of the principles of said Form of Government, so long as I shall continue to be a Professor in this Seminary.'"

The Van Ess library which belongs to the Seminary contains 17,000 volumes. Almost a thousand volumes have been added to it.

"It is unequalled by any library in the country in patristic literature, and in all the great works on Ecclesiastical History. In the literature of the Reformation, and in the department of Incunabula, it is unique in this country. It is still deficient in the English and the modern German theological literature. In Biblical philology it is very incomplete. So in American Theology, and theological periodicals."

The Directors feel that they cannot accomplish fully the objects for which the Seminary was established without an endowment of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in addition to eighty thousand dollars which was subscribed at the founding of the Institution. And for this they make their present appeal. We sincerely trust that it may be entirely successful, and that the Seminary may be placed in a condition to be a blessing for all generations.

X. Catalogue of the Twenty-ninth Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Founded 1805. pp. 32.

There is a picture in this Exhibition, noble in its execution, and still nobler in its subject. It is the deliverance of Leyden, by Wittkamp. We cannot do better than quote from the Catalogue.

"In 1574, during the cruel wars carried on by Philip II, Leyden was besieged by the Spaniards, under Valdes. The king of Spain, after a long course of barbarity, conducted by the Duke of Alva. had offered, by proclamation, a free pardon to all, except the Prince of Orange, who should come in and sign an abjuration of their heresy. The provinces universally rejected the offer, and resolved on maintaining their liberties to the last. The Spaniards reduced Leyden to the last extremity. The inhabitants lived on the carcasses of their fellow-citizens. Women lined the ramparts, and performed the duty of soldiers. Six thousand persons, out of twenty thousand, died of famine. When summoned to surrender, the survivors replied that they could not want subsistence so long as their left arms remained, on which they could feed, while with the right they defended the city. Vanderwerf, the Burgomaster-the central figure of the picture was solicited by some of the inhabitants to surrender. He said to them:

"My friends, since I must die, it is of little importance whether I fall by you or by the enemy: cut me to pieces, and divide the pieces among you; I shall die satisfied if I can be in any way useful.'

"At the moment that has been described, the magnanimous resolution was formed of breaking down the dykes, and letting the occan overflow the Rhineland. Information was given to the besieged, by their countrymen at a distance, by means of carrier pigeons, that the dykes of the Meuse and the Issal had been opened. After some time, the sea, impelled by a violent south-west wind, rushed in, and drove the inundation with such fury against the besiegers, that Valdes was obliged to draw off his forces. The Admiral of Zealand, Louis Boissot, then advanced with his little fleet of flat-bottomed boats, sailed over the newly-formed expanse, and triumphantly entered the city.

"The Prince of Orange soon arrived among the gallant inhabitants. After rewarding the Admiral, and the commander of the town, Douza, (or Does), and the officers and soldiers, he offered to the town the option of two benefits-an immunity from taxes for a certain period, or the foundation of a University in the city The citizens crowned their former glory by choosing the latter part of the alternative. It is to this circumstance that the celebrated University of Leyden owes its existence."

The prominent figures, beside Vanderwerf, are “ Pieter Corneleszoon Manalant, an Evangelical preacher, apostle of the Protestant religion; the military chief, Van der Does; the poet, Pieter Janszoon Van der Morsch, wounded, during the siege." "The people bow down before civic virtue, and the sublime power of religion, which were certainly the great supporters of the courage of Leyden.”

M. Wittcamp is an artist of Antwerp. This picture was sent to America with a view of competing for the highest of the prizes offered by the Pennsylvania Academy, but it arrived too late. The Academy were however, so much delighted with it, that they purchased it from the artist. Every Protestant should see it. Its artistic merit is undoubted.

Our readers may not be aware that the great controversy of the times has found a development among artists in Europe. At Düsseldorf, especially, there are rival Protestant and Roman Catholic schools of painting. Lessing is the head of the Protestant school, and the celebrated picture of the martyrdom of John Huss, in the Düsseldorf Gallery at New York, was painted by him as a testimony for Protestantism. With him are Sohn, Veit, we believe, and others. The leaders of the Roman Catholic school are Cornelius, Schadow, and Overbeck. The details of the matter, into which although the subject is interesting, our limits will not allow us to enter, may be found in Count Razinsky's great work on German Art.

We hope our readers are interested in the Academy of Fine Arts. We need all the antagonisins we can find to the overpowering commercial spirit of our age and country. These we must find in America, in religion, literature, science, the fine arts, social life. Whatever refines, softens and humanizes, without destroying enterprize, we should welcome. The Academy has held on its way amidst difficulties, and we feel great pleasure in saying a cheering word to its Directors and supporters. Their labors are not unappreciated, and the time, we trust, will soon arrive, when the Academy will be placed on as broad and permanent a foundation of usefulness, as its best friends can desire. Its appeal, in this country, must be to the people, and they will not prove unworthy of the confidence reposed in them.

