the arms extended in a slightly depressed direction, so that the palms are on a line with the lower part of the breast; and bandages secure the legs at the angle. This is the character of the sculptures on the crosses at Clonmacnois, and Monasterboyce. On this last mentioned structure two figures on each side hold spears or poles, the points of which touch the arm-pits of the figure.

The figure on the cross at Tuam has a mural crown on its head, its arms extended horizontally, a beard accurately curled in the Assyrian fashion, and an ornamented waistcloth. In the Nubian crucifixion placed beside it on page 166, the figure provided with a Fez headpiece, and Calmuck features, extends its arms horizontally, the feet rest on a ledge, and another ledge gives a slight degree of repose to the wearied sufferer. This plate is taken from Monsieur Rifaud's "Voyage en Egypte et en Nubie,' &c. The Frenchman mentions that he copied it from the façade of the little temple of Kalabsche. An Irish bronze relic illustrating Henry O'Brien's work and the "Dublin Penny Journal" is represented on page 167, with a mural crown again, the ribs rather too strongly marked, an ornamented skirt hanging round the loins, and drapery of a striped pattern enveloping the thighs. The legs are secured by bands as in the other examples. The airy and triumphant figure of Krishna is set beside it, with his feathered crown, his strings of pearls, his ornamented scarf, and his graceful action, one arm slightly raised and the other depressed, holding the snake at two distant points, and trampling on its neck with his bare feet, whose ancles are girt with a chaplet of pearls. There is a striped piece of drapery depending from the loins, and clothing the thighs, precisely as in the Irish bronze figure, but there is an indescribable air of lightness and

grace around the figure, contrasting very strongly with the angularity of the Irish image. We extract Mr. Keane's conclusions, drawn from these and similar facts:

"The veneration entertained for the cross in the most remote ages of the world's history, the numerous figures on the cross found in every variety of form on ancient Heathen Sculptures, all over the world, and the tradition among the Buddhists of the God Thot having been crucified, all confirm the fact of this primeval prophecy of the Crucifixion."

After referring to the downward sloping position of the arms, and the tying of the legs at the ancles, he mentions other figures similarly distinguished at Duleek, Durrow, Tarmon-Fechen, Castle Dermot, &c., and a cord passing round the breast and under the arms of one of the figures at Monasterboyce, so that the arms are allowed to hang. He then proceeds

"Such a mode of representing the Crucifixion never could have occurred to the Missionaries and

early Irish Christian

Bishops, who are universally allowed to have made the Scriptures their chief study, and who consequently could not have been unacquainted with the distinctive particulars of that solemn event."

fact by the writer: Strong instances are given of this

The

"The most ancient relics of unmistakably Christian times represent the Saviour as suspended by the arms, and fastened to the cross with nails. I shall notice three wellknown Christian relics, upon which the Crucifixion scene is so represented. first is a brazen box supposed to have been used for preserving a portion of the Holy Scriptures. It is called Meeshac (Maiseach, beautiful, qu.) by Sir William Betham, and bears on it the date CCCCCIII. The other is the case the Caah (Cathach,+ warlike), in which St. Columb's box of the same style as the former, but is copy of the Psalms was preserved. It is a probably more modern. The third is called St. Dimma's Box.

called

"These ancient Irish relics, richly embossed, represent the Crucifixion scene according to the Scriptural account, while

VOL. LXXI.-NO. CCCCXXI.

Hence the name.

8

upon every stone cross in Ireland on which the design appears, it is represented with ankle cords, and without suspension from the hands. This would seem to prove that

the device on the stone crosses was not grounded on the Scripture narrative, and therefore must have had its origin in that traditional prophecy of a crucifixion frequently mentioned elsewhere."

Another distinctive peculiarity in the Irish stone crosses is

"The absence in every instance of the two thieves crucified with Our Lord. This cannot be accounted for by want of space to introduce them, as there is in every case a number of heterogeneous figures introduced, entirely out of character with the scene recorded in the Bible. Besides a variety of human figures, the sculptors have depicted dogs and monsters of various forms. In one case a man is represented as standing on his head (cross, street of Kells) in the space which might have been appropriated to one of the two thieves."

