interior of the building in Trafalgar Square more resembles that of an ill-regulated workhouse than of a palace dedicated to the arts. The smallest collection in the most insignificant town in Italy is better lodged. If it be not desirable to have the silken hangings of the Pitti or the gilded cornices of the Louvre, let us at least have some simple yet tasteful decoration, and a little decent furniture, a comfortable chair upon which we may sit to enjoy a picture, and a paper that will not grossly offend the eye. Not the least important of the functions claimed for the fine arts is the raising of public taste and the refinement of manners. If this be one of the objects of picture galleries, those who are to benefit by pictures should surely be shown, by the manner in which they are kept, that some value is attached to them. The common multitude will not be persuaded that things can be very precious which are crowded on bare walls like useless lumber. We feel certain that it would be no longer necessary to warn the public that they are not to bring into the Gallery baskets with provisions, and to litter the floor with sandwichpapers and orange-peel, if the furniture and the decoration of the rooms were such as to lead them to believe that they were in a place where they were expected to behave with decency. We do not advocate such over-decoration as might destroy the effect of the pictures or distract attention from them. But it is a vulgar mistake to suppose that ornamentation destroys fine paintings. So far from such being the case, its judicious employment adds to their enjoyment. Any one experienced in galleries will know how different is the impression made by pictures seen in different localities and under different circumstances. This utter absence of elegance and refinement in the fittings and furniture of all our public exhibitions is a proof of a want of national good taste. It is nowhere more strikingly seen than in the British Museum, where the heavy, dingy, box-shaped ceilings, thoroughly classic though they may be, cause a painful sense of oppression, and utterly disfigure the proportions of the rooins, and the ponderous mahogany cases are more fitted to hold a housekeeper's stores than to receive the choicest specimens of ancient art.

In concluding these remarks we cannot refrain from expressing a hope that, when the question shall be finally settled, and when, as we trust will be the case, the various collections of art are united under one roof, provision will be made for the future management of the whole upon a more rational system than that now in operation either in the British Museum or in the National Gallery. At present these establishments are administered by the cumbrous machinery of unpaid Trustees. In the British Museum the vices of the system are fully exemplified-more espe

cially

cially at the present time, when certain Trustees are supposed to represent the various antagonistic interests of the antiquities, the library, and the natural history. We have endeavoured in a former article to do justice to the rare energy and abilities of Mr. Panizzi; but in the position he holds, with curtailed power and responsibility, it would be impossible even for a man of his capabilities to manage with adequate order and system that vast institution. The result of this division of authority and want of method is a constant disagreement and rivalry between the different departments, arising from some real or presumed sacrifice of the one to the other. Unpaid and dilettante administration, in which responsibility scarcely exists at all, or is so much divided that it rests on no one man's shoulders, is opposed to all good and solid improvement. It is a system which has only worked at all in England through continual but very undesirable public pressure and interference. Let us have one man of character, capacity, and knowledge placed at the head of our art, vested with full authority and responsible to Parliament and the country for the due discharge of the duties confided to him. If it be absolutely necessary that there should be Trustees in order that vested rights may be respected, let those Trustees be merely retained to watch over the due fulfilment of the particular trusts confided to them, but for no other purpose whatever. A step in the right direction has been taken by the appointment of a Director, and by a diminution of the number and power of the Trustees, of the National Gallery. We have shown how well the change, incomplete as it is, has worked under the direction of a competent man. We suspect that, if the powers of interference of the Trustees had been even more diminished, the progress and success would have been proportionately greater. Let an equally competent officer be placed at the head of a great Museum of Art, such as we have sketched out, and we will venture to say that in a very few years there will be no nation in the world which could vie with us in the extent, completeness, value, and arrangement of our various collections. Instead of losing, as we now do, for want of decent accommodation to exhibit them, many precious works of art which would otherwise be presented and bequeathed to the nation, we should possess an establishment to which public spirited and liberal men would be proud to confide their choicest treasures.

*We cannot refrain from bearing our testimony to the ability, knowledge, and devotion displayed by Mr. Cole in the management of the Kensington Museum. The varied and admirably arranged collections there exhibited now form one of the most useful and interesting exhibitions of the metropolis, and are a convincing proof of what may be accomplished in a short space of time by well-directed and unfettered energy.

ART.

ART. IV.-1. Aegypten's Stelle in der Weltgeschichte-Geschichtliche Untersuchung in fünf Büchern. Von Christian Carl Josias Bunsen. Vols. I.-V. Hamburg and Gotha, 1844-1857. 2. Egypt's Place in Universal History-An Historical Investigation, in five books. By Christian C. J. Bunsen. Translated from the German by Charles H. Cotterell. Vols. I-III. London, 1848-1859.

3. An Account of some recent Researches near Cairo, undertaken with the view of throwing light upon the Geological History of the Alluvial Land of Egypt. Instituted by Leonard Horner, Esq. From the Philosophical Transactions. Parts I. and II. London, 1855 and 1858.

