triangulation. It appears from the report of General Derrecagaix, Director of the Geographical Department in France, on the maps exhibited at the International Congress held at Paris in 1889, referring especially to our large scale maps, that the productions of the Ordnance Survey had for a long time been quoted on the Continent as a work without precedent, and one which should serve as a model for all civilized nations.'

Revision of the cadastral maps can hardly be said to have begun. A few towns have been revised for special reasons. A revision of London (surveyed 1842) is now in progress.* In fact, the initial work itself being only just completed, the moment for considering systematic revision has only now arrived. The matter is a pressing one; but it is obvious from the cautious way in which it is treated in the official literature that the largeness of the votes required to carry it out promptly and efficiently is the real obstacle in the matter. The sums needed to bring the present cadastral maps up to date in ten years, and then to keep them always up to a fifteen-year limit of revision, was estimated in 1892 at 630,000l., to be spread over the first ten years, and 55,000l. a year afterwards— a very much less amount than the 10,000,000l. and 380,000Z. which we have seen are the sums estimated for the same work in France, where, however, the whole country is in arrear since 1852. In the present day, when statistics of every kind are so constantly in requisition, and large schemes of improvement -agricultural, municipal, and administrative—are incessantly coming to the front, it should be almost needless to insist on the value and economy of a survey containing all the most important particulars of the surface of the country, collected according to a uniform system, with an accuracy that is unimpeachable, and a completeness which no detail can elude; adaptable, with ready ease, to every varying purpose of legislation, economy, or improvement. The 25-inch' and 6-inch maps show every hedge, fence, ditch, bank, wall, building, and even every isolated tree in the whole country. The '25-inch map also shows, by colour, whether a building or any part of it is of glass, wood, or more durable materials. The 'town plans' show not only the exact shape of every building, but every porch, bow window, area, doorstep, lamp-post, railing, and fire-plug. Frequent levels are inserted along all roads, and in other places; the 6-inch maps have contour lines at intervals of 100 feet; the exact boundaries of counties, parishes, boroughs,

*Lancashire and Yorkshire, which till lately only had a 6-inch map, have been resurveyed on the larger scales; but this is hardly 'revision' in the exact

sense.

and

and other civil divisions are inserted in full detail; the area of every parcel appears on the '25-inch' map, in acres, calculated to four places of decimals, -that is, to about half a square foot.

If these details be thought unnecessarily minute, or if proof be wanted of the inconveniences likely to arise if this survey were non-existent or untrustworthy, or even if it were allowed to remain very seriously in arrear, it is enough to point to the tithe maps, made in 1837 at a cost of two millions of money. These only comprised a portion of the kingdom; five-sixths of them left much to be desired in the matter of accuracy, and the whole were speedily found to be of little practical value beyond the special purposes for which they were originally designed. In 1856 40,000l. were again spent by the Enclosure Commissioners in maps, not to mention the sums, probably more than equal to both these amounts put together, laid out by private individuals and companies in the preliminary surveys for drainage, railway, and engineering works before the time of the cadastral survey. The annual sum required for the adequate maintenance of the maps in an efficient state of revision is doubtless a large one, but it bears no comparison to the sums that will be wasted on inferior work, of no general utility, which must be done by individuals if the national maps are neglected and allowed to fall out of date. 'A cadaster,' said M. Avila at the Statistical Congress at Brussels (to which our Government sent Mr. Farr as its representative), 'should be the inventory of the real property of a country, showing title, statistics territorial and agricultural, mortgages, in short everything having to do with property.' Our cadastral survey, as has been seen, comes nearer to fulfilling this ideal than any other yet produced. The efficient maintenance and revision of the map is purely a question of money. Evidently the provision now contemplated for periodically revising even the '25-inch' map is very inadequate to the needs of many districts, especially in the neighbourhood of growing towns. It is to be hoped that this short-sighted economy may soon yield to more enlightened ideas.

We are now in a position to appreciate the figures available relative to the cost of the Ordnance Survey as a whole. The total cost of the Survey, including the triangulation, primary, secondary and tertiary, levelling, surveying, drawing, engraving, publishing, and all necessary indexes, has been between 50%. and 517. per square mile-or about 1s. 8d. an acre. This includes an enormous area of 'town plans' on a scale of which cost on the average from 15s. to 20s. per acre. It also includes the whole cost of the 1-inch topographical map, and

the

the smaller scales, with which the foreign cadastral surveys above reviewed have had nothing whatever to do. The normal cost of the 2500 survey is about 1s. per acre-or the same price as the Austrian, and cheaper than any of the other surveys of which particulars are forthcoming. It is evident therefore that the money expended is not wastefully applied. Indeed, considering the very heavy proportion which town areas bear in this country to the total acreage surveyed, the additional expense involved in publication, and the inclusion of the small scale maps in the cost, our Survey may probably be reckoned the cheapest in Europe.

