As a collector and adaptor of things】 never knew Dan's equal. His "shop," as he called it, a den he built for himself, leading out of the harness-room, was a sight to see. Take a carpenter's, a chem ist's, a blacksmith's, a cobbler's, and a marine-store dealer's shop. Mix well together; shuffle and cut; throw in a few books, garnish with diagrams in chalk, and plates out of the Illustrated London News, and you may faintly realize Dan's box, or bureau, or desk, which the dear hereafter. At any rate, as I write of the hand will open no more, contains them. past I had better substitute "was" for There they are. To you has been con- is." fided the trust to dispose of them, and you must go through with it. Things are there belonging to a past generation, which show the difficulty of your task. He had not had the heart to destroy them, when he stood as you stand now. They are strange to you - put them aside and examine the rest. What is this bundle tied with what was once a scarlet riband, and marked to be laid on my heart"? It contains your mother's love letters, and she has "gone before." Here is a broken surroundings. His speciality was mak toy, marked "poor Charles ". -the brother ing things out of something else, and you never saw. Here is that wonderful always having that something else handy effusion, about which you (a poet of thir- in his store. The heaps of apparent teen) got so teased. Well, he was proud rubbish he kept and added to day by day of it. Your famous treatise in the "Quar- were appalling! The wildest conjecture terly," is not there, but this doggerel, could not anticipate an use for one article and your school-boy correspondence, are out of a hundred; but the time would stored amongst the things, with notes, surely come when something would get and marks, and signs of loving interest. out of order, or be broken, or lost, or You recalled in these moments many an what not; and then Dan would scratch act of folly that may have given pain; his square head, look intensely stupid for many an omission to do what might have a minute or two, and then march straight given pleasure, and there are spots upon for his "shop," saying that he thought he the things which were not there before. he had "summut as 'ud do;" and "do" it did. Hitherto I have dealt with people who accumulated things, if not exactly against their will, at any rate, without premeditation. What is gathered and stored with malice prepense, are not "things" in that sense of the word, which is, I hope, familiar by this time, with the reader. Therefore, I have nothing to say about monomaniacs who collect postage-stamps and monograms; about gentlemen who affect private museums, and sometimes think more of their mahogany cases and cabinets, and of the neatly-written tickets which mark the objects within, than of those objects themselves; or of ladies of the Toodles' species, who infest auctions, and buy anything that goes cheap. pass these by with a wave of the pen, and come to DAN. A little stream ran at the bottom of the garden. Out of the sherry cask Dan made a water-wheel; with an old gun and some straightened horse-shoes he made a pump which it worked. He pieced together a lot of old lead piping, and not only sent water up into the house, but made a fountain on the lawn! He constructed a sun-dial out of a broken pillar and an old copper stew-pan. He mended the church clock with Heaven knows what heterodox material. The harness never wore out. The gig was always spick and span. His employer did not know what a carpenter's bill was. The cows, the pigs, and the poultry throve and multipled. He was the "vet of three parishes, which accounts for the rows of bottles and the unholy apparatus which, with a stuffed owl and sundry dried skins of vermin, gave a cabalistic Dan is not the opposite to Bathsheba, but a man- -a short stumpy man, with a square head and a stolid expression of countenance, which might lead the un-character to his den. wary to think him a stupid. Any specu- His den was Dan's pride. His confilator who invested in Dan as a stupid dence in its resources was unlimited. would make a bad transaction. Dan is He scorned new materials. In his spare Jack (and master) of all trades, and a time he would straighten out old nails, philosopher to boot. "Is"! I first knew re-turn old screwsget things handy," him when I was a boy-no matter how as he said-smoking his pipe gravely many years ago. He was factotum to the while, and coming out now and the the father of a schoolfellow whom I "knew with those observations which entitled at home," and Dan was no chicken then. him to consideration as a philosopher, He may have gone to the land of the but are out of place here. 66 I fear that the race of handy men, like Dan, is well nigh extinct. He was "odd boy" about the place when my friend's father married. He had been in that service twenty-five years when I first met him. The idea of going away to "better himself" was, I believe, the only one that did not enter Dan's angular cranium. He was not perfect. I regret to say that once in a while he got exceedingly drunk. His master was rather a quick-tempered man, and time after time discharged him on the spot - but he never went. Where are you now, oh, ambidexterous Dan? Is that honest clever right hand of yours with the dust, or is it still busy amongst your things? Ah, no! How time flies! Twelve years ago I met the "little Milly" of the days I write of, a grown-up young lady. The three gallant soldier boys, her brothers, are all gone. Has the grim Reaper spared you, Dan? Anyhow you are too old to work, and the amazing problem what has become of your things-is too maddening to be entertained. A. DE F. From The Portfolio. THE GREEK FACE BEFORE PHIDIAS. WE are too apt to think of the Greeks as if during