original situations, represent goddesses, one of whom is armed with shield and spear, who tread upon the fallen and deal death on every side. Gods are fighting with sword and shield; a powerful serpent-man has curled himself round one of them and holds his arm with the shield fast with his teeth, the only case in which a god seems to have the worst of it for a time. Then appears a mighty hero of whom not much is preserved, armed with a club, which he seems to be brandishing with both arms. If those who find traces of the lion's skin on his head are right, this hero must be Herakles, and, in fact, his being placed near the two principal divinities of the battle, Athena and Zeus, would be doubly justified, principally because an old oracle connects him with the victory of the Gigantomachia; and, secondly, because he was considered to be the father of the Pergamene hero Telephos, and consequently the ancestor of the Pergamenian princes. Indeed, if one weighs this question properly, and remembers how near the hero stands to Zeus and Athena in other Gigantomachias, we might ask if we should not look for him rather on the east side. To the north belong a fiery pair of horses and a chariot. Did chariots and horses form the centre of every side of the altar, as in some beautiful vase paintings of perhaps 150 years before? There also, according to the fragments, belongs a group which may have reference to the gods of war and vengeance: a winged goddess (Nemesis?), who has followed a fleeing giant with hasty steps, drags him backwards by the head, and her raised right hand strikes a spear down to his breast; a single combat between two armed men follows, the giant in armour, the god in short light garments, his arm lifted high to strike; shield clashes on shield, a youthful form sinks mortally wounded between them in lines of striking beauty and pain. A goddess with long draperies, the back of her beautiful head veiled, hurries forward, and endeavours to tear the protecting shield away from her fallen foe, while her right hand is about to throw a vase surrounded with a serpent at him. Then an almost prostrate divinity stabs his sword into the breast of a bull-necked colossus. Finally, the two rather inferior groups seem to belong to the north side: a combat between a goddess and a serpent-giant, and the goddess of similar style who lifts her spear against a serpent man, while a powerful lion rushes on an enemy in human form. It is not only for the lion's sake that I place this group near the north-west corner, and on the other side of it, the west side, the goddess who rides to battle on a mighty lion over fallen foes. As if she had just had a shot, she is taking a fresh arrow out of the quiver, and during this pause a goddess who has hurried before her keeps off another adversary who is pressing towards her.* The eagle carrying the thunderbolt behind the goddess mounted on a lion seems to indicate a movement in another direction, and may perhaps have prepared the turning round the corner. On this west side we may also place the noble chariot and pair of Helios, which a young giant with raised fell is trying to frighten; before the god of the sun rode Eos (compare her girdle with that of the lion-riding figure); on the same side must be her sister Selene, whom perhaps some do right in recognizing in a goddess riding sidewards, whose back and profile only is visible. I will not dilate any more on what, under the most favourable circumstances, could only be probabilities or suppositions, and these hints will suffice to give at least an idea of the possible development of this series of sculptures. At present we cannot realize the abundance of artistic, mythological, historical, and technical points of view which it may still have to offer us. Really prophetic were Brunn's words, although not intended to have quite the same meaning, when he said that the Pergamene school of art would not fail to occupy us in future and in many different ways. The remains of the Gigantomachia are so abundant and rich in every way that at present we have not a thought left for the other discoveries, although at any other time they would prove most attractive. The smaller relievos (1.58 metres high), treat of the Telephos legend and probably of a part of the fabulous primitive history of Pergamon; they seem to have been placed inside the porticoes of the altar building. Here, if anywhere, we have the models for the good Roman relievos; for instance, for the more ancient arches of triumph. But for the present I will only hint at them as a part of the many other treasures mentioned in the beginning. The works have recommenced; † the plan is to resuscitate, as it were, the whole town as we succeeded in doing with an ancient festive place in Olympia. Let no one envy us this success; compared with other European nations, whose civilization in this respect began earlier, we have much to do. May they not only rejoice in *The fluttering garment waving in arches over her head reminds one of a great number of similar figures on Roman sarcophagi. It is remarkable how different is the manner of execution of her dress from that of the rider. Since the above lines were written the excavations have been brought to an end (summer, 1881). I hope there will be found an opportunity of laying the new results also before the English reader. our progress, but try to equal, nay, to surpass us in the same sphere of action! We shall welcome that also as a precious fruit of our undertaking, as it cannot fail to awaken a sense of the ideal in the dullest minds and to keep it alive in others. GUSTAV HIRSCHFELD. ART. VII.