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diff --git a/old/67825-0.txt b/old/67825-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 428c826..0000000 --- a/old/67825-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,11150 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Views and Opinions, by Ouida - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Views and Opinions - -Author: Ouida - -Release Date: April 13, 2022 [eBook #67825] - -Language: English - -Produced by: KD Weeks, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was - produced from images generously made available by The - Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIEWS AND OPINIONS *** - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - Transcriber’s Note: - -This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects. -Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. - -Footnotes have been moved to follow the paragraphs in which they are -referenced. - -Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please -see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding -the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation. - - - - - - - - - VIEWS AND OPINIONS - - - - - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - VIEWS AND OPINIONS - - - - - - - BY - OUIDA - AUTHOR OF ‘UNDER TWO FLAGS,’ ‘SANTA BARBARA,’ ETC. - - - - - - - METHUEN & CO. - 36 ESSEX STREET, W.C. - LONDON - 1895 - - - - - TO - W. H. MALLOCK - - AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF PERSONAL REGARD - AND INTELLECTUAL ADMIRATION - - - - - Except two, all these Essays have previously appeared in the - _Fortnightly Review_ and the _North American Review_. - - - - - CONTENTS - - PAGE - THE SINS OF SOCIETY, 1 - CONSCRIPTION, 34 - GARDENS, 45 - O BEATI INSIPIENTES! 55 - CITIES OF ITALY, 87 - THE FAILURE OF CHRISTIANITY, 111 - THE PASSING OF PHILOMEL, 131 - THE ITALY OF TO-DAY, 145 - THE BLIND GUIDES OF ITALY, 160 - L’UOMO FATALE, 188 - THE NEW WOMAN, 205 - DEATH AND PITY, 223 - SHELLEY, 254 - SOME FALLACIES OF SCIENCE, 281 - FEMALE SUFFRAGE, 302 - VULGARITY, 327 - THE STATE AS AN IMMORAL FACTOR, 347 - THE PENALTIES OF A WELL-KNOWN NAME, 368 - THE LEGISLATION OF FEAR, 382 - - - - - THE SINS OF SOCIETY - - ‘Ses divertissements sont infiniment moins raisonnables que - ses ennuis.’—PASCAL. - -A brilliant and daring thinker lately published some admirable papers -called ‘Under the Yoke of the Butterflies.’ The only thing which I would -have changed in those delightful satires would have been the title. -There are no butterflies in this fast, furious and fussy age. They all -died with the eighteenth century, or if a few still lingered on into -this, they perished forever with the dandies. The butterfly is a -creature of the most perfect taste, arrayed in the most harmonious -colours: the butterfly is always graceful, leisurely, aerial, unerring -in its selection of fragrance and freshness, lovely as the summer day -through which it floats. The dominant classes of the present day have -nothing in the least degree akin to the butterflies; would to Heaven -that they had! Their pleasures would be more elegant, their example more -artistic, their idleness more picturesque than these are now. They would -rest peacefully on their roses instead of nailing them to a ballroom -wall; they would hover happily above their lilies and carnations without -throwing them about in dust and dirt at carnivals. - -Butterflies never congregate in swarms; it is only locusts which do -that. Butterflies linger with languorous movement, always softly -rhythmical and undulating even when most rapid, through the sunny air -above the blossoming boughs. The locust is jammed together in a serried -host, and tears breathlessly forward without knowing in the least why or -where he goes, except that he must move on and must devour. There is -considerable analogy between the locust and society; none between -society and the butterfly. But be the yoke called what it will, it lies -heavily on the world, and there is no strength in the strongest -sufficient to lift it up and cast it off, for its iron is Custom and its -ropes are Foolishness and Bad Example, and what is termed Civilisation -carries it as the steer carries the nose-ring and the neck-beam. - -Some clever people have of late been writing a great deal about society, -taking English society as their especial theme. But there are certain -facts and features in all modern society which they do not touch: -perhaps they are too polite, or too politic. In the first place they -seem to except, even whilst attacking them, smart people as elegant -people, and to confuse the two together: the two words are synonymous in -their minds, but are far from being so in reality. Many leaders of the -smart sets are wholly unrefined in taste, loud in manner, and followed -merely because they please certain personages, spend or seem to spend -profusely, and are seen at all the conspicuous gatherings of the season -in London and wherever else society congregates. This is why the smart -sets have so little refining influence on society. They may be common, -even vulgar; it is not necessary even for them to speak grammatically; -if they give real jewels with their cotillon toys and have a perfect -artist at the head of their kitchens, they can become ‘smart,’ and -receive royalty as much and as often as they please. The horrible word -smart has been invented on purpose to express this: smartness has been -borrowed from the vocabulary of the kitchenmaids to express something -which is at the top of the fashion, without being necessarily either -well born or well bred. Smart people may be both the latter, but it is -not necessary that they should be either. They may be smart by mere -force of chance, impudence, charm, or the faculty of making a royal -bored one laugh. - -It is, therefore, impossible for the smart people to have much influence -for good on the culture and manners of the society they dominate. A -_beau monde_, really exclusive, elegant and of high culture, not to be -bought by any amount of mere riches or display, would have a great -refining influence on manner and culture, and its morality, or lack of -it, would not matter much. Indeed, society cannot be an accurate judge -of morality; the naughty clever people know well how to keep their -pleasant sins unseen; the candid, warm-hearted people always sin the -sole sin which really injures anybody—they get found out. ‘You may break -all the ten commandments every day if you like,’ said Whyte Melville, -‘provided only you observe the eleventh, “Thou shalt not be found out.”’ -There is a morality or immorality, that of the passions, with which -society ought to have little or nothing to do; but there is another kind -with which it should have a good deal to do, _i.e._, the low standard of -honour and principle which allows persons in high place to take up -_richards_ for sheer sake of their wealth, and go to houses which have -nothing to recommend them except the fact that convenient rendezvous may -be arranged at them, or gambling easily prosecuted in them. But it is -not society as constituted at the present year of grace which will have -either the courage or the character to do this. Theoretically, it may -condemn what it calls immorality and gambling, but it will always -arrange its house-party in accord with the affinities which it -sedulously remembers and ostensibly ignores, and will allow bac’ to -follow coffee after dinner rather than illustrious persons should pack -up and refuse to return. - -At risk of arousing the censure of readers, I confess that I would leave -to society a very large liberty in the matter of its morality or -immorality, if it would only justify its existence by any originality, -any grace, any true light and loveliness. In the face of its foes lying -grimly waiting for it, with explosives in their pockets, society should -justify its own existence by its own beauty, delicacy and excellence of -choice and taste. It should, as Auberon Herbert has said, be a centre -whence light should radiate upon the rest of the world. But one can only -give what one has, and as it has no clear light or real joy within -itself it cannot diffuse them, and in all probability never will. ‘The -Souls’ do, we know, strive in their excellent intentions and their -praiseworthy faith to produce them, but they are too few in numbers, and -are already too tightly caught in the tyres of the great existing -machinery to be able to do much towards this end. After all, a society -does but represent the temper of the age in which it exists, and the -faults of the society of our time are the faults of that time itself; -they are its snobbishness, its greed, its haste, its slavish adoration -of a royalty which is wholly out of time and keeping with it, and of a -wealth of which it asks neither the origin nor the solidity, and which -it is content only to borrow and bask in as pigs in mud. - -It is not luxury which is enervating; it is over-eating, over-smoking, -and the poisoned atmosphere of crowded rooms. Edmond de Goncourt likes -best to write in a grey, bare room which contains nothing to suggest an -idea or distract the imagination. But few artists or poets would desire -such an _entourage_. Beauty is always inspiration. There is nothing in a -soft seat, a fragrant atmosphere, a well-regulated temperature, a -delicate dinner, to banish high thought; on the contrary, the more -refined and lovely the place the happier and more productive ought to be -the mind. Beautiful things can be created independently of place; but -the creator of them suffers when he can enjoy beauty only in his dreams. -I do not think that the rich enjoy beauty one whit more than the poor in -this day. They are in too great a hurry to do so. There is no artistic -enjoyment without repose. Their beautiful rooms are scarcely seen by -them except when filled with a throng. Their beautiful gardens and parks -are visited by them rarely and reluctantly. Their treasures of art give -them no pleasure unless they believe them unique, unequalled. Their -days, which might be beautiful, are crammed with incessant engagements, -and choked with almost incessant eating. - -In England the heavy breakfasts, the ponderous luncheons, the long, -tedious dinners, not to speak of the afternoon teas and the liqueurs and -spirits before bedtime, fill up more than half the waking hours; -‘stoking,’ as it is elegantly called, is the one joy which never palls -on the human machine, until he pays for it with dyspepsia and gout. -People who live habitually well should be capable of denying their -appetites enough to pass from London to Paris, or Paris to London, -without wanting to eat and drink. But in point of fact they never dream -of such denial of the flesh, and they get out at the buffets of Boulogne -and Amiens with alacrity, or order both breakfast and dinner, with wines -at choice, in the club-train. A _train de luxe_ is, by the way, the -epitome and portrait of modern society; it provides everything for the -appetite; it gives cushions, newspapers and iced drinks; it whirls the -traveller rapidly from capital to capital; but the steam is in his -nostrils, the cinder dust is in his eyes, and the roar of the rattling -wheels is in his ears. I do not think that plain living and high -thinking are a necessary alliance. Good food, delicate and rich, is like -luxury; it should not be shunned, but enjoyed. It is one of the best -products of what is called civilisation, and should be duly appreciated -by all those who can command it. But feeding should not occupy the -exaggerated amount of time which is given to it in society, nor cost the -enormous amount of money which is at present spent on it. - -Luxury in itself is a most excellent thing, and I would fain see it more -general, as the luxury of the bath was in Imperial Rome open to one and -all; with the water streaming over the shining silver and snowy marbles, -and the beauty of porphyry and jade and agate gleaming under the silken -awning, alike for plebeian and patrician. It is not for its luxury for a -moment that I would rebuke the modern world: but for its ugly habits, -its ugly clothes, its ugly hurry-skurry, whereby it so grossly -disfigures, and through which it scarcely even perceives or enjoys the -agreeable things around it. - -Luxury is the product and result of all the more delicate inventions and -combinations of human intelligence and handicraft. To refuse its graces -and comforts would be as unwise as to use a rudely-sharpened flint -instead of a good table-knife. A far more lamentable fact than the -existence of luxury is that it is so little enjoyed and so rarely made -general. We deliberately surrender the enjoyment of the luxury of good -cooking because we most stupidly mix up eating with talking, and lose -the subtle and fine flavours of our best dishes because we consider -ourselves obliged to converse with somebody on our right or our left -whilst we eat them. We neutralise the exquisite odours of our finest -flowers by the scent of wines and smoking dishes. We spoil our -masterpieces of art by putting them together pell-mell in our rooms, -smothered under a discordant mingling of different objects and various -styles. We allow nicotines to poison the breath of our men and women. We -desire a crowd on our stairs and a crush in our rooms as evidence of our -popularity and our distinction. We cannot support eight days of the -country without a saturnalia of slaughter. We are so tormented by the -desire to pack forty-eight hours into twenty-four, that we gobble our -time up breathlessly without tasting its flavour, as a greedy schoolboy -gobbles up stolen pears without peeling them. Of the true delights of -conversation, leisure, thought, art and solitude, society _en masse_ has -hardly more idea than a flock of geese has of Greek. There is in the -social atmosphere, in the social life of what is called ‘the world,’ a -subtle and intoxicating influence which is like a mixture of champagne -and opium, and has this in common with the narcotic, that it is very -difficult and depressing to the taker thereof to leave it off and do -without it. As La Bruyère said of the court life of his time, it does -not make us happy but it makes us unable to find happiness elsewhere. -After a full and feverish season we have all known the reaction which -follows on the return to a quiet life. There is a magnetic attraction in -the great giddy gyrations of fashionable and political life. To cede to -this magnetism for a while may be highly beneficial; but to make of it -the vital necessity of existence, as men and women of the world now do, -is as fatal as the incessant use of any other stimulant or opiate. - -The great malady of the age is the absolute inability to support -solitude, or to endure silence. - -Statesmanship is obscured in babbling speech; art and literature -are represented by mere hurried impressions snatched from -unwillingly-accorded moments of a detested isolation; life is -lived in a throng, in a rush, in a gallop; the day was lost to -Titus if it did not record a good action; the day is lost to the -modern man and woman unless it be spent in a mob. The horror of -being alone amounts in our time to a disease. To be left without -anybody else to amuse it fills the modern mind with terror. ‘La -solitude n’effraie pas le penseur: il y a toujours quelqu’un dans -la chambre,’ a witty writer has said; but it is the wit as well as -the fool in this day who flies from his own company; it is the -artist as well as the dandy who seeks the boulevard and the crowd. - -There is nothing more costly than this hatred of one’s own company, than -this lack of resources and occupations independent of other persons. -What ruins ninety-nine households out of a hundred is the expense of -continual visiting and inviting. Everybody detests entertaining, but as -they all know that they must receive to be received, and they cannot -bring themselves to support solitude, people ruin themselves in -entertainment. There can scarcely be a more terrible sign of decadence -than the indifference with which the _grands de la terre_ are everywhere -selling their collections and their libraries. Instead of altering the -excessive display and expenditure which impoverish them, and denying -themselves that incessant amusement which they have grown to consider a -necessity, they choose to sell the books, the pictures and the -manuscripts which are the chief glories of their homes; often they even -sell also their ancestral woods. - -This day, as I write, great estates which have been in the same English -family for six hundred years are going to the hammer. This ghastly -necessity may be in part brought about by agricultural depression, but -it is far more probably due to the way of living of the times which must -exhaust all fortunes based on land. If men and women were content to -dwell on their estates, without great display or frequent entertainment, -their incomes would suffice in many cases. It is not the old home which -ruins them: it is the London house with its incessant expenditure, the -house-parties with their replica of London, the women’s toilettes, the -men’s shooting and racing and gaming, the Nile boat, the Cairene winter, -the weeks at Monte Carlo, the Scotch moors, the incessant, breathless -round of intermingled sport and pleasure danced on the thin ice of debt, -and kept up frequently for mere appearances’ sake, without any genuine -enjoyment, only from a kind of false shame and a real inability to -endure life out of a crowd. - -There is a stimulant and a drug, as I have said, in the curious mixture -of excitement and _ennui_, of animation and fatigue, produced by -society, and without this mixture the man and woman of the world cannot -exist; and to find the purchase-money of this drug is what impoverishes -them, and makes them indifferent to their own degradation, and sends -their beautiful old woods and old books and old pictures to the shameful -uproar of the sale-rooms. If the passion for the slaughter of tame -creatures which is almost an insanity, so absorbing and so dominant is -it, could be done away with in England, and the old houses be really -lived in by their owners all the year round with genuine affection and -scholarly taste, as they were lived in by many families in Stuart and -Georgian days, their influence over the counties and the villages would -be incalculable and admirable, as Mr Auberon Herbert and Mr Frederick -Greenwood have recently said; and the benefit accruing to the fortunes -of the nobles and gentry would be not less. - -It is not only in England that men have become bored by and neglectful -of their great estates. All over Italy stand magnificent villas left to -decay or tenanted by peasants, the lizard creeping in the crevices of -forgotten frescoes, the wild vine climbing over the marbles of abandoned -sculptures, the oranges and the medlars falling ungathered on the -mosaics of the mighty and desolate courts. Why is this? In the earlier -centuries men and women loved pleasure well, and had few scruples; yet -they loved and honoured their country houses, and were happy in their -fragrant alleys and their storied chambers, and spent magnificently on -their adornment and enrichment with a noble pride. It is only now in the -latest years of the nineteenth century that these superb places are left -all over Europe to dust, decay, and slow but sure desolation, whilst the -owners spend their time in play or speculation, call for bocks and -brandies in the club-rooms of the world, and buy shares in mushroom -building companies. - -Marion Crawford observes dryly ‘that it is useless to deny the enormous -influence of brandy and games of chance on the men of the present day.’ -It is indeed so useless that no one who knows anything of our society -would dream of attempting to deny it, and if we substitute morphia for -brandy, we may say much the same of a large proportion of the women of -the present day. Drinking and gambling, in some form or another, is the -most general vice of the cultured world, which censures the island -labourer for his beer and skittles, and condemns the continental workman -for his absinthe and lotteries. It is a strange form of progress which -makes educated people incapable of resisting the paltry pleasures of the -green-table and the glass; a strange form of culture which ends at the -spirit frame, the playing cards, and the cigar box. The poor Japanese -coolie amongst the lilies and lilacs of his little garden is surely -nearer both culture and progress than the drinker and the gambler of the -modern clubs. - -Reflect on the enormous cost of a boy’s education when he belongs to the -higher strata of social life, and reflect, also, that as soon as he -becomes his own master he will, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, -take advantage of his liberty only to do what Crawford’s young Don -Orsino does, _i.e._, drink brandy, gamble at bac’, and try to gain -admittance into the larger gaming of the Bourses. It will certainly be -allowed by any dispassionate judge, that a better result might be -arrived at with such exorbitant cost; that a nobler animal ought to be -produced by such elaborate and wholly useless training. - -Drinking and gambling (in varied forms it is true, but in essence always -the same) are the staple delights of modern life, whether in the rude -western shanty of the navvy, the miner and the digger, or in the -luxurious card-rooms of the clubs and the country houses of the older -world. We have even turned all the rest of creation into living dice for -us, and the horse trots or gallops, the dog is fastened to the -show-bench, the pigeon flies from the trap, even the rat fights the -terrier that our fevered pulses may beat still quicker in the unholy -agitation of a gamester’s greed. - -We are great gamblers, and the gambler is always a strangely twisted -mixture of extravagance and meanness. Expenditure is not generosity; we -are lavish but we are not liberal; we will waste two thousand pounds on -an entertainment, but we cannot spare five pounds for a friend in -distress. For the most part we live not only up to but far beyond our -incomes, and the necessary result is miserliness in small things and to -those dependent on us. - -‘Ses divertissements sont infiniments moins raisonnables que ses -ennuis,’ says Pascal of the society of his day, and the statement stands -good of our own. Society has no pleasure which is graceful or elevating, -except music; but music listened to in a crowd loses half its influence; -and it is an insult to the most spiritual of all the arts to regard it, -as it is regarded in society, as a mere interlude betwixt dinner and the -card-table. There is little except music which is beautiful in the -pageantries of this day. A ball is still a pretty sight if it takes -place in a great house, and if not too many people have been invited. -But except this, and this only in a great house, all entertainments are -unsightly. No decoration of a dinner-table, no gold plate, and orchidæ, -and electric light, and old china can make even tolerable, artistically -speaking, the sight of men and women sitting bolt upright close together -taking their soup around it. A full concert-room, lecture-room, church, -are a hideous sight. A garden party in fair weather and fine grounds -alone has a certain grace and charm; but garden parties, like all other -modern spectacles, are spoilt by the attire of the men, the most -frightful, grotesque and disgraceful male costume which the world has -ever seen. When the archæologists of the future dig up one of our bronze -statues in trousers they will have no need to go further for evidence of -the ineptitude and idiotcy of the age. What our historians call the dark -ages had costumes, alike for the villein and the seigneur, adapted to -their needs, serviceable, picturesque and comely; this age alone, which -vaunts its superiority, has a clothing for its men which is at once -utterly unsightly, unhealthy, and so constructed that all the bodily -beauty of an Apollo or an Achilles would be obscured, caricatured, and -deformed by it. The full height of its absurdity is reached when the -glazier comes in his black suit to mend your windows, and brings his -working clothes in a bundle to be put on ere he works and put off ere he -goes into the street. The political incapacity with which the natives of -Ireland are charged by English statesmen never seemed to me so -conclusively proven as by their persistence in wearing ragged tail-coats -and battered tall hats in their stony fields and on their sodden bogs. A -man who cannot clothe his own person reasonably is surely a man -incapable of legislating for himself and for his kind. This rule, -however, if acted on, would disfranchise Europe and the United States. - -To a society which had any true perception of beauty, grace, or -elegance, the masher would be impossible; the shoulder-handshake, the -tall hat, the eternal cigarette, the stiff collar, the dead birds on the -ball-dresses and bonnets, the perspiring struggles of the sexes on the -tennis ground, and a thousand other similar things would not be for a -moment endured. To a society which had any high standard of refinement -such entertainments as are appropriately called ‘crushes’ would be -insupportable; the presence and the speeches of women on public -platforms would be intolerable; all the enormities of the racecourse -would be abhorrent; its fine ladies would no more wear dead -humming-birds upon their gowns than they would wear the entrails of dead -cats; its fine gentlemen would no more gather together to murder -hand-fed pheasants than they would shoot kittens or canaries; to a truly -elegant society everything barbarous, grotesque and ungraceful would be -impossible. - -An incessant and _maladif_ restlessness has become the chief -characteristic of all cultured society nowadays: it is accounted a -calamity beyond human endurance to be six months at a time in one place; -to remain a year would be considered cause for suicide. The -dissatisfaction and feverishness which are the diseases of the period -are attributed to place most wrongly, for change of place does not cure -them and only alleviates them temporarily and briefly. Here, again, the -royal personages are the first offenders and the worst examples. They -are never still. They are never content. They are incessantly -discovering pretexts for conveying their royal persons here and there, -to and fro, in ceaseless, useless, costly and foolish journeys. - -Every event in their lives is a cause or an excuse for their indulgence -in the _pérégrinomanie_; if they are well, they want change of scene; if -they are ill, they want change of air; if they suffer a bereavement, -nothing can console them except some agreeable foreign strand; and the -deaths, births and marriages of their innumerable relations furnish them -with continual and convenient reasons for incessant gyrations. In all -these multiplied and endless shiftings of place and person the -photographs fly about in showers, and the gold and silver offerings are -tendered in return on bended knees. - -It must be confessed that royalty confirms and keeps up many usages and -obligations of society which are absurd and unpleasant, and which -without royal support would die a natural death. - -What can be more absurd, more childish, and more utter waste of money -than the salutes with which it is the custom to celebrate the going and -coming, the births and the deaths, of these royal people? The savage who -expresses his joy by discharging his rusty musket is deemed a silly -creature; but the civilised nation is less excusably silly which -expresses its pleasure, its grief, and its homage by means of this hard, -ugly, unpleasant noise which has no sense in it, and blows away in smoke -vast sums of money which might easily be better spent. It is a barbarous -practice, and it is difficult to comprehend a civilised world tamely -submitting to its continuance. - -The most vulgar form of salutation, the shake-hands, has been adopted -and generalised by princes, until it is now usual in countries where it -was unknown in the beginning of the century. Nothing can be more -ludicrous and ungraceful, or more disagreeable, than the ‘pump-handling’ -which is common in all ranks of society, and which great personages -might easily have abolished altogether. They think it makes them -popular, and so they resort to it on every suitable and unsuitable -occasion. There can be no possible reason why people should go through -this unpleasant action, and few sights are more absurd than to see two -elderly gentlemen solemnly sawing each other’s arms up and down as they -meet before the doorsteps of their club. The slight smile and scarcely -perceptible bend of the head which are all with which well-bred people -recognise their acquaintances at a reception or a ball, is fully -sufficient for all purposes of recognition at any period of the day, and -can amply preface conversation. The pressure of hands should be left to -lovers, or to friends in moments of impulses of emotion; on leave-taking -before, or on welcome after, a long absence. There are many men still in -Europe, not all old men either, who know how to greet a woman, and bend -low over her hand and touch it lightly with their lips; and how -graceful, how respectful, how suggestive of homage is that courtly -salutation! It is the fault of women that it has become the exception, -not the rule. - -If we had Charles the First on the throne of England, and Louis Quatorze -on the throne of France, whatever political difficulties might come of -it, manners would certainly be considerably altered, corrected and -refined. The influence of some great gentleman might do much to purge -the coarseness and commonness of society out of it; but such a personage -does not exist, and if he did exist, the Augean stable would probably be -too much for his strength. He would retire, like Beckford, to some -Fonthill and build a Chinese Wall between him and the world. - -But alas! the vulgarity of the age is at its highest in high places. The -position of sovereigns and their descendants is one which should at -least allow them to be the first gentry of their countries in feeling as -they are in precedence and etiquette; they might, were they capable of -it, set an example of grace, of elegance, and of purity of taste. Strong -as is the revolutionary leaven amongst the masses, the force of snobbism -is stronger still, and all habits and examples which come from the -palace are followed by the people with eager and obsequious servility. -If, when princes and princesses were united in wedlock, they ordained -‘No presents,’ the abominable blackmail levied by betrothed people on -their acquaintances would cease to be fashionable, and would soon become -‘parcel and portion of the dreadful past.’ If, when princes and -princesses paid the debt of nature, the Court officials sent out the -decree ‘No flowers,’ all other classes would take example, and the -horrible, senseless barbarism of piling a mass of decaying wreaths and -floral crosses upon a coffin and a grave would pass to the limbo of all -other extinct barbaric and grotesque customs. But they are careful to do -nothing of the kind. The bridal gifts are too welcome to them; and the -funeral baked meats are too savoury; and all the royal people all over -Europe unite in keeping up these tributes levied from a groaning world. -Modern generations have made both marriage and death more absurd, more -banal, and more vulgar than any other period ever contrived to do; and -it is not modern princes who will endeavour to render either of them -simple, natural and dignified, for the essence and object of all royal -life in modern times is vulgarity, _i.e._, publicity. - -Of all spectacles which society flocks to see, it may certainly be said -that the funeral and the wedding are the most intolerably coarse and -clumsy. There is indeed a curious and comical likeness between these -two. Both take place in a crowd; both are the cause for extortion and -expenditure; both are attended unwillingly and saluted with false -formulæ of compliment; both are ‘seen out’ and ‘got through’ with sighs -of relief from the spectators; and both are celebrated with the -sacrifice of many myriads of flowers crucified in artificial shapes in -their honour. - -Hymen and Pallida Mors alike grin behind the costly and senseless -orchids and the sweet dying roses and lilies of the jubilant nurseryman. -The princes and the tradespeople have in each case decreed that this -shall be so; and society has not will or wisdom enough to resist the -decree. - -A poet died not long ago and left amongst his farewell injunctions the -bidding to put no flowers on his bier. The wise press and public -exclaimed, ‘How strange that a poet should hate flowers!’ Poor fools! He -loved them so deeply, so intensely, that the tears would start to his -eyes when he beheld the first daffodils of the year, or leaned his lips -on the cool pallor of a cluster of tea roses. It was because he loved -them so well that he forbade their crucified beauty being squandered, to -fade and rot upon his coffin. Every true lover of flowers would feel the -same. Nothing more disgusting and more offensive can be imagined than -the cardboard and wires on which the tortured blossoms are fastened in -various shapes to languish in the heated atmosphere of a _chambre -ardente_, or in the sickly and oppressive air of a mortuary chamber. All -the designs which serve to symbolise the loves of cook and potboy on St -Valentine’s Day are now pressed into the service of the princely or -noble mourners; harps, crowns, crosses, hearts, lyres, and all the trash -of the vulgarest sentiment are considered touching and exquisite when -hung before a royal catafalque or heaped upon a triple coffin of wood, -lead and velvet. In all these grotesque and vulgar shapes the innocent -blossoms are nailed, gummed, or wired by workpeople, grinning and -smoking as they work, and the whole mass is heaped together on bier, in -crypt, or on monument, and left to rot and wither in sickening emblem of -the greater corruption which it covers. - -The fresh-gathered flowers laid by maidens’ hands on the wet hair of -Ophelia, or the white breast of Juliet, might have beauty both natural -and symbolical. One spray of some best-loved blossom, placed by some -best-loved hand on the silenced heart, may have the meaning and be the -emblem of the deepest feeling. To put softly down upon a bed of moss and -rose-leaves the dead white limbs of a little child may have fitness and -beauty in the act. To go in the dusk of dawn into the wet, green ways of -gardens, silent save for the call of waking birds, and gather some bud -or leaf which was dear to our lost love, and bear it within to lie with -him where we can never console or caress him in his eternal solitude: -this may be an impulse tender and natural even in those first hours of -bereavement. But to arise from our woe to order a florist to make a harp -of lilies with strings of gold or silver wire; to stay our tears, to -break the seals of boxes come by rail from Nice and Grasse and Cannes: -this indeed is to fall into bathos beside which the rudest funeral -customs of the savage look respectable and dignified. - -When we realise what death is and what it means: that never will those -lips touch ours again; that never will that voice again caress our ear; -that never more will our inmost thoughts be mirrored in those eyes; that -never more shall we say, ‘Shall we do this to-day? shall we do that -to-morrow?’ that never more can we go together through the grass of -spring, or together watch the sun drop down behind the hills; that never -can we ask pardon if our love were fretful, human, weak; that never more -can there be communion or comprehension; that all is silent, lonely, -ended, an unchanging and unchangeable desolation:—when we realise this, -I say, and think that there are persons who, left to this awful -solitude, can give orders to floral tradesmen and take comfort in toys -of cardboard and wire, we may be pardoned if we feel that the most -bitter scorn of the cynic for human nature is flagellation too merciful -for its triviality and folly. - -Truly, in nine times out of ten it is but a conventional and unreal -sorrow which thus expresses itself; truly, out of the millions of deaths -which take place there are but few which create deep and abiding grief; -still, the association of these elaborate artificial wreaths and -garlands, these stiff and crucified blossoms, with the tomb would only -be possible to the most vulgar and insensible of generations, even as -decoration, even as mere common-place compliment, whilst to the true -lover of flowers they must be ever a distressing outrage. - -In Lopez de Vega’s _Diego de Alcala_ the humble servant of a poor -hermit, lowliest of the low, begs pardon of the flowers which he gathers -for the chapel, and begs them to forgive him for taking them away from -their beloved meadows. This is a worthier attitude before those divine -children of the dews and sun than the indifference of the lovers of the -flower carnival or the funeral pageant. - -If a daisy were but as scarce as a diamond, how would the multitudes -rush to adore the little golden-eyed star in the grass! - -One of the most exquisitely beautiful things I ever saw in my life was a -thick tuft of harebell glittering all over with dew on a sunny morning -where it grew on a mossy wall. It was not worth sixpence, yet it was a -thing to kneel down before and adore and remember reverently for -evermore. - -Who will deliver us, asks George Sala, from the fashionable bridal, from -the eternal ivory satin and the ghastly orange-blossom, and the two -little shavers masquerading as pages? - -The roughest and rudest marriage forms of savage nations are less -offensive than those which are the received and admired custom of the -civilised world. There cannot be a more Philistian jumble of greed, -show, indecency and extravagance than are compressed into the marriage -festivities of the cities of Europe and America. When the nuptials are -solemnised in the country, something of country simplicity and freshness -may enter into them, but almost all fashionable weddings are now taken -to the cities, because a huge enough crowd cannot be gathered together -even in the biggest of big country houses. Often the persons concerned -go to an hotel, or borrow a friend’s mansion for the celebration of the -auspicious event. - -Year after year the same trivial and tiresome usage, the same vulgar and -extravagant customs, the same barbarous and uncouth ceremonies prevail, -and are accepted as sacred and unalterable law. The most intimate, the -most delicate, the most personal actions and emotions of life are set -out in the full glare of light in the most unscreened and most unsparing -publicity; and no one sees the odious and disgusting coarseness of it -all. The more sensitive and refined temperaments submit meekly to the -torture of its commands. - -If marriage, so long as the institution lasts, could become in its -celebration that which decency and good taste would suggest, a simple -and sacred rite with neither publicity nor gaudy expenditure to profane -it, there might come, with such a change, similar alteration in other -ceremonies, and sentiment might have a chance to put in its modest plea -for place unfrightened by the loud beating of the brazen drums of -wealth. In all the annals of the social life of the world there has not -been anything so atrocious in vulgarity as a fashionable wedding, -whether viewed in its greedy pillaging of friends and acquaintances or -in its theatrical pomp of costume, of procession and of banquet. It is -the very apogee of bad taste, incongruity and indecency, from the coarse -words of its rites to its sputtering champagne, its unvaried orations, -and its idiotic expenditure. It is this publicity which is dear to the -soul of our Gaius and Gaia; for were it not so there would be more -special licences demanded, since these are not so costly that -gentle-people could not easily afford to have their marriage ceremony as -entirely private as they pleased. But they would not feel any pleasure -at privacy; they despise it; they are always ready with gag and rouge -for the foot-lights; if they had not an audience the bride and -bridegroom would yawn in each other’s faces. Every ceremony duly repeats -and carefully imitates those which have preceded it. There is no -originality, there is no modesty, there is no dignity or reserve. The -plunder which is called ‘presents’ are laid out on exhibition, and the -feverish anxiety of every bride-elect is to get more presents than any -of her contemporaries. Even the in-door and out-door servants of each of -the two households have this shameless blackmail levied on them; and -gillies subscribe for a hunting-watch, and kitchen-maids contribute to -the purchase of a silver-framed mirror. Scarcely even is a royal or -aristocratic marriage announced than the laundries and the pantries are -ransacked for sovereigns and half-sovereigns to purchase some costly -article to be offered to their princely or noble employers. Imagine the -slaves of Augustus presenting him with a gold whistle, or the comedians -of Louis Quatorze offering him a silver cigar-box! - -But all is fish which comes to the nets of the impecunious great folks -of the _fin de siècle_, and the unhappy households must submit and buy a -propitiatory gift out of their salaries. That households are notoriously -dishonest in our day is but a necessary consequence. Who can blame a -servant if, knowing the blackmail which will be levied on him, he -recoups himself with commissions levied in turn upon tradesmen, or -perquisites gleaned from the wine-cellars? It is said openly, though I -cannot declare with what truth, that all the gifts in gold and silver -and jewels which are offered to princes on their travels by loyal -corporations or adoring colonists are sold immediately, whilst all the -costly boxes and jewelled trifles which such princes are obliged by -custom to leave behind them wherever they have been received are -similarly disposed of by the greater number of their recipients. It is, -perhaps, the reason why royal donors so frequently limit themselves to -the cheap gift of a signed photograph. They know that photographs cannot -be offered to them in return. - -The diffusion of German influence, which has been general over Europe -through the fatality which has seated Germans on all the thrones of -Europe, has had more than any other thing to do with the vulgarisation -of European society. The German eats in public, kisses in public, drags -all his emotions out into the public garden or coffee-house, makes -public his curious and nauseous mixture of sugar and salt, of jam and -pickles, alike in his sentiments and in his cookery, and praises -Providence and embraces his betrothed with equal unction under the trees -of the public square. - -And the influence of courts being immense, socially and personally, -society throughout Europe has been Germanised; scholars love to point -out the far-reaching and deeply penetrating influence of the Greek and -Asiatic spirit upon Rome and Latium; historians in a time to come will -study as curiously the effect of the German influence on the nineteenth -and twentieth centuries, and that of royal houses upon nations in an -epoch when royalty drew near its end. - -It is to German and royal influence that English society owes the -introduction of what are called silver and golden weddings, of which the -tinsel sentiment and the greedy motive are alike most unlovely. Gaius -and Gaia grown old, proclaim to all their world that they have lived -together for a quarter or a half century in order that this fact, -absolutely uninteresting to any one except themselves, may bring them a -shower of compliments and of gifts. They may very probably have had -nothing of union except its semblance; they may have led a long life of -bickering, wrangling and dissension; Gaius may have wished her at the -devil a thousand times, and Gaia may have opened his letters, paid his -debts out of her dower, and quarrelled with his tastes ever since their -nuptials: all this is of no matter whatever; the twenty-five or the -fifty years have gone by, and are therefore celebrated as one long hymn -of peace and harmony, the loving-cup is passed round, and blackmail is -levied on all their acquaintances. ‘Old as he is, he makes eyes at my -maid because she is young and fresh-coloured!’ says Gaia in her -confidante’s ear. ‘The damned old hag still pulls me up if I only look -at a pretty woman!’ grumbles Gaius in his club confidences. But they -smile and kiss and go before the audience at their golden wedding and -speak the epilogue of the dreary comedy which society has imposed on -them and which they have imposed on society. And the buffets of their -dining-hall are the richer by so many golden flagons and caskets and -salvers given by their admiring acquaintances, who are not their dupes -but who pretend to be so in that unending make-believe which accompanies -us from the nursery to the grave. The union may have been virtually a -separation for five-sixths of its term; the ill temper of the man or the -carping spirit of the woman, or any one of the other innumerable causes -of dissension which make dislike so much easier and more general than -affection, may have made of this ‘married life’ an everlasting apple of -discord blistering the lips which have been fastened to it. -Nevertheless, because they have not been publicly separated, the wedded -couple, secretly straining at their chains, are bound after a certain -term of years to receive the felicitations and the gifts of those around -them. - -The grotesqueness of these celebrations does not seem to strike any one. -This century has but little humour. In a witty age these elderly wedded -pairs would be seen to be so comical, that laughter would blow out their -long-lit hymeneal torch, and forbid the middle-aged or aged lovers to -undraw the curtains of their nuptial couches. Love may wither in the -flesh, yet keep his heart alive maybe—yes, truly—but if Love be wise, he -will say nothing about his heart when his lips are faded. - -Old men and women, with grandchildren by the hundred, and offspring of -fifty years old, should have perception enough of the ridiculous not to -speak of a union which has so many living witnesses to its fruitfulness. -The tenderness which may still unite two aged people who have climbed -the hill of life together, and are together descending its slope in the -grey of the coming night, may be one of the holiest, as it is certainly -the rarest, of human sentiments, but it is not one which can bear being -dragged out into the glare of publicity. What is respectable, and even -sacred, murmured between ‘John Anderson my jo, John,’ and his old wife -as they sit in the evening on the moss-grown wall of the churchyard, -where they will soon be laid side by side together for evermore, is -ridiculous and indecent when made the theme of after-dinner speeches and -newspaper paragraphs. No true feeling should ever be trumpeted abroad; -and the older men and women grow, the more bounden on them becomes the -reserve which can alone preserve their dignity. But dignity is the -quality in which the present period is most conspicuously deficient. -Those who possess it in public life are unpopular with the public; those -who possess it in private life are thought pretentious, or old-fashioned -and stiff-necked. - -The French expression for being fashionable, _dans le train_, exactly -expresses what fashion now is. It is to be remarkable in a crowd indeed, -but still always in a crowd, rushing rapidly with that crowd, and no -longer attempting to lead, much less to stem it. Life lived at a gallop -may be, whilst we are in the first flight, great fun, but it is wholly -impossible that it should be very dignified. The cotillon cannot be the -minuet. The cotillon is sometimes a very pretty thing, and sometimes a -very diverting one, but it is always a romp. I would keep the cotillon, -but I would not force every one to join in it. Society does force every -one to do so, metaphorically speaking; you must either live out of the -world altogether or you must take the world’s amusements as you find -them, and they are nowadays terribly monotonous, and not seldom very -unintelligent, and a severe drain upon both wealth and health. Youth, -riches and beauty may have ‘a good time,’ because they contain in -themselves many elements of pleasure; but this ‘good time’ is at its -best not elegant and always feverish; it invents nothing, it satisfies -no ideal, it is full of slavish imitation and repetition, and it is -bored by tedious and stupid ceremonies which everyone execrates, but no -one has the courage to abolish or refuse to attend. - -One is apt to believe that anarchy will sooner or later break up our -social life into chaos because it becomes so appalling to think that all -these silly and ugly forms of display and pompous frivolity will go on -for ever; that humanity will be for ever snobbishly prostrate before -princes, babyishly pleased with stars and crosses, grinningly joyful to -be packed together on a grand staircase, and idiotically impotent to -choose or to act with independence. There appears no possibility -whatever of society redressing, purifying, elevating itself; the -unsavoury crowd at the White House reception and the Elysées ball is -only still more hopelessly ridiculous and odious than the better-dressed -and better-mannered throng at St James’s or the Hofburg. The -office-holder in a republic has as many toadies and parasites as an -archduke or a _kronprinz_. The man who lives in a shanty built of empty -meat and biscuit tins on the plains of Nevada or New South Wales is by -many degrees a more degraded form of humanity than his brother who has -stayed amongst English wheat or Tuscan olives or French vines or German -pine-trees: many degrees more degraded, because infinitely coarser and -more brutal, and more hopelessly soaked in a sordid and hideous manner -of life. All the vices, meannesses and ignominies of the Old World -reproduce themselves in the so-called New World, and become more vulgar, -more ignoble, more despicable than in their original hemisphere. Under -the Southern Cross of the Australian skies, cant, snobbism, corruption, -venality, fraud, the worship of wealth _per se_, are more rampant, more -naked, and more vulgarly bedizened than beneath the stars of Ursa Major. -It is not from the mixture of Methodism, drunkenness, revolver-shooting, -wire-pulling, and the frantic expenditure of _richards_ who were navvies -or miners a week ago, that any superior light and leading, any -alteration for the better in social life can be ever looked for. All -that America and Australia will ever do will be to servilely reproduce -the follies and hopelessly vulgarise the habits of the older -civilisation of Europe. - -What is decreasing, fading, disappearing more and more every year is -something more precious than any mere enjoyment or embellishment. It is -what we call high breeding; it is what we mean when we say that _bon -sang ne peut mentir_. All the unpurchasable, unteachable, indescribable -qualities and instincts which we imply when we say he or she has ‘race’ -in him, are growing more and more rare through the continual alliance of -old families with new wealth. We understand the necessity of keeping the -blood of our racing and coursing animals pure, but we let their human -owners sully their stock with indifference so long as they can ‘marry -money,’ no matter how that money has been made. The effect is very -visible; as visible as the deterioration in the manners of the House of -Commons since neither culture nor courtesy are any longer exacted there, -and as the injury done to the House of Lords by allowing it to become a -retreat for retired and prosperous tradesmen. - -It is reported that Ravachol, who was not especially sound at the core -himself, stated it as his opinion that society is so rotten that nothing -can be done with it except to destroy it. Most sober thinkers, who have -not Ravachol’s relish for the pastimes of crime, must yet be tempted to -agree with him. Who that knows anything at all of the inner working of -administrative life can respect any extant form of government? Who that -has studied the practical working of elective modes of choice can fail -to see that there is no true choice in their issues at all, only endless -wire-pulling? Who can deny that all the legislation in the world must -for ever be powerless to limit the _sub rosa_ influence of the -unscrupulous man? Who can deny that in the struggle for success, honesty -and independence and candour are dead-weights, suppleness and falsehood, -and the sly tact which bends the knee and oils the tongue, are the -surest qualities in any competitor? Who can frame any social system in -which the enormous, intangible and most unjust preponderance of interest -and influence can be neutralised, or the still more unjust preponderance -of mere numbers be counteracted? - -Some thinkers predict that the coming ruler, the working man, will -change this rottenness to health; but it may safely be predicted that he -will do nothing of the kind. He will be at the least as selfish, as -bribable, and as vain, as the gentry who have preceded him; he will be -certainly coarser and clumsier in his tastes, habits, and pleasures, and -the narrowness of his intelligence will not restrain the extravagance of -his expenditure of moneys not his own, with which he will be able to -endow himself by legislation. If Socialism would, in reality, break up -the deadly monotony of modern society, who would not welcome it? But it -would do nothing of the kind. It would only substitute a deadlier, a -still triter monotony; whilst it would deprive us of the amount of -picturesqueness, stimulant, diversity and expectation which are now -derived from the inequalities and potentialities of fortune. The sole -things which now save us from absolute inanity are the various -possibilities of the unexpected and the unforeseen with which the -diversity of position and the see-saw of wealth now supply us. The whole -tendency of Socialism, from its first tentatives in the present trades -unions, is to iron down humanity into one dreary level, tedious and -featureless as the desert. It is not to its doctrines that we can look -for any increase of wit, of grace and of charm. Its triumph would be the -reign of universal ugliness, sameness and commonness. Mr Keir Hardie in -baggy yellow trousers, smoking a black pipe close to the tea-table of -the Speaker’s daughters, on the terrace of the House of Commons, is an -exact sample of the ‘graces and gladness’ which the democratic’ -apotheosis would bestow on us. - -It is not the cap and jacket of the Labour member, or the roar of the -two-legged wild beasts escorting him, which will open out an era of more -elegant pleasure, of more refined amusement, or give us a world more -gracious, picturesque and fair. Mob rule is rising everywhere in a muddy -ocean which will outspread into a muddy plain wherein all loveliness and -eminence will be alike submerged. But it is not yet wholly upon us. -There is still time for society, if it care to do so, to justify its own -existence ere its despoilers be upon it; and it can only be so justified -if it become something which money cannot purchase, and envy, though it -may destroy, cannot deride. - - - - - CONSCRIPTION - - -In a recent interview with Lord Wolseley, the visitor states that he -obtained from that officer the following vehement declaration in favour -of enforced and universal military service:— - -‘You develop his physical power, you make a man of him in body and in -strength, as the schools he had been at previously had made a man of him -mentally. You teach him habits of cleanliness, tidiness, punctuality, -reverence for superiors, and obedience to those above him, and you do -this in a way that no species of machinery that I have ever been -acquainted with could possibly fulfil. In fact, you give him all the -qualities calculated to make him a thoroughly useful and loyal citizen -when he leaves the colours and returns home to civil life. And of this I -am quite certain, that the nation which has the courage and the -patriotism to insist on all its sons undergoing this species of -education and training for at least two or three generations, will -consist of men and women far better calculated to be the fathers and -mothers of healthy and vigorous children than the nation which allows -its young people to grow up without any physical training although they -may cram their heads with all sorts of scientific knowledge in their -national schools. In other words, the race in two or three generations -will be stronger, more vigorous, and therefore braver, and more -calculated to make the nation to which they belong great and powerful.’ - -It is obvious that such a rhapsody could only be uttered by one who has -never studied the actual effects of conscription on a population, but -speaks merely of what he has been led to believe is its effect from what -he has watched on the drill-grounds of countries little otherwise known -to him. It is a sweeping assertion, still less grounded on fact than its -corresponding declaration, that school makes a man of its pupil -mentally, which is by no means always or inevitably the case. I could -not, of course, propose to contravene any purely military statement of a -military celebrity, but this composite and wholesale and most amazing -declaration I do dispute, and I think that I know more of the effects of -compulsory service than does its speaker. Lord Wolseley has never -certainly dwelt, even for a short time, in those countries which are -cursed by conscription. He sees that the battalions of conscripted -armies seem to him to march well and manœuvre finely, and he concludes, -with natural military prejudice, that the results, moral and mental, of -conscription on a nation are admirable, and are unattainable in any -other manner. - -To begin with, he considers evidently as beyond all dispute that the -soldier is the highest type of humanity, which may be doubted, and that -obedience is the highest human virtue, which may be also doubted. All -the finest freedoms of mankind have been obtained, not by obedient, but -by utterly disobedient, persons; persons who, if they had failed, would -have been thrown into prison or sent to scaffolds. Obedience in the -child is the first and the highest virtue, because the whole well-being -of the child, material and moral, depends on it. But the man, to be a -man, must be courageous enough to disobey if disobedience be needed by -honour, justice, or wisdom. There are moments, even in war and even in a -soldier’s life, when the magnificent daring which disobeys is a more -precious quality than the primmer and more decorous one of unquestioning -deference to commands received. In older times the modes of warfare or -the manner of civil life left much freer scope to idiosyncrasy and -choice, much wider space for the play of spirit and originality. Modern -warfare, like modern education, tends yearly to draw tighter the bonds -with which it buckles down all natural growth of character and -possibility of adventure. Mechanical reproduction is the chief note of -military effort as of civil. The soldier, like the civilian, every year -tends more and more to become only one infinitesimal atom of a rivet in -the enormous and overwhelming engine of the State. - -To a young man of genius, or even of merely great talent, it is certain -that the enforced term of military service would be sorely and indelibly -injurious. Genius does not easily obey, and all the harsh, unlovely, -stupid routine of camp and barrack would be so odious to it that a youth -of brilliant gifts and promise might easily be compromised and -condemned, continually and fatally, in his passage through the ranks. -Even were such a youth obedient to his duties, the sheer waste of time, -the dispiriting influences of a long period of tedious, irksome, and -detested occupations, would have the most depressing and dwarfing effect -upon his talent. History teems with instances, which it would be -tiresome to enumerate, in which revolt and refusal have produced for the -world all that we most prize of liberty, of conscience, and of conduct. -Revolt and refusal are disobedience, and they have frequently been quite -as noble and fruitful as the more passive virtue of obedience, which not -seldom has taken the form of timorous submission to, and execution of, -conscious wrong. Would Lord Wolseley have admired or condemned a -_mousquetaire_ of the Louvre who should have refused to fire on the -Huguenots from the windows? - -But were obedience the first of virtues, conscription does not teach it: -it enforces it, which is a very different thing. You do not put a -quality into a man because you taught him and forced from him by fear -the simulacrum of it. Because the conscript has for a term of years, to -his bitter hatred and despite, been compelled to obey at the point of -the bayonet, he does not thereby become a more willingly obedient man; -he will, on the contrary, as soon as he is set free, revenge himself by -insubordination to his parents, his employers, his superiors, in all the -ways which may be open to him. The obedience exacted from the soldier is -taken by force: he obeys because he knows that those stronger than -himself will punish him badly if he do not. This is not an ennobling -sentiment, nor is it one which can lend any beauty or nobility to a -character. You are not a better or a kinder master because you have been -a slave, nilly-willy, for three of the best years of your life. -Obedience which is rendered out of true veneration may be a tonic to the -nature which is bent by it; but the obedience which is merely rendered, -as all conscripts’ obedience is, because if it be not given the irons -and the cell will follow, does no one any moral good, teaches no virtue -which can be productive hereafter. There is no servant, groom, artisan, -farm-labourer, or hireling of any kind so lazy, so impudent, so -insubordinate, and so useless as the young man who has recently come out -from his term of compulsory service. It is natural that it should be so. -As we cannot create morality by Act of Parliament, so we cannot create -character by the knapsack and the cross-belts. Family education, even -school education, can in a measure mould character, because it is the -long, free, malleable, tender years of childhood and boyhood upon which -it works; but after twenty-one, the character does not vitally alter -much, though it will assimilate vice and vanity with fatal quickness. -When Lord Wolseley utters the preposterous declaration that the -education given by conscription teaches a lad ‘all the qualities -calculated to make him a thoroughly useful and loyal citizen,’ has he -the least idea of what is the actual moral state of the barrack-yards -and barrack-rooms of the armies of the continent? Has he ever reflected -on the inevitable results of the pell-mell confusion with which the -clean-living young sons of gentle-people and commercial people are flung -together with the lowest ruffians from the cellars of the cities and the -caves of the mountains? Will he even credit how constantly the healthy, -hard-working, obedient lad from the farmside or the counting-house, who -left his people, happy in his duties and clean in body and mind, comes -back to them, when his time is over, cankered body and soul, eaten up by -disease, scornful of simple ways, too useless to work, too depraved to -wed, too puffed up with foul desires and braggart conceits to earn the -bread which he considers his father and brothers bound to labour to -provide for him? - -When the youth has had purity and strength of character and of mind -enough to resist the contagion in which he has been steeped, he will in -nine instances out of ten be a spoilt agriculturist, artisan, student, -labourer. He has been torn from his chosen pursuit at the moment when he -had begun to fairly master it, and he is spoilt for it, he is out of -joint with it, he forgets its cunning. If he were engaged in any of -those arts which require the utmost delicacy of touch, the ends of his -fingers have become coarse, rough, blunted, and have lost all their -sensitiveness; the porcelain-painters, the jewellers’ artificers, the -makers of the inimitable _articles de Paris_, suffer immeasurably from -the injury done to their finger-tips by barrack work; whilst on the -other hand the horny palms of the lads who push the plough and use the -spade have grown so softened by what is to them the lighter work of the -barracks, that they writhe with pain when they go out on their farms and -the skin soon is stripped off the raw flesh. - -To a military commander it is natural that the diffusion of the military -temper should appear the beau ideal of improvement. Every class has its -own intrinsic vanity, and sees in itself the salt and savour of society. -But in truth there is a distinct menace to the world, in the present -generalisation of the military temper, which is and must always be -accompanied by narrowness and domination. What the young man acquires -from his years of enforced service is much more often the hectoring and -bullying temper characteristic of the soldier to the civilian, than it -is the obedience, humility and loyalty which Lord Wolseley believes that -he brings away with him. It is certainly most unjust that the soldier -should be regarded, as in England, inferior to the civilian, and hustled -out of theatres and concert-rooms; but it is still worse for the -community when the soldier can fire on citizens, slash at greybeards, -and run through children with impunity, as he can do in Germany, at his -will and pleasure. - -The very rules and qualities which are inevitable for the well-being of -the soldier are injurious to the character of the civilian: mill-like -routine, and unquestioning acceptance of orders, are not the makers of -virile or high-minded men in civil life, however necessary they may be -in battalions. Linesmen and gunners are admirable and useful persons, -but they are not the supreme salt of the earth that we should endeavour -to make all humanity in their likeness. The military education creates a -certain sort of man, an excellent sort of man in his way, and for his -purpose; but not the man who is the best product of the human race. - -The story of Tell may be a myth or a fact, but whichever it be, the -refusal to bow to the cap on the pole represents a heroism and a temper -finer than any which militarism can teach, and which are, indeed, -altogether opposed to it Even were the regiment the school which Lord -Wolseley is pleased to believe it, why should he suppose that there are -no others as good or better? The old apprenticeships, which have been -done away with, were strict in discipline and insistent on obedience, -and they are now considered too severe in consequence. Yet they were -schools which kept a youth constantly within the practice of his art or -trade. Conscription takes him away from it. It unsettles a young man at -the precise moment in his life when it is most necessary that he should -be confirmed in his tastes for and practice of his chosen occupation. It -sends him from his village to some city, perchance hundreds of miles -away, and keeps shifting him from place to place, imbuing him with the -sickly fever of unrest, which is the malady of the age, and rendering -his old, quiet, home-rooted life impossible to him. There can be nothing -worse for him than the barrack life; at times very harsh and onerous and -cruel, but with long, lazy pauses in it of absolute idleness, when the -lad, lying in the sun on the stone benches, dozes and boozes his hours -away, and the vicious rogue can poison at will the ear of the simple -fool. - -Lord Wolseley considers it an admirable machinery for creating citizens; -it is not so, because the individual it creates is a mere machine, with -no will of his own, with all virility and spirit beaten and cursed out -of him, with no ideal set before him but to wait on the will of his -corporal or captain. A soldier is at no time a good ‘all round’ man; the -military temper and standard are, and must be, always narrow. In its -most odious and offensive forms, as in Germany, it amounts to a brutal -and most dangerous tyranny, overbearing in its intolerable vanity, and -holding civilian life of no more account than dust. - -Lord Wolseley seems to imagine that where conscription exists every man -serves. In no country does every man serve. Even in Germany a very large -proportion escape through physique or through circumstances, through -voluntary mutilation or emigration. It is fortunate that it is so, for I -can conceive nothing so appalling to the world as would be the forcing -of the military temper down the throats of its entire multitudes. -Militarism is the negation of individuality, of originality, and of true -liberty. Its sombre shadow is spread over Europe; its garotting collar -of steel is on the throat of the people. ’Forty-eight has produced -nothing better than the universal rule of the tax-gatherer and the -gendarme. The French Republic has the same corruption, the same -tyrannies, and the same coercion by bayonets for which the two Empires -were reviled. Germany is a hell of despotism, prosecution and espionage. -Russia, a purely military nation, is given up to torture, corruption, -filth, and drunkenness. Italy has recovered political freedom only to -fall prostrate at the feet of her old foe, who has ‘the double beak to -more devour.’ This is all that militarism and its offspring, -conscription, has done for the three nations who most loudly protested -their free principles. In the latter, at least, the whole people sweat, -groan, perish under the burdens laid upon them for the maintenance of -the vast battalions of young men imprisoned in barrack-yards in enforced -idleness and semi-starvation, whilst the fruitful lands of the Veneto, -of Apulia, of the Emilia, of Sardinia, and of Calabria lie untilled -under the blue skies, the soil crying for its sons, the spade and the -scythe rusting whilst the accursed sabre and musket shine. - -When the gain of what is termed a whole nation under arms is estimated, -the exaggeration of the pompous phrase hides the nakedness of the fact -that large numbers of young men are lost to their country by the means -to which they resort to escape military service. In Italy and Germany -these may be counted by legions: in France fugitives from the military -law are less numerous, because in France men are more wedded to the -native soil, and take to service more gaily and more naturally, but in -Italy and Germany thousands flock to emigrant ships, thus choosing -lifelong self-expatriation; and every year, as the military and fiscal -burdens grow heavier, will lads go away by preference to lands where, -however hard be the work, the dreaded voice of the drill-sergeant cannot -reach them, and they can ‘call their soul their own.’ Patriotism is a -fine quality, no doubt, but it does not accord with the chill and -supercilious apathy which characterises the general teaching and temper -of this age, and a young man may be pardoned if he deem that his country -is less a mother worthy of love than a cruel and unworthy stepmother, -when she demands three of the fairest years of his life to be spent in a -barrack-yard, and wrings his ears till the blood drops from them, or -beats him about the head with the butt of a musket, because he does not -hold his chin high enough, or shift his feet quickly enough. - -For a hundred years humanity in this generation has been shouting, -screaming, fighting, weeping, chaunting, bleeding in search and struggle -for various forms of what has been called liberty. The only result -hitherto deducible from this is the present fact that the nations of -Europe are all watching each other like a number of sullen and -suspicious dogs. We are told that this is peace. It is such excellent -and perfect peace that it is merely their mutual uncertainty of each -other’s strength which keeps them from flying at each other’s throats. -It is not peace which Europe enjoys; it is an armed truce, with all the -exhausting strain on the body politic and on the exchequer which must -accompany such a state of things. Conscription enables this state of -tension to exist, and the impatience which conscription excites in the -people renders them perpetually thirsty and feverish for war. They fancy -that war would end it; would give them some good in return for all their -sufferings. ‘We cannot go on like this,’ is the universal feeling on the -Continent; it is the feeling created by conscription. Conscription is -the pole-axe with which the patient labourer or citizen is brained, and -it is cut from the wood of his own roof-tree. It is possible, probable, -that conscription will be enforced in England also, with the many other -forms of servitude which democracy assures us is liberty; but it is -certain that when it is so, the country will be no longer the England -which we have known in history. - - - - - GARDENS - - -In the charming essay called ‘Caxtoniana’ there is a passage on gardens -which is supremely true, and which reminds us that whoever has a garden -has one chamber roofed by heaven in which the poet and philosopher can -feel at home. This passage was written beside a bay-window opening on -the stately and beautiful gardens of the great author’s home: to few is -it given to possess such; but of any garden a certain little kingdom may -be made, be it only green enough and well removed from city noise. Even -within cities, little gardens, such as may be seen in the Faubourg St -Martin and the Marais, where the population is poorest and densest, may -be charmingly pretty, and a great solace to those who care for and look -on them; and it is these little nooks and corners of gardens which give -so much of its joyous and glad aspect to the whole of Paris. The great -beauty of Rome (now since the Italian occupation irrevocably destroyed) -was in the gardens; the shadowy, noble, antique gardens, with the -embalmed breath of the past on their air, and the eternal youth of their -flowers running wild over funeral sepulchre and fortress wall. It is -their gardens which make the ancient cities and towns of Belgium so full -of repose, of friendliness, of the calm of Nature and the romance of -history. Public gardens, like public parks, may be beautiful, useful, -health-giving, pleasure-giving; but still they must ever be public -gardens: it is the private gardens, the green places dedicated to -thought and to affection, which alone are lovable, and which alone make -a home possible, even amidst the network of crowded streets. - -It would be difficult for a Thoreau or a Wordsworth, for Alfred Austin -or for Alphonse Karr, to find much pleasure in a public garden even -historic as that of the Luxembourg, wondrous as those of the East, or -beautiful as that of the Borghese in Rome or the English garden of -Munich. Wherever intrusion is possible, and any movement other than that -of birds is heard, we have no garden in the fullest, sweetest sense of -the word. The lover of his garden is inevitably and essentially -exclusive. He must be so, or the magic charm of his domain is gone. It -may be a tiny plot fenced round by a privet or box hedge, or it may be -stately pleasaunces walled in by clipped yew and gay terraces; but it -must be his alone; his to wander in, to cherish, to dream through, -undisturbed. A public garden is a valuable pleasure-ground for a city; -but is no more a garden ‘roofed by heaven,’ in Bulwer-Lytton’s sense of -the word, than life in a hotel and at a _table d’hôte_ is a home. - -Gardens tend sadly to become more and more artificial with the -ever-increasing artificiality of an age which, whilst demanding nature -from its art and literature, becomes itself, with every breath it draws, -farther and farther removed from nature. The great gardens of great -houses in England, esteemed the finest gardens in the world, are spoiled -for those who love them by the innumerable gardeners, by the endless and -overdone sweeping and cleaning and clipping and pruning. A garden, like -a woman may be too neat, too stiff, too _tiré à quatre éping les_. The -remorseless brooms and barrows in autumn trundle away all the lovely -carpet of golden and crimson leaves, and deprive the nightingales, when -they come in spring, of their favourite and most necessary retreat. -Sweep the paths, if you will, though even they need not be swept as -smooth as a billiard-table; but to sweep and clear away the leaves from -under the shrubberies, and from about the roots of trees, is a fatal -error, most destructive to the trees themselves. - -‘Corisande’s garden,’ in ‘Lothair,’ is the ideal garden; and it is -pathetic to think that, as an ideal, it was given to the world by one -esteemed of all men the coldest and most world-hardened. But Disraeli -had a warm and enduring devotion to flowers in his nature, and their -loveliness and innocence and ‘breath of heaven’ never failed to touch -the soul which slumbered behind that glittering, artificial, and -merciless intelligence. He rightly abhorred the elaborately-patterned -beds, the dazzling assorted colours, the formal mosaic of hues, in which -the modern gardener delights. All the sweet-smelling, and what are now -called old-fashioned, flowers are hustled out of the way by the -bedding-out system and the present craze for geometrical arrangement. -Numbers of delicious flowers which were dear to the heart of Herrick, -fragrant, homely, kindly, hardy things, have been banished almost out of -all knowledge, that the pelargonium, the dahlia, the calceolaria, the -coleus, and various other scentless but fashionable flowers may fill -group and border. It is a mistake. Even the petunia and the dwarf -datura, though so sweet at sunset, cannot give such fragrance as will -yield the humble favourites of yore—the musk-plants, the clove-pinks, -the lavender, the lemon-thyme, the moss-rose, the mignonette, and many -another sweet and simple plant which is rarely now seen out of cottage -gardens. - -Educated taste will spend large sums of money on odontozlossom, catleyia -and orchid, whilst it will not glance perhaps once in a lifetime at the -ruby spots on the cowslip bells and the lovely lilac or laburnum flowers -blowing in a wild west wind. It will be a sorry day for the flowers and -the nation when the cottage gardens of England disappear and leave the -frightful villa garden and the painfully mathematical allotment field -alone in their stead. An English cottage, such as Creswick and -Constable, as old Crome and David Cox saw and knew them, and as they may -still be seen, with roses clambering to the eaves, and bees humming in -the southern-wood and sweetbriar, and red and white carnations growing -beside the balsam and the dragon’s-mouth, is a delicious rural study -still linked, in memory, with foaming syllabub and ruddy cherries, and -honey-comb yellow as amber, and with the plaintive bleating of new-born -lambs sounding beyond the garden coppice. Who that knows England has not -some such picture—nay, a hundred such pictures—in his recollection? - -And it is in these gardens that Shakespeare’s, Milton’s, Ben Jonson’s -‘posies’ may still be gathered; every flower and floweret of them still -known by such names as Ophelia and Perdita gave them. Even in winter -they are not wholly dreary or colourless; for there are their -holly-bushes, their hellebore, their rosethorn, their hepatica, and -their snowdrops to enliven them. In these times, when all the ‘realism’ -of the lives of the poor is considered to lie in squalor, famine, crime, -drunkenness, and envy, it is pleasant to know that such cottage gardens -as these are still extant, though no longer frequent, in the land of -Shakespeare and Ben Jonson; and that often, behind the door where the -climbing white rose mounts to meet the thatch, there are still good -humour, thrift, cheerfulness and cleanliness to be found in company with -that manly content in existing circumstances which is the only form of -durable happiness or solid virtue. - -Children should never be allowed to pluck flowers, even in the fields -and hedges, merely to throw them aside; they should be early taught -reverence for this floral beauty which is around them, and never be -permitted wantonly to break down boughs and branches, or fill their laps -with buttercups and daisies only to leave them withered in the sun, -discarded and forgotten. To teach the small child to care for flowers, -to place them tenderly in water when gathered, and cherish them -carefully in his nursery, is not only to give him a valuable moral -lesson, but to lead him also to a taste and feeling which will give him, -when he grows to manhood, many glad and innocent hours, and render him -thoughtful and sympathetic when he deals with those sensitive -plants,—the souls of women. - -A love for flowers indicates the quickness for imagination and the -delicacy of sentiment of those in whom it is strong. It will also be -almost always accompanied by a feeling for all other kinds of natural -beauty and woodland life. It would be difficult to love the rose without -loving the nightingale, or cherish the hawthorn without caring for the -thrushes that build in it. The fatal tendency of modern life is to -replace natural by artificial beauty, where beauty is not driven out of -the way altogether. Every child who is led to feel the loveliness of the -water-lily lying on the green pond-water, or of the wild hyacinth -growing in the home-wood grasses, will, as he grows up, lend his -influence and his example to the preservation of all rural and sylvan -loveliness. - -In the great world, and in the rich world, flowers are wasted with -painful prodigality. The thousands and tens of thousands of flowers -which die to decorate a single ball or reception are a sad sight to -those who love them. ‘The rooms look well to-night,’ is the utmost that -is ever said after all this waste of blossom and fragrance. It is waste, -because scarcely a glance is bestowed on them, and the myriad of roses -which cover the walls do not effectively make more impression on the eye -than the original silk or satin wall-hanging which they momentarily -replace. Growing plants may be used in thousands for decoration without -waste, but the inordinate display of cut flowers is a pitiable -destruction of which scarcely one guest in fifty is sensible. In bowls -and baskets and jars, cut flowers can live out their natural space; but -nailed on walls, or impaled on wires, they are soon faded and yellow, -and the ballroom in the morning is as melancholy a parable of the -brevity of pleasure as any moralist could desire. - -Church decoration is not a whit better; flowers are wantonly sacrificed -to it, and in the winter the birds are starved through it for need of -the evergreen berries torn down in woods and gardens to adorn the altars -of men. The numbers of dead birds found in frost and snow on moor and -field have increased enormously with the increase in church decoration. -A sheaf of grain hung up for the seed-eating birds in winter, with some -trays of meal-worms put on the ground for the insectivorous birds, would -be a more useful form of piety than the cartload of branches and the -garlands of berries given to church and cathedral. - -The young should be led to cherish their flowers as wisely as, and more -tenderly than, they cherish their gold and silver pieces in their -money-boxes. The exquisite beauty of even the humblest blossom can only -be appreciated by the eyes which gaze on it with attention and -affection. If the wild thyme, or the shepherd’s-purse, or the -cuckoo’s-eye, or any one of the tiny blossoms of the sward and the -hedge-row were but as rare as sapphires are, the whole world would -quarrel for them; but Nature has sown these little treasures broadcast -with lavish hand, and scarcely any one is grateful. A single flower, if -taken care of in winter, will gladden the eyes of an invalid or cripple -for days; with care and thought for it a bunch of cut flowers, if cut at -sunrise with the dew upon them, will live the week out in water in any -cool weather; but these lovely, joy-giving things are wasted with the -most reckless indifference. - -Botany may be well in its way; but incomparably better is the practical -knowledge of how to make flowers grow, and infinitely better still is -the tenderness which turns aside not to tread on the wild flower in the -path, not to needlessly disturb the finch’s nest in the blossoming -broom. Of all emotions which give the nature capable of it the purest -and longest-lived pleasure, the sense of the beauty of natural things is -the one which costs least pain in its indulgence, and most refines and -elevates the character. The garden, the meadow, the wood, the orchard, -are the schools in which this appreciative faculty is cultured most -easily and enjoyably. Dostoïevsky may find food for it on the desolate -steppe, and Burns in the dreary ploughed furrow; but to do this, genius -must exist in the man who feels: it is to the ordinary sensibilities, -the medium mind, the character which is malleable, but in no way -unusual, that this training of the eye and of the heart is necessary: -and for this training there is no school so happy and so useful as a -garden. - -All children, or nearly all, take instinctive delight in gardens: it is -very easy to make this delight not merely an instinctive, but an -intelligent one; very easy to make the arrival of the first crocus, the -observation of the wren’s nest in the ivy hedge, of the perennial -wonders of frost and of sunshine, of the death and the resurrection of -Nature, of the deepest interest to a young mind athirst for marvels. -Then what greater joy and triumph does the world hold than these of the -child gardener with his first bouquet of roses, his first basket of -water-cress, his first handful of sweet peas! His garden, if he be -taught to care for it in the right way, will be an unceasing happiness -to him; he will not grudge the birds a share of his cherries, for he -will value too well the songs they sing to him; he will breathe in the -fresh home balm of the dewy sweet herbs, the wet flower borders, and he -will draw in health and vigour with every breath; and if he reads his -fairy stories and his lays of chivalry under the blossoming limes, -poetry and history will keep for him in all after time something of his -first garden’s grace, something of the charm of a summer playtime. - -If we did not know it as a fact, we should infer from the whole tenor of -the verse of Tennyson that green old gardens, deep in their shade and -placid in their beauty, had been about him all his life from infancy. -The garden is a little pleasaunce of the soul, by whose wicket the world -can be shut out from us. In the garden something of the Golden Age still -lingers; in the warm alleys where the bees hum above the lilies and the -stocks, in the blue shadows where the azure butterflies look dark, in -the amber haze where the lime leaves and the acacia flowers wave -joyously as the west wind passes. - -The true lover of a garden counts time and seasons by his flowers. His -calendar is the shepherd’s calendar. He will remember all the events of -his years by the trees or plants which were in blossom when they -happened. ‘The acacias were in flower when we first met,’ or ‘the -hawthorns were in blossom when we last parted,’ he will say to himself, -if not to others; and no lovers are happier, or more spiritually in love -than those whose sweetest words have been spoken in a garden, and who -have fancy and feeling enough to associate their mute companions in -memory with their remembered joys. No love can altogether die which -comes back upon remembrance with every golden tuft of daffodil or every -garland of growing honeysuckle. It is the garden scene in ‘Faust,’ it is -the garden scene in ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ which embody passion in its -fullest and its fairest hours. - - - - - O BEATI INSIPIENTES! - - -‘Blessed are the poor in spirit,’ says the Evangelist: he should have -added, Blessed are the fools, the commonplace, the obscure, the -mediocre; blessed those who have done nothing remarkable, thought -nothing noteworthy, created nothing beautiful, and given nothing fair -and fine to their generation! Unmolested may they dwell; unharassed may -they live their lives at their own pleasure, unwatched may they take -their daily walks abroad, ungrudged may they find happiness, unmolested -may they indulge their grief. Their nursery days may rest forgotten; -they will not be ransacked for reminiscences of childish petulance or -babyish frowardness. Their school years may rest in the past, -undisturbed by the grubbing of chroniclers and commentators, amongst the -playground dust, and between the pages of the gradus. Their faults and -follies will lie quiet in the grave, and no contemporary schoolfellow -will recall their thefts of apples or their slips in parsings; or will -write to the newspapers how they used a crib or smashed a tradesman’s -windows. Unworried, unenvied, unmisrepresented, they will pass through -life inglorious, but at peace; and amongst the ashes of their buried -years no curious hands will poke and rake in feverish zeal to find -traces in their infancy of their bad passions, and drag out the broken -pieces of the rattles or the ninepins they destroyed. - -How ignorant is genius of what it does when it leaps up to the light of -its sunrise! how little it recks of the hornet swarm which will circle -round its head, of the viper brood which will coil round its ankles, of -the horde of stinging, prying, buzzing, poisoning insects which will -thicken the air as it passes, and hide in the heart of the roses it -gathers! - -It is not only the fierce light which beats upon a throne which genius -has to bear, but the lurid glare of the sulphur fires of envy, making -livid what is white, making hideous what is fair, making distorted and -deformed what is straight and smooth and comely. - -The world holds a concave mirror to the face of genius, and judges the -face by the reflection. - -The calm consciousness of power in the great writer, in the great -artist, will always appear vanity to the majority, because the majority -is incapable of seeing how entirely different to vanity it is, and how, -if arrogant in the world, it is always humble in the closet; if it be -conscious of its own superiority to its contemporaries, it will be none -the less conscious of its inferiority to its own ideals. The intimate -union of pride and of humility, which is characteristic of all genius, -and pre-eminently sincere in it, can never be understood by the world at -large. - -Flaubert, as we know, corrected, effaced, reconstructed, erased and -altered every line of his text a hundred times, in careless -dissatisfaction with himself; but when an editor of a review asked him -to make some corrections in the proof of St Julian Hospitador, he -haughtily replied to the meddler: ‘_Des corrections?—j’en donne -quelquefois, mais je n’en fais jamais!_’ Inexorable self-scourger in his -study or his studio, the man of genius is high-mettled and arrogant as -an hidalgo before interference. How should the fool understand this?—the -fool who deems himself perfect when strutting before his mirror, but is -downcast before the first mocking glance or ridiculing word which he -encounters in the public street! - -Humanity loves to scoff, and say that genius is human. No doubt it is; -but its humanity is always of a different kind to that of ordinary men. -The nightingale is classified by naturalists amongst the tribe of the -Sparrows, in the class of the Finches; but this fact does not make the -nightingale only a sparrow, or only a finch. The nightingale sees life -and nature very differently to the sparrow, though his physical -organisation may, in some respects, resemble his kinsman’s. It is one -thing to sit on the housetops and drink rinsings from the gutter, and -another to sit on a myrtle bough and drink dew from the heart of a rose. -How shall those to whom the rinsings are sweet be able to judge those -for whom the rose is chalice-bearer? - -In a recent monograph upon his friend Meissonier, Alexandre Dumas has -quoted some petulant and childish sayings of the great painter which -would have been better left in oblivion. Dumas prefaces them by the -phrase ‘J’ai entendu Meissonier dire, mais peut-être, il est vrai, ne le -disait-il qu’à moi:’ in these last words, ‘_ne le disait-il qu’à moi_,’ -lies the whole gist of the matter, in these few words are contained the -confession of the consciousness which should have preserved Meissonier’s -impetuous and unconsidered self-revelations from being, after his death, -made public by his friend. It is just these things which are said only -to us, which are said perhaps foolishly, perhaps hastily, perhaps -stupidly, but in any way said in entire good faith, and in the -conviction of the good faith of the confidant, which should never be -repeated, above all when the ground is closed over the speakers of them. -It will be said that there is nothing in this recollection of Meissonier -which is in any way to his discredit. There is not. Yet it is none the -less a violation of confidence; and in a sense it dwarfs the stature of -him. One of the chief characteristics of genius is an extreme -youthfulness of feeling and of impulse, often also of expression; the -great artist is always in one side of his nature a child. But this fact, -which is so lovable and engaging in him in his lifetime, makes him -continually, in his careless and confidential utterances, say what is -natural, and may even be beautiful in its spontaneity and suitability to -the moment of its expression, but which loses its colour, its light, its -charm, as a dried and pressed flower loses them when it is reproduced -after death in the rigidity of type. - -Taine set a fine example in his will when he enjoined on his heirs to -burn all the documents in which he had written down all he had heard -from his contemporaries. The rose should be always hung before the door -wherever two or three are gathered together in familiar intercourse, and -the inquisitive, censorious, malignant world is listening cunningly at -the keyhole. The world will not go away for the rose; but those within -should enforce respect for its symbol, and should stuff up the keyhole. - -I once knew and liked for several years a diplomatist who was very -popular in society. He was often with me, and one day he unfortunately -told me that it was his habit to write down every night, no matter how -late it might be when he went home, the record of everything witty, or -interesting, or singular, that he had heard during the day, and the -names of all the persons whom he had met and with whom he had conversed. -‘I have done this,’ he added, ‘ever since I was an unpaid _attaché_, and -these volumes, which are many, as you may imagine, will not be published -until the time designated to my executors in my will.’ Ever after this -confession from him I saw him with much less pleasure; these bulky -volumes, though unseen, cast their grim shadow over the present and the -future; I never again laughed and talked with him without the -recollection that he was treasuring up the nonsense I spoke or repeated -to write it down in black and white before he allowed himself to sleep. -The thought was a ghost at every intellectual banquet at which he and I -met. I wanted to call out to our companions, - - ‘There’s a chiel amang you takin’ notes.’ - -As he was a man who had his _petite entrée_ into the arcana of politics, -and was personally acquainted with the most distinguished people of -Europe, he must have burned a good deal of post-midnight oil over his -nightly chronicle, and I wonder he could keep awake to make it. - -He died some years since, and of those voluminous records there is -nothing said in the press as yet. No doubt, however, they will see the -light some day; and some heir or heirs will make a round sum of money -out of them. There is a kind of treason in this habit of committing to -paper for ultimate publication what is said by those around us. If the -matter be emended and emasculated when printed, it loses all interest; -if published verbatim, the publication constitutes a betrayal. Social -intercourse is surely based on the tacit assumption that what is said in -it is said under cover of the white flag of mutual trust. I do not think -that we have any right whatever to make any kind of private conversation -public. The motive for doing so can never be a very high one. There is, -no doubt, a great temptation in the wish to tell what we know about a -friend whose character we see was unknown or misunderstood by the world -in general, even probably by his intimate associates; but I doubt if we -have the right to do so. If he revealed his natural inner self more -completely to us than to others, it was no doubt because we inspired him -with a more complete confidence or sympathy than did others. Shall that -confidence or that sympathy be abused or betrayed by any man or woman of -common honour? - -It is a fact which is to be regretted that the faculty of inspiring -confidence is, unfortunately, often allied to an utter faithlessness in -keeping it. Those who most attract it are often those who most betray -it. The sympathy which draws out our secrets is frequently united to -considerable treachery in using them. Even those who are in many ways -faithful and sincere betray after death those who trusted them in life, -by revelations of their correspondence, either intentional or careless. - -‘Cachez votre vie: étalez votre esprit,’ is a wise counsel; but it is -this which the world will not permit if it can by any torment prevent -it. He who has once allowed his wit to shine, and dazzle the eyes of his -contemporaries, is expected to live his life for ever afterwards with -open doors. - -People who are famous are invariably accused of being self-conscious, -reserved, monosyllabic, lacking in candour, in expansiveness, in -inclination to converse. What more natural than that they should be so, -since they know that their most intimate companion may not be able to -resist the temptation of recording and retailing everything they say? If -they speak as they feel, they are accused of ‘giving themselves away,’ -as the English slang phrases it; if they be as reserved and as silent as -it is possible to be without offence to society, they are accused of -_morgue_, of vanity, of arrogance. In either case, whatever they do say, -whether it be much or be little, will be certainly exaggerated, -misrepresented, and disliked. Meissonier may, in a weak moment, wish he -were Fortuny; Tennyson may, in an irritable hour, prefer money to fame; -and each may say so to a trusted companion. But it is hard that the -evanescent, unwise desire should be soberly published many years after -in each case by a hearer who was deemed a friend. - -We are none of us, perhaps, as loyal as we ought to be in speech. We are -too thoughtless in what we repeat; and many, for sake of an epigram or a -_jeu de mot_, sacrifice the higher duties of respect for confidence and -silence on it. But speech may have the excuse of unpremeditation, haste, -the contagion of conversation going on around. The indiscretions of -written and of printed words share none of these excuses. Even if -written in hurry or in carelessness, there is leisure enough when a -proof sheet is received, between its reception and its publication, for -all such revelations to be effaced. Have we a right to make public -private conversations? I do not consider that we have. Intercourse, at -all events the pleasure of intercourse, reposes on the tacit condition -that its privacy is intangible. Intimate correspondence does the same. -In letters we give hostages to our friends. It should be understood that -such hostages are not to be led, like captives, into the public -market-place and sold. - -In the many memories of intimacy with Alfred Tennyson which have been -published since his death, few would, I think, have pleased a man so -reluctant to be observed and commented on as was he. The fulsome -adulation would scarcely have sufficed to reconcile him to the cruel -dissection. - -Famous people, like obscure ones, do not weigh every syllable they -speak; and the former pay heavily for imprudent utterance, whilst the -latter sin scot-free because nobody cares a straw what they say or do -not say. Tennyson, in an imprudent moment, said once to Henry Irving -that Shelley had no sense of humour. It is quite true that Shelley had -not: his life would have been brighter and happier if he had been able -to laugh oftener; and it is exceedingly unfair to Tennyson to twist this -statement of an actual fact into a depreciation of Shelley to his own -self-praise. Even if he implied that he were the greater poet of the -two, should a friend deride this, should a trusted companion record it? - -Mr Knowles relates how Tennyson, speaking of his habit of composing -verses which he never wrote down as he sat over the winter’s fire, -added, ‘How many hundreds of fine lines went up the chimney and -vanished!’ The world cries out, ‘What! did he call his own verses fine?’ -Why should he not? He must have known that he enriched the English -language with scores of fine lines, as I suppose he must have known that -he made many with false quantities, which halt painfully. But are these -careless, natural phrases, utterances which should be produced in print? -Nothing can divest such _post-mortem_ revelations of a suspicion of -treachery. They suggest the note-book of the diplomatist, in which at -nightfall were recorded all the witty sayings and careless confidences -heard during the daytime. - -Mr Knowles, who admired Tennyson extremely, and lived for many years in -his close intimacy, puts into print the saying of Tennyson that he -wished he could have had the money which his books had brought without -the nuisance of the fame which accompanied it. This was not an heroic -speech, though it might be a natural one. It was probably a wrathful -ebullition excited by the irritation of public comment and the prying -impertinence of public curiosity. But it is the kind of speech which is -never intended for reproduction in print. We all have these moments of -ungrateful impatience with our lot. The king wishes himself in the -hovel, the hind wishes himself on the throne. Whoso gathers the laurel -longs for the cowslip, he who has the field flowers sighs for the myrtle -and the bays. But it is not the place of a bosom friend to stereotype -for all time the reproach of Fortune’s favourites to the magnificent -caprices of Fortune. Certainly Tennyson, having been compelled to -choose, would have chosen the poverty and fame of Homer or of Cervantes -rather than a life of inglorious ease and obscure eating of good -dinners. The imperishable record in print, of a passing mood of -irritability in which he said otherwise, is therefore a cruel injustice -done to him. - -It is impossible for the ordinary mind, which is usually dense of -perception and greedy of observation, to attempt to measure or conceive -in any degree the unsupportable torment to a sensitive temper and an -exalted intelligence of the mosquito swarm of inquisitive interrogators -and commentators; of the exaggeration, the misrepresentation, the -offensive calumnies, and the still more offensive admiration, which are -the daily penalty of all greatness. The adoring American, perched -staring in the pear tree outside the dining-room window, may well have -embittered to Tennyson the meats and wines of his dinner-table within. -If he had got up from his table and shot the spy, such a pardonable -impulse should certainly have been considered justifiable homicide. That -because a man has done something higher, better, more beautiful than his -fellows, he is therefore to be subjected without resistance to their -curiosity and comment, is a premiss so intolerable that it should not be -permitted to be advanced in any decent society. The interviewer is the -vilest spawn of the most ill-bred age which the world has yet seen. If -he be received, when he intrudes, with the toe of the boot, he has but -his fitting reception. - -There has been lately published the following personal description of a -great writer whom I will not especially designate. It runs as follows: -‘The first impression one gets is of a small man with large feet, -walking as if for a wager, arms swinging hither and thither, and fingers -briskly playing imaginary tunes in the air as he goes. Then, as the -eccentric shape comes nearer, one is aware of a stubby beard and peeping -eyes expressive of mingled distrust and aversion; a hideous hat is -clapped down on the broad brow, which hat, when lifted, displays a bald -expanse of skull bearing no sort of resemblance whatever to the -counterfeit (_sic_) presentiments of Apollo; and yet, incongruous though -it seems, this little vacuous, impatient, querulous being is no other -than—’ And then there is named one of the greatest masters of language -whom the world has ever owned. - -Yet who, having read this infamous portrait of physical defects, whether -it be truth or libel, can ever again entirely divest his memory of it, -can ever wholly prevent its arising in odious ridicule between him and -his rapturous sense of the perfect music of a great style? Shakespeare -cursed those who would not let his bones alone; the living genius may -with equal justice curse those who will not let alone his living form -and features. There are only two classes of persons who may be certain -of seeing every physical fault or deformity or affliction in face or -form brutally written down in print: they are the man of genius in the -reports of his contemporaries, and the escaped criminal on the handbills -and search-warrants of the police. Renan and Arton receive exactly the -same measure. - -The vulgar, the Herr Omnes of Luther, cannot comprehend the hatred, the -loathing of observation and comment, which are of the very essence of -the poetic temperament. Yet it is strange to think that being mobbed can -be agreeable to anyone. The sense of being pursued by incessant -curiosity, as often as not a merely malignant curiosity, must poison the -hours of life to the proud and sensitive nature. Such curiosity existed, -no doubt, in the days of Ovid, in the days of Alkibiades; but modern -inquisitiveness is far worse, being armed with all the modern powers to -torture. The intolerable Kodak, the intolerable interviewer, the -artifices of the press, the typewriter, the telegraph, the telephone, -the greedy, indelicate, omnivorous mind of the modern public—all -contribute to make of celebrity a Gehenna. - -Creation is the paradise of the artist or poet; sympathy, if it be also -true, is balm to him; for the opinion of others he will never greatly -care if his lips have been truly touched with the coal from the altar, -yet the sense of his influence over them will be welcome to him; but the -espionage of the multitude will be always to him irritating as mosquito -bites, pestilent as a swarm of termites, darkening like a locust flight -the face of the sun. - -It is hard to think that one who has an illustrious name cannot idly -gossip with an intimate friend without every careless word being -stereotyped. One is grateful to Mr Knowles for telling us that Tennyson -declared he would shake his fists in the face of Almighty God if He, -etc., etc. One rejoices to know of this outburst of honest indignation -at the unpitied sufferings of the helpless and the harmless, this grand -flinging of the phylacteries in the face of a hypocritical and egotistic -world. At the same time it is surely impossible to admit that such a -spontaneous and impassioned expression of emotion ought, by any hearer -of it, to have been, in cold blood, put on record and produced in print? - -Poor dead singer of Ida and Œnone! The ruthless inquisitors who poisoned -his life still pursue him even beyond the cold waters of the Styx! There -is something infinitely pathetic in the knowledge of how, all his life -long, Tennyson endeavoured to avoid the intrusion of the crowd, and of -how utterly useless all his wishes and endeavours were, and how those -whom he trusted and confided in, bring out the dead children of his -spoken thoughts naked in the sight of the multitude whom he shunned. - -The confidential utterances of great men and women should no more be -desecrated by being told to the public than tears and kisses should be -profaned by the publicity of a railway station. - -The general reader can no more understand why Tennyson suffered so -intensely at seeing a chestnut tree felled in full flower than they can -understand the course in the heavens of Argol or Altair. To spread out -before them these delicate, intricate, bleeding fibres of the soul is to -slay Pegasus and Philomel to make a workhouse meal. - -Mr Knowles alleges that it is necessary for him and other intimate -friends of Tennyson to say all they thought of him, and repeat all he -said, because a similar record of Shakespeare’s conversations would be -so precious a treasure to the world. This, also, is a questionable -premiss. Shakespeare, happy in so much, was happiest of all in the -obscurity in which his personality is sheltered; and the world is to be -congratulated that it knows too little of the man to squabble and dwarf -and disfigure him to the detriment of his works, as it does Byron and -Shelley. What the man is matters so little. Psychology is but another -name for curiosity, envy, or _dénigremené_. Whether the orchid grow on a -rotten tree, or the lily on a dunghill, affects not the beauty of the -orchid or the fragrance of the lily. What Horace was, or was not, at the -Augustan Court cannot touch the exquisite grace of his style, the lovely -lines of his pictures in words. The more we look at any writer the less -we are likely to do justice to his creations, because his personality -will exercise upon us either a great attraction or a great repulsion. It -would be better for all works if, like Cologne Cathedral, they were -without known progenitors. - -Could Dante Rossetti ever have dreamed that Mr Leyland would preserve -the poor, pathetic little note asking for the gift of more wine in his -last illness, which Mr Val. Prinsep saw fit to publish in the _Art -Journal_ of September 1892? If we may not trust our most intimate -friends with our necessities, in whom can we confide? The whole of this -aforesaid correspondence of Rossetti was never intended for, nor is it -fitted for, publication. The general world has a right to see any -artist’s completed work, and judge it as they may choose to do, but they -have no right to be made acquainted with the hesitations, the -self-torment, the fluctations, the depression, the exultation, which -preceded its birth. These are the ecstasies and the agonies which -precede all gestation and parturition, and are not for public -exhibition. Mr Leyland, loving Rossetti well, should have burned all -these letters before, or immediately after, the artist’s death. Mr -Leyland was a man who knew his generation, and must have known the use -which would be made of them. If a friend grant me a favour, and -afterwards blab of that favour to our common acquaintances, I should -prefer that such a favour had never been accorded. I think that most -people will agree with this feeling. Yet reticence concerning favours -done is not common in our times. Such reticence ought to be held the -simplest obligation of honour; but the majority of persons do not so -regard it. There is hardly a letter of any length ever written in which -there are not some sentences liable to misconstruction, or open to -various readings. It is grossly unfair to place any letter before those -who are not in the possession of its key; that key which can alone lie -in an intimate knowledge of its writer’s circumstances and temperament. -If Rossetti were not rich enough to buy the wine he wanted in his -weakness, the shame is not his, but that of the world which left him -poor. To think that he was too poor even to ever see Italy is an -intolerable disgrace to his contemporaries. He would have been wiser to -have left his patrons and to have lived in Italy on a black crust and a -plate of bean soup. - -If the man of genius amass wealth, he is accused of avarice or of -mercenary sale of his own talent. If he remain poor, or be in trouble, -no language can sufficiently condemn his extravagance, his improvidence, -his immorality. If he live with any kind of splendour, it is display and -profligacy; if he endeavour to avoid remark, it is meanness, hauteur or -poverty. - -Men and women of genius when they have money are too generous with it, -and when they have it not are too careless about the lack of it. -Shakespeare, we are told, had the prudence to put his money together and -to buy houses and lands, with shrewd eye to the main chance; but this -is, after all, mere supposition on the part of posterity. We know so -little of the circumstances of his life that, for aught we can tell, he -may have had some sharp-eyed, true-hearted friend or factor, who thus -transmuted the poet’s loose coins into solid fields and freeholds, as -George Eliot had behind her George Lewis. I cannot believe that -Titania’s laureate ever quarrelled over deeds of copyhold and questions -of fees and betterments with the burgesses and notaries of -Stratford-upon-Avon. More likely, far, that he was lying in the sun, -dreaming, deep cradled in cowslips and ladysmocks, as his winged verses -flew up with the bees into the budding lime boughs overhead, whilst some -trusty friend or brother did battle in his name with the chafferers and -the scriveners in the little town. And when all was settled, and the -deeds of transfer only wanted signature and seal, that trusty go-between -would shout across the meadows to waken Will from his day-dream, and -Will would lazily arise and come across the grass, with the pollen of -the bees and the fragrant yellow dust of the cowslips on his clothes, -and, with his sweet, serene smile, would scrawl his name to parchments -which he scarcely even read. That is, I would take my oath, how the -stores of Shakespeare increased, and how New Place became his. -Pembroke’s friend and Rosalind’s creator never cared much for lucre, I -am sure; for land he might care, because he loved England: he loved her -fields, her woods, her streams, and he saw them as her sons can never -see them now, uninjured and undimmed, the Lenten lilies growing tall -beneath the untrimmed hedges of hazel and hawthorn, the water meadows -spreading broad and fair, without a curl of smoke in sight, save that -which rose from the cottage hearths. Elizabethan England was meadow -where it was not coppice, park where it was not forest, heathery -moorland where it was not reedy mere. It was natural that Shakespeare -should care to call his own some portion of that beautiful leafy kingdom -of his birth. - -Even so Scott loved his Scottish soil, and Tennyson cared to own -Farringford and Hazelmere. Even so George Sand’s last dying words were -of the trees of Nohant. Passion and pleasure and fame and love were in -those last moments naught to her, but the green, fresh, dewy leafage of -dead summers was still dear. - -The psychologist Lombroso, in a recent essay, which must fill the -_bourgeois_ breast with exultation, finding that it is not possible for -him to deny the mental fecundity of genius, denies its physical -fertility, and endeavours to prove his assertion, after the customary -method of scientists, by avoiding and omitting every fact which would in -any manner tell against his theory. Evidence when manipulated by the -scientist is like the colt when it issues, docked and clipped, from its -training stable. Laying down the proposition that precocity is -atavistic, founded on the declaration of the biologist, Dr Delaunay, -that it is a sign of inferiority, he cites the marvellous precocity of -Raffaelle, Pascal, Mozart, Victor Hugo, Mirabeau, Dante, Handel, -Calderon, Tasso, and many others, who prove, on the contrary, that -precocity is the sign of splendour, strength and durability of genius. -He remarks that precocity is a mark of insignificance, and that the -small and low organism develops with much greater rapidity than the -higher order! Were we not used to the pompous self-contradictions of -Science, we should be surprised to see a characteristic of so many great -minds pronounced to be a defect and a deformity; it is certainly only a -scientist who would dream of classing Raffaelle, Dante, Mozart, Hugo, -amongst the lesser organisms. - -The whole argument is built on the same quagmire of illogical assertion -and false deduction. He first lays down as an axiom that men of genius -are physically sterile, and supports it by the strange and curiously -incorrect assertion that Shakespeare and Milton had no posterity! He -proceeds to quote the saying of La Bruyère: ‘Ces hommes n’ont ni -ancêtres ni postérités; ils forment eux-seuls toute une descendance.’ -Now, as regards ancestry, it is clear that La Bruyère spoke -figuratively: he did not and could not mean that men of genius have no -progenitors: he meant that who their progenitors were did not matter to -the world which cared only for themselves; in a similar way he spoke of -their descendants, not as actually non-existent, but as counting for -nothing beside the superior creation of their works. - -Amongst the sterile _célibataires_ Lombroso oddly enough includes -Voltaire and Alfieri, whose loves and liaisons were famous and numerous. -He entirely ignores Victor Hugo, whose philoprogenitiveness was so -excessive as to be absurd; the extreme affection for their offspring of -Tennyson and Renan, of George Sand and of Juliette Adam, of Millias and -of Meissonier, of Mario and of Grisi, and of countless others whose -names are famous and whose affections were or are most ardent. The -offspring publicly recognised by man or woman is by no means necessarily -the sole offspring of either. Allegra is not mentioned beside Ada in -Burke’s Peerage. Natural children frequently are not allowed to know -even their own parentage; a woman may have children whom she does not -openly acknowledge; a man may have children of whose birth even he knows -nothing. It is not every celebrated woman who has the maternal courage -of George Sand, nor every celebrated man who has the paternal tenderness -of Shelley. - -Lombroso confuses in a most unscientific manner the passion of love and -the bond of marriage. Because Michael Angelo says that art is wife -enough for him, Lombroso supposes that no passion, good or evil, ever -moved him. The fact that a man or woman has not married does not prove -that they have had no amours: the probability is that their ardour and -caprice in love have withheld them from the captivity of a legal union, -which is usually the tomb of love. Everything which disturbs the odd -conclusion to which it has pleased him to come is put aside and left out -by a writer whose treatise pretends to be based on an inexorable -accuracy. He carefully omits all reference to the men of old who would, -almost without exception, disprove his theory. The three greatest of -these are surely Mahomet, Alexander and Julius Cæsar: all this triad -were famous for sensual indulgence almost without limit. So far as the -fact may be considered to honour genius, its alliance with the joys of -voluptuous passions is fully established, and no ingenuity in paradox of -a perverse hater of it can contravene the fact. As for the poets, from -Catullus to Burns, they rise in their graves and laugh in the face of -the biologist. Sterile? They? As well call sterile the red clover which -yields its fecundating pollen to the bee in the glad sunlight of a -summer day. - -The great singer called Mario was a man of genius in every way, apart -from the art in which he was unsurpassed: yet, he was a singularly -handsome man, and possessed of magical seduction for women. Of the -Spanish poet Zorilla, for whose recent death all Spanish women wept, the -same may be said. Longfellow was very handsome, and his life was lovely, -noble, and harmonious, from his youth to his grave. The physical beauty -of Washington is well known, yet his genius cannot be contested. Vandyke -had extreme physical beauty; Raffaelle also; the painters have nearly -always been conspicuous for personal beauty, from Leonardo to Millais -and Leighton. Gladstone has very fine features and a magnificent -constitution; his physical strength is wonderful, yet his intellect has -always been at full stretch, like a racing greyhound. The personal -beauty and fine stature of Tennyson were accompanied by the most keen -intellectual ardour, extant until the very latest day of his life. The -beauty of Milton and of Goethe has become traditional in their -respective countries. Wellington and Marlborough were singularly -handsome men. Napoleon was a man of short stature, but his face had a -classic beauty which resisted even death, as may be seen in the mask -taken from his dead features at St Helena. Take Lamartine; place his -verse where you will, it is impossible to deny his genius, the genius of -intense poetic sympathy and insight, of eloquence, of magical music of -utterance, of comprehension of all creatures which live and suffer; he -himself was his finest poem, and as to his wonderful physical beauty -there can be no dispute. Of three typical men of genius of modern times -take Shakespeare, Goethe and Henri Quatre; all were of much beauty of -person, and masculine vigour was not lacking in any; in the two latter -it was even excessive. The hero of Arques and Ivry was the lover of more -fair women than peopled the harem of Sardanapalus. Yet he had supreme -genius; the genius of command, of wit, of intuition, of magnetic charm -over the minds and wills and hearts of men; a charm which has been -stronger than death, and has kept the fascination of his memory green -throughout the length and breadth of France. Many more similar examples -might be quoted. These, however, suffice to prove the inexactitude of -the envious calumnies cast upon genius by Lombroso, who actually asserts -that genius is never separated from physical degeneracy, and that the -splendour of the brain is always paid for by atrophy of other organs! -Were this true, the wretched, deformed, stunted creatures, the arrest of -whose physical development is artificially obtained by the most cruel -torture, and constitutes a trade in the Cevennes and the Pyrenees, would -all of them become Napoleons, Goethes, Byrons, Mussets, Racines and -Bismarcks. The manufacture of cripples would be the manufacture of -heroes and poets! The favourite theory of scientists that genius is -_caused_ by physical imperfection is manifestly untrue, and grossly -calumnious. It means, if it means anything, that the physically -imperfect creature is the intellectually perfect; that the scrofulous -and hunchbacked dwarf is the light-giver of the world, the Apollo -Citharædus of the arts. What facts bear out such a theory? - -Equally calumnious and false is the conclusion by Lombroso, that the man -of genius (like the madman) is born, lives and dies, _cold_, _solitary_, -_invisible_. A more abominable libel was never penned by mediocrity on -greatness. The sweet, bright humour of Scott, buoyant even beneath woe -and bodily pain; the gay, delightful kindliness of Molière, the -cheerful, serene philosophies of Montaigne, the superb resistance to -calamity of Cervantes, the playful, indulgent, affectionate temper of -Thackeray, the noble tranquillity in adversity of Milton, the happy -whimsical humour of Horace, the calm and fruitful leisure of Suetonius, -the adoration of Nature of all the poets, from Theocritus to Lecomte de -Lisle—all these and a thousand others arise to memory in refutation of -this ignoble libel. Who held that the saddest things on earth were— - - ‘Un cage sans oiseaux, une ruche sans abeilles, - Une maison sans enfans?’ - -Victor Hugo: the master of one of the most fertile, puissant and -imaginative minds ever known on earth. That genius seeks solitude is -natural: it is only the fool who is afraid of his own company; the -meditations and intellectual memories of genius must always be more -delightful to it than the babble of society. - -The commerce and conversation of the majority of persons is wearisome, -trivial, dull; it is not wonderful that one who can commune in full -harmony of thought with Nature, and with the wisdom of old, turns from -the common babble of the common herd, and seeks the shelter of the -library, or the silence of the forest and the moor. But such an one will -always give more human sympathy than he can ever receive. None can see -into his soul; but the souls of others are laid bare to him. To others -he is a mystery which they fear; but others are to him as children whom -he pities. If their folly and deadness of heart arouse his scorn, he yet -weeps for them, because they know not what they do. They cannot hear, as -he hears, the sigh in the leaves of the fallen tree, the woe in the cry -of the widowed bird, the voices of the buried nations calling from the -unseen tombs: no, in that sense he is alone, as the seer is alone and -the prophet; but this loneliness comes not from the coldness of his own -heart, but from the poverty of the hearts of other men. Who dares to say -that those who alone can put into speech the emotions of a humanity, in -itself dumb and helpless, are incapable of feeling those emotions which -without them would find neither utterance nor interpreter. - -Lombroso speaks exultingly of the cruelty to women of Musset, Byron, -Carlyle and others; he has evidently no conception of the intense -irritation roused in sensitive natures by uncongenial and enforced -companionship. Jane Carlyle was a woman of fine wit and character, but -she had no tact and little patience, and her sharp retorts must have -been as thorns in the flesh of her bilious and melancholy Saul, as his -uncouthness and ill-breeding must have been cruel trials to her. But -this was no fault of either of them: it was the fault of that sad -mistake, so common in the world, of an ill-assorted marriage, in which -the prisoners suffered only the more because they were, in their -different ways, of fine character, with a sense of duty so acute in each -that it was a torture to both alike. What Lombroso calls the brutality -of Carlyle was probably little else than the morbid gloom caused by a -diseased liver, this disease in turn caused by the constraint and -asphyxiation of a town life in a small house to a man born of hardy, -outdoor, rustic stock, and farmed to breathe the strong, keen air of -solitary Scottish moors and hills, to be braced by storm and sunshine, -to battle with snow and wind and rain. The terrible folly which drives -men of talent into cities, and leave them only the vitiated air of close -and crowded streets, of feverish gatherings, and of unhealthy -club-houses, is the origin of that alliance, so often seen in the -present age, between the gifted mind and the suffering body, or the -restless nerves, of a _névrosé_, of a hypochondriac, or of a bilious -diabetic. - -Lombroso, in the malignant spitefulness with which the scientists throw -mud and stones at all genius, calls Byron a _Rachitique_, on account of -his deformed foot; but when we remember Byron’s splendid swimming -powers, his endurance in the saddle, his passion for the mountains and -the sea, his heroic calmness on his lonely deathbed, we must, if we are -sincere, admit that this _Rachitique_, even apart from all his superb -genius, was a man of no common courage and no common force, and that, -whatever might be at birth the physical weakness accompanying his great -physical beauty, he had known how to make himself the equal of the -strongest even in outdoor sports. When we think of that great beauty -before which women went down as corn before the flash of the -reaping-hook, of the incomparable romance of that life, passing from the -crowds of St James’s to the pine solitudes of Ravenna, from the -adulation of Courts to the silence of Alp and ocean, from the darksome -glens and braes of Scotland to the azure light on the Hellespont and the -Adrian Sea—when we think of its marvellous compass brought within the -short span of thirty-six years, of its god-like powers, of its -surpassing gifts, of its splendour of song, of wit, of melody, of -passion, and of inspiration, of its tragic close, which broke off the -laurel bough in its green prime, as Apollo would have it broken—when we -think of this life, I say, it is easy to understand why its effulgence -has been the mark for every petty malignity and jealous mediocrity ever -since the light of the sun died down at Missolonghi. - -Byron’s must ever remain the most ideal, the most splendid, the most -varied life which ever incarnated in itself the genius of man and the -gifts of the gods: what joy, then, to the petty and the envious to point -to his club foot, and to assure us he was _Rachitique_! The puling -versifiers who spend their lifetime in elaborating artificial sonnets -based on early Italian methods, straining, refining, paring, altering, -transforming, trying to replace by effort all which is lacking to them -in inspiration, may well be unable to comprehend aught of that fiery -fury of scorn and invective, of that Niagara-like rush of thought and -word and imagery, which made verse as natural an utterance to Byron as -the torrent of its song is natural to the nightingale in the months of -spring. To the grand verse of Byron there may be rivals, there may be -superiors; but to the poetry of his life there is no equal in any other -life. What greater, more unpardonable sin can he have in the sight of -mediocrity? - -I lately saw a tourist of small stature, mean appearance, and awkward -gesture, criticising unfavourably the attitude of the beautiful Mercury -in the Vatican Rotonda. I was irresistibly reminded of certain -versifiers and newspaper essayists of the present moment criticising -Byron! - -Lombroso asserts that ‘the man of genius has only contempt for other men -of genius; he is offended by all praise not given to himself; the -dominant feeling of a man of genius, or even of erudition, is hatred and -scorn for all other men who possess, or approach the possession of -genius or talent.’ A greater libel was never penned. It is natural that -those who are masters of their art should be less easy to please, less -ignorant of its demands and beauties, than the crowd can be. The great -writer, the great artist, the great composer, can scarcely fail to feel -some disdain for the facility with which the public is satisfied, the -fatuity with which it accepts the commonplace, the second-rate, the -imitation, the mere catch-penny, as true and original creation. But this -scorn for the mediocre, which is inseparable from all originality and is -its right and privilege, does not for a moment preclude the ardent -sympathy, the joyous recognition with which genius will salute the -presence of kindred genius. What of the friendship of Coleridge and -Wordsworth, of Byron and Shelley, of Flaubert and George Sand, of -Shakespeare and Ben Jonson? Scarce a year ago two illustrious men -conversed with sympathy and friendship under the green leaves by the -waters of Annecy. Philippe Berthelet narrates how ‘sous les vieux noyers -de Talloires ils discutèrent pour la première fois de leur vie, Renan -défendant son cher Lamartine, et Taine son poëte préféré Musset; je -garde un pieux souvenir des nobles paroles de ces deux grands hommes -qu’il m’a été donné d’entendre ce soir de Septembre sur le bord du lac -limpide, au pied de la Tournette couronnée de neiges.’ - -The public likes inferior production; as a rule prefers it, because it -understands it more easily; and this preference may irritate the supreme -artist into a burst of wrath. Berlioz gave the _Damnation de Faust_ to -empty benches, and his Titanic disdain of his contemporaries for their -preference of weaker men has been justified by the verdict of the -present generation. But this sentiment of scorn is as far removed from -the petty malignity of envy and injustice as the fury of the tempest -amongst the Alps or Andes is unlike the sputtering of a candle guttering -in a tin sconce. To the poet to see the poetaster crowned; to the great -man to see his miserable imitator accepted as his equal; to the planet -on high to know that the street lamp below is thought his rival, must -ever be offensive. But this offence is just, and has grandeur in it; it -is no more meanness and jealousy than the planet is the gaspipe or the -Alpine storm the candle. - -To the great artist it is a great affront to see the imitator of -himself, the thief, the dauber, the mimic, the mediocre, accepted as an -artist by the world. He is entitled to resent the affront and to scourge -the offender. The intolerance of genius for mediocrity is called -unkindness: it is no more unkind than the sentence of the judge on the -criminal. In our time the material facilities given to production have -multiplied mediocrity as heat multiplies carrion flies; it should have -no quarter shown to it; it is a ravaging pest. - -Cheap printing makes writers of thousands who would be more fittingly -employed in stitching shoes or digging ditches; and the assistance of -photography makes painters or draughtsmen of thousands who would be more -harmlessly occupied whitewashing sheds or carding wool. Genius is as -rare as ever it was in all the arts; but the impudent pretensions of -nullity to replace and represent it increase with every year, because it -finds readier acceptance from the ever-increasing ignorance of a -universally educated public. The men of genius who do exist do not say -this loudly enough or often enough: they are afraid to look unkind and -to create enemies. It is not excellence which is malignant, envious, -slanderous, mean: it is inferiority; inferiority dressed in the cheap -garment of ill-fitting success. - -There is a draughtsman who is very eminent in our time, and whose -drawings have brought him in alike celebrity and wealth. He is esteemed -one of the first artists in black-and-white of the century. Yet he never -draws a line of any figure without resorting to his immense collection -of photographs of all kinds and conditions of persons, in all attitudes -and in all costumes, whence he selects whatever he may want to -reproduce. This habit may perhaps not impair his skill as a draughtsman; -but it certainly makes him a mere imitator, a mere copyist, and robs his -works of all spontaneity, originality and sincerity. To draw from a -photograph is mere copying, mere cheating; it is not art at all. Yet -this popular draughtsman has not the least shame or hesitation in -avowing his methods; nor do his public or his critics appear to see -anything to censure or regret in them. If the true artist, who is -sincere and original in all his creations, who draws from life, and -would no more employ a camera than he would pick a pocket, feels, and -expresses the contempt which he feels, for the draughtsman who is -dependent on photographs, he is not moved either by hostility or -jealousy, but by a wholesome and most just disdain. It is a disdain with -which the general public can have little sympathy, because they cannot -estimate the quality of the offence which excites it. - -To the creator, whether of prose, of poem, of melody, picture, or -statue, who is sincere in all he creates, to whom conscious imitation -would have all the baseness of a forgery, and to whom sincerity and -originality are the essence of creative talent, the fraud of imitation -disgusts and offends as it cannot do the mere outsider. Such disgust, -such offence, are no more envy or jealousy than the sublime fury of the -storming-party is the secret stabbing of the hired bravo. - -Oh, the obscure! the vile obscure! what shafts dipped in gall will they -not let fly from the dusky parlour in which they sit and look with -envious scowl out on the distant splendour of great lives! - -The sweetest singer who ever sang on the classic Tyrrhene shore—Shelley, -who soared with the skylark and suffered with the demi-god—Shelley -leaves unhappily behind him a piteous little letter telling his friend -Williams, in Dublin, of his poverty, and asking for the loan of -five-and-twenty pounds; and this poor little letter is basely preserved -and is sold by auction in London in the month of March of last year for -the sum of eleven sovereigns! _O beati insipientes!_ who cares whether -you borrow five-and-twenty pounds, or five-and-twenty pence, or -five-and-twenty thousand? Who cares to keep your humble request, your -timid confession? Who cares whether you got what you craved, or were -left to die of hunger? You, the mediocre, the commonplace, the -incapable, are left in peace; but the sorry, carking, humiliating need -of the beautiful boy-singer, whose name is blessed for all time, is -dragged into the auction-mart and bid for rabidly by the curious! What -joy for you, you well-fed, broad-bellied, full-pursed hordes of the -commonplace, to think that this sensitive plant shivered and sickened -under the vulgar hand of dun and bailiff, and withered in the sandy -waste of want! He could write down the music of the lark, and hear the -laughter of the fairies, and paint the changing glories of the sea, and -suffer with the fallen Titan as with the trodden flower—but he was once -in sore need of five-and-twenty pounds! _O beati insipientes!_ Here lie -your triumphs and your revenge. Clasp your fat palms above your ample -paunch, and grin as you embrace your banker’s pass-book. Take heed to -keep that little letter of the poet of the ‘Prometheus’ safe under glass -for all time, to comfort the jealous pains of the millions of -nonentities whom you will continue to procreate until the end of time! -Such are the consolations of inferiority. - -Genius offends by its unlikeness to the general; it scorns their -delights, their views, their creeds, their aspirations; it is at once -much simpler and much more profound than they; it suffices to itself in -a manner which, to the multitude, seems arrogance; the impersonal is -always much more absorbing to it than the personal; there are qualities -in it at once childlike and godlike, which offend the crowd at once by -their ignorance and by their wisdom. In a word, it is apart from them; -and they know that, they feel that, and they cannot forgive its -unlikeness. - -_O Beati Insipientes!_ Unwatched, you eat and drink and work and play; -unchronicled are your errors and your follies; would you weep, you may -weep in peace; would you take a country walk, no spy, notebook in hand, -will lurk in the hedges; when you pour out your trivial nonsense in the -ear of a friend, he will not treasure it up to turn it into printer’s -copy as soon as you shall be cold in your coffin. - -_O Beati Insipientes!_ You know not what safety, what peace, what -comfort are gained for you by your mantle of obscurity. You know not, -and you would not believe though angels and archangels descended to tell -it you, that the splendour of the sunlight of fame is darkened for ever -to those whose path lies through it by the shadow which follows, -mimicking, prying, listening, grinning, girding, slobbering, eagerly -watching for a false step, cruelly counting the thorns trodden amidst -the flowers—that shadow which dogs without mercy the whole of a life, -and thrusts its prying fingers through the cere-clothes of death, that -shadow of merciless and malign curiosity which follows genius as the -assassin followed the fair youth Crichton through the streets of Mantua: -the crime of Crichton being to excel! - - - - - CITIES OF ITALY - - -Whatever may be the opinion of Europe as to the political advantages -accruing to it from the independence of Italy, it must be mournfully -confessed that the losses to art and to history through it are greater -than any which could have been caused by centuries of neglect or long -years of hostile occupation and devastating war. It is scarcely to be -measured, indeed, what those losses are; so immense are they in their -extent, so incessant in their exercise, so terrible in their irreparable -infamy. No doubt it could never be foreseen, never be imagined, by those -who brought about and permitted the consolidation of Italy into one -kingdom, that the people, nominally free, would become the abject slaves -of a municipal despotism and of a barbarous civic greed. None of the -enthusiasts for Italian independence possessed that power of foresight -which would have told them that its issue would be the daily -destruction, by hordes of foreign workmen, of its treasures of art and -its landmarks of history. Yet there is no exaggeration in saying that -this, and nothing less than this, is its chief issue. - -Hermann Grimm published a powerful appeal to the scholars and artists of -Europe against the Italian destruction of Rome. Having for thirty years -written on Italian cities and their art and history, with scholarship -and devotion, he had gained the right to raise his voice in indignant -protest and scorn against the mercenary and vulgar shamelessness with -which the Roman municipality is so dealing with the splendid heritage -which it has received, that soon scarcely one stone will be left upon -another of the sacred city. He said, and with truth, that the portion of -the Italian nation which has the eyes to perceive and the soul to abhor -all that is being done is so small a minority, and one so spiritless, -hopeless and discouraged, that it is for all practical purposes -non-existent. He appealed to what he termed that larger Rome which -exists in the hearts of all who have ever known Rome with a scholar’s -knowledge, or an artist’s love. The appeal may be powerless but at least -it may be heard; and though it will scarcely be able to pierce through -the thick hide of smug vanity and rapacity in which Italian -municipalities are enveloped, it will put on record the courage and the -scorn of one man for what is the greatest artistic iniquity of our time. -It is idle and untrue for Italians to say that the rest of Europe has no -right to interfere with what they do with the legacy they enjoy. In the -first place, without the aid and acquiescence of Europe, the Italian -kingdom as a unity could never have existed at all; without the -permission of Europe the entry into Rome could never have been made at -all. Europe has the title to observe and to condemn the manner in which -the superb gift, which she permitted to be given to those very various -peoples who are called Italians, is being squandered away and destroyed. -The United Kingdom of Italy may, as a political fact, disappear -to-morrow in any European war or any great Socialistic uprising; but -historic Italy, classic Italy, artistic Italy, is a treasure which -belongs to the whole world of culture, in which, indeed, the foreigner, -if he be reverent of her soil, is far more truly her son than those born -of her blood who violate her and desecrate her altars. Italy cannot be -narrowed to the petty bounds of a kingdom created yesterday; she has -been the mistress of all art, the muse and the priestess of all peoples. - -What are the Italians doing with her? It is sickening to note and to -record. Nothing can ever give back to the world what, day by day, -municipal councillors having houses to sell, syndicates and companies -merely looking for spoliation and speculation, contractors who seize on -the land as a trooper seizes on a girl in a sacked town, are all taking -from the fairest and the most ancient cities and towns on earth. The -sound of the hatchet in the woods and gardens of Italy is incessantly -echoed by the sound of the pickaxe and hammer in the cities and towns. -The crash of falling trees is answered by the crash of falling marbles. -All over the land, destruction, of the vilest and most vulgar kind, is -at work; destruction before which the more excusable and more virile -destruction of war looks almost noble. For the present destruction has -no other motive, object, or mainspring than the lowest greed. It is -absolutely incomprehensible how, after having been the leaders and the -light of the far centuries, the Italians have, by common consent and -with pitiable self-congratulation, sunk to the position of the most -benighted barbarism in art. In everything which is now constructed the -worst and most offensive taste is manifest, whilst that which has -existed for centuries is attacked and pulled down without remorse. I -wholly fail to account, on any philosophic or psychological grounds, for -the utter deadness of soul which has come on the Italians as a nation. -Born with loveliness of all kinds, natural and architectural, around -them, the æsthetic sense should be as instinctive in them as their -movements of limbs or lungs. Instead of this, it is entirely gone out of -them. They have no feeling for colour, no sense of symmetry, and little -or no sense of reverence for the greatness and the gloriousness of the -past. - -The only people in whom any of the native feeling for natural and -artistic beauty still exists are those country people who dwell far -removed from the contagion of the towns, and the marine populations of -the Veneto. But even in these it is slighter than any student of the -past would expect. The sense of colour is _nil_ in most Italians; they -might as well be colour-blind for any heed they take of harmony of -tones. They delight in _chinoiseries_, in photographs, in crétonnes, in -all the rubbish bought in modern Exhibitions. In the superb and immense -halls of a palace of the Renaissance one will see priceless tapestries -on the walls, antique marbles on the consoles, frescoes of Veronese, of -Giulio Romano, or of Sodoma on the ceilings; and at the same time see -arm-chairs and couches, some yellow, some blue, some green, some -scarlet; a table-cover of crimson; and the mosaic floor covered with a -worthless _moquette_ carpet of all hues, and of a set and staring -pattern. I call to mind a similar palace on the Tiber, whose very name -is as a trumpet-call to all the glories of the past; there the antique -statues have been coloured, ‘because white marble is so cold and sad;’ -an admirable copy in bronze of the Mercury of Gian’ di Bologna has had -his wings, his petasus, and his caduceus gilded; and the marble floors -have been taken up to have French parquet flooring laid down in their -stead, and varnished so highly that the woods glisten like -looking-glasses; yet the owner of and dweller in this place is a great -noble, who, after his own fashion, cherishes art. I have seen a Greek -Venus, found in the soil at Baiæ, wreathed round with innumerable yards -of rose-coloured gauze by its owner, an Italian princess. The excuse -given is, ‘_Senza un’po di tinta sta cosi fredda!_’ - -It is the same feeling which makes the Italian peasant say of the -field-flowers which you have arranged in your rooms, ‘How well you have -made those vulgar weeds look! Any one would take them now for _fiori -secchi_!’ (artificial flowers). Whence comes it, this absolute blindness -of the eyes, this deadening absence of all consciousness of beauty? It -is the same thing in their villages and their fairs. Go to a fair on a -feast-day in any part of France; go to a kermesse in Belgium or -Luxembourg; go to a merry-making in Germany or Austria, and you will see -a picturesque and graceful sight; you will see a great deal of what the -eyes of Teniers, of Ostade, of Callot, of Mieris saw in their day. There -will be harmonised colours, unconscious grace of grouping, arrangements -of common goods and simple things so made that beauty is got out of -them. But in a village festival in Italy there is nothing, except in the -water pageants of Venice, which is not ugly; it is all dusty, -uninteresting, untempting; what colours there are, are arranged with the -same disregard of fitness as is shown in the yellow, red and green -arm-chairs of the palace chambers; and the whole effect is one of -squalor and of vulgarity. The carnivals, which used to be fine and -brilliant spectacles, are now, almost all, save that of Milan, mere -tawdry, trivial, unlovely follies. Who can account for this? - -Are we to infer that all the transmitted influences of race count for -nothing? Would those who, rightly or wrongly, are tempted to explain all -the problems of life by the doctrines of heredity tell me why the living -representatives of the most artistic races on earth are almost -absolutely deprived of all artistic instincts? Some have suggested that -it is the outcome of the artificial habits and false taste of the -eighteenth century; but this can scarcely be correct, because this -artificiality existed all over Europe, not in Italy alone, and besides, -never touched the country people in any way or in any of their habits. - -The excuse made for the utter disregard and destruction of beauty in -Italy is that the utility of all things is now preferred to beauty. But -this is no adequate explanation. It may explain why a dirty steamboat is -allowed to grind against the water-steps of the Ca’d’Oro, or why the -fair shores of Poselippo and the blue bays of Spezzia and Taranto are -made hideous by steam and bricks. But it will not explain why the -peasant thinks a wax or cambric flower more lovely than a field anemone -or daffodil, or why the nobleman paints his Athene and gilds the wings -of his Hermes. This can only be traced to the utter decay of all feeling -for beauty, natural or artistic, in the Italian mind, and, though we -see, we cannot adequately explain, we can only deplore, it. There is no -doubt a tendency all the world over to loss of the true sense of beauty; -despite the æsthetic pretences of nations, the real feeling for natural -and artistic perfection is very weak in most of them. If it were strong -and pure, the utilitarian (_i.e._, the money-getting spirit) would not -prevail as it does in architecture, and forest solitudes would not be -destroyed as they are; and men would see what hypocrites they be who -make millions out of some hideous desecration of nature by factories, -iron foundries, or petroleum wells, and think they can purchase -condonation, and a reputation for fine taste, by buying pictures for -their galleries or inlaying their halls with rare woods or stones. The -whole world which calls itself civilised is guilty more or less of the -most absolute barbarism; but modern Italy is guiltiest of all, even as -he who has inherited a fair home and cultured intelligence is guiltier -than he who has never known anything but a vitiated atmosphere and a -squalid house. It is the immensity of her heritage which makes her abuse -of all her opportunities so glaring and so utterly beyond pardon. - -Nothing can ever give back to mankind what every day the Italian -municipalities and people are destroying, as indifferently as though -they were pulling down dead leaves or kicking aside anthills in the -sand. There is not even the pretext for these acts that they are done to -better the state of the people; to execute them the cheapest foreign -labour is called in, ousting the men of the soil off it: house-rent is -trebled and quadrupled, house-room narrowed, and in many instances -denied, to the native population: and contracts are given away right and -left to any foreign companies or syndicates who choose to bid for them. -The frightful blocks of new houses, the hideous new streets, the filthy -tramways, the naked new squares, are all made by foreign speculators who -purchase the right of spoliation from the municipalities as the private -owners of the soil. A few men are made temporarily richer: the country -is permanently beggared. - -‘Rome’ wrote Hermann Grimm, ‘represents for humanity a spiritual value -which cannot be easily estimated, but which is none the less precious -because ideal.’ Yet the vulgar and petty administration of an ephemeral -moment is allowed to treat the capital of the world as though it were -some settlement of shanties in the backwoods of America, fit only to -disappear beneath the mallet and scaffolding of carpenters and masons. -He said with justice that to call it vandalism is an injustice to the -Vandals, for they, at least, were too ignorant to know the worth of what -they destroyed, and acted in mere fierce instinct of conquest, with no -ulterior greed; but they who are now destroying arch on arch, tower on -tower, temple and church and palace, piling the sacred stones one on -another like rubble, and effacing landmarks which had been respected -through a thousand years, have the excuse neither of ignorance nor of -war. They know not what to do, and we may add that they care not what -they do, so long as their gain is made, their pockets filled. - -Of all the grotesque barbarisms committed in Rome, the destruction of -the cloister of Ara Cœli and of the tower of San Paolo upon the Capitol, -to make room for an equestrian statue of Victor Emmanuel, has been one -of the most offensive and ill-judged. All the world knows the beauty of -the Capitol, the immemorial memories connected with it, and the great -statue which for so many centuries has felt the Roman sunshine strike on -its golden bronze. The placing of a modern statue in juxtaposition with -the mighty Aurelian is an act so irredeemably vulgar, so pitiably -incongruous, that it is a matter of infinite regret, even for the repute -of the House of Savoy, that the present king did not peremptorily forbid -such use of his father’s manes. In the Superga, or on the mountain-side -of the Piedmontese Alps he loved so well, a statue of Victor Emmanuel -would be in keeping with his traditions, but it is a cruelty to him to -dwarf him by such surroundings and such memories as are there on the -Capitol of Rome. His fame is not of the kind which can bear, uninjured, -such comparisons; and were it even ten times greater than it is, there -could be no excuse for using the Capitol for such a purpose when there -is the whole width of the Campagna for it, and when, in perfect accord -with the abilities of modern sculptors, there are all the staring and -naked modern piazzas waiting for their works. Will it be credited that -it was actually proposed to place a statue of him between the columns of -St Mark? In these matters the king could and should, with perfect -propriety, intervene, and forbid a pretended homage for his father’s -memory being made a pretext and cover for the coarse and common -vandalism of the epoch. In Florence, the beautiful wooded entrance of -the Cascine was destroyed to make the bald, uninteresting square called -the Piazza degli Zuavi, and a large, stony, open place, shadeless and -unlovely, was reserved for a monument to Victor Emmanuel; for this the -oval brick basement of the pedestal was raised many years ago, and there -stands, unfinished and hideous, an eyesore to the city, an insult to the -royal House. - -There is scarcely a little town, there is no provincial capital on the -whole peninsula, which has not some new, staring, stucco street named -Corso Vittorio Emmanuele, or some historic and ancient square made -absurd and pitiable by being re-baptised Piazza dell’ Independenza. The -effect is at once ludicrous and deplorable. - -If it were necessary thus to deify the events of the last thirty years, -and magnify them out of their true proportions, it would have been easy -to build some wholly new city in some vacant spot, which might have -borne any name or names deemed fitting, and thus have left in peace the -great cities of the past, and not have made the present recall the fable -of the frog and the bull. - -Around Rome, as well as within it, the most luxuriant vegetation, a few -years ago, alternated with the most sacred ruins: tombs and temples and -triumphal arches were framed in the most abundant foliage; the banksia -rose, the orange, the myrtle, the jessamine climbed and blossomed amidst -the ruins of the palace of the Cæsars. In all these grand gardens, in -these flowering fields, in these grass meadows, stretching between their -marble colonnades, there was, as the German scholar says, an infinite -calm, a loveliness and stillness in which the poet and the scholar could -draw near to the mighty dead who had once been there as living men. -There was nothing like it left on earth. Now it is destroyed for ever. -Now,—in the stead of that tender silence of the tombs, that exquisite -freshness of the spring, awakening in a thousand moss-grown dells and -myrtle thickets which had seen Ovid and St Paul, Augustine and -Raffael--now, in the stead of this there are the stench of engines, the -dust of shattered bricks, the scream of steam whistles, the mounds of -rubbish, the poles of scaffolding, long lines of houses raised in -frantic haste on malarious soil, enormous barracks, representative of -the martial law required to hold in check a liberated people: all is -dirt, noise, confusion, hideousness, crowding, clamour, avarice. - -The leaders of an invading and victorious army would have been ashamed -to cause the havoc and the blasphemy which the Roman municipality have -carried out with shameless callousness; the indignant voice of Europe -would have bidden a Suwarrow, a Napoleon, a Constable de Bourbon stay -his hand, had he dared to level with the dust the august monuments of -which neither the majesty nor the memories have power to daunt the -impious hand of the nineteenth century Edilizia. Common faith, even, has -not been kept with the Roman people in the ruin of their city; the -completed plan, put before the public in 1880, of the works which were -intended, did not prepare the public for one-tenth of the devastation -which has been wrought. In the words of Grimm, those who put forth the -plan of ’80 proposed tranquil, moderate and decent measures, and never -contemplated the insensate haste, the brutal fury, the unsparing greed -shown by those who, professing to accept its propositions, have utterly -disregarded and far outstripped them. In the plan of ’80 it was, for -instance, expressly stated and provided that certain gardens, amongst -them the Ludovisi, should be purchased by the city, but kept intact in -their verdure and extent. This promise has been broken. - -What traveller has not known the Ludovisi Gardens? What scholar, -dreamer, painter, has not found his heaven there? Those immemorial -pines, making twilight beneath them in the sunniest noon, those lofty -walls of bays and of arbutus, those dim, green, shadowy aisles leading -to velvet swards and violet-studded banks, the family of peacocks -spreading their purples, their emeralds, their gold, out in the glory of -the radiant light, the nightingales singing night and day in the -fragrant solitudes, Sappho’s angel in Corrinna’s gardens—who has not -known these? who has not loved these? And they are gone, gone forever; -gone through the greed of men, and in their stead will stand the vile -rows of cheap and staring houses: in their place will reign the devil of -centralisation. - -Centralisation is the heart-disease of nations. The blood, driven by it -from the body and the limbs, becomes turgid and congested, overfills the -vessels of the heart, and chokes them up; there is no more health, and -later there is death. It has been the curse of France. It will be the -curse of Italy. The violated nymphs and the slaughtered nightingales of -the ruined gardens will be avenged. But what solace is that to us? We -have lost them forever. No power on earth can give them back to us. - -There is a violation of that sentiment which the Latins called Piety, so -glaring, and so monstrous, in the destruction of Rome by the Italians, -that it dwarfs all similar ruin being wrought elsewhere. All over Italy -things are daily being done which might wring tears from the statues’ -eyes of stone.[A] - ------ - -Footnote A: - - A Zoological Menagérie has been placed in the park of the Villa - Borghese! - ------ - -After the outrage to Rome, the injury done to Venice is the most -irreparable, the most inexcusable. - -The wanton destruction of the island of Saint Elena is, after the -destruction of the Ludovisi and other historic gardens in Rome, the most -disgraceful act of the sacrilege of modern Italy. It is barbarism -without one shadow of excuse or plea of obligation. This loveliest isle -had been spared by all hostile fleets and armies. It lies at the very -mouth of the lagoon opening out from the Grand Canal. It arrests the -eyes of all who go to and fro the Lido. It was, a little while ago, a -little paradise of solitude, fragrance and beauty. Its thickets of wild -rose, of jessamine, and of myrtle, were filled with song-birds. Its old -church, the oldest in the Veneto, stood, grey and venerable, amidst the -shade of green acacias and flowering oleanders. The little world of -blossom and of melody, hung between the sea and sky, had a holiness, a -pathos, a perfection of woodland loveliness not to be told in words; -there no sound was heard except the bells of the matins and vespers, the -lapping of the waves, the whir of the white gulls’ wings, and the echo -of some gondolier’s boating song. To sit in its quiet cloisters, with -the fragrance of its wild gardens all around, and see the sun set beyond -Venice, and the deep rose of evening spread over the arch of the skies -and the silver plain of the waters, was to live a little while in the -same world that Giorgione and Veronese knew. It seems like a vision of a -nightmare to find these cloisters levelled and these gardens and trees -destroyed; the whole island made a grimy, smoking mound of clay and -ruins. Yet thus it is. The government has chosen to make it a site for a -factory and foundry; and, not content with this defilement, is throwing -up, upon it and beside it, acres of the stinking sand and clay dredged -up from the canals, intending in due time to cover this new soil with -other factories and foundries, full in the face of the Ducal Palace, a -few furlongs from the Piazza of St Mark. Viler devastation was never -more iniquitously or more unpardonably wrought. - -Meantime the very commonest care is refused to such interesting and -priceless houses as the House of the Camel, which is let out to a number -of poor and dirty tenants, with its eponymus alto-relievo made the -target for the stones of the children; while in the same quarter of the -Madonna dell’ Orta, close at hand, a manufacturer is allowed to send the -mouths of his steam-tubes hissing through the iron arabesques and -between the carved foliage of a most noble Gothic doorway belonging to a -deserted church. - -I am aware that it is useless to protest against these things. The soul -in the country is withered up by small greeds. All these irreparable -injuries are done that municipal councillors may pocket some gain, and -any stranger who has the money necessary can purchase from the Conscript -Fathers of the hour the right to defile, to annex, to violate, to -destroy the fairest and most sacred places in Italy. The goddess is -given over to the ravishing of any boor who brings a money-bag. - -The scholar, the poet, the archæologist are all abhorred in modern -Italy; their protests are impatiently derided, their reverence is -contemptuously ridiculed, their love of art, of nature, or of history, -is regarded as a folly, ill-timed and inconvenient, lunatic and -hysterical. But the new-comer who proposes a machine, a chimney, a -monster hotel, a bubble company, or a tramway station, is welcomed with -open arms; it is considered that he means ‘progress,’ _i.e._, that he -means a subsidy for some one, a general scramble for gold pieces. - -Emile de Lavaleye has demonstrated, in his recent _Lettres d’ Italie_, -that these works in Venice, so fatal to the city, cannot ever result in -any financial profit; that, with coal forty francs a ton, it is -impossible they should ever bring any; that all industry of the kind is -artificial and pernicious in Italy, and ends in impoverishing the many -to enrich a few. - -It is a wanton love of destruction which can alone lead a people who -possess neither iron nor coal to make foundries and factories in Venice, -the most lovely and luminous city of the sea. These works cannot be ever -profitable at Venice, by reason of the immense cost of the transport -there of the metals and combustibles necessary for their development. -Yet in every direction their foul smoke is rising, and dimming that -translucent air so dear to every painter from Carpaccio to Aïvarnovski. -From the Zattere alone no less than fourteen factory chimneys are -visible. - -The Fondamenté Nuové was in the days of the Doges the _riva_, -consecrated to the villas and pleasure-gardens of the Venetian nobles; -their palaces were only for winter habitation or ceremonious use, but -the beautiful garden-houses facing Murano were their retreat for mirth, -ease and recreation of all kinds, with nothing between them and the -silvery lagoon except the clouds of foliage and of blossom which then -covered these little isles. Nothing would have been easier than to make -this shore now what it was then, and it would even have been undoubtedly -profitable to have done so. Will it be credited that, instead, it has -been selected as the especial site of gas-works and iron-works and all -abominations of stench and smoke, whilst, instead of the laughing -loveliness of flowering lawns leaning to touch the sea, there is a long -and dreary brick embankment, on which you can walk if you choose, and -recall, if you can, the ‘tender grace of a day that is dead’? - -‘_La lumière de Venise_‘ has been the theme of all poets and the -enchantment of all travellers for centuries; that opal-hued, -translucent, ethereal light has been the wonder of every wanderer who -has found himself in the enchantment of its silvery radiance. ’_On nage -dans la lumière_,’ is the just expression of Taine, to describe the -exquisite effulgence of the light in Venice. Yet this wonder, this -delight, this gift of Nature from sea and sky, the modern masters of the -fate of Venice deliberately sacrifice, that a few greedy commercial -adventurers may set up their chimneys on the shores consecrated to St -Mark. - -The Venetian populace have still in themselves a sense of colour and a -passion for verdure; in every little _calle_ and at every _traghetto_ an -acacia grows and a vine climbs; on the sails of the fishing and fruit -boats there are painted figures, and in the garb of those who steer them -there is still picturesque choice of form and hue. But in the Venetian -municipality, as in every other Italian municipality, all taste is dead, -all shame is dead with it; and the only existence, the only passion, -left in their stead, are those of gain and of destruction. On the -Giudecca hideous factories, which belch out the blackest of smoke close -to the dome of the Church of the Redentore, have been allowed to pollute -the atmosphere and disgrace the view; and in every shed or outhouse -where anyone has a fancy to stick up the iron tube of an engine, similar -smoke passes forth, making day frightful and clouding the lagoon for -miles. - -Reverence, and that sense of fitness which always goes with reverence, -are wholly lacking in the modern Italian mind. There is a kind of -babyish self-admiration in its stead, which is the most sterile of all -moral ground, and with which it is impossible to argue, because it is -deaf and blind, inwrapped in its own vanity. In a few years’ time, if -the Italian kingdom last, it will insist on its history being -re-written, and the debts that it owed to the French Emperor in ’59 and -to the German Emperor in ’70 being struck out of its balance-sheet -altogether. Nothing was more untrue, more bombastical, or more -misleading than the favourite phrase, _Italia fara da se_; but it is one -of those untruths which have been caressed and repeated until they are -accepted as facts; and the injury done by this conceit to the present -generation is very great. - -Nature has done all for Italy; it is a soil which is indeed blessed of -the gods; from its pure and radiant air to its wildflowers, which spring -as though Aphrodite were still here ‘to sow them with her odorous foot,’ -it is by Nature perfectly dowered and thrice blessed. In its roseate -dawns, its crystal, clear moonlight, its golden afternoons, it has still -the lovely light of an unworn world. Art joined hands with Nature, and -gave her best and her richest treasures to Italy. It is, to any scholar, -artist, poet, or reverent pilgrim to her shrines, a thing of intolerable -odium, of unutterable sorrow, that the very people born of her soil -should be thus ignorant of her exquisite beauty, thus mercenary, venal -and unshamed in their prostitution of it. - -Even amongst those who follow art as their calling, there is no sense of -colour or of fitness. When the old houses of the Via degli Archibusieri -were pulled down in Florence, to lay bare the colonnade beneath them, a -committee of artists deliberated for three months as to the best method -of dealing with this colonnade. The result of their deliberations was to -cover the old stone with stucco and paint the stones brown, with white -borders! The effect is enhanced by upright lamp-posts, coloured brown, -stuck in the middle of the way. The excuse given for the demolition of -the houses was that the removal of them would widen a thoroughfare: as -the lamp-posts are much more obstructive to drivers than the houses -were, the correctness of the reasons given can be easily gauged. This is -an example of all the rest. ‘Are we to go in rags for sake of being -picturesque?’ said a syndic now ruling one of the chief cities of Italy, -to a person who complained to him of the destruction of art and beauty -now common throughout the peninsula. The reply is characteristic of that -illogical stupidity and that absolute colour-blindness which are common -to the modern Italian, or, let us say, the municipal Italian mind. They -are insensible themselves to the horror of their work, just as they are -unconscious why yellow, blue and green chairs on a red carpet offend a -delicate taste. To whitewash frescoed walls; to make old monasteries -look brand new; to scrub and peel and skin sculptured marbles; to daub -over beautiful arches and columns and cloisters with tempera paintings, -mechanically reproduced in one set pattern over and over again, over -miles of stucco; to outrage the past and vulgarise the present; to -respect nothing; to set the glaring seal of a despotic and bourgeois -administration over all which ages have made lovely and reverent—all -this they think an admirable and hygienic work, while they let human -excrement be strewn broadcast over the fields and emptied in the street -at midday under broiling heat, and set the guards of their rivers to -drive out with blows of the scabbard the poor children who would fain -splash and bathe in them under canicular suns. The excuse of hygiene is -only the parrot cry which covers the passion for iconoclasm and -destruction. To make their own _interessi_ while the moment lasts is the -only desire at the heart of all these civic councillors and engineers, -architects and contractors, house-owners and speculators. To petty -personal purposes and selfish personal profits everything is sacrificed -by the innumerable prefects, syndics, and town councillors, by whom -Italy is regarded as the Turkish pashas regarded the Egyptian fellah. - -Florence, again, might, with great ease, have been made one of the most -beautiful cities of Europe: if there had been only moderate care and -decent taste displayed in its administration, its natural and -architectural charms were so great that it would have been a facile task -to keep them unharmed. If its suburbs, indeed, of ugliness and squalor, -could show good roads and shady avenues; if its river banks, instead of -brick walls, showed grass and trees; if its filthy cab-stands were kept -out of sight, and its city trees allowed to grow at the will of Nature, -Florence would be lovely and twice as healthy as it is. But there is no -attempt to preserve what is beautiful, or to make what is of necessity -modern accord in any manner with the old; whilst on trees there is waged -a war which can only oblige one to conclude that those who are entrusted -with the care of them have no eye except to the filling of their own -wood-cellars. It is a very common thing to see an avenue of plane or -lime trees with their heads cut off, whilst all the trees, whether in -the public gardens or on the boulevards, are chopped and hacked out of -all likeness to themselves, and of course dry up and perish long before -their time. - -Nothing can be more criminal that what is actually now being proposed in -the Florence town council, i.e., to raise a loan of eight millions, at -four per cent., to destroy the entire old centre of the city.[B] I -repeat, nothing more criminal, more wasteful, or more senseless could be -done. Florence is very poor; a few years ago she was on the brink of -bankruptcy; taxation is enormous throughout Tuscany; the poorest are -taxed for the very bed they lie on; the amount which she has to pay to -the government from the _dazio consume_ (that is, the octroi duty at the -gates, on all food and produce of every kind entering the town) is -extravagant and intolerable. So cruelly are the simplest productions of -the soil mulcted by taxation that every class suffers, whether producer -or consumer. The annual interest payable on the new loan will add -immensely to the burdens which the city bears; and for what purpose is -such a loan to be contracted? For the purpose of pulling down the oldest -and most historic parts of Florence, to create a naked wilderness which -will be changed into one of those squares, dusty and hideous, with metal -lamp-posts round it and stunted shrubs in the centre of it, which -represent to the municipal Italian the _ne plus ultra_ of loveliness and -civilisation. The excuse given of hygienic reasons is a lie. All the -uncleanly classes which dwelt in the Ghetto have been bundled off -wholesale to the S. Frediano quarters, where they will continue to dwell -with unchanged habits, a few score of yards removed from where they were -before. The dirt of Italian cities is not due to the age or shape of the -streets, it is due to the filthy personal habits of the people, which -are the same in a wide and roomy farm-house in the pine woods as in a -garret of a town. They love dirt; water never touches their bodies all -the year round, and never touches even their faces or hands in winter; -they like their vegetables raw, their wine sour; their pipes are -eternally in their mouths, and their clothes reek with every stench -under heaven. It is the habits of the people, not the formation of the -streets, which constitute the standing peril of pestilence in Italy. -They would make a new house as filthy as an old one in a week. For what, -then, is this enormous, useless, and unpardonable addition to the civil -debt of Florence incurred? Only to put money in the pockets of a few -speculators, and a few owners of the soil, at the cost of destroying all -that is most interesting, valuable, and historical in the city. - ------ - -Footnote B: - - Since this was written it has been done, entirely obliterating - republican Florence, and creating a new enormous debt for the town. - ------ - -Will it be credited by any readers of these words that it is actually in -contemplation to turn the old piazza behind the Palazzo Strozzi into a -range of glass-galleries like those of Milan or of Brussels? It is -incredible that a whole civil population can tranquilly permit such -outrage, and such grotesque outrage, to be committed in its name. - -It is indeed very much as though the owner of Raffaeles and Titians tore -them up into tatters and bought chromo-lithographs and olegraphs to hang -in their places. - -Oftentimes the populace itself is pained and mortified to see its old -heirlooms torn down and its old associations destroyed, but the populace -has no power; the whole civic power is vested in the bureaucracy, and -civic electoral rights are wholly misunderstood and practically unused -by the masses of the people. It is for the most part the smug and -self-complacent _bourgeoisie_ which rules, and which finds a curious -delight in the contemplation of everything which can destroy the cities -of the Renaissance, and the records of classic Latium, to replace them -with some gimcrack and brand-new imitation of a third-rate modern French -or Belgian town, glaring with plate-glass, gilding, dust, smoke, acres -of stucco, and oceans of asphalt. - -The modern Italian has not the faintest conception of the kind of -religious reverence with which the English, the German, the American -scholar visits the cities of Italy. Such an emotion seems to the son of -the soil wholly inexplicable and grotesquely sentimental. If the -Englishman praise a monster hotel or a torpedo-boat, or the German the -march of a regiment, or the American the shafts of a factory, then, and -then only, will the Italian regard the travellers with complacency. And -what is done in the cities is repeated in the small towns, of which the -municipalities think it grand and ‘advanced’ to imitate the innovations -of larger ones, and where the house-owners and owners of the soil are -just as greedy as their town councillors, and just as eager to sacrifice -any classic beauty or mediæval memory for gain. - -Could Dante come to life, no curse that he ever breathed upon his -countrymen would be one-half so fierce and deep as that with which he -would devote the Italian of the close of the nineteenth century to the -vengeance of the offended gods. But Dante’s self would say his curses to -deaf ears, wadded close with the wool of vanity and greed. - -Meanwhile the taxation of all these towns is so high that tradespeople -are ruined in them, as the country proprietors are ruined in hundreds -and thousands by the imposts on land and all that land produces. Against -blind cupidity the gods themselves are impotent. - - - - - THE - FAILURE OF CHRISTIANITY - - -Very soon, as the history of the world counts time, Christianity will -have completed its two thousand years of existence. In some shape or -other its doctrines dominate the civilised portions of Europe and -America and Australasia; and even in Asia and in Africa its -representatives and its missionaries are busied in the endeavours to -diffuse them into the dark places of the earth. Whether we accept it as -what is called a revealed or supernatural religion, or whether we more -rationally consider it an offspring of the older and similar myths of -Asia united to Judaism, the fact remains the same of the immense area of -its adoption by the human race, and especially by the Aryan race. -Islamism is widespread, but has no continuous power of proselytism -similar to Christianity; and Judaism, though inexorably potent on the -Jewish tribes, whatever country they inhabit, can claim little or no -power of attracting strangers within its fold; does not, indeed, seek to -attract any. - -To live and spread as it has done, Christianity must have some vital -force within itself superior to those possessed by other creeds. It must -be suited to the human race in some manner which the religion of -Mohammed and that of Israel have alike missed. Indeed, the whole history -of the acquisition of its dominion is very singular, and has probably -been due to the socialistic element contained in it; for the gospels are -a breviary intimately dear to the heart of every communist. -Mohammedanism is aristocratic; so is Judaism, so were the Greek and -Latin religions; but Christianity is the religion of democracy, of -universal equality, of the poor man consoled for privation on earth by -his belief that such privation is surely the narrow gate by which heaven -alone can be reached. Even in the moment when Christianity most nearly -approached an aristocratic worship, it still contained the germs of -democracy; it still held out hope to the poor man, hope both spiritual -and material; in the feudal ages, when it was the war-cry of knights and -ruling power of great kings and arrogant priests, it still whispered in -the ear of the swineherd and the scullion,—‘Take my tonsure and my -habit, and who knows that thou mayest not live to earn the triple -crown?’ - -Because Socialism is for a great part atheistic, it has been wholly -forgotten how socialistic have been the influences on society of -Christianity. The evangels are essentially the dream of a poor man; the -vision of a peasant asleep after a day of toil, and seeing in his vision -the angels come for him, whilst they spurn the rich man on whose fields -he has laboured. ‘Come to Me, all ye who sorrow and are heavy-laden, and -I will give you rest.’ It is the invitation to the poor; not to the -rich. The disciples are fishermen for the most part; Christ is himself a -carpenter; the whole dream is a passion-play of peasants as entirely as -that which represented it last year in Ammergau; and in it power, -intellect and law are all subverted and proved wrong when Pilate gets -down from the judgment-seat, and the watching fishers believe that they -behold the resurrection. This socialistic influence the doctrines of -Christianity have had, and have gradually made felt throughout many -ages, and are making felt more sharply and rudely in this our own than -in any other age. The most ‘pious’ of all sects are also always the most -democratic; the Nonconformists and the Wesleyans are always the most -intent on levelling the barriers and irregularities of social life. -Protestantism was the democratic daughter of the Papacy, but the Papacy -was also a democrat when it made it possible for a swineherd to hold the -keys of St Peter, and for a Becket to rule a Plantagenet, for a Wolsey -to rule a Tudor. - -Again and again the humble vassal lived to thunder excommunication upon -monarchs, and the timid scribe who dared not lift his eyes from his -scroll became the most powerful, the most arrogant, the most inexorable -of churchmen. It was this hope contained within it for the lowliest, -this palm held out by it to the poorest, which made the enormous -influence of Christianity from the days of Basil and Augustine to the -days of Richelieu and Wolsey. The feudal lords who shouted Christian -war-cries, and the despotic kings who swore by the Holy Rood and by Our -Lady, were wholly unconscious that in the creed they cherished there -were the germs of the democratic influences which would in time to come -undermine thrones and make aristocracy an empty name; they did not know -that in Clement Marot’s psalm-books and in Wycliffe’s Bible there lay -folded that which would in time to come bring forth the thesis of -Bakounine and the demands of the Knights of Labour. - -If we meditate on and realise the essentially socialistic tendencies of -the Christian creed, we may wonder that the ‘_grands de la terre_’ ever -so welcomed it, or ever failed to see in it the death-germs of their own -order; but we shall completely understand why it fascinated all the -labouring classes of mankind and planted in them those seeds of -communism which are now bearing forth full fruit. But what is almost -equally certain is that Christianity will be wholly powerless to -restrain the results of what it has inspired. - -For of all absolutely powerless things on earth Christianity is the most -powerless, even though sovereigns are still consecrated, multitudes -still baptised, parliaments and tribunals still opened, and countless -churches and cathedrals still built in its name. It has become a -shibboleth, a husk, a robe with no heart beating within it, a winged -angel carved in dead wood. It has said that it is almost impossible for -the rich man to be just or inherit the kingdom of heaven: the Anarchists -insist that it is utterly impossible, and will, if they can, cast the -rich man into hell on earth. - -Christianity has opened the flood-gates to Socialism; but it will not -have any power in itself to close them again. For nothing can be in more -complete contradiction than the prevalence of the profession of -Christianity with the impotency of that profession to colour and control -human life. The Buddha of Galilee has not one-thousandth part of the -direct influence on his professional disciples that is possessed by the -Buddha of India. Christianity is professed over the whole earth wherever -the Aryan race exists and rules, but all the kingdoms and republics -which make it their state creed are, practically, wholly unaffected by -its doctrines, except in so far as their socialistic members derive -precedent and strength from them. - -Take, for instance, that which governs states and prescribes the duties -of men—the majesty of the law, as it is termed—the science and the -practice of legislation. Side by side with the religion enjoined by the -state there exists a code of legislation which violates every precept of -Christianity, and resembles only the _lex talionis_ of the old Hebrew -law, which the Christian creed was supposed to have destroyed and -superseded. - -A savage insistence on having an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth -is the foundation of all modern law. The European, or the American, or -the Australasian, goes on Sunday to his church and says his formula, -‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,’ -and then on the Monday morning prosecutes a boy who stole a ball of -string, or a neighbour who has invaded a right of way, or an enemy whose -cow has strayed, or whose horse has kicked, or whose dog has bitten, and -exacts for one and all of these offences the uttermost penalty that the -law will permit him to demand. It may be said that such law is -absolutely necessary in civilised states: it may be so: but then the -empty formula of the Christian forgiveness of trespasses should be in -honesty abandoned. - -Mr Ruskin never writes on Venice without dwelling on the vital influence -of the Christian creed on the men of the middle ages, and contrasting -the religious spirit of those whose cry was St Mark, and whose -admiration was St Jerome, with those of modern times, when these names -mean nothing on the ears of men. But, in truth, the influence was -architectural and artistic rather than moral; the memory neither of St -Mark nor St Jerome ever prevented the blinding of the eyes of doges who -had displeased the people, the treachery and brutality of their -inexorable decrees, the torture of the Foscari, the betrayal of -Carracciolo, the sale of slaves, or any one of the awful cruelties and -tyrannies of the Council of Ten. - -As it was in the Venice of the middle ages, so has it been and is -wherever Christianity is nominally dominant. The cross is embroidered on -banners and its psalter is carried to churches in pious hands, but its -real influence on the life of nations is as slight as that of Mark and -Jerome on the Council of Ten. The whole practical life of nations lives, -breathes and holds its place by creeds and necessities which are the -complete antithesis of the Christian; they are selfish in their -policies, bloodthirsty in their wars, cunning in their diplomacy, -avaricious in their commerce, unsparing in their hours of victory. They -are so, and, alas! they must be so, or they would be pushed out of their -place amongst nations, and parcelled out, like Joseph’s coat, amongst -their foes. - -The capitalist who makes millions by the manufacture of rifled cannon -sees no inconsistency in murmuring in his seat at Catholic mass or -Protestant service, ‘Return good for evil,’ ‘If one cheek be smitten, -turn the other,’ and all the rest of the evangelical injunctions to -peace and forbearance: were any to suggest to him the inconsistency of -his conduct, such an one would speak to deaf ears; that his whole life -was a violation of the precepts he professed would be an unintelligible -reproach to him: his soul would take refuge, smug and safe, in his -formulas. Yet who can deny that, if the commands of Christianity had in -the least penetrated beneath the surface of human life, to make weapons -of destruction would be viewed as a crime so frightful that none would -dare attempt it? Some writer has said that ‘singing psalms never yet -prevented a grocer from sanding his sugar.’ This rough joke expresses in -a grotesque form what may be said in all seriousness of the impotency of -Christianity to affect modern national life. - -Christianity is a formula: it is nothing more. The nations in which -daily services in its honour are said in thousands and tens of thousands -of cathedrals and churches, sell opium to the Chinese, cheat and slay -red Indians, slaughter with every brutality the peaceful natives of -Tonquin and Anam, carry fire and sword into central Asia, kill Africans -like ants on expeditions, and keep a whole populace in the grip of -military service from the Spree to the Elbe, from the Zuider Zee to the -Tiber, from the Seine to the Neva. Whether the nation be England, -America, France, Russia, Italy, or Germany, the fact is the same; with -the gospels on its reading-desks and their shibboleth on its lips, every -nation practically follows the lusts and passions of its human greeds -for possession of territory and increase of treasure. Not one amongst -them is better in this matter than another. Krupp guns, shrapnel shells, -nitro-glycerine and submarine torpedoes are the practical issues of -evangelicism and Catholicism all over the civilised world. And the -nations are so sublimely unconscious of their own hypocrisy that they -have blessings on their warfare pronounced by their ecclesiastics, and -implore the Lord of Hosts for his sympathy before sending out armoured -cruisers. - -This is inevitable, is the reply: in the present state of hostility -between all nations, the first one to renounce the arts of war would be -swallowed up by the others. So it would be, no doubt; but if this be the -chief fruit of Christianity, may not this religion justly be said to -have failed conspicuously in impressing itself upon mankind? It has -impressed its formulas; not its spirit. It has sewn a phylactery on the -hem of humanity’s robe: it has never touched the soul of humanity -beneath the robe. It has produced the iniquities of the Inquisition, the -egotism and celibacy of the monasteries, the fury of religious wars, the -ferocity of the Hussite, of the Catholic, of the Puritan, of the -Spaniard, of the Irish Orangeman and of the Irish Papist; it has divided -families, alienated friends, lighted the torch of civil war, and borne -the virgin and the greybeard to the burning pile, broken delicate limbs -upon the wheel and wrung the souls and bodies of innocent creatures on -the rack: all this it has done, and done in the name of God. - -But of mercy, of pity, of forbearance, of true self-sacrifice, what has -it ever taught the world? - -A while ago there was published an account of the manufacture of the -deadliest sort of dynamite on the shores of Arran. Full in the front of -the great sea, with all the majesty of a rock-bound and solitary shore -around them, these hideous works raise their blaspheming face to Nature -and pollute and profane her most solemn glories; and there, on this -coast of Arran, numbers of young girls work at the devilish thing in -wooden huts, with every moment the ever-present risk of women and huts -being blown into millions of atoms if so much as a shred of metal, or -even a ray of too warm sunshine, strike on the foul, sickly, infernal -compound which their fingers handle. A brief while since two girls were -thus blown into the air, and were so instantaneously and utterly -annihilated that not a particle of their bodies or of their clothing -could be recognised; and all the while the sea-gulls were circling, and -the waves leaping, and the clouds sailing, and deep calling to deep, -‘Lo! behold the devil and all his works.’ And there is no devil there at -all except man—man who makes money out of this fell thing which blasts -the beauties of Nature, and scars the faces of the hills, and has made -possible to civilisation a fashion of wholesale assassination so -horrible, so craven, and so treacherous that the boldness of open murder -seems almost virtue beside it. - -The manufactory of nitro-glycerine on the Arran shore is the emblem of -the world which calls itself Christian. No doubt the canny Scots who are -enriched by it go to their kirk religiously, are elders of it, very -likely, and if they saw a boy trundle a hoop, or a girl use a needle on -the Sabbath day, would think they saw a crime, and would summon and -chastise the sinners. Pontius Pilate was afraid and ashamed when he had -condemned an innocent man; but the modern followers of Christ have -neither fear nor shame when they pile up gold on gold in their bankers’ -cellars through the death which they have manufactured and sold, -indifferent though it should strike down a thousand innocent men. - -Even of death Christianity has made a terror which was unknown to the -gay calmness of the Pagan and the stoical repose of the Indian. Never -has death been the cause of such craven timidity as in the Christian -world, to which, if Christians believed any part of what they profess, -it would be the harbinger of glad tidings, the welcome messenger of a -more perfect life. To visionaries like Catherine of Siena, it may have -been so at times, but to the masses of men and women professing the -Christian faith, death has been and is the King of Terrors, from whose -approach they cower in an agony which Petronius Arbiter would have -ridiculed, and Socrates and Seneca have scorned. The Greek and the Latin -gave dignity to death, and awaited it with philosophy and peace; but the -Christian beholds in it innumerable fears like a child’s terror of -ghosts in darkness, and by the manner of the funeral rites with which he -celebrates it contrives to make grotesque even that mute majesty which -rests with the dead slave as much as with the dead emperor. - -Christianity has been cruel in much to the human race. It has quenched -much of the sweet joy and gladness of life; it has caused the natural -passions and affections of it to be held as sins; by its teaching that -the body should be despised, it has brought on all the unnamable filth -which was made a virtue in the monastic orders, and which in the -Italian, the Spanish, the Russian peoples, and the poor of all nations -is a cherished and indestructible habit. In its permission to man to -render subject to him all other living creatures of the earth, it -continued the cruelty of the barbarian and of the pagan, and endowed -these with what appeared a divine authority—an authority which Science, -despising Christianity, has yet not been ashamed to borrow and to use. - -Let us, also, endeavour to realise the unutterable torments endured by -men and maidens in their efforts to subdue the natural desires of their -senses and their affections to the unnatural celibacy of the cloister, -and we shall see that the tortures inflicted by Christianity have been -more cruel than the cruelties of death. Christianity has ever been the -enemy of human love; it has forever cursed and expelled and crucified -the one passion which sweetens and smiles on human life, which makes the -desert blossom as the rose, and which glorifies the common things and -common ways of earth. It made of this, the angel of life, a shape of sin -and darkness, and bade the woman whose lips were warm with the first -kisses of her lover believe herself accursed and ashamed. Even in the -unions which it reluctantly permitted, it degraded and dwarfed the -passion which it could not entirely exclude, and permitted it coarsely -to exist for the mere necessity of procreation. The words of the -Christian nuptial service expressly say so. Love, the winged god of the -immortals, became, in the Christian creed, a thrice-damned and -earth-bound devil, to be exorcised and loathed. This has been the -greatest injury that Christianity has ever done to the human race. Love, -the one supreme, unceasing source of human felicity, the one sole joy -which lifts the whole mortal existence into the empyrean, was by it -degraded into the mere mechanical action of reproduction. It cut the -wings of Eros. Man, believing that he must no longer love his mistress, -woman, believing that she must no longer love her lover, loved -themselves, and from the cloisters and from the churches there arose a -bitter, joyless, narrow, apprehensive passion which believed itself to -be religion, but was in truth only a form of concentrated egotism, the -agonised desire to be ‘saved,’ to ascend into the highest heaven, let -who else would wait without its doors or pine in hell. The influence of -this is still with the world, and will long be with it; and its echo is -still loud in the sibilant voices which hiss at the poet who sings and -the poet who glorifies love. - -And herein we approach that spurious offspring of Christianity which is -called cant. - -Other religions have not been without it. The Mosaic law had the -Pharisee, who for a pretence made long prayers. The Greek and the Latin -had those who made oblations to the gods for mere show, and augurs who -served the sacred altars with their tongue in their cheek. But from -Christianity, alas! has arisen and spread a systematic hypocrisy more -general, more complete, more vain, more victorious than any other. The -forms of the Christian religion facilitate this. Whether in the Catholic -form of it, which cleanses the sinner in the confessional that he may go -forth and sin again freely, or in the Protestant form, which, so long as -a man listens to sermons and kneels at sacraments, does not disturb him -as to the tenor of his private life, the Christian religion says, -practically, to all its professors: ‘Wear my livery and assemble in my -courts; I ask no more of you in return for the moral reputation which I -will give to you.’ - -Its lip-service and its empty rites have made it the easiest of all -tasks for the usurer to cloak his cruelties, the miser to hide his -avarice, the lawyer to condone his lies, the sinner of all social sins -to purchase the social immunity from them by outward deference to -churches. - -The Christian religion, outwardly and even in intention humble, does, -without meaning it, teach man to regard himself as the most important of -all created things. Man surveys the starry heavens and hears with his -ears of the plurality of worlds; yet his religion bids him believe that -his alone out of these innumerable spheres is the object of his master’s -love and sacrifice. To save his world—whose common multitudes can be no -more in the scale of creation than the billions of insects that build up -a coral-reef beneath the deep sea—he is told that God himself took human -shape, underwent human birth, was fed with human food, and suffered -human pains. It is intelligible that, believing this, the most arrogant -self-conceit has puffed up the human crowd, and that with the most cruel -indifference they have sacrificed to themselves all the countless -suffering multitudes which they are taught to call ‘the beasts which -perish.’ It is this selfishness and self-esteem which, fostered in the -human race by Christianity, have far outweighed and overborne the -humility which its doctrines in part strove to inculcate and the mercy -which they advocated. - -It is in vain that the human race is bidden to believe that its -Creator cares for the lilies of the field and for the birds of the -air: it is the human race alone for which its God has suffered and -died, so it believes, and this solitary selection, this immense -supremacy, make it semi-divine in its own sight. It is the leaven of -egotism begotten by the Christian creed which has neutralised the -purity and the influence of its teachings. Here and there saintly men -and women have been guided by it solely in the ways of holiness and -unselfishness; but the great majority of mankind has drawn from it -chiefly two lessons—self-concentration and socialism. ‘Rock of ages, -cleft for _me_,’ sighs the Christian; and this ‘immense Me’ is, as -Emerson has said of it, the centre of the universe in the belief of -the unconscious egotist. - -Christians repeat like a parrot’s recitative the phrase that no sparrow -falls uncounted by its Creator, and they go to their crops and scatter -poison, or load fowling-pieces with small shot to destroy hundreds of -sparrows in a morning. If they believed that their God saw the little -birds of the air fall, would they dare to do it? Of course they would -not; but they do not believe: it only suits them to use their formula, -and they are never prevented by it from strewing bird-poison or setting -bird-traps. - -Behold their priests taking on themselves the vows of poverty, of -chastity, and of renunciation, and whether they be the Catholic -cardinal, stately, luxurious and arrogant, or whether they be the -Protestant bishop, with his liveried servants, his dinner parties, and -his church patronage, what can we see more widely removed in unlikeness -from all the precepts of the creed which they profess to obey? What -fiercer polemics ever rage than those which wrangle about the body of -religion? What judge would not be thought a madman who should from the -bench counsel the man who has received a blow to bear it in meekness and -turn the other cheek? What missionary would be excused for leaving his -wife and children chargeable on parish rates because he pointed to the -injunction to leave all that he had and follow Christ? - -What attempt on the part of any community to put the precepts of -Christianity into practical observance would not cause them to be -denounced to magistrates as communists, as anarchists, as moonstruck -dreamers, as lunatics? There are sects in Russia which endeavour to do -so, and the police hunt them down like wild animals. They are only -logically trying to carry out the precepts of the gospels, but they are -regarded therefore as dangerous lunatics. They can have no place in the -conventional civilisation of the world. What judge who should tell the -two litigants in any lawsuit concerning property that they were -violating every religious duty in wrangling with each other about filthy -lucre would not be deemed a fool, and worse? The French Republic, in -tearing down from its courts of law and from its class-rooms the emblems -of Christianity, has done a rough, but sincere and consistent, act, if -one offensive to a great portion of the nation; and it may be alleged -that this act is more logical than the acts of those nations who open -their tribunals with rites of reverence towards a creed with which the -whole legislature governing these tribunals is in entire and militant -contradiction. ‘Religion is one thing; law is another,’ said a lawyer -once to whom this strange discrepancy was commented on; but so long as -law is founded on assumptions and principles wholly in violence with -those of religion, how can such religion be called the religion of the -state? It is as absurd a discrepancy as that with which the Italian -nation, calling itself Catholic, drove out thousands of Catholic monks -and Catholic nuns from their religious houses and seized their -possessions by the force of the secular arm. It is not here the question -whether the suppression of the male and female monastic orders was or -was not right or necessary; what is certain is that the state, enforcing -this suppression, can with no shadow of sense or of logic continue to -call itself a Catholic state; as it still does continue to call itself -in the person of its king and in its public decrees. - -How is it to be accounted for—this impotence of Christianity to affect -the policies, politics, legislation and general life of the nations -which think their salvation lies in the profession of its creed? How is -it that a religion avowedly making peace and long-suffering of injury -the corner-stone of its temple has had as its principal outcome war, -both the fanaticism of religious war and the avarice of civil war; a -legislation founded on the _lex talionis_ and inexorable in its -adherence to that law; and a commerce which all the world over is -saturated with the base desire to overreach, outwit and outstrip all -competitors? - -It is chiefly due to the absolutely ‘unworkable’ character of its -injunctions; and partly due to the Jewish laws entering so largely into -the creeds of modern Christians: also it is due to the fact that even in -the purer creeds of the evangelists there is so much of egotism. ‘What -shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’ -‘His own’—that throughout is to be the chief thought of his existence -and its constant end. The greatest of the Christian martyrs were but -egotists when they were not matoïdes. Their fortitude and constancy were -already rewarded, in their belief, by every sweetness of celestial joys -and glories. It may be doubted whether they even felt the scourge, the -torch, the iron, or the rods, so intensely in their exaltation was their -nervous system strung up to ecstasy. What could the poor offer of -earthly life seem worth to those who believed that by thus losing it -they would enter at once and forever into the exquisite consciousness of -a surpassing beatitude? An intense, though innocent, selfishness was at -the root of all the martyrdoms of the early Christian Church. There was -not one amongst them which approached for unselfishness the death of -Antinous. And it is surely this egotism which is an integral part of the -Christian creed, and which has been at once its strength and its -weakness; its strength in giving it dominion over human nature, and its -weakness in allying it with baser things. The alloy has made the gold -more workable, but has destroyed its purity. - -Meanwhile, although the majority of Christian nations profess the -Christian faith more or less sincerely, and give it at least the homage -of hypocrisy, all the intellectual life of the world is leaving its -folds without concealment. There is in its stead either the hard and -soulless materialism of the scientist, or the sad, vague pantheism and -pessimism of the scholar and the poet. Neither will ever suffice for the -mass of mankind in general. The purely imaginative and intellectual mind -can be content to wait before the immense unexplained enigma of life; it -accepts its mystery, and sees the marvel of it, in the changing cloud, -the blossoming weed, the wistful eyes of the beasts of burden, as much -as it sees it in humanity itself. To such a mind the calmness and -sadness of patience, and the kind of universal divinity which it finds -in nature, can suffice: and to it the complacent conceit of science over -the discovery of a new poison, or a hitherto unsuspected action of the -biliary duct in mammals, must seem as childish and as narrow as does the -belief in the creeds of the Papist, the Evangelical, or the Baptist. -This is the only mental attitude which is at once philosophic and -spiritual; but it must ever remain the privilege of the few; it can -never be the possession of the multitude. The multitude will be forever -cast into the arms of science, or of faith, either of which will alike -flatter it with the assurance that it is the chief glory of creation, -before which all the rest of creation is bound to lie subject in bonds -and pain. - -It is this selfishness and self-admiration which have neutralised in man -the good which he should have gained from the simple benevolence of the -Sermon on the Mount. A religion which is founded on the desire of men to -attain eternal felicity will be naturally seductive to them, but the -keynote of its motive power can never be a lofty one. The jewelled -streets of the New Jerusalem are not more luxuriously dreamed of than -the houris of the Mohammedan paradise. Each form of celestial recompense -is anticipated as reward for devotion to a creed. And as all loyalty, -all loveliness, all virtue _pêchent par la base_ when they are founded -on the expectation of personal gain, so the Christian religion has -contained the radical defect of inciting its followers to obedience and -faithfulness by a bribe—a grand bribe truly—nothing less than eternal -life; such life as the soul of man cannot even conceive; but still a -bribe. Therefore Christianity has been powerless to enforce its own -ethics on the world in the essence of their spirit, and has been -perforce contented with hearing it recite its formulas. - -What will be its future? There is no prophet of vision keen enough to -behold. The intellect of mankind is every year forsaking it more -utterly, and the ever-increasing luxury which is possible with riches, -and the ever-increasing materialism of all kinds of life into which -mechanical labour enters, are forces which every year drive the -multitudes farther and farther from its primitive tenets. In a small, -and a poor, community Christianity may be a creed possible in its -practical realisation, and consistent in its simplicity of existence; -but in the mad world of modern life, with its overwhelming wealth and -its overwhelming poverty, with its horrible satiety and its horrible -hunger, with its fiendish greed and its ghastly crimes, its endless -lusts and its cruel bitterness of hatreds, Christianity can only be one -of two things—either a nullity, as it is now in all national life, or a -dynamic force allied with and ruling through socialism, and destroying -all civilisation as it, at present, stands. - -Which will it be? There is no prophet to say. But whichever it be, there -will be that in its future which, if it remain dominant, will make the -cry of the poet the sigh of Humanity: - - ‘Thou hast triumphed Opale Gallilean, - And the world has grown grey with Thy breath!’ - - - - - THE PASSING OF PHILOMEL - - -Will there ever be a world in which the voice of Sappho’s bird will be -no longer heard? - -I fear it. - -For thrice a thousand years, to our knowledge, that divine music, the -sweetest of any music upon earth, has been eloquent in the woods and the -gardens of every springtime, renewing its song as the earth her youth. -The nightingale has ever been the poet’s darling; is indeed poetry -incarnated; love, vocal and spiritual, made manifest. Nothing surely can -show the deadness, dulness, coarseness, coldness of the human multitude -so plainly as their indifference to this exquisite creature. Do even -people who call themselves cultured care for the nightingale? How do -they care? They rise from their dinner-table and stroll out on to a -terrace or down an avenue, and there in the moonlight listen for a few -moments, and say ‘How charming!’ then return to their flirtations, their -theatricals, their baccarat or their bézique within doors. Bulbul may -sing all night amongst the roses and the white heads of the lilies; they -will not go out again. They prefer the cushioned lounge, the electric -light, the tumbler of iced drink, the playing cards, the spiced _double -entendre_. Here and there a woman may sit at her open casement half the -night, or a poet walk entranced through the leafy lanes till dawn, but -these listeners are few and far between. - -When Nature gave this gift to the world she might well have looked for -some slight gratitude. But save when Sappho has listened, or Meleager, -or Shakespeare, or Ford, or Musset, or Shelley, or Lytton, who has -cared? Not one. - -Possibly, if the nightingale had been born once in a century, rarity -might have secured for it attention, protection, appreciation. But -singing everywhere, as it has done, wherever the climate was fit for it, -through so many hundreds and hundreds of years, it has been almost -wholly neglected by the soulless and dull ears of man. - -A slender, bright and agile bird, the nightingale is neither shy nor -useless, as it is said that most poets and musicians are. It eats grubs, -worms, lice, small insects of all kinds, and hunts amongst the decaying -leaves and grass for many a garden pest, with active energy and -industry, qualities too often lacking to the human artist. It builds a -loose, roomy nest, often absolutely on the ground, and always placed -with entire confidence in man’s good faith. It is a very happy bird, and -its song is the most ecstatic hymn of joy. I never can imagine how it -came to be associated with sorrow and tragedy, and the ghastly story of -Procne and Itys. For rapturous happiness there is nothing to be compared -to the full love-song of the nightingale. All other music is harsh, -cold, dissonant, beside it. But, alas! the full perfection of the song -is not always heard. For it to sing its fullest, its richest, its -longest, it must have been in peace and security, it must have been left -untroubled and unalarmed, it must have its little heart at rest in its -leafy home. Where the nightingale is harassed, and affrighted, and -disturbed, its song is quite different to what it is when in happiness -and tranquillity; where it feels alarmed and insecure it never acquires -its full song, the note is shorter and weaker, and the magnificent, -seemingly unending, trills are never heard, for the bird sings as though -it were afraid of being heard and hunted—which, indeed, no doubt it is. - -When entirely secure from any interference, year after year in the same -spot (for, if not interfered with, it returns unerringly to the same -haunts), many families will come to the same place together, and the -males call and shout to each other in the most joyous emulation day and -night. Under these conditions alone does the marvellous music of the -nightingale reach its full height and eloquence. No one who has not -heard the song under these conditions can judge of it as it is in its -perfection: the strength of it, the rapture of it, the long-sustained, -breathless tremulo, the wondrous roulades and arpeggios, the exquisite -liquid sweetness, surpassing in beauty every other sound on earth. - -In one spot, dearer to me than any upon earth, where the old stones once -felt the tread of the armoured guards and the cuirassed priests of the -great Countess Matilda, the nightingales have nested and sung by dozens -in the bay and arbutus of the undergrowth of the woods, and under the -wild roses and pomegranates fringing the meadows. On one nook of grass -land alone I have seen seven close together at daybreak, hunting for -their breakfasts amongst the dewy blades, in amicable rivalry. Here they -have come with the wild winds of March ever since Matilda’s reign, and -for many ages before that, when all which is now the vale of Arno was -forest and marsh. Here, because long protected and beloved, they sing in -the most marvellous concert, challenging and answering each other in a -riot of melody more exquisite than any orchestra created by man can -produce; the long ecstasy pouring through the ardours of full noonday, -or across the silver radiance of the moon; saluting the dawn with joyous -_Io triomphe!_ or praising the starry glories of the night with a -rapturous _Salve Regina!_ - -The hawks sweep through the sun rays, the owls flash through the -shadows, but the nightingales sing on, fearless and unharmed; it is only -man they dread, and man cannot hurt them here. - -Naturalists state that the nightingale does not attain to the uttermost -splendour of its voice until the eighth or ninth year of its life, and -that the songsters of that age give lessons to the younger ones. To the -truth of this latter fact I can vouch from personal observation, but I -doubt so many years being required to develop the song to perfection. I -think its perfection is dependent, as I have said, on the peace and -security which the singer enjoys; on its familiarity with its nesting -haunts, and on the sense of safety which it enjoys. This may be said, in -a measure, of the song of all birds; but it is especially true of the -nightingale, which is one of the most sensitive and highly organised of -sentient beings, and one, moreover, with intense affections, devoted to -its mate, its offspring and its chosen home. - -It will be objected to me that nightingales sing in captivity. They do -so; but the song of the caged nightingale is intolerable to the ear -which is used to the song of the free bird in wood and field and garden. -It is not the same song; it has changed its character: it sounds like -one long agonised note of appeal, and this indeed we may be certain that -it is. - -I confess that I hold many crimes which are punishable by the felon’s -dock less infamous than the caging of nightingales, or indeed the caging -of any winged creatures. Migratory birds, caged, suffer yet more than -any, because, in addition to the loss of liberty, they suffer from the -repression of those natural instincts of flight at certain periods of -the year, which denial must torture them to an extent quite immeasurable -by us. The force of the migratory instinct may be imagined by the fact -that it is intense and dominant enough to impel a creature so small, so -timid, and so defenceless as a song-bird to incur the greatest perils, -and wing its unprotected way across seas and continents, mountains and -deserts, from Europe to Asia or Africa, in a flight which is certainly -one of the most marvellous of the many marvels of Nature to which men -are so dully and so vain-gloriously indifferent. The intensity of the -impelling power may be gauged by the miracle of its results; and the -bird in whom this instinct is repressed and denied must suffer -incredible agonies of longing and vain effort, as from unfit climate and -from unchanged food. No one, I am sure, can measure the torture endured -by migratory birds from these causes when in captivity. Russian women of -the world are very fond of taking back to Russia with them nightingales -of Southern Europe, for which they pay a high price: these birds -invariably die after a week or two in Russia, but the abominable -practice continues unchecked. Nightingales are captured or killed -indiscriminately with other birds in all the countries where they nest, -and no one seems alive to the shameless barbarity of such a sacrifice. - -With every year their chosen haunts are more and more invaded by the -builder, the cultivator, the trapper, the netter. Nightingales will nest -contentedly in gardens where they are unmolested, but their preference -is for wild ground, or at least for leafy shrubberies and thickets: the -dense hedges of clipped bay or arbutus common to Italy are much favoured -by them. Therefore the nudity characteristic of high farming is fatal to -them: to Philomel and her brood shadow and shelter are a necessity. - -Where I dwell, much is still unaltered since the days of Horace and -Virgil. The ‘silvery circle’ of the reaping-hook still flashes amongst -the bending wheat. The oxen still slowly draw the wooden plough up and -down the uneven fields. The osiers still turn to gold above the -flag-filled streamlets; the barefooted peasants run through the -flower-filled grass; the cherries and plums tumble uncounted amongst the -daisies; the soft, soundless wings of swallow and owl and kestrel fan -the air, as they sweep down from the old red-brown tiles of the roofs -where they make their homes; the corn is threshed by flails in the old -way on the broad stone courts; the vine and ash and peach and maple grow -together, graceful and careless; the patient ass turns in the circular -path of the stone olive-press; the huge, round-bellied jars, the amphoræ -of old, stand beside the horse-block at the doors; the pigeons flash -above the bean-fields and feast as they will; the great walnut trees -throw their shade over the pumpkins and the maize; men and women and -children still work and laugh, and lounge at noon amongst the sheaves, -thank the gods, much as they did when Theocritus ate honey by the -fountain’s brink. But how long will this be so? How long will the Italy -of Virgil and Horace be left to us? - -Under the brutality of chemical agriculture the whole face of the world -is changing. The England of Gilbert White and Thomas Bewick is going as -the England of the Tudors went before it; and the France of the Bourbons -is being effaced like the France of the Valois. The old hedgerow timber -is felled. The cowslip meadows are turned into great grazing grounds. -The high flowering hedges are cut to the root, or often stubbed up -entirely, and their place filled by galvanised wire fencing. The -wildflowers cannot blossom on the naked earth; so disappear. The drained -soil has no longer any place for the worts and the rushes and the -fennels and the water spurges. Instead of the beautiful old lichen-grown -orchard trees, bending to the ground under the weight of their golden or -russet balls, there are rows of grafts two feet high, bearing ponderous, -flavourless prize fruits, or monotonous espaliers grimly trimmed and -trained, with shot bullfinches or poisoned blackbirds lying along their -ugly length. - -The extreme greed which characterises agriculture and horticulture, as -it characterises all other pursuits in modern times, will inevitably -cause the gradual extermination of all living things which it is -considered possible may interfere with the maximum of profit. In the -guano-dressed, phosphate-dosed, chemically-treated fields and gardens of -the future, with their vegetables and fruits ripened by electric light, -and their colouring and flavouring obtained by the artificial aids of -the laboratory, there will be no place for piping linnet, rose-throated -robin, gay chaffinch, tiny tit, or blue warbler; and none amidst the -frames, the acids, the manures, the machines, the hydraulic engines, for -Philomel. The object of the gardener and the farmer is to produce: the -garden and the farm will soon be mere factories of produce, ugly and -sordid, like all other factories. - -The vast expanses of unbroken corn lands and grazing lands, to be seen -in modern England, have no leafy nooks, as the fields of Herrick, of -Wordsworth, of Tennyson’s earlier time had for them. In Italy and in -France the acids, phosphates, sublimates, and other chemicals, poured -over vineyards and farm lands drive away the nightingale, which used to -nest so happily under the low-growing vine leaves, or amongst the endive -and parsley. ‘The lands are never left at peace,’ said a peasant to me -not long ago; and the peace of the birds is gone with that of the -fields: the fates of both are intimately interwoven and mutually -dependent. Where the orchard and the vineyard are still what they were -of old—green, fragrant, dusky, happy places, full of sweet scents and of -sweet sounds—there the birds still are happy. But in the newfangled -fields, acid-drenched, sulphur-powdered, sulphate-poisoned, stripped -bare and jealously denuded of all alien life, winged and wild animals, -hunted and harassed, can have no place. Scientific husbandry has -sacrificed the simple joys of rural life, and with them the lives of the -birds. ‘What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose -his own soul?’ has been asked by the wisdom of old. The song of the -birds is the voice of the soul of Nature, and men stifle it for sake of -avarice and greed. - -Three or four years ago the village of San Domenico, on the highway to -Fiesole, was a green nest which in spring was filled with the music of -nightingales; the fields, with the wild-rose hedges, were one paradise -of song in springtime and early summer. The old villa, which stands with -its big trees between the little streams of Africa and Mensola, where -Walter Savage Landor lived and where he wished to be allowed to die, was -hidden away under its deep cedar shadows, and the nightingales day and -night sang amongst its narcissi and its jonquils. An American came, -bought and ruined. He could let nothing alone. He had no sentiment or -perception. He built a new glaring wing, spoiling all the symmetry of -the old tenement, daubed over with new stucco and colour the beautiful -old hues of the ancient walls, cut down trees by the old shady gateway, -and built a porter’s lodge after the manner beloved of Hampstead and of -Clapham. He considers himself a man of taste; he is (I am ashamed to -say) a scholar! It would have been less affront to the memory of Landor, -and to the spirits haunting this poetic, historic, legendary place, to -have razed the house to the ground, and have let the grass grow over it -as over grave. - -Higher up, but quite near, on the same hillside as the villa of Landor, -there stood a stone house, old, solid, coloured with the beautiful greys -and browns of age; it had at one side a stone staircase leading up to a -sculptured and painted shrine, before it were grass terraces with some -bamboos, some roses, some laurels and beneath these a lower garden which -joined the fields and blended with them. It was quite perfect in its own -simple, ancient way. A year ago the dreadful hand of the improver seized -on it, daubed it over with staring stucco, painted and varnished its -woodwork, stuck vulgar green _persiennes_ in its old casements, and, in -a word, made it as nearly as possible resemble the pert, paltry, -staring, gimcrack structure of a modern villa. It is now a blot on the -hillside, an eyesore to the wayfarer, an offence to the sight and to the -landscape; and the nightingales, which were so eloquent on its grass -terraces, go to its rosebushes and bamboos no more. - -Such treatment as this of secluded places scares away the little brown -lover of the moon: where there are brought all the pother and dust of -masons’, carpenters’ and painters’ work, the voice of Philomel cannot be -heard; the sweet solitude of the rose thicket is invaded by uncouth din -and vulgar uproar; the cedar shadows lie no more unbroken on the -untrodden sward; the small scops owl flits no more at evening through -the perfumed air, the big white owl can nest no more beneath the -moss-grown tiles and timbers of the roof; all the soft, silent, shy -creatures of fur and feather, which have been happy so long, are -startled, terrified, driven away for ever, and the nightingale dare nest -no more. It is impossible to measure the injury done to the half-wild, -half-tame denizens of the woods and gardens by the mania for restoration -and innovation which characterises the purchasers and the tenants of the -present day. - -One such ghastly renovation as this, which has vulgarised and ruined the -Landor villa and its neighbour, causes an amount of havoc to the -creatures of the brake and bush which can never be repaired. Once -frightened and driven out, they never come back again. They are the -youth of the world; and, like all youth, once gone, they are gone for -ever. - -The builder who desecrated these places, the people who live in them, do -not perceive the abomination which they have wrought; and if they were -called to account, would stare at their accuser, understanding nothing -of their sin. Are there not an admirably grained and varnished hall -door, and window shutters of the brightest pistachio green? What matter -if Philomel nest no more under the cuckoopint and burdock? Is there not -the scream of the tramway whistle? What matter if the Madonna’s herb -grow no longer on the old stone steps and the swallow build no more -under the hanging eaves? Are there not the painted boards declaring, in -letters a foot long, that the adjacent land is to be let or sold for -building purposes? - -By the increase of bricks and mortar, and the sterility and nudity which -accompany scientific agriculture, the nightingale is everywhere being -driven higher into the hills, where it may still hope to nest -unmolested, but where the temperature is unsuited to it. Its breeding -grounds become, with every season, fewer and more difficult to find. It -is sociable, and would willingly be at home in the gardens even of -cities; but men will not leave it in peace there. Its nests are taken -and its feeding grounds are destroyed by the over-sweeping and -over-weeding of the modern gardener. The insensate modern practice of -clearing away all leaves as they fall from the soil of shrubberies and -avenues starves the nightingales, as it starves the roots of the trees. -When the leaves are left to lie through the winter the trees rejoice in -their warmth and nourishment, and the returning birds find a rich larder -in the spring. A carpet of golden leaves is a lovely and useful thing; -but the modern gardener does not think so, and his intolerable birch -broom, and yet more intolerable mechanical sweeper, tears away the -precious veil which Nature’s care would spread in preservation over the -chilly earth. - -Starved, hunted, robbed of its nest, and harassed in its song, the -nightingale must therefore inevitably grow rarer and rarer every year. - -The vile tramways, which have unrolled their hideous length over so many -thousands of miles all over Europe, bring the noise, the glare, and the -dirt of cities into the once peaceful solitude of hill and valley. They -are at this moment being made through the beautiful forest roads of the -Jura! - -The curse of the town is being spread broadcast over the face of the -country, as the filth of urban cesspools is being carried out over -rustic fields. The sticks, the guns, the nets, the traps, the birdlime -of the accursed bird destroyer, are carried by train and tram into the -green heart of once tranquil wolds and woods. The golden gorse serves to -shelter the grinning excursionist, the wild hyacinths are crushed under -the wine flasks and the beer bottles. The lowest forms of human life -leave the slums and ravage the virgin country; ten thousand jarring -wheels carry twenty thousand clumsy, greedy hands to tear down the wild -honeysuckle and pull to pieces the bird’s nest, to tear up the -meadow-sweet and strangle the green lizard. The curse of the town mounts -higher and higher and higher every year, and clings like a vampire to -the country, and sucks out of it all its beauty, and stifles in it all -its song. - -Soon the hiss of the engine and the bray of the cad will be the only -sounds heard throughout Europe. It is very probable that the conditions -of human life in the future will be incompatible with the existence of -the nightingale at all. It is almost certain that all natural beauty, -all woodland solitude, all sylvan quiet, will be year by year more and -more attacked, diminished, and disturbed, until the lives of all -creatures which depend on these will come altogether to an end. - -Let us imagine what the world was like when Sappho heard the -nightingales of Greece, and we can then measure by our own present loss -what will be the probable loss of future generations; the atmosphere was -then of a perfect purity; no coal smoke soiled the air or blurred the -sea; no engine hissed, no cogwheel whirred, no piston throbbed; the -sweet wild country ran to the very gates of the small cities; there was -no tread noisier than the footfall of the ox upon the turf; there was no -artificial light harsher than the pale soft gleam of the olive oil, the -temples were white as the snow on Ida, and the brooks and the fountains -were clear as the sparkling smile of the undimmed day. In such a world -every tuft of thyme and every bough of laurel had its nest, and under -the radiant skies the song of the nightingales must have been eloquent -over all the plains and hills in one unbroken flood of joy. - -Let us picture the fairness of the world as it was then, with undimmed -skies, unpolluted waters, untouched forests, and untainted air; and we -must realise that what is called civilisation has given us nothing worth -that which it has taken, and will continue to take away from us, -forever. - - - - - THE ITALY OF TO-DAY - - -Cavallotti[C] has written, in his letter of protest against the arrest -of the Sicilian deputy, De Felice, a sentence which deserves to be -repeated all over the land: one of those sentences, _multum in parvo_, -which resume a whole situation in a phrase: he has written: ‘Invece che -del pane si da il piombo.’ Instead of bread to the suffering and -famished multitudes there is offered lead, the lead of rifle bullets and -of cannon-balls. That is the only response which has as yet been given -to demands which are in the main essentially just. Is the English public -aware that the Italian city of Caltanissetta has been, the first week of -the year, bombarded by Italian artillery, and that in that town alone -six hundred arrests have been made in one day? If this were taking place -in Poland the English public and its press would be convulsed with rage. - ------ - -Footnote C: - - Deputy for Corteolona, and leader of the Extreme Left. - ------ - -The attitude of the press in England towards the present Italian -struggle against overwhelming fiscal burdens is so singular that it can -only be attributed to one of two things: Bourse interests or German -influence. All that is said in the English press concerning Italian -affairs is at all times marked by singular ineptitude and inaccuracy; -but at the present crisis it is conspicuous for a resolute and -unblushing concealment of facts. The unfortunate flattery which has been -poured out on Italy by the German press and Parliament for their -emperor’s ends, and by the English press and Parliament out of hatred of -France, has been taken for gospel truth by the Quirinale, the Palazzo -Braschi, and every deputy and editor from Alps to Etna, and has fed the -natural vanity of the Italian disposition, until, in a rude awakening, -the whole nation finds itself on the brink of bankruptcy and anarchy. - -To all conversant with the true state and real needs of the country ever -since the death of Victor Emmanuel, the language of the German and -English press and Parliaments has seemed almost insane in its optimism, -as it has been most cruel in its fulsome falsehood. Much of the present -woe may be attributed to it; for if Berlin and London had not taken, or -pretended to take, Messer Francesco Crispi for a statesman, it is very -possible that that ingenious lawyer might never have dragged his -sovereign into the meshes of the Triple Alliance and the Slough of -Despond of a bottomless debt. That unintelligent and interested flattery -is as injurious to nations as to individuals and gives them vertigo, is -a truth too frequently forgotten or purposely disregarded. - -Perhaps one of the oddest and least admirable traits in the public -opinion of the latest half of this century is its absolute -unconsciousness of its own caprices and inconsequence; its entire -ignorance of how flatly its assertions of to-day contradict those of -yesterday and will be contradicted by those of to-morrow. History has -accustomed us to such transmogrifications, and we know that power is -potent to turn the insurgent into the reactionist, but certainly the -drollest and most picturesque episode in connection with the Sicilian -revolution is the arrest of the deputy De Felice, for inciting to civil -war, coupled with the fact that the last deputy arrested for precisely -the same cause was Francesco Crispi at the time of Aspromonte! History, -in all its length and breadth, does not furnish us with any droller -antithesis than that of Crispi as arrested and Crispi as arrester. The -Italian press has contented itself with merely stating the -circumstances, and letting them speak for themselves; the European press -does not appear even to be aware of them. For the European press, with -the exception of the French, the Crispi of Aspromonte is dead and -buried, as the Crispi of Montecitorio and the Quirinale would desire -that he should be. The prostration of the English press in especial -before the latter is infinitely comical to those who know the real -career of the fortunate Sicilian notary who began life as a penniless -republican, and is ending it as a plutocrat, a reactionist, and a Knight -of the Order of the Association. It is probable that Europe on the whole -knows but little of the Crispi of Aspromonte; it is possible that De -Felice and his friends will cause it to know more. Falstaff abjuring -cakes and ale, and putting two mirthful roysterers in the pillory, would -present the only companion picture worthy of comparison with the Crispi -of Montecitorio gravely defending the seizure of the leader of the Fasci -on the score that the offence of the latter is _lesa alla patria_. Why -is revolutionary effort in ’93 and ’94 treason to the country when -revolutionary effort in ’59 and ’48 was, we are taught by all Italian -text-books, the most admirable patriotism? It is a plain question which -will never be honoured by an answer. Crispi of Montecitorio does not -condescend to reason; he finds it easier to use cannon and bayonets, as -they were used against that Crispi of Aspromonte of whom he considers it -ill-bred in anyone to remind him. Crispi understands the present era; he -knows that it does not punish, or even notice, such inconsistencies, at -least when they are the inconsistencies of successful men. - -Were the national sense of humour as quick as it was in the days of -Pulci and Boiardo this circumstance would be fatal to the dictatorship -of the ex-revolutionist. - -In the national litany of Italy the chief of gods invoked are Mazzini, -Ugo Foscolo, Garibaldi, Manini, and a score of others of the same -persuasion, and all the present generation (outside what are termed -Black Society and Codini Circles) are reared in religious veneration of -such names. Now, it does not matter in the least whether this veneration -be well or ill founded, be wise or unwise; it has been taught to all the -present youth and manhood of all liberal-minded Italian families as a -duty, a pleasure, and a creed in one. What sense is there in blaming -this multitude if they carry out their own principles to a logical -conclusion, and refuse to see that the opinions which were noble and -heroic in their fathers become treason and crime in themselves? The -House of Savoy, by a lucky chance for itself, drew the biggest prize in -the lottery of national events in 1859; but it was not to place the -House of Savoy on the Italian throne that Garibaldi fought, and Mazzini -conspired, and a host of heroes died in battle or in exile. To all those -whose names are like trumpet-calls to us still, the merging of their -ideal of United Italy into a mere royal state must have seemed bathos, -must have caused the most cruel and heartbreaking disillusion. They -accepted it because at the time, rightly or wrongly, they considered -that they could do no less; but they suffered, as all must suffer who -have cherished high and pure dreams and behold what is called the -realisation of them in the common clay of ordinary circumstance. - -No one can pretend that the chief makers of the union of the country -were monarchical. They were Red; and were hunted, imprisoned, exiled, -shot for the colour of their opinions, precisely in the same manner as -the leaders of the Fasci and the deputies of the Extreme Left are being -dealt with now. Measures of this kind are excusable in absolute or -arbitrary governments, such as Russia or Prussia; but in a State which -owes its very existence to revolutionary forces, they are an anomaly. It -is truly the sad and sorry spectacle of the son turning on and -strangling the father who begat him. - -At the present date Italy is a military tyranny. It is useless to deny -the fact. Many parts of the country are in a state of siege, as though -actually invaded and conquered; and although recent events are alleged -in excuse for this, it is by no means the first time that the army has -been used for the suffocation of all public expression of feeling. -Arbitrary and unexplained arrest has always been frequent; and when the -sovereigns visit any city or town the gaols thereof have always been -filled on the vigil of the visit with crowds of persons suspected of -democratic or dangerous tendencies. A rigid censorship of telegrams has -long existed, as inquisitorial as any censorship of an _ancien régime_; -and at the present moment telegrams from Sicily are absolutely forbidden -to be despatched. Wholesale invasion of the privacy of private houses -takes place at the pleasure of the police, and seizure of private -letters and papers follows at the caprice of the Questura. - -Where is there any pretext of liberty? In what does the absolutism of -1894 differ from that of the Bourbon, or of the Este-Lorraine? In what -sense can a Free Italy be said to exist? The Gallophobia now so general -amongst English political speakers and writers may account for the -determination in them to applaud the Italian Government, alike when it -is wrong as when it is right; but it is quite certain that, whatever be -the motive, the English press has, with very few exceptions, combined to -hide from the English public the true circumstances and causes of a -revolution which, however to be deplored in its excesses, is not a whit -more blameable, or less interesting and excusable than the other -revolutions of Italy which filled England with such delight and -sympathy. The kingdom of Italy was created by revolution. As the life of -a nation counts, it was but yesterday that Garibaldi’s red shirt was -pushed through the gates of Stafford House, narrowly escaping being torn -to rags by the admiring and enthusiastic crowds of London. To the -philosophic observer there is something extremely illogical in the -present denunciation of men who are now doing nothing more than -Garibaldi did with the applause of Europe and America. To set up statues -in every public square to Garibaldi, and imprison Garibaldi Bosco, and -charge with high treason De Felice Giuffrida, is a nonsense to which it -is difficult to render homage. - -It is well known that the King, unconstitutionally, refused to accept -the Zanardelli Ministry because it would have led to reduction of the -army, and, as a necessary consequence, to withdrawal from the German -incubus. He is possessed with a mania for German influences; influences, -of all others, the most fatal to public freedom and political liberty. -Nothing in the whole world could have been so injurious to Italy as to -fall, as she has done, under the mailed hand of the brutal Prussian -example and exactions. - -Germany has always been fatal to Italy, and always will be. The costly -armaments which have made her penniless are due to Germany. Her army and -navy receive annual and insulting inspection by Prussian princes. The -time will probably come when German troops will be asked to preserve -‘social order’ in the cities and provinces of Italy. So long as the -German alliance continues in its present form, so long will this danger -for Italy always exist, that, in the event of the Italian army proving -insufficient, or unwilling, to quell revolution, the timidity or -despotism of Italian rulers may beg the aid of Germany to do so. - -In the manifesto of the Extreme Left, after the fall of Giolitti, the -state of the country was described in language forcible but entirely -true. - -‘Commerce is stagnant, bankruptcy general, savings are seized, small -proprietors succumb under fiscal exactions, agriculture languishes, -stifled under taxation, emigration is increased in an alarming -proportion to the population, the municipalities squander and become -penniless; the country, in taxes of various kinds, pays no less than -seventy per cent., _i.e._, four or five times as much as is paid by rich -nations. The material taxable diminishes every day, because production -is paralysed in its most vital parts, and misery has shrunken -consumption; in a word, the whole land is devoured by military exactions -and the criminal folly of a policy given over to interests and ambitions -which totally ignore the true necessities of the people. The hour is -come to cry, “Hold, enough!” and to oblige the State not to impose -burdens, but to make atonement.’ - -There is nothing exaggerated in these statements; they are strictly -moderate, and understate the truth. The Extreme Left may or may not be -Socialistic, but in its manifesto it is entirely within the truth, and -describes with moderation a state of national suffering and penury which -would render pardonable the greatest violence of language. - -The Extreme Left affirms with the strictest truth that its members have -never contributed to bring about the present misery, and are in no -degree responsible for it. The entire responsibility lies with corrupt -administration, and with military tyranny and extravagance. - -When a people are stripped bare, and reduced to destitution, can it be -expected, should it be dreamed, that they can keep their souls in -patience when fresh taxes threaten them, and the hideous Juggernauth of -military expenditure rolls over their ruined lives? - -Italians have been too long deluded with the fables of men in office; -and many years too long, patient under the intolerable exactions laid -upon them. It is not only the imperial, but the municipal tyrannies -which destroy them; they are between the devil and the deep sea; what -the State does not take the Commune seizes. The most onerous and absurd -fines await every trifling sin of omission or commission, every -insignificant, unimportant, little forgetfulness leads to a penalty -ridiculously disproportioned to the trifling offence—a little dust swept -on to the pavement, a dog running loose, a cart left before a door, a -guitar played in the street, a siesta taken under a colonnade, a lemon -or a melon sold without permit to trade being previously purchased and -registered, some infinitesimal trifle—for which the offender is dragged -before the police and the municipal clerks, and mulcted in sums of -three, five, ten, twenty, or thirty francs. Frequently a fine of two -francs is quite enough to ruin the hapless offender. If he cannot pay he -goes to prison. - -The imperial tax of _ricchezza mobile_ is levied on the poorest; often -the bed has to be sold or the saucepans pawned to pay it. The pawning -institutes are State affairs; their fee is nine per cent., and the goods -are liable to be sold in a year. In France the fee is four per cent., -and the goods are not liable to be sold for three years. When a poor -person has scraped the money together to pay the fees, the official -(_stimatore_) often declares that the article is more worthless than he -thought, and claims a _calo_ of from ten to a hundred francs, according -to his caprice; if the _calo_ be not paid the object is sold, though the -nine per cent. for the past year may have been paid on it. The gate-tax, -_dazio consumo_, best known to English ears as _octroi_, which has been -the especial object of the Sicilian fury, is a curse to the whole land. -Nothing can pass the gates of any city or town without paying this -odious and inquisitorial impost. Strings of cattle and of carts wait -outside from midnight to morning, the poor beasts lying down in the -winter mud and summer dust. Half the life of the country people is -consumed in this senseless stoppage and struggle at the gates; a poor -old woman cannot take a few eggs her hen has laid, or a bit of spinning -she has done, through the gates without paying for them. The wretched -live chickens and ducks, geese and turkeys, wait half a day and a whole -night cooped up in stifling crates or hung neck downwards in a bunch on -a nail; the oxen and calves are kept without food three or four days -before their passage through the gates, that they may weigh less when -put in the scales. By this insensate method of taxation all the food -taken into the cities and towns is deteriorated. The prating and -interfering officers of hygiene do not attend to this, the greatest -danger of all to health, _i.e._, inflamed and injured carcasses of -animals and poultry sent as food into the markets. - -The municipalities exact the last centime from their prey; whole -families are ruined and disappear through the exactions of their -communes, who persist in squeezing what is already drained dry as a -bone. The impious and insensate destruction of ancient quarters and -noble edifices goes on because the municipal councillors, and engineers, -and contractors fatten on it. The cost to the towns is enormous, the -damage done is eternal, the debt incurred is incalculable, the loss to -art and history immeasurable, but the officials who strut their little -hour on the communal stage make their profits, and no one cares a straw -how the city, town, or village suffer. - -If the Italian States could have been united like the United States of -America, and made strictly neutral like Belgium, their condition would -have been much simpler, happier, and less costly. As a monarchy, vanity -and display have ruined the country, while the one supreme advantage -which she might have enjoyed, that of keeping herself free to remain the -courted of all, she has wilfully and stupidly thrown away, by binding -herself, hand and foot, almost in vassalage, to Prussia. For this, there -can be no doubt, unfortunately, that the present King is mainly -responsible; and, strange to say, he does not even seem to be sensible -of the magnitude of the evil of his act. - -It is as certain as any event which has not happened can be, that -nothing of what has now come to pass would have occurred but for the -disastrous folly which has made the Government of Italy strain to become -what is called a Great Power, and conclude alliances of which the -unalterable condition has been a standing army of as vast extent as the -expenditure for its maintenance is enormous. There is nothing abnormal -in the present ruin of the country, nothing which cannot easily be -traced to its cause, nothing which could not have been avoided by -prudence, by modesty, and by renunciation. As the pitiful vanity and -ambition to reach a higher grade than that which is naturally theirs -beggars private individuals, so the craze to be equal with the largest -empire, and to make an equal military and naval display with theirs, has -caused a drain on the resources of the country, a pitiless pressure upon -the most powerless and hopeless classes, which have spread misery -broadcast over the land. - -It might be deplorable, unwise, possibly thankless, if the country -dismissed the House of Savoy; but in so doing the country would be -wholly within its rights. The act would be in no sense whatever _lesa -alla patria_; it might, on the contrary, be decided on, and carried out, -through the very truest patriotism. The error of the House of Savoy is -the same error as that of the House of Bonaparte; they forget that what -has been given by a plebiscite, a later plebiscite has every right and -faculty to withdraw. The English nation, when it put William of Orange -on the throne, would have been as entirely within its rights and -privileges had it put him down from it. When a sovereign accepts a crown -from the vote of a majority, he must in reason admit that another larger -and later majority can withdraw it from his keeping. A plebiscite cannot -confer Divine Right. It cannot either confer any inalienable right at -all. It is, therefore, entirely illogical and unjust to visit the -endeavour and desire to make Italy a republic as a crime of high -treason. An Italian has as much right to wish for a republican form of -government, and to do what he can to bring it about, as the Americans of -the last century had to struggle against the taxation of George III. And -if the Casa Savoia be driven from the Quirinale, it will owe this loss -of power entirely to its own policy, which has impoverished the nation -beyond all endurance. The present King’s lamentable and inexplicable -infatuation for the German alliance, and all the frightful expenditure -and sacrifice to which this fatal alliance has led, have brought the -country to its present ruin. - -At the moment at which these lines are written, the flames of revolution -are destroying the public buildings of the city of Bari; before even -these lines can be printed, who shall say that these flames may not have -spread to every town in the Peninsula? Of course, the present revolts -may be crushed by sheer armed force; but if a reign of terror paralyse -the movement for awhile, if a military despotism crush and gag the life -out of Palermo and Naples and Rome, as it has been crushed and gagged by -similar means in Warsaw and in Moscow, the causes which have led to -revolution will continue to exist, and its fires will but die down -awhile, to break forth in greater fury in a near future. The Crispi of -Montecitorio is now busy throwing into prison all over the country a -large number of citizens, for doing precisely the same things as the -Crispi of Aspromonte did himself, or endeavoured to do. But in the -present age a man may abjure and ignore his own past with impunity. As -it is always perfectly useless to refute Mr Gladstone’s statements by -quotations from his own earlier utterances, so it would be quite useless -to hope to embarrass the Italian premier by any reminder of his own -younger and revolutionary self. Renegades always are impervious to -sarcasm, and pachydermatous against all reproach. - -Crispi is very far from a great man in any sense of those words, _Au -pays des aveugles le borgne est roi_, and he has had the supreme good -fortune to have outlived all Italian men of eminence. If Cavour and -Victor Emmanuel were living still, or even Sella and Minghetti and La -Marmora, it is extremely probable that the costly amusement of making -Crispi of Aspromonte First Minister of the Crown would never have been -amongst the freaks of fate. He has had ‘staying power,’ and so has -buried all those who would have kept him in his proper place. It is -possible that if he had adhered to his earlier creeds he might have been -by this time President of an Italian Republic, for his intelligence is -keen and versatile, and his audacity is great and elastic. But he has -preferred the more prosperous and less glorious career of a minister and -a _maire du palais_. He has emerged with amazing insolence from -financial discredit which would have made any other man ashamed to face -the social and political worlds; and, _mirabile dictu!_ having dragged -his King and country into an abyss of poverty, shame and misery, he is -still adored by the one and suffered to domineer over the other. - -Successful in the vulgar sense of riches, of decorations, of temporary -power, and of overweening Court favour, the Sicilian man of law is; -successful in the higher sense of statesmanship, and the consolation of -a suffering nation, he never will be. And that he has been permitted to -return to power is painful proof of the weakness of will and the moral -degradation of the country. There is no great man in Italy at the -present hour, no man with the magnetism of Garibaldi, or the intellect -of D’Azeglio, or even the rough martial talent of Victor Emmanuel, and -in the absence of such the sly, subtle, fox-like lawyers, by whom the -country is overrun, come to the front, and add one curse more to the -many curses already lying on the head of Leopardi’s beloved Mater -Dolorosa. It is possible that, for want of a man of genius who would be -able to gather into one the scattered forces, and fuse them into -irresistible might by that magic which genius alone possesses, the cause -of liberty will be once more lost in Italy. If such a leader do not -appear, the present movement, which is not a revolt but a revolution in -embryo, will probably be trampled out by armed despotism, and the -present terror of the ruling classes of Europe before the bugbear of -anarchy will be appealed to in justification of the refusal to a ruined -people of the reforms and the atonement which they have, with full -right, demanded. - - -_January 1894._ - - - - - BLIND GUIDES - - -Amongst the famous gardens of the world, the Orti Oricellari[D] must -take a foremost place, alike for sylvan beauty and for intellectual -tradition. Second only to the marvellous gardens of Rome, they were -first, for loveliness and for association, amongst the many great and -carefully-cultured gardens which once adorned Tuscany. Under the -Rucellai their superb groves and glades sheltered the most intellectual -meetings which Florence has ever seen. The Società Oricellari (which -continued that imitation of the Platonic Academy created by Cosimo and -Lorenzo) assembled here under the shade of the great forest trees. Here -Machiavelli read aloud his Art of War, and here Giovanni Rucellai -composed his Rosamunda. The house built for Bernardo Rucellai by Leon -Battista Alberti was a treasure-house of art, ancient and contemporary; -and learning, literature and philosophy found their meet home under the -ilex and cedar shadows, and in the fragrant air of the orange and myrtle -boughs. High thoughts and scholarly creation were never more fitly -housed than here. Their grounds, covered with trees, plants, fruits and -flowers, were then known as the Selva dei Rucellai, and must have been -of much larger extent in the time of Machiavelli than they had become -even in the eighteenth century; for when Palla Rucellai fled in fear of -being compromised in the general hatred of all the Medici followers and -friends, he left the Selva by a little postern door in its western wall -which opened on to the Porta Prato and the great meadow then surrounding -that gateway. Therefore they must then have covered all the space now -occupied by the detestable modern streets called Magenta, Solferino, -Montebello, Garibaldi, etc., and I have myself indeed conversed with -persons who remember, in their youth, the orchards appertaining to these -gardens existing where there are now the ugly boulevards and the dirt -and lumber of the railway and tramway works. - ------ - -Footnote D: - - Since this was written, one-half of these gardens have been destroyed; - the other half bought by the Marchese Ginori. - ------ - -On this unfortunate flight of Palla in 1527, the populace broke into the -gardens, and destroyed the statues, obelisks and temples which -ornamented them, but the woods and orchards they appear to have spared; -for, some thirty years later, the park seems to have been in its full -perfection still, when Ferdinand, in the height of a violent and devoted -passion, gave it to his Venetian mistress as her _casin de piacere_, and -Bianca brought a mode of life very unlike that of the grave and -scholarly Rucellai into its classic groves; for although her fate was -tragic, and her mind must have been ever apprehensive of foul play, she -was evidently of a gay, mirthful, pleasure-loving temperament. - -The jests and pranks, the sports and pastimes, the conjuring and comedy, -the mirth and music, the dances and mummeries, which pleased the taste -of Bianca and her women, replaced the ‘noble sessions of free thought’ -and the illustrious fellowship of the Academicians. The gravity and -decorum of the philosophical society departed, but the floral and sylvan -beauty remained. At the time when she filled its glades with laughter -and song and the beauty of her women, the Selva was what was even then -called an English garden, with dense woods, wide lawns, deep shade, and -mighty trees which towered to the skies. But when it passed into the -hands of Giancarlo de’ Medici that Cardinal decorated it with a grotto, -a giant, and other _gentilezze_, and changed it into an Italian garden, -with many sculptural and architectural wonders, and plants and flowers -from foreign countries, employing in his designs Antonio Novelli, who, -amongst other feats, brought water to it from the Pitti, and built up an -artificial mountain in its midst. He must have done much to disfigure -it, more than the mob of 1527 had done; but soon after these -ill-considered works were completed the gardens passed to the Ridolfi, -who, preserving the rare flowers and fruits, with which the Cardinal had -planted it, allowed the woodland growth to return to its freedom and -luxuriance. Of him who ultimately restricted the park to its present -limits, and robbed the house of all its treasures of art and admirable -ornament, there is, I believe, no record. From the Ridolfi it went to a -family of Ferrara, of the name of Canonici, and from them to the -Stiozzi, who sold it in our own time to Prince Orloff, by whose heir it -has once more been put up for sale. Amidst all these changes the beauty -of the park, though impaired, has existed much as it was when it was -celebrated in Latin and Italian prose and verse, although diminished in -size and shorn of its grandeur, invaded on all sides by bricks and -mortar, and cruelly violated, even in its inmost precincts. The house -has been miserably modernised, and the gardens and glades miserably -lopped, yet still there is much left; and many of their historic trees -still lift their royal heads to morning dawn and evening stars. Enough -remains to make a green oasis in the desert of modern bricks and stucco; -enough remains for the student to realise that he stands beneath boughs -of cedar and ilex which once sheltered the august brows of Leone X. and -cast their shade on the gathered associates of that literary society of -which no equal has ever since been seen. The gardens, even in their -shrunken and contracted space and verdure, are still there, priceless in -memories and invaluable to the artist, the student and the lover of -nature and of history. - -It seems scarcely credible, yet such is the fact, that these treasures -of natural beauty and storehouses of historical association should have -already once been invaded to build the ordinary modern house called -Palazzo Sonnino, and that now the municipality is about to purchase half -of them—for what purpose?—_to cut the trees down and cover the ground -with houses for the use of its own office-holders_, those multitudinous -and pestilent _impiegati_ who are the curse of the public all over -Italy, and feed on it like leeches upon flesh. That the destruction of -such gardens as these for such a purpose can even be for an instant -spoken of is proof enough of the depths of degradation to which public -indifference and municipal vandalism have sunk in the city of Lorenzo. -It can only be equalled by the destruction of the Farnesina and Ludovisi -gardens. Few places on earth have such intellectual memories as the -Oricellari gardens; yet these are disregarded as nought, and the cedars -and elms which shaded the steps of philosophers and poets, of scholarly -princes and mighty Popes, are to be felled, as though they were of no -more value than worm-eaten mill-posts. - -That a people can be _en masse_ so utterly dead to memory, to greatness, -to beauty, and to sense, makes any serious thinker despair of its -future. There are waste grounds (grounds already deliberately laid -waste) yawning by scores already, in the town and around it, on which -any new buildings which may be deemed necessary might be raised. There -is not one thread or shadow of excuse for the abominable action now -contemplated by the Florence Municipality, and certain to be consummated -unless some opposition, strong and resolute, arise. Even were the Orti -Oricellari a mere ordinary park, without tradition, without heritage, -without association, it would be imbecility to cover the site with -bricks and mortar, for Maxime du Camp has justly written that whoever -fells a tree in a city commits a crime. ‘Chaque fois qu’un arbre tombe -dans une ville trop peuplée cela équivaut à un meurtre et parfois à une -épidémie. On a beau multiplier les squares, ils ne remplaceront jamais -la ceinture de forêt qui devrait entourer toute capitale et lui verser -l’oxygène, la force, et la santé.‘ These are words salutary and true, -which would be well inscribed in letters of gold above the council -chamber of every municipality. When towns are desperately pinched for -space, hemmed in on every side, and at their wits’ end for lodging-room, -there may be some kind of credible excuse for the always mistaken -destruction of gardens, trees and groves. But in all the cities of Italy -there is no such excuse; there are vast unoccupied lands all around -them; and in their midst more, many more, houses than are occupied. In -Rome and Florence the latter may be counted by many thousands. There is -not the feeblest, flimsiest pretext for such execrable destruction as -has already overtaken so many noble gardens in the former city, and now -menaces the Orti Oricellari in the latter. - -Nor is this Selva, although the most famous, the only garden which is -being destroyed in Florence, whilst many beautiful glades and lawns have -been, in the last ten years, ruthlessly ruined and effaced that the -wretched and trumpery structures of the jerry-builders may arise in -their stead. The Riccardi garden in Valfonda was once like that of the -Oricellari, a marvel of loveliness; and its lawns, its avenues, its -marbles, its deep, impenetrable shades, its sunlit orange-walks and -perfumed pergolate, surrounded a house which was a temple of art and -contained many choice statues of ancient and contemporary masters. -Talleyrand once said that no one who had not lived before the great -revolution could ever know how perfect life could be. I would say that -none can know how perfect it can be who did not live in the Italy of the -Renaissance. Take the life of this one man, Riccardo, Marchese Riccardi, -who spent most of his existence in this exquisite pleasure-place, which -he inherited from its creator, the great scholar and _dilettante_, -Romolo Riccardi, and where he resided nearly all the year round. In the -contemporary works of Cinelli on the _Bellezze di Firenze_, his house -and gardens are described; they are alluded to by Redi,— - - ‘Nel bel giardino - Nei bassi di gualfondo inabissato - Dove tieni il Riccardi alto domino.’ - -They are spoken of in admiration by Baldinucci, and, in the description -of the festival of Maria de’ Medici’s marriage by proxy to Henri Quatre, -they are enthusiastically praised by the younger Buonarotti. The court -of the Casino was filled with ancient marbles, busts, statues and -inscriptions, Latin and Greek; the exterior was decorated in fresco and -tempera, with many rare sculptures and paintings and objects of art, -whilst, without, a number of avenues led in all directions from the -house to the gardens and the woods, where, in shade of ilex and cypress, -marble seats and marble statues gave a sense of refreshing coolness in -the hottest noon. Here this elegant scholar and accomplished noble -passed almost all his time, receiving all that was most learned and -illustrious in the society of his epoch; and occasionally giving -magnificent entertainments like that with which he bade farewell to -Maria de’ Medici. Of this delicious retreat a few trees alone remain -now; a few trees, which raise their sorrowful heads amongst the bricks -and mortar, the theatres and photographic studios, around them, are all -that are left of the once beautiful and poetic retreat of the scholars -and courtiers, the ambassadors and _illuminati_, of the family of the -Riccardi. Why has not such a place as this once was been religiously -preserved through all time, for the joy, health and beauty of the city? - -It would be scarcely possible for so beautiful and precious a life as -this of the Riccardi to be led in our times, because it is scarcely -possible, lock our gates as we may, to escape from the detestable -atmosphere of excitation and worry which is everywhere around. The mania -of senseless movement is now in the human race, as the saltatory -delirium seized on the Neapolitan peasants and hurried them in crowds -into the sea. - -Riccardo Riccardi living now would be ashamed to dwell the whole year -round in his retreat of Valfonda; would waste his time over morning -newspapers, cigars and ephemeral telegraphic despatches; would probably -spend his money on horse-racing; would send his blackletter folios, his -first copies, and his before-letter prints to the hammer, and would make -over his classic marbles to the Louvre, the Hermitage, or to his own -government. He and his contemporaries had the loveliness of leisure and -the wisdom of meditation; they knew that true culture is to be gained in -the library, not in the rush of a _pérégrinomanie_; and being great, -noble and rich, judged aright that the best gifts given by high position -and large fortune are the liberty which they allow for repose, and the -power which such repose confers to enjoy reflection and possession. In -modern life this faculty is almost wholly lost, and the wit and the fool -are shaken together in the vibration of railway trains, and jostled -together in the eating-houses of the world, till, if the fool thus -obtain a varnish of sharpness, the wit has lost all individuality and -grace. - -Not long since, I said to an Englishman who has filled high posts and -attained high honours, whilst public life is always repugnant to his -tastes and temperament, that he would have been wiser to have led his -own life in his own way, under his own ancestral roof-tree in England; -and he answered, ‘I would willingly have done so, but they would have -said that I had nothing in me!’ Characteristic nineteenth century reply! -Romolo and Riccardo Riccardi did not trouble themselves in their -different generations what their contemporaries thought of them. They -led their own lives in their own leafy solitude, and only called their -world about them when they were themselves disposed to entertain it. - -The gardens of the Gaddi were equally and still earlier renowned, and in -them the descendants of Taddeo Gaddi had a pleasure-house wondrous and -lovely to behold, while the rich gallery of pictures annexed to it was -situated next to the Valfonda, and covered what is now the new Piazza di -S. M. Novello. These descendants had become great people and eminent in -the church, many cardinals and monsignori amongst them, and also -celebrated _letterati_, of whom Niccolo, son of Senibaldo, was the most -illustrious. He, as well as a scholar and patron of letters and arts, -was, like the Riccardi, a botanist, and, as may be seen in the pages of -Scipione Ammirato, was foremost for his culture of sweet herbs and of -lemons and citrons. Whilst he filled worthily the post of ambassador and -of collector of works of art for the Medici, he never forgot his garden -and his herb-garden, and was the first to make general in Tuscany the -Judas-tree, the gooseberry, the strawberry, the Spanish myrtle, the -northern fir and other then rare fruits and shrubs. So fragrant and so -fair were his grounds, that the populace always called them, and the -vicinity perfumed by them, Il Paradiso dei Gaddi. This beautiful retreat -has for centuries been entirely destroyed and forgotten; and all which -is left of the rich collections of the Gaddi are those thousand -manuscript folios which Francis I. of Austria purchased and gave to the -libraries of Florence, where to this day they remain and can be read. - -The director of the Gaddi gardens bore the delightful name of Messer -Giuseppe Benincasa Fiammingo; and a contented life indeed this worthy -and accomplished student must have led, working for such a patron, and -passing the peaceful seasons and fruitful years amidst the cedar-shadows -and the lemon-flower fragrance of this abode of the Muses and of Flora -and Pomona. - -We dwell too much upon the strife and storm, the bloodshed and the -internecine feuds of the passed centuries; we forget too often the many -happy and useful lives led in them, which were spent untroubled and -consecrated to fair studies and pursuits, and which let the clangour of -battle go by unheard, and mingled not with camp or court or council. - -We forget too often the placid life of Gui Patin under his cherry trees -by the river, or of the Etiennes, in the learned and happy seclusion of -their classic studies and noble work, even their women speaking Latin as -their daily and most natural tongue; we only have ear for the fusillades -of the Fronde, or the war-cries of Valois and Guise. In like manner we -are too apt only to dwell upon the daggers and poison powders, the -factions and feuds, the conspiracies and the city riots of the Moyenage -and Renaissance, and forget the many quiet, useful, happy persons clad -in doublet and hose, like Messer Benincasa, and the many learned and -noble gentlemen clothed in velvet and satin, like Niccolo Gaddi, his -master, who passed peacefully from their cradle to their grave. - -In the fifteenth century, according to Benedetto Varchi, who himself saw -them, there were no less than a hundred and thirty of these magnificent -demesnes in the city; and whatever may have been the sins of the earlier -and the follies of the later Medici, that family, one and all, loved -flowers, woods and lawns, and fostered tenderly ‘il gusto del -giardinaggio’ in their contemporaries. This taste in their descendants -has entirely disappeared. They are bored by such of the magnificent -gardens of old as still exist in their towns and around their villas; -they abandon them without regret, grudging the care of keeping them up, -and letting them out to nursery gardeners or to mere peasants whose only -thought is, of course, to make profit out of them. - -The Latins were at all times celebrated for their beautiful gardens; all -classic records and all archæological discoveries prove it. The Romans -and the Tuscans, the Venetians and the Lombards, in later mediæval -times, inherited this elegant taste, this art, which is twin child -itself with Nature; but in our immediate epoch it has vanished; the -glorious legacies of it are supported with indifference or done away -with without regret. How is this to be explained? I know not unless the -reason be that there has come from without a contagion of vulgarity, -avarice and bad taste which the Italian temperament has been too weak to -resist, and with which it has become saturated and debased. The modern -Italian will throw money away recklessly on the Bourses or at the -gaming-tables; he will spend it frivolously at foreign baths and -fashionable seaports; he will let himself be ruined by a pack of idle -and good-for-nothing hangers-on whom he has not the courage to shake -off; but he grudges every penny which is required for the maintenance of -woodland and garden, and he will allow his trees to be felled, his -myrtles, bays and laurels to vanish, his fountains to be choked up by -sand or weed, and his lawns to degenerate into rough pasture, without -shame or remorse. - -Almost all these noble gardens enumerated by Varchi still existed in -Florence before 1859. Now but few remain. Even the Torrigiani gardens -(which for many reasons one would have supposed would have been kept -intact by that family) have been almost entirely destroyed within the -last year, and the site of them is being rapidly covered with mean and -ugly habitations. The magnificent Capponi garden, so dear to the blind -statesman and scholar, Gino Capponi, has been more than half broken up -by his heirs. The renowned Serristori garden was cut in two and shorn of -half of its beauty when the first half of the Via dei Bardi was -destroyed. The Guadagni garden is advertised as building ground. The -Guicciardini gardens are still standing, but as they and their palace -have been given over to amalgamated railway companies, the respite -accorded to them will probably be of brief duration. The bead roll of -these devastated pleasure-grounds and historic groves could be continued -in an almost endless succession of names and memories, and the immensity -of their irreparable loss to the city is scarcely to be estimated. When -we reflect, moreover, that before 1859 the whole of the ground from the -Carraia Bridge westward was pasture and garden and avenue, where now -there are only bricks and mortar and a network of ugly streets, we shall -more completely comprehend the senseless folly which built over such -green places, or, where it did not build, made in their stead such -barren, dusty, featureless, blank spaces as the Piazza degli Zuavi and -its congeners. - -Ubaldino Peruzzi (who has been buried with pomp in Santa Croce!) was the -chief promoter and leader of this mania of demolition. It was at his -instigation that the Ponte alle Grazie and the chapel of the Alberti -were pulled down; that the Tetto dei Pisani was destroyed to make way -for an ugly bank; that the noble trees at the end of the Cascine were -felled to make way for a gaudy, gingerbread bust and a hideous -guardhouse; that the beautiful Stations of the Cross leading to San -Miniato al Monte were destroyed to give place to vulgar eating-houses -and trumpery villas; and that old palaces, old gardens and old churches -were laid waste to create the bald and monotonous quays called severally -the Lung Arno Serristori and Torrigiani. Peruzzi began, and for many -years directed, the destruction of the beauties of the city, and only -stopped when, having brought the town to the verge of bankruptcy, funds -failed him, and he retired perforce from municipal office. - -But if it may be feared that the good we do does perish with us, it is -certain that the evil we do does long survive us, and flourishes and -multiplies when we are dust. The lessons which Peruzzi taught his -fellow-citizens in speculation and spoliation will long remain, whilst -his bones crumble beneath a lying epitaph. His dead hand still directs -the scrambling haste with which the historic centre of the city is being -torn down, in order that glass galleries, brummagem shops, miserable -statues, and a general reign of stucco and shoddy, may, as far as in -them lies, bring the Athens of Italy to a level with some third-rate -American township. - -Except with a few rare exceptions, Italians are wholly unable to -comprehend the indignation with which their callousness fills the -cultured observer of every other nationality. Anxiety to get -ready-money, an ignorance of their true interests, and a babyish love of -new things, however vulgar or barbarous, have completely extinguished, -in the aristocracy and bureaucracy, all sentiment for the arts and all -reverence for their inheritance and for the beauty of Nature. It would -seem as if a kind of paralysis of all perception had fallen on the whole -nation. A prince of great culture, refinement and reputed taste having -occasion this year to repair his palace, has stuccoed and coloured it -all over a light ochre yellow! A great noble sold his ancestral gardens -last year to a building company, and his family clapped their hands with -delight as the first ilex trees fell beneath the axe! To make a _paven_ -street in Venice, unneeded, incongruous, vulgar, abhorrent to every -educated eye and mind, Byzantine windows, Renaissance doorways, -admirable scrollworks, enchanting façades, marbles, and mosaics, of hues -like the sea-shell and the sea-mouse, are ruthlessly torn down and -pushed out of sight for ever. Ruskin in vain protests, his tears -scorched up by his rage, and both alike powerless. Gregorovius died -recently, his last years embittered and tortured by the daily -destruction of the Rome so sublime and sacred to him. I remember well -the day when the axe was first laid to the immemorial groves of the -Farnesina: a barbarous and venal act, done to gratify private spleen and -greed, leaving a mere mass of mud and dirt where so late had been the -gracious gardens which had seen Raffaelle and Petrarca pace beneath -their shade. The Spanish Duke, Ripalda, whose passionate love for his -Farnesina was known to all Rome, died of the sorrow and fever brought on -by seeing its desecration, died actually of a broken heart. ‘I shall not -long survive them,’ he said to me, the tears standing in his proud eyes, -as he looked on the ruin of his avenues and lawns, which had so late -been the chief beauty of the Tiber, facing their sponsor and neighbour, -the majestic Farnese Palace. - -To the student, the artist, the archæologist, to live in Rome now is to -suffer inexpressibly every hour, in mind and heart. - -Who does not know the piazza of San Giovanni Laterano as it was? The -most exquisite scene of earth stretched around the most beautiful -basilica of the world! Go there now: the horizon is closed and the -landscape effaced, vile modern erections, crowded, paltry, monstrous in -their impudence and in their degradation, shut out the green plains, the -azure hills, the divine, ethereal distance, and close around the -spiritual beauty of the great church, like bow-legged ban-dogs round a -stag at bay. The intolerable outrage of it, the inconceivable shame of -it, the crass obstinacy and stupidity which make such havoc possible, -should fill the dullest soul with indignation. Yet such things are being -done yearly, daily, hourly, ceaselessly, and with impunity all over -Italy, and no voice is raised in protest. Whenever any such voice is -raised, it is seldom that of an Italian; it is that of Ruskin, Story, -Yriarte, Taine, Vernon Lee, Augustus Hare, or it is my own, to the -begetting of ten thousand enemies, to the receiving of twice ten -thousand maledictions. - -Nor is it only in the great cities that such ruin is wrought. In every -little hamlet, on every hill and plain there is the same process of -destruction going on, which I have before compared to the growth of -lupus on a human face. Rapidly, in every direction, the beauty, the -marvellous, the incomparable, natural, and architectural beauty of the -country is being destroyed by crass ignorance and still viler greed. - -Along those famous hillsides, which rise above Careggi, there was, until -a few months ago, a landmark dear to all the countryside, a line of -colossal cypresses which had been planted there by the hand of the Pater -Patriæ, Cosimo de’ Medici himself. These grand and noble trees were -lately sold, with the ground on which they stood, to a native doctor of -Florence, who _immediately felled them_. Yet if before this unpardonable -action, in looking on the fallen giants, anyone is moved to see the pity -of it and curse the stupid greed which set the axe at their sacred -trunks, he who does so mourn is never the prince, the noble, the banker, -the merchant, the tradesman; it is some foreign painter or scholar, or -some peasant of the soil who remembers the time when one vast avenue -connected Florence and Prato. - -Within one mile of each other there are, near Florence, a green knoll, -crowned with an ancient church, and a river, shaded by poplar trees; the -beauty of the hill was an historic tower, dating from the year 1000, -massive, mighty, very strong, having withstood the wars of eight -centuries; at its foot was a stately and aged stone pine. The beauty of -the river was a wide bend, where the trees and the hills opened out from -the water, and a graceful wooden bridge spanned it, chiefly used by the -millers’ carts and the peasants’ mules. In the gracious spring-time of -last year, the old tower was pulled down to be used for building -materials, for which it was found that it could not be used, and the -stone pine was felled, because its shade prevented a few beans to the -value of, perhaps, two francs growing beneath it. On the river the white -wooden bridge has been pulled down, and a huge, red, brick structure, -like a ponderous railway bridge, hideous, grotesque, and shutting out -all the sylvan view up stream, has been erected in its stead, altogether -unfitted for the slender rural traffic which alone passes there, and -costing a heavy price, levied by taxation from a rural, and far from -rich, community. Thus are two exquisite landscapes wantonly ruined; no -one who has known those scenes, as they were a year ago, can endure to -look at them as they are. There was no plea or pretext of necessity for -such a change; the one was due to private greed, the other to municipal -brutishness and speculation; some persons are a few pounds the heavier -in purse, the country is for ever so much the poorer. - -There is, within another mile, an old castellated villa with two mighty -towers, one at either end, and within it chambers panelled with oak -carvings of the Quattro Cento, of great delicacy and vigour of -execution; it stands amidst a rich champagne country, abounding in vine -and grain and fruits, and bears one of the greatest names of history. -_It is now about to be turned into a candle manufactory!