have the daughter of the illustrious Sir Thomas More, and the famous Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery (whom her tutor might well have saluted by the epithet "eruditissima," which Elizabeth's tutor Ascham had applied to Queen Katherine Parr), she who defied Cromwell himself; and-" the subject of all verse"-Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, to whom her brother inscribed his "Arcadia."

The heroines of history are, indeed, well represented, for, besides Margaret Roper (No. 78, erroneously entitled Queen Katherine of Aragon), we have (No. 288) Alice, Countess of Derby, the "Amaryllis" of Spenser; Lady Arabella Stuart, the fair and unhappy victim of the cruelty of Elizabeth and James I.; Charlotte de la Tremouille, another Countess of Derby, the noble and heroic lady who had the honour of being the last person to submit to the parliament (her portrait, No. 554, is a charming one, and all the more interesting from its connexion with the ancestry of the noble earl to whom we owe the Exhibition); Anne, Countess of Morton, who, in the disguise of a French servant, took the youngest daughter of Charles I., afterwards "La Belle Henriette," in safety to Paris, and near to her, that celebrated princess herself (No. 582); the courageous sister of Colonel Lane, who aided the escape of Charles to Bristol; Lady Dorothy Sidney, the "Saccharissa" of Waller's poem; the noble Lettice Fitzgerald; Blanche, Lady Arundell of Wardour, who defended her husband's castle, and Rachel Lady Russell.

Of the famous men who shed a lustre on the reign of Elizabeth, many are represented in this collection; and certainly

-those who fought, and spoke, and sung,

were in no period of our history more prominent and famous than in that memorable reign. England never had wiser councillors, greater poets, more daring soldiers and sailors, more enterprising discoverers, more princely merchants. The collection is enriched by portraits of the great Burleigh, of Cecil, and of Sidney; of Raleigh, and Drake, and Frobisher; of Ben Jonson, and Shakspeare, and Spenser; of Sutton, the worthy founder of the Charterhouse; and the collegiate Gresham, builder of the Royal Exchange. Chivalry and accomplishments in arts and arms could have no better representative than Raleigh, of whom the Marquis of Bath sends the fine full-length portrait, No. 750, and Sidney (well represented in the Earl of Warwick's beautiful half-length, No. 274)— Sidney, the well-graced and gifted, who stands apart even amongst the many noble figures of the reign.

A remarkable series of portraits of great churchmen illustrate the history of their times. The portraits of William of Wykeham and Archbishop Chicheley (the latter a copy from the original at Lambeth Palace) were probably composed from monumental effigies; but one cannot see them together without thinking how the prelate-architect found the youthful Chicheley in a field tending his father's flock, nor without calling before the mind the calm figure of the primate founding amidst the civil tumult of the fifteenth century those noble institutions of charity and learning, which have made his name almost as immortal as that of his illustrious patron. Apocryphal as the representations may be, a host of memories are called up by the portraits of Arundel, the

warlike archbishop who placed Henry Bolingbroke upon the throne, and condemned Richard to his dungeon in Pomfret; of Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, founder of the Free Grammar School of Manchester; of Alcock, Bishop of Ely, chancellor to Henry VII., who founded Jesus College, Cambridge; of Archbishop Warham, the friend of Erasmus; and, as already mentioned, the inflexible Bishop Fisher, who so firmly denied Henry VIII.'s assumed headship of the Church. The Reformation prelates, too, are well represented; and here the very opposites in Church polemics meet. We have already mentioned the portraits of Cranmer and Latimer, of Wolsey, Pole, and Gardiner : besides these, we have the gentle Bishop Jewell, the primates Whitgift, and Grindal, and Parker; here, too, is Knox, the insolent and sacrilegious apostle of the Scottish Reformation. Then come Andrews, Bishop of Winchester; and Archbishop Laud, the illustrious victim of the Puritans; and Williams, that loyal Welshman, Lord Keeper and Archbishop of York, who fortified Conway for King Charles; Bishop Juxon, the royal martyr's pious and faithful friend; the learned Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh; the good Jeremy Taylor; the munificent Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury; and the loyal John Cosin, Bishop of Durham on the Restoration.

