Even the most fantastic gurgoyle had its meaning, and, however we must dissent from much that M. Michelet has written, we have always been struck with the power and imagination displayed in his remarks on this theme.

The work of M. Didron is essentially a work of classification. And yet, strange to say, it commences with a condemnation of the principle which led the authors of the middle ages to do little more than commonplace the writings of their predecessors. Hence the vast folios, which despite. their absurdities and errors, must still be looked upon as wonderful illustrations of perseverance, and the bare transcription of which would seem ample work for the life of a dozen ordinary men. But the folios even of Vincent de Beauvais are still useful to the scholar and the philologist, and it is only the flippant who will attempt to cast unqualified ridicule upon labours, of which, though under more genial auspices, we are still reaping the fruits.

M. Didron proceeds to draw a most interesting parallel between the written encyclopædias, and those which adorned the exterior of the wondrous cathedrals of the same age. Eighteen hundred and fourteen statues form a history of the world round the mighty fabric of Notre Dame de Chartres. The creation of the world, and of men, and of animals, the first malediction pronounced against the human race, the rise of the arts of life and refinement, the studies and investigations of the mind, the varied motley of virtues and vices, the redemption, and the life of the Redeemer, and of those who followed Him in His work of grace, all these live in stone, and form a marvellous visible treasury, which in an age of few books and readers, must have been of a value which our more fortunate position scarcely allows us power to estimate.

M. Didron commences with the iconography, or archæological history of God, as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost respectively, which will be shortly followed by the history of the Angel, the Devil, the Seven Days of Creation, the Birth and Fall of Man, the Archæological history of Death, and of the "Dance of Death," etc.

It is sincerely to be hoped that this design may be carried out with the same efficiency that distinguishes the portion now made known to the English public through

Mr. Millington's translation. We will meanwhile, for the benefit of our readers, cull a few useful remarks from M. Didron's account of the nimbus, aureole, and glory.

This ornament (for in effect the whole three are identical, though different in their application), he observes, “will often alone be found sufficiently expressive to enable us to determine the dignity and character of the personage invested with it."

"The glory is constantly adopted by artists, both in painting and sculpture, as a characteristic ornament: it either encircles the head alone or the entire figure. As an attribute it serves to denote a holy person, in the same manner as the crozier or the sceptre distinguishes a bishop or a king. When this attribute encircles the head only it is called a nimbus. In this case it is analogous in signification to a crown, from which however it differs essentially in position if not in form. Both the crown and the nimbus are circular, but the former is placed horizontally on the head. The position of the latter is vertical.

"The nimbus may sometimes be almost microscopic in dimensions, but its importance ought never to be overlooked. Every sculptor occupied in making or re-modelling Gothic statues, every painter engaged in the restoration of ancient frescoes, or of early stained glass, each antiquary whose time and energies are devoted to researches in Christian Iconography, will find this characteristic to be of the highest practical importance, and one, too, which requires to be studied with scrupulous attention, since the omission of it may transform a saint into an ordinary mortal, or an incorrect application elevate the mere mortal into a divinity. Errors of this description are frequently committed by artists of the present day in their representations of religious themes. Some years since, for example, a painting on glass, representing Christ and a few saints, was exhibited. One of the saints, a bishop only, was adorned with that form of nimbus, which is appropriated to the Deity alone, and the figure of Christ was entirely destitute of the insignia which Christian artists have universally employed as the symbol of His divinity. Consequently the saint was represented as divine, while our Saviour appeared but as a man. The nimbus therefore, in Iconography, is of equal importance with the fingers and the mamma in zoology; and although its form may be by no means striking to the eye, the idea it should convey is often of the highest importance. In some instances not the head alone but the entire person is encircled by a nimbus; in this latter case it ought to be designated by another name in order that two ornaments, varying so much in size and nearly always in form, may not be confounded one with another. The nimbus encircling the body will for the present be distinguished by the term aureole, and the propriety of this denomination will be justified hereafter. The aureole is of less universal application than the nimbus, or ornament of the head, properly so called; it is very rarely seen in Pagan Iconography, and in Christian art is restricted almost exclusively to the Divine persons, to the Virgin Mary, or to the souls of saints, exalted after the death of the body into the kingdom of heaven.

In the Illustrated Library. H. G. Bohn. 1851.

"The nimbus of the head and the aureole of the body differ in a remarkable degree, yet both are sometimes figured in the same manner, and both usually impart the same idea, that of apotheosis, glorification, or deification. It seems therefore desirable that one single word should be employed as a generic term to include both species of nimbus, and express the union of the two ornaments.

