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ed." The same limitation will, of course, | on his death all things returned once more be observable in the taste of those who to chaos, till public opinion restored the come to the consideration of any work of legitimate monarchy. art with no larger experience than their own; they will either desire an exact reproduction of what they know through their senses, and will reward the artist according to the photographic accuracy of his imitation; or they will yield up their own imaginative prepossessions, and be content to look at nature precisely as the artist bids them.

Again, what happened after the first Reform Bill? Long experience of liberty, and the spread of education, had entitled the nation to demand direct representation in Parliament, and the prophecies of those who foretold that the first fruits of Reform would be the immediate destruction of existing institutions were signally falsified. Nevertheless, it cannot escape notice, that If our assumption, that the passing the great and predominant aim of all the moods, as well as the abiding character of legislation, which followed the first Reform a nation, are reflected in its taste be true, Bill, was rather to complete the emancipawe ought to be able to discover some phe- tion of the individual, than to reconstruct nomena in current politics corresponding the idea of the State. The abolition of with that temper of the imagination in the Test Acts; Catholic Emancipation; which we have found our contemporary the admission of the Jews to Parliament; art to be conceived. Somewhere or other, the repeal of the Corn Laws, Navigation whether in the predominance of a princi- Laws, and Paper Duty; the disestablishple, or of a class, there should be an im- ment of the Irish Church; the University pulse in the direction of individual liberty, Tests Act, these measures have all largely threatening to swallow up every other ele- increased the liberty of the individual, but ment in the constitution. And this im- they have at the same time destroyed much pulse undoubtedly exists. As we have of that corporate life, in which if we shown, the prevailing tendencies in our art may use the phrase the personality of and letters, which we have noticed, began the State found, rightly or wrongly, a mode after the first Reform Bill, and, from that of expression. Nor have the ideals which date to 1867, the ruling influences of the have been abolished been replaced by any nation proceeded almost entirely from the just equivalents. The middle classes exmiddle classes. The watchword of these cel in the virtue of domesticity and the classes has always been liberty. Through- arts of commerce. But these, though out our history they have performed the they are the foundation of liberty, are not most valuable services to the State in pre- the end of national life. The unswerving serving the balance of the constitution. aim of Liberalism, however, has been to It was in great part through their cour-identify the life of England with the ageous resolution that religious independence was secured at the Reformation. The staunch support which they gave to the cause of civil liberty carried the nation through the long struggle which ended with the settlement of 1688. As the chief counterpoise to the powers lodged in the monarchical part of the constitution, their influence has always been beneficially exercised. But it has been far otherwise when events have elevated them into the preponderating power of the State. When the monarchy fell in the civil wars, the middle and Dissenting classes usurped for a moment the direction of affairs. What All this we believe to be contrary to the happened? Those who had shown them- true spirit of the English constitution, selves so well qualified to defend the prin- which, like the genuine art described by ciple of liberty, were found to be utterly Reynolds, seems to involve "an assemdevoid of the instinct of government. blage of contrary qualities, mixed in such They produced Fifth-Monarchy men, Lev-proportions that no one part is found to ellers, Antinomians, in abundance, but not counteract the other." It is, indeed, not a single Parliament which could fuse into surprising that the long period of Liberal a new harmony the dissolving elements of supremacy should have produced a fixed the constitution. A great man repressed belief in the mind of Liberal leaders that for a while their anarchical aspirations, but | Liberalism, or the middle-class self, and

homely and commercial character of the middle classes, as if they alone were the makers and maintainers of the English constitution. The Englishman's house has always been his castle. Liberal policy would make his counting-house into his church, his parish into his country, and himself into the world. The basis of England's power is her commerce; Liberalism accordingly seeks to restrict the national action to buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest, and encourages among every class of the people one dominant passion-money-making.

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business profits, as a sublime, if isolated, spectacle of self-conscious morality.

England are identical terms, nor that, like | and is exhorted to exhibit herself to the Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Lowe, they should backsliding nations of the Continent, from accordingly indulge in grotesque carica- the secure vantage-ground of her enormous tures of their rivals' policy. Mr. Gladstone is not likely to change his opinion, that his own ideal has an equivalent in the law of things. But the country perceived that when the principle of liberty in his hands ceased to be one of negation and destruction, when it endeavored to shape itself into a constructive form, it ceased to be liberty in the English sense of the word. Liberty then appeared in the shape of Mr. Bruce's Licensing Bill; in the disregard of law in the Collier and Ewelme Rectory appointments; and in the use of the royal prerogative to accomplish the personal will of the first minister of the crown, at the expense of the rights of one branch of the legislature.

