but it is inadequate. In turning from Mr. Rhodes to the next writer, however, the final word should be one of appreciation; for it would be difficult to point to a more conscientious and successful effort to penetrate beneath the surface of congressional legislation and bring to light the inner political forces that produced the result. To portray the mental attitude of representative men in all parties, in England as well as in America, toward the vast issues that were shaping themselves in these years is to perform a service only second to the service of leading the reader with calm and dispassionate judgment through the field of conflict that furnishes the material for the volume.

Mr. Eben Greenough Scott's Reconstruction during the Civil War 1 is, as his preface informs us, an introduction to a proposed treatise on the political history of the whole reconstruction period. The work is likely to attract much attention and discussion. It is written in the spirit of the political critic. He proposes the question, “Have we preserved the ancient character handed down to us along with the Constitution, or have we wandered from the faith of our fathers?" The Constitution, he thinks, "preserves the character of a landmark by which the fidelity or infidelity of the people to their ancient character can be judged. When the storm has cleared away, it reveals indubitably how far they have been swept from their moorings." Mr. Scott believes that the time has now come for the people, "the security of whose liberties is coincident with the preservation of their constitutional character, to ascertain if they have suffered the character to become impaired." He expounds the Union as a group of States, "consisting of a purely artificial central power, endued with the attributes of sovereignty by the sovereign States, who delegated certain powers for the purpose of creating a 1 Reconstruction during the Civil War in the United States of America. By EBEN GREEN

qualified and limited sovereign." Starting with this conception of state sovereignty, and with the conception of a people moored to the wharf of a rigid Constitution, it is natural that he should find opportunity to convict the President and Congress of inconsistency and of transgression of the Constitution as thus understood. The emphasis placed by the writer upon the state sovereignty aspects of our early history is evidence of a healthy reaction against the nationalistic interpretation of the beginnings of the history of the United States which has affected many writers of American history; but it cannot be said that Mr. Scott works out his preliminary thesis satisfactorily. His method is the old one of political speculation rather than the offering of historical evidence, and he does not give due weight to the strength of the view that the framers of the Constitution avoided the issue of state or national sovereignty. But, granting the correctness of his contention regarding the intention of the people who ratified the Constitution, it is difficult to see how Mr. Scott can hope to derive from this the obligation that the men of the reconstruction period should place the same construction upon the constitutional relation of States and nation that the men of 1789 did. To write a history to prove that the people of the Union should, under the circumstances of 1865, square their action to the "four corners of the Constitution" as it had been construed in 1789 is not only to attempt the impossible, but it is to forsake the function of the historian. When a people does, in fact, permanently moor its ship of state, it ceases to become a progressive society. Certainly this cannot be charged against the United States, whose name is synonymous with development and change. It is the duty of the historian to trace the growth of national sentiment, and the ' process whereby the Constitution was OUGH SCOTT. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1895.

adapted to this growth. Construction and usage effected this adaptation, and at last, in the supreme trial of the civil war, the results were forced upon men's knowledge by the policy of coercion, the reconstruction measures, and the amendments to the Constitution. To the historian who rightly apprehends and fairly traces these tremendous forces of national evolution, the efforts of the statesmen who sought, in the years of war, to harmonize respect for the Constitution with a determination to hold fast to the fruits of the battlefield will be occasions for expressions of respect for the deep-seated love for law in such a people, rather than for exclusive criticism of their inconsistencies and factional contests. The stubborn facts of the situation were there to be dealt with. By the side of these facts, the question of whether the States had indeed been out of the Union or not became a metaphysical rather than a practical question. To hold to the theory of state sovereignty, to plead the rigid interpretation of the Constitution, and to demand the recognition of the revolted States, with their old rights and pretensions unimpaired, is to shut one's eyes to the facts of war and to bask in a dreamland of speculative politics. But But Mr. Scott is convinced that the question ought to have been settled by the assumed opinions of the men of 1789. Believing that "the sources of all political events are to be found in constitutional principles," he has devoted his historical introduction to a philosophical inquiry into such topics as the origins of state sovereignty, the rise and philosophy of American political parties, the Ordinance of 1787, and the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. This introduction is neither systematic nor compact, and frequently seems to be a vehicle by which the author may bring forward ideas not particularly related to the subject in hand. Some of the slips made in the survey may be noted by way of illustration of a certain looseness of state

ment. On page 185 we find that everything that Hamilton did was opposed to the landed interest, and arrayed this class against him, while on page 141 it is said that this interest actively supported Hamilton's financial measures. Pennsylvania, one of the most democratic of States, is contrasted with "democratic" New England, and its asserted lack of popular notions in government is explained by the effects of the alleged overshadowing influence of the proprietor of the colony. But it is unnecessary to pursue farther this line of criticism, for Mr. Scott's theory that constitutional principles are the sources of political events makes such historical criticism impertinent. From this point of view, it is easy to ignore the social and economic interpretation of the growing nationalism and the habit of loose construction of the Constitution, even in the administrations of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. Instead of taking note of these facts, the author beckons us back to the events and principles which actuated the people in the period of their political origin. "Then it is," he insists, "that a people discloses its true nature most simply." It would not be easy for Mr. Scott to substantiate this view.

