passing the earth from the rising to the setting, and from the setting to the rising sun, are meeting again amidst the solitudes of that virgin ocean. And new combinations of mankind are there preparing, to play the leading parts in the last act of the long drama of human life. The New World commenced the fusion of the varied nations of the Old, but it is on the shores, or in the bosom, of the Pacific that that fusion is to be consummated. There, the diverse elements of the population of Eastern America are gathered to a focus in California, and blend with those of China and the intervening isles. Auriferous Australia will ere long be the scene of an analogous combination; and at this moment, in New Zealand, a fusion is in progress between the most powerful of the Caucasian races and the most elevated of the Australasian. Gold is now the great lode-star of the nations, and is destined to break up the seclusion of the hermit races of India and China. It was gold abroad and distress at home that first covered the Atlantic with ships and its western shores with a new population,— and the same agencies of Providence are doing a like service for the Pacific. But the progress of the human race, though slow and liable to many fluctuations, is, on the whole, ever onwards and instead of the labour-market of the new empires of Oceanica being supplied, like that of Eastern America, by means of violence, and with the captive savages of Negroland, it will be voluntarily occupied, and ere long flooded,—by the free and industrious outpourings of China.

AN IDEAL ART-CONGRESS

IN the Palace of the Fine Arts at Paris-in the prize-roomthere is a noble painting by Paul Delaroche, representing an ideal congress of the great masters in Art from the age of Pericles to that of Louis XIV. In subject it is as interesting as in execution it is beautiful. The grouping of the figures is admirable. There, as is proper in Painting, Symmetry is subordinated to Life and Expression. The attitude of each artist is eminently life-like; there is no appearance of vacancy about them, each seeming more or less engaged with his neighbours; the groups blend softly into one another; and throughout the whole there runs a symmetry, unnoticed by any but the well-trained eye, but which is felt by all in the perfect order which pervades the composition. As if to balance and relieve the animated and seemingly lawless diversity of arrangement in the multitude of figures on either side, the central group is thoroughly symmetrical,—an arrangement, moreover, admirably appropriate to the Classic and Ideal figures which it is designed to represent. In the centre of that central group, sit aloft in a row-grave, silent, and majestic-the three great masters of Grecian art,- Apelles the painter, Phidias the sculptor, and Ictinus, the architect of the peerless Parthenon. On the broad steps which lead down from their daïs or tribunal, stand four ideal female figures: on the right, the Muses of Greek and Gothic art, and on the left those of Roman art and

the Renaissance. The Gothic Muse, with her long fair hair and tenderly-green mantle, is as beautiful as even Mr Ruskin. could desire, and is said to be a portrait of the artist's wife, the beautiful daughter of Horace Vernet; while her vis-à-vis of the Renaissance—with her brilliant draperies and half-naked abandon of costume, happily represents the mingled beauties and excess of modern Art. Beautiful, bold, half-undraped, "robes loosely flowing, hair as free," with jewelled bracelets on her full rounded arms, and with a sort of luxurious grandeur in the pose and physiognomy, she well symbolises that style of art which Bramante, Michael Angelo, Paul Veronese, and Rubens carried out with such a prodigality of talent, and such a splendid license. In the front and centre of this group is a half-kneeling female figure, youthful and Oriental in her cast of beauty, the genius of Art; with wreaths and garlands beside her, which she is about to bestow upon the most worthy. The whole of this group, as we have said, is highly symmetrical,-forming very nearly a living arch, of which the line formed by the three Greek figures is the base, the four ideal figures the sides, and the kneeling Genius the connecting keystone.

To the right and left of this central group-which is half separated from the rest by the limits of a semicircular recess― spread (nearly eighty in number) the leading artists in Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, who flourished from the beginning of the thirteenth to the close of the seventeenth century. Next to Phidias-that is to say, immediately to the right of the central group-are the sculptors; next to Ictinus, or immediately to the left of the central group, are the Architects. The Painters (who are as numerous as both the other classes united) are divided into two groups, forming the wings of the picture, a most judicious arrangement in all respects; and not least so because, in a pictorial point of view, the figures of the great painters give a strength to the wings of the composition which the more humble and less known figures of the

sculptors and architects (who are judiciously placed in an intermediate and subordinate place) could never have imparted. On the extreme left are the great Colourists,-prominent among whom are Titian, Rubens, and Rembrandt; on the extreme right, those who excelled in purity of design and grandeur of thought,-grouped around Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michael Angelo. There they appear, those old masters in the Arts, the sculptors and architects comparatively sombre, or even poor in their dress; while the painters are conspicuous, as was their wont, for the splendour and rich colouring of their attire. There sits Rubens,-betraying, by attitude and costume, his double importance as painter and ambassador. There stands Titian,-erect, and portly in his red velvet mantle, discoursing upon the secrets of his art. There, too, is Rembrandt, with a muddiness of colouring about him aptly expressive of his style of painting. Away to the right appears the beautiful face and figure of Raphael, advancing in his delicately-blue silk mantle, lined with white,-a being as fit to excite the emotion of love as he was capable himself of experiencing it. There, also, robed in his furred cloak, reclines the noble old man Leonardo, a proficient alike in science, poetry, and art; while at once painter, sculptor, and architect--the stern old Michael Angelo sits solitary in the midst of that multitude of his brethren, disdainfully absorbed in his own thoughts.

The prize-room is semicircular (hence its name, l'Hémicycle). On public occasions, the Professors occupy the straight end, or diameter, of this room; and the pupils are seated fronting them on concentric semicircular benches, rising gently one above another. Above the last of these tiers, rises the expanse of the wall, covered by this magnificent painting,—its central group being, of course, immediately opposite the Professors, and the wings of the picture curving forward towards them along the semicircular sides of the room. The idea of the painting, therefore, is,-that the distribution of prizes to the Art-students should take place, as it were, in presence

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of a Congress of the great masters of past ages; and that, as if in token of their approval, the kneeling Genius of Art should appear as if throwing her wreaths to the successful competitors. A fine idea, certainly, and admirably executed. The space covered by the painting measures not less than fifty feet in length, by about fifteen feet in height. The figures in front are colossal; those farther removed are life-size. The whole is lighted up by a broad daylight from above; and the lights and shades in the picture are made to correspond with this arrangement of the natural light. All the figures in the composition are still; the animation is entirely in the expression and attitude, which gives to the multitude of figures "a sort of Elysian repose, befitting an assemblage of beings who belong no more to this noisy changeable world, but to one all peaceful, all divine."

On contemplating this Ideal Congress of Artists, and beholding such vast diversity among them-as to aspect, country, station, temperament, and time,-some rich, some poor-some from the Court and some from the cloister,—a galaxy of Christian artists arrayed around a central constellation from the Pagan ages of Greece, the questions naturally suggest themselves: What is the exciting cause of national genius in the Fine Arts? Why is one age barren of the beautiful, and another redundant? And why do the antipodal eras of Science and of Poetry keep revolving round one another, each coming in sight by turn,-like those diverse-coloured twin stars first seen by Herschel, which now loom purple upon the star-gazer, and now green?

In attempting to solve the problem thus suggested, it must be borne in mind-if we would not overstep the modesty of truth that Genius, like all the other manifestations of Human Nature, is eccentric in its development. Sometimes its stars come in clusters, thick and bright as the Milky Way, in which cases the primal source of the inspiration may probably be detected. Genius is then epidemic, and