The painter's name appears to be known of only three hundred and forty out of the thousand and thirty portraits described in the catalogue; sixty works are ascribed to Holbein, seventy-eight to Cornelius Jansen, fifty-one to Vandyke, and thirty-one to Sir Peter Lely. The other artists of whose works we have specimens are: Mabuse (three), Mytens (one), Janet (five), More (twelve), Zucchero (fourteen), Pourbus (one), Marc Garrard (eleven), Lucas de Heere (eight), Pierino del Vaga (one), Hilliard (four), Isaac Oliver (two), Patoun (one), Jordano (one), Burbage (one), his own (or two, if he really painted the "Chandos Shakspeare), Faithorne (one), Van Somer (fourteen), Sir Nicolas Bacon (one), Rembrandt (one), Gerard Honthorst (five), George Jamesone (four), Breughel (one), Henry Stone (three), Rubens (three), Daniel Mytens (six), Walker (ten), Dobson (nine), Leigh (one), Mireveldt (four), Jan Steen (one), Henry Cooke (one), Mary Beale (five), Cuyp (one), John Taylor (two), Hanneman (two), Gasker (two), Wissing (three), Riley (two), Carlo Maratti (two), and single specimens of the works of Bower, Laniere, Honthorst, Cleyn, Roussel, Sadler, Van der Helt, Cooper, Switz, Richardson, Mignard, Balthasar Gerbier, Millar, Michael Wright, John Greenhill, Vandevelde, Netscher, Medina, Huysman, Flatman, Snelling, Tilson, and Kneller. Some of these are not named by Walpole. It will be seen, therefore, that some of the portraits are assigned to artists of little celebrity, and that the artists are unknown who painted between six and seven hundred of the portraits exhibited! As to a large number of these, neither the character of the person represented nor any merit in the portrait invite inquiry; but there are many portraits as well of eminent persons, as portraits of artistic merit, which afford interesting subjects for comparative study, with a view to the identification of their authorship. Many of the portraits attributed to Holbein are obviously not his work at all; and most of the Elizabethan series assigned by

*

* Who, for instance, painted the portrait (No. 336) of "Edmund Spenser,” and the portrait (No. 660) of "Edmund Waller," the court poet of the Stuarts?

their owners to Zucchero, are the work of other painters whose very names are unknown.* The Marquis of Salisbury's portrait of the Queen herself is believed, however, to have been really painted by Zucchero; and the Hampton Court portrait of "Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots" (321), the painter of which is not mentioned in the catalogue, is no doubt Janet. Lord Taunton's portrait of that unhappy queen, which is assigned to Lucas Cornelli, can hardly have been painted by the artist of that name, who painted pictures by the square yard for Henry VIII., and had afterwards to turn cook. To him is ascribed in the catalogue the portrait gravely called "John of Gaunt," which may, however, have been made up by Cornelli from the monument in old St. Paul's Cathedral, two centuries after his time. In like manner, the portrait of the famous Archbishop Arundel, the friend of Bolingbroke, was probably designed in the time of Henry VIII. from his monumental effigy. The portrait called "Richard Nevill, Earl of Warwick" (the "king-maker"), belongs to the beginning of the seventeenth century, and is absurdly misappropriated. But it is not the object of the present article to pursue this branch of the subject.

It is more agreeable to speak of such authentic works as Holbein's portrait of "Henry VIII. and his Family" (170), the only original representation of these royal personages; his immortal delineation of "Sir Thomas More;" his "Sir Henry Guildford," a very fine specimen, formerly at Hampton Court, lent by her Majesty; Vandyke's portraits of "King Charles I." and "Queen Henrietta Maria," and of many celebrities of the time-the portraits of "Strafford" (624), and Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, may be particularly mentioned;-works which are among the great ornaments of the exhibition. If (as Mr. Samuel Redgrave, in his preface to the catalogue, remarks) the works of our native painters occupy little space in this year's collection of national portraits, which ends with the reign of James II., they will fill a conspicuous place in the exhibition designed for next year. Meantime, we are grateful to Lord Derby for, and congratulate the public upon, the opportunity of now viewing such a collection of the celebrated characters of our history in ages of the deepest interest for all time, assembled at South Kensington from all parts of England, as at the spell of a potent magician, to

Come like shadows-so depart!

W. S. G.

Of the portraits erroneously attributed to Holbein we have a striking example in No. 54, which is obviously a portrait of Charles V., together with Ferdinand of Aragon, but is described as a portrait of Henry VII., and attributed to Holbein.

This view is confirmed by Mr. Planche's letter in The Builder, where some interesting criticisms on the portraits in the Plantagenet reigns will be found.

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

THEODORUS II., EMPEROR OF ABYSSINIA.

THE recent prolonged detention of a British consul and his companions by Theodorus II., Emperor of Abyssinia, for supposed connivance with the intrigues of the Mussulmans of Egypt against the Christian Highlanders of Eastern Africa, has, apart from the apathy shown in the matter by government, attracted attention to a country concerning which not only is very little known, but whose interests and policy are almost utterly ignored. A word or two in time may help to convey some tangible ideas as to the real state of things in a region so remote, and among a race undoubtedly still in a semi-barbarous condition, but who are in many respects deserving of the sympathy of Christian nations.

