native kings strove again to revive the revival, their effort was but partly successful. At the coming of the Greek rulers, who almost at once followed these Egyptian kings, native art seemed to have fallen to its lowest depth. All the strength and grace of form had disappeared. The hieratic rules were still obeyed; but the clear eye and firm hand of the ancient artist was gone, and the very sense of beauty seemed to have vanished. Suddenly there came a new impulse. The earlier Ptolemies were national kings. They became Pharaohs among their Egyptian subjects, supporting the religion and the manners of their adopted country. The third of these politic sovereigns, Euergetes the Benefactor, won the affection of the people by restoring in his Syrian war the images which the Persians had carried away. Thus Egyptian and Greek met together to learn from one another, and so there arose a new and splendid art, influenced by Hellenic forms of architecture, still Egyptian indeed, yet having the distinct marks of foreign ideas. Here I can only notice the reaction which brought back to Egypt in new forms the gift she made ages before to the intelligence of Greece. One chief object of these papers is to show how Egypt affected other countries, not how they affected Egypt, but in this case I must deviate from my plan so far as to tell how in her seeming decrepitude the ancient country once more revived at the touch of genius, another proof of the flexible power of a race we are too much used to consider immovably conservative. In his The discovery is due to the marvellous insight of Mariette. long and laborious study of the great temple of Dendara, he was astonished to see that this edifice, built at the end of the Ptolemaic rule, expressed in its plan the doctrine of Plato, the master spirit of the university of Alexandria in the same age. The old want of system is here exchanged for method. Each part of the temple has its fit object in due sequence. The King presents himself as a suppliant at the great door which he alone could enter. He passes from rite to rite through the successive chambers, and at last, in the innermost sanctuary, before the golden instrument of music, the sistrum, which was the emblem of the goddess of beauty, Athor, he wins the knowledge of the three great ideas of Platonic philosophy, the Beautiful, the True, and the Good. The hymns which cover the walls, translating into Egyptian language the thoughts of Greek philosophy, may have an Epicurean sound, but the Platonic theory rules the whole. It was impossible that such a mental impulse should not find expression in form as well as in words. Though the old skill of hand and knowledge of proportion had departed, the feeling for beauty was not dead. Thus while the art of the details of a Ptolemaic temple wearies us, that of its masses delights us with a new splendour of form and colour. The old capitals of the columns are discarded or modified. Instead of two main types, we have so many that no four capitals in a portico several rows in depth need be alike. And these forms, though wanting the ancient sense of proportion, are beautiful in their fanciful variety, for they are suggested by the shapes of Greek architecture. The old scale of colour is discarded and blended tones are introduced. The brilliant earlier Egyptian decoration was suited to full day, or to artificial twilight. The Ptolemaic is exquisite in the clear light of the interior of a hall with open roof, the beautiful Hypæethral Hall of the temple of Phila. Had the artists of this age been as vigorous as those of the older times their work would have been the most beautiful in all Egypt. With its defects it has a splendid originality that gives it high rank among the great styles of the world. The qualities of Egyptian art cannot be summed up in a few words, yet some idea may be suggested. This art had an object, and having expressed it as fully as any human work has done, never wholly forgot its true function. Constructive skill it has. Imitation it shows in the power of following Nature and even other art, while still true to its principles of form. It displays fancy always in its decorative skill, but most of all when stimulated by Greek ideas. Above all, it shows imagination, for we never look at an Egyptian building without being startled by the force with which it expresses one great idea, simple or else complex, yet still strong in its unity. The true sense of proportion is here. The knowledge of colour is never wanting to complete it. COMPARATIVE NOTE. No long comparison need be made between the art of the Egyptians and that of their Oriental rivals. The great temples of the Chaldæan cities were merely buildings of the most elementary kind. The Assyrian palaces have higher claims to art. Yet as compositions they are far inferior to the Egyptian temples. Instead of presenting a system of well-proportioned courts and halls, they are merely aggregates of rooms, the larger of which are without symmetry, from the desire to enclose a great space, while the architects were unable to span a wide roof. The merit of these palaces was in their wall-decorations. The lower part of the walls was covered with slabs, the sculptures of which often show much skill, and in the latest period excel those of Egypt. The upper part was covered with porcelain bricks of simple colours, arranged in patterns which have much merit, though they show a poverty of invention. The Phoenicians again never rivalled the Egyptians. They were metal-workers, and not architects. Fergusson has well said that the artificers of Solomon's temple were smiths, not masons. Even as metal-workers they lacked originality. Serving every ruling fashion of commerce, they borrowed in succession Egyptian, Assyrian, and Greek designs. Yet all they did shows a surprising faculty of adaptation, and a native skill which coloured each phase of Phoenician work with an unmistakable hue of its own. The debt the Phoenicians owed to Egypt opens a very curious inquiry. The Egyptian representations of tribute of works in gold, silver and bronze, the wonders of the great craftsmen of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries before the Christian era, must be compared with the treasures of Mycena and the patterns at Orchomenos, if we would know the oldest Phoenician style. The origin is clearly Egyptian, yet even in this remote age we can discern the Phoenician characteristics. The next link is found in the description of Solomon's Temple and the oldest metal-work from Assyria and Cyprus. Still we are in the presence of the Egyptian