are at least tolerable when they confine themselves within reasonable limits; but this murmuring of scented nothings, this continual pampering up of the emotions with sounding words, is neither good nor endurable, and, if continued, it will be alike destructive of our national literature and our reputation for sturdy common

sense.

Let us take a quotation from Pater's "Studies in the Renaissance," not as a specimen of his more extravagant writing, but as one of this halfdelirious sweetness to which we have been referring. He is speaking of Greek sculpture:

If one had to choose a single product of Hellenic art, to save in the wreck of all the rest, one would choose, from the beautiful multitude of the Panathenaic frieze, that line of youths on horses, with their level glances, their proud, patient lips, their chastened reins, their whole bodies in exquisite service. This colorless, unclassified purity of life, with its

blending and interpenetration of intellectual, spiritual, and physical elements, still folded together, pregnant with the possibilities of a whole world closed within it, is the highest expression of that indifference which is beyond all that is relative or partial.

Here we have another style of rhapsody than Swinburne's-rhapsody uttered, as we may fancy, in a whisper, in some half-waking intervals of an opium-trance-rhapsody which clearly reveals no mean power of writing, and in which each word seems deliberately chosen and placed, and yet which means-well (is it an exaggeration to say?), absolutely nothing. We gain from it an impression of pleasant sound-if we do not look too closely, we can fancy that its author is a very clever fellow; but if we once dare to break the spell, and try to attach a definite meaning to the words, we grow momentarily more bewildered, and at last give it up in despair. What is a chastened rein? What is a body in "exquisite service"? What colorless, unclassified purity? What is--all the rest of it? We can't say. Can any of our readers? Can Mr. Pater himself?

We have been a long time coming to the consideration of Mr. Comyns Carr's essays, but we have prepared the way for our readers to thoroughly understand his work, whence it had its origin, and its position in the school to which we are referring. Mr. Carr may be said to be the utmost and worst development of the school to which he belongs. In him the victory of sound over sense is far more triumphant, because more habitual, than even in Swinburne and Pater; nor is even his sound of the same quality as theirs, but rings faint and hollow, as if it were some telephonic echo of those writers. In him, too, is the doctrine sensuous carried to a pitch which

transcends all former efforts. To use his own words, spoken approvingly of Keats, “Men and women perfect in the flesh, with their feet on perfect flowers, move across his fancy as in twilight." The first essay in the book is on The Artistic Spirit in Modern English Poetry," and the gist of it may be found in Stopford Brooke's Primer of English Literature," the essay being an expansion, possibly an unconscious one, of two sentences therein. Not so ideal, but for that very reason closer in his grasp of nature than Shelley, in love of loveliness for its own sake, in the sense of its rightful and preeminent power, and in the singleness of the worship which he gave to beauty, Keats is especially the artist." Such, shortly put, is the essence of Mr. Carr's long essay-an old idea enough, strung out to thirty and odd pages. Full of admiration for the solid, sensuous character" of Keats's verse, Mr. Carr writes as if the limited vision of that wider poet was worthy of greater praise than any sight, and talks about the "fleeting things" admitted by Byron and Shelley, but excluded by Keats "from the sacred realm of ideal truth."

66

It would be useless to weary our readers with quotations from Mr. Carr's essays in support of our assertion as to the character of the doctrine he teaches; it is, as we have said above, identical in all essential respects with that of Swinburne and Pater; but we will give one or two further examples of the difficulty with which he manages to surround his simplest criticisms, owing to the habit of considering the form and sound of the sentence rather than its sense. Thus, talking of Leonardo da Vinci's portrait-painting, Mr. Carr says: "We can not, perhaps, define the means by which he infused a certain harmony into monstrous features, nor can we tell how it is that the smile upon the lips of his women should avail to bring all the features into perfect agreement of expression, and how the system of finely balanced shadows should give even to his portraits the significance of character." Or, again, of Michael Angelo. The stillness pervading the work of Michael Angelo implies of itself a foregone season of passionate preparation, wherein all the recesses of human passion have been sounded—“ the brooding stillness of Michael Angelo's faces, with all the later passions held in still suspense." It may be that in such sentences a meaning lies hidden beyond the reach of us ordinary mortals; it may be that it is true that art has no mission save that of apotheothizing sensuousness, and enveloping us in languid dreams; it may be, perhaps, even true that expression becomes more perfect as its obscurity deepens and its meaning grows less-in a word, it may be that in the time to come these apostles of the higher criticism, these priests of a fleshly

