Part 7

"Is there a lesson, though given by the most learned professor, that could cause to live before us all the life of the Rome of the Cæsars as do these effigies? In the long succession of portraits which embrace three centuries of history the differences of times and of men are contrasted more keenly and more vividly than in the recitals of ancient authors or in the dissertations of modern erudites. Augustus and Tiberius, Constantine and Theodosius, all bore the same title--'imperator'; all were called consuls, Cæsars, Augusti, _patres patriæ_, etc. Nevertheless, from the first to the fourth centuries the supreme power was greatly modified. Volumes have been written to explain the change, but there is nothing that makes it so clear as the comparison of the images of these princes. Augustus, in perhaps the most beautiful of all his statues, called _de Prima Porta_, has his head, arms, legs, and feet bare. Over the soldier's short tunic he wears a cuirass, and over it is thrown the military mantle of command. He is represented as supreme chief haranguing his troops. Another statue may represent him as a simple citizen, clothed with the toga and holding in his hand the manuscript of the discourse he proposes reading to the senate. The statues still show forth the Roman Republic, at least the customs and the style of it. Most vividly is the spirit and also the deception of the system perceived which, while investing a single individual with a power almost limitless, affects for two centuries a preservation of ancient liberties. Turn from these to an image of one of the successors of Diocletian, one who preferred to reside in Constantinople, the new capital of the empire. Do not seek his image in one of the ceremonial statues where, by force of routine, the sculptor may perchance have preserved classic rules; but in monuments of another order, where the artist kept closer to reality, in miniatures adorning manuscripts, in mosaics, in ivory diptychs, etc. There you will find figures which have nothing left of the simplicity and nobility which Rome borrowed from Greece, but figures which in some particulars recall the old art of Asia, and in others already announce the art of the middle ages. The head is encircled with a diadem. The body and the limbs are entirely hidden by clinging draperies which are very long and very narrow. The materials which form this species of case are decorated from top to bottom with rich embroideries in the shape of medallions, flowers, animals, and even persons. There is no more deception; we are no longer in Rome; fictions so long preserved have finally disappeared; the empire has turned into an Oriental despotism.

"Between the two extremes of the series, how many degrees are there which furnish the very best commentaries of history? The heads of all the Cæsars, even those of Claudius, the accidental scholar, and of Caligula, the wicked and witty fool, are aristocratic. They show the nobility and the pride of race. You recognize in them the descendants of those grand patrician families which at first seemed to hold exclusively the right to give masters to the Romans. With Vespasian, scion of a middle-class family pushing its way into second-class public positions, the advent of a new order is evident. Vespasian has the round and smooth, double-chinned face of the chief clerk of a commercial or banking establishment. Trajan has the features of a soldier who has probably pushed his way to the front from the ranks. Hadrian, who turns his head to hear the better, whose bright eyes gleam even in the marble, whose half-opened mouth seems in the act of speech, shows the features of a learned and intelligent scholar. Marcus Aurelius, with his bristling hair and beard, would be taken for a Greek philosopher. In Caracalla's looks there is derangement. His eye betrays that murderous and fantastic frenzy which seized more than one emperor, especially of those who from early youth had been exposed to the temptations of absolute power.[17]

[Footnote 17: There is a bust of Julius Cæsar in England of which a cast or a copy should be by the side of every expounder of the Commentaries. The presence of the bust would give new life to the narrative, for there is more life in the marble than in the writing. There are in the Louvre, placed side by side, three representations of Nero which tell the story of the man more graphically than the pages of Suetonius. The first represents the youth, whose thoughts are pure, hopes bright, and resolves noble. The second shows the conflict with evil and the beginning of the triumph of sin. The third is so monstrous in its brutality and lust that it must have been taken but a short time before the catastrophe which terminated the matricide's career. Historians may detail the circumstances of the fall of Rome, philosophers may investigate the causes which led to it, but that hideous face in the Louvre tells the whole story with a force so startling, so instantaneous, that history and philosophy seem weak and wanting.]

"Not to personages alone do pictured monuments give life. The same character of sensible reality is imparted to the frame and to the surroundings of the picture, to all the theater where these actors played their parts. Of this truth no one of our teachers, when I was a collegian, seemed to have a suspicion. There was not an illustration in the cold and dry compendiums which were placed in our hands. I can almost ask myself if, when I studied Greek and Roman history, I was really convinced that Sparta and Athens, Rome and Carthage had actually existed. I certainly did not know how or where to place them in space, what idea to have of their situation, or of the outlines made by the ridges of their walls, their houses, and their temples. All these cities were to me vague shadows, floating between heaven and earth. No one of them answered to a distinct and defined form.