The latter half of the book, on the reconstruction measures during the war, gives in a spirited and interesting way the arguments against President Lincoln's policy. With this policy the author is quite as little in accord as he is with the conquered-province theory of Thaddeus Stevens, "the Mephistopheles of the Republican party." Lincoln, Mr. Scott seems to believe, was personally desirous of aggrandizing his own power. When the difficulties of the President's position, in the later years of his life, with radicals like Wade and Stevens on the one side, and the partisans of the South on the other, are recalled, it is hard to understand the tone of disparagement of Lincoln that pervades the book. The reader will not find in these pages any

considerable attempt to show the currents of public sentiment which underlay the utterances of the Congressmen. By comparing the method of Mr. Scott

with the method of Mr. Rhodes, the student will perceive the difference between the critic of a policy and the historian of an epoch.

THE question, Why do we enjoy pictures? which must at times occur to every one who has to do with art (if, indeed, in moments of discouragement, it does not formulate itself more dryly as, Do we enjoy pictures ?), is intimately bound up with another inquiry, namely, What pictures do we enjoy ?

That æsthetics is still the vaguest and most fantastic branch of psychology is perhaps owing to the fact that people have attempted to answer these two questions separately: on the one hand, psychologists endeavor to deduce all art enjoyment from the experiences of the child or the savage; and on the other, connoisseurs devote their attention to the study of history and documents relating to art, and to the reconstruction of ancient masters. Thus, while Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his Psychology, illustrates his views of the "æsthetic sentiments" by nothing more illuminating than "the battle-scenes of Vernet and the pieces of Gérôme,” and Morelli elaborately reconstructs the various phases of a Bachiacca or an Ambrogio da Predis, those whose only desire is to enjoy the best art in the most appreciative way receive no answer to their question, How and what shall I enjoy in order to get the utmost pleasure from pictures? It might therefore have been predicted that such a class of amateurs — and they form by far the greater number of those into whose lives art enters would, if they took any interest in more abstract

1 The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance. With an Index to their Works. By BERNHARD

problems, remain unsatisfied by the application of mere metaphysics or mere learning to a matter which, for them, is either a question of enjoyment or nothing, and that no treatment of the subject could be adequately carried out except by a writer who was competent to answer both the how and the why of art enjoyment.

Such competence, we believe, is possessed by Mr. Bernhard Berenson, whose small volume on The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance forms the sub

ject of the present paper. In his Venetian Painters, a preceding volume of a series which is planned to include the whole of Italian painting during the Renaissance, Mr. Berenson proved himself well acquainted with the historical aspects of his subject; while in his Lorenzo Lotto, already noticed in these pages, he brought to bear upon the problem of reconstructing the artistic. personality of a neglected though fascinating painter an unusual degree of skill in the use of all the delicate instruments of scientific connoisseurship. Moreover, in the lists of works by the great masters that he submits to our attention, he has shown that, so far as research, taste, and discrimination can go, he is fully competent to answer one, at any rate, of the questions, namely, what to enjoy in the world's heritage of art.

Thus, when he turns, as he has done in this volume about the Florentines, to the question of why and how we enjoy BERENSON. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1896.

peo

the masterpieces which he and other ple well trained in the appreciation of art have selected for us as being really great, we are entitled to expect something more precise and helpful than the theories elaborated by people who have never taken a discriminating pleasure in æsthetic objects. How, then, does Mr. Berenson treat this interesting question? Setting aside those elements in paint ing which it has in common with literature, that is to say, all the elements of association with sentiment, the suggestions of pleasant scenes, attractive types, and the emotional states induced by these, -setting aside all, in fine, that we call "poetic" in a picture, as not being the specific elements of enjoyment capable of being afforded by painting, and by nothing else, the author proceeds to analyze the elements which are peculiar to the art of painting; judging that these, and these alone, must be the sources of our specifically artistic pleasure. The The result, he finds, is, at first hearing, a decided shock; yet when we examine it, it is so simple, so severely logical, so true to our most intimate sensations, that we feel as if we had always known it.

