that he wished to put before the world, a new theory of politics or morals or religion, to dress it up in a novel. You remember how Young Englandism was put before the world in "Coningsby." It was thought that people who might find a series of political dissertations dull, would read with pleasure that a brilliant young man of great expectations, conversing at Cambridge with a brilliant friend, expressed certain views about the Tory party; that he then visited a duke, and in conversation with the heir to the title discussed the prospects of nobility in England; then discussed manufactures with a Manchester millionaire; then the prospects of the Jewish race with an all-accomplished Hebrew capitalist. This was the plan of the story; the reader's imagination was filled with ducal palaces, splendid London and Paris parties, and love-scenes; only now and then was he expected to imbibe a little of the new political philosophy; but gradually the whole dose was administered; and, then the brilliant young man, his work being done, is translated to Parliament and a rich wife, and the story ends. Critics, who saw that the cbject of a novel is pleasure, and the object of a political discussion profit, justly pointed out that, considered as a work of Art, this and similar works were altogether vicious. It does not follow, however, that they are intrinsically bad, and that they ought not to be written. They are simply not works of Art, but if a man can recommend his views to the public by borrowing the machinery of Art, I know no reason why he should not do so. If people will take in a political doctrine when it is explained by a fictitious peer to a fictitious M.P., and will not take it in when the author delivers it in propriâ persona, I know no reason why their peer and their M.P. should be grudged them, only I think that wrong opinions are better conveyed in this mode than right ones, and that hazy conceptions will get more advantage from it than clear ones.

It is by no means true that Art ought always in practice to be kept apart from

that which is not Art. On the contrary, there are large classes of the works of men which are partly artistic and partly not. All things that make what I may call the furniture of man's life are of this kind, the articles of utility that habitually surround him, from the clothes that he wears and the chairs that he sits on, to the halls in which he meets his fellowcitizens in council and the temples in which he worships. All such things exist in the first place for use and convenience, and so far are not artistic. Use, convenience, is the paramount law to which all such things are subject. It is a breach not so much of taste as of good sense when we wear clothes that trip us up, or give us colds, because they are graceful, put up with dark rooms for the sake of tracery in the windows, build lecture-halls or churches in which no human voice can make itself heard. But in all such matters, as soon as Use is fully satisfied Art takes her turn. Man likes to draw delight from the things that habitually surround him. Wherever his mind has freedom for enjoyment, there will he provide the materials of enjoyment, contrivances of Art which may exhilarate the sense. Hence arises the Art of Decoration, reaching its highest dignity in Architecture, which, therefore, differs from the other arts, such as Painting or Poetry, in this, that it is attached like a parasite to that which is not an Art, but a mechanical craft governed by convenience, namely, building. From this peculiarity in Architecture, there follow at once certain practical rules of criticism. For instance, a building may be as good as possible and yet not beautiful, for the conditions of utility may not allow much beauty; and, again, a building may be very beautiful and yet very bad, for the beauty may have been introduced in defiance of the conditions of utility.

Let me take another example of these mixed Arts, one in which I have always noticed men's critical judgments to be especially confused on account of their overlooking its mixed character-I mean Oratory. It is evident that this, in the first instance, is not an Art. It is not

most venerable, most terrible; it will play at bowls with the sun and moon. So too the power of sympathy, when it plays, will not be contented with pleasurable images, it will deliberately create griefs in order that it may share them. It will not be mirthful, for indeed sympathy, when it is strongly excited, is never mirthful, But not the less on that account is this activity of sympathy a sport, for it has no ulterior object, and ends in itself. It will not indeed be a sport to all. As in every school there are commonly weakly or effeminate boys who do not care to mix in the more vigorous sports of their schoolfellows, so will these larger and intellectual exercises of manhood be too strenuous and formidable for intellectual weaklings. Such are pleased with a ballad but fatigued with "Paradise Lost," because their imagination is not equal to a sustained flight; or their feelings are not lively enough, or their characters elevated enough, to enable them to enter into great and impressive situations, so that while they may feel a genuine interest in the "Ticket of Leave Man," they are entirely unmoved by "Philip Van Artevelde." And indeed among the greater excursions of imagination are some which, to all but the most robust mind, are ponderous sport. When the powers of man are at the highest, his gambols are not less mighty than his labours. Man, working, has contrived the Atlantic cable, but I declare that it astonishes me far more to think that for his mere amusement, that to entertain a vacant hour, he has created Othello and Lear, and I am more than astonished, I am awe-struck, at that inexplicable elasticity of his nature which enables him, instead of turning away from calamity and grief, or instead of merely defying them, actually to make them the material of his amusement, and to draw from the wildest the human spirit a ple