"If this be the case with classical antiquity, in spite of the color and splendor of the narratives of its writers, how much more difficult is it to know and understand France of the middle ages when condemned to study it in its literary work alone! The literature of the period is partly in debased Latin, partly in early French. The French of the day was not the language of the thinkers. The deep thought of the age is not to be found in minstrelsy and ballads. It must be asked of the learned, of philosophers, of theologians, and of sacred writers. But to follow them in the subtle analyses and in the excessive complications of symbolism, in which they delight, requires mental efforts which are made all the more laborious by the artificial character of the church Latin, which no longer continued to renew itself at the source of popular speech. It is impossible to see how such works, in spite of their value to erudition, can be called to take part in the education of the young. It is for this reason that lately, by a judicious innovation, a discreet place has been made in the curriculum for histories and poems written in the common language, for the Chanson de Roland, and for the works of Villehardouin and Joinville. But the student can only read these in translations, or in those adaptations which so modernize the language as to leave but a little of its original flavor, and which therefore make but an imperfect contact between the original work and the mind of the reader. But supposing the scholar capable of mastering the original text: can its formless and superabundant prose, or the tiresome monotone of its flowing dissonances, give him emotions which have the vivacity of those which a page of Tacitus or a song of Virgil gives to those who know even a modicum of Latin? Can they have the power to excite the imagination in the same degree as any strong and concise sentence of the historian, any sonorous and glowing verse of the Roman poet?

"It is only exceptionally and as by flashes that the writings of the middle ages give the impression of true beauty. The conceptions are often grand, but the expression is always weak and dragging. On the other hand, Roman or Gothic churches are not less beautiful after their manner than Greek temples. Their beauty is of another fashion, but many souls are touched more deeply. They manifest no less clearly the power of the religious faith which constructed them. The particular character of Christian faith is shown with singular clearness in their majesty, in the elevation of their vaults, in the half lights which flood them, and in the thousands of figures which populate and animate every surface. As in Greece, the sculptor co-operates intelligently and docilely with the architect and has occupied no less happily the allotted fields. As Phidias and Alcamenes represented on the pediments and friezes of Doric temples the great gods of Greece and the local myths of Athens and Olympia, so anonymous masters, called to decorate the cathedrals of the middle ages, have placed impressive statues on the sides and in the _voussoirs_ of the portals, in the open galleries which run along the façades, on the top of the pinnacles which throng the roof--in fact, everywhere where space is offered. These statues, distributed in an order regulated by doctrine and tradition, show forth the Saviour, the Virgin, saints and angels, prophets and apostles, and hosts of personages and scenes suggested by Holy Writ or by local and popular legends. Among these images there are many at Bourges, Chartres, Rheims, Amiens, and Nôtre Dame de Paris, which are marvels of severe elegance, of chaste and haughty grace, and of lofty moral nobility. This wonderful statuary has but lately been investigated, exposed, and studied, but already it would be difficult to find a connoisseur unwilling to compare with the most boasted statues of antiquity that admirable image of the teaching Christ of the west portal of Amiens, to which the popular surname has been attached of _le Beau Dieu d'Amiens_.

"For evident reasons, French sculpture of the thirteenth century did not, as did Greek sculpture, devote itself to the study and reproduction of the nude. It denied itself this attraction. All figures are clad; but beneath the drapery, which is in fine masses with large folds, the outline and the movement of form are indicated with precision. The principal interest and the rare originality, however, of this sculpture is that it is perhaps the most expressive that has ever existed. This expressiveness appears in the general effect of the pose, in the disposition of the drapery, but especially in the character which the artist has succeeded in giving to the features of the face.

"The august mysteries of the Christian dogma, the poetry of the Old and of the New Testament, the triumphant deaths of martyrs, the miracles of saints and their infinite charity--these things which the middle ages failed to put into clear and intelligible words are fully rendered in sculpture. The work of the chisel is large and firm. Difficulties are not sought, nor are they feared. Whatever be the material, the form is sure. To understand how superior the plastic is to the literary work, and to measure the distance, compare the Amiens statue with the portraits the authors of the Mysteries endeavor to draw of the Son of God. 'What can be more flat than these poor verses, which are nevertheless of the sixteenth century? The authors had good intentions and an apprehension of what should be done, but they were betrayed by the language in which they wrote. The sculptors of the thirteenth century, on the contrary, who possessed fully the grammar of their art, expressed all they felt, and have left us the most divine images of Jesus Christ in existence.'[18]

[Footnote 18: E. Mâle. Revue Universitaire, Third Année, l. i, p. 15.]