ideal, may be hailed as the true regenerators of humanity. But if it be not so, if this be but a phase through which we must pass, ere reaching a clearer and a healthier atmosphere, if, as we believe, the time will soon come when this wordy Babel will fall to the earth, and its builders be

scattered abroad, to rail-splitting and other honest and useful if uncongenial employments, in such a case we may perhaps be pardoned for having lent a hand to the destruction of the vast edifice of humbug which we have here styled "the Higher Criticism." London Spectator.

I.

you, and yet keep yourself above them, in the sense of recognizing that there are moral and

Hook gave an admirable definition of true moral heroism; only, unfortunately, the heroes whom human beings take up and fondle in their rather capricious and sometimes very idolatrous fancies, are but seldom moral heroes, and hardly ever heroes to us only because they are moral heroes, and so it happens that very few of the favorite heroes of mankind would be covered by his definition. He says with as much depth as truth, if he were speaking solely as a moralist, "A hero is a man who must have ends beyond himself," ends which "cast him, as it were, out of himself," and "must pursue these ends by means which are honorable, the lawful means, otherwise he may degenerate into a wild enthusiast. He must do this without distortion or disturbance of his nature as a man, because there are cases of men who are heroes in great part, but who are so excessively given to certain ideas and objects of their own, that they lose all the proportion of their nature. There are some ecclesiastical heroes who, by giving undue prominence to one idea, lost the just proportion of things, and became simply men of one idea. A man, to be a hero, must pursue ends beyond himself by legitimate means. He must pursue them as a man, not as a dreamer; he must not give to some one idea a disproportionate weight which it does not deserve, and forget everything else which belongs to the perfection and excellence of human nature. If he does all this he is a hero, even if he has not very great powers; and if he has great powers, then he is a consummate hero. Such a man, he contended, was Dr. Hook, and he certainly deserved the best title which he (Mr. Gladstone) had given him." Now, no doubt it is a part of the truest moral heroism to devote yourself to causes higher than yourself, and yet not merge wholly the large nature of man in these causes; to have zeal without being a zealot. To work for ends above

men even in the service of the highest ends, is a task of moral difficulty which may well be dignified with the name of moral heroism. And yet, in the popular sense of the word, it will hardly do so to define heroes as to exclude almost all the favorite heroes of human fancy. In point of fact, men make heroes to themselves much less by any large and balanced moral judgment, than by the fascination which particular types of character have for other types of character often very different. To an ordinary boy, the only thing needful to make a hero is a great capacity for enterprise, and coolness and daring in the critical moment. Nelson, Dundonald, and Napoleon are the sort of figures to catch their minds and hearts, whether they had the true heroism of devoting themselves to the highest ends, and yet limiting their zeal by keeping their largest human sympathies, or not. We doubt, indeed, whether a figure like the late Dean of Chichester would ever recommend itself as that of a perfect hero to any mind, young or old. There was too little of the extraordinary in his career, too much of steady industry and unflagging simplicity, to set fire to any one's imagination. In the popular sense of the term, at least, it is the first requisite of a "hero" to fire the imagination. Of course, the imagination may be fired in a hundred different ways—by that "zigzag lightning in the brain" which makes an Alexander and a Napoleon, or even by that mere singularity of gifts or of destiny which makes a great beauty, or a great singer, or a great actor. There are plenty of young people whose heads have been turned by the narrative of the triumphs of mere beauty. There are many more whose heads have been turned by the fascination of that power which concentrates at once thousands of eyes in a fixed gaze of admiration. What is essential to the popular hero is some power to thrill. Without that, however noble