Again, the immoderate extension of the idea of individual liberty has weakened the old English love of national independence. Mr. Gladstone's belief in a new law of nations "recognizing independence, frowning upon aggression, favoring the pacific and not the bloody settlement of disputes, and aiming at permanent rot temporary adjustments," is founded on the revolutionary dream of the perfectibility of man, and of the moral "solidarity" produced by the progress of democracy. But it is opposed alike to our experience of our own nature and to the teaching of history. It is true, as Burke says, that And not only did liberty suffer in the England is one member of a community hands of those who pretended to be its of nations bound together by moral sentiforemost champions, but almost every ments, rising originally out of a common principle of life in the nation was dwarfed political and religious system. Great efand enfeebled by their policy. The char- forts have been made by men of the acter of the people of England is not highest genius to bring this European solely commercial; it is monarchical, aris- community under "a tribunal of paratocratic, warlike, and religious. How many mount authority." Charlemagne, who was of its inborn energies then must be sup- able to legislate throughout his empire pressed by the despotism of a single "for the correction of abuses, the refor principle of action; how inevitable it is mation of manners, the economy of his that these energies, driven in upon them- farms, the care of his poultry, and even selves, should cease to co-operate towards the sale of his eggs; "Gregory VII., the harmonious development of the na- who sought to make all the kingdoms of tion! The aristocracy has its wealth and Europe fiefs of the Church; both claimed position ready made; the exclusive na- to be the arbiters of the West; and had tional worship of money narrows to ungen- their pretensions been founded on reason erous limits its opportunities of political they might fairly have hoped to realize action. The Church listens to the words them, at a time when mankind were united of her Founder, "Ye cannot serve God by common law, common language, and and mammon; she sees the heart of the common religion. They failed; the spirit nation apparently devoted to the service of of local liberty was too strong for them; mammon; it is scarcely wonderful then, the boundaries of nature, the ambition of if one powerful party within her pale kings, the diversities of national language, should, with a deplorable recklessness, cry and the genius of national art, all fostered for separation from the State. Art finds in the instincts of Gothic independence as the prevailing atmosphere of trade little opposed to the ideal of imperial centralizathat is pleasing to the imagination; the tion. What probability is there, now that foolish cry, "Art for art's sake" is conse- the passion of the European nations for quently heard. The poet turns his eyes independence has been so clearly proved inward and begins to analyze the workings by history, when religion itself has beof his own mind; the painter seeks for come a cause of division between these liberty in a purely artificial revival of an- nations, and their various characters are tique forms. The professor of taste or so sharply defined in their laws, arts, lan"culture" will have nothing whatever to guages, and literatures, that they will ever do with the vulgarity of current politics. submit their liberties to the judgment of a "My ardent young Liberal friends," he tribunal, so rash, wavering, and destructive says, "keep aloof from the arena of as democratic opinion? There is but one politics at present, and promote_within system by which in these days the sense yourselves an inward working." Foreign of European kinship and of national indepolicy becomes an obsolete phrase. En

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gland is congratulated on her insularity,

LIVING AGE.

VOL. XXVI.

1302

Gibbon, Roman Empire, chapter xlix.

pendence can be preserved, and that, as Burke justly observes, is the balance of

power.

To maintain public law, the sole bulwark of national independence, has ever been the leading motive of genuine English statesmen. Advantageously placed by nature, and strong in the genius of her people, England has been for centuries the chief barrier against aggression. And if this love of independence has characterized the nation in the past, it is doubly and trebly necessary that it should do so in the present:

Hoc opus, hoc studium, parvi properemus et ampli,

Si patriæ volumus, si nobis vivere cari.

Not only have the institutions of English freedom been established all over the globe; not only is England the pledged champion of the smaller free societies of Europe, but the forces of aggression against which she has to contend are infinitely stronger than in earlier times. We have seen the great representative of absolute force in Europe deliberately violate the public law, while what is ironically called the European Areopagus, including ourselves, who by our honor, our interests, our traditions, were bound to resist the aggression, sat indifferently looking on.

It is, indeed, high time that England should resume her "responsibilities." But in the view of Mr. Gladstone, and, so far as we can gather from the speeches and writings of the recess, of Liberals generally, England's responsibilities are even now more than she can bear. "The truth is," they say, "that, turn where we will, we are met on every side with proofs that the cares and the calls of the British empire are already beyond the strength of those who govern it." Mr. Gladstone looks forward with serene composure to the day when commercial supremacy shall pass from England to America. Mr. Lowe thinks it a grave misfortune that we ever acquired possession of India, and accuses the ministry of leading the country astray from the true paths of "happiness," which would appear to lie in money-making and engineering. We must-such can be the only inference-retrench our expenses, contract our frontiers, and leave the field to some hardier and younger race. What would Demosthenes have said to such despondency as this? "I do not wonder," he would have said, "that the Russians, who are ever on the alert, get the better of you who sit still and delay; I say, I do not wonder at this at all. On