From the inferiority of execution of the heads on these crosses, compared with other parts, Mr. Keane suspects some indifferent Christian artists to have tried their unskilled hands at rubbing away the mural crown or other inappropriate head gear. The winged quadrupeds on these crosses, generally supposed to represent cherubim, are quoted by our author as attendants on some of the pagan deities connected with this subject. An engraving copied from Thevenot's travels is introduced, representing a winged deity seated on a rainbow, a man kneeling on one side in adoration, a round tower on the spectator's left surmounted by an ox's head, two like towers on the right, with a fire blazing on one in honour as it were of the sun depicted above it, and a row of acrobats supporting another row whose feet rest on a piece of wood supported by the shoulders of the first. Mr. Keane judges the winged figure to be Baal Berith, Lord of the Covenant (Judges viii. 33), identical with Thammuz or Adonis, and supposes the rows of figures as presenting a crucifixion scene. But nothing in the attitudes of the men who have their arms interlocked in a horizontal position, gives an idea of crucifixion or suffering in any way. Everything in the picture suggests a ritual function, and we know that tours de force were essential portions of some pagan devotional rites.

all

Having devoted as much space as was at our disposal to the examination of this interesting work, we merely add that, whether our readers are satisfied with Mr. Keane's conclusions or not, his work is a very valuable one, for all the information it affords concerning the architectural remains and finished engravings of the still of our country, and for the accurate existing specimens. They are not only accurate as to outline and detail, but most of them charming little pictures in which the light and shade are skilfully distributed, and the picturesque carefully attended to. The book is finely printed in antique type, on toned paper, and is a very worthy addition to those richly-gotout works relative to Ireland already published by the eminent Dublin firm whose names are on the title page. The information extracted from old authors known only to scholars and archeologists is immense, whether its application to the author's views, in instances be considered strikingly correct or not. In one point the author is favourably distinguished from some of his brother archæologists. Though extreme in his theory of our towers, temples, crosses, and and even the names of ourearly saints, boasting of an origin anterior to the building of Solomon's temple, his mode of asserting his opinions is singularly modest. He adduces his proofs, combines them skilfully, and leaves his readers to determine their just value and force. He does justice in every case to, and mentions with high respect the exertions of his fellow-labourers whose theory is opposed to his, while contending for the soundness of his own. The points of difference between the Christian and the Pagan archaeologists are not likely to be adjusted to the satisfaction of both parties in a day. Sound scholars are enlisted on both sides, and our early authorities preserved such silence, or spoke so vaguely on the matters in dispute, that nothing better can now be used than circumstantial arguments, derived from analogy and very indirect evidence. Meantime existing discussions have a tendency to the better preservation of our ancient relics in architure and ornament, and to keeping awake a spirit of archæological investigation.

Every partisan will produce some facts worth remembering, or point out some valuable relics hitherto undiscovered, or at least unmentioned. The grand point controverted may remain undecided, but we shall get somewhat clearer information on modes of life, social usages, and religious beliefs of ancient times in our country. The patient and enterprising alchemists did not light on the philosopher's stone or the elixir vitæ, but in their researches they made valuable discoveries in chemistry, which later

scholars, unimpeded by foregone conclusions, have employed for the advancement and enlargement of science. A similar result may be reasonably expected in favour of antiquarian knowledge. The controversy may be kept up in some instances at the expense of temper and courtesy, but the field of archæological knowledge will be enlarged, and its limits better defined.

In the present paper we have been unable to notice the so-called Norman Churches and the Round Towers.