his life, however high his purposes, however great his capacity to excite true love, there is nothing of what is ordinarily meant by a hero. You may thrill, of course, by moral means, though not so easily as by physical or intellectual means. But without some means by which you can stir the blood-without something that makes many hearts beat a little quicker when a name is mentioned that name will never really gain the heroic level. There must be some glitter in the qualities which make a hero. A wonderful dancer is a true heroine to many-the Yankees used to turn out in crowds to drag Fanny Ellsler's carriage for her, if we remember rightly; and, no doubt, to many an English lout, Weston, the pedestrian, is a great hero now; but neither to Yankees nor to English louts would the late Dr. Hook have seemed 'worthy of an ovation. Fidelity and nobility and power of character tend far less to make a hero than strenuous muscles, with finely coördinated nerves. You may be come a hero by a single wonderful jump more easily than by a lifetime of noble effort; by being able to sing an octave higher or lower than the best singers of your time, more easily than by training a whole generation of good musicians. Hence we think the condition by which Mr. Gladstone rightly limits true moral heroism -the condition that a man must not merge himself in the ends for which he lives-is almost inconsistent with heroism in its popular sense, or, at least, excludes a great deal that is in the highest sense heroism to the popular understanding. Napoleon, whom Mr. Gladstone will not allow to be a true hero, is a hero to the popular imagination almost precisely because he broke through this condition, and broke through it quite recklessly. The "demonic element," as Goethe used to call it, is almost essential to the popular hero. But then it is just the demonic element in a man which makes light of moral limits. Why are Byron and Shelley, especially the former, so great to the popular mind, except because their lives were tinged with the romance always associated with genius when it tramples moral laws under foot? It is the wild element in genius which does most to make a hero of the man of genius, not the tame. Rajah Brooke would never have been the hero he was but for his dash into wild life, even though his purpose in making that dash was to subdue it, and bring it into something like order. In the popular hero, there must be nothing like humdrum; and yet without a very large element of humdrum, there is no true moral life, and very little true moral heroism. It is the brilliant dash at great ends without much consideration for the means, which has given half the fascination to most popular heroes' lives. Without that, the lives

would not be so dramatic as to magnetize men, for it is dramatic, not moral, life which catches the imagination. Would Mr. Carlyle have made a hero even of Dr. Johnson merely for his charitableness and his tenderness to his poor dependents, and to his cat, or for anything but for his unexampled power of stamping intellectually on feebler beings? Would he have made heroes both of Cromwell and of Frederick the Great— totally different as they were in mind, and life, and genius-but for the stormy force that was in both of them alike? Even to Mr. Carlyle, it is the whirlwind in a man which makes a hero of him, not the self-regulating power. Even in actions strictly and perfectly moral, it is not their morality which catches the imagination and makes them heroic, so much as their dramatic vividness. David's acts in accepting the challenge of the Philistine giant, and in pouring on the ground the water which had been procured at the cost of so much peril to his followers, were far more heroic in the popular sense than his devotion of himself to soothe the melancholy of Saul; but neither of them in all probability involved half the patient self-sacrifice. Heroism in its common and popular sense is, after all, only the gilding on great careers, not the essential gold. Lord Beaconsfield will, for generations to come, be a far greater hero to the popular mind of England than either the late Sir Robert Peel or the late Lord Russell-in all probability, a greater figure than either Mr. Canning or Mr. Fox; perhaps he may even be spoken of as more extraordinary than Lord Chatham and Mr. Pitt. Yet this will not be for any essential greatness in his career, but because such qualities as he had were dramatic, not to say melodramatic, the qualities which catch the fancy, and set on fire the most inflammable materials, which are almost always among the poorest materials, about the human character and heart. London Spectator.

II.