for itself various forms and modes of expression, there follows immediately from it one great law, which notwithstanding is often violated. It is that every work of Art must be in its total effect pleasurable. Not that pain is to be excluded; as I have just remarked, pain is one of the principal instruments with which the tragic poet works. But it must be used as the painter uses shadow, that is, by way of contrast to light, and in order to set off or relieve light. Every work of Art is bad, however powerful, which leaves on the mind a predominant feeling of dissatisfaction, or disgust, or horror. And yet it is very common to hear works of Art judged simply by their power, by the amount of effect they produce, without regard to the quality of the effect. At Bologna, for example, there is a very powerful picture by Domenichino, of the Martyrdom of St. Agnes. Now to see a human being put to a violent death is a dreadful thing, and, as a general rule, I had rather not see even any representation of it. But when the death is martyrdom, when faith and hope triumph over bodily torture, then no doubt, instead of being merely painful, it becomes sublime. It then becomes a fair subject for Art, because the contemplation of it produces on the whole a predominant feeling of triumph and satisfaction. satisfaction. But the artist's special problem is to convey the sense of this victory of faith over pain. If he merely paints with great power the change produced in the human body by the agonies of death, he misses the mark altogether. And this was the effect produced on me by Domenichino's picture. I felt as I should feel if I saw a woman stabbed to the heart in the street. I thought I anything so power had never seen it

to give pleasure that men make speeches, but to produce persuasion. The first and indispensable merit of a good speech, therefore, is that it produce persuasion, that is, as much persuasion as is possible in the circumstances. If a speech does not do this, if it does not, when spoken, attract and hold the attention of the audience, it is of no sort of importance how well it reads. All its merits are out of place, and therefore out of taste. The performance is essentially a failure, and to praise it because, in a different audience, or in the minds of readers some time afterwards, it produces persuasion, is like saying of a general's tactics that they were admirable, only not adapted to overcome the particular enemy with whom he had to contend. I am thinking particularly, as you will guess, of Burke, whose speeches are so full of good thinking and fine writing, but who is said to have "thought of convincing while his hearers thought of dining," and so got the name of the Dinner Bell. If he really did think of convincing, and was so totally unable to do it, all we can say is, that he must have been a thoroughly incapable orator. But I fancy he did not really think of convincing, at least not of convincing that particular audience. I suppose he fancied himself speaking to Johnson and Reynolds, or perhaps to future times, and it may be happy for us that he did so. But, critically, a speech which is not listened to can never be anything but a bad speech, and the speaker who makes it, who, as they say, is above his audience, commits the capital fault in Art, for as the capital fault in war is cowardice, and the capital fault in common life is dishonesty, so in Art the capital fault is inappropriateness.

As in architecture, so in oratory, directly utility is satisfied, Art takes her turn. Speech, when it is already clear and strong, is all the better for being also agreeable; sentences that have been so arranged as to be perspicuous may as well be further so arranged as to be musical. But in oratory, as in architecture and everything else, all

true ornament is a shy and diffident thing. It cannot bear to appear out of place; it hates to be intrusive and impertinent. When men are intensely occupied or anxious, it slips out of view, and therefore architectural ornament is displeasing in a counting-house or shop, and oratorical ornament is insufferable in a scientific demonstration, and must be introduced with caution in a budgetspeech. But when men have leisure, when the work that occupies them does not absorb all their minds, or press for instant decision, when, however earnest or solemn, it allows of being considered in the way of brooding contemplation rather than of close calculation reasoning, then, again, Art is in place; and so, for example, architectural ornament is appropriate in a Church, and rhetorical ornament in a sermon. there are cases where both architecture and oratory become almost purely artistic, and the element of utility is nearly eliminated from both. Such are, in architecture, memorial buildings and mausoleums; in oratory, panegyrical speeches.