"Italy of the Renaissance is quite unintelligible to any one who has not measured the place held by art in the preoccupations not only of artists who practice it, but of all men of all conditions--of princes, nobles, tradesmen, and of citizens of most humble occupations. No one in any rank is without a passionate love for plastic beauty. This love was Italy's life and Italy's death. She died of it, because all her sap was consumed in satisfying it. It made her indifferent to her dismemberment, to the hard yoke of her tyrants, to the loss of her political liberties, and of her independence. But, at the same time, it constituted the intensity of her life which was exhausted and renewed again in the ardor with which she pursued her ideal and in her endeavors to realize it under all its aspects. Let him who would wish to obtain an exact idea of this condition reside for a while in Mantua, in Parma, in Sienna, in Florence, or in any other less-known city which nevertheless had its local school of art, its architects, its sculptors, its painters, some of whom, though they only worked for their native city, were not far from manifesting genius.[19]

[Footnote 19: Raphael's Madonnas save the reputation of the papal see of the sixteenth century, for pontiffs who cherished such pure and gentle representations could not have been so corrupt as Luther's partisans assert.]

"The written history of the seventeenth century and its rich literature can not alone give an idea of the situation occupied by Louis XIV in Europe when he was admired, imitated, or rather servilely copied, as pre-eminently the type of the modern king even by those who hated him the most. After two centuries, have we not seen his wonderful prestige still potent in dominating the sickly mind of Louis II of Bavaria? In his desire to copy his chosen model Louis ruined himself in building palaces. In this folly he showed discrimination. Louis XIV, when dying, may have accused himself of having indulged too great a love for building; but his edifices, with their majestic grandeur and the opulence of their decoration, gave that royal life a frame which had much to do with the dazzling which all Europe experienced when in the presence of _le Roi Soleil_. In order to recognize and experience, though but for a moment, a little of the impression felt by all contemporaries, Versailles must be visited; the apartments of the palace, the terraces, and the alleys of the park must be traversed. Thus will be thrown upon this historic figure a light far more brilliant and true than could possibly be the result of learning by heart accounts of all the campaigns of Turenne or Condé, or all the clauses of the treaties of Nimègue and Ryswick.

"The same may be said of the eighteenth century, of which only an incomplete idea can be had without a knowledge of its art. This century, to which Voltaire gave the note, seems to have had no sentiment of poetry. Down to the time of André Chenier everything called poetry was no more than rhymed prose. The imagination, however, did not lose its rights. Like a stream which changes its bed, it withdrew from literature to flow into the arts of design. There it gives evidence of invention and of light and spontaneous grace. Architects adopt plans of happy arrangement. They employ forms of rare elegance both in the elements of construction and in the ornaments which decorate them. Such sculptors as Capperi and Houdon give to portraiture a marvelous intensity of life, while the terra cottas of Clodion, with their fantastic and voluptuous charm, recall the clay modelers of antiquity. Such painters as Greuze, Lancret, and Boucher spread before the eyes living idyls, while Watteau and Frangonard conjure dreams of ideal Cytheras, of a chimerical paradise where reign eternal youth and eternal desire. The politics of our kings and of our ministers of the period is but a succession of faults and weaknesses. The best concerted plans come to naught. The most brilliant victory produces no useful results. If France, in spite of so many reverses, still held her supremacy in Europe, she owed it to her writers and to her artists."

Perrot's arguments might be used with even greater force in reference to those notions which have had no Comines, no Joinville, no Froissart, no Villehardouin, but the history of whose civilization may be traced in monuments along the Rhine and the Danube, the Ems and the Elbe. In the last part of the article Perrot considers the best methods of giving the desired instruction. However interesting and valuable his suggestions may be in communities where the instruction has already been established, it is evident that there must first be a conviction of the value and necessity of such studies and the determination to have them started. Methods are not difficult to devise, and will vary with national and individual tastes. That American colleges of thirty, forty, or fifty years ago should have objected to the introduction of the history of the fine arts into their curricula is easily understood. Art in any form was regarded by the New England mind as an emanation of the devil, and the New England mind controlled American colleges. Why the repugnance continues to exist is harder to understand. It may subsist from ignorance, from prejudice, or from conservatism. Conservatism may still regard all information to be derived from art as objectionable. Prejudice may still be strongly fixed in the notion that written and spoken words are the only vehicles of instruction, and that the arts are useless and idle vanities, while ignorance may be awaiting demonstration which will have to be strong and conclusive to awake it from self-satisfied apathy. May the good words of Perrot help on the cause and accelerate the time when the best and the fullest education will be offered by the American university!