the contrary, the wonder would have been if we, who had left undone everything which men in our position ought to have done, had obtained the advantage over those who had done everything that they ought. What I do wonder at is thisthat you, men of England, who once maintained the struggle with Napoleon on behalf of European law, who abstained, in spite of your many opportunities, from all private aggrandizement, who sacrificed your properties and risked your persons that Europe might have justice, now shrink from service and hesitate to tax

yourselves when your own empire is in peril; and, after preserving the liberties of other countries, collectively and individually, sit down quietly to the loss of your own."* The man who did not despair of making Athens, with all her scattered maritime empire, the centre of a Grecian confederacy against the common foe, would never have admitted that the chief danger to the wealthiest country in the world lay in her physical incapacity to protect her extended possessions against foreign attacks. He would have seen that our peril was, as it had been with his own countrymen, a domestic one; that if it ever arose, it would be in the shape of a disinclination, on the part of the people, to make sustained efforts; in a readiness to disbelieve in all dangers not immediately present; in the failure to bear without murmuring burdens undertaken for the sake of ideal objects; above all, in the perverted ingenuity of party spirit, rancorously persisting in ascribing every act of political opponents to base and ignoble motives.

We are happy to think that it is not the Tory party, the party that upholds constitutional authority, which has given utterance to despairing sentiments, or which has shrunk from incurring "responsibility." It was by daring to undertake responsibility that Englishmen created their empire. England understands the saying "Noblesse oblige," and the word which she sets highest in her vocabulary is duty. From the day when Clive at Chandernagore said, "We cannot stop here," to the day when the hero of Lucknow bade his friends inscribe over his grave: "Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty," there has never been a great public servant of this country who has feared to undertake the responsibility his position required of him. The government, in acting on their own responsibility, have acted

*Paraphrased from Demosthenes, Olynth. B. 25.

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constitutionally, and their action will not | said in 1873, "Nothing is so likely to be misinterpreted by the nation. The En- recruit the exhausted powers of our poets glish people understand that the ministry, as admission of fresh air from the outer so far from starting a novel policy of their world."* At that date the insularity of own, have been rather endeavoring, as Lord our foreign policy, and the apparently Salisbury puts it, to gather up the threads boundless prospects of our trade, seemed of English tradition which Liberal policy to have deadened the instincts of the people had so rudely broken. They see that the to the sense of national honor. But a Tories maintain the authority of the sover- change has come; we are once again in eign, not in her mere personal capacity, communion with the world; and it only but as the representative of the majesty of remains to be seen whether the rising repEngland. The imperial instinct the gov-resentatives of our art and literature will ernment have encouraged is not the in- reflect the feeling of the nation in their flated self-esteem by which, according to ideal region, by restoring the old traditions Mr. Lowe, every Englishman comes to of English taste. imagine himself an Alexander or a Sesostris, but the legitimate pride the Englishman feels in the inheritance transmitted to him by the valor of Clive and Welling. ton, by the statesmanship of Chatham and Hastings. And the empire they are resolved to defend is not, as Mr. Gladstone pretends, a disjointed property of leagues and acres, but a vast moral and political system, involving the highest interests of mankind, the empire of constitutional liberty.

Two events of the greatest interest in connection with our subject have lately occurred. The first is the institution of the Society for the Elevation of the Stage, mentioned by the Bishop of Manchester at the Church Congress in Sheffield. We observed that the bishop, in his speech on the occasion, very characteristically appealed to the middle classes as the people from whom the elevating impulse was to proceed, and that the course which he advised them to adopt was a policy of abIn conclusion, we turn once more from stention. Whenever they disapproved of a politics to taste. If, as we hold, the recent play on the score of morality, they were action of the government amounts to a to mark their disapprobation by staying reassertion of the true life and character away; then the managers would find that of England, and if the policy thus inaugu- immoral exhibitions did not pay. We venrated is to be permanent, then we shall ture to prophesy that no reform will ever see a reflection of this spirit in our art. be effected by this negative policy, or by As the passion for liberty has prevailed in making money in any shape the standard Society over respect for authority, so in art of art. As far as the influence of public the rage for analysis has weakened the taste is brought to bear upon the character spirit of action. The union of art and of the drama, we want an active intervensociety, which in the days of Reynolds, tion of that which is best in all classes, the and even in those of Scott, was so close, refinement of the upper classes, the sound has been completely severed. At a time morality of the middle classes, the energy when the fate of his country is in the bal- of the lower classes. But the reform must ance, the English poet is found dreaming be initiated on the stage itself. Managers, of earthly paradises, and the English authors, and actors, like ministries, must painter is delineating the incidents of the have courage, and believe that their audimodern nursery, or the manners of media-ences do themselves injustice in their presval music parties. Nor can it be said that, ent standard of taste. It will not do in society, the generous feeling of equality merely to revive the plays of Shakespeare between those who provide imaginative on the stage, though that in itself is much; pleasure and those who pay for it, so preva- we need dramatists who will write in the lent in the early part of this century still spirit of Shakespeare, plays imbued with exists. What, however, if the ancient love the genius of true action, historic or poreturn, the artist relinquishing his prefer-etic, comedies at once healthy and wellence for cliques and coteries, society dis- bred, melodramas (for after all a good carding its vulgar belief in the inferiority of melodrama is not to be despised) which art to the money by which art is rewarded, have nothing to do with the order of modand both recognizing that their highest ern life. interests lie in preserving and reflecting the historic spirit of their national consti

