let in, the figure of Christ, seen from behind, stands out in his long robes, raising his hand to bid the dead arise. Lazarus, pale, ghostlike in this effulgence, slowly, wearily raises his head in the sepulcher. The crowd falls back. Astonishment, awe. This coarse Dutchman has suppressed the incident of the bystanders holding their nose, to which the Giottesque clung desperately. This is not a moment to think of stenches or infection! Entombment: Night. The platform below the cross. A bier, empty, spread with a winding-sheet, an old man arranging it at the head. The dead Saviour being slipped down from the cross on a sheet, two men on a ladder letting the body down, others below receiving it, trying to prevent the arm from trailing. Immense solemnity, carefulness, hushedness. A distant illuminated palace blazes out in the night. One feels that they are stealing him away. I have reversed the chronological order and chosen to speak of Tintoret after Rembrandt, because being an Italian and still in contact with some of the old tradition, the great Venetian can show more completely both. what was gained and what was lost in imaginative rendering by the liberation of the individual artist and the development of artistic means. First, of the gain: This depends mainly upon Tintoret's handling of light and shade, and his foreshortenings: it enables him to compose entirely in huge masses, to divide or concentrate the interest, to throw into vague insignificance the less important parts of a situation in order to insist upon the more important; it gave him the power also of impressing us by the colossal and the ominous. The masterpiece of this style, and probably Tintoret's masterpiece therefore, is the great Crucifixion at S. Rocco. To feel its full tragic splendor one must think of the finest things which the early Renaissance achieved, such as Luini's beautiful fresco at Lugano; by the side of the painting at S. Rocco everything is tame, except perhaps Rembrandt's etching called the Three Crosses. After this, and especially to be compared with the frescoes of Masaccio and Ghirlandaio of the same subject, comes the Baptism of Christ. The old details of figures, dressing and undressing, which gave so much pleasure to earlier painters, for instance, Piero della Francesca, in the National Gallery, are entirely omitted, as the nose-holding in the Raising of Lazarus is omitted by_Rembrandt. Christ kneels in the Jordan, with John bending over him, and vague multitudes crowding the banks, distant, dreamlike beneath the yellow stormlight. Of Tintoret's Christ before Pilate, of that figure of the Saviour, long, straight, wrapped in white and luminous like his own wraith, I have spoken already. But I must speak of the S. Rocco Christ in the Garden; as imaginative as anything by Rembrandt, and infinitely more beautiful. The moonlight tips the draperies of the three sleeping apostles, gigantic, solemn. Above, among the bushes, leaning his head on his hand, is seated Christ, weary to death, numbed by grief and isolation, recruiting for final resistance. The sense of being abandoned of all men and of God has never been brought home in this way by any other painter; the little tear-stained Saviours, praying in broad daylight, of Perugino and his fellows, are mere distressed mortals. This betrayed and resigned Saviour has upon him the Weltschmerz of Prometheus. But even here we begin to feel the loss, as well as the gain, of the painter being forced from the dramatic routine of earlier days: instead of the sweet, tearful little angel of the early Renaissance, there comes to this tragic Christ, in a blood-red nimbus, a brutal winged creature thrusting the cup in his face. The uncertainty of Tintoret's inspirations, the uncertainty of result of these astonishing pictorial methods of attaining the dramatic, the occasional vapidness and vulgarity of the man, unrestrained by any stately tradition like the vapidness and vulgarity of so many earlier masters, comes out already at S. Rocco. And principally in the scene of the Temptation, a theme rarely, if ever, treated before the sixteenth century, and which Tintoret has made unspeakably mean in its unclean and dramatically impotent suggestiveness: the Saviour parleying from a kind of rustic edifice with a good-humored, fat, half feminine Satan, fluttering with pink wings like some smug seraph of Bernini's pupils. After this it is scarce necessary to speak of whatever is dramatically abortive (because successfully expressing just the wrong sort of sentiment, the wrong situation) in Tintoret's work: his Woman taken in Adultery, with the dapper young Rabbi, young Rabbi, offended neither by adultery in general nor by this adulteress in particular; the Washing of the Feet, in London, where the conversation appears to turn upon the excessive hotness or coldness of the water in the tub; the Last Supper at S. Giorgio Maggiore, where, among the mysterious wreaths of smoke peopled with angels, Christ rises from his seat and holds the cup to his neighbor's lips with the gesture, as he says, "This is my blood," of a conjurer to an incredulous and indifferent audience. To Tintoret the contents of the chalice is the all-important matter: where is the majesty of the old Giottesque gesture, preserved by Lionardo, of