style. The Assyrian and the Cyprian metal-work then show us a mixed Egyptian and Assyrian style and treatment, in which Assyrian taste finally supersedes Egyptian. This history is an important element in our comparative view, for it shows the fruitfulness of Egyptian art. The inquiry might indeed be traced onward, and the elements which Greek art borrowed from Egypt might be explained, but as they came through a Phoenician medium, and, for the most part, after that medium had been coloured by Assyrian influence, it is of less interest to follow the descent of style in this new direction. To put any art by the side of that of Greece is the severest test. The sense of measure and form in the three great provinces of architecture, sculpture, and painting was never so fully given to any other people. Yet if, in imagination, we see an Egyptian temple or pyramid beside the Parthenon, we are conscious of a loftier idea and a more forcible expression in the older work. We can never say of the Great Pyramid that measure and form are wanting, or that it has not surpassed our conception of human limitations. At the moment when the mummies of some of the great Pharaohs have been yielded up by their secret catacomb, and have revisited the upper air once more, what need is there to plead for the interest of ancient Egypt? The trivial questions of the day are put aside as we look across the vast space of time to the old civilization which has these lips eloquent, though dumb, for its advocates. France has done her duty to science nobly; Germany shares the glory; why should England refuse the appeal which Professor Maspero has made? REGINALD STUART POOLE. THE CANADIAN TARIFF. ENGLAND is angry with Canada about the new Canadian tariff; angry she would have a right to be if the tariff were, as she seems to suppose, Protectionist and directed against the mother country. Directed against the mother country with any unkind intention it is impossible that the Canadian tariff, or any other measure adopted by Canada, should be. The feeling of British Canadians towards England is as warm as any reasonable Englishman can desire. The French are French, and their hearts turn to their own mother country. The Irish are Irish, though less Fenian than their compatriots in the United States, as their conduct with regard to the Land League has shown. But the British of all parties retain their affection for England. The gradual relaxation of the political tie has only strengthened the natural bond. Nor is the Canadian tariff Protectionist, except in relation to the coal tax, which is imposed avowedly for the purpose of compelling Western Canada to burn Nova Scotia coal, but does not concern England. It is not Protectionist, at least in its main object or in its direct intention, though it may be said to have a Protectionist or quasi-Protectionist aspect to which reference shall presently be made. It is the offspring of shcer fiscal necessity. There was a large and growing deficit, which it was imperative to fill. There were only three ways of filling it further borrowing, direct taxation, and an increase of the import duties. Further borrowing would have been profligate; it would of course have impaired our credit, and would only have staved off the need; the English creditors of Canada, at all events, would not have desired that we should take this course. From direct taxation all statesmen in communities like Canada shrink on political and social, as well as on financial grounds. An increase of the import duties alone : remained. The effect has been an addition to the revenue, which has not only filled the deficit, but produced a surplus, though of what amount it would not be safe to say before next winter, when the Finance Minister will make his statement. The character of the tariff as a revenue tariff is thus vindicated by the result. The writer of this paper has been assured by leading commercial men in Canada, who are in principle Free Traders, and who are unconnected with politics, that the measure on the whole was as well framed as the circumstances would permit; and the Opposition, while as a matter of course it has denounced the Government plan, has as yet propounded no counter plan of its own. The object, announced from the Throne, was not the protection of native industry, but the equalization of revenue with expenditure, and the framers are men who have always professed Free Trade sentiments, besides being the heads of the Conservative and Imperialist Party. The tariff is directed, if against anybody, against the people of the United States, who were excluding Canada from their markets, and at the same time throwing their surplus goods, whenever there was a glut, at very low prices into the markets of Canada, not perhaps in large quantities, but in such a way as to derange the calculations of Canadian manufacturers, and prevent, so it was alleged, the free growth of Canadian enterprise. There is a rider to the tariff providing that if the United States will lower their duties, Canada will lower hers. Sir John Macdonald and his colleagues are, in fact, able to boast that the result of their policy has been a diminished importation of American, and an increased importation of British goods, though it would be unsafe to join in their exultation without knowing the statistics of smuggling, which, on that long and perfectly open frontier, always goes on to a large extent, and has no doubt increased since the raising of the duties on American goods, being in fact the irregular protest of Nature against an artificial line. The Canadian tariff, we repeat, is the offspring of sheer fiscal necessity. And how was the fiscal necessity produced? How comes it to pass that, though Canada has had no Civil War, and her defence is mainly undertaken by England, her financial condition is now actually worse than that of the United States,-that her public debt is heavier in proportion to her population, and much heavier in proportion to her wealth than theirs,-that while their debt is being rapidly reduced, hers is still increasing, and that her most experienced financier, Sir Francis Hincks, finds it his duty to warn her, in the Montreal Journal of Commerce, that her liabilities are being piled up at a most dangerous rate, and that the reckoning day is at hand? The answer will show that Imperialism, though it may be a magnificent policy, is a policy for which you pay, and that for the increased duties laid by her NorthAmerican Colonists on her goods, England has mainly herself to thank. Of the public debt of Canada, half, at least, may be set down to the |