proportion enters into both these kinds of Art, it is evident that it must conform to these varying conditions. Regularity in time is what is called rhythm, and therefore rhythm appears in all the arts that deal with time. Now what is regularity in space? Regularity in space is what we call form, and accordingly form takes the place of rhythm in all the arts which deal with space. Form and rhythm differ from each other as the sense of sight from the sense of hearing; and the pleasure which the ear receives from a Spenserian stanza, from the regular beat of the iambic cadence, the ordered recurrence of the rhymes, and the swelling Alexandrine at the close, is precisely analogous to the pleasure which the eye receives from the spire of Salisbury or the dome of St. Paul's. You must see plainly that, though I am near the end of my time, I am still at the beginning of my subject. But my purpose was merely to furnish a few hints; if any one of you to whom these questions are new has been interested, he will pursue for himself the analysis from the point where I leave it. I will bring this lecture to a close by a few inferences from the principles just stated. It is this principle of imitation which gives to Art its boundless range. Without it painting would not rise beyond arabesque, and poetry beyond metrical rhetoric. rhetoric. With it painting acquires a field as large as the visible universe, and poetry a field even more unlimited, comprehending the world of thought and the world of sense together. And as Art extends its range, so does the character of the artist become more important and dignified. I have described the artist as being a person superior to others in freshness and joyfulness of spirit. But this freshness implies much more than could at first sight appear. It is not merely that he is still mirthful or rapturous when others become sedate, not merely that where others speak he sings, where others step he dances. It is besides that he has an imitative faculty that others want, an observant eye, a pene But though regularity, as rhythm or form, pervades all Art, yet it does not by itself constitute that which is highest in Art. It fills a very important place in music and in architecture; but when we examine the arts of painting and the literary arts, that is, poetry and artistic prose, we see another principle taking precedence of it. What is the chief source of the pleasure which we derive from a picture? It is not certainly regularity or beauty of form. A party of Dutch boors by Teniers do not exhibit much of this characteristic. What, then, is it which pleases in thetrating insight, a retentive memory for Teniers? It is the likeness of the painted Dutchmen to real Dutchmen. And if we pass at once from a low style of Art to the highest, and consider what pleases us in a Raphael, we shall find that, though form is distinctly present here, and though the eye is charmed by a multitude of subtly-contrived proportions, yet still the principal charm is the resemblance of the painted figures to real human beings, the faithful imitation of reality. We have found, then, the second of what I call the primary modes of art, imitation. To recur to my former language, the human faculties, when they sport, amuse themselves first, with introducing regularity or rhythm into their movements, secondly, with imitating all kinds of objects. forms and images, a power of sympathy which carries with it a power of divination. Now we can imitate only what interests us strongly; he, therefore, who can imitate many things, is he who is interested in many things; and the artist, whose mind mirrors and reflects everything, has this power simply because he lives more intensely than others. This explains to us how it is that the great artists of the world stand out so prominently. It is true that they did but undertake to find amusement, sport, recreation for their fellow-men; but because true joy is true insight, and intense life is profound knowledge, therefore we rank Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe with great philosophers, the men who have truly and clearly mirrored the universe with those who have rightly analysed it. But among all the arts it is only poetry that can confer this supreme kind of fame, because speech is the ouly mirror in which the whole universe can be reflected. With colours or in marble we can express only what we see, but there is nothing that the mind can think which cannot be uttered in speech. And, therefore, in the poetry of all ages we possess, as it were, a shifting view of the universe as it has appeared to successive generations of men. According to the predominant inclination of the human mind in each age is the poetry of that age. At one time it is busy with the brave deeds of the hero, the contest and the laurel wreath, at another time with mere enjoyment, with wine and love. Then it describes the struggle of man against destiny, heroic fortitude and endurance in the midst of little hope; at another time it pictures man as in probation, purified in adversity, and having a hope beyond the grave. At one time it becomes idyllic, delights in country life, simple pleasures, simple loves, a wholesome and peaceful existence; at another time it loves cities, and deals in refinements, courtesies, gallantries, gaieties. And sometimes it takes a philosophical tone, delights in the grandeur of eternal laws, aspires to communion with the soul of the world, or endeavours to discover, in the construction of things, the traces of a beneficent plan. So far the mind of the artist is passive. Its function so far is to receive impressions from without and to reflect them faithfully. But then comes in that other principle, which we may call the active principle of Art, the principle of regularity or rhythm. The mass of impressions received from without is reduced to shape and unity by the artist. And in this shaping, arrangement, and unification he may show as much mastery as in the correctness of his imitation of Nature. But now it is to be noticed that the taste for imitation and the taste for regularity or rhythm are very distinct things. Often no doubt the same man has both, perhaps oftener than not, but it sometimes happens that an artist has one but not the other, and very often that he has the two faculties in very unequal degrees. Hence there are in Art, and have been ever