the whole period from Homer to Polybius, not to say from Homer to Agathias, the full spirit of the manifold works that they have bequeathed to us had been poured out upon every generation. We never try to think what the life of the contemporaries of Alcæus or Theognis was like upon the whole. We only use Alcæus and Theognis as data for determining the constituents of what we call "the Greek spirit," which was the spirit of no Greek generation, of no Greek city, not even of the Athens of Pericles, but rather the glorified ghost of all. or simply reproductions of the normal face of the artist's contemporaries, individualized in some measure by the more or less successful introduction of traditional traits, it is equally clear that the type they represent is not the type of the Elgin Marbles. And the Greek face, as it exists now, is like the type of the historical busts and is not like the type of the Elgin Marbles, though some travellers profess to have found the latter still general round Misitra. If what we may call the Phidian type ceased to be general from, let us say, 450 B.C. onwards, we may ask, Was it ever general before? Perhaps this is not improbable; the limits of individual variation are much wider among a civilized race such as the Greeks had then become, than among a ruder race, where individuals differ only in the degree of perfection with which they conform to a common type. This suggests the further questions, Whether there was a general type which preceded the Phidian, and if so, whether we have any means for determining what it was? One of the minor results of this assumption, which we all make more or less unconsciously, is that we suppose, or think and speak as if we supposed, that the Greeks in general were like the Elgin Marbles. We know, of course, from the personalities of Plato's Dialogues, and from the more or less authentic portraits of the celebrated Greeks of the historical age, that this type was not permanent; for whether we suppose that the archetypes of the busts which had come down to us were genuine portraits, At Twenty years ago Mr. Scharf, in the account of Greek art which he prefixed to the third edition of " Wordsworth's Greece," remarked that a cat-like arrangement of the eyes was one of the common characteristics of all archaic Greek art, and the astounding sarcophagus from the Castellani Collection gives a new interest to such inquiries. first sight it seems a very startling hypothesis that the Greeks could ever have been like that strange couple, with their short great toes, and hollow chests, and retreating foreheads, with the whole face converging to the mouth: it is startling to think that there have ever been such men at all, and that if they ever lived they must have lived little, if any more, than twenty-five centuries ago. are to assume that the rate at which it is possible for the prevailing type of face to change is absolutely fixed, we shall put the Castellani sarcophagus out of court altogether; we shall say it is impossible that the artist can have been representing what he saw: either he was incompetent or he was not serious. But it is certain that the rate is anything but fixed: the contrast between the first sitter of Kneller and the last sitter of Reynolds is decidedly less than the contrast between the first sitter of Lawrence and the last sitter of Millais; and both are dwarfed by the contrast between the first sitter of Lawrence and the last sitter of Reynolds; and this again by the contrast between If we the sitters of Vandyke and the sitters of head and the nose, and Assyrian art for Kneller. And if we go back a century the fact that the Assyrian eyebrows met from Vandyke to Holbein, we find a still there across a permanent wrinkle, why greater divergence of type between the should we distrust both when they agree two extremes; while the well-marked that the eyes pointed more or less upElizabethan type which comes between is ward towards the back of the head? sharply distinguished from both. And Further presumptions of the same or this is what we really ought to expect; der might be accumulated almost without the rate of change among men's habits limit, but perhaps these are enough to and institutions is liable to the most sur- justify us in returning to the Castellani prising variations, and these, like their sarcophagus seriously, and exami..ing it cast of countenance, are really the ex- without prejudice. Two things strike pression of their thoughts, and feelings, us at once, and dispose us in its favour: and wishes. We know that between 550 one is, that though the work be very and 450 B.C. the Greeks went through feeble and ignorant, it has a look of the most complete and thorough mental painstaking veracity about it-if it were transformation on record, and we ought not so startling we should call it lifelike; not to be startled by evidence which the other is more important. In the points to corresponding physical modifications of an unusually rapid kind. Homeric poems we discern a strong and unmistakable sense of human beauty, an evident delight in the contrast be tween smooth cheeks, and glossy tresses, and bright rolling eyes. Now these are just the elements of beauty which are present in the Castellani sarcophagus, for the wide orbits imply a great play of the eyeball within them. Still it may be objected that the catlike arrangement of the eyes is too general a characteristic of early art to be significant in any single instance. It would require very full technical knowledge to dispose exhaustively of what this objection implies, and to pronounce with certainty how far, if at all, the mere in- And what do the retreating brow and experience of the hand and the eye would the upward slope of the orbits imply? tend to force a type upon artists