FOR Some two years or more a novel form of war has been waged against Great Britain by an enemy wholly unlike any former foe our nation has encountered. At first this enemy was contemned. Ridicule was the lath with which he was to be slain. Fenianism was hardly more than a joke. Of the existence of a single flesh and blood Fenian sagacious persons had doubts. This enemy, however, quickly made his peculiar power to annoy known. He taxed the efforts of Viceroys in Canada and in Ireland, and engaged the attention of judges, juries, jailers, and journalists, as often baffling as being baffled. He got mysteriously out of prison. He made speeches from the dock of a character more than to counteract all the moral advantage of verdicts and sentences. He worried the police until the men resigned in disgust. He gave evidence of audacity by a daring attempt on Chester Castle, with its complement of a plan to seize the mail-boat at Holyhead and land in Ireland. He broke into insurrection and led flying columns for six weeks through frost and snow, after a will-o'-thewisp. He found victory to a certain extent even in defeat; raising international questions, which teazed the American Minister, brought sharp letters from Mr. Seward, and ultimately, in more than one instance, caused inglorious surrender of British independence. And when supposed to be destroyed, the irrepressible Fenian burst again upon the scene, rescuing his leaders at Manchester

with a defiance showing his backers to be numerous and desperate. Nay, even when justice, which had limped long, boldly put down her foot-to use an American phrase-in full resolve to crush him, the result was to develop a seeming Fenian strength which, in the form of Funeral Processions, startled the Empire and exposed the panic of the Irish Government. Further, when outraged public opinion demanded that those demonstrations should be suppressed, the Fenians yielded only to open a new campaign in the diabolical form of Gunpowder Treason and Plot, of arson and assassination! What is this Fenian Enemy? Whence has he come? What are his purposes? Of what political or social upheaving is his existence an evidence? What is the full extent of the danger he causes ; and how may he best be met?

To all these interrogatories the answers have been very various. Something of what we shall say cannot be expected to be new. Our survey, however, may have fresh and important points. Fenianism originated among the Irish in America. It certainly did not spring up first in Ireland. The Ireland of the interval 1855-60 was freer from seditious impulses than perhaps in any period of her history. The St. Patrick Brotherhood, the parent of Fenianism, started up in America so suddenly, and with so perfect an organization as to create a suspicion that the movement was deliberately plotted, and was not an ex

pression of any spontaneous popular sentiment. It was planned with the double idea of producing irritation in the relations of England with America, and of ultimately exciting sedition in Ireland and England, wherever an Irish population could be found in sufficient numbers to give hope of success. The plan was antecedent to the American civil war, and it is well to bear this in mind, as the statement has been made that the Fenianism of America is mainly a retaliation upon England for favouring the cause of the Southern Confederacy. The Fenians were an organization previous to the civil war. They had buried M'Manus in Ireland before that struggle opened. They had established the nucleus of their order in the west of the county of Cork before Bull Run. Their society was not created by that conflict, though taken advantage of for recruiting purposes, and though it did serve the Northern cause, and lay the "United States" under an obligation. It is quite an error, however, to say that the principal part of the fighting against the South was done by the Irish, the Germans and the native Americans themselves having fought with as great bravery, and sent quite as large a proportion of their numbers into the field. The heritage of hate laid up for herself in America by England-inevitably-gave the Fenian leaders an opportunity of working upon the American mind in a spirit of hostility towards Great Britain, when attention was removed from war; and this opportunity was used with an activity and skill suggesting once more very powerfully that the movement was no accidental thing, but planned somewhere secretly, by able and unscrupulous men, calculating upon humiliating and torturing England, rather than upon conquering her. Of these conspirators, whoever they were, such batches of Fenian pirates as those who crossed the ocean in the Jacknell-such Fenian madmen as attempted to lead an insurrectionary mob at Limerick Junctionsuch Fenians as "Colonel" Kelly and "Colonel" Burke were the dupes. Those fanatics have the hands to war, but others who never intend to fling a bottle of Greek fire, or light a fusee, far less to grasp a

pike, or put themselves at all in the way of Dublin detectives, were the heads to think. No one can shut his eyes to the fact that a large class glory in anything that damages the reputation or shakes the stability of Great Britain, even though their own fortunes may be involved in her prosperity; and that these feelings, in their concentration, may have found embodiment in some knot of combinators, who coolly believe that they see their way to an end, is not surely a view at all romantic or improbable.