since Art began, two styles, two schools, two tendencies, which are always at war, by turns almost victorious, but never quite destroying their foe. The watchword of the one school is nature; with them Art is nothing but careful observation and exact representation; they deify nature, and almost think it a sin to exercise any choice among the materials she presents to them. The other school think more of what the artist gives than of what he finds; to them Nature is the quarry out of which Art draws shapeless blocks, and informs them with beauty, Nature is the chaos out of which Art makes a Cosmos. The besetting sin of the first school is ugliness; the besetting sin of the last is falseness and feebleness. All through history these schools have contended, and indeed you have little else in the history of Art but the perpetual veering of fashion and opinion between these two extremes. There is but one other question, which has been so much debated between artists, and this is the question with which I began, whether Art exists for pleasure or for moral improvement. I said that the confusion which generally seems to the lay-world to reign in Art criticism was not so great as it appeared, and that great judges do not differ in Art so irreconcilably as they themselves love to declare. I have now put before you the two great points of difference to which almost all disagreements in Art may be traced. It is a clue through the maze of Art-criticism to know that its intricacies are caused mainly by two fundamental disagreements. Let me repeat the two great questions of debate. The first is the question whether Art exists for pleasure, or for instruction and moral improvement. The second is the question how much Art derives from Nature, and how much Art adds to Nature. In conclusion let me say that this latter controversy does not much affect the greatest artists. They are for the most part practically above it. It is the second class of artists who run into mere imitation, like the Dutch school of painting, or to false prettiness, like the pastoral poets. And so with critics, it is generally an immature taste that excludes and condemns either the Realist or the Idealistic school. Young readers of poetry who have a strong sense of rhythm, and a strong appreciation of what is formed, finished, and regular in conception, delight in Milton, and for a time find Shakespeare slovenly, loose, irregular. On the other hand, those who have strong feelings and a strong sense of reality delight in Shakspeare, and find Milton cold and unreal. At the present day it is the lovers of rhythm, form, and harmony that stand firm by Tennyson, the lovers of reality and variety desert him for Browning. Of course of these two factions one or the other must be right,-Tennyson must be greater than Browning, or he must be less. But assuredly both these artists, and all really great artists, are Realists and Idealists at once. Milton did not know Nature nearly so well as Shakespeare, but assuredly he had a keen eye for reality, as well as a powerful imagination to form new combinations above Nature and greater than Nature; Shakespeare had not Milton's stateliness nor his elaborate and complex rhythms, but assuredly he too had Art as well as Nature, form as well as matter, unity as well as variety. All the great artists both draw from Nature and add to Nature. If Tennyson is exquisite in form and composition, he is also faithful in imitation and rich in knowledge; if Browning is inexhaustible in knowledge and variety, there are rhythms in him too, if quaint ones, methods, if difficult to follow, unity, or a powerful struggle for it. SILCOTE OF SILCOTES. BY HENRY KINGSLEY, AUTHOR OF "RAVENSHOE," 66 THE HILLYARS AND THE BURTONS," ETC. CHAPTER XLII. THE CONFERENCE ON THE RAMPARTS IS INTERRUPTED BY AN OLD FRIEND. WITH the cool breeze blowing from Aspern on her face, the Princess turned towards Kriegsthurm. She felt that in some way her silly schemingif it might be called scheming-so obstinately carried out, was unsuccessful; and that Kriegsthurm, the well-paid minister of her follies, the agent in all her silly schemes, was face to face with her. She had come to Vienna, believing that Kriegsthurm was so deeply committed to the revolutionary party, to Frangipanni the Italian Constitutionalist on the one hand, and to Boginsky the outrageous Mazzinist on the other, that he dare not follow her into the lion's paws. She was quite deceived. His was a knight move against a castle; to go to whist, she had played the last trump out, and he had come in with an overpowering suit. Kriegsthurm was not inclined to let such an exceedingly wellyielding head of cattle stray out of his pasture; and so, on the strength of his being known to the Austrian police as the most clever, unscrupulous, and bestinformed spy in Europe, he had made his peace with the Austrian Government, and followed his dear Princess to Vienna, with a view of "working" the Princess and receiving pay from the Austrian police at one and the same time. So much about him for the present. "Madame has not served me well," he began, when the Princess turned to him. "I only say so much at present. The time may come, if Madame continues her present course of action, when I may say that Madame has served me shamefully and shabbily." The poor Princess, softened perhaps by the wind from Aspern, began to cry; and to wish, strangely enough, but with a true instinct, that her very objectionable nephew, Arthur, was there, or even old Miss Raylock, to confront this rascal. But she was all alone, and wept. So Kriegsthurm went on. "The time may come when I may have to say to Madame that it is hopeless for her to me. That I hold hollow of my hand. attempt to escape Madame in the That I love her she need not be told, but ingratitude of the most traitorous kind may extinguish love. I may have to say all this at some future time; at present I do not. Madame has proposed this secluded meeting herself, knowing that she could. not propose a public one; but she will see that I am all-powerful, and that I must be treated with confidence." The Princess had not yet got through her softened mood, and was still crying. The fool got contemptuous of her, of her, the most Silcote of the Silcotes"the incarnation of Silcotism," as Miss Raylock once said, who ought to know; and in his contempt for her he leaped too