which They imply simply this, that the movethere was nothing in their models to ments of the jaw are the most important suggest. In default of such knowledge movements of the face; that instead of it may be observed, that if inexperience being fixed at an angle to the cheek-bone, were the only cause, we should expect, the upper jaw moves freely in a line with cæteris paribus, to find this arrangement it; or rather, that the motion of the most marked in the earliest and rudest whole head, often if not generally a downwork. Now there is medieval work ward motion, adapted to large masses of without the peculiarity which is much food in comparatively fixed positions, has ruder than Oriental work with the pecu- not yet been superseded by the motion liarity and there is typical medieval of the lower jaw, adapted to small and work, like the Chessmen from the He- manageable morsels presented in variabrides in the British Museum, in which ble positions by the hand; or, to put the it would be paradoxical to trace any same thing in another form, the position strong Romanic influence. Then, too, we of the upper jaw has not yet been modi find the peculiarity much more marked fied by the frequent upward movements in the bust of Thothmes III., a king of of the lower and by its diminished size. the eighteenth dynasty, than in the statue In this connexion it is significant to ob of Mentu Hetp, an officer of the eleventh; serve that the Rakshasas, savages ideal while in the two great white busts of ized into devils, who always appear Rameses II. in the centre of the Egyptian Hindoo legends with their jaws buried in Gallery at the British Museum it disap-carcasses, are to be recognized, accordpears altogether. Again it is less marked ing to popular belief, by the upward slant in the Man-headed Bulls and gigantic of their eyes when they appear in human statues from Nimroud than in the metope form. Now in Buddhist art-and all from Selinus of Athene and Perseus; Indian art begins among the non-Aryan and though it may be said that the races which Buddha evangelized this Assyrian work shows more feeling for upward slant is always distinctly tracea artistic dignity than the Greek, it can ble. hardly be said that it shows more artistic knowledge. Again, if we trust Egyptian art for the fact that the Egyptians had no perceptible depression between the fore in It is to be observed further that the cheek-bone might have retained the posi tion which it had inevitably in days when men were still coarse feeders, even after the modifications which would be due to the special development of the lips and eyes are already established, but something of the old lie of the face still remains, which has completely disappeared in the works of the Phidian period. this cause had ceased to operate, unless other causes had come in to modify it. So that the question comes to be partly, When did the Greeks come to feed themselves decently with their hands, and what other causes carried the transformation up to a point which neither the Egyptians This suggests the further question, nor the Assyrians reached? Now it is Was there any special cause tending to obvious that the movement of the eye increase the plasticity of the organism would tend to modify the orbit, if the lat- that continued to work with increasing ter be not assumed to have become abso-intensity up to the Phidian period? There lutely rigid. Again, when the action of the lips in speaking and singing became more important than their action in swallowing, this would modify not only the lips themselves, but also their position in relation to the cheek. Still more decisive would be the growth of the brain, pushing the forehead upward and forward, and forcing the whole skull to modify itself to meet the changed centre of gravity in the upper part of the head. The Homeric Greeks were certainly not fine feeders; their habitual food was collops of half-burnt meat, served on spits, whence one fears they were pulled off with the teeth, and barley pillaus (that rarely attained the dignity of doughcakes; baking, as Mr. Davies has pointed out in "Hermathena," No. 1, was un- consequences. known), which must have been consumed either by raising the bowl to the mouth, or by gradually gobbling up a fistfull; while the bread, which had become the staff of life in the historical period, was so hard that it had to be soaked in water, and therefore was probably eaten in small mouthfuls, that were raised genteelly between the finger and the thumb. Again, the Homeric Greeks used to be sung to at their feasts by an harper; the Historic Greeks sing themselves to the sound of a piper; and one of the chief advantages which they expect from a drinking-bout is that it will set them talking. As we have had occasion to observe already, the Homeric Greeks were remarkable for the mobility of their eyes, and this explains a peculiarity of the vases of the transition period: although the permanent lines of the face still converge on the mouth, the eye points abruptly upward as often as downward; obviously this would be so if the habitual position of the eye in the orbit was variable, while the orbit was not yet modified by its movement. A later stage of the transition we are imagining may be traced in the Æginetan Marbles; there certainly were two: one was the accelerating intellectual movement; the other, perhaps even a more decisive one, was the universal gymnastic training. Theognis, who 'flourished 540 B.C., knows nothing of gymnastics as a part of education, though he is full of the opportunities a man has of forming himself at drinkingclubs. Pindar, less than two generations later, is full of athletics, as if they were the business of life. The fact is, the ascendancy of Sparta brought all Greece to the festivals held under