THERE is a picture lately purchased by the committee of the Calcutta Art Gallery, which for those who know anything of the art of Mediæval Italy is full of significance. Throughout the growth of the Mediterranean civilisations the student is constantly impressed by the vigour of the civic rather than the national ideal. We think clearly and continuously--not of Egypt, Judæa, Syria, Greece, Italy, Spain and Africa--but of Memphis, Thebes, Jerusalem, Tyre, Damascus, Ephesus, Athens, Rome, Carthage, and it may be a score or two of others. The state appears in our minds as merely a vague hinterlandlike appanage of the city thus conceived. Nor can we fail to see the influence which the pursuit of civic ideals has had upon the religious conceptions both of Judaism and of the Christianity which succeeds it. It strikes upon an Indian ear as somewhat strange that the Jew should be able, in such good faith, to denote so much as he does simply by the use of the name of a municipality. "Send thee help from the sanctuary and strengthen thee