pushing forward the bread with one hand, the wine with the other, and thus uncovering the head and breast of the Saviour, the gesture which does indeed mean"I am the bread you shall eat, and the wine you shall drink?” There remains, however, to mention another work of Tintoret's which, coming in contact with one's recollections of carlier art, may suggest strange doubts and well-nigh shake one's faith in the imaginative efficacy of all that went before: his enormous canvas of the Last Day, at S. Maria dell' Orto. The first and overwhelming impression, even before one has had time to look into this apocalyptic work, is that no one could have conceived such a thing in earlier days, not even Michelangelo when he designed his Last Judgment, nor Raphael when he painted the Vision of Ezekiel. This is indeed, one thinks, a revelation of the end of all things. Great storm clouds, whereon throne the Almighty and His Elect, brood over the world, across which, among the crevassing, upheaving earth, pours the wide glacier torrent of Styx, with the boat of Charon imaginative suggestion far surpassing this of Tintoret's. The breathless effort of the youths breaking through the earth's crust, shaking their long hair and gasping; the stagger of those rising to their feet, the stolidity, hand on hip, of those who have recovered their body but not their mind, blinded by the light, deafened by the trumpets of Judgment; the absolute self-abandonment of those who can raise themselves no higher; the dull,, awe-stricken look of those who have found their companions, clasping each other in vague, weak wonder; and further, under the two archangels who stoop downward with the pennons of their triumpets streaming in the blast, those figures who beckon to the re-found beloved ones, or who struggling across its precipitous waters. The angels, confused with the storm clouds of which they are the spirit, lash the damned down to the Hell stream, band upon band, even from the far distance. And in the foreground the rocks are splitting, the soil is upheaving with the dead beneath; here protrudes a huge arm, there a skull; in one place the clay, rising, has assumed the vague outline of the face below. In the rocks and water, among the clutching, gigantic men, the huge full-bosomed women, tosses a frightful half-fleshed carcass, grass still growing from his finger tips, his grinning skull, covered half with hair and half with weeds, greenish and mouldering: a sinner still green in earth and already arising. A wonderful picture: a marvel-shade their eyes and point to a ous imaginative mind, with marvelous imaginative means at its command. Yet, let us ask ourselves, what is the value of the result? A magnificent display of attitudes and forms, a sort of bravura ghastliness and impressiveness, which are in a sense barrocco, reminding us of the wax plague models of Florence, and of certain poems of Baudelaire's. But of the feeling, the poetry of this greatest of all scenes, what is there? And, standing before it, I think instinctively of that chapel far off on the wind-swept Umbrian rock, with Signorelli's Resurrection. A flat wall accepted as a flat wall, no place, nowhere. A half-a dozen groups, not closely combined. Color reduced to monochrome, light and shade nowhere, as nowhere also all these devices of perspective. But in that simply treated fresco, with its arrangement as simple as that of a vast antique bas-relief, there is an glory on the horizon, or who, having striven forward, sink on their knees, overcome by a vision which they alone can behold. And recollecting that fresco of Signorelli's you feel as if this vast, tall canvas at S. Maria deil' Orto, where topple and stream the dea and the quick, were merely so much rhetorical rhodomontade by the side of the old hymn of the Last Day: "Mors spebit et natura Quam resurget creatura Judicanti responsura. VERNON LEE, in The Contemporary Review. [CONCLUDED.] THE GREAT MIDRASH.* The Midrash, or collection of Mid"homiletic discourses, rashim, known among Jews as the Midrash Bibliotheca Rabbinica: Midrash Rabboth. Eine Sammlung alter Midraschim. Rabba, is the chief literary product | custom may be noted in the Midrash extant of post-Talmudic Judaism. Next to the Talmud, it is the most important and the most voluminous of the early Rabbinical books. In Dr. Wünsche's translation, it occu pies no less than six closely printed octavo volumes. It embodies not alone the allegorical teaching of the Fathers of the Synagogue, ranging over the field of Pentateuch and Hagiography, but the whole mass of tradition and narrative, legend and myth, which adumbrates as with a halo of romantic fable the heroes of Jewish history. Critically speaking, the Midrash is the proper and necessary complement of the Talmud. In their origins, the works overlap. And just as the Talmud is the outcome of the "Halachic," or legalistic schools, so is the Midrash the product of the so-styled "Agadists," or popular interpreters of Scripture, known from a very early period as darshanim, or expounders. The origin of midrashic literature is to be found in the early parables and illustrations of the Palestinian exegists. The more immediate beginnings of Agadic interpretation can be traced to a peculiar institution of the Synagogue, the Sabbath afternoon discourses upon the Sacred Writings. The mornings were devoted to the public reading of the Law and the Prophets only; and to make up for the neglect of the remaining books of Scripture, it was usual to deliver, after the mid-day service, popular addresses upon Bible topics, in which the Hagiography was largely drawn upon and illustrated. A survival of this ancient Zum ersten Male ins Deutsche übertragen. Von Dr. Aug. Wünsche. Leipzig: Otto Schultze. 