XI. The Stones of Venice. The Foundations. By John Ruskin, Author of "The Seven Lamps of Architecture, "Modern Painters," &c., &c., vith Illustrations drawn by the Author, pp. 435.

Mr. Ruskin, as our readers probably know, is a man of great and peculiar genius. His "Modern Painters by a Graduate of Oxford," brought him up from obscurity

at once. He is warmly attached to Anglicanism, after a high-church fashion, but decisively opposed to Popery. His views in Architecture may not be universally approved, but no one can help admiring him.

Genius always develops some truth. Its power lies in the fresh representation of that which men feel to be great. What it utters, appears indeed simple, but it is like the story of Columbus and the egg, easy when found out. The glory of Mr. Ruskin is, that his genius meets all the requisitions of the Welsh Triad. “An eye that can see nature, a heart that can feel nature, and a boldness that dare follow nature."

This book, which is indeed only part of a book, is a Treatise on Architecture, commencing with the quarry, and going through all the parts of the building, ending with the vestibule. We presume Part II will contain full descriptions of Venice. Mr. Ruskin's reason for selecting that city as the exemplar of architecture -but we will let him tell the story himself—

"All European Architecture, bad and good, old and new, is derived from Greece through Rome, and colored and perfected from the East. The history of Architec ture is nothing but the tracing of the various modes and directions of this derivation. Understand this once for all; if you hold fast this great connecting clue, you may string all the types of successive architectural invention upon it, like so many beads. The Doric and the Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of all Romanesque, massy, capitaled buildings-Norman, Lombard, Byzantine, and what else you can name of the kind; and the Corinthian of all Gothic, early English, French, German, and Tuscan. Now observe; those old Greeks gave the shaft; Rome gave the arch; the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch. The shaft and arch, the frame-work and strength of Architecture, are from the race of Japheth; the spirituality and sanctity of it from Ishmael, Abraham and Shem.

"You have perhaps heard of five orders; but there are only two real orders, and there never can be any more until doomsday. On one of these orders, the ornament is convex; those are Doric, Norman, and what else you recollect of the kind. On the other, the ornament is concave; those are Corinthian, early English, decorated, and what else you recollect of that kind.

"This Greek Architecture, with its two orders, was clumsily copied and varied by the Romans, with no particular result, until they began to bring the arch into extensive practical service. And in this state of things came Christianity; seized upon the arch as her own; decorated it, and delighted in it; invented a new Doric capital, to replace the spoiled Roman one. This Roman Christian Architecture, is the exact expression of the Christianity of the time, very fervid and beautiful, but very imperfect; in many respects ignorant, and yet radiant with a strong, childlike light of imagination, which flames up under Constantine, illumines all the shores of the Bosphorus, and the Egean and the Adriatic Sea, and then gradually, as the people gave themselves up to idolatry, becomes corpse-light.

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This Christian art of the declining empire is divided into two great branches, Western and Eastern; one centered at Rome, the other at Byzantium, of which the one is the early Christian Romanesque, properly so called, and the other carried to higher imaginative perfection by Greek workmen, is distinguished from it as Byzantine.

"When sensuality and idolatry had done their work, and the religion of the empire was laid asleep in a glittering sepulchre, the living light rose upon both hori zons, and the fierce swords of the Lombard and Arab, were shaken over its golden paralysis.

"The work of the Lombard was to give hardihood and system to the enervated body and enfeebled mind of Christendom; that of the Arab was to punish idolatry, and to proclaim the spirituality of worship. The Lombard covered every Church which he built with the sculptured representations of bodily exercises, hunting and war. The Arab banished all imagination of creature form from his temples, and proclaimed from their minarets, There is no God, but God.' Opposite in their character and mission, alike in their magnificence of energy, they came from the North and from the South, the glacier torrent, and the lava stream; they met and contended over the wreck of the Roman Empire; and the very centre of the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead water of the opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the Roman wreck, is VENICE.

"The Ducal palace of Venice, contains the three elements in exactly equal proportions-the Roman, Lombard and Arab. It is the central building of the world."

The approach to Venice, with which the volume closes, has a peculiar graphic quiet power.

"We have but walked some two hundred yards, when we come to a low wharf or quay, at the extremity of a canal, with long steps on each side down to the water, which latter, we fancy, for an instant, has become black with stagnation; another glance undeceives us; it is covered with the black boats of Venice. We enter one

of them, rather to try if they be real boats or not, than with any definite purpose, and glide away; at first, feeling as if the water were yielding continually beneath the boat, and letting her sink into soft vacancy. It is something clearer than any water we have seen lately, and of a pale green; the banks, only two or three feet above it, of mud and rank grass, with here and there a stunted tree; gliding swiftly past the small casement of the gondola, as if they were dragged by, upon a painted

scene.

