZ, and J. QUITT. Vienna: Verlag der Mechitaristen-Kongregation. 1903.

3. Kleinasien, ein Neuland der Kunstgeschichte. By JOSEF STRZYGOWSKI. Leipsic: J. C. Hinrichs. 1903. 4. Publications of an American Archæological Expedition, 1899-1900. Part II.: Architecture and other Arts. By H. CROSBY BUTLER. New York: 1903.

IN

N a recent article in this Review on the progress of archæological discovery among the ruins of pagan Rome, attention was drawn to a parallel activity in the field of Christian antiquities. It seems desirable to pursue this part of the subject further and to notice some of the more remarkable work which is being done, not only among the monuments of Italy, but also in those long neglected provinces of the East which are now assuming an even greater importance in the eyes of the archæologist and the historian.

The hope of solving problems so intricate as those concerning the transition from Hellenistic and Roman to Christian art is essentially dependent upon the progress of scientific accuracy in exploration and upon the perfecting of illustrative methods. The learned antiquaries of the eighteenth century had little sympathy with the patient inductive reasoning demanded by modern archæology; the genius of their age was all in favour of the imposing generalisation and the ex cathedrâ utterance. Nor had they or their immediate successors the ample opportunities for comparative investigation which the progress of mechanical invention has placed at our disposal to-day. They them selves saw everything in a mellow Olympian light fatal to the conception of inconspicuous things, and the artists whom they employed, with a like disregard for tiresome detail, insensibly inclined to perversion of the truth under

* January 1904.

the subtle influence of preconceived ideas. The engraver, in his turn, augmented the inevitable inaccuracy of such work, with the result that the student of such famous books as those of Ciampini on the mosaics of Rome, or of Gori upon the ivory diptychs of the ancients, had to rely upon figures with only a general resemblance to the originals they professed to reproduce. Although there was a gradual improvement through the first half of the nineteenth century, the change was rather of kind than of degree. Books like Seroux d'Agincourt's Architecture, Sculpture, ' and Painting,' and even Garrucci's 'History of Italian Art,' leave much to be desired from the point of view of accuracy, and it was still impossible for the untravelled inquirer to form a clear idea of the most ancient monuments of Christianity. The rapid development of photography and the introduction of rigid methods effected a revolution which transformed antiquarianism into scientific archæology, equalising the opportunities of all countries, and ousting the dilettante from his dictatorial chair. The results of this revolution are now becoming manifest on all sides, and in no province are they more welcome than in that of Christian archæology, which is ceasing to be the arena of sectarian encounters and is yielding rich revenues of fact under the administration of impartial science. If Giovanni Battista de Rossi could have lived into the new century, he would not have disowned the structures now rising from the foundations which he so accurately laid.

The handsome book of Dr. J. P. Richter and Miss A. Cameron Taylor on the mosaics of Sta. Maria Maggiore at Rome is distinguished alike by this excellence in reproduction and by the systematic investigation which the critical modern spirit demands. Never before have the details of mosaic been so perfectly rendered as those here reproduced from the water-colour drawings and tracings of Signor Carlo Tabanelli. It is possible for the first time to appreciate the tone and quality of the work, for in the fine coloured plates every tessera can be distinctly seen, and the utmost care has been exercised to secure an exact correspondence with the original scheme of colour. Signor Tabanelli's work for The Golden Age of Classic Christian 'Art' is a worthy sequel to that which he produced for Mgr. Wilpert's great book on the paintings of the Catacombs-in which the pictorial art of the earliest centuries of Christianity was first made fully available for study. Placed, like the historical series in S. Apollinare

Nuovo at Ravenna, far too high to be properly seen, these much-restored mosaics were hardly more accessible than the frescoes in the dark chambers of subterranean Rome; and it is an achievement of no mean order to have brought them within easier range of critical examination. By climbing high scaffolds and swinging from the roof in a cage, the authors and their artist have given us a series of reproductions which entirely supersede the plates in de Rossi's Musaici Cristiani' devoted to the illustration of this church.

The ancient mosaic pictures are, as is well known, disposed in a long series of panels above the columns on either side of the nave, and on the great triumphal arch at the east end of the building, the decoration of the apse being medieval work of the thirteenth century. Those of the nave depict episodes from the history of Abraham, Moses, Jacob, and Joshua; those of the arch scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin; while at the summit of the arch is an inscription: 'xYSTVS EPISCOPUS PLEBI DEI,' placed here by Pope Sixtus III. (A.D. 432-440). Hitherto it has been assumed by most archæologists that in any case the arch-mosaics are the work of Sixtus, and that if those of the nave are not his, they are at least to be ascribed to his predecessor, Liberius (A.D. 352-366), who is likewise described in the Liber Pontificalis' as the builder of the church. The reason for supposing a difference in date between the two series is due to an apparent divergence in their general character; for whereas the scenes of the nave are evidently influenced by such reliefs as those of the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, those of the arch are less obviously inspired by classical art, but offer peculiarities pointing to a later time. De Rossi was so impressed by this distinction that he was disposed to assign the nave-series to Liberius, and that of the arch alone to Sixtus, taking it for granted, as almost all other investigators have done, that the Old Testament pictures were historical illustrations conceived in the manner of early illuminated Bibles like the Vienna Genesis, and that those of the arch were composed to celebrate the decision of the Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431), by which the right of the Virgin to the title of "Theotokos' was finally established. But it was argued by the Russian Professor Ainaloff, who in recent years subjected the mosaics to as careful an examination as his opportunities allowed, that the close affinity between the unrestored portions of arch and nave compels us to regard the two series as the work

of a single period, and even of the same group of artists. If, then, no typological connexion was to be assumed between the subjects of the nave and the arch, the apparent inconsistency of the two had simply to be accepted and both attributed to the time of Sixtus. For the general character and many details of the arch seemed incompatible with an earlier date than the fifth century, and the more antique style of the compositions in the nave must therefore be due to a deliberate imitation of ancient models. We shall have occasion to refer below to the probable reproduction of earlier frescoes in mosaic, and to the copying of antique sculpture by the mosaicists of the post-Constantine period at Ravenna. Here we need only note that similar conservative tendencies were manifested by the first illuminators of manuscripts. Professor Ainaloff, indeed, compares these mosaics to enlarged miniatures, and draws attention, like earlier writers, to their similarity in many details to the Vatican Virgil' and the Iliad' in the Ambrosian Library at Milan.

Upon all the theories which ascribe the mosaics to the century after Constantine, the authors of The Golden Age of Early Christian Art' have delivered a sudden and unexpected attack. They, too, hold that all the mosaics originated at one period; but instead of assigning them to the time of Sixtus in the fifth century, they boldly carry them back no less than 200 years, pronouncing them to be the work of men still living in the afterglow of the great classic traditions. It is hardly necessary to point out that if this attack should succeed it would effect a revolution in many of our most widely accepted ideas on early Christian art. Propositions which claimed axiomatic truth would become invalid; the streams of sacred rivers would return upon their 'sources.' It is impossible within the limits of a short article to do full justice to so daring and ingenious an hypothesis, or to follow all the lines of argument by which the authors seek to overcome the conservatism of existing opinion. The ordnance which they bring to bear is of two kinds theological and artistic; and this double assault lends a formidable aspect to their attack. For a plain man, who knows something of early Christian art and would be disposed to resist to the last upon artistic grounds, is taken aback when the balls whistle about his ears from an unexpected quarter and the heavy batteries of early patristic symbolism are brought up upon his flank.

Stated in the briefest possible manner, the theory pre