THE

HE laws which determine the value of historical evidence ought to be the same for ancient as for modern times. A writer of any period of modern history is expected to produce in support of his facts the testimony of credible contemporary witnesses, and is justly censured if he founds his narrative upon documents of uncertain authorship and unknown date. But this historical sense has been of slow growth. For many centuries the histories of the countries of modern Europe commenced with fictions which had not even the recommendation of embodying popular traditions or national stories. The inventions of one or two chroniclers respecting the origin and early history of their nation were received by their immediate successors without hesitation, were repeated with confidence by a long and respectable list of authorities, and at length became so firmly embedded in the national belief, that no one ever thought of challenging their truth or questioning their authenticity. In this manner the early annals of English history were filled with an imaginary series of monarchs, the descendants of Brute the Trojan, whose names and dates were recorded with the same precision as those of the Plantagenets and the Tudors. Their lives and deeds were accepted as historical facts; and King Lear, the son of Bladud, who was 'ruler over the Britons in the year of the world 3105,' was believed to be as real a personage as William the Conqueror or Henry the Eighth. These tales, once universally accepted, have long since disappeared from English history, because the writers, on whose authority they rested, had no possible means of ascertaining their truth."

In ancient history, however, a different canon of criticism has prevailed almost down to the present day. Stories consecrated by the belief of ages seemed to claim a prescriptive right to belief. A kind of halo rested upon every portion of Greek and Roman literature; and it appeared almost as presumptuous to

question

383

Bunsen's Egypt and the Chronology of the Bible. question the tales of Livy as the statements of the Bible. Hence the heroes of Greek and Roman story, and the fabulous lists of Athenian and Alban kings, retained their hold upon our belief and their places in our popular histories long after Brute and his successors had passed into oblivion.* It was only timidly and gradually that critics ventured to apply to ancient history the laws respecting the value of evidence, and to examine the grounds upon which the ancients themselves believed in the stories which they related. It began to be perceived that in many cases these writers had no means of verifying their statements; and that they frequently derived their accounts from the tales of the poets, the traditions of the people, or the speculations of philosophers. An historian in the third century before the Christian era might have no better authorities for events which happened five hundred years before his time than we now possess two thousand years afterwards. Such a writer can only command our confidence by producing satisfactory evidence that he derived his narrative, either directly or indirectly, from credible witnesses, contemporary, or nearly so, with the events which he relates. It is the more necessary to dwell upon this fundamental law of historical evidence, because, though admitted in theory, it is constantly violated in investigations connected with the more remote periods of antiquity. Even Niebuhr, K. O. Müller, and the other distinguished scholars of Germany, have frequently drawn important conclusions from isolated statements, written long after the occurrence of the events to which they relate by unknown authors and at unknown periods. In fact we can point to only two eminent modern scholars who have fully recognized in their published works the importance of the principle for which we are contending. It is one of the many, and not least valuable, services which Sir George Cornewall Lewis and Mr. Grote have conferred upon the scholarship of this country, that they have given admirable specimens of the true method of historical research, and have consistently refused to admit as historical facts statements derived from traditionary and hearsay sources.† M. Bunsen

* Dr. Hales, in his work upon Chronology, of which the second edition was published so recently as 1830, observes that the thirty reigns of the Athenian kings and archous, from Cecrops to Creon, form one of the most authentic and correct documents to be found in the whole range of profane chronology.'—vol. i. p. 133.

†The following observations of Sir G. C. Lewis deserve the attentive consideration of the historical student:-It seems to be often believed, and at all events it is perpetually assumed in practice, that historical evidence is different in its nature from other sorts of evidence. Until this error is effectually extirpated, all historical researches must lead to uncertain results. Historical evidence, like judicial evidence, is founded on the testimony of credible witnesses. Unless these witnesses had personal or immediate perception of the facts which they report;

unless

M. Bunsen has followed another method, and adopted very different criteria as to the value of testimony. We regret that a writer of his attainments and reputation should have pursued a plan of historical criticism which cannot possibly lead to any satisfactory results. His work upon Egypt has now been some years before the public; and the way in which it has been generally criticised is a striking proof of the laxity which still prevails in forming a judgment of the history of antiquity. It would seem that even now the credence given to the history of the past is in an inverse proportion to the value of the evidence. In examining the history of the civil wars of Rome, or of any other period narrated by contemporary witnesses, their testimony is sifted, compared, and frequently questioned; but the higher we ascend the less rigid is the canon of our belief, and when nothing is known everything is believed. Even those who impugn M. Bunsen's conclusions, do not, for the most part, seem to be aware of the insecure foundations upon which his whole system rests. Startled by the antiquity which he assigns to the Égyptian monarchy, and by the remote period in which he places the first colonization of the valley of the Nile, they refuse, without any further investigation, to credit a narrative which appears to contradict the Biblical account of the creation and dispersion of man. On the other hand, those who find a difficulty in crediting the plainest historical statements of Scripture, hail with delight a theory which carries back the authentic history of Egypt to a period before the Deluge. Hence M. Bunsen's work has, to a great extent, been judged according to the theological prepossessions of the critics. The unbeliever has been credulous, and the believer sceptical: but neither the one nor the other has tested the value of the author's researches by the laws of historical evidence. We do not hesitate to acknowledge that we consider the chronology of the Scriptures to be more credible in itself, and more in accordance with the known facts of history, than the immense period of time which M. Bunsen professes to have derived from the Egyptian records; but our rejection of his theory is quite irrespective of our interpretation of the Bible. As M. Bunsen lays claim to a superior method of historical criticism, and seems to think that no one can differ from him unless blinded by religious prejudice and

unless they saw or heard what they undertake to relate as having happened, their evidence is not entitled to credit. As all original witnesses must be contemporary with the events which they attest, it is a necessary condition for the credibility of a witness that he be a contemporary, though a contemporary is not necessarily a credible witness. Unless, therefore, a historical account can be traced by probable proof to the testimony of contemporaries, the first condition of historical credibility fails.'-An Inquiry into the Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. i. p. 15.

theological