"In speaking of the combination of the nimbus and aureole, I shall in future employ the term glory: nimbus will be applied peculiarly to that encircling the head, aureole to that of the body, and glory to the union of both."

It would be easy to point out dozens of passages equally important and useful, did not our limits prevent the possibility of so doing. Moreover, our previous remarks on Mrs. Jameson's writings apply, mutatis mutandis, with equal force to the labours of M. Didron. We part from the perusal of such works with the satisfaction of finding one more link in the history of art recovered, one more impulse given to the formation of sound taste. Whether we are in the picture gallery or the cathedral, whether we would discuss the authenticity of a painting, or the relative antiquity of a mosaic, it is only by a previous acquaintance with the classification (the true chronology in works of art) of the subject and its treatment, that we can hope to arrive at a sound and unprejudiced conclusion.

A FEW NOTES FROM THE NILE.

MY DEAR

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

LETTER No. III.

VOYAGE TO CAIRO.

From our Nile Boat, Boulac, off Cairo, Nov. 18th.

My last was posted for you from Alexandria, and now I have to give you our first experience of voyaging on the Nile; it will make my letter more intelligible if I put it in the form of a diary, first premising a description of our boat and crew. She is a long narrow vessel, like some of the light passenger boats on our rivers and canals, with a raised cabin and long pitched bows. She carries two large lateen sails, and both in front, an unusual and rather inconvenient arrangement; it is better to have one in the bows and one astern. The fore-part is occupied with the kitchen and hold, in the waist is our cabin, a pleasant little room, large enough abundantly for two, with a good divan covered with clean chintz on each side, and furnished with hanging book-shelves and mahogany cabinets for our glass, dishes, &c. Astern of the cabin is our bedroom, with a comfortable bed (not a ship's berth) on each side; there is but little space between the beds, for I can reach out from mine, if necessary, and wake S- but this matters little, as we have a dressing room still astern where is all the washing apparatus, &c. Our clothes stow away in drawers under our beds, and every available place in the boat is turned into closet, cupboard, and store room. There is a sort of ante-room to the cabin which, with the help of a good sail-cloth curtain to let down at night, we have formed into a sleeping place for our English servant. The dragoman sleeps in the hold, the rest where they can, some on the deck in front and some on the roof of the cabin. Our crew are as follows::

1st. The dragoman, Derwush Ramadan.

2nd. The captain, or Rais Taeed.

3rd. The steersman, Amer.

4th. An Arab servant, Mahoumed.

Then we have eight men as sailors and a boy, their names are 1. Omar; 2. Abed; 3. Mahoumed Awad; 4. Mahou

med Abubekr; 5. Mahoumed Haudron, i. e. the little; 6. Ahmet; 7. Hassan; 8 Juliman, and last of all a very sharp merry boy named Mahmoud, whose chief office is to cook for the crew. These men receive from us 60 piastres (the piastre is worth nearly 24) per month each, the boy half as much. We have also a good cook, named François, he is a German, but speaks also bad French; we pay him double what we should give an Arab cook, viz. £4 per month, but it is worth the difference, the Arabs are so dirty. The Rais and steersman are included in the hire of the boat.

Nov. 10. I said good bye to our hospitable friends after taking supper with them, and embarked at half-past nine, a clear bright moonlight, the light wind is against us and the boat is quickly poled across to the other side of the canal, and the Arab sailors leap on shore with the tackrope, with a repeated and monotonous cry, which seems to me, (mind I give you notice once for all, my Arabic spelling is mere spelling by ear,) "Allah E-sar Ya Mohammed." The banks of the canal at first sight are fringed with trees, and some country houses and gardens, and present a beautiful appearance in the still moonlight; it was a warm night, and I sat for an hour on deck; but soon the canal became uninteresting and monotonous, and we retired to bed leaving the men tracking.

Nov. 11. Still tracking, the sides of the canal most uninteresting, high banks of earth and sand, and beyond them a wide dead flat of swamp and rice grounds. It gets very hot towards afternoon, the thermometer in our cabin was at 83°, yet the air is pleasant and exhilarating.

We had a strange disturbance this afternoon. It was just 5 o'clock and the boat slipping quietly along, Swas on shore shooting, with Dirwush and Mahoumed, the Rais gravely squatting in the bows with his pipe, and the steersman with equal gravity and similar pipe squatting in the stern; I was lounging idly with a book on the little divan in the ante-room, when I heard an extraordinary clatter of voices which brought me out to see. There I saw just appearing above the top of the high bank Dirwush and Mahoumed dragging a struggling Arab whose face was covered with blood, and dozens more running up from different directions in the fields, and surrounding them; in a moment our eight sailors who were tracking on the other side of the canal, got hold of the little boat which we carry