let us add for the benefit or the vexation of collectors, are now counterfeited with such skill, and in such abundance, that, like those by Bernard Palissy, hardly any certificate of genuineness, except where we can have, distinct historical proof, can be trusted. We know of one dealer in Florence who sold six successive reliefs by Della Robbia, from the same church wall, to six too enthusiastic amateurs of ancient Tuscan workmanship. The wise the buildings of that period and country reach, with very rare exceptions, high excellence in their respective arts. It is as idle to place the Duomo of Florence on an equality with the Cathedral of Rheims as to speak of the carvings of Donatello or Michel Angelo in the terms appropriate to the work of Phidias. But an effect on the mind hardly inferior is produced by the intimate and vital union between the masterpieces of the delightful sculptors of Tuscany and the architec-will pay a visit to the Ginori works at ture which enshrines their treasures. Doccia, and content themselves with the And all our English efforts to restore same thing at the price of a reproducarchitecture are hopeless and valueless tion; or there are skillful hands, much until we have men sufficiently gifted and nearer England, which will supply them trained to model the human form, no less with Luca or Andrea at discretion. But than to design the elevation. we will not dwell on this torturing topic. The second great epoch of Tuscan sculpture sees the art fairly transferred to that city which was, at the same time, the centre of painting-Florence. It may be parted into two main sections. In the earlier, the influence of the Renaissance is slightly felt; the religious elements are yet predominant; gradual improvement in studying natural form is perceptible, and grace and life more and more penetrate the bronze and the marble; but the leading wish is to express Christian sentiment in a way which, compared with the Greek, might be called pictorial rather than plastic. Our limits will allow us little more than a list of names. Ghiberti, although so far imbued with the singular and (we must add) the shallow classicality of that age as to date a visit to Rome "in the 440th Olympiad "-a date which naturally defeats Mr. Perkins' powers of calculation, seeing that an Olympiad covered four years-is perhaps the most complete example of the style just characterized. Greater power and variety, with a clearer perception of the limits of sculpture, belong to Donatello, whom the author apparently regards as the central or typical artist of the Florentine school. A basrelief of "Dancing Children," beautifully engraved after the original at Prato, seems to us to merit this praise more than the somewhat meagre, though famous, "St. George" from Or San Mi Desiderio da Settignano, Mino da Fiesole, Luca della Robbia and his firm or family, may be grouped with Donatello. The Robbia earthenwares, Mr. Perkins furnishes a very curious history of the equestrian group of Bartolomeo Colleoni, cast for Venice by the great Verocchio. He gives no small share in this justly celebrated work to Verocchio's successor in completing the group, a certain Venetian-Leopardi. We must demur, however, to some of the praise here awarded to Leopardi, as we can hardly help ascribing to him the head of the horse, which is precisely the least satisfactory portion of the group; although Mr. Perkins is probably correct in assigning the style of the drapery at any rate to Venetian influence. A notice of the similar group modelled by Verocchio's greater pupil, the all-accomplished and all-capable Leonardo, is also given. This is enough to convince us that we have lost the one work of Italian sculpture which might really have borne comparison with the Hellenic, in that model which was destroyed by the French soldiery of Louis XII., as their successors, under Napoleon, defaced Leonardo's "Last Supper." So France "protects the arts"-a protection, let us add, too well appreciated in Germany, Spain, and Italy, to require any comment. After these artists the decline commences. Study of form for form's sake, study of finish for the sake of finish, study of grace as an exhibition of balanced lines, all led the sculptor away from the object of his art-the expression of religious sentiment or pathetic thought through metal or marble. Then came the last and fatal change which, from been issued, contains the strange statement that the letters so long preserved by the Buonarroti family have been handed over to the State authorities, with an injunction to forbid any revelation of their contents. Should this irrational entail be broken through (as common sense demands), we may hope to return to a subject which is little likely to lose its interest as a tale, or its importance as a lesson. Pollajuolo to Gibson, Mr. Perkins justly German and narcotic, life by Herr considers has practically ruined Italian Grimm, of which a translation has just sculpture. The dead subjects of Greek or Roman mythology were substituted for subjects which appealed to living hearts and heads. In place of the sacred figures of Christian art, we have the foul revel of the Satyr, the heavy extravagance of the Neptune, or the nastiness of the painted Venus. But it is only the earlier portion of this "road downwards" (for no one can deny real, though misdirected, creative power to Pollajuolo, Torrigiano, or Giovanni Bologna) which falls within Mr. Perkins' province. To these artists, with the less important though once European reputations of Sansovino, Bandinelli, and others, he has devoted the same conscientious labor with which he has illustrated their predecessors. But we can only glance at this subject, adding that Mr. Perkins gives to the dismay, again, of collectors -the brief list of best-authenticated specimens of the base but skillful Cellini, and that his print of the "Jonah," ascribed to Raffaelle, fully confirms that impossibility