symbols but always fetishes, holy as actual abodes of a spirit, and belonging to a lower order of religious ideas. It is, perhaps, impossible to prove that they were one more than the other. Opinions will differ according to the estimate formed of the general standard of civilisation testified by Minoan remains; and some will hold high art not incompatible with low ideas of religion. Perhaps the truth lies in compromise. The symbols of the better educated often remain the fetishes of the vulgar. The double axe may well have served both functions in later Minoan Crete.

Further, be it noted, the cult objects, reasonably so regarded, which have come to light on prehistoric Cretan sites, afford abundant evidence, direct and inferential, of anthropomorphic conceptions, and little, if any, of theriomorphic. Those monstrous shapes, compound of bird, beast, and man, which appear in great variety on gemsealings, seem to be proved by their infinite variety to have been rather heraldic fantasies than presentations of the divine. They were, in fact, signet devices, subject to infinite modification for obvious purposes of utility; while of those types which seem to show monstrous dæmonic shapes performing or accepting ritual homage-even if such interpretations be correct-it must be said emphatically that they are too few to be taken as evidence of a racial theriomorphic cult, although, at the same time, there would be nothing surprising or inconsistent with the history of human superstition that monstrous personifications of evil or terror should have co-existed with a prevalent anthropomorphic conception of divinity.

Hardly less seriously have our ideas concerning the external relations of the Egean peoples in the prehistoric age been affected by Cretan research. It had long been recognised that Mycenaean art, in its higher efforts, showed considerable trace of Egyptian influence; while the presence, on the one hand, of indubitable Egyptian bibelots in Mycenaean deposits on the Greek mainland, in Rhodes, and in Cyprus, and, on the other, of Mycenæan pottery on certain Egyptian sites, was taken to prove some degree of commercial relation between the Egean area and the Nile mouths. This inference, however, did not greatly impair—indeed it rather strength

H

ened—the existing belief, based on Homer and the Hellenic antiquaries, that the Phoenician Semites had a virtual monopoly of sea-borne trade in the prehistoric Levant; and by their mediation, it was still supposed, both the artistic influence and the products of Egypt reached the Ægean area. Even the Kefti' tributaries, who are shown bearing vases of typically Mycenæan forms in Theban wall-paintings of the eighteenth dynasty, were interpreted as Phoenician. The number of indubitably foreign objects found on Egean sites up to the close of the nineteenth century was very small; the Egyptian artistic influence was discerned only in a very select class of the finer Egean products. There was no sufficient reason, in a word, for supposing that Ægeans or Egyptians were personally familiar with each other's homes; and the conspicuous absence of any but derivative and highly stylised marine motives in Mycenæan decoration, and of representations or remains of nautical apparatus, was taken as confirmatory of Mycenæan unfamiliarity with the sea. Indeed some archæologists went so far at one time as to deny to Mycenaean society all knowledge of fish food.

Some of the minor grounds of this general conclusion were weakened before the exploration of Crete began. At Phylakopi, for example, as the published report now proves, representations both of galleys and fishermen were observed on pottery; and the beautiful 'flying-fish fresco sufficed to dispel any doubt that an Ægean artist had personal familiarity with marine models. But it was reserved for the Cretan explorers to demolish the major premiss of the Phoenician theory by showing that the Kefti tributaries, in the fashion of their hair and dress, offer so close a parallel to figures on Knossian frescoes that the probability of their having been actual Cretans was of the strongest; further, that the architectural, formative, and decorative influence of Egypt, clearly discernible in Cretan products, was of a range and character which imperatively demanded a revision of the theory that communication between Egypt and Crete was indirect and only occasional. Even taken alone, Mr Evans' discovery that the Ægeun prehistoric systems of writing had no obvious relation to the Phoenician was sufficient to outweigh any later tradition of a Phoenician comVol. 200.-No. 400.

mercial supremacy in the area and at the epoch in which that writing came into use.