It is extremely unlikely that persons of this character favour Democracy in the abstract. The success of their operations, and the theory of their system, depend too much on government by a few, and implicit obedience from the many, to allow them to adopt the American idea in its simplicity; but they see a tendency in Great Britain to acknowledgment of the democratic influence which cannot be resisted, and they hope, by increasing alarm as to the consequences, and operating upon those fears to gain their ends, before a democratic wave has rolled over the land which may bring them no good. Hence the hurry to put forward a large variety of claims of an extreme nature, and the urgency with which they apply the argument of American Fenian and Irish Fenian menace as a means to extort compliance. If a great deal is not accomplished in 1868, and before the Reformed Parliament assembles, they shall apprehend that their chances afterwards may be much less promising. We know that Fenianism at its start in America was fed by this influence; that its foundation-stone was laid with benedictions; that as the structure rose such a "go on and prosper" swelled its ranks and coffers; and that at this day, there, as here, the condemnations at times pronounced against it are of a description to produce an opposite idea among its adherents as to the real sentiments of many who affect to hate it. The patrons of Fenianism have another reason for active hostility to England in the circumstance that it is a cry which fills their own purses. He who wishes to have a fat benefice under the voluntary system, can only gain popularity by humour

ing the fancy, fostering the delusion, or flattering the vice, of the American public as it happens to show itself. The American Catholic Church is not less tinged with Fenian sympathies than that Church in Ireland, which has we must say, been lowered in estimation by the absence of clerical propriety evinced during the funeral processions by some of its ministers. If Fenianism have this origin and character, it may be inferred that we are not soon to get rid of the torment of it. It will be too useful in the States to be honestly discouraged. The knowledge that England is being harassed is a sweet morsel to roll under the tongue. Americans as Republicans may hate Great Britain, but the Fenianism even of America has root in a hope that there may be substituted in Ireland first, and eventually in Great Britain, one form of national faith for another has its root in an ambition to cancel the Reformation, and bring back in these lands the domination thrown off at the Revolution. This is confessed almost in words to be the aim underlying many open and sanguine manifestations in these countries, in connection with which there is always a looking beyond the ocean to the avenging Ireland of the west, before which Protestant England is, of course, to succumb.

At the same time, it is only too plain that it is not the Irish Fenian in America that England has more reason to fear, but the American Democracy, to whom Fenianism is useful as a party instrument. The Fenian organization, now that we have got past the sharp crisis of the landing amongst us of the "Captains" -Fenian tramps thrown out of work after the civil war-would be troublesome, but could not become formidable-would commit isolated outrages, but could cause no serious insurrectionary movement or international complication, if it were only Irish sedition in America, hallowed by narrow ecclesiastical sanctions. American partisans, however, find a use for it, and American Ministers of State more than wink at it, and of the whole American people there is but a small party, and these men that eschew politics, who do not read with satisfaction the rhodomontade of New York Celtic spouters,

paid per speech by the showmen, and when a good point seems made against Great Britain do not applaud it. The Americans ought to get full credit for the moral influences which have sway among them. We do not forget that the police authorities of New York sided with the cause of authority in England in the matter of the Manchester executions. But the ravenous native pride takes such forms, as the speech, for example, of Mr. Henry Ward Beecher some few days ago in New York; and his language points to an anomaly on which we have somewhat to say.

"Politically," declared Mr. Beecher, they (the Americans) were now by their position, by their territory, and by the character of their population, almost wholly independent of Europe. America exerted far more influence on Europe than she received from it. America is now the moral instructor of all European peoples. We are, so to speak, the mischief-maker of the whole world. So long as we prosper we are a standing threat against thrones everywhere. Thirty millions of concrete statements of personal liberty are unanswerable. There is no nation on the globe, this side of India, that does not feel the moral influence of the American Government. The Reform Bill in England is among the first fruits of the influence of the American Government over Europe. One victory in behalf of free government has already been achieved by another victory for human rights in England. Whatever may be the use made of suffrage in England-and it will probably be in support of the established order of things-the inevitable result will be the destruction of some of the characteristic laws and social institutions of that country."

There are few who will dispute Mr. Beecher's dictum that America is become the "mischief-maker" of the world, or refuse to himself the representative character in that respect which he has done much to earn. But what is extraordinary is the circumstance that in the general struggle that is being waged in these countries by free men, sustaining free institutions, the parent of American free institutions, against a religio-political system, and a conspiracy, in deadly opposition to freedom, we should fail