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tution?

Writing in opposition to the tide of individualism, which was then at its height, we

The other event to which we allude is the election of a new president to the chair

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once occupied by Sir Joshua Reynolds. | with variety; the annals of India to inspire The choice of the Academicians is in every him with romance. In his endeavor to way worthy of the institution they repre- re-establish the broken links of national sent. Sir Frederick Leighton at least tradition, he may move at first with cannot be said to have lowered the dignity something of stiffness, but he can encourof his art by any ignoble concessions to age himself by reflecting on the success what is false and vulgar in contemporary that attended the generous aims of the taste. With a true admiration for the old school of the Carracci, who revived paintmasters, an exquisite sense of ideal beauty, ing in Italy at a time when all the true and perfect technical accomplishment, all principles of composition seemed to have his pictures exhibit unmistakably a love of been forgotten. If the English artist conpainting for its own sake. May we not tinue to work in a similar temper, his task venture to hope that, sharing so largely as will become lighter with familiarity; conhe does in the gifts of the most illustrious genial subjects will occur to him; his style of his predecessors, the painter of the will insensibly adapt itself to the circum"Procession in Honor of Cimabue's Ma- stances of his age; and he will find that, donna," will, under a new sense of respon- by following the spirit of the English consibility, impress, both by precept and exam- stitution, he has touched the heart of the ple, on the students of the Royal Academy, English people. the greatness of that old and noble English spirit which lives in the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds? We cannot claim Mr. Ruskin as an authority in our favor; but it is a pleasure to us to quote his true and eloquent observations on the influence of national spirit on art:

It is a fact more universally acknowledged than enforced or acted upon, that all great painters, of whatever school, have been great only in their rendering of what they had seen and felt in their early childhood; and that the greatest among them have been most frank in acknowledging their inability to treat anything successfully but that with which they had been familiar. The "Madonna" of Raffaele was born on the Urbino Mountains, Ghirlandajo's is a Florentine, Bellini's a Venetian; there is not the slightest effort, on the part of any one of these great men, to paint her as a Jewess.

AUTHOR OF

A DOUBTING HEART.

BY MISS KEARY,
CASTLE DALY," ",

OLDBURY," ETC.

CHAPTER XXI.

A LORD OF BURLEIGH.

THE windows of Air Throne stood wide open, and an incessant melody of rumbling wheels in the street far below, and shrill twittering of sparrows in the eaves, came through, with now and then a hot puff of smoke from a neighboring chimney, bringing a cloud of smuts to settle unheeded on the bare tables and the empty easel. The place had a strangely forlorn, unused look, Apply this principle to all the branches in spite of the spring sunshine that poured of English art and imaginative literature; in at the casements and made dusty let it be extended to what is historic and squares of light on the floor. There was fundamental in English society; let it be however no one to notice its unnatural apinterpreted by what is classic in the prac-pearance but Mildred West, who, having tice of English painters, poets, dramatists, and novelists; by the disciplined freedom of Reynolds, and Wilkie, and Turner; by the monarchical liberty of Shakespeare; by the republican orderliness of Milton; by the chivalrous common sense of Scott; let this be done, and we shall acquire a basis of authority, by starting from which the artist may become a law to himself. Voluntary his obedience will be, but it will be at the same time unqualified. Yet his application of established principles will by no means lead him to the mere reproduction of ancient forms. Wide regions of imagination are still open for his invention to explore. He has the history of this country to raise his ideas of action; the fresh life of the colonies to furnish him

suddenly recollected that more than three weeks ago she had promised Christabel Moore to attend to the airing of her rooms in her absence, had rushed up and thrown the windows wide. Then, having spied out a book of Katharine's, left on a distant dusty shelf, she carried it to the hearthrug, and was now seated before the empty grate, with her elbows propped on the skeleton's box, greedily devouring the contents of her prize. Of late Mildie's opportunities of securing a free half-hour for the absorbed reading which was a prime necessity of existence with her, had been too rare to admit of her being at all fastidious as to the circumstances under which the treat was taken. She could read standing upright on the stairs, while the

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