IN discoursing the other day in the schoolroom at Hawarden on Dean Hook's life, Mr. Gladstone took occasion to describe him as "a hero," and was thus led to define his idea of what constitutes heroism. He began by remarking, what indeed is sufficiently obvious, that a man need not be any the less a hero because he is a Christian or a clergyman. It seems that in Dr. Latham's Dictionary a hero is defined to be "a man eminent for bravery"; but Mr. Gladstone not unnaturally thought this definition too narrow, seeing that bravery may be a merely animal quality, while on the other hand there are cer

patriots; the medieval heroes were the saints. In the technical language of the schools "heroic virtue was an indispensable requisite for canonization. Now the same man may, like St. Louis, be a mighty leader in court and camp and a saint, or, again, there may be a great patriot statesman and ruler of lofty religious aims like Charlemagne, who narrowly missed canonization, but whose private life was tainted with faults which would have made his appearance in the calendar rather strange. The fact is, that there is an antithesis between what may roughly be called the natural or pagan and the Christian standard of excellence; not that the two are irreconcilable, or are not sometimes reconciled in the same character, but that they are distinct in theory and not unfrequently separated in fact. Christianity introduced new types of virtue into the world, though it did not therefore supersede the old. It added what theologians would call the supernatural to the natural order of merit. Now the heroic ideal of classical antiquity springs mainly from a sense of the dignity of human nature; the Christian ideal of sanctity grows out of a sense of sin. And hence, as has sometimes been remarked, the latter conduces most directly to theological and ecclesiastical activity, the former to political. The one develops the distinguishing qualities of a patriot, the other of a saint. Yet the two kinds of energy may be combined in the same character, as in the nobler spirits among the Crusaders, while the concurrence of both is required for the general welfare of society. There is an unselfish grandeur, which is truly heroic, in the character and career of Hildebrand, whatever we may think of the abstract justice of his cause or of some of the methods he adopted for promoting it. His dying exclamation sounds almost like an echo of the story of Regulus.

But if there is a heroism which is not synonymous with sanctity, there are forms of saintliness, well deserving of reverence and love, which can hardly, without some strain of language, be termed heroic. To take two examples of our own day: Mr. Matthew Arnold has paid a graceful tribute to the exquisite piety and religious refinement, so to speak, of Eugénie de Guérin, nor

would it be easy to find a more touching record of "a beautiful soul." Another English writer has describea, under the title of "A Dominican Artist," in a work reviewed some years ago in our columns, the career of Père Besson, a young French painter who afterward became a priest and a missionary. Both lives appeal with irresistible force to the Christian instinct of sympathy for whatever things are pure and lovely, yet neither can exactly be called heroic, in the ordinary sense of the word. The Greeks designated moral and physical beauty by a common term, and there are various manifestations both of saintly and heroic virtue which at once command as by spontaneous attraction the love and admiration of mankind. But still there is one beauty of the hero and another of the saint, even if they are sometimes united in the same person. In the highest type of perfection the two characteristics would perhaps be found to coalesce with one another, but as a matter of fact and experience there have been many genuine heroes whom it would be extravagant to qualify as saints, and many genuine saints, whether canonized or not, whose temperament or outward circumstances did not lead them to the achievement of any heroic work. Even the vulgarized use of the word hero, as when we speak of the hero of a novel-who may be a Dick Turpin or a Titobears witness to external energy of some kind being essential to the heroic idea. But no such necessity is recognized in the "De Imitatione Christi," which the common instinct of Christendom, Catholic and Protestant alike, has accepted as an almost inspired manual of the saintly life, or indeed for that matter in Law's “Serious Call" or the "Pilgrim's Progress." It would not be a complete statement of the case, but it would perhaps be as nearly a correct indication of the contrast as can be compressed into a few words, to say that heroism is understood to consist in noble action and saintliness in patient endurance. And just as a man may be eminent both as a statesman and a writer though politics and literature are distinct pursuits, so he may unite in himself the characteristic claims of a hero and a saint.

London Saturday Review.

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