Articles of possible Cretan importation, of various ages, have now been observed in Egyptian deposits. The black vases from Abydos containing colouring matter, on whose evidence Mr Petrie insists in his Methods and Aims,' if truly Cretan, would take commercial relations back to the epoch of the first Pharaonic dynasty; but Mr Evans doubts their provenance. In any case the fragments of liparite and diorite bowls, of Egyptian fabric, recorded by Mr Evans in his third report as having been unearthed at Knossos, are of the earliest dynastic times. In presence of these venerable witnesses, the 'Old Empire' style of a Cretan lamp, the 'Kamares' potsherds found in the Fayum, a diorite statuette of the thirteenth dynasty, and an alabaster lid of King Khyan occurring at Knossos, are not less to be expected than the late Mycenæan pottery of Tell el-Amarna, the derived Egyptian gods carved upon a Phæstian shell, the Nilotic type of Cretan house, or the Nilotic vegetation adapted to native vegetable forms in Cretan art. That Egyptians voyaged to prehistoric Crete is probable; that Cretans voyaged to Egypt is, in view of the Kefti pictures, certain. Moreover, evidence for the frequent commerce of inhabitants of various islands and coasts within the Egean area is abundant. The Phylakopi volume shows that, in the period of the Second City, such 'middle Minoan products of Crete as Kamares polychrome vases and steatite bowls came freely into Melos, and that possibly the finest wall-frescoes were imported as panels in wooden frames from Knossos. On the other hand, not only vases of Melian fabric went to Crete, but obsidian knives, for whose manufacture Melos alone in the whole Egean area possessed the necessary material, were in common use on all the circumjacent coasts. Identical gem types have been found in Crete and in Laconia; most authorities now regard the Mycenæan inlaid daggers as of Cretan fabrication, on the ground that nothing among the certainly indigenous products of the prehistoric Argolid can prepare us for the amazing technique of those weapons. It is needless to multiply examples. These are more than enough to dispel any lingering belief that the fleets of Minos or of Agamemnon were fantasies of poets.

Discoveries which have given to an ancient civilisation so high a place in human history as that which must now be conceded to the Egean culture involve it also in more serious problems than it had suggested while believed to be only an inconsiderable episode in social development. The most important of these problems, and the one which has already roused most strife, is concerned with the possible parental relation of Ægean culture to that of later Hellas. Many Hellenists seem to be irritated by any suggestion that the art of the great classic age was rather a renascence than a new creation, and that the essential germ had existed and fructified in the Ægean area in prehistoric times. The discoveries of each successive season at Knossos, however, make it appear more probable that not only Greek artistic motives but the Greek artistic spirit have a prehistoric pedigree which was far longer than was once supposed. In fact, since Mr Evans' exploration of the lateMycenæan' graves at Knossos, and his studies and those of other scholars in the succeeding Geometric period in Crete and Greece, as illustrated by finds in caves and tombs, it has become increasingly difficult to find a clear break at any epoch between early Ægean art and that exemplified in the oldest strata at Olympia. Before continuity can be satisfactorily established, however, we shall have to know more of early religious creed and rite, of early Ægean skull-forms and Ægean languages-points on which evidence as yet is defective, ill-marshalled, and obscure; but it is quite time already that the 'devout Hellenist' schooled himself to accept an enquiry conducted on the Hellenic principle of following the argument whithersoever it may lead. Mr Evans, at any rate, is never afraid to follow it. In the practice of this virtue, if no other, we have no better Hellenist.

D. G. HOGARTH.

Art. IV.-THE POLISH NATION.

1. Rzecz o Roku 1863 (The Truth about the Year 1863). By Stanislaus Kozmian. Three vols. Cracow: Polish Publishing Society, 1891. (German translation by Landau. Vienna: Konegen.)

2. o Dzialaniach i Dzielach Bismarcka (Bismarck; his doings and achievements). By Stanislaus Kozmian. Cracow: Czas Press, 1902.

3. Przeglad Wszechpolski (The United Poles' Review, or Organ of the National Democrats). Cracow, 1902. 4. Nasza Mlodziez (The Rising Generation). By 'Scriptor.' Cracow Anczyc and Co., 1903.

5. Dzieje Zniweczenia Unii (Destruction of the United Ruthenian Church. By Father Ladislaus Chotkowski. Cracow: Polish Publishing Society, 1899.

6. The Expansion of Russia. By F. H. Skrine. Cambridge: University Press, 1903.

'IN this God's world . . . where men and nations perish as if without law, and judgment for an unjust thing is sternly delayed, dost thou think that there is therefore no justice? It is what the fool hath said in his heart. It is what the wise in all times were wise because they denied, and knew for ever not to be. My friend, if thou hadst all the artillery of Woolwich trundling at thy back in support of an unjust thing . . . I would advise thee to call halt, to fling down thy baton, and say, "In God's name, No!" Thy "success"? Poor devil, what will thy success amount to? If the thing is unjust, thou hast not succeeded; no, not though . . . the just thing lay trampled out of sight, to all mortal eyes an abolished and annihilated thing.'*

Carlyle had no particular love for the country we are writing about, and certainly was not thinking of it when he penned this magnificent passage. Yet it is peculiarly applicable to Poland, and never more so than now. There is some justice in whatever happens; and we must own frankly that the Poles deserved the fate which fell upon them in 1772. It served them right, for it was their fault that the land was given over to anarchy. In the same sense we say that a householder who leaves doors

* Carlyle, 'Past and Present,' cap. ii, 'The Sphinx.'