quickly to his first object, and began his business exactly at the wrong end. "I want money, Madame. poor." She wiped her eyes directly. always do want money," she said. wonder what you do with it all. I have not got any." I am "You "I But "Madame has eighty thousand pounds' worth of jewellery. I must have some of that." Had he not himself told Tom Silcote that very night that she would see him, Tom, deeply as she loved him, in the workhouse (or to that effect), before she would part with a single stone? Yet this fool and conspirator (are they not now and then convertible terms?) proposed for himself what he would never have proposed for her darling Tom. An Italian, one would have thought, would never have made such a blunder, and would never have made such a venture. But of what nation was Kriegsthurm again? It was a foolish venture, and the tables were at once turned for a time. Kriegsthurm proposed to her to touch her sacred accumulations. The attorney blood which was in her from her father's side, and the old English land accumulative blood which was in her from her mother's side, alike rose in rebellion to this demand, flushed her cheek, and, strange to say, passed back to her brain, and set her wits a-going. And she had been to Italy and seen the theatricalities, and could imitate them on occasions; as Master Kriegsthurm will bear witness to his dying day. She gave him one instance of this now, and he never asked for another. They were standing together under a lonely gas-lamp, which was burning steadily within its glass, in spite of the wandering wind which came from Aspern, and they could see one another's faces. His was confident, bold, and coarse (to refresh your memory after so long, he was a square, coarse-featured man, with a red complexion). Hers was pale, thin, and refined, with the remains of a very great beauty. They stood and looked at one another; he, at least, looked at her until he saw that she was not looking at him, but over his shoulder, at which time he began to feel an uneasy sensation in his back. Still he looked at her steadily. And her face changed as he watched it. The eyes grew more prominent, the lips parted; she was gazing at something which he dared not turn and face: gazing over his right shoulder, too, most unpleasantly. No one would care to have, say for instance Lady Macbeth, looking steadily over your right shoulder, while you were perfectly conscious that Malcolm's mishap was not your first offence. The Princess of Castelnuovo stared so very steadily over Kriegsthurm's right shoulder that she had frightened him out of his wits before she tried her grand coup. All of a sudden she broke out, sharp, shrill, and clear. "Mind that man! He is going to stab you from behind, and penetrate your lungs. Mind him!" Kriegsthurm, with a loud oath, dashed alongside of her, and began his beforementioned polyglot system of swearing. We have nothing to do with that, but something with this. The Princess knew quite well that his life was not perfectly safe here in Vienna, and she had tried to frighten him by pretending to see a democrat, thirsting for his blood, behind him in the dark. She had intended to frighten him, but she frightened herself also a little bit. She never believed that there was a betrayed democrat behind him; she only wanted to scare him. She had only evolved that democrat who was to penetrate Kriegsthurm's lungs out of her internal consciousness. Yet, when Kriegsthurm had run round behind her for protection, they both heard that heretofore purely imaginary democrat running away along the ramparts as hard as ever his legs would carry him. The Princess, though quite as heartily frightened as if she by idly and incredulously saying an old spell had raised the devil, was the first to recover her presence of mind. Kriegsthurm, though a bold man, was as white as a sheet when he again faced her under the gas-lamp, with his eyes squinting over his shoulder. She began"Ungrateful man! your life!" I have saved "I acknowledge it, Madame. Did you see the man ?" "I saw him plainly." "Was he like any one you had ever seen before?" asked Kriegsthurm. "No," said she, "a tall dark man with a beard." This was rather a worse fib than the first one, though she did not know it. The man had no beard, and she had seen him before. "Let us have no recriminations, Madame; I will not even ask you why you distrusted me and fled from me. For," he added, as his nerve came back, "the spirits have told me that." She was fond of the man, and had got the whip hand of him through an accident. Her fondness for the man caused her to spare the use of the whip. The revelations of the spirits had been so exceedingly unsatisfactory that even her silly credulity had given way under them, and spiritualism was now among the follies of the past. She was friendly with him. "Never mind the spirits; and I will tell you why I run away from you. You knew everything about Sir Godfrey Mallory; and you knew, and know, that I was innocent. My brother was a man so fierce and so strict that I feared his anger, particularly after Miss Raylock had got the power of putting her tongue to work about it. I consulted you, and you promised to save my reputation. You then came to me, and told me that you had done so by making Silcote believe that Sir Godfrey's attentions were paid to my sister-in-law, his wife. You remember my despair and horror at such a course, but you pointed out to me that she was too far above suspicion for any breath to tarnish her character; and indeed I believed you. But, to my infinite wonder and consternation, the poison took hold on my jealous brother's heart, in spite of my open familiarity with poor Godfrey Mallory, whom I liked in a way-you know what a fool I am, at least your pocket does. I dared neither speak nor hold my tongue. Her death lies at the door of my cowardly folly and your villany. And she will be a ministering angel when you and I lie howling." One is allowed to quote Shakespeare, and so I put Shakespeare's words in her mouth. Her own were fiercer and coarser, for Silcote's sister could be fierce and coarse at times. "Till very lately, Kriegsthurm, I thought that this was all you had done. The other day, when you were dunning me beyond patience for money, and I threatened to appeal to my brother, you told the old horrible story, that you had got my handwriting forged by some |