17 JULY 1897, Page 25

Sculptured Tombs of Hellas. By Percy Gardner, Litt.D. (Mac- millan

and Co.)—It is quite impossible with such appliances as we have at our command to do justice to this beautiful volume. We can acknowledge in general terms the great learning which Dr. Gardner has brought to bear upon his subject, and the sympathetic spirit, not always found in so happy a conjunction, with which this learning is informed. But the illustrations, ac abundant, so well choeen, and so admirably executed, are a great part of the work. It is the felicitous adaptation of the text to them, the appropriateness with which the details of the art are made to illuminate the life of the people to which it belonged, that constitute the chief beauty and interest of the volume. The Attic monuments are, of course, artistically the finest ; but we are inclined to think that some of the Spartan examples are even more interesting. The Spartan temper is somewhat lightly esteemed among us, but there was a seriousness in their view of life which amply deserves the recognition that Dr Gardner gives it. Plates VIII. (the mourning slave), X. (Tynnias, son of Tynon, a man of peace, but one " who would sit undisgracod among the seated gods of the frieze of the Parthenon"), XI. (Ariatomantes, a warrior in the act of charging, a very noble figure indeed), and XIII. (a family group) may be mentioned. Dr. Gardner con- trasts with perfect justice the tasteless, and even hideous, monu- ments which crowd our cemeteries with the propriety, delicacy, and beauty that are to be seen in the Attic graveyards. He would even prefer the latter, it would seem, to the recumbent figures with which the modern revival of medireval art is filling our cathedrals. The Georgian monuments, with their bewigged gentlemen reclining on one elbow, are, after all, snore like the Attic examples. The Attic sculptors represented their subjects "in their habit as they lived." Dr. Gardner adds an interesting account of the Mausoleum.