or

And

Now all that I have said hitherto has been deduced from one simple principle. Knowing nothing more of Art, than that it is enjoyment, I can deduce with confidence that what does not produce enjoyment on the whole is not truly artistic. I can deduce that what assumes the form and outward appearance of Art, but really has in view, not enjoyment, but the spreading of some doctrine, the detecting of some abuse, or the recommending of some virtue, is again not truly artistic, however useful it may sometimes be; further I can deduce that Art is not always independent; but, in some cases, as architecture and oratory, parasitic, and accordingly, that, in judging of particular performances in these departments, it is necessary to apply two standards in succession, the practical standard and the artistic standard, and that the great and decisive test of merit in this case is what I may call the free play of Art in subordination.

But let us now come somewhat nearer to Art, and inquire more closely into its

nature. I have said that it is activity for its own sake; in short, that it is sport. It may occur to you as an objection that it would be absurd to call cricket or whist Art, or to class them with painting and poetry. Certainly, but what I said was that Art is sport, not that sport is always Art. The two propositions are perfectly different. Art, I affirm, is sport, that is, activity for its own sake; but then it is sport of a particular kind. Now how do the games that I have mentioned differ from Art? They differ in this respect, that though their object is pleasure, their laws are the same as those of men's serious activities. What makes the serious business of life serious is the cares, the dangers, the anxieties, attending it. Remove these, and it becomes a game. This is the theory of games. They are, for the most part, imitations of one of the most serious activities of life-war, with the element of danger and pain removed. Cricket, chess, cards, are only different forms of mimic war; they call into play precisely the same faculties and in the same way as real war, only the object being trifling, danger removed, and the time given to them short, the play has some of the excitement and bustle of real conflict with none of its fatigues and pains. Now Art is like these games in respect of its sole object being pleasure, but it is unlike them in this respect, that it does not merely repeat the activities of serious life, but has laws and modes of activity of its own. Let us try and discover some of these laws, confining ourselves to the simplest and most elementary.

The different kinds of Art answer to different faculties; let us pass them in review and see if we cannot discover a likeness running through them. Such a likeness strikes us at once. There is an obvious correspondence between the art of music and the art of dancing; there is another correspondence equally plain between music and poetry. Dancing is the way or mode in which we express delight in bodily movement; music is the mode in which we express delight in the power of producing sound,

whether by voice or instrument; poetry is the way in which we express delight in speech. But the mode of expressing delight is in all three cases the same: it is by rhythm. What is dancing but rhythmical movement? What is music but rhythmical sound? What is poetry but rhythmical speech? We may say then that rhythm is one of the primary modes of Art.

Rhythm is nothing but proportion, and to say that it is a primary mode of Art is merely to say that human beings delight in regularity, in pattern, in proportion. In the commonest actions, even where the question is entirely of utility, and not of gratification, we use as much regularity, or what we call neatness, as we can. The commonest objects which surround us in daily life must have arrangement and pattern, or they offend our eyes. What we seek even when we are principally concerned with utility, we affect much more earnestly when pleasure is our object. Rhythm runs through our whole existence subdued and little perceived, and of a simple kind, it is present everywhere as a kind of seasoning; without it life would be slovenly, disgusting, comfortless. But in Art, instead of an accessory, it becomes a principal thing; it is cultivated for its own sake; the more elaborate and intricate forms of it are employed, which are capable of affecting the mind with a far stronger feeling than a quiet soothing satisfaction, and which possess the secret of rapture and of inspiration.

But am I justified in speaking of rhythm as common to all arts when I have only shown it to exist in some? I have shown it in music and poetry, but not in painting, sculpture, and architecture. No doubt in this latter kind of Art it assumes a somewhat different shape, but it is not the less present. Music and poetry are arts which deal with time, painting and sculpture deal with space. A picture is at rest, always the same, and occupying a certain portion of space; a song begins and ends, and occupies a certain portion of time. Now if the principle of regularity or