1880-1886. on Genesis, where every division. opens with a verse from the Hagiography, which the teacher connects with the portion of the Law previously read in public. These Sabbath expositions were quite distinct from the meetings for Talmudic disputation, known as "Pirka," in vogue during the same period; and the notes of these popular lectures made and preserved by those attending them, formed the basis of the collections of "Agadoth" occasionally referred to in the Talmud— such as the "Agadta d'be Rav" mentioned in Tractate Synhedrin. At first the Halachic teacher was also the popular preacher. Hillel and Shammai were such, and Shemayah and Abtalyon actually bore the title darshanim. But in course of time, as legalism grew, the functions were separated; and though there was never an absolute divorce between Halacha and Agada, certain Rabbins began to devote themselves more or less exclusively to popular exposition, and became known as "Baale Agada," or masters of Agadic interpretation. Later on, Midrashic teaching received a powerful impetus from without, and the Agadists came to the fore. While times were easy, and the people experienced no difficulty in obtaining the means of livelihood, they were content to listen to the long-drawnout disquisitions of the Halachists. But with the evil days ushered in by the third and fourth centuries, a change came over the spirit of the Jews, and the masses would no longer tolerate the "legalistic" comments of the "Pirka;" the college benches "While the perremained empty utah was easily earned," cries Joshua ben Levi, "they heard Halacha; now they will hear nothing but what speaks to them of comfort and hope." The revolt against Talmudic disputation grew apace, until the great est teacher of the times, Chiya bar Abba, found his lecture-hall deserted, while the Agadist, Rabbi Abuhu, could not accommodate all who crowded to listen to him. The latter comforted his colleagues by telling him how two merchants came to a certain town, the one with foodstuffs and the other with precious stones and pearls, and how the former was patronized by the vulgar, while only the wiser portion of the community sought the latter. But the many among the Jews would have nothing to do with the Halachic "jewels." In vain Joshua ben Levi denounced the Agadoth, saying -"He who reads them has no profit; who reflects upon them burns himself." In vain Chiya bar Abba cried out that "even if full of good things, the hands that copied them deserved to be chopped off." In vain Rabbi Seria stigmatized them as "enigmas" and "riddles." In vain it was taught that he who transcribes them has no portion in the world to come, he who expounds them is excommunicated, and he who listens to them has no advantage from them." Nothing would wean the poorer Jews from the Agadic or Midrashic discourses; and the close of the Talmudic epoch found the Halachic disputations forsaken for good and aye by all save a few orthodox admirers of hair-splitting casuistry. 66 Though the original discourses have not come down to us in their entirety for the Midrashim we possess are all more or less fragmentary, mere notes made by the leading teachers present for subsequent use and reference-enough remains to enable us to understand the preference shown up the people for the homiletic exercises of their darshanim. For the vast majority of Jews, the dialectics of the "Pirka" never had any attraction whatever. And when increasing cares of livelihood began to press upon them, when persecution began to work, and troubles came upon them, they found less and less time to devote to those ceremonial observances and minutia upon which the Rabbinical exegists laid such stress. In distress and danger, they found little to comfort them in the teaching of the Halachists, continually adding to the number of inferential precepts which were to "magnify the Law," and increase the merits of those who observed them. The Legalists would hear of no compromise. "He who breaks through the hedge of the Law," thundered the Halachist, "the serpent shall bite him," and he clinched his argument with the needful citation from Sacred Writ, giving chapter and verse. The Agadist spoke comfortably to his hearers; he bade them rely on the goodness of the Deity, and produced his text in support of what he taught. "See God's mercy," he cried, expounding the difficult verse in Exodus, xxxiii., 19-and the parable is one of the best of its kind found in the Midrash: "When Moses stood before the Almighty in Heaven, the Holy One showed him the treasures of recompense laid up for the righteous. 'Whose treasure is this?' inquired Moses, pointing to one place. 'It is for those that study the Law.' 'And this?' 'For those who live righteously.' this other?' 'For those who succor the orphan and the fatherless.' And so Moses 'And |