Stroke by stroke we count the plunges of the oar, each heaving up the side of the boat slightly, as her silver beak shoots forward. We lose patienee, and extricate ourselves from the cushions; the sea air blows keenly by, as we stand leaning on the roof of the floating cell. In front, nothing is to be seen but long canal and level bank; to the West, the tower of Mestre is lowering fast, and behind it there have risen purple shapes, of the color of dead rose-leaves, all round the horizon, feebly defined against the afternoon sky-the Alps of Bassano. Forward still: the endless canal bends at last, and then breaks into intricate angles, about some low bastions, now torn to pieces, and staggering in ugly rents towards the water,-the bastions of the foot of Malghera. Another turn, and another perspective of canal; but not interminable. The silver beak cleaves it fast, it widens; the rank grass of the banks sinks lower and lower, and at last dies in tawny knots along an expanse of weedy shore. Over it on the right, but a few years back, we might have seen the lagoon stretching to the horizon, and the warm southern sky bending over Malamocco to the sea. Now we can see nothing but what seems a low and monotonous dockyard wall, with flat arches to let the tide through it; this is the railroad bridge, conspicuous above all things. But at the end of those dismal arches, there rises, out of the wide water, a straggling line of low and confused brick buildings, which, but for the many towers which are mingled among them, might be the suburbs of an English manufacturing town. Four or five domes, pale, and apparently at a greater distance, rise over the centre of the line; but the object which first catches the eye, is a sullen cloud of black smoke, brooding over the northern half of it, and which issues from the belfry of a Church.

Here is a beautiful definition. "All noble ornamentation is the expression of man's delight in God's work."

We were very much struck with a principle developed by Mr. Ruskin, in his “Modern Painters” and again in this work, in the chapter on the “Treatment of Ornament." The moral is one of the most important that a human being can learn, the liberty-in-law so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxons as a race, so indispensable to all virtue and permanent happiness in individual men.

"In the tenth chapter of the second volume of Modern Painters,' the reader will find, that I traced one part of the beauty of God's creation to the expression of a self-restrained liberty; that is to say, the image of that perfection of divine action, which, though free to work in arbitrary methods, works always in consistent methods, called by us laws.

"Now, correspondingly, we find that when these natural objects are to become subjects of the art of man, their perfect treatment is an image of the perfection of human action; a voluntary submission to the divine law.

"It was suggested to me, but lately, by the friend to whose originality of thought I have before expressed my obligations, Mr. Newton, that the Greek pediment, with its enclosed sculptures, represented to the Greek mind the law of Fate, confining human action within limits not to be overpassed. I do not believe the Greeks ever distinctly thought of this; but the instinct of all the human race, since the world began, agrees in some expression of such limitation, as one of the first necessities of good ornament. And this expression is heightened, rather than diminished, when some portion of the design slightly breaks the law to which the rest is subjected; it is like expressing the use of miracles in the divine government; or, perhaps, in slighter degrees, the relaxing of a law, generally imperative, in compliance with some more imperative need-the hungering of David.

“Observe, however, and this is of the utmost possible importance, that the value of this type does not consist in the mere shutting of the ornament into a certain space, but in the acknowledgment by the ornament of the fitness of the limitation; of its own perfect willingness to submit to it; nay, of a predisposition in itself to fall into the ordained forin, without any direct expression of the command to do so; an anticipation of the authority, and an instant and willing submission to it, in every fibre and spray; not merely willing. but happy submission, as being pleased rather than vexed to have so beautiful a law suggested to it, and one which to follow is so justly in accordance with its own nature. You must not cut out a branch of hawthorn as it grows, and rule a triangle round it, and suppose that it is then submitted to law. Not a bit of it. It is only put in a cage, and will look as if it must get out, for its life, or wither in the confinement. But the spirit of triangle must be put into the hawthorn. It must suck in isoscelesism with its sap. Thorn and blossom, leaf and spray, must grow with an awful sense of triangular necessity upon them, for the guidance of which they are to be thankful, and to grow all the stronger and more gloriously. And though there may be a transgression here and there, and an adaptation to some other need, or a reaching forth to some other end, greater even than the triangle, yet this liberty is to be always accepted under a solemn sense of special permission; and when the full form is reached, and the entire submission expressed, and every blossom has a thrilling sense of its responsibility, down into its tiniest stamen, you may take your terminal line away if you will. No need for it any more. The commandment is written on the heart of the thing." pp. 257-259.

In scarce any books do you add so much to your sheer knowledge as in Mr. Ruskin's, and where the matter is not new, it is in new light, and, Si non e vero, e ben trovato.

[Other notices ready for this number are crowded out.]