How to re

a cavædium, clearly distinguishing the two. On the other hand, the inference naturally, and almost as certainly, drawn from the language of Varro and Vitruvius is, that the two were the same. concile these contradictions? Becker would disregard the difference in tone and circumstances, and follow Pliny as against the other authorities, forgetting that what might be true of a splendid villa in the second century after Christ, might not be true, as a rule, a hundred years earlier. A rich man, living in an age of unbounded luxury, might well enough have two drawing-rooms for distinct uses, but the question for us is, How was it with Dentatus, Marcellus, and Cicero ?

The original Roman house was the atrium,- the square, single apartment, black (ater) from the smoke which escaped from a hole in the middle of the room. This one apartment served for the whole family, and for all purposes, just as in the case in our Western logcabins. It was, at once, bed-room, kitchen, dining-room, and place of sacrifice. In time, as wealth increased, other rooms were added, -bed-rooms, kitchen, &c.; but still this original apartment remained the centre around which the others were grouped, the gathering place for the family, of reception-room, "the open part of the house" (cavum ædium). The term atrium acquired now a more general signification, and was applied by the poets, for instance, like our word "hall," to any large single apartment for public use: size and splendor are its natural attributes. In ordinary houses, there was but one central room, called indifferently by both names, and used for all family purposes. In large establishments, however, the two sets of functions were naturally divided; and, besides the magnificent atrium, used for receptions, and open to the public, there was, after a smaller and more private family gathering-room, open to the air, like the atrium, the cavum ædium proper (called by Cicero atriolum). It is worthy of note, that, while Pliny mentions the two separately in his Laurentine villa, in the simpler Tuscan villa, he speaks only of an "atrium ex more veterum." The eight chapters of the part now published contain the whole of the in-door life of the Romans, the out-of-door life being left for the other part, which is to follow, we are told, "in not a long time."

W. F. A.

ART AND TRAVEL.

THE works of the Provençal and Northern French poets, the remains of the Castilian and Middle High-German and Old-English and Scan

VOL. LXXXII. -NEW SERIES, VOL. III. NO. I.

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dinavian singers, have been collected and translated and analyzed, says Adolf von Schack, with singular zeal; but, in this choir of all nations, the voice of the very people who so long surpassed them all in culture has not yet been heard,—that of the Arab poets of Spain. And it is this want which he undertakes to supply in his somewhat discursive, but, on the whole, interesting and very useful book, the fruit of several summers' residence in Andalusia and Granada. Hammer-Purgstall, indeed, has included a good deal of the SpanishArab poetry in his vast and chaotic storehouse of material for the history of the Arabian literature; yet Schack's work will be found to throw a good deal of light upon a period hitherto very obscurely known. The political history of the Arabs of Spain, indeed, may be said to have been worse than unknown, until the recent researches of the Dutch orientalist, Dozy, cleared away much of the confusion in which Conde, so long regarded as the chief authority upon the subject, had involved them; for, as Dozy shows conclusively, Conde has taken mutilated passages of Latin Chronicles for translations of Arabian historians; and, when he had the original text, has understood it so badly as to make two or more persons out of one, to take infinites for proper names, and to represent some men as dead before they were born, and others as playing imaginary parts who never existed at all. It is only lately that the publication of the Arabian historians in the original text, most of them edited by Dozy, has afforded a trustworthy basis for the examination of this brilliant period in mediæval history; while, of Dozy's recent critical history of the Mussulmans of Spain, from the eighth to the twelfth century, Schack says, that one must regard it, in connection with his researches upon the history and literature of Spain in the Middle Ages which it supplements, as one of the greatest scientific achievements of our century; for it has rescued one of the most important periods in the history of the world from the darkness of falsehood and fable, and brought it into the light of historical truth."

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The term "Moor," or "Moorish," as applied to the Arabs of Spain and their architecture, has perhaps withdrawn our attention a good deal from the fact, that this whole Mohammedan civilization of Spain was substantially Arabian. It was a term applied by the Christians

* Poesie und Kunst der Araber in Spanien und Sicilien. Von ADOLF FRIEDRICH VON SCHACK. Berlin: 1865. Verlag von Wilhelm Hertz, Bessersche Buchhandlung. 2 vols.

of Spain to their Mohammedan enemies, without distinction of the race to which they belonged; and, in this sense, it has passed into all European languages, and has led to the mistake of supposing that the Moorish architecture of Spain, as it was called, was something different from the Arabian, and originated among the Mauritanians or Berbers, who were so largely blended with the Arabs throughout the peninsula. The Mohammedan population of Spain was in truth very mixed, and there were, no doubt, among the many small rulers of Spain in the eleventh century, some of Berber origin; but, nevertheless, the Arabian civilization was everywhere predominant both in the country and in the cities. The Berber princes who made any pretence to culture were ashamed of their Berber origin, and assumed the manners and tone of the Arabs. Every thing that was done in either literature or art was Arabiau. The Berbers were looked upon as barbarians, and really accomplished nothing; for they attempted nothing. And, if the Moors have any place in the history of art at all, it is, as Schack says, as the destroyers of Cordova and the plunderers of Az-Zahra.

