as superior to physical beauty in the modern, as psychical beauty in the modern is superior to psychical beauty in the ancient.  Costume then, as physical, is more beautiful ancient than modern.  Now that a certain amount of physical beauty is requisite to constitute Fine Art, will be readily admitted; but what that amount is, must be ever undefined.  That the maximum of physical beauty does not constitute the maximum of Fine Art, is apparent from the facts of the physical beauty of Early Christian Art being inferior to that of Grecian art; whilst, in the concrete, Early Christian Art is superior to Grecian.  Indeed some specimens of Early Christian Art are repulsive rather than beautiful, yet these are in many cases the highest works of Art.

In the “Plague at Ashdod,” great physical beauty, resulting from picturesque costume and the exposed human figure, was so far from desirable, that it seems purposely deformed by blotches of livid color; yet the whole is a most noble work of Poussin.  Containing as much physical beauty as this picture, the writer remembers to have seen an incident in the streets where a black-haired, sordid, wicked-headed man, was striking the butt of his whip at the neck of a horse, to urge him round an angle of the pavement; a smocked countryman offered him the loan of his mules:  a blacksmith standing by, showed him how to free the wheel, by only swerving the animal to the left:  he, taking no notice whatever, went on striking and striking; whilst a woman waiting to cross, with a child in her one hand, and with the other pushing its little head close to her side, looked with wide eyes at this monster.

This familiar incident, affording a subject fraught with more moral interest than, and as much picturesque matter as, many antique or mediaeval subjects, is only wanting in that romantic attraction which, by association, attaches to things of the past.  Yet, let these modern subjects once excite interest, as it really appears they can, and the incidents of to-day will acquire romantic attractions by the same association of ideas.

The claims of ancient, mediaeval, and modern subjects will be considered in detail at a future period.

The Carillon. (Antwerp and Bruges)

In these and others of the Flemish Towns, the Carillon, or chimes which have a most fantastic and delicate music, are played almost continually The custom is very ancient.

  At Antwerp, there is a low wall
    Binding the city, and a moat
    Beneath, that the wind keeps afloat. 
  You pass the gates in a slow drawl
  Of wheels.  If it is warm at all
    The Carillon will give you thought.

  I climbed the stair in Antwerp church,
    What time the urgent weight of sound
    At sunset seems to heave it round. 
  Far up, the Carillon did search
  The wind; and the birds came to perch
    Far under, where the gables wound.