In 1830 the family "Gugsa" reigned at Gondar. Unfortunately, although converted to Christianity, and ostentatiously zealous in repairing and building churches, they were of Mussulman origin, and consequently always suspected of being secretly connected by policy, as they were by blood, with the Galla Mussulmans-the great enemies of the empire in the South. The Abyssinians, who reckon some five millions of souls, dwelling, as we have observed, in a highland country, have adopted the system of an hereditary monarchy from time immemorial; and, although there have been many royal interlopers, still have they been always obliged to submit to the religious traditions of the country. Tracing their origin to Manilik, a son of Solomon and of the Queen of Sheba, but who was also, like a king of Persia of olden and fabulous times, called Aroe, "the Serpent," a more critical history traces back the monarchy to a century before our era, when, established at Axum, the Abyssinian kings held pacific relations with the Greeks of Alexandria, and it was from the patriarchs of the same city that they received the first lights of the Gospel in the fourth century. The kings then assumed a kind of semi-sacerdotal character, and the monarchy has, amid numerous revolutions, ever been based upon a united religious and military ascendancy. The frequent revolutions revealed by the history of Abyssinia, as recorded in the pages of Bruce, Rüppel, Mansfield Parkyns, Beke, Harris, and others, have arisen from the power of an ever-turbulent and anarchical feudality; and hence it was that the family "Gugsa" attained to supreme power in Gondar in 1798, and preserved it until 1830.

The Emperor of Abyssinia is entitled Negus Nagast-za Aitiopiya"King of the Kings of Ethiopia," in allusion to the forty-four provinces, each of which bears the official title of kingdom. His power is far from being absolute, and is limited by the Fatha-nagast, or Imperial Code, which he cannot change, and which assures their rights and privileges to July-VOL. CXXXVII. NO. DXLVII.

the great vassals of the empire. The chief of these is the Ras, who has his palace at Gondar, and corresponds to the mayor of the palace or the "constable" of the older French monarchies. After him come the Balambras, or governors of the four provinces of Sennaar, and of the state prison of Sar Amba, or "chief fortress ;" and then the Dajaz "dukes," or hereditary nobility. The system of Abyssinian feudality resembles closely that of Europe in the middle ages. The fiefs or feudal tenures were personal in their origin, and the Negus himself is only the first baron of his empire. The peasants or serfs have, however, certain privileges. They have their parishes (Aghar), governed by an elective mayor (Tchaka) and elders. The mayor is responsible for the service and taxes, and in return for such responsibility he inherits the property of those who die without heirs; whence an Abyssinian saying, "As the heavens belong to the moon, so does the land belong to the Tchaka." The mayor has, however, no judicial functions; these are attached to the Chum, appointed by the emperor, and the higher courts are ruled over by such of the barons as have the right of nagarit, that is to say, of "a wardrum." The highest tribunal of all is that of the Likawent (plural of Lik), presided over by the emperor. The title of Bahar Nagast, or "Emperor of the Sea," is also still nominally kept up, although the littoral of the Red Sea has passed from the hands of the Abyssinians into those of the Mussulmans, Turks, Arabs, and Gallas.

Penal legislation is marked by a certain degree of mildness. The last sentence of the law is never inflicted for political offences. Rebels of high rank are imprisoned in the mountain fortresses called Ambas (whence the newspapers placed on record that Captain Cameron and his friends had been removed to the town of Amba!), and their property is confiscated. The right hand and the left foot-the hand that holds the sword and the foot that serves to mount are cut off from highwaymen and murderers; always a most cruel, and not unfrequently a fatal punishment. The only crime that positively entails the punishment of death is said to be the sale of a Christian into slavery.

The Church constitutes a third power, which balances, if it does not surpass, the influence of the crown and of feudalism. It enjoys this power in virtue of its influence over the people, of its property, its antiquity (for Christianity survived in Abyssinia the conquest of Egypt by the Mussulmans), and its hierarchal and theocratic authority-an authority which, for want of support from without, is ever combated by the temporal power. Both the Protestant and Romanist missionaries have, however, interested themselves in the Abyssinians; and while the latter concede what they designate as "Coptic heresies," as the marriage of priests, the celebration of the service in the Ghaz language, and the deviations in the calendar, "they still hope for the proximate admission of this ancient Church into the bosom of the great Catholic unity."

"*

The existing Church, notwithstanding its imperfections, whether in the view of a general Christianity, or of a mere Romanist formula, has its utility. It alone upholds the national spirit-it alone softens the man

* Théodore II., le Nouvel Empire d'Abyssinie et les Interêts Français dans le sud de la Mer Rouge. Par Guillaume Lejean, Ancien Vice-Consul de France à Massaoua.