Spartan protection at Delphi and Olympia, and then set all Greece training for them; and the enthusiasm thus created survived the undivided Spartan ascendancy for more than a generation, with the most fruitful To resume. Unless on anatomical grounds it can be determined à priori that the limits of possible modification within historical times are insignificant, it is far from improbable that we can still trace in the rude remains of archaic Greek Art a transformation of the Greek face corresponding to the transformation which we know took place in the Greek mind. G. A. SIMCOX. From Macmillan's Magazine. A JATRA. ON the north bank of the sacred Nerbudda, about twenty miles from the mouth, there is a little village called Bhadbhut, which, with the exception of one month in every eighteen years, exists in the quiet placid way natural to Hindu villages. The houses are of mud; there is no bazar, and the only substantial building in the place is the white temple overlooking the river. No one of higher authority lives here than the village patels, who can scarcely read or write, and the village accountant, who does those offices The brain of the Macedonian race must have been for them; and their only subordinates Comparatively undeveloped, accordingly the retreating brow reappears on the coins of Alexander's successors. Fare a few Bhils, who act as village watch men, and are distinguished from their non-official brethren only by the bows and arrows they carry. But as that particular month approaches the village begins to grow, and by the time the new moon is visible it is a town. There is a bazar, broad and long, lined with the shops of grain-sellers, and cloth-sellers, and spicesellers, and sweetmeat sellers, and braziers; there is street after street of new houses; on the shore there is a perfect fleet of boats, each with its one short mast, supporting a mighty sweeping yard three times the length of itself, and new boats arriving can hardly make their way among the swarms of bathers. more artistic representations of scenes from holy legends, with Krishna often as the central figure, are also to be seen. But the great sight of all is to see how many people are doing nothing at all. The hum of voices goes on all night, and even an hour or two before dawn: in every quieter spot a firmament of glowing cigarettes shows how many are unwilling to waste these precious hours in sleep. The ordinary pilgrim's attendance at the temple is very brief. The crowd pour in at one door and out at another imme diately. To continue passing through and through, from the calling of the god in the morning till the terrible voice which is supposed to send him to sleep at sunset, is a work of merit. Near the temple sit the holy mendicants and ascet ics, almost naked, smeared all over with mud, wearing their hair and beard uncut, and looking altogether perfectly hideous and perfectly self-satisfied. Some of them are very distinguished — as he who has come down from Benares, measuring the whole distance with his prostrate The explanation of the change is that the Jatra has begun. A year composed of lunar months, like that of the Hindu calendar, is very rickety, and continually wants patching; and it is prescribed that when the month Bhadarava's turn to be intercalated comes which happens in eighteen years then for the space of the second Bhadarava a Jatra is to be held at Bhadbhut. Now the most extraordinary thing about a Jatra is the ab-body; and he who lies all day on a plank sence of anything extraordinary. That so many people should come so far to see so little, that they should be so happy in doing nothing, and take so much trouble about it is really surprising. The belief that there is particular virtue in bathing in the Nerbudda at this particular time and place partly accounts for the assemblage, but what have holy pilgrims to do with merry-go-rounds, which are as crowded as the temple? and what means the roaring trade in brass and copper pots ? But it is neither religion nor traffic that brings all these people together; thousands come only for the fun of the thing, and what the fun is, is the greatest puzzle to a European. There are the merry-go-rounds, certainly; nor are they confined to youth: a fullgrown man will mount a small green wooden horse, and ride as if his only object in life were to catch the yellow one in front of him; and old men who are past such severe equestrian conflicts will still take a seat in the cars that travel an inner and more sober circuit. Dancing and singing and story-telling go on too. Nautches are not to be seen, but there is studded with nails points upwards; and he who has held his hand up in the air for twenty-five years, till the finger-nails have grown so long that he appears to be holding up a bunch of snakes, and the muscles of the arm perfectly rigid. This wretched man will consent to bring his hand down again (he says he would have to soak the muscles in oil for three weeks in order to do so) if any one will feast for him three thousand Brahmans. Truly there is not much that is pleas ing in a Jatra — childish amusements and miserably corrupt superstition. Still, Anglo-Saxons at least must admire that hundreds of thousands of persons are content to take their holiday where no liquor is allowed to be sold, and that great as are the crowds, there is no quarrelling, and helpless and unprotected as the people are, scarcely any crime. From The Sunday Magazine. CUSTOMS OF MADAGASCAR. THE form of government in Madagas car was, and we may say is, patriarchal. The unit, or simple element, is the fam ily; and just as the father is the ruler of his children and dependants, so in a village the head man, along with the elders or old men, exercised the duties of magistrates. The king, again, was the great |