The art of painting is differentiated from nature and from all the other arts, not by color, which it shares with nature itself, with pottery, rugs, etc., but by the fact that on a surface of two dimensions it represents objects that have three; and painting, furthermore, along with sculpture, is peculiar in that it represents movement by means of objects actually motionless. In form and movement, then, Mr. Berenson finds the essence of the representative arts. But how do we realize represented form and movement? It sounds at first almost as comic to say that we enjoy pictures by the sense of touch as it would to assert that our enjoyment of music comes to us through our sense of smell; nevertheless, if we follow our author's brief yet convincing account of how it is that represented form and movement become

Although it has recently become a moot point whether or not touch really is, what the old psychologies called it, the "parent sense," from which all the other senses have been derived by process of evolution, yet no one has denied that touch plays a leading part in forming our notions of reality. Even if we do not at first see things flat, as we used to be taught, it is only when to the merely visual impressions of the world we have added an infinity of muscular experiences that our perception of things about us becomes definite. It is largely, if not wholly, by means of touch that we learn to appreciate distance, solidity, and motion. If we speak of the third dimension, we mean a space corresponding to certain muscular sensations; if of solidity, we mean a resistance to certain muscular pressures; if of movement, we mean a correspondence to muscular experiences of our own organisms. Thus, in order vividly to realize the solidity of objects, and their position or movement in space, our sense of touch must be called into play, either actually or through remembrance and imagination. Painting, whose peculiar task it is to represent objects of three dimensions upon a surface that has only two, must therefore call the sense of touch to its aid, if it is to succeed in making a vivid impression; while both painting and sculpture, which have to represent movement by means of objects actually stationary, can do it successfully only by appealing to the muscular sense, to touch in an

other form.

This merely abstract chain of reasoning would lead us to an a priori conclusion, namely, that those paintings which succeed in rousing the imagination of

touch (actual handling is of course out of the question) are the only ones which solve the problems peculiar to their art, -the representation of form and movement, and are, consequently, the pictures which we must regard as great art. But what are the facts? Testing the theory by applying it in a concrete case, Mr. Berenson finds it to be not only a formula upon which he can hang all the great masterpieces of Florentine art, without exception, but one which explains as well the hierarchy of the artists of that school, accounting for the supremacy of the great masters, Giotto, Masaccio, Leonardo, Botticelli, and Michelangelo, over their illustrious and often, at first blush, more attractive fellow-craftsmen, Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo, Ghirlandaio, Andrea, and the rest. Florentine art, as he points out, does not attempt to win us by charm of color, beauty of types, or exalting effects of space composition. From Giotto to Michelangelo it is almost exclusively devoted to the human figure, in repose or movement, and Mr. Berenson would have us believe that the profound hold Florentine art has upon us is due to the fact that it persistently devoted almost its whole energy to the rendering of form and movement, specific task of the art of painting.

the

If we admit with our author that "successful grappling with problems of form and movement is at the bottom of the higher arts," we shall probably follow him a step farther, when, in connection with Michelangelo, he discusses the world-old question of the nude in art, and explains, on the basis of the same formula, the fact that the figure arts find, and inevitably must find, in the nude their most absorbing interest. Granting that the success of painting in its specific task depends upon making us realize three dimensions by means of two, and movements by means of objects actually motionless; and granting further that the only way in which it can make us realize space, solidity, and movement is by ap

pealing powerfully to our ideated sense of touch, by compelling us, in other words, to get upon our own persons the sensation of all the pressures and strains and of all the muscular tension that the objects themselves would give us in real experience, granting all this, as we can scarcely fail to do if we have followed the argument so far, the mere statement of the question What lends itself most readily to such vivid realization? suggests the inevitable answer. What can be so easy to realize in ideated muscular sensations as the human body? But Mr. Berenson goes still farther into the matter. He accounts for the possibility of our realizing represented movement in a vivid way by the mimetic element in our natures, which makes it almost certain that we shall tend to imitate nearly every motion that we see, whether in real life or in representation. Now, what so easy to imitate in its movements as the human body?

We have stated the problem of the nude in art in a way that appears, perhaps, foolishly simple, but we have been obliged to summarize Mr. Berenson's interesting discussion of this point in order to leave space for a still more important matter. So far we have considered only the author's view of what are the specific elements in the art of painting, — that is to say, form and movement, and his explanation of how we realize these specific elements. But the question of why, when we have once realized them, we enjoy the representation of form and movement still awaits us.

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Mr. Berenson's doctrine on this point, if not so startlingly original as the formula already discussed, is at all events a thoroughly original application of a general theory of pleasure held by many. The view that pleasure springs from the energetic and healthy functioning of the organism is familiar to us, but no one before Mr. Berenson has succeeded in systematically applying this theory to the pleasure derived from art. When read