HOW STANDARD TIME IS OBTAINED.

BY T. B. WILLSON, M. A.

Almost everybody knows that observatories are the places from which standard time is sent out and corrected daily or hourly. But comparatively few have more than the vaguest idea of the means used at the observatories for obtaining it.

Probably the majority of people suppose that the observatories obtain the correct time from the sun. When the average man wishes to give his watch the highest praise he says, "It regulates the sun," not being aware that a watch which would keep with the sun around the year would have to be nearly as bad as Sam Weller's. The farmer may safely decide when to go in to dinner by the sun, but if the mariner was as confident that the sun marked always the correct time as the farmer is he would be sure to be at times two or three hundred miles from where he thought he was. In other words, the sun--that is, a sundial--is only correct on a few days in each year, and during the intervening times gets as far as a whole quarter hour fast or slow.

These variations of the sun from uniform time caused no end of trouble between the astronomers and the fine clockmakers before it was discovered that sun time is subject to such irregularities. The better the clock, the worse it often seemed to go.

But as the variations in sun time are now accurately known, correct time might be obtained from the sun by making proper allowance, were it not for the difficulty of observing its position, with sufficient exactness. The large disk of the sun can not be located so perfectly as can the single point which a star makes. For this reason astronomers depend almost wholly upon the stars for obtaining accurate time. It is the method of doing this which we propose to describe.

There are several hundred stars whose positions have been established with the greatest accuracy by the most careful observations at a number of the principal observatories of the world. If a star's exact position is known, it can readily be calculated when it will pass the meridian of any given place--that is, the instant it will cross a north-and-south line through the place. The data regarding these stars are all published in the nautical almanacs, which are got out by several different observatories for the use of navigators and all others who have uses for them. These stars are known as "clock stars."

Every observatory is provided with at least one, or, better, several clocks that are very accurate indeed. Every appliance and precaution which science can suggest is resorted to to make these clocks accurate. The workmanship is, of course, very fine. What is known as the "retaining click" prevents their losing a single beat while being wound. The small variations in the length of the pendulum which changes of temperature would cause are offset by compensation. The rise of the mercury in the pendulum bob, if the weather grows warmer, shortens the pendulum precisely as much as the expansion of its rod lengthens it, and conversely if it becomes colder. Such clocks, too, are set on stone piers built up from below the surface of the ground and wholly independent of the building itself. Often the clocks are made with air-tight cases, and sometimes are placed in tightly closed chambers, only to be entered when absolutely necessary. Some fine clocks even have appliances for offsetting barometric changes, but these affect such clocks less than other influences or imperfections which can not be accounted for, and thus they are seldom provided against.

The astronomer's principal clock--the one he uses in all his calculations--marks what is known as sidereal, not ordinary, time. The revolution of the earth in its orbit sets the sun back in its place in the heavens at the rate of about four minutes a day, or one whole day in a year, so that this clock, indicating star time, gains this amount and is only with ordinary clocks once a year. After it is once adjusted, no attempt is made to regulate it exactly, as the astronomer would better calculate its differences than disturb its regulation, always provided its rate is very uniform and accurately known.

One or more of the other clocks, however, are made to show ordinary time, and corrected by observations taken every few days. It is from this clock that the standard time is sent out.

It is possible to connect any of these clocks telegraphically with an instrument in the observatory, known as a chronograph. It consists of a cylinder with a sheet of paper around it, on which rests a pen connected with the telegraphic instrument which follows the beats of the clock. The cylinder is turned slowly by clockwork, and the pen, carried slowly along by a screw, describes a spiral on the paper with jogs or teeth in it about a quarter of an inch apart, caused by the beats of the clock. In this way the astronomer secures a visible record of the beating of his clock, or rather of the movements of his telegraphic recorder. Thus, if he has another key on the same circuit with the clock, connected with his chronograph recorder, and should touch it between the beats of his clock, it would put in an extra jog or tooth on his record, and it will show, what he could not have told in any other way, in just what part of the second he touched this key, whether in the first or last part of the second, and precisely how far from either end--that is, he can determine fractions of a second with great nicety.