Our sketch of the history of the Ordnance Survey shows that, while the scope of the undertaking exceeds any programme heretofore attempted by any Government, the mode and style of its execution are second to none, either from a scientific, artistic, or utilitarian point of view, and that the cost of the work, stroke for stroke, is probably lower than that paid by any other nation for a similar purpose. The following dispassionate and almost judicial sentences with which the Committee of 1892 close their Report will probably carry more weight than any eulogistic phrases which we could frame, and will form a fitting conclusion to the present article:

'We are convinced that the basis of the Ordnance Survey is perfectly accurate and satisfactory. The great necessities of the Survey are obviously completion and early revision, and with these necessities not even any suggested improvements should be allowed to interfere. But should the sums which we have proposed for the purpose of revision be granted, and should the various recommendations which we have suggested be carried out, we confidently anticipate that the public will have no reasonable grounds for complaint as regards this great national work.'

ART.

ART. III.-Meisterwerke der griechischen Plastik. Von Adolf Furtwängler. Leipzig-Berlin, 1893.

FOR

OR the past quarter of a century Professor Furtwängler has been one of the most prolific writers on ancient Greek art in all its aspects. So far as sculpture is concerned, he has seen many of his views accepted as conclusive, or at all events stated in a friendly manner, in the current histories of that art. More than that, much of his work has received ample appreciation at the hands of archæologists of all nationalities, while in our own country in particular his name has become almost a household word in certain circles, thanks in a great measure to the energy with which his views have been propounded in lectures and otherwise by those learned ladies who, for a number of years, have been wont to hie from Cambridge and Oxford to complete their archæological training in Berlin. Yet he is not happy. For all his labours, he finds that the modern histories of Greek sculpture are worthless. He has seen floating before his mind for a long time, so he says in his Preface, the possibility of a new history which shall survey the whole field of existing sculptures. Preparatory to that task, however, the ground must be cleared of many matters of dispute, involving innumerable details, yet capable, as he thinks, of yielding results which may afterwards be gathered up in sweeping historical statements. The purpose of the present bulky volume is to clear that ground.

But let no reader take up this book in the fond belief that these preparatory discussions will lead him anywhere near the old and yet ever new questions of what constitutes beauty in Greek sculpture, or what differentiates the style of this or that masterpiece which we are fortunate in still possessing. Whether our author is capable of dealing with such questions is open to doubt. He has at all events chosen another line, and, with one or two exceptions which we shall notice, has adhered to it. He has perceived that in works on Greek sculpture hitherto there. has always been a second or subsidiary current of investigation, the object of which was to rescue from the vast mass of GræcoRoman statues in our museums certain specimens which might fairly be regarded as derived from famous Greek originals, and to accept them with more or less of misgiving as copies of the same. Here was an opening for an adventurous spirit to show that all these misgivings were in vain; and such in the main is the task which Professor Furtwängler has set himself to accomplish. Success, or even partial success, beyond what had been previously achieved, would deserve ample recognition,

though

though at the best it would still leave us with the unsatisfactory result that it is with copies we are dealing, not with originals. We cannot forget that a few years ago there was found at Eleusis an absolutely authentic Græco-Roman copy of the famous group of Cecrops and his daughter in the west pediment of the Parthenon. Though true in the letter, how dismal in spirit that copy is, no words can describe.

Apart, however, from this, which is the chief purpose of our author, we welcome most gladly the vast amount of new material, new argument, and new vigour which he has imparted to subjects which had previously been threshed out over and over again, partly by himself and partly by compatriots of his own, in no way inferior to him in ability, if something behind him in pretensions. His book cannot in any fairness be classed among those collections of essays which, having previously done duty in an ephemeral publication, are often fondly thought worthy of preservation. Its proportion of absolutely new thought and speculation is too great for that, and yet its whole aspect is that of old controversies revived. We seem to be reading over again the back numbers of the Archäologische Zeitung,' brought up to date.

6

While regretting the restless and polemical tone of the book in general, we say frankly that in some of its most important parts, those, for example, where he discusses and summarizes time-honoured arguments, he appears to us to have chosen his course wisely and with a sagacity which does him infinite credit. His chapter on the Venus of Milo is quite admirable in this respect, and all the more welcome because we are seldom now-a-days without some new speculation to show that she had been grouped with a statue of Mars or what not. As is well known, there was found with the Venus a marble plinth on which was inscribed the name of the sculptor, Agesandros of Antioch. Those who believed that the statue must have been the work of Praxiteles-and they were the majority, or at all events the more powerful party-contended that the plinth did not belong to the Venus. Others with no such prejudice maintained the contrary. Amid this contention the plinth disappeared, and has not been since recovered. Fortunately a drawing of it had been made, by means of which it is possible to reconstruct the statue on its base, as Professor Furtwängler has done with great pains; so that there is now hardly the smallest room to doubt that the Venus of Milo was the work of Agesandros,-a sculptor who, to judge by the inscription, as we may with certainty do, was at least two centuries after Praxiteles. That is not, however, saying that

he