he human mind under the most varied
circumstances. We have read the volume of the learned and accomplished
professor with infinite satisfaction, and we can safely recommend it to
the perusal of the student and the man of letters. The history of art,
in the early stages of Christianity, is the history of intellectual
cultivation in the most extraordinary period of the world's history. The
state of the world during the first centuries after the departure of
Christ, was essentially exceptional. It had never been; it never will be
again. Art and civilisation were weighed and were found wanting--a new
idea visited the earth and conquered it--old arts drooped and died:
civilisation degenerated at once into barbarism; whilst a new art and a
new civilisation, with the light of Heaven upon them, were already
preparing to claim the dominion over future centuries.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] _Geschichte der bildenden Kuenste bei den Christlichen Voelkern_. Von
GOTTFRIED KINKEL.

[20] Psalm xlii. 1.

[21] 1 Cor. ix. 9.

[22] Rev. v. 5.

[23] John, i. 29, and Rev. v. 6.

THE PORTRAIT.

A TALE: ABRIDGED FROM THE RUSSIAN OF GOGOL. BY THOMAS B. SHAW.

CHAPTER I.

By none of the numerous objects of interest in the busy city of St
Petersburg are the steps of the sauntering pedestrian more frequently
arrested than by the picture-shop in the Stchukin Dvor.[24] True it is
that the specimens of art there displayed are distinguished rather by
eccentricity of design, and rudeness of execution, than by striking
evidences of genius. The paintings are for the most part in oil, coated
with green varnish, and fitted into frames of dark yellow tinsel. A
winter-piece with white trees, a ferociously red sunset, like the glow
of a conflagration, a Flemish boor with a pipe and dislocated-looking
arm--resembling a turkey-cock in ruffles, rather than a human
being,--such are the ordinary subjects. Beside them hang a few
engravings: portraits of Khosrev-Mirza in his sheepskin bonnet, and of
truculent generals with cocked hats and crooked noses. Bundles of coarse
prints, on large paper broadsides, are suspended on either side the
door. Here we have the Princess Miliktris Kirbitierna;[25] yonder the
city of Jerusalem, its houses and churches smeared with vermilion, which
gaudy colour has also invaded a part of the ground and a brace of
Russian pilgrims in huge fur gloves. If these works of art find few
purchasers, they at least attract a throng