-The Union with England of Scotland and Ireland. THE immediate effect of the Irish Land Act, 1881, is as exciting as was the agitation which preceded the enactment of the statute. So remarkable is the measure, so clamant was its necessity, so startling, powerful, and precise are its operations, that social and party issues refuse to find their natural rest in the legislation which has received the imprimatur of Parliament and the Crown; and Ireland still remains the question of the day. At this hour force and remedy are both being attempted on an extraordinary scale, and behind both Coercion and Land Acts there stands the vaster problem of the separation of Ireland from Great Britain. It may be safely said that at no time was it more needful for the inhabitants of the three kingdoms to study the situation; as safely may it be added that no more powerful light is thrown upon it than that which is derived from the history of Scotland. That savage code of morals which makes of revenge a virtue, even of the murderer a hero, appears at the first glance to be the one whose hold is still the strongest on the hearts and minds of the Irish people. The unhappy island remains, to all appearance, an unreclaimed waste of alternate anarchy and coercion-a horrible arena of the fiercest human passions. It is not wonderful that the eyes of Englishmen are still turned-curiously, not without sympathy, not without scorn-to the standing mockery of English statesmanship, the undoubted breach in the unity of the United Kingdom. Yet, on the whole, scorn is yielding to sympathy, the sense of alienation is giving place to the desire for co-operation under conditions of fair play; and the first real likelihood of a happy change in the relations of Great Britain and Ireland, which for centuries have grappled with each other, seems at last to have been achieved; namely, a change of feeling and resolve in that one of the two which, for evil or for good, has, as of old, the power. What, then, has Scotland to say to this question? Can it instruct Englishmen ? can it teach Irishmen? can it throw light upon the dark near future of the great problem upon which the eyes of the world are turned? Let us see. The Irish kingdom, in its existence as a separate nationality, its power in war, or its influence over the destinies of England, was at no time more than a shadow, compared with the ancient kingdom of Scotland. Much more than Scotland, Ireland was the prey of intestine feuds; much less than Scotland, could Ireland heal those feuds by the miraculous cure of common cause against the English foe. In a substantial form subsisting for centuries, Scotland was the ally of the continental enemies of her southern neighbour; and the ventures of English monarchs abroad were weakened by the provision, often too small, which had to be made to ward off a descent from the north. Shakespeare puts the thought thus into the mouth of King Henry V.— We must not only arm to invade the French, And, enforcing his precautions by a reference to history, the king is made to say- We fear the main intendment of the Scot, Hath shook and trembled at the ill neighbourhood. In To Ireland language of this kind would have been grossly inapplicable. Far from being a strong, separate, watchful, and united power, Ireland had from the twelfth century been dominated and overawed by adventurous Englishmen. form England and Ireland were one, when in form and substance England and Scotland were at mortal war. Yet, as we turn the kaleidoscope, and look at the kingdoms of to-day, England and Scotland are bound together so closely that their disunion would be the scheme or the dream of a madman; England and Ireland are, it would almost seem, as far from each other as they have ever been. The sentiment that Scotland had given a line of kings to England, and that the two nations became accordingly wondrously welded together, does not much impress one's mind. James the First was hardly at ease upon the English throne ere he began to scowl upon his upbringing, and tread roughly upon the religious sympathies of his own nation; and those who came after him in that line did little credit to their Scottish extraction. One thing, however, they did do they sowed Scotland with blood; they endeared Presbyterianism to the hearts of the Scottish people, making England appear in the hated guise of a persecuting, prelatic power. I incline to the belief that, up to the Revolution of 1688, England was less closely united to Scotland by the symbol of the union of the crowns, than to Ireland by the power of the sword. If a question were asked as to the time beyond which it would not be absolutely incumbent on the student of the existing contrast between the two countries to go, one might safely select in or about the year 1700. During the latter half of the seventeenth century, both had been enveloped in the cruel flames of civil war; as this latter half was about to begin, both had felt the iron heel of Cromwell, and Drogheda had found its far off parallel at Dunbar. Of the two, Scotland was the fiercer and the less subdued. As the later Stuarts waved the sword of Episcopacy over Presbyterian and Catholic alike, they found the sterner task to be to make Scotland conform. The insidious trick had already been played of planting in Ireland an alien church; the attempt now made in Scotland-gloomily prefaced by the fate of Guthrie and Argyll, and terrible in the persecutions of the west and south, the infamy of the High Commission, and all the horrors of the killing time-was met by the fury of widespread revolt, the execration of Claverhouse, the murder of Sharpe, the frenzied rejection of the Test, and the as frenzied love of the Covenant. Yet, most strange to say, when English monarchs had declared for Romanism, sympathy with them, now thoroughly aroused in Ireland, was not wanting in the rebellious northern kingdom-from the moment at least when William touched the English shore. William had not signed the Covenant, and the Covenanters became gloomy and more; and the motley enmity to the reigning house gathered force in Scotland, at the very moment when the Irish Catholics were headed by the feeble monarch who had just been hustled from the throne. It was but a year before the Boyne that the forces of William had been vanquished at Killiecrankie, and a mortal wound had been given to Jacobitism by a bullet in |