of successfully "cutting in" to sculpture from painting on which we dwelt in the course of last autumn. Blackwood's Magazine. DAY AND NIGHT. THE days were once too short for life and me— Too short for life-too short for hopes that made time. And but for glories sweet of stars and moon, Thus was it on the other side of Time; Michel Angelo is of course the great name-we may truly say, the one and only great name-during the last days of the Tuscan school. Once more, in Mr. Perkins' pages, we traverse that most melancholy of all artist-biographies While yet the path wound dubious up the heights -the misdirected training, hesitating Through mists that flew aside as the winds blew between the frescoes of Ghirlandajo and Betimes, and opened up, in glimpses sweet, the counsels of Lorenzo; the design for A royal road that clomb the very heavensthe Julius monument of colossal impos-O'er virgin heights by no man trod before, A road divine, that, still ascending, led sibility; years wasted in ignoble dispute, And vales of paradise, where vulgar foot or buried in the quarries of Cararra; the Had ne'er profaned the flowers: a road for kings, insults of the unworthy, the cabals of Worthy of one who in his right of youth Was heir of all things worthy, and was born the jealous; and last, but alas! not least, To be all that was possible to man. in the long series of misfortune, the sensitive nature and obstinate disposition of the misunderstood and unhappy Buonarroti. A sadder picture, we repeat, can hardly be found. Even the Sistine "Jeremiah" of the great painter-greater here, as is now generally recognized, than he was in sculpture-does not express more predominance or hopelessness of sorrow. But the materials for a complete judgment on Michel Angelo have not yet been published, at least in England. The elaborate, but eminently And on that path amid the rising mists And on this road there was no need of night. The sweet and bitter of each unknown thing, And of all the mysteries the soul and heart. Now it is changed: up to the mountain-head All things have changed; but this most changed of all, That I have learned the busy day by heart, Like him who once scaled heaven and fathomed hell, The path obscure* and wild has made me fear. So now, if there be any praise to say, And I were glad, if ever glad I were, They should shut close behind my flying feet So might I wake e'er I was half aware But the light morning comes and wakes the world, Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita This is the very morn, the selfsame morn, Night, that can blur the boundaries of time, 'Twas sweet to live when life was fresh and young; It would be sweet to live if life was old, The heavenly headlands heaving slow in sight. All clear and bare, with nought that can be hid; To know that Joy flashes his angel wings And think ye not the darkling night is dear To one with this chill landscape in his eyes? The gloom that blots the weary pathway out, And the dear sleep, which still 'tis possible Might steal the traveler unawares to heaven? Thus nightly to the tender night I make Beautiful night! that in thy dewy hand Popular Science Review. WAVES OF HEAT AND WAVES OF DEATH. BY B. W. RICHARDSON, M. A., M. D. WHILE our sanitarians are busily occupied in pointing out those evils of our social condition, on which many diseases rest that need never be seen or From an unreasonable blindness to sanitary defects, we have gradually drifted into an equally unreasonable measurement of them. In regard to spreading diseases we hear now almost exclusively of one cause-drains and the smells thereof. The evidence is conclusive that certain disorders-some forms of continued fever, for instance-are due to emanations from sewers and drains; and it is possible that some of the other communicable diseases are, under special developed but for our own misdoings, and while it is our duty to listen to what they have to say, and to follow the simple precepts which they lay down for our guidance, it is well for us not to lose sight of the all-important fact that there are certain influences at work in the production of diseases over which the sanitarian has no control. In some senses, indeed, sanitary science, in the midst of great achievements, has, to a certain extent, been an obstruction to scientific progress. This is no paradox. When circumstances, communicated by the our first sanitary reformers commenced their great works they had such a strong case in their hands, they had such prominent evils to contend with, they had such flattering promises to offer, such rewards for the waiting, hoping masses, and such triumphs for the zeal and labors of their own disciples, that when they once obtained a hearing they were heard to the exclusion of nearly all else. Oh! the happy days that were to come -the millennium of health, how near was its advent! Henceforth, we were not to cure diseases in detail, but to prevent them in phalanx. The epidemics were to be wiped out, and the nation that nurtured them was to be stamped uncivilized, gross, and dangerous-a gigantic upas tree, infecting a world elsewise physically pure. I, who have been one of the stanchest advocates of sanitary progress, can not, I hope, be doubted, in repeating that the results of sanitary work, although they have fulfilled much, have not been prosecuted without some disadvantage. I think that they have tended rather largely to damp the energies of many able and observant men in that line of medical inquiry which professes to treat disease; I fear they have thrown a cloud of skepticism over the whole art of treating; and I am certain they have given rise to the invention of sundry theories and speculations, which do not account for various common and all-important phenomena. But that which is most to be complained of is the tendency to which they have led, of ignoring pervading influences, active in the production of disease, and of supplementing the