The limitation of the Arabian genius to architecture, to the almost entire exclusion of pictures and statues, has commonly been ascribed to a prohibition, in the Koran, of the representation of the forms of living kings; but Schack maintains, that there is really no foundation for such an opinion. If there be any prohibition of the kind, it is contained in the passage of the fifth sura, where it is said, "O true believers! surely wine and lots [games of chance] and images and divining arrows are an abomination, of the work of Satan; therefore avoid them, that ye may prosper." But these words are understood by many commentators as applying only to idolatrous images, while others have looked upon them as applying only to the carved pieces or men with which the pagan Arabs played chess, and others to the representation of the forms of such bodies as cast a shadow. There are, indeed, many traditional expressions of the Prophet in disapproval of the representation of the forms of living kings; but there is no express law of his religion against it, as there is against the drinking of wine. And,'even in this matter of wine, the prohibition was early disregarded. The poets of Damascus, at the court of the Ommiades, made the praises of wine the chief burden of their songs. And, though music and dancing were also condemned in the Koran and the traditions, yet, before a century had elapsed after the Hegira, the palaces of the caliphs swarmed with guitar-players

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and female-dancers, and no feast among the people was complete without both. It is therefore not a law, but, at best, a strong prejudice among the Orthodox, which restrained the Mohammedan artists from representing the human form; and, in point of fact, we find numerous instances of such representation. The caliphs Moawia and Abd ul Melik, of the dynasty of the Ommiades, had their coins struck, bearing a full-length representation of themselves girded with a sword. Chomarujah adorned his palace at Cairo with statues of himself and his wives, made of wood highly carved, and painted in gorgeous colors, wearing crowns of purest gold on their heads, and turbans that glittered with precious stones. Carpets, moreover, the use of which is so common throughout the East, were often adorned with figures. The Fatimites had them inwoven with portraits of kings and celebrated men, while the tapestries with which the sides of their tents were hung were covered over with figures of men and animals, and porcelain dishes were found in their treasury supported upon figures of lions curiously wrought. And the workshops of Cairo were constantly turning out statuettes of gazelles and elephants and giraffes, which were used at banquets, except when the cadi or other Orthodox personages were present. The heretic dynasty of the Fatimites, indeed, affords the most numerous instances of painting and sculpture; but many others may be gathered from the history of the Mesopotamian kingdoms and other parts of the Mohammedan world. No external hinderance, therefore, stood in the way of the development of these arts among the Mohammedans. The cause must be sought elsewhere, not, however, in the want of subjects; for a Mohammedan Titian would have found a congenial field in depicting the joys of the blessed among the black-eyed virgins of Paradise, and a Mohammedan Rembrandt would have found inspiration enough in the torments of the damned. The explanation, according to Schack, goes much deeper: it lies in the mental limitation of the Arab, in his want of clear perception of external things. His nature, as his poetry shows, is wholly subjective: the impressions which human life and the visible world make upon him are reflected in his mind, and understood; not the visible world itself, or human life in its manifold phases. The power of conceiving and reproducing the peculiar physiognomy of a subject is wholly wanting in him; and hence he has neither painting nor sculpture, standing in this respect, together with the rest of the Semitic races, in such striking contrast with the Greek, who was able to give a plastic,

tangible form to his conception, a form which expressed the thought in its clearness, as well as the internal subordination of each element of feeling to the pervading sentiment of the whole.

The Mosque of Cordova may not compare, in the perfection of its architecture, with the Parthenon or the Strasburg Minster; but it is surprising how, out of the discordant materials at their command, out of ancient pillars of various orders and Byzantine mosaics and African marbles, the Spanish Arabs contrived to erect a structure, which was not only one of the most wonderful works of human hands, but was so singularly adapted in its external form to the peculiar characteristics of the Arabian mind. For it typified to the Arab the Paradise that he imagined to himself as he thirsted in the burning wastes of the deserts after water and shade, a spot cool and sheltered, where the murmuring of fountains lulled him to soft sleep and dreams of bliss. It was the concentration on earth of all the joys that the true believer was to possess on the other side of the grave. In its great court, under thickly-arching trees, played a bubbling fountain, like that by the side of which the blessed were one day to rest; and in the stillness of its vast spaces, dark as with the darkness of sacred groves, with the pillars thick as forest-trees, and the plinths and arches stretching from one to another and spreading themselves overhead, like branches of the tuba, the wondrous tree of Paradise, the pining soul of Islam revelled in solitary delight; for the Paradise it dreamed of was made real to the senses. But, marvellous as this creation of the Arabian architect was, it illustrates in its very conception this limited subjective character of the Arabian mind. For it was not an ideal type of beauty they aimed at, not even an imitation of nature, but simply a vast space sacred to silence and to rest.

H. J. W.

THE author of "Five Years in Damascus " and of " Murray's Handbook for Syria" has not done so well in his account of the unvisited and almost unknown Bashan,* but that we wish he had done better. He has been too anxious to interlard his narrative with Scripture quotations, forgetting that all his readers have their Bibles at hand; but hardly any have any description of the Perea which he was privileged to visit, which remained an unsuspected treasure-house

*The Giant Cities of Bashan and Syria's Holy Places. By the Rev. J. L. PORTER. New York: Nelson & Sons, 1866.