only one of the countless German tales which repeat this ancient legend; now it is a knight drawn by fairy hands, now a saint who is borne by miraculous powers up the Rhine until his body finds a proper resting place.51

It is a strange fact too that in the North even burials—not burnings only-took place in a ship; for the coffin was made in the form of one.52 Therefore the idea of the voyage of the soul must be counted more primitive than the separation of the two modes of interment.

In this brief glance over the beliefs of Heathen Europe we have been able to gather from almost every land traces of a great and ancient myth concerning the future of the soul after death. So widespread is it, and so ancient, that we judge it to be Indo-European, that is to say, to have been born. in the early cradle of the European races. The picture has, it is true, much faded from its original hues. Our task has been like that of tracing the design upon some long-neglected fresco. Here and there the colours may retain a part of their old brightness: more often they have left behind them nothing but faint lines, and we are enabled to get a notion of the original only by a careful, and even a tedious examination, by slowly piecing together a

In Beowulf (89, &c.), Scyld is confused with Scéf. Ethelw. III, 3, and William of Malmesbury tell the story of the right person. For stories resembling that of Lohengrin, see Grimm "Deutsche Sagen," pp. 256, 276. St. Martin and St. Emmeranus are among those whose bodies were miraculously conveyed by water. Panzer "Bayarische Sagen u Bräuche," I, 222. Simrock "Handb. der D. Myth.," p. 285. Sigmund takes the body of Sinfiotli to the sea-shore and sets it afloat. Sæm. 170.

52 Grimm "Deut. Myth.," II, 693, 4th Ed. "Jarlm. saga," c. 45.

multitude of disjointed fragments. As time passes on and middle-age thought, with its last relics of heathenism, fades before the advance of the new learning, this belief of the Earthly Paradise fades with it. Like the elves and fairies fleeing "from the presence of the sun," it flies round the globe to escape out of the way of inquiry and exact investigation. When the western lands of Europe are known too well, it crosses the Atlantic and for a while finds a home in the new world. At last it dies altogether out of the region of belief, and rises again in the world of fiction, as a New Atlantis, an Utopia. But Utopia is, alas, Ou-topos, the land of No-where.

C. F. KEARY.

THE RUBENS CENTENARY AND THE

ANTWERP ART CONGRESS.

BY C. H. E. CARMICHAEL, M.A.

(Read Jan. 8, 1879.)

a

WHEN the City of Antwerp resolved, for the second time within the same century, to celebrate Festival in honour of her renowned citizen, Peter Paul Rubens, she threw herself into the work of rejoicing with an ardour that few great mercantile centres would display for such an object, and with a good taste that still fewer could rival.

The great secret of the success of the Rubens Festival and Art Congress of 1877 seems to me to have been that the Festival was everybody's Festival, and that all ranks of Antwerp Society, and even both the great parties which so sharply divide Belgian politics and Belgian society, united in showing their common respect for the memory of Rubens.

How strong a hold that memory has on the Belgian mind, nothing could more strikingly testify than this universality of celebration, which was so characteristic of the Centenary of 1877. That it should have been determined to make an Art Congress one of the leading features of the Festival will be accepted as most suitable to the occasion.

Its success was greatly due to the same widely diffused energy of which I have already spoken. Taken up heartily by the highest office-bearers in the municipality, under the honorary presidency of the overworked, but ever-courteous Burgomaster of Antwerp, M. Léopold de Wael, and the able chairmanship of the President of the Cercle Artistique, M. Edouard Pecher, the Antwerp Art Congress played a conspicuous part in the more serious features of the Rubens Centenary. Of the Belgian members it may be sufficient to say that some of the most distinguished had held and are now holding high place in the Councils of the Nation. M. De Wael, returned to the Chambers yet again as Deputy for Antwerp at the last elections, is one of the VicePresidents of the new Chamber, and M. RolinJacquemyns, one of the Honorary Presidents of the Legislative Section, was at the same period returned for Ghent, and is holding the important Portfolio of the Interior, in the present Belgian Administration.

The effective President of the Legislative Section, M. Louis Hymans, of Brussels, had himself been a Member of the House of Representatives, and had been chosen by the House to report to it on the last attempt at Art Copyright Legislation, which had engaged the attention of the Chambers. As an

author, M. Hymans is held in high esteem for his valuable History of the Belgian Parliament. Several, both of the native and foreign members of the Antwerp Art Congress, have since taken prominent positions in other International gatherings. M. Dognée, of Liège, was one of the most active members of the Legislative Section of the recent

International Literary Congress in Paris, of which I hope to give some account to this Society on another occasion, and he was at the same time one of the Commissioners for Belgium at the Paris Exhibition. M. Meissonnier, of the Institute, who naturally took a leading part in our discussions at Antwerp, has since presided over an International Art Copyright Congress in Paris. Others, among whom I may name Belgian, Swedish, German, and English members, the thoughtful and original Antwerp artist, Charles Verlat; the accomplished representative of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at Stockholm, Count Von Rosen; the genial KunstDirektor Steffeck of Berlin; and one of our own familiar friends of Burlington House, the Academician Calderon, have been decorated by the French Government since the close of the International Exhibition. I have been thus particular in giving some account of the composition of the Antwerp Art Congress, in order that those of us who did not follow its proceedings at the time may form their judgment as to the general calibre of its members. And as I cannot attempt to carry you with me through all the manifold details of the discussions of even one Section, but must content myself with dwelling upon some of the more widely interesting general features of the Congress and Festival, I have been desirous that you should know thus much at least of who we were, before I proceeded to say something about what we did. If I commence by saying that we discussed Rubens from pretty nearly every possible point of view, and that we tried to get some light thrown upon every kind of influence