knowledge of these influences by referring forms of disease that have been observed to some insanitary condition. NEW SERIES-VOL. I., No. 5. same emanations; but, after all, the drain is only one means for the propagation of a limited class of spreading disorders, and if we continue looking only into the drain for all this class, as we have been looking for some few years past, we shall lose by our devotion to the contemplation more than we ever gained by being first directed to that line of research. We will not forget the drain, however, nor the bad smell, nor bad water, nor uncleanliness in general, as causes of diseases. That would, indeed, be mistaken policy; but we will suppose all the drains pure, all the water unexceptionable, and every dwellinghouse and the body itself clean, and what then? Physical millennium? No! Death finds dirt an ally, but he can do without it, and although cleanliness is sometimes his opponent, it is more commonly a neutral. Without a word against sane sanitary science, I want on this occasion to point out that there are in nature certain agencies at work which determine many of our common and fatal diseases, and which lie apart from the ordinary social conttol of man, according to his present wisdom and acquirement. To put the matrer in a very strong light, let us look at a man struck dead by a flash of lightning; that man did not die from any cause over which sanitary science could exert control: he died, and we all confess the fact, from the effects of an external force which is out of our hands: there is no reason why science should not ultimately be wise enough to come in and restore the man after the accident, but it could hardly make every necessary protection against the accident. Just as purely external in their origins, and invincible in their powers, are certain 37 other outside agencies, which the sanitarian can not touch. These agencies differ from the lightning flash, because they are more widely diffused, and, therefore, more inappreciable, but they are not the less outside, and not the less unpreventible. We may take, in illustration of this fact, the most frequent disease-common cold. Whence comes it? Why should a fourth of England wake in the morning with cold? Why, for some weeks past, should sore throat have been so prevalent that scarcely any one could be met who, on inquiry, would not be found with the back of the throat unduly red, and the tonsils large? Why, in a given village or town, shall the medical men be summoned on some particular day to two or half-a-dozen places perhaps at once, to visit children with croup? What is the reason that many cases of sudden death, by so-called "apoplexy," crowd together into a few hours? Why, in a given day or week, are shoals of the aged swept away, while the young live as before! These are questions which are above the answering of curative and preventive medicine alike. Curative medicine, if her interpreter be honest, at the name of them, stands abashed; and preventive medicine says, if her interpreter be true, "The questions are as yet out of my range." Still, we are not altogether ignorant: some circumstances appear to be followed by effects so definite, that we may almost consider we have them before us, in an obscure picture of cause and effect. It will be profitable to look at this picture, and try to make it out from various points of view; but I must confine myself to one point now, viz., to the simple influence of a low wave temperature on life. If we carefully observe the fluctuation of the thermometer by the side of the mortality of the nation at large, no very remarkable relationship seems to be traceable between the one and the other. But if, in connection with the mortality, care be taken to isolate the cases, and to divide them into groups according to their ages, a singular and significant series of facts follow, which show that after a given age a sudden decline of the temperature influences mortality by what 1 may be considered a definite law. The law is, that up to the age of thirty years variations of temperature exert no influence on the mortality of the population; but after the age of thirty is reached, then a fall of temperature, which is sufficient to cause an increased number of deaths, acts in a given manner as it may be said in waves or lines of intensity, according to the years of the people. If we make these lines nine years long, we discover that they double in force at each successive point. Thus, if the fall in the temperature be sufficient to increase the mortality at the rate of one person of the age of thirty, the increase will run as follows: One death at thirty years of age. In these calculations nothing seems to be wanting that should render them trustworthy; they result from inquiries conducted on the largest scale; they have been computed by our greatest authority in vital statistics, and they accord with what we gather from common daily observation; they supply, in a word, the scientific details and refinements of a rough estimate founded on universal experience, and they lead us to think very gravely on many subjects which may not have occurred to us before, and which are as curious as they are absorbing. We often hear small moralizers, who know little or nothing about vital phenomena-by which term I mean nothing mysterious, but simply the physics embraced in those phenomena which we connect with form and motion under the generic term, life-we often hear, I say, small moralizers harp on the one string, that man knows nothing of the laws of life and death. But what an answer to such presumption of ignorance do the facts rendered above supply! Why, life and death are here reduced on given conditions to reasonings as abstract and positive as are the reasonings on the atomic theory, or the development of force by the combustion of fuel. It is not necessary for the vital philosopher to go out into the towns and villages to take |