_ In vain do the -agriculturists around protest that the filthy stench of the offal which -will be brought there, and the noxious fumes of the smoke, which will -pour from the furnace chimney about to be erected amongst its fir-trees, -will do infinite harm to the vineyards and orchards around. No one gives -ear to their lament. Private cupidity and communal greed run hand in -hand; and the noble building is doomed beyond hope. Who can hold their -soul in patience or seal their lips to silence before such impiety and -imbecility as this? - -When this kind of destruction is going on everywhere, in every city, -town, village, province, commune, all over Italy, who can measure the -ultimate effects upon the face of the country? What, in ten years’ time, -will be left of it as Eustace and Stendahl saw it? What, in twenty -years’ time, will be left of it as we now know it? Every day some -architectural beauty, some noble avenue, some court or loggia or -gateway, some green lawn, or shadowy ilex grove, or sculptured basin, -musical with falling water, and veiled with moss and maidenhair, is -swept away for ever that some jerry-builder may raise his rotten walls -or some tradesman put up his plate-glass front, or some dreary desert of -rubble and stones delight the eyes of wise modernity. - -It is impossible to imagine any kind of building more commonplace, more -ugly, and less suitable to the climate than the modern architecture, or -rather masons’ work, which has become dear to the modern Italian mind. -It is the kind of house which was built in London twenty or thirty years -ago, and now in London is despised and detested. The fine old hospital -of Santa Lucia, strong as a rock, and sound as an oak, has recently been -knocked down by a man who, returning with a fortune made in America, -desired to be able to name a street after himself. (Streets used to be -named after heroes who dwelt in them; they are now named after -_rastaqouères_, who pull them down and build them up again.) Instead of -the hospital, there are erected some houses on the model of London -houses of thirty years ago, with narrow, ignoble windows and façades of -the genuine Bayswater and Westbourne Grove type. There has not been one -opposing voice to their erection, and any censure of them is immediately -answered by a reference to the brand-new dollars of their builder. In -the suburbs it is the hideous cottage (here called _villino_), which, -having disgraced the environs of London and Paris, is now rapturously -set up in the neighbourhood of Italian towns. Both these types of -house-building (for architecture it is absurd to call it) are as -degraded as they can possibly be; and, whereas the London and Paris -suburban cottages have frequently the redeeming feature of long windows -down to the ground, modern Italian houses have narrow windows of the -meanest possible kind, affording no light in winter and no air in -summer. The horrible English fashion of putting a window on each side of -a narrow doorway is considered beautiful in Italy, and slavishly -followed everywhere, whilst the climbing roses and evergreen creepers -which in England and France so constantly cover the poorness of modern -houses, are, in Italy, only conspicuous by their absence. The noble -loggias, and balconies, and colonnades of old Italian mansions were in -the old time run over with the tea rose, the glycine and the banksia; -but the wretched modern Italian ‘villino’ is, in all its impudence, -naked and not ashamed. - -These dreadful modern constructions, with flimsy walls, slate roof, -pinched doorway, mean windows, commonness, cheapness and meanness -staring from every brick in their body, are disgracing the approach of -every Italian city; they are met with climbing the slope of -Bellosguardo, beside the hoary walls of Signa, behind the cypresses of -the Poggio Imperiale, on the road to the Ponte Nomentana, outside the -Porta Salara, on the way to the baths of Caracalla, close against the -walls of the Colosseum, above the green canal water of Venice, in front -of the glad blue sea by Santa Lucia, anywhere, everywhere, insulting the -past, making hideous the present, suited to no season and absurd in -every climate, the rickety offspring of a century incapable of artistic -procreation. - -It is impossible to enter into the minds of men who actually consider it -a finer thing, a prouder thing, to be a third-rate, mediocre, commercial -city than to be the first artistic, or the noblest historic, city of the -world. Yet this is what the modern Italian, the Italian who governs in -ministry, bureaucracy, municipality, and press, deliberately does -prefer. He thinks it more glorious, and worthier, to be a feeble -imitation of a shoddy American city than to be supreme in historic, -artistic and natural beauty. He will sell his Tiziano, his Donatello, -his Greek and Roman marbles, and his Renaissance tapestries without -shame; and he will pant and puff with pride because he has secured a -dirty tramway coaling-yard, has befouled his atmosphere with mephitic -vapours and coal-tar gas, and has reduced his lovely _verzaja_, so late -green with glancing foliage and fresh with rippling water, into a -howling desert of iron rails, shot rubbish, bricks and mortar, unsightly -sheds, and smoke-belching chimneys. To the educated observer the choice -is as piteous and as grotesque as that of the South Sea Islander -greedily exchanging his pure, pear-shaped, virgin pearl for the glass -and pinchbeck of a Birmingham brooch. - -Not many years ago there was in these gardens of the Oricellari of which -I have spoken a neglected statue lying unnoticed in a darksome place. It -was the Cupid of Michaelangelo, which, being discovered by the sculptor -Santerelli, there and then was sold to the South Kensington Museum, -where it may be seen to-day. This will ere long be the fate of all the -sculptures and statues of Italy, and the ‘modern spirit’ now prevailing -in the country will consider it best that it should be so. - -The empty word of ‘progress’ which is repeated by all nations in this -day, as if they were parrots, and has as much meaning in it as if it -were only ‘poor poll,’ is continually used to cover, or feign to excuse, -all these barbarous enormities; but most insincerely, most vainly. To -turn a rich agricultural country into a fourth-rate manufacturing one -can claim neither sagacity nor prudence as its defence. To demolish -noble, ancient and beautiful things, in order to reproduce the modern -mushroom-growths of a dreary and dusty ‘western township,’ can allege -neither sense nor shrewdness as its excuse; it is simply extremely -silly; even if inspired by greed it is both silly and short-sighted. Yet -it is the only thing which the Italian municipal councils consider it -excellent to do; they have, after their manner, sufficiently paid -tribute to the arts when they have chipped a Luca Della Robbia medallion -out of an ancient wall and put it away in a glass case in some gallery, -or when they have taken an altar (as they have just taken the silver -altar out of San Giovanni) and locked it up in some museum where nobody -goes.[E] - ------ - -Footnote E: - - This altar has been since, at the entreaty of the people, replaced in - San Giovanni. - ------ - -To the arguments of common sense that an altar is as safe, and as -visible, in the baptistery as in a museum, and that five centuries have -passed over Luca’s out-of-door work without wind or weather, heat or -frost, impairing it in the least, no one in the municipal council of any -town would for a moment attend. They do not want reason or fitness; they -only want the vaporous, fussy, greedy, braggart ‘modern tone.’ - -Everyone who has visited Florence knows the house fronting the gate of -San Pier Gattolino (Porta Romana), on the front of which are found -remnants of an almost wholly damaged fresco, through which a window has -been cut. The house was once radiant with the frescoes of Giovanni di -San Giovanni, which Cosimo dé Medici caused to be painted on its façade, -because fronting the gateway by which all travellers came from Rome, ‘it -was to be desired, for the honour of the city, that the first impression -of all such travellers should be one of joy and beauty, to the end that -such strangers might receive pleasure therein and tarry willingly.’ This -wise and hospitable reasoning has been utterly lost sight of by those -who rule our modern cities, and the approaches to all of them are -defiled and disfigured, so that the heart of the traveller sinks within -his breast. Instead of Cosimo’s gay and gracious fresco-pageantry upon -the walls, there are only now, by the Romano gate, a steam tramway -belching filthy smoke, a string of carts waiting to be taxed, and a -masons’ scaffolding where lately towered the Torrigiani trees! - -Reflect for a moment what the rule of—we will not say an Augustus, but -merely of a Magnifico, of a Francois Premier—might have made in these -thirty years of modern Italy. Marvellous beauty, incomparable grandeur -of form, surpassing loveliness of Nature, entire sympathy of the -cultured world and splendour immeasurable of tradition and example, all -these after the peace of Villafranca, as after the breach of Porta Pia, -lay ready to the hand of any ruler of the land who could have -comprehended their meaning and their magnificence, their assured -opportunity and their offered harmony. - -But there was no one; and the moment has long passed. - -The country has been guided instead into the trumpery and ephemeral -triumphs of what is called modern civilisation, and an endless -expenditure has gone hand in hand with a mistaken policy. - -Whenever a royal visit is made to any Italian town, the preparations for -it invariably include some frightful act of demolition, as when at -Bologna, on the occasion of the late state visit of the sovereigns, the -noble Communal Palace of that city was bedaubed all over with a light -colouring, and its exquisitely picturesque and irregular casements were -altered, enlarged, and cut about into the mathematical monotony dear to -the municipal mind, no one present having sense to see that all the -harmony and dignity of its architecture were ruthlessly obliterated. -Some similar action is considered necessary in every town, big or -little, before the reception of any prince, native or foreign. The -results are easily conceived. It is said that William of Germany did not -conceal his ridicule of the colossal equestrian statues in _pasteboard_ -which were set up in the station entrance at Rome in his honour; but as -a rule the royal persons in Europe appear not to have any artistic -feeling to offend. The only two who had any were hurled in their youth, -by a tragic fate, out of a world with which they had little affinity. -Those who remain have no sympathy for tradition or for the arts. The -abominations done daily in their names and before their eyes leave them -wholly unmoved. Nay, it is no secret that they do constantly approve and -urge on the vandalism of their epoch. - -The Italian people would have been easily led into a higher and wiser -form of life. (I speak of the Italian people as distinguished from the -Italian bureaucracy and borghesia, which are both of a crass and -hopeless philistinism.) The country people especially have an artistic -sense still latent in them, and they remain often artistic in their -attire, despite the debasing temptations of cheap and vulgar modern -clothing. Their ear for music is generally perfect, they detect -instantly the false note or the faulty chord which many an educated -hearer might let pass unnoticed. Their national songs, serenades, and -poems are admirable in purity and grace, and although now, alas! -comparatively rarely heard on hillside and by seashore, they remain -essentially the verse of the people. Unfortunately this part of the -nation is absolutely unrepresented. The noisy agitator, the greedy -office-seeker, the unscrupulous politician, the pert, unhealthy lawyer -crowd to the front and screech and roar until they are esteemed both at -home and abroad to be the sole and indivisible ‘public,’ whilst their -influence, by intrigue and bustle, does most unhappily predominate in -all spheres municipal and political; and the entire press, subsidised by -them, justifies them in all they do and pushes their selfish and -soulless speculations down the throats of unwilling and helpless men. - -‘Mi son meco,’ says Benedetto Varchi, ‘molte volte stranamente -maravigliato com’ esser posso che in quelli uomini i quali son usati per -piccolissimo prezzo, insino della prima fanciullezza loro, a portare le -balle della Lana in guisi di facchini, e le sporte della Seta a uso di -zanaiuoli, ed in somma a star poco meno che schiavi tutto il giorno, e -gran pezza della notte alla Caviglia e al fuso, si ritrovi poi in molti -di loro, dove e quando bisogna, tanta grandezza d’anima e cosi nobili e -alti pensieri, che sappiamo, e osino non solo di dire ma di fare quelle -tante e si belle cose, ch’ eglino parte dicono, e parte fanno.’[F] - ------ - -Footnote F: - - ‘I have in myself wondered strangely many a time how it is possible - that in men who from their earliest youth have been used at the lowest - price to bear bales of wool as porters and baskets of silk as - carriers, and in a word to be little better than slaves all the day - long, and to spend a great part of the night at carding and spinning, - can in so many cases display, when there is opportunity and need, so - much greatness of soul and such high and noble thoughts, and cannot - only say but do such beautiful things as are said and done by them.’ - - _Zanaiuoli_ means, literally, ‘whoever carries a basket’; there is no - exact English equivalent. - ------ - -A people of whom this was essentially, and not merely rhetorically, -true, would have been with little difficulty kept within the fair realm -of art and guided to a fine ideal, in lieu of being given for their -guides the purchased quill-men of a venal journalism, and bidden to -worship a dirty traction-engine, a plate-glass shop front, and a bridge -of cast-iron, painted red. - -If through the last thirty years a sovereign with the cultured tastes of -a Leonello d’Este or a Lorenzo del Moro, had been dominant in the -councils of Italy, he would have made his influence and his desires so -felt that the municipalities and ministries would not have dared to -commit the atrocities they have done. Constitutional monarchs may be -powerless in politics, but in art and taste their power for good and for -evil is vast. Alas! in no country in Europe is any one of them a scholar -or a connoisseur. They have no knowledge of the one field in which alone -their influence would be unhampered, and might be salutary. They think -themselves forced to pat and praise the modern playthings of war and -science, and of beauty they have no conception, of antiquity they have -merely jealousy. - -It is to be deplored, not only as a national, but as a world-wide, loss -that Modern Italy has entirely missed and misconceived the way to true -greatness and to true prosperity. In other centuries she was the light -of the world; in this she deliberately prefers to be the valet of -Germany and the ape of America. Had there been men capable of -comprehending her true way to a new life, and capable of leading her -varied populations in that way, she might have seen a true and a second -Renaissance. But those men are not existing, have not existed, within -recent times for her; her chiefs have all been men who, on the contrary, -knew nothing of art and cared nothing for nature; a statesman like -Cavour, a conspirator like Mazzini, a free-lance like Garibaldi, a -soldier like Victor Emmanuel were none of them men to understand, much -less to re-create, the true genius of the nation; their eyes were fixed -on political troubles, on social questions, on acquisition of territory, -on quarrels with the Pope, and alliances with reigning houses. Since -their death lesser people have taken their places, but have all followed -in the same tracks, have all misled the nation to imagine that her -_risorgimento_ lies in copying American steam-engines and keeping -ironclads ready for a signal from the potentate of Berlin. - -Italy might be now, as she was in the past, the Muse, the Grace, the -Artemis and the Athene of the world; she thinks it a more glorious thing -to be only one amongst a sweating mob of mill-hands. - -Italy, beautiful, classic, peaceful, wise with the wisdom inherited from -her fathers, would have been the garden of the world, the sanctuary of -pure art and of high thought, the singer of immortal song. Instead, she -has deliberately chosen to be the mere imitator of a coarse and noisy -crowd on the other side of the Atlantic, and the mere echo of the armed -bully who dictates to her from the banks of the Spree. - - - - - L’UOMO FATALE - - -If there were any free speech or free action in matters political -permitted in what is known as Free Italy, it would be at once -interesting and useful to ask of its Government under what _régime_ they -govern? Is it under a constitutional monarchy, a dictatorship, a -military despotism, or what? The reply would probably be that it is -still a constitutional monarchy with popular parliamentary -representation. But the counter reply would be: Then why are all the -restraints limiting a constitutional sovereign broken through and all -the privileges appertaining to, and creating the purpose of, -parliamentary representation violated or ignored? When the king of a -constitutional Italy violated the Constitution in refusing the -Zanardelli Cabinet because it did not promise acquiescence in his own -views, the country should have protested, and insisted on the Zanardelli -Cabinet being placed in power for the sake of the constitutional -principle therein involved. It was the first step towards absolutism. If -it had been promptly stopped and punished there would have been no more -similar steps. It was allowed to pass unchastised, and the result has -been that every succeeding week which has since passed has seen worse -and continual violations of the Constitution and the Code. - -‘_L’uomo fatale_,’ as the Italian people call Crispi, was summoned to -rule, and the result has been, what everyone cognisant of his character -knew would be inevitable, namely, the abolition of all liberties and -safeguards of the body politic, and the substitution of secret, -irresponsible, and absolutely despotic, tribunals, and secret agencies, -worked by the will of one man. The revolutionary movement has been -crushed by military force with a brutality and injustice which, were the -scene Russia or Austria, would cause monster meetings of indignation in -London. Led by _The Times_, _The Post_, and other journals, English -opinion is deaf and blind to the tyrannies which it would be the first -to denounce in any other nation. English opinion does not choose to -understand, and does not desire to be forced to understand, that Italy -is at the present time as completely ruled by an unscrupulous despotism, -and by sheer use of the sabre and musket, as is Poland at this hour, or -as Austrian Venetia was earlier in the century; and that Italy presents -the same spectacle of prisoners, purely political, being hustled through -the towns manacled by handcuffs and chained to one another by a long -iron fetter; lawyers, landowners, merchants, editors, men of education, -probity and honourable life being yoked with the common criminal and the -hired bravo. It is difficult to comprehend how and why this shameful -outrage upon decency and liberty is viewed with indifference by the rest -of Europe. That it may give pleasure to the foes of Italy is easily -understood; but how can it fail to give pain and alarm to her friends? -How is it that unanimous protest and unanimous censure do not arise from -all those who profess to recognise the necessity of freedom for national -well-being? - -The extreme gravity of the fact that the Italian sovereign chooses and -caresses a minister who is permitted to set aside at will all ordinary -provisions and protections of the law, does not appear to excite any -astonishment or apprehension outside Italy. In Italy itself the people -are paralysed with fear; the steel is at their throats, and the army, -which they have been ruined to construct and maintain, crushes them into -silence and exhaustion. - -Let the English people picture to themselves what would have been the -verdict of Europe if England had dealt with Ireland as Sicily has been -dealt with; let them imagine Lord Wolseley acting like General Morra; -let them imagine a cordon drawn around the whole island, ingress and -egress forbidden under pain of arrest, telegrams destroyed, approaching -vessels fired upon, the whole population forcibly disarmed, no news—save -such as might be garbled by superior order—permitted to be despatched -from the interior to the world at large, thousands of men thrust into -prison on suspicion whilst their families starved, absolute secrecy, -absolute darkness and mystery covering irresponsible despotism; let the -English public imagine such a state as this in Ireland, and then ask -themselves what would be the verdict of Europe and America upon it. -Sicily contains two millions of persons, and this vast number has been -given over to the absolute will of a single brutal soldier, who is -screened by ministerial protection from any ray of that daylight of -publicity which is the only guarantee for the equity of public men. - -We are told that the island is pacified. So is a garotted and -blindfolded creature pacified; so is a murdered corpse pacified. The -most merciless reprisals have followed on the attempts of the peasantry -to save themselves from the grinding extortions of their usurers and the -pitiless taxation of their communes; and the reign of terror which has -been established is called tranquillity. The same boast of ‘peace when -there is no peace’ is made in the Lunigiana. - -There is not even the gloss of affected legality in the countless -arrests which have filled to overflowing the prisons of Italy. The -charges by which these arrests are excused are so wide that they are a -net into which all fish, big and little, may be swept. The imputation of -‘inciting to hatred between the classes’ is so vague that it may include -almost any expression of social or political opinion. It is an -accusation under which almost every great writer, thinker or philosopher -would be liable to arrest, and under which Jesus Christ and Jean Jacques -Rousseau, Garibaldi and John Milton, Washington and Brahma, Tolstoï and -St Paul would be all alike condemned as criminals. - -Equally vague is the companion accusation of inciting to civil war. As I -pointed out in my article of last month, Italy owes her present -existence entirely to civil war. Civil war may be a dread calamity, but -it may be also an heroic remedy for ills far greater than itself. What -is called authority in Italy is so corrupt in itself that it cannot -command the respect of men, and has no title to demand their obedience. -The creator itself of civil war and disturbance, such authority becomes -ridiculous when draping itself in the toga of an intangible dignity. -Moreover, it is now incarnated in the person of a single unscrupulous -opportunist. Why should the nation respect either his name or his -measures? The King of Italy, always servilely copying Germany, has -decreed the name and measures of the lawyer Crispi sacred, as Germany -has sent to prison many writers and printers for having expressed -opinions hostile to the acts or speeches of German public men. Under the -state called _piccolo stato d’assedio_ military tribunals judge civil -offences, or what are considered offences, and pass sentences of -imprisonment varying in duration from six months to thirty years. The -infamous sentence of twenty-three years’ imprisonment, of which three -are to be passed in solitary confinement, passed on the young advocate -Molinari, for what is really no more than an offence of opinions, has -forced a cry of surprise and disgust even from the German press. The -monstrous iniquity of this condemnation has made even the blind and -timid worm of Italian public feeling turn writhing under the iron heel -which is crushing it, and this individual sentence is to be carried for -appeal into the civil courts, where it is fervently to be hoped it may -be altered if not cancelled.[G] Hundreds of brutal sentences have been -passed for which there is no hope or chance of appeal, and vast numbers -of men, in the flower of youth or the prime of manhood, are being flung -into the hell of Italian prisons, there to be left to rot away in unseen -and unpitied suffering, till death releases them or insanity seizes -them. Insanity comes quickly in such torture as Italian prison-life is -to its victims. - ------ - -Footnote G: - - It was not cancelled, and Molinari is now in the _ergustolo_ of - Oneglia. - ------ - -A journal called _L’Italia del Popolo_ contained a spirited and eloquent -article proving that Crispi was neither courageous nor honest, as a -Socialist deputy had in a moment of flattery called him: this perfectly -legitimate and temperate article caused the confiscation of the paper! -‘If Crispi be Almighty God, let us know it!’ said the _Secolo_ of Milan, -a courageous and well-written daily newspaper which has itself been -frequently confiscated for telling the truth. - -As specimens of other sentences passed in the month of February of the -present year, take the following examples: - -In Siena the proprietor of the journal _Martinello del Calle_ was -condemned to thirty-five days of prison for having called the deputy -Piccarti ‘violent and grotesque.’ - -The journal _Italia del Popolo_ was seized because it contained -quotations from the Memoirs of Kossuth. - -The _Secolo_ of Milan was seized for protesting against the condemnation -to _twenty years’_ imprisonment of the soldier Lombardino, although he -had completely proved his innocence of the offence attributed to him. - -The barber, Vittorio Catani, having been heard, in the Piazza S. Spirito -of Florence, to say that the revolts in Sicily were due to hunger and -distress, was condemned to three months’ imprisonment and fifty francs -fine. - -At San Giuseppe, in Sicily, an old peasant surrendered one gun; -confessed to having a better one, and showed where he had put it; he was -sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. - -A day-labourer, Stefano Grosso, went to visit his father who was dying; -a revolver being found in the cottage, during his visit, he was -condemned to six months of prison for owning it, although there was no -proof of his ownership. - -The brothers Di Gesù, herdsmen, accustomed to sleep in a building where -many other persons slept also, were sentenced to a year and a half of -prison because an old rusty gun, quite useless, was found in a cupboard, -although there was no evidence whatever that they owned, or knew of its -existence. - -These are a few typical instances of sentences passed by the hundred, -and tens of hundreds, at the present hour in the unhappy kingdom of -Italy. Everyone suspected however slightly, accused however indirectly, -is arrested and removed from sight. Oftentimes, as in Molinari’s case, -the sentence embraces periods of solitary confinement, that infernal -mental torture under which the strongest intellect gives way. What is -the rest of Europe about that it views unmoved such suffering and such -tyranny as this? Let it be remembered that the vast majority of these -prisoners have no crime at all on their consciences. Molinari, sentenced -in his youth to twenty-three years of prison, has committed no sin -except that of being a Socialist. The term Anarchist is constantly used -by the tribunals to describe men who are merely guilty of such opinions -as are held by your Fabian Society in England. - -There has been no actual _coup d’état_, but there has been what is -worse, because less tangible, than a _coup d’état_, namely, the -insidious and secretive alteration of a constitutional Government into a -despotic one, the unauthorised and illegitimate suppression of free -discussion and of lawful measures, and the substitution for them of -arbitrary methods and secret-police investigation. The change has been -quite as great as that which was wrought in Paris by the canon of the -Tenth of December, but it has been made by means more criminal, because -less open and as yet unavowed. The King of Italy, having mounted the -throne under an engagement to hold inviolate the Constitution, has -violated it as violently as Louis Napoleon his oath to the French -Republic; but he has done so more insidiously and less courageously, -having never dared to announce to his people his intention to do so. His -decree postponing the assembling of the Chambers because ‘public -discussion would be prejudicial’ was a virtual declaration that -parliamentary government was at an end, but the fact was covered by an -euphemism. In like manner, Crispi has said that he will ‘ask’ for -irresponsible powers to be given him, but he defers the day of asking, -and _ad interim_ takes those powers and uses them as he chooses. The -Italian Chambers are to be allowed to meet, but it is intimated to them -that unless they vote for the ‘full powers’ they will be dissolved, and -a more obedient Parliament elected under the military law of the -existing reign of terror. ‘La camera sapra quelle che si deve sapere,’ -Crispi stated the other day; that is, he will tell them as much as he -chooses them to know. The amount of the financial deficit is to be put -before the Chambers as one half only of what it really is. If there be -any exposure made, or hostility shown, he has his weapon ready to his -hand in dissolution. A new chamber elected under his docile prefects and -his serried bayonets will not fail to be the humble spaniel he requires. -If the present deputies, when the decree proroguing their assembly was -proclaimed, had all met in Rome, and, without distinction of party or -group, had insisted on the opening of Parliament, and compelled the -monarch to keep his engagement to the Constitution, it is possible that -both he and his minister would have submitted. But Italian deputies are -poor creatures, and the few men of mark and strength who are amongst -them are swamped under the weight of the invertebrate numbers. Hence we -are scandalised by the spectacle of a whole body of the elected -representatives of a nation being muzzled and set aside, and their -discussion of opinion and action declared prejudicial to the interests -of their country. It would be simpler and more candid to sweep away -Parliament and Senate altogether than to make of them a mere mechanical -dummy, pushed aside as useless lumber whenever there is any agitation or -danger before their country. Umberto of Savoia would hesitate to -proclaim himself an absolute sovereign, but _de facto_, though not _de -jure_, he has made himself one. The text of the Treaty of the Triplice -has never been made known to the country. Rumours have been heard that -there are private riders attached to it which personally bind the House -of Savoy to the House of Hohenzollern, and cause the otherwise -inexplicable, and in every event culpable, obstinacy of the Italian -sovereign in insisting on the inviolability of the military _cadres_. Be -this as it may, the engagements of the treaty are kept a profound -secret, and such secrecy is probably one of the clauses. Now, if the -will and signature of one man suffice to pledge a nation in the dark to -the most perilous obligations none can predict the issue, what is this -except an absolute monarchy? What pretence can there still be of a -constitutional Government? - -Let the English nation figure to itself their Queen binding them -secretly to the most onerous engagements which might cause in the end -the total exhaustion and even extinction of their country, and they will -then comprehend what Italians are enduring, and have long endured, from -the secret pact of their sovereign, of which they have no means to -measure the dangers or the responsibilities, although the burden and -terror of these lie upon them. It is only by means of the military gag -that the sovereign can keep mute the popular anxiety, curiosity and -alarm. - -The only reforms which would be of the slightest practical use would be -the abolition of the hated gate-tax, and salt-tax,[H] and the reduction -of the military and naval expenditure. There is no ministry of any party -who dares propose these, the only possible, alleviations of the national -suffering. - ------ - -Footnote H: - - To such an extent is the espionage on the salt-tax carried that a poor - man living on the seashore is not allowed to take up more than one - pail of sea-water to his house in one day lest he should expose the - water to the heat of the sun and use the few salt crystals which its - evaporation would leave at the bottom of the pail. - ------ - -The formation of the Kingdom of Italy has been aggrandisement, gain and -rejoicing to the Piedmontese and Lombard States, but it has been only -oppression, loss and pain to the country south of the Appenines. Even in -the Veneto, if the gauge of felicity be prosperity, the province must -miserably regret the issue of its longed-for liberation. ‘Piû gran’ -miseria non c’è sulla terra che n’ l’è la nostra,’ says a gondolier of -Venice to me in this ninety-fourth year of the century. The magnificent -and hardy race of gondoliers is slowly and wretchedly perishing, under -the grinding wheels of communal extortion, and the ignoble rivalry of -the dirty steamboats and the electric launches. But there is greater -misery still than theirs, such misery as makes the worst hell of Dante’s -heaven by comparison—the misery of the children in Sicily, little white -slaves sold for a hundred, or a hundred and fifty francs each, to brutal -blows, smarting wounds, incessant labour, and absolutely hopeless -bondage. - -Court-martial is substituted for civil law at the mere will of the -monarch and his minister. There has been nothing in the recent events -which can justify the establishment of it, and its abominable and -irresponsible decrees, in which the torture of solitary confinement so -largely figures. Local dissensions and jealousies find vent in -accusations and condemnations, and the barbarity of the soldier and the -gendarme to the civilian is regarded as a virtue and rewarded. What can -be said of a Government which confounds the political writer with the -brigand of the hills, the peaceful doctrinaire with the savage assassin, -the harmless peasant with the poisoner or strangler, and chains them all -together, and pushes them all together into prison-cells, fœtid, -pestilent, wretched, already overcrowded? What will be done with all -these thousands? What will be made of all this loss and waste of life? -Miserable as is the existence of Italian felons, they must eat -something, however scanty. The cost to the country of their useless, -stagnant, fettered lives will be immense, whilst their own anguish will -be unspeakable. Many of them, I repeat, are guilty of no offence -whatever except of desiring a republic, or professing Socialist -doctrines. I have no personal leaning towards Socialism, and regard it -as unworkable, and believe that it would be pernicious if it could be -brought to realisation. But it is no crime to be a Socialist. Socialism -is an opinion, a doctrine, a creed, an idea; and those who hold it have -every right to make a propaganda when they can. It is monstrous that, at -the pleasure of a monarch or a minister, an idea can be treated as a -capital crime. The young advocate Molinari is guilty of nothing except -of inculcating revolutionary doctrines. What sin is this? It is one -shared by Gautama and Christ. - -Maxime du Camp has just died, a member of the Academy of France. He was -once one of the Thousand of Marsala. What is now bringing intellectual -and gifted youths to the felon’s dock in Italy is precisely such a creed -as drove the late Academician to enrol himself under Garibaldi. Who -shall affirm that there may not be in these young men, thus infamously -judged and sentenced to-day, such brilliant intelligence and critical -acumen as have made Maxime du Camp the admired of all who can appreciate -scholarship, style, perception and true philanthropy, whether they may -or may not agree with his arguments or endorse his deductions? - -It would be impossible for any generous or unselfish nature not to burn -with indignation before the poverty entailed on Italy by military -madness, and the suffering caused to the poor and harmless by the fiscal -and municipal tyrannies and the hired spies and extortioners of the -Government.[I] Jules Simon said the other day that pity is the mark of -great souls. In Italy it is considered the mark of the malefactor. A -young nobleman of the Lunigiana, Count Lazzoni, has now a price set upon -his head because he has espoused and taught the doctrines of Mazzini. He -was rich, gifted, fortunate; his family insisted that he should give up -either his doctrines or themselves, and, with themselves, his estates -and title. He chose to abandon the last, not without great personal -affliction, because he was tenderly attached to his relatives. This -young hero is now being hunted by soldiery, and when found will be tried -by court-martial under the convenient charge of ‘exciting to -class-hatreds.’ Yet what are such young men as these but the very salt -and savour of a country? It is not they who are the criminals, but the -egotists who dance and dine, and gamble and smoke, and bow at the -Quirinale, and the Vatican, and pay court to the favourites of the hour, -and care nothing what ruin hangs over their country, nor what suffering -is entailed on their countrymen, so long as they get a rosette for their -buttonhole, or rear the favourite for a race in their stables. They are -the true criminals; not the youths, like Molinari and Lazzoni, not the -men like De Felice and Barbato, who think and feel and dare. - ------ - -Footnote I: - - The taxes of the Government amounted to four hundred millions odd in - 1873; in 1893 they amount to over eight hundred millions. - ------ - -Why are not the young Princes of the House of Savoy amongst the -suffering peasantry of Sicily, seeing with their own eyes, hearing with -their own ears, doing something to aid, to mitigate, to console, instead -of spending their lives in leading cotillons, driving tandem, trying on -new uniforms, and shooting in all seasons of the year? Why do they not -go and live for a month in the sulphur-mines, carry the creels of -sulphur on their bare backs, and feel the stinging smart of it in their -blinded eyes and dried-up throats and excoriated lips? They would then, -at least, know something of how a portion of their people live and die. -It would be more useful than dressing up in plumes and armour to amuse -William of Prussia. - -Lockroy, in writing to the French newspaper _L’Eclair_, says that Italy -is served well by her public servants, and possesses unlimited resources -and marvellous genius. In what way is she well served by her public -servants? She is stripped bare by all who pretend to serve her, and -everyone who enters her service, high and low, seeks only to advantage -and enrich himself. Corruption, like dry-rot in a tree, permeates the -whole public organisation of Italy, from the highest to the lowest -official. All the municipalities are rotten and rapacious. Nothing is -done without _mancia_; or, as it is called further East, _backsheesh_. -The law courts are swarming hotbeds of bribery and perjury. - -Her natural resources may be great, but they are so burdened by impost -and tax, so strained, fettered, prematurely harvested and spent, that -they are exhausted ere they are ripe. Of her genius there is but little -fruit in these days; there is no originality in modern Italian talent; -in art, literature, science, architecture, all is imitation, and -imitation of an ignoble model; the national sense of beauty, once so -universal, so intense, is dead; the national grace and gaiety are dying; -the accursed, withering, dwarfing, deforming spirit of modernity has -passed like a blast over the country and made it barren. - -In the people there are still beauty of form and attitude, charm and -elegance of manner, infinite patience, infinite forbearance, infinite -potentialities of excellence as of evil. But they need a saviour, a -guide, a friend; they need a Marcus Aurelius, a Nizahualcoytl, a St -Louis, a Duke Frederic of Montefeltro, a ruler who would love them, who -would raise them, who would give them food bodily and mental, and lead -them in the paths of peace and loveliness. Instead of such, what have -they? Men who set their wretched ambition on the approving nod of a -Margrave of Brandenburg; who deem it greatness to turn a whole starving -peasantry into a vast ill-ordered, ill-equipped, and ill-fed army; who, -for pomp, parade, and windy boast seize the last coin, the last crust, -the last shirt; who find a paltry ideal in an American machine-room, an -elevated railway, and an electric gun; and who deem an ignoble vassalage -to the German Emperor meet honour and glory for that Italy which was -empress of the earth and goddess of the arts when the German was a -forest-brute, a hairy boor, a scarce human Caliban of northern lands. - -As events have moved within the last few weeks it is wholly within the -bonds of possibility, even of probability, that if the Crown and its -chief counsellor see greater danger to themselves threaten them in the -coming year, they may appeal for armed help to their ally, who is almost -their suzerain, and a fence of Prussian bayonets may be placed around -the Quirinale and the House of Assembly. Who shall say that the secret -and personal treaty does not provide for such protection? - -So far as a public opinion can be said to exist in Italy (for in a -French or English sense of the words it does not as yet exist), it is -stirring to deep uneasiness and indignation at the subserviency of the -tribunals to the ferocity of the Government in what is compared to the -Bloody Assize of the English Jeffreys. It is becoming every day more and -more alarmed at the absolutism of a King, all criticism of whose acts is -made penal, yet whose personal interference and obstruction is every day -becoming more obvious, more galling, and more mischievous. A new place -of deportation for the condemned of Massa-Carrara is being prepared on -the pestilential shore of the Southern Maremma. This new _ergastolo_ may -prove not only a tomb for those confined in it; but it may very possibly -become a pit in which the Italian monarchy will be buried. If the next -election should return, as it may do, two hundred of the Extreme Left, -‘_l’uomo fatale_’ may be the cause of a revolution as terrible as that -of 1789. - -Foreign speakers and writers of the present hour predict the success of -Crispi. What is meant by the word? What success is there possible? The -enforced acceptance of additional taxation? The placing of the last -straw which breaks the camel’s back? The quietude which in the body -politic, as in the physical body, follows on drainage of the blood and -frequently presages the faintness of death? The reduction of -parliamentary representation to a mere comedy and formula? The passive -endurance of martial tyranny by a frightened nation, whose terror is -passed off as acquiescence? The increase of debt, the enlargement of -prisons, the paralysis of the public press? - -These are the only things which can be meant by the success of Francesco -Crispi, or can be embodied in it. - -He is the brummagen Sylla of an age of sham, but he has all the desire -of Sylla to slay his enemies and to rule alone. - -In this sense, but only in this sense, he may succeed. Around the sham -Sylla, as around the real Sylla, there may be laid waste a desolated and -silent country, in which widows will mourn their dead, and fatherless -children weep for hunger under burning roofs. Such triumph as this he -may obtain. Italy has seen many triumph thus, and has paid for their -triumph with her tears and with her blood. - -_March 1894._ - - - - - THE NEW WOMAN - - -It can scarcely be disputed, I think, that in the English language there -are conspicuous at the present moment two words which designate two -unmitigated bores: The Workingman and the Woman. The Workingman and the -Woman, the New Woman, be it remembered, meet us at every page of -literature written in the English tongue; and each is convinced that on -its own special W hangs the future of the world. Both he and she want to -have their values artificially raised and rated, and a status given to -them by favour in lieu of desert. In an age in which persistent clamour -is generally crowned by success they have both obtained considerable -attention; is it offensive to say much more of it than either deserves? - -A writer, signing the name of Sarah Grand, has of late written on this -theme; and she avers that the Cow-Woman and the Scum-Woman, man -understands; but that the New Woman is above him. The elegance of these -choice appellatives is not calculated to recommend them to educated -readers of either sex; and as a specimen of style forces one to hint -that the New Woman who, we are told, ‘has been sitting apart in silent -contemplation all these years’ might in all these years have studied -better models of literary composition. - -We are farther on told ‘that the dimmest perception that you may be -mistaken, will save you from making an ass of yourself.’ It appears that -even this dimmest perception has never dawned upon the New Woman. - -We are farther told that ‘thinking and thinking,’ in her solitary, -sphinx-like contemplation, she solved the problem and prescribed the -remedy (the remedy to a problem!); but what this remedy was we are not -told, nor did the New Woman apparently disclose it to the rest of -womankind, since she still hears them in ‘sudden and violent upheaval’ -like ‘children unable to articulate whimpering for they know not what.’ -It is sad to reflect that they might have been ‘easily satisfied at that -time’ (at what time?), ‘but society stormed at them until what was a -little wail became convulsive shrieks;’ and we are not told why the New -Woman who had ‘the remedy for the problem,’ did not immediately produce -this remedy. We are not told either in what country or at what epoch -this startling upheaval of volcanic womanhood took place in which ‘man -merely made himself a nuisance with his opinions and advice,’ but -apparently did quell this wailing and gnashing of teeth since it would -seem that he has managed still to remain more masterful than he ought to -be. - -We are further informed that women ‘have allowed him to arrange the -whole social system, and manage, or mismanage, it all these ages without -ever seriously examining his work with a view to considering whether his -abilities and his methods were sufficiently good to qualify him for the -task.’ - -There is something comical in the idea thus suggested, that man has only -been allowed to ‘manage or mismanage’ the world because woman has -graciously refrained from preventing his doing so. But the comic side of -this pompous and solemn assertion does not for a moment offer itself to -the New Woman sitting aloof and aloft in her solitary meditation on the -superiority of her sex. For the New Woman there is no such thing as a -joke. She has listened without a smile to her enemy’s ‘preachments’; she -has ‘endured poignant misery for his sins;’ she has ‘meekly bowed her -head’ when he called her bad names; and she has never asked for ‘any -proof of the superiority’ which could alone have given him a right to -use such naughty expressions. The truth about everything has all along -been in the possession of woman; but strange and sad perversity of -taste! she has ‘cared more for man than for truth, and so the whole -human race has suffered!’ - -‘All that is over, however,’ we are told, and ‘while on the one hand man -has shrunk to his true proportions’ she has, during the time of this -shrinkage, been herself expanding, and has in a word come to ‘fancy -herself’ extremely, so that he has no longer the slightest chance of -imposing upon her by his game-cock airs. - -Man, ‘having no conception of himself as imperfect’ (what would Hamlet -say to this accusation?) will find this difficult to understand at -first; but the New Woman ‘knows his weakness,’ and will ‘help him with -his lesson.’ ‘_Man morally is in his infancy._’ There have been times -when there was a doubt as to whether he was to be raised to her level, -or woman to be lowered to his, but we ‘have turned that corner at last -and now woman holds out a strong hand to the child-man and insists upon -helping him up.’ The child-man (Bismarck? Herbert Spencer? Edison? -Gladstone? Alexander III.? Lord Dufferin? the Duc d’Aumale?)—the -child-man must have his tottering baby steps guided by the New Woman, -and he must be taught to live up to his ideals. To live up to an ideal, -whether our own or somebody else’s, is a painful process; but man must -be made to do it. For, oddly enough, we are assured that despite ‘all -his assumption he does not make the best of himself,’ which is not -wonderful if he be still only in his infancy; and he has the incredible -stupidity to be blind to the fact that ‘woman has self-respect and good -sense,’ whilst he has neither, and that ‘she does not in the least -intend to sacrifice the privileges she enjoys on the chance of obtaining -others.’ - -I have written amongst other _pensées éparses_ which will some day see -the light, the following reflection:— - - L’école nouvelle des femmes libres oublie qu’on ne puisse pas à la - fois combattre l’homme sur son propre terrain, et attendre de lui des - politesses, des tendresses, et des galantéries. Il ne faut pas au même - moment prendre de l’homme son chaire à l’Université et sa place dans - l’omnibus; si on lui arrâche son gagne-pain on ne peut pas exiger - qu’il offre aussi sa parapluie. - -The whole kernel of the question lies in this. The supporters of the New -Woman declare that she will not surrender her present privileges, -_i.e._, though she may usurp his professorial seat, and seize his -salary, she will still expect the man to stand that she may sit; the man -to get wet through that she may use his umbrella. Yet surely if she -retain these privileges she can only do so by an appeal to his chivalry, -_i.e._, by a confession that she is weaker than he. But she does not -want to do this; she wants to get the comforts and concessions due to -feebleness, at the same time as she demands the lion’s share of power -due to superior force alone. It is this overweening and unreasonable -grasping at both positions which will end in making her odious to man -and in her being probably kicked back roughly by him into the seclusion -of a harem. - -The New Woman declares that man cannot do without woman. It is a -doubtful postulate. In the finest intellectual and artistic era of the -world women were not necessary to either the pleasures or passions of -men. It is possible that if women make themselves as unlovely and -offensive as they appear likely to become, the preferences of the -Platonic Age may become acknowledged and dominant, and women may be -relegated entirely to the lowest plane as a mere drudge and -child-bearer. - -Before me at the moment lies an engraving from an illustrated journal of -a woman’s meeting; whereat a woman is demanding, in the name of her -sovereign sex, the right to vote at political elections. The speaker is -middle-aged and plain of feature; she wears an inverted plate on her -head, tied on with strings under her double-chin; she has -balloon-sleeves, a bodice tight to bursting, a waist of ludicrous -dimensions in proportion to her portly person; her whole attire is -elaborately constructed so as to conceal any physical graces which she -might possess; she is gesticulating with one hand, of which all the -fingers are stuck out in ungraceful defiance of all artistic laws of -gesture. Now, why cannot this orator learn to gesticulate properly and -learn to dress gracefully, instead of clamouring for a franchise? She -violates in her own person every law, alike of common-sense and artistic -fitness, and yet comes forward as a fit and proper person to make laws -for others. She is an exact representative of her sex as it exists at -the dawn of the twentieth century. - -There have been few periods in which woman’s attire has been so ugly, so -disfiguring and so preposterous as it is in this year of grace (1894) at -a period when, in newspaper and pamphlet, on platform and in -dining-room, and in the various clubs she has consecrated to herself, -woman is clamouring for her recognition as a being superior to man. She -cannot clothe herself with common sense or common grace, she cannot -resist the dictates of tailors and the example of princesses; she cannot -resist the squaw-like preference for animals’ skins, and slaughtered -birds, and tufts torn out of the living and bleeding creature; she -cannot show to any advantage the natural lines of her form, but -disguises them as grotesquely as mantua-makers bid her to do. She cannot -go into the country without making herself a caricature of man, in coat -and waistcoat and gaiters; she apes all his absurdities, she emulates -all his cruelties and follies; she wears his ugly pot hats, his silly, -stiff collars; she copies his inane club-life and then tells us that -this parody, incapable of initiative, bare of taste and destitute of -common sense, is worthy to be enthroned as the supreme teacher of the -world! - -Woman, whether new or old, leaves immense fields of culture untilled, -immense areas of influence wholly neglected. She does almost nothing -with the resources she possesses, because her whole energy is -concentrated on desiring and demanding those she had not. She can write -and print anything she chooses; and she scarcely ever takes the pains to -acquire correct grammar or elegance of style before wasting ink and -paper. She can paint and model any subjects she chooses, but she -imprisons herself in men’s _atéliers_ to endeavour to steal their -technique and their methods, and thus loses any originality she might -possess in art. Her influence on children might be so great that through -them she would practically rule the future of the world; but she -delegates her influence to the vile school boards if she be poor, and if -she be rich to governesses and tutors; nor does she in ninety-nine cases -out of a hundred ever attempt to educate or control herself into fitness -for the personal exercise of such influence. Her precept and example in -the treatment of the animal creation might be of infinite use in -mitigating the hideous tyranny of humanity over them, but she does -little or nothing to this effect; she wears dead birds and the skins of -dead creatures; she hunts the hare and shoots the pheasant, she drives -and rides with more brutal recklessness than men; she watches with -delight the struggles of the dying salmon, of the gralloched deer; she -keeps her horses standing in snow and fog for hours, with the muscles of -their heads and necks tied up in the torture of the bearing rein; when -asked to do anything for a stray dog, a lame horse, a poor man’s donkey, -she is very sorry, but she has so many claims on her already; she never -attempts by orders to her household, to her _fóurnisseurs_, to her -dependents, to obtain some degree of mercy in the treatment of sentient -creatures and in the methods of their slaughter, and she continues to -trim her court gowns with the aigrettes of ospreys. - -The immense area for good influence which lies open to her in private -life is almost entirely uncultivated, yet she wants to be admitted into -public life. Public life is already overcrowded, verbose, incompetent, -fussy and foolish enough without the addition of her in her sealskin -coat with the dead humming bird on her hat. Women in public life would -exaggerate the failings of men, and would not have even their few -excellencies. Their legislation would be, as that of men is too often, -the offspring of panic or prejudice; and women would not put on the drag -of common-sense as men frequently do in public assemblies. There would -be little to hope from their humanity, nothing from their liberality; -for when they are frightened they are more ferocious than men, and, when -they gain power, more merciless. - -‘Men,’ says one of the New Women, ‘deprived us of all proper education -and then jeered at us because we had no knowledge.’ How far is this -based on facts? Could not Lady Jane Grey learn Greek and Latin as she -chose? Could not Hypatia lecture? Was George Sand or Mrs Somerville -withheld from study? Could not in every age every woman choose a Corinna -or a Cordelia as her type? become either Helen or Penelope? If the vast -majority have not the mental or physical gifts to become either, that is -Nature’s fault, not man’s. Aspasia and Adelina Patti were born, not -made. In all eras and all climes a woman of great genius or of great -beauty has done very much what she chose; and if the majority of women -have led obscure lives, so have the majority of men. The chief part of -humanity is insignificant whether it be male or female. In most people -there is very little character indeed, and as little mind. Those who -have much of either never fail to make their mark, be they of which sex -they may. - -The unfortunate idea that there is no good education without a college -curriculum is as injurious as it is erroneous. The college education may -have excellencies for men in its friction, its preparation for the -world, its rough destruction of personal conceit; but for women it can -only be hardening and deforming. If study be delightful to a woman, she -will find her way to it as the hart to water brooks. The author of -_Aurora Leigh_ was not only always at home, but she was also for many -years a confirmed invalid; yet she became a fine classic, and found her -path to fame. A college curriculum would have done nothing to improve -her rich and beautiful mind; it might have done much to debase it. - -It would be impossible to love and venerate literature of the highest -kind more profoundly than did Elizabeth Barrett Browning, yet she was -the most retiring of women and chained by weakness to her couch until -her starry-eyed and fiery suitor descended on her and bore her away to -Italy. It is difficult to see what the distinction of being called a -wrangler can add to the solid advantage and the intellectual pleasure of -studying mathematics; or what the gaining of a college degree in -classics can add to the delightful culture of Greek and Latin literature -as sought _per se_. - -The perpetual contact of men with other men may be good for them, but -the perpetual contact of women with other women is very far from good. -The publicity of a college must be injurious to a young girl of refined -and delicate feeling, whilst the adoration of other women (as in the -late chairing of a wrangler by other girl graduates) is unutterably -pernicious. Nor can I think the present mania for exploration and -incessant adventure beneficial either to the woman or the world. - -When a young and good-looking girl chooses to ride or walk all alone -through a wild and unexplored country, it must be admitted that, if the -narrative of her adventures be not sheer fable, she must have -perpetually run the risk of losing what women have hitherto been taught -to consider dearer than life. It is nothing short of courting abuse of -her maiden person to explore all alone mountainous regions and desert -plains inhabited by wild and fierce races of men. One such young -traveller describes, amongst other risky exploits, how she came one -night in the Carpathians upon a deep and lonely pool, made black as the -mouth of Avernus by its contrast with the moonlit rocks around, and of -how, tempted by this blackness, she got down from her saddle, stripped, -plunged and bathed! The stars alone, she says, looked down on this -exploit, but how could this Susannah be sure there were no Elders? And -common sense timidly whispers, how, oh how, did she manage to dry -herself? - -Personally, I do not in the least believe in these stories any more than -in those of the noted Munchausen; but they are put into print as sober -facts, and as such we are requested and expected to receive them. - -The ‘Scum-Woman’ and the ‘Cow-Woman,’ to quote the elegant phraseology -of the defenders of their sex, are both of them less of a menace to -humankind than the New Woman with her fierce vanity, her undigested -knowledge, her overweening estimate of her own value, and her fatal want -of all sense of the ridiculous. - -When scum comes to the surface it renders a great service to the -substance which it leaves behind it; when the cow yields pure -nourishment to the young and the suffering, her place is blessed in the -realm of nature; but when the New Woman splutters blistering wrath on -mankind she is merely odious and baneful. - -The error of the New Woman (as of many an old one) lies in speaking of -women as the victims of men, and entirely ignoring the frequency with -which men are the victims of women. In nine cases out of ten the first -to corrupt the youth is the woman. In nine cases out of ten also she -becomes corrupt herself because she likes it. - -When Leonide Leblanc, scorning to adopt the career of a school teacher, -for which her humble family had educated her, walked down the hill from -Montmartre to seek her fortunes in the streets of Paris, she did so -because she liked to do so, which was indeed quite natural in her. -Neither Mephistopheles nor Faust led her down from Montmartre, and its -close little kitchen and common little bedchamber; neither -Mephistopheles nor Faust was wanted, Paris and the boulevards were -attraction enough, and her own beauty and ambition were spurs -sufficiently sharp to make her leave the unlovely past and seek the -dazzling future. The accusation of seduction is very popular with women, -and they excuse everything faulty in their lives with it; but the -accusation is rarely based on actual facts. The youth and the maiden -incline towards each other as naturally as the male and female blossoms -of trees are blown together by the fertilising breeze of spring. An -attraction of a less poetic, of a wholly physical kind, brings together -the boy and girl in the garrets, in the cellars, in the mines, on the -farm lands, in the promiscuous intercourse of the streets. It is nature -which draws the one to the other; and the blame lies less on them than -with the hypocritical morality of a modern world which sees what it -calls sin in Nature. - -It is all very well to say that prostitutes were at the beginning of -their career victims of seduction; but it is not probable and it is not -provable. Love of drink and of finery, and a dislike to work, are the -more likely motives and origin of their degradation. It never seems to -occur to the accusers of man that women are just as vicious and as lazy -as he is in nine cases out of ten, and need no invitation from him to -become so. - -A worse prostitution than that of the streets, _i.e._, that of loveless -marriages of convenience, are brought about by women, not by men. In -such unions the man always gives much more than he gains, and the woman -in almost every instance is persuaded or driven into it by women: her -mother, her sisters, her acquaintances. It is rarely that the father -interferes to bring about such a marriage. - -A rich marriage represents to the woman of culture and position what the -streets represent to the woman of the people. But it is none the less a -loveless sale of self, because its sale is ratified at St Paul’s -Knightsbridge or at S. Philippe du Roule. - -In even what is called a well-assorted marriage, the man is frequently -sacrificed to the woman. As I wrote long ago, Andrea del Sarte’s wife -has many sisters; Correggio, dying of the burden of the family, has many -brothers. Men of genius are often pinned to earth by their wives. They -are continually dwarfed and dulled by their female relations, and -rendered absurd by their sons and daughters. In our own day a famous -statesman is made very ridiculous by his wife. Frequently the female -influences brought to bear on him render a man of great and original -powers and disinterested character, a time-server, a conventionalist, a -mere seeker of place. Woman may help man sometimes, but she certainly -more often hinders him. Her self-esteem is immense and her -self-knowledge very small. I view with dread for the future of the world -the power which modern inventions place in the hands of woman. Hitherto -her physical weakness has restrained her in a great measure from violent -action; but a woman can make a bomb and throw it, can fling vitriol, and -fire a repeating revolver as well as any man can. These are precisely -the deadly, secret, easily handled modes of warfare and revenge, which -will commend themselves to her ferocious feebleness. - -Jules Rochard has written: - - ‘J’ai professé de l’anatomie pendant des longues années, j’ai passé - une bonne partie de mavie dans les amphithéâtres, mais je n’en ai pas - moins éprouvé un sentiment pénible en trouvant dans toutes les maisons - d’education des squelettes d’animaux et des mannequins anatomiques - entre les mains des fillettes.’ - -I suppose this passage will be considered as an effort ‘to withhold -knowledge from women,’ but it is one which is full of true wisdom and -honourable feeling. When you have taken her into the physiological and -chemical laboratories, when you have extinguished pity in her, and given -weapons to her dormant cruelty, which she can use in secret, you will be -hoist with your own petard—your pupil will be your tyrant, and then she -will meet with the ultimate fate of all tyrants. - -In the pages of an eminent review a physician has recently lamented the -continually increasing unwillingness of women of the world in the United -States to bear children, and the consequent increase of ill-health; -whilst to avoid child-bearing is being continually preached to the -working classes by those who call themselves their friends. - -The elegant epithet of Cow-Woman implies the contempt with which -maternity is viewed by the New Woman, who thinks it something fine to -vote at vestries, and shout at meetings, and lay bare the spine of -living animals, and haul the gasping salmon from the river pool, and -hustle male students off the benches of amphitheatres. - -Modesty is no doubt a thing of education or prejudice, a conventionality -artificially stimulated; but it is an exquisite grace, and womanhood -without it loses its most subtle charm. Nothing tends so to destroy -modesty as the publicity and promiscuity of schools, of hotels, of -railway trains and sea voyages. True modesty shrinks from the curious -gaze of other women as from the coarser gaze of man. When a girl has a -common bedchamber and a common bathroom with other girls, she loses the -delicate bloom of her modesty. Exposure to a crowd of women is just as -nasty as exposure to a crowd of men. - -Men, moreover, are in all, except the very lowest classes, more careful -of their talk before young girls than women are, or at least were so -until the young women of fashion insisted on their discarding such -scruples. It is very rarely that a man does not respect real innocence; -but women frequently do not. The jest, the allusion, the story which -sullies her mind and awakes her inquisitiveness, will much oftener be -spoken by women than men. It is not from her brothers, nor her brother’s -friends, but from her female companions that she will understand what -the grosser laugh of those around her suggests. The biological and -pathological curricula complete the loveless disflowering of her maiden -soul. - -Everything which tends to obliterate the contrast of the sexes, like the -mixture of boys and girls in American common schools, tends also to -destroy the charm of intercourse, the savour and sweetness of life. -Seclusion lends an infinite seduction to the girl, whilst the rude and -bustling publicity of modern life robs woman of her grace. Packed like -herrings in a railway carriage, sleeping in odious vicinity to strangers -on a shelf, going days and nights without a bath, exchanging decency and -privacy for publicity and observation, the women who travel, save those -rich enough to still purchase seclusion, are forced to cast aside all -refinement and delicacy. - -It is said that travel enlarges the mind. There are many minds which can -no more be enlarged, by any means whatever, than a nut or a stone. What -have their journeys round the world and their incessant gyrations done -for the innumerable princes of Europe? The fool remains a fool, though -you carry him or her about over the whole surface of the globe, and it -is certain that the promiscuous contact and incessant publicity of -travel, which may not hurt the man, do injure the woman. - -Neither men nor women of genius are, I repeat, any criterion for the -rest of their sex; nay, they belong, as Plato placed them, to a third -sex which is above the laws of the multitude. But even whilst they do so -they are always the foremost to recognise that it is the difference, not -the likeness, of sex which makes the charm of human life. Barry Cornwall -wrote long ago,— - - As the man beholds the woman, - As the woman sees the man; - Curiously they note each other, - As each other only can. - - Never can the man divest her - Of that mystic charm of sex; - Ever must she, gazing on him, - That same mystic charm annex. - -That mystic charm will long endure, despite the efforts to destroy it of -orators, in tight stays and balloon sleeves, who scream from platforms, -and the beings so justly abhorred of Mrs Lynn Lynton who smoke in public -carriages and from the waist upward are indistinguishable from the men -they profess to despise. - -But every word, whether written or spoken, which urges the woman to -antagonism against the man, every word which is written or spoken to try -and make of her a hybrid, self-contained opponent of men, makes a rift -in the lute to which the world looks for its sweetest music. - -The New Woman reminds me of an agriculturist who, discarding a fine farm -of his own, and leaving it to nettles, stones, thistles and wire-worms, -should spend his whole time in demanding neighbouring fields which are -not his. The New Woman will not even look at the extent of ground -indisputably her own, which she leaves unweeded and untilled. - -Not to speak of the entire guidance of childhood, which is certainly -already chiefly in the hands of woman (and of which her use does not do -her much honour), so long as she goes to see one of her own sex dancing -in a lion’s den, the lions being meanwhile terrorised by a male brute; -so long as she wears dead birds as millinery and dead seals as coats, so -long as she goes to races, steeplechases, coursing and pigeon matches; -so long as she ‘walks with the guns’; so long as she goes to see an -American lashing horses to death in idiotic contest with velocipedes, so -long as she curtsies before princes and emperors who reward the winners -of distance-rides; so long as she receives physiologists in her -drawing-rooms, and trusts to them in her maladies; so long as she -invades literature without culture, and art without talent; so long as -she orders her court-dress in a hurry, regardless of the strain thus -placed on the poor seamstresses; so long as she makes no attempt to -interest herself in her servants, in her animals, in the poor slaves of -her tradespeople; so long as she shows herself, as she does at present, -without scruple at every brutal and debasing spectacle which is -considered fashionable; so long as she understands nothing of the beauty -of meditation, of solitude, of Nature; so long as she is utterly -incapable of keeping her sons out of the shambles of modern sport, and -lifting her daughters above the pestilent miasma of modern society; so -long as she is what she is in the worlds subject to her, she has no -possible title or capacity to demand the place or the privilege of man, -for she shows herself incapable of turning to profit her own place and -her own privilege. - - - - - DEATH AND PITY - - -_Le livre de la Pitié et de la Mort_ is the latest and, in my -estimation, in some respects, the most touching and the most precious of -the works of Loti, and I wish that this little volume, so small in bulk, -so pregnant with thought and value, could be translated into every -language spoken upon earth, and sped like an electric wave over the -dull, deaf, cruel multitudes of men. It is not that Loti himself needs a -larger public than he possesses. All who have any affinity with him know -every line he writes. - -Despite the singular absence of all scholarship in his works—for, -indeed, he might be living before the birth of Cadmus for any allusion -which he ever makes to the art of letters—a perfect instinct of style, -like the child Mozart’s instinct for harmony, has led him to the most -exquisite grace and precision of expression, the most accurate, as well -as the most ideal realisations in words alike of scenery and of -sentiment. - -His earlier works were not unjustly reproached with being _trop -décousu_, too impressionist; but in his later books this imperfection is -no longer traceable, they are delicately and beautifully harmonious. A -sympathetic critic has said, perhaps rightly, that the long -night-watches on the sea, the long isolation of ocean voyages, and the -removal from the common-place conventional pressure of society in cities -and provinces have kept his mind singularly free, original and poetic. -But no other sailor has ever produced anything beautiful, either in -prose or in verse; and the influence of the Armorican coast and the -Breton temperament have probably had more to do with making him what he -is than voyages which leave sterile those who with sterile minds and -souls go down to the deep in ships, and come back with their minds and -their hands empty. He would have been just what he is had he never been -rocked on any other waves than the long grey breakers of the iron coast -of Morbihan, and, to those whom from the first have known and loved his -poetic and pregnant thoughts, even the palm leaves of the first -intellectual Academy of the world can add nothing to his merit, nay, -they seem scarcely to accord with his soul, free as the seagull’s -motion, and his sympathy wide as that ocean which has cradled and nursed -him. - -But it is not of himself that I wish to speak here. It is of this last -little book of his which, so small in compass, is yet vast as the -universe in what it touches and suggests. All the cultured world has, -doubtless, read it; but how little and narrow is that world compared to -the immeasurable multitudes to which the volume will for ever remain -unknown, and also to that, alas! equally great world to which it would -be, even when read, a dead letter: for to those who have no ear for -harmony the music of Beethoven is but as the crackling of thorns under a -pot. He knows this, and in his preface counsels such as these to leave -it alone, for it can only weary them. - -Indeed, the book is in absolute and uncompromising opposition to the -modern tone of his own times, and to the bare, dry, hard temperament of -his generation. It is in direct antagonism with what is called the -scientific spirit and its narrow classifications. It is full of altruism -of the widest, purest and highest kind, stretching out its comprehension -and affection to those innumerable races which the human race has -disinherited, driven into bondage, and sacrificed to its own appetites -and desires. To its author the ox in the shambles, the cat in the gutter -is as truly a fellow creature as the mariner on his deck, or the mother -by his hearth; the nest of the bird is as sacred as the rush hut of the -peasant, and the cry of the wounded animal reaches his heart as quickly -as the wail of the fisherman’s widow. No one can reproach him, as they -reproach me (a reproach I am quite willing to accept), with thinking -more of animals than of men and women. His charities to his own kind are -unceasing and boundless; he is ever foremost in the relief of sorrow and -want. It cannot be said either that he is what is scornfully called a -‘mere sentimentalist.’ He is well known as a daring and brilliant -officer in his service, and he has shown that he possesses moral as well -as physical courage, and that he is careless of censure and indifferent -to his own interests and prospects when he is moved to indignation -against the tyrannies of the strong over the weak. Here is no woman who -has dreamed by her fireside or in her rose garden until her sentiment -has overshadowed her reason, but a _brave des braves_, a man whose life -is spent by choice in the most perilous contest with the forces of -nature, a man who has been often under fire, who has seen war in all its -sickly horror, who has felt the lightnings of death playing round him in -a thousand shapes. His noble and rashly-expressed indignation at the -barbarities shown in the taking of Tonquin led to his temporary -banishment from the French navy. He does prove, and has ever proved, in -his conduct as in his writings, that to him nothing human can be alien. -But he is not hemmed in behind the narrow pale of humanitarianism: he -has the vision to see, and the courage to show, that the uncounted, -sentient, suffering children of creation for whom humanity has no mercy, -but merely servitude and slaughter, are as dear to him as his own kind. - -In a century which in its decrepitude has fallen prone and helpless -under the fiat of the physiologist and bacteriologist, this attitude -needs no common courage. Browning had this courage, Renan had it not. In -an age when the idolatry of man is carried to a height which would be -ludicrous in its inflated conceit were it not in its results so tragic, -it requires no common force and boldness to speak as Loti speaks of the -many other races of the earth as equally deserving with their tyrants of -tenderness and comprehension; to admit, as he admits, that in the -suppliant eyes of his little four-footed companions he can see, as in a -woman’s or a child’s, the soul within speaking and calling to his own. - - ‘She’ (she is a little Chinese cat which had taken refuge on board his - frigate) ‘came out of the shadow, stretching herself slowly, as if to - give herself time for reflection. She came towards me with several - pauses, sometimes with a Mongolian grace; she lifted one paw in the - air before deciding to put it down and take a further step; and all - the while she gazed at me fixedly, questioningly. I wondered what she - could want with me. I had had her well fed by my servant. When she was - quite near, very near, she sat down, brought her tail round her legs, - and made a very soft little noise. And she continued to look at me, to - look at me _in the eyes_, which indicated that intelligent ideas were - thronging through her small head. It was evident that she understood, - as all animals do, that I was not a thing, but a thinking being, - capable of pity, and accessible to the mute entreaty of a look. - Besides, it was plain that my eyes were really eyes to her, that is, - they were mirrors in which her little soul sought anxiously to seize - some reflection from my own. - - ‘And whilst she thus gazed at me, I let my hand droop on to her quaint - little head, and stroked her fur as my first caress. What she felt at - my touch was certainly something more than a mere impression of - physical pleasure; she had some sentiment, some comprehension of - protection and sympathy in her forsaken misery. This was why she had - ventured out of her hiding-place in the dark; this was what she had - resolved to ask me for with diffidence and hesitation. She did not - want either to eat or drink, she only wanted a little companionship in - this lonely world, a little friendship. - - ‘How had she learned that such things were, this stray, hunted - creature, never touched by a kind hand, never loved by anyone, unless, - perhaps, on board some junk, by some poor little Chinese child who had - neither caresses nor playthings, sprung up by chance like a sickly - plant, one too many in the grovelling yellow crowd, as unhappy and as - hungry as herself, and of whom the incomplete soul will at its - disappearance from earth leave no more trace than hers? Then one frail - paw was timidly laid on my lap, with such infinite delicacy, such - exceeding discretion! and, after having lingeringly consulted and - implored me through the eyes, she sprang upon my lap, thinking the - moment come when she might establish intimate relations with me. She - installed herself there in a ball, with a tact, a reserve, a lightness - incredible, and always gazing up in my face ... and her eyes becoming - still more expressive, still more winning, said plainly to mine,— - - ‘“In this sad autumn day, since we are both alone in this floating - prison, rocked and lost in the midst of I know not what endless - perils, why should we not give to one another a little of that sweet - exchange of feeling which soothes so many sorrows, which has a - semblance of some immaterial eternal thing not subjected to death, - which calls itself affection, and finds its expression in a touch, a - look?″’ - -In the dying hours of another cat, the charming Moumoutte Blanche, whose -frolics we follow, and whose snowy beauty we know so well, the same -thought comes to him. - - ‘She tried to rise to greet us, her expression grateful and touched, - her eyes showing, as much as human eyes could, the internal presence - and the pain of that which we call the soul. - - ‘One morning I found her stiff and cold, with glassy orbs, a dead - beast, a thing men cast out on to the dust heap. Then I bade Sylvester - dig a little grave in a corner of the courtyard, at the foot of a - shrub.... Where was gone that which I had seen shine in her dying - eyes, the little, flickering, anxious flame from within: where was it - gone?’ - -And he carries her little lifeless body himself down into the open air. - - ‘Never had there been a more radiant day of June, never a softer - silence and warmth crossed by the gay buzzing of summer flies; the - courtyard was all blossom, the rose boughs covered with roses; a sweet - country calm rested on all the gardens around; the swallows and - martins slumbered; only the old tortoise, Suleima, more widely awake - the warmer it became, travelled merrily without aim or goal over the - old sun-bathed stones. There was everywhere that melancholy of skies - too fair, of weather too fine, in the exhaustion of a hot noon-day. - All the plants, all the things, seemed to cruelly shout there the - triumph over their own perpetual new birth, without pity for the - fragile human creatures who heard that song of summer, weighed - themselves with the consciousness of their own impending, unavoidable - end. - - ‘This garden was and is to me the oldest and most familiar of all the - places of the earth, in which all the smallest details have been known - to me from the earliest hours of the vague and surprised impressions - of infancy. So much so that I am attached to it with all my soul; that - I love with a singular force and regard almost as my fetish the - venerable plants which grow there, its trellised branches, its - climbing jessamines, and a certain rose-coloured diclytra which every - month of March displays on the same spot its early-burgeoning leaves, - sends out its flowers in April, grows yellow in the suns of June, and - at last, burnt up by August, seems to give up the ghost and perish.... - And with an infinite melancholy, in this place so gay with the fresh - sunlight of a young year, I watched the two beloved figures with white - hair and mourning gowns, my mother and Aunt Claire, going and coming, - leaning down over a flower border as they had done so many years to - see what blossoms were already opening, or raising their heads to look - at the buds of the creepers and the roses. And when the two black - robes went onward and became farther away in the far perspective of a - long green avenue, I saw how much slower was their step, how bent were - their forms. Alas for that time too close at hand when in the green - avenue which would be ever the same, I should behold their shadows no - more! Is it possible that a time will ever come when they shall have - left this life? I feel as if they will not entirely depart so long as - I myself shall be here, to invoke their benevolent presence, and that - in the summer evenings I shall still see their blessed shades pass - under the old jessamines and vines, and that something of their spirit - will remain to me in the plants which they cherished, in the drooping - boughs of the honeysuckle and in the rosy petals of the old diclytra!’ - -He feels, and feels intensely, the similarity of sentiment between -himself and all other forms of sentient life. He is not ashamed to -perceive and acknowledge that the emotions of the animal are absolutely -the same in substance as our own, and differ from ours only in degree. -Could this knowledge become universal it would go far to make cruelty -impossible in man, but as yet it has only been realised and admitted by -the higher minds of a very few, such as his own, as Tennyson’s, as -Wordsworth’s, as Browning’s, as Lecomte de Lisle’s, as Sully -Prudhomme’s; it requires humility and sympathy in the human breast of no -common kind; it is the absolute antithesis of the vanity and egotism of -what is called the scientific mind, although more truly scientific, that -is, more logical, than the bombast and self-worship of the biologist and -physiologist. - -Loti sees and feels that the little African cat from Senegal, which he -brought to his own Breton home, is moved by the same feelings as -himself, and in a more pathetic because a more helpless way, and he has -remorse for a momentary unkindness to her as though she were living -still. - - ‘It was one day when, with the obstinacy of her race, she had jumped - where she had been twenty times forbidden to go, and had broken a vase - to which I was much attached. I gave her a slap at first; then, my - anger not satiated, I pursued her and kicked her with my foot. The - slap had only surprised her, but the kick told her that it was war - between us; and then she fled as fast as four legs would take her, her - tail like a feather in the wind. When safe under a piece of furniture - she turned round and cast at me a look of reproach and distress, - believing herself lost, betrayed, and assassinated by one beloved, - into whose hands she had entrusted her fate; and as my look at her - remained hostile and unkind, she gave vent to the great cry of a - creature at bay. Then all my wrath ceased in one instant: I called - her, I caressed her, I soothed her, taking her on my knees all - breathless and terrified. Oh, that last cry of despair from an animal, - whether from the poor ox tied to the slaughter-place, or of the - miserable rat held in the teeth of a bull-dog—that last cry which - hopes nothing, which appeals to no one, which is like a supreme - protestation thrown in the face of Nature, an appeal to some unknown - pity floating in the air. Now all which remains of my little cat, whom - I remember so living and so droll, are a few bones in a hole at the - foot of a tree. And her flesh, her little person, her affection for - me, her infinite terror that day she was scolded, her great joy, her - anguish and reproach—all, in a word, which moved and lived, and had - their being around these bones—all have become but a little dust!’ - -‘What a spiritual mystery, a mystery of the soul, that constant -affection of an animal, and its long gratitude!’ he says in another -place; and when, meaning to act mercifully, he gives chloroform to a -poor, sick, stray cat, he is haunted by the fear that he has done wrong -to end for it that poor little atom of joyless, friendless life, which -was all that it could call its own. - -This is its story,— - - ‘An old, mange-eaten cat, driven away from its home, no doubt by its - owner, for its age and infirmities, had established itself in the - street on the doorstep of our house, where a little warmth from a - November sun came to comfort it. It is a habit of certain people who - call their selfishness sensibility to send out to be purposely lost, - the creatures which they will not take care of any longer, and do not - desire to see suffer. All the day he had sat there, piteously huddled - in a corner of a window, looking so unhappy and so humble! An object - of disgust to all the passers-by, threatened by children, by dogs, by - continual dangers, every hour more ill and feeble, eating Heaven knows - what rubbish, got with difficulty out of the gutter, he dragged out - his existence, prolonging it as best he might, trying to retard the - moment of his death. His poor head was covered with scabs and sores, - and had scarcely any fur left on it, but his eyes remained pretty, and - seemed full of thought. He had certainly felt, in all the frightful - bitterness of his lot, that last degradation of all, the inability to - make his toilette, to polish his coat, to wash and comb himself as all - cats love to do so carefully. It hurt me so to see this poor lost - animal that, after having sent him food into the street, I approached - him and spoke to him gently. (Animals soon understand kind words, and - are consoled by them.) Having been so often hunted and driven away, he - was at first frightened at seeing me near him; his first look was - timid, suspicious, at once a reproach and a prayer! Then soon - comprehending that I was there from sympathy, and astonished at so - much happiness, he addressed me in his own way: ‘Trr! Trr! Trr!’ - getting up out of politeness, trying, despite his mangy state, to arch - his back in the hope that I should stroke him. But the pity I felt for - him, though great, could not go as far as that. The joy of being - caressed he was never to know again. But in compensation it occurred - to me that it would be kind to end his life of pain by giving him a - gentle, dreamful death. An hour later, Sylvester, my servant, who had - bought some chloroform, drew him gently into our stable, and induced - him to lie down on some warm hay in an osier basket which was destined - to be his mortuary chamber. Our preparations did not disturb him: we - had rolled a card into a cone-shaped form, as we had seen the - ambulance surgeon do; he had looked at us with a contented look, - thinking he had at last found a lodging and people who had pity on - him, new owners who would shelter him. - - ‘Despite the horror of his disease, I stooped over him and stroked - him, and, always caressing him, I induced him to lie still, and to - bury his little nose in the cone of cardboard; he, a little surprised - at first, and sniffing the strange, potent odour with alarm, ended - however in doing what I wished with such docility that I hesitated to - continue my work. The annihilation of a thinking creature is, equally - with annihilation of man, a cruel and responsible thing, and contains - the same revolting mystery. And death, besides, carries in itself so - much majesty that it is capable of giving grandeur in an instant to - the most tiny and finite creatures, as soon as its shadow descends on - them. Once he raised his poor head to look at me fixedly; our eyes - met, his with an expressive interrogation, an intense anxiety, asked - me, “What is it that you do? You whom I know so little, but to whom I - trusted—what is it that you do to me?” And I still hesitated; but his - throat inclined downwards, and his face rested on my hand, which I did - not withdraw; stupefaction had begun to steal over him, and I hoped - that he would not look at me again. - - ‘And yet, yes, once again! Cats, as the village people here say, have - their lives united to their bodies. In one last struggle for life his - eyes met mine; across his mortal semi-sleep he seemed now to perceive - and understand: “Ah! it was to kill me, then? Well, I let you do it! - It is too late—I sleep!” - - ‘In truth, I feared I had done ill. In this world, where we know - nothing surely of anything, it is not even allowed us to let pity take - this shape. His last look, infinitely sad, even whilst glazing in - death, continued to pursue me with reproach. “Why,” it said, “why - interfere with my fate? Without you I should have dragged my life on a - little longer, had a few more little thoughts. I had still strength to - jump up on a window-sill, where the dogs could not reach me; where I - was not too cold in the morning, especially if the sun shone there. I - still passed some bearable hours watching the movement in the street, - seeing other cats come and go, having consciousness of what was doing - round me, whilst now there is nothing for me but to rot away for ever - into something which will have no memory. _Now I am no more!_” Truly, - I should have recollected that the feeblest and poorest things prefer - to linger on under the most miserable conditions, prefer no matter - what suffering to the terror of being nothing, of _being no more_.’ - -And he cannot forgive himself an act which was meant out of kindness, -but in which the regard of the dying animal makes him see almost a -crime. This tenderness for every breathing thing, this sentiment of the -infinite, intense pity and mystery which accompany all forms of death is -ever present with him, and nothing in its hour of dissolution is too -small or too fragile, or too mean or too miserable, in his sight not to -arouse this in him. - -Read only the story of the _Sorrow of an Old Galley Slave_. - -This old man, who has been in prison many times, is at last being sent -out to New Caledonia. ‘Old as I am, could they not have let me die in -France?’ he says to our friend Yves (Mon Frére Yves), who is gone with -his gunboat to take a band of these prisoners from the shore to the ship -in which they are to make their voyage. Encouraged by the sympathy of -Yves in his impending exile, the old felon shows him his one treasure; -it is a little cage with a sparrow in it. - - ‘It is a tame bird, that knows his voice, and has learnt to sit on his - shoulder. It was a year with him in his cell, and with great - difficulty he has obtained permission to carry it with him to - Caledonia, and, the permission once obtained, with what trouble he has - made a little cage for it to travel in, to get the bits of wood and - wire necessary, and a little green paint to brighten it and make it - look pretty! - - ‘“Poor sparrow!” says Yves to me afterwards when he tells me this - tale. “It had only a few crumbs of prison bread such as they give to - convicts, but he seems quite happy all the same. He jumps about gaily - like any other bird.” - - ‘Later still, as the train reaches the transport ship, he, who has - forgotten for the moment the old man and the sparrow, passes by the - former, who holds out to him the little cage. “Take it,” says the old - prisoner, in a changed voice. “I give it to you; perhaps you may like - to use it.” - - ‘“No, no,” says Yves, astonished. “You know you are going to take it - with you. The bird will be your little comrade there.” - - ‘“Ah,” answers the old man, “he is no longer in it. Did you not know? - He is no longer here.” - - ‘And two tears of unspeakable grief rolled down his withered cheeks. - - ‘During a rough moment of the crossing the door of the cage had blown - open, the sparrow had fluttered, frightened, and in a second of time - had fallen into the sea, his wings, which had been clipped, not being - able to sustain him. - - ‘Oh, that moment of horrible pain! To see the little thing struggle - and sink, borne away on the tearing tide, and to be unable to do - anything to save him! At first, in a natural movement of appeal, he - was on the point of crying for help, of begging them to stop the boat, - of entreating for pity, for aid; but his impulse is checked by the - consciousness of his own personal degradation. Who would have pity on - a miserable old man like him? Who would care for his little drowning - bird? Who would hearken to his prayer? - - ‘So he keeps silence, and is motionless in his place while the little - grey body floats away on the frothing waves, quivering and struggling - always against its fate. And he feels now all alone—frightfully alone - for evermore, and his tears dull his sight, the slow salt tears of - lonely despair, of a hopeless old age. - - ‘And a young prisoner, chained to his side, laughs aloud to see an old - man weep.’ - -Was anything more beautiful than this ever written in any tongue? - -Loti stretches to a nobler and a truer scope the _nihil humani a me -alienum puto_. To him nothing which has in it the capacity of attachment -and of suffering is alien; and it is this sentiment, this sympathy which -breathe through all his written pages like the fragrance of some pressed -and perfumed blossom. It is these which make his influence so admirable, -so precious, in an age which is choked to the throat in suffocating -egotisms and vanities, and bound hand and foot in the ligaments of a -preposterous and purblind formalism of exclusive self-adoration. Can any -reader arise from reading the page which follows without henceforth -giving at least a thought of pity to the brave beasts of the pasture who -perish that the human crowds may feed? - - ‘In the midst of the Indian Ocean one sad evening when the wind began - to rise. - - ‘Two poor bullocks remained of a dozen which we had taken on board at - Singapore, to be eaten on the voyage. These last two has been saved - for the greatest need, because the voyage was protracted and the ship - blown backward by the wicked monsoon. - - ‘They were two poor creatures, weak, thin, piteous to see, their skin - already broken about their starting bones by the rude shaking of the - waves. They had journeyed thus many days, turning their backs to their - native pastures, whither no one would ever lead them again; tied up - shortly by the horns, side by side, lowering their heads meekly every - time that a wave broke over them and drenched their bodies in its - chilly wash; their eyes dull and sad, they munched together at bad - hay, soaked and salted; condemned beasts, already struck off the roll - of the living, but fated to suffer long before they would be killed—to - suffer from cold, from blows, from sickness, from wet, from want of - movement, from fear. - - ‘The evening of which I speak was especially melancholy. At sea there - are many such evenings, when ugly, livid clouds drag along on the - horizon as the light fades, when the wind arises and the night - threatens to be bad. Then when one feels oneself isolated in the midst - of these infinite waters, one is seized with a vague terror that - twilight on shore would never bring with it even in the dreariest - places. And these two poor bullocks, creatures of the meadow and its - fresh herbage, more out of their element than men on this heaving and - rolling desert, and not having like us any hope to sustain them, were - forced, despite their limited intelligence, to endure in their manner - all this suffering, and must have seen confusedly the image of their - approaching death. They chewed the cud with the slowness of sickness, - their big, joyless eyes fixed on the sinister distances of the sea. - One by one their companions had been struck down on these boards by - their side; during two weeks they had lived alone, drawn together by - their loneliness, leaning one against another in the rolling of the - ship, rubbing their horns against each other in friendship. - - ‘The person charged with provisioning the ship came to me on the - bridge, and said to me in the usual formula: “Captain, they are about - to kill a bullock.” - - ‘I received him ill, though it was not his fault that he came on such - an errand. The slaughter of animals took place just underneath the - bridge, and in vain one turned away one’s eyes or tried to think of - other things, or gazed over the waste of waters. One could not avoid - hearing the blow of the mallet struck between the horns in the centre - of the poor forehead held down so low to the floor by an iron buckle; - then the crash of the falling animal, who drops on the bridge with a - clashing of bone upon wood. And immediately after it is bled, skinned, - cut in pieces; an atrocious, nauseous odour comes from its opened - belly, and all around the planks of the vessel, so clean at other - times, are soiled and inundated with blood and filth. - - ‘Well, the moment had come to slay one of the bullocks. A circle of - sailors was formed round the iron ring to which it was to be fastened - for execution. Of the pair they choose the weaker, one which was - almost dying and which allowed itself to be led away without - resistance. - - ‘Then the other one turned its head to follow its companion with its - melancholy eyes, and seeing that its friend was led to the fatal - corner where all the others had fallen, _it understood_; a gleam of - comprehension came into the poor bowed head, and it lowed loudly in - its sore distress. Oh, that moan of this poor, solitary creature! It - was one of the most grievous sounds that I have ever heard, and at the - same time one of the most mysterious. There were in it such deep - reproach to us, to men, and yet a sort of heart-broken resignation, I - know not what, of restrained and stifled grief, as if he, mourning, - knew that his lament was useless and that his appeal would be heard by - none. “Ah, yes,” it said, “the inevitable hour has come for him who - was my last remaining brother, who came with me from our home far - away, there where we used to run together through the grass. And my - turn will come soon, and not a living thing in the world will have any - pity either for him or me.” - - ‘But I who heard had pity. - - ‘I was even beside myself with pity, and a mad impulse came over me to - go and take his big, sickly, mangy head to rest it on my heart, since - that is our instinctive caress by which to offer the illusion of - protection to those who suffer or who perish. But truly indeed he - could look for no succour from anyone, for even I, whose soul had - thrilled with pain at the intense anguish of his cry, even I remained - motionless and impassive in my place, only turning away my eyes. For - the despair of a mere animal should one change the direction of a - vessel and prevent three hundred men from eating their share of fresh - meat? One would be considered a lunatic if one only thought of such a - thing for a moment. - - ‘However, a little cabin boy, who, perhaps, was also himself alone in - the world, and had found none to pity him, had heard the cry—had heard - it and been moved by it like myself to the depths of his soul. He went - up to the bullock and very softly stroked its muzzle. He might have - said to it, had he thought to do so,— - - ‘“They will all die too, those who are waiting to eat your flesh - to-morrow. Yes, all of them, even the youngest and strongest, and - maybe their last hour will be more terrible than yours, and with - longer pain. Perhaps it would be better for them if they too had a - blow of the pole-axe on their foreheads.” - - ‘The animal returned affectionately the boy’s caress, gazing at him - with grateful, kind eyes, and licking his hand.’ - -The cynic will demur that this compassion for cattle will not prevent -the human eater from consuming his _bœuf à la mode_, or his slice from -the sirloin, with appetite. But even if cattle must be slaughtered, how -much might their torture be alleviated were men not wholly indifferent -to it. The frightful infamies of the cattle trade on sea would be ended -were none bought after a voyage. The hideous deaths by drought and by -cold, all over the plains of South America, would be no more. No longer -would a single living bullock endure thirty agonising operations on his -quivering body, when fastened down to the demonstrating or experimenting -table of veterinary students. It is not so much death itself, when -swift, sure, almost painless, which is terrible, as it is the agony, -protracted, infinite, frightful, incalculable, which is inflicted for -the passions, the pleasure, or the profit of men. - -Were such sympathy as breathes through the _Book of Pity and of Death_ -largely felt, all the needless cruelty inflicted by the human race, that -mere carelessness and indifference of which the world is so full, would -gradually be reduced until it might in time cease entirely. The cruelty -of the rich to horses from mere want of thought alone is appalling. Few -know or care how their stables are managed, what is the maximum of work -which should be demanded of a horse, and what the torture inflicted by -certain methods of breaking-in and harnessing and driving. Frequently -are to be seen the advertisements by carriage-makers of ‘one-horse -broughams, warranted for hill work and to carry four persons, with, if -desired, a basket on roof for railway luggage.’ That these abominable -loads are given to one horse continually there can be no doubt, as these -announcements are frequent in all the newspapers, and never seem to -elicit any wonder or censure. A shabby and vicious economy constantly -gives, in this extravagant and spendthrift generation, a load to one -poor horse which would certainly, in a generation earlier, and -undoubtedly in a century ago, only have been given to a pair of horses -or even to two pairs with postillions. Speed, also, being insisted on, -no matter what load is dragged, the race of carriage-horses grows weaker -and weaker in build and stamina. What woman, either, in any capital of -the world, thinks for a moment of keeping her horses out in rain and -snow, motionless for hours, whilst she is chattering in some warm and -fragrant drawing-room, or dancing and flirting in some cotillon? No -attention is ever given to the preferences, tastes and affections of -animals, which yet are undoubtedly of great strength and tenacity in -them, not only towards their owners, but often, also, towards their own -kind. I am, at the present moment, driving a mare who was always driven -with her sister, who died eighteen months ago. She does not forget her -sister, and the stable companion given her instead she hates, and -endeavours, with all her might, to kick and bite across the pole and in -the stalls. I owned also a pony so attached to his comrade that they -could live in the same loose-box together, and when the companion died, -this pony was miserable, whinnied and neighed perpetually, lost health, -and in a few months died also. In life he was the humble and devoted -slave of his brother, would fondle him, clean him, follow him about in -all directions, and show to him every testimony of affection possible in -one creature to another. Yet such feelings as these, although very -common in animals, are never remembered or considered for an instant, -and animals of all kinds are sold from owner to owner, and hustled from -place to place, with no more regard than if they were chairs and tables. -What they suffer from strange voices, new homes, and unfamiliar -treatment no one inquires, for no one cares. Convenience and profit are -all which are considered. There is little or no remembrance of the -idiosyncrasy of each creature. The ecstatic, ardent, nervous temperament -of the dog; the timid, imaginative, impulsive mind of the horse; the -shrinking shyness of the sheep, the attachment to place and people of -the wildest or silliest creature when once kindly treated and long -domesticated—all these things are never recollected or considered in -dealing with them. Hard and fast rules are laid down for them, by which -they, in their various ways, are forced to abide. Their natural -instincts and desires are treated as crimes, and their longings and -preferences are unnoticed or thwarted. Who ever thinks of or cares for -the injustice and cruelty concentrated in that single phrase, ‘_The -hounds were whipped off_,’ or its pendant, ‘_The fox was broken up_,’ -etc., etc.? They are sentences so common, and so often used, that the -horrible cruelty involved in them has altogether passed out of notice. -Men and women grow up amidst cruelty, and are so accustomed to it, that -they no more perceive it than they do the living organisms in the air -they breathe or in the water they drink. Were it otherwise they could -not walk down Ludgate Hill or up Montmartre without unbearable pain. - -The grief of the ox driven from his pastures, of the cow divided from -her calf, of the dog sent away from his master, of the lion torn from -his desert or jungle, of the ape brought to die of nostalgia in cold -climes, of the eagle chained down in inaction and gloom, of all the -innumerable creatures taken from their natural life or their early -associations, because the whim, the appetite, the caprice, the pleasure -or the avarice of men is gratified or tempted by their pain, never moves -anyone to pity. They are ‘subject-creatures’ in the human code, and what -they may suffer, or may not suffer, is of no import; of less import even -than the dying out of the Maoris, or the dwindling away of the Red -Indian tribes, or the death of African porters on the caravan routes. - -It is said that there is less cruelty now than in earlier times, because -some public spectacles of cruelty have been put down in many countries. -But since this age is the most exacting in small things, the most -egotistic, the most silly, and the most nervous which the world has -seen, it is probable that its increased interference with animal -liberty, and its increased fear of them (not to mention its many -increased means of animal destruction and torture, whether for sport or -experiment) have diminished their freedom and multiplied their -sacrifice. Freedom of choice and act is the first condition of animal as -of human happiness. How many animals in a million have even relative -freedom in any moment of their lives? No choice is ever permitted to -them; and all their most natural instincts are denied or made subject to -authority. - -If old pictures and old drawings and etchings are any criterion of the -modes of life of their own day, there can be no doubt that animals were -much freer and much more intimately associated with men in earlier times -than they are now. In their representations we see no banqueting scene -without the handsome dogs stretched upon the rushes or before the daïs; -no village fair without its merry mongrels running in and out between -the rustics’ legs: no triumph of emperor or ceremonial of cardinal or -pope without the splendid retriever and the jewel-collared hound: in the -pictures of the Nativity the animals are always represented as friendly -and interested spectators; in scenes from the lives of saints the -introduction of animals wild and tame are constant; therefore, as we -know that all these old painters and etchers depicted invariably what -they saw around them, it is certain that they were accustomed to see in -their daily haunts animals made part and parcel of men’s common life. -Those animals were roughly treated, may be, as men themselves then were, -but they were regarded as comrades and companions, not as alien -creatures to be despised and unremembered except for use and profit. -When the knight offered up his falcon his heart was rent, as in parting -from a brother most beloved. - -It is a fearful thought that were not animals considered to contribute -to the convenience, the profit and the amusement of men, they would not -be allowed to live for a half-century longer. They would be destroyed as -ruthlessly as the buffalo of the United States of America has already -been, and all birds would be exterminated as well without remorse. There -is no honour, no decency shown in the treatment of animals and birds by -men. When Menelek sent, as a gift to Carnot, his two tame young lions, -who had been free in his rude African palace, and were only eighteen -months old, the receiver of the gift could give them nothing better than -a narrow cage in the Jardin des Plantes. - -Even the lovely plumage and the great agricultural utility of the -thistle-seed-eating goldfinch does not save him from being trapped, -shot, poisoned, caged, as the ignorance, greed, or pleasure of his human -foes may choose. Nothing is too large or too small, too noble or too -innocent, to escape the rapacity, the brutality, and the egotism of men; -and in the schools all the world over there is never a syllable said -which could by suggestion or influence awaken the minds of the attendant -pupils to a wider, gentler, and truer sense of the relations of animals -and birds to the human race. Indeed, it would be almost ridiculous to -attempt to do so when no princeling makes a royal visit or an Eastern -tour without slaughtering, by hundreds and by thousands, tame birds and -untamed beasts; when in every market and every shambles the most -atrocious suffering is inflicted openly and often needlessly; when the -imperial and royal persons find their chief diversion and distraction in -rending the tender flesh of hares and pheasants, of elk and chamois with -shot and bullet; and when the new scientific lexicons opened to them -teach children how to make a white rabbit ‘blush’ by the severance of -certain sensitive nerves, and bid them realise that in the pursuit of -‘knowledge,’ or even of fantastic conjecture, it is worthy and wise to -inflict the most hellish tortures on the most helpless and harmless of -sentient creatures. To sacrifice for experiment, or pleasure, or gain, -all the other races of creation, is the doctrine taught by precept and -example from the thrones the lecture-desks, the gunrooms, and the -laboratory-tables of the world. It is not a doctrine which can make -either a generous or a just generation. Youth is callous and selfish of -itself, and by its natural instincts; and all the example and tuition -given from palace, pulpit and professorial chair are such as to harden -its callousness and confirm its selfishness. - -Even the marvellous sagacity, docility and kindness of the elephant do -not protect him from being slain in tens of thousands, either for the -mere value of his tusks, or for the mere pleasure and pride taken by men -in his slaughter. Even so inoffensive a creature as the wild sheep of -the hills of Asia is mercilessly hunted down and shot by European -sportsmen, although his carcass is absolutely of no use or value -whatever when found, and it is usually lost by the shot creature falling -down a precipice or into some inaccessible nullah. Nearer at home the -chamois and ibex have been so treated that they will ere long be extinct -on the European continent. To wild creatures there is no kind of -compassion or of justice ever shown. I have known an officer relate -without shame how, when he was once sleeping in a tent on the plains of -India, a leopard entered between the folds of the canvas, and as he -awoke stood still and looked at him, then quietly turned round and went -out again; he stretched out his arm for his revolver, and shot, as it -passed out into the air, the creature which had spared him. There is no -decency, no common ordinary feeling or conscientiousness, in men in -their dealings with animals. They publish their advertisements without -compunction of ‘geldings’ and ‘bullocks,’ and inflict castration -wholesale whenever they deem it to their profit or convenience to do so, -whether their prey be a bull or a cock, a colt or a puppy. When the -gourmand feels his ‘belly with fat capon lined,’ the atrocious suffering -by which the capon has been swollen to unnatural obesity never troubles -him for a moment, nor when he eats his pâté de Strasbourg has he any -feelings or remembrance for the geese with their webbed feet nailed down -to the boards before the sweltering fires. - -England has lately lamented the loss of a young man of royal birth, and -of gentle and kindly disposition, who died under circumstances which -touched the national sentiment. Yet the Duke of Clarence, of whom it was -said that he would not have willingly wronged a living being, passed his -last days on earth, the days in which he already felt the chills and -languor of impending sickness, in the slaughter of tame birds. There is -something shocking in the thought that, during the last hours in which -an amiable youth enjoyed the gladness of the air and the freedom of the -woods, he should have been solely occupied in taking the life of -innocent and happy creatures, reared merely to offer this miserable -diversion to him and his. This degraded sport, the curse, the shame and -the peril of England, has never had passed on it a commentary more -severe, a sarcasm more scathing than the words, ‘_There will be no -shooting until after the royal funeral_,’ which were announced at, and -of, innumerable country-house parties; the sacrifice of the idolised -amusement being emphasised as the most complete expression of woe and -regret possible to the nation. It would be ridiculous, were it not -sickening, that in a land where men prate from morning till night of -public duty, and make boast of their many virtues, public and private, -no shame is attached to the shameful fact that all its gentlemen of high -degree, all its males who have leisure and large means, find no other -pursuit or pleasure possible in autumn and winter than the innocent -slaughter or maiming of winged creatures, reared merely to furnish them -with such diversion. - -It is inconceivable that reasonable beings, who claim to exercise -preponderance in the influence and direction of public affairs, should -not perceive how injurious and debasing as an example is this foolish -and cruel pursuit which they have allowed to obtain over them all the -force of habit, and all the sanctity of a religion. Common rights are -sacrificed, harmless privileges abolished, old paths blocked, pleasant -time-consecrated rights of way are forbidden through copse and furze and -covert, all wild natural woodland life is destroyed by the traps, -poisons and guns of the keepers and their myrmidons, and incessant -torture of woodland animals, and incessant irritation of rural -populations go on without pause or check, in order that princes, -gentlemen and _rastaquouères_ may pass week after week, month after -month, year after year, in this kind of carnage which is delightful to -them, and at which their women unashamed are encouraged to assist. -‘Walking with the guns’ has now become a favourite and fashionable -feminine amusement. In the middle of the day both sexes indulge in those -rich dishes and stimulating drinks, which are their daily fare, and -carry typhoid fever into their veins; and after luncheon, replete and -content, they all return to the organised slaughter in the leafless -woodlands, or the heather-covered moors, or the ‘happy autumn fields.’ -The gladiatorial shows of Rome might be more brutal, but were at least -more manly than this ‘sport,’ which is the only active religion of the -so-called ‘God-serving classes.’ It is hereditary, like scrofula; the -devouring ambition of the baby-heir of a great house is to be old enough -to go out with the keepers; and instinct against such slaughter, if it -existed in his childish soul, would be killed by ridicule; example, -precept and education are all bent to one end, to render him a slayer of -creatures wild and tame. If he make later on the tour of the world, his -path over its continents will be littered by dead game, large and small, -from the noble elephant to the simple wild sheep, from the peaceful and -graminivorous elk to the hand-fed pheasant. There is no escape for him; -even if he have little natural taste for it, he will affect to have such -taste, knowing that he will otherwise be despised by his comrades, and -be esteemed a _lusus naturæ_ in his generation. He will not dare to be -‘odd’; the gun is the weapon of the gentleman, as in other days was the -rapier or the sword; the gunroom is his _Academe_; he is learned in the -choice of explosive bullets, and can explain precisely to any fair -companion the manner in which they rend and tear the tender flesh of the -forest animals. - -Read this exploit of sport, printed by a Mr Guillemard, apparently -without the slightest sense of shame. He is in the pursuit of ‘bighorn’ -(_ovis nivicola_), animals, perfectly innocent and harmless, living in -the wilds of Kamschatka. - - ‘One, which appeared to carry the best horns, was more or less hidden - by some rocks, but the other stood broadside on upon a little knoll, - throwing up his head from time to time.... Resting my rifle on the - ground, I took the easier shot. There was no excuse for missing, and - as the bullet _made the well-known sound dear to the heart of the - sportsman, I saw that it had broken the shoulder_, and the animal, - staggering a yard or two, fell over seawards and was lost to view.’ - -It is lost irrevocably. The joy of having slaughtered him is not, -however, the less. - -A little farther on the sportsman suddenly comes upon ‘a very much -astonished bighorn; a fine old ram of the fifth or sixth year.’ - - ‘I fired almost before I was conscious of it, but not a moment too - soon, for the beast was in the act of turning as I touched the - trigger. It was his last voluntary movement, and the next instant he - was rolling down the precipice.... _The fun was not yet over_, for, - perched upon a bare pinnacle, stood another of our quarry. The animal - had been driven into a corner by some of our party on the cliff above. - The next instant, after a vain but desperate effort to save himself, - he was whirling through four hundred feet of space.... On going up to - him I found one of the massive horns broken short off, and the whole - of the hind quarters shattered into a mass of bleeding pulp.... Our - decks were like a butcher’s shop on Boxing Day.’ - -And the scene seems so beautiful to him that he photographs it. - -This is the tone which is general and which is considered becoming when -speaking or writing of the brutal slaughter of harmless creatures. No -perception of its disgusting callousness, its foul unseemliness, ever -visits writer or reader, speaker or hearer. - -When men kill in self-defence it is natural; when they kill for food it -is excusable; but to kill for pleasure and for paltry pride is vile. How -long will such pleasure and such pride be the rule of the world? They -give the strongest justification that Anarchists can claim. If the heart -of Tourguenieff could be put into every human breast, the quail would be -a dear little feathered friend to all; but as the world is now made, the -story of Tourguenieff’s quail would be read in vain to deaf ears, or, if -heard, would be drowned in peals of inane laughter. Could that sense of -solidarity of community between animals and ourselves, which is so -strongly realised by Pierre Loti, be communicated to the multitude of -men, cruelty would not entirely cease, because men and women are -frequently horribly cruel to each other, and to dependents, and to -children, and to inferior and subject human races, but cruelty to -animals would then be placed on the same plane as cruelty to human -beings, would be regarded by society with loathing, and punished by the -severity of law, as cruelty in many forms to human creatures is now -punished. Whereas, now not only are all punishments of cruelty, other -than to man, so slight as to mean hardly anything at all, in fact, -totally inefficient and wholly inadequate,[J] but the vast mass of -cruelty to animals, the daily continual brutal offences against them of -their owners and employers, is placed, perforce, entirely out of reach -of any punishment whatsoever. - ------ - -Footnote J: - - A footman of Lord Darnley’s was sentenced to pay £2 by the Rochester - magistrates for having killed a dog by heaping burning coals on it! - This in the end of the year 1894. - ------ - -A man can chain up his dog in filth and misery; the rider may cut his -horse to pieces at his caprice; the woman may starve and beat her cat; -the landowner may have traps set all over his lands for fur and feather; -the slaughterer of cattle may bungle and torture at his pleasure; the -lady may wear the dead bodies of birds on her head and on her gown; the -mother may buy puppies and kittens, squirrels and marmosets, rabbits and -guinea-pigs, to be the trembling plaything of her little children, -tormented by these in ignorance and in maliciousness till death releases -the four-footed slaves; all these and ten thousand other shapes and -kinds of cruelty are most of them not punishable by law. Indeed, no law -could in many instances find them out and reach them, for the cruelty -often goes on behind the closed doors of house and stable, kennel-yard -and cattleshed, nursery of the rich and garret of the poor. No law can -reach it in its aggregate; law is indeed, as it stands, poor and meagre -everywhere, but cruelty could not, by any alteration of it, be really -abolished. To be eradicated, it must become a revolting thing in the -eyes of men; it must offend their conscience and their love of justice. -It would do this in time, could such a sense of unison with animals as -is the inspiring motive of the _Book of Pity and of Death_ become -general in humanity. There is little hope that it ever will, but the -world would be a lovelier dwelling-place if it could be so. - -Rome, it is tritely said, had no monument to Pity. Yet it was the Romans -by whom the man was stoned who slew the dove which sought refuge in his -breast. The multitudes of the present day are, all over the world, below -those Romans in sentiment. Their farmers shoot even the swallows which -build confidingly beneath the eaves of their roofs. Their gentry cause -to be trapped and slain all the innocent birds which shelter and nest in -their woods. The down of jays’ breasts flutters on the fans of their -drawing-room beauties, and _lophophores_ and _colibri_ sparkle in death -upon their hair. If in a mob of Londoners, Parisians, New Yorkers, -Berliners, Melbourners, a dove fluttered down to seek a refuge, a -hundred dirty hands would be stretched out to seize it, and wring its -neck; and if any one with the pity of old Rome tried to save and cherish -it, he would be rudely bonneted, and mocked, and hustled amidst the -brutal guffaws of roughs, lower and more hideous in aspect and in nature -than any animal which lives. There is no true compassion in that crowd -of opposed yet mixing races which, for want of a better word, we call -the modern world. There is too great a greed, too common a selfishness, -for the impersonal and pure feeling to be general in it. Yet, as -children are born cruel, but may often be taught, by continual example -and perception, kindness and self-sacrifice, so perchance might the -multitudes be led to it were there any to teach it as Francis of Assisi -taught it in his generation, were there any to cry aloud against its -infamy with the force and the fervour of a Bruno, of a Bernard, of a -Benedict. - -St Francis would have walked with Loti hand in hand, through the -olive-trees, with the good wolf between them; and what beautiful things -the trio would have said to each other! - -But the Churches have never heeded the teaching of Assisi; they have -never cared for or inculcated tenderness to the other races of creation -in which, whether winged or four-footed, the preacher of Assisi -recognised his brethren. They have been puffed up with the paltry pride -of human self-admiration; and they are now being outbid and outrun in -influence and popularity by the teachers of that still more brutal, more -narrow, and more vainglorious creed which calls itself science, in which -as many crimes are perpetrated as in the name of liberty. - -As all religions reign awhile, then pass and perish, so will the reign -of science; but very possibly not before its example and demands will -have destroyed on the face of the planet all races except man, who in -his turn will become nought on the exhausted surface of a dead earth. -Meantime, whilst those whom we call inferior creatures are still with -us, while the birds people the air which would be so empty without them, -and the beasts live around us with their pathetic eyes, their wise -instincts, their long, patient, unrewarded forbearance, we are nearer to -the secret mystery of life when we feel, with Francis and with Loti, the -common soul which binds ourselves and them, than when we stand aloof -from them in a puffed-up and pompous vanity, or regard them as the mere -chattels and chores of a bondslave’s service. - - - - - SHELLEY - - -Above my head in the starry July night goes with soft, swift, silent -movement through the scented air, above the tall leaves of the aloes, -and under the green boughs of the acacias, a little brown owl. Families -of them live on the roof of this great house, and at sunset they descend -and begin hunting for crickets and moths and water-beetles and mice. -These owls are called, in scientific nomenclature, the _scops carniola_; -to the peasantry they are known as the _chiu_; by Shelley they were -called the aziola. I have never found any Italian who called this owl -aziola, but I suppose that Mary Godwin did, since she said, ‘Do you not -hear the aziola cry?’ And Shelley made answer, very truly, of this cry, -that it was music heard,— - - ‘By wood and stream, meadow and mountain side, - And fields and marshes wide,— - Such as nor voice, nor lute, nor wind, nor bird - The soul ever stirred.’ - -The note is very far-reaching, deep and sweet, clear and melodious, one -single note sounding at intervals of thirty or forty seconds through the -still air of the summer night. It is said to be a love call, but I doubt -it, for it may be heard long after the pairing season; the bird gives it -forth when he is flying as when he is sitting still, and it is -unmistakably a note of contentment. Nor do I think it is sad, as Shelley -terms it; it has a sound as of pleased meditation in it, and it has a -mellow thrill which, once heard, cannot be forgotten ever. For myself, -never do I hear the call of the _chiu_ (which is often heard from May -time until autumn, when these birds migrate to the East) without -remembering Shelley and wishing that he lived to hear. - -He is more truly a son of Italy than any one of her own poets, for he -had the sentiment and passion of her natural beauty, which cannot be -said of the greatest of them. Neither he nor Byron can be well -comprehended by those who are not intimately acquainted with Italian -landscape. The exceeding truthfulness of their observation of, and -feeling for, it cannot certainly be appreciated except by those who have -lived amongst the sights and sounds which took so close a hold upon -their imagination and their heart. - -Byron must have often ridden over the firm, smooth, yellow shores of the -sea beyond Pisa, for he lived some time in the peaceful city dedicated -to St Ranier, and probably both he and Shelley spent many hours many a -time in a wood I know well, which follows the line of the sea for -sixteen miles, and is many miles in depth. On the shore, pines, rooted -in drifted sand half a mile broad, stand between the deciduous trees and -the sea beach, and protect them from the violence of the westerly winds; -when you are half a mile inland, you leave the pines and find ilex, -acacia, beech, holly, juniper, and many aspen and other forest trees. -Here the wood-dove, the goldfinch, the nuthatch, the woodpecker, the jay -and the cuckoo dwell; here the grassy paths lead down dusky green aisles -of foliage, fringed with dog-roses, where one may roam at pleasure all -the day long, and meet nothing living beside the birds, except sometimes -a stoat or a fox; here the flag-lily and the sword-rush grow in the -reedy pools, and the song of the nightingale may be heard in perfection; -its nests are made in numbers under the bracken, amongst the gorse and -in the impenetrable thickets of the marucca and the heather. These woods -are still entirely wild and natural, and they are rarely invaded except -by the oxen or buffaloes drawing waggons to be filled with cut furze and -dead branches by the rough and picturesque families who sit aloft on the -giddy heights of these sylvan loads. But these invaders are few and far -between, and in spring and summer these forest lands are as still and -solitary as they certainly were when the poets wandered through them, -listening to the sea-breeze sighing through the trees. - -No one, I repeat, can fully appreciate the fineness and accuracy of -observation and description of both Byron and Shelley who does not know -Italy well; not with the pretended knowledge of the social hordes who -come to its cities for court, and embassy, and gallery, and tea party, -but such knowledge as can alone be gained by long and familiar intimacy -with its remote and solitary places. - -Few, perhaps, if any, think of Shelley as often as I do; and to me his -whole personality seems the most spiritual and the most sympathetic of -the age. - -The personality of Byron startles, captivates, entrances; he flashes by -us like a meteor; lover, noble, man of pleasure and of the world, -solitary and soldier by turns, and a great poet always, let the -poetasters and sciolists of the moment say what they will in their -efforts to decry and to deny him. Shelley’s has nothing of this dazzling -and gorgeous romance, as he has nothing in his portraits of that haughty -and fiery challenge which speaks in the pose of the head and the glance -of the eyes in every picture of Byron. Shelley’s eyes gaze outward with -wistful, dreamy tenderness; they are the eyes of contemplative genius, -the eyes which behold that which is not seen by the children of men. -That sweetness and spirituality which are in his physiognomy -characterise the fascination which his memory, like his verse, must -exercise over any who can understand his soul. Nothing is more unfitting -to him than those wranglings over his remains which are called studies -of his life and letters. The solemnity and beauty of his death and -burial should surely have secured him repose in his grave. - -In no other country than England would it be possible to find writers -and readers, so utterly incapable of realising what manner of nature and -of mind his was, that they can presume to measure both by their -foot-rule of custom and try to press both into their small pint-pot of -conventional mortality. Would he not have said of his biographers, as he -wrote of critics,— - - ‘Of your antipathy - If I am the Narcissus, you are free - To pine into a sound with hating me?’ - -What can his conduct, within the bonds of marriage or without them, -matter to a world which he blessed and enriched? What can his personal -sorrows or failings be to people who should only rejoice to hearken to -his melodious voice? Who would not give the lives of a hundred thousand -ordinary women to make happy for an hour such a singer as he? - -The greatest duty of a man of genius is to his own genius, and he is not -bound to dwell for a moment in any circumstances or any atmosphere which -injures, restrains, or depresses it. The world has very little -comprehension of genius. In England there is, more than anywhere else, -the most fatal tendency to drag genius down into the heavy shackles of -common-place existence, and to make Pegasus plough the common fields of -earth. English genius has suffered greatly from the pressure of -middle-class English opinion. It made George Eliot a hypocrite; it made -Tennyson a chanter of Jubilee Odes; it put in chains even the bold -spirit of Browning; and it has kept mute within the soul much noble -verse which would have had rapture and passion in its cadences. The -taint of hypocrisy, of Puritanism, of conventionality, has deeply -entered into the English character, and how much and how great has been -the loss it has caused to literature none will ever be able to measure. - -Shelley affranchised himself in its despite, and for so doing he -suffered in his life and suffers in his memory. He was a Republican in a -time when republican doctrines were associated with the horrors of the -guillotine and the excesses of the mob, then fresh in the public mind. -He would now be called an Altruist where he was then called a Jacobin. -His exhortation to the men of England,— - - ‘Men of England, wherefore plough - For the lords who lay ye low? - Wherefore weave with toil and care - The rich robes your tyrants wear?’— - -would, were it published now, be quoted with admiration by all the good -Radicals, with John Morley at their head; indeed, it is astonishing that -they have never reprinted it in their manuals for the people. It is -wonderful also that ‘The Masque of Anarchy’ has escaped quotation by the -leaders of the Irish opposition, and that the lines written during the -Castlereagh administration have not been exhumed to greet the -administration of any Tory Viceroy. Shelley in these forgot, as poets -will forget, his own law, that the poet, like the chameleon, should feed -from air, not earth. But what then was deemed so terrible a political -crime in one of his gentle birth and culture would now be thought most -generous and becoming, as the democratic principles of Vernon Harcourt -and Lord Rosebery are now considered to be by their political party; the -odes and sonnets which then drew down on him execration and persecution -would now procure him the gratitude of Gladstone and the honour of the -_Nineteenth Century_. - - ‘A people starved and stabbed in the untillèd field,’ - -is a line which has been strangely overlooked by orators for Ireland. - -Shelley’s political creed—if an impersonal but intense indignation can -deserve the name of creed—was born of his hatred of tyranny and a pity -for pain which amounted to a passion. But his nature was not one which -could long nurture hate; and he says truly that, with him and in all he -wrote, ‘Love is celebrated everywhere as the sole law which should -govern the moral world.’ - -In politics, had he lived now, he would certainly have fared much -better; in moral liberty also he would, I think, have found more -freedom. Though the old hypocrisy clings still in so much to English -society, in much it has been shaken off, and within the last twenty -years there has been a very marked abandonment of conventional opinion. -There is much that is conventional still; much to the falsehood of which -it is still deemed necessary to adhere. But still there is a greater -liberality, a wider tolerance, an easier indulgence; and it may -certainly be said that Shelley, if he lived now, would neither be -worried to dwell beside Harriet Westbrooke, nor would Mary Godwin be -excluded from any society worthy of the name. Society is arriving at the -consciousness that for an ordinary woman to expect the monopoly of the -existence of a man of genius is a crime of vanity and of egotism so -enormous that it cannot be accepted in its pretensions or imposed upon -him in its tyranny. Therefore it is wholly out of date, and unfitting to -the times, to see critics and authors discussing and embittering the -memory of Shelley on account of his relations with women. - -These relations are in any man indisputably those which most reveal his -character; but they are none the less indisputably those with which the -public have least permission to interfere. We have the ‘Prometheus -Unbound’ and ‘The Revolt of Islam’; we have the sonnet to England and -the ode to the skylark; we have the ‘Good-night’; and the ‘Song’; and -with all these riches and their like given to us by his bounteous and -beautiful youth, shall we dare to rake in the ashes of his funeral-pyre -and search in the faded lines of his letters to find material for -carping censure or for ingenious misconstruction? It adds greater horror -to death; this groping of the sextons of the press amongst the dust of -the tomb, this unhallowed’’ searching of alien hands amongst the papers -which were written only to be read by eyes beloved. The common mortal is -freed from such violation; he has left nothing behind him worth the -stealing, he has been a decorous and safe creature, and his signature -has been affixed to his weekly accounts, his bank drafts, his household -orders, his epistles to his children at school, and not a soul cares to -disturb the dust on their tied-up bundles. But the man or woman of -genius has no sepulchre buried so deep in earth or barred so strongly -that the vampire of curiosity cannot enter to break in and steal; from -Heloise to Shelley the paper on which the burning words which come -straight from the heart are recorded is the prey of the vulgar, and the -soul bared only to one other soul becomes the sport of those who have -not eyes to see, nor ears to hear, nor mind to understand. - -I have said ere now often, and I shall say it as long as I have power to -say anything, that with the private life of the man or woman of genius -the world has nothing to do. - -What is it to the world who was Allegra’s mother, or who was the -prototype of Mignon, or who was the Lady of Solitude of the Elysian -isles of the ‘Epipsychidion’; what matter whether Shakespeare blessed or -cursed Anne Hathaway, or whether personal pains and longings inspired -the doctrines of the ‘Tetrarchordon’? It matters no more than it matters -whether Lesbia’s sparrow was a real bird or a metaphor, no more than it -matters whether the carmen to Cerinthe were written for the poet’s -pleadings _in propria persona_ or for his friend. It matters nothing. We -have ‘Don Juan’ and ‘Wilhelm Meister’; we have ‘Hamlet’ and the -‘Lycidas’; we have the songs of Catullus and the elegies of Tibullus; -what wants the world more than these? Alas! alas! it wants that which -shall pull down the greater stature to the lower; it wants that which -shall console it for its own drear dulness by showing it the red spots -visible on the lustre of the sun. - -The disease of ‘documents,’ as they are called in the jargon of the -time, is only another name for the insatiable appetite to pry into the -private life of those greater than their fellows, in the hope to find -something therein wherewith to belittle them. Genius may say as it will -that nothing human is alien to it, humanity always sullenly perceives -that genius _is_ genius precisely because it is something other than -humanity, something beyond it, above it—never of it; something which -stands aloof from it, however it may express itself as kin to it. That -the soul of man is divine is a doubtful postulate; but, that whatever -there is divine in a human form is to be found in genius, is true for -all time. The mass of men dimly feel this, and they vaguely resent it, -and dislike genius, as the multitude in India and Palestine disliked -Buddha and Christ. When the tiger tears it or the cross bears it the -mass of men are consoled for their own inferiority to it. In the world -Prometheus is always kept chained; and the fire he brings from heaven is -spat upon. - - ‘Oh, weep for Adonais!—The quick Dreams, - The passion-winged Ministers of thought, - Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams - Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught - The love which was its music, wander not, - Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain, - But droop there, whence they spring; and mourn their lot - Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain, - They ne’er will gather strength, nor find a home again. - . . . . . . . . . . - The soul of Adonais, like a star, - Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.’ - -Every line in Shelley’s verse which speaks of Italy is pregnant with the -spirit of the land. Each line is a picture; true and perfect, whether of -day or night, of water or shore, of marsh or garden, of silence or -melody. Take this poem, ‘Julian and Maddalo,’— - - ‘How beautiful is sunset, when the glow - Of heaven descends upon a land like thee, - Thou paradise of exiles, Italy! - - . . . . . . . . . . - - As those who pause on some delightful way, - Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood - Looking upon the evening, and the flood - Which lay between the city and the shore - Paved with the image of the sky: the hoar - And airy Alps, towards the north, appeared, - Thro’ mist, a heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared - Between the east and west; and half the sky - Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, - Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew - Down the steep west into a wondrous hue - Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent - Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent - Among the many-folded hills—they were - These famous Euganean hills, which bear, - As seen from Lido through the harbour piles, - The likeness of a clump of peaked isles— - And then, as if the earth and sea had been - Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen - Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame, - Around the vaporous sun, from which there came - The inmost purple spirit of light, and made - Their very peaks transparent.’ - -Whoever knows the lagoons of the Lido and of Murano knows the exquisite -justness and veracity of this description. I thought of it not long ago -when, sailing over the shallow water on the way to the city from -Torcello, I saw the sun descend behind the roseate Euganean hills, -whilst the full moon hung exactly opposite, over the more distant chain -of the Istrian mountains. - -Then this again: - - ‘I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit - Built round dark caverns, even to the root - Of the living stems who feed them; in whose bowers, - There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers; - Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn - Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne - In circles quaint, and ever-changing dance, - Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance - Pale in the open moonshine; but each one - Under the dark trees seems a little sun, - A meteor tamed; a fixed star gone astray - From the silver regions of the Milky-way. - Afar the Contadino’s song is heard, - Rude, but made sweet by distance;—and a bird - Which cannot be a nightingale, and yet - I know none else that sings so sweet as it - At this late hour;—and then all is still.’ - -He said, ‘which cannot be a nightingale,’ because he wrote this on the -1st of July, and nightingales rarely sing after June is past. But I have -heard nightingales sing in Italy until the middle of July if the weather -were cool and if their haunts, leafy and shady, were well protected from -the sun; so that this bird which he heard was most likely Philomel. -Blackbirds and woodlarks sing late into the dark of evening, but never -in the actual night. - -How he heard and studied the nightingale! - - ‘There the voluptuous nightingales - Are awake through all the broad noonday, - When one with bliss or sadness fails, - And through the windless ivy-boughs, - Sick with sweet love, droops dying away - On its mate’s music-panting bosom; - Another from the swinging blossom, - Watching to catch the languid close - Of the last strain, then lifts on high - The wings of the weak melody, - Till some new strain of feeling bear - The song, and all the woods are mute; - When there is heard through the dim air - The rush of wings, and rising there - Like many a lake-surrounded flute, - Sounds overflow the listener’s brain - So sweet, that joy is almost pain.’ - -There is not the slightest exaggeration in these lines, for, exquisite -as they are, they rather fall below than exceed the rapture and riot of -countless nightingales in Italian woods by noon and night, and the -marvellous manner in which the stronger singers will take up and develop -the broken songs of weaker birds. - - ‘If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; - If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; - A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share - - The impulse of thy strength, only less free - Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even - I were as in my boyhood, and could be - - The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, - As then, when to outstrip the skyey speed - Scarce seemed a vision, I would ne’er have striven - - As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. - Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! - I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! - - A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed - One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. - - Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: - What if my leaves are falling like its own! - The tumult of thy mighty harmonies - - Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, - Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, - My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! - - Drive my dead thoughts over the universe - Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth; - And, by the incantation of this verse, - - Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth - Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! - Be through my lips to unawakened earth - - The trumpet of a prophecy! O wind, - If winter comes, can Spring be far behind?’ - -In the ‘Ode to the West Wind,’ written in a wood washed by the Arno -waters, how completely his spirit loses itself in and is identified with -the forces of Nature! how in every line we feel the sweep and motion of -the strong _libeccio_ coming from the grey Atlantic, over ‘the sapless -foliage of the ocean,’ to - - ‘waken from his summer dreams - The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, - Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, - - Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ’s bay, - And saw in sleep old palaces and towers - Quivering within the wave’s intenser day.’ - -When that wind sweeps up the broad bed of the Arno, the yellowing -canebrakes bend, the rushes thrill and tremble, the summer’s empty nests -are shaken from the ilex and oak boughs, the great pines bend and -tremble, the river, stirred by the breath of the sea, grows yellow and -grey and swollen and turgid, the last swallow flies southward from his -home under the eaves of granary or chapel, and the nightingales rise -from their haunts in the thickets of laurel and bay and go also where -the shadows of Indian temples or of Egyptian palm-trees lie upon the -sands of a still older world. - -In that most beautiful and too little known of poems, ‘Epipsychidion,’ -the whole scene, though called Greek, is Italian, and might be taken -from the woods beside the Lake of Garda, or the Sercchio which he knew -so well, or the forest-like parks which lie deep and cool and still in -the blue shadows of Appenine or Abruzzi. - - ‘There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide; - And many a fountain, rivulet and pond, - As clear as elemental diamond, - Or serene morning air; and far beyond, - The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer - (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year), - Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls - Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls - Illumining, with sound that never fails, - Accompany the noonday nightingales; - And all the place is peopled with sweet airs; - The light clear element which the isle wears - Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers, - Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers - And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep; - And from the moss violets and jonquils peep, - And dart their arrowy odour through the brain, - Till you might faint with that delicious pain.’ - -In the whole world of poetry Love has never been sung with more beauty -than in this great poem. - - ‘Ah me! - I am not thine: I am a part of _thee_. - - . . . . . . . . . . - - Pilot of the Fate - Whose course has been so starless! O too late - Beloved! O too soon adored, by me! - For in the fields of immortality - My spirit should at first have worshipped thine, - A divine presence in a place divine; - Or should have moved beside it on this earth, - A shadow of that substance, from its birth; - - . . . . . . . . . . - - We—are we not formed, as notes of music are, - For one another, though dissimilar; - Such difference, without discord, as can make - Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake - As trembling leaves in a continuous air? - - . . . . . . . . . . - - The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me. - To whatsoe’er of dull mortality - Is mine, remain a vestal sister still; - To the intense, the deep, the imperishable, - Not mine, but me, henceforth be thou united - Even as a bride, delighting and delighted. - The hour is come:—the destined Star has risen, - Which shall descend upon a vacant prison. - The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set - The sentinels—but true love never yet - Was thus constrained: it overleaps all fence; - Like lightning, with invisible violence - Piercing its continents. - - . . . . . . . . . . - - This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed - Thee to be lady of the solitude. - And I have fitted up some chambers there - Looking towards the golden Eastern air. - And level with the living winds which flow - Like waves above the living waves below. - I have sent books and music there, and all - Those instruments with which high spirits call - The future from its cradle, and the past - Out of its grave, and make the present last - In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, - Folded within their own eternity. - Our simple life wants little, and true taste - Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste - The scene it would adorn, and therefore still, - Nature with all her children, haunts the hill. - The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet - Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit - Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance - Between the quick bats in their twilight dance; - The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight - Before our gate, and the slow silent night - Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep. - Be this our home in life, and when years heap - Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay, - Let us become the overhanging day, - The living soul of this Elysian isle, - Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile - We two will rise, and sit, and walk together, - Under the roof of Blue Ionian weather, - And wander in the meadows, or ascend - The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend - With lightest winds, to touch their paramour; - Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore, - Under the quick faint kisses of the sea, - Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy,— - Possessing and possest by all that is - Within that calm circumference of bliss, - And by each other, till to love and live - Be one:—or, at the noontide hour, arrive - Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep - The moonlight of the expired night asleep, - Through which the awakened day can never peep; - A veil for our seclusion, close as Night’s, - Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights; - Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain - Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again. - And we will talk until thought’s melody - Become too sweet for utterance, and it die - In words, to live again in looks, which dart - With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart, - Harmonising silence without a sound. - Our breaths shall intermix, our bosoms bound, - And our veins beat together; and our lips - With other eloquence than words, eclipse - The soul that burns between them; and the wells - Which boil under our beings inmost cells, - The fountains of our deepest life, shall be - Confused in passion’s golden purity, - As mountain springs under the morning Sun. - We shall become the same, we shall be one - Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two? - One passion in twin hearts, which grows and grew - Till like two meteors of expanding flame, - Those spheres instinct with it become the same, - Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still - Burning, yet ever inconsumable: - In one another’s substance finding food, - Like flames too pure and bright and unimbued - To nourish their bright lives with baser prey, - Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away: - One hope within two wills, one will beneath - Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, - One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality, - And one annihilation. Woe is me! - The winged words on which my soul would pierce - Into the height of love’s rare Universe, - Are chains of lead around its flight of fire,— - I pant, I sink, I tremble I expire!’ - -No words which were ever written ever expressed more truly that infinite -and indefinite yearning which exists in all love that is a passion of -the soul as well as of the senses; that nameless longing for some still -closer union than any which physical and mental union can bestow upon -us; that desire for absolute absorption into and extinction within the -life beloved, as stars are lost in the light of the sun, which never can -find full fruition in life as we know it here. - -Keats, Shelley, Savage Landor, Byron, Browning, and Robert Lytton, have -been each and all profoundly penetrated by and deeply imbued with the -influence of Italy; and it may be said of each and all of them that -their genius has been at its highest when under Italian influences, and -has been injured and checked and depressed in its development by all -English influences brought to bear upon it. - -Shelley most completely of all escapes the latter, not only because he -died so early, but because his whole temperament resisted conventional -pressure as a climbing plant resists being fastened to the earth; flung -it off with impatience, as the shining plumage of the sea-bird flings -off the leaden-coloured rain and the colourless sands of the shore. -Shelley had not only genius: he had courage; the most rare, most noble, -and most costly of all forms of courage, that which rejects the -measurements and the laws imposed upon the common majority of men by -conventional opinion. And this praise, no slight praise, may be given to -him, which cannot be given to many, that he had the courage to act up to -his opinions. The world had never dominion enough over him to make him -fear it, or sacrifice his higher affections to it. In this, as in his -adoration of Nature and his instinctive pantheism, he was the truest -poet the modern world has known. - -To the multitude of men he must be forever unintelligible and alien; -because their laws are not his laws, their sight is not his sight, their -heaven of small things makes his hell, and his heaven of beautiful -visions and of pure passions is a paradise whereof they cannot even -dimly see the portals. But to all poets his memory and his verse must -ever be inexpressibly dear and sacred. His ‘Adonais’ may be repeated for -himself. There is a beauty in the manner of his death which we must not -grudge to him if we truly love him. It fitly rounded a poet’s life. That -life was short, as measured by years! but, ended so, it was more -complete than it would have been had it stretched on to age. Who -knows?—he might have become a magnate in Hampshire, a country squire, a -member of Parliament, a sheriff for the county, any and all things such -as the muses would have wept for; Shelley in England, Shelley old, would -have been Shelley no more. Better and sweeter the waves of the Tyrrhene -Sea and the violet-sown grave of Rome. Sadder and more painful than -earliest death is it to witness the slow decay of the soul under the -carking fret and burdensome conventionalities of the world; more cruel -than the sudden storm is the tedious monotony of the world’s bondage. -The sea was merciful when it took the Adonais who sang of Adonais from -earth when he was yet young. He and his friends, he and those who wrote -the ‘Endymion’ and the ‘Manfred,’ were happy in their deaths; their -spirits, eternally young, live with us and have escaped all -contamination of the commonplace. Byron might have lived to wrangle in -the Lords over the Corn Laws; Keats might have lived to become a London -physician and pouch fees; Shelley might have lived to be _Custos -Rotulorum_ and to take his daughters to a court ball. Their best friend -was the angel of death who came at Rome, at Missolonghi, at Lerici. -‘Whom the gods love die young.’ - -The monotony, the thraldom and the pettiness of conventional life lie -forever in wait for the man of genius, to sink him under their muddy -waters and wash him into likeness with the multitude: Shelley, Byron and -Keats escaped this fell embrace. - -What may be termed the material side of the intellect receives -assistance in England, that is to say, in the aristocratic and political -world of England; wit and perception and knowledge of character are -quickened and multiplied by it. But the brilliancy, liberty and -spirituality of the imagination are in it dulled and lowered. If a poet -can find fine and fair thoughts in the atmosphere of a London Square, he -would be visited by far finer and fairer thoughts were he standing by -the edge of the Adrian or Tyrrhene Sea, or looking down, eagle-like, -from some high spur of wind-vexed Apennine. The poet should not perhaps -live forever away from the world, but he should oftentimes do so. - -The atmosphere of Italy has been the greatest fertiliser of English -poetical genius. There is something fatal to genius in modern English -life; its conditions are oppressive; its air is heavy; its habits are -altogether opposed to the life of the imagination. Out-of-door life in -England is only associated with what is called ‘the pleasure of -killing things,’ and is only possible to those who are very robust of -frame and hard of feeling. The intellectual life in England is only -developed in gaslight and lamplight, over dinner-tables and in -club-rooms, and although the country houses in some instances might be -made centres of intellectual life, they never are so by any chance, -and remain only the sanctuaries of fashion, of gastronomy and of -sport. The innumerable demands on time, the routine of social -engagements, the pressure of conventional opinion, are all too strong -in England to allow the man of genius to be happy there, or to reach -there his highest and best development. The many artificial restraints -of life in England are, of all things, the most injurious to the -poetic temperament, which at all times is quickly irritated and easily -depressed by its surroundings. There is not enough leisure or space -for meditation, or freedom to live as the affections or the fancy or -the mind desires; and the absence of beauty—of beauty, artistic, -architectural, natural and physical—oppresses and dulls the poetic -imagination without its being sensible of what it is from the lack of -which it suffers. - -It has been said of a living statesman that he is only great in -opposition. So may it be said of the poet who touches mundane things. He -is only great in opposition. Milton could not have written a Jubilee Ode -without falling from his high estate; and none can care for Shakespeare -without desiring to expunge the panegyric on a Virgin Queen written for -the Masque of Kenilworth. The poet is lord of a spiritual power; he is -far above the holders of powers temporal. He holds the sensitive plant -in his hand, and feels every innermost thrill of Nature; he is false to -himself when he denies Nature and does a forced and unreal homage to the -decrees and the dominion of ordinary society or of ordinary government. - - ‘Both are alien to him, and are his foes.’ - -This line might fittingly have been graven on Shelley’s tombstone, for -it was essentially the law of his soul. The violence of his political -imprecations is begotten by love, though love of another kind: love of -justice, of truth, of tolerance, of liberty, all of which he beheld -violated by the ruling powers of the state and of the law. With the -unerring vision which is the birthright of genius, he saw through the -hypocrisies and shams of kings, and priests, and churches, and -council-chambers, and conventional morality, and political creeds. The -thunder of the superb sonnet to England which begins with the famous -line, - - ‘An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king,’ - -came from his heart’s depths in scorn of lies, in hatred of pretence, in -righteous indignation as a patriot at the corruption, venality and -hypocrisy of - - ‘Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, - But leech-like to their fainting country cling.’ - -It is perhaps to be lamented that the true poetic temperament should -ever turn aside to share the fret and fever of political strife. It is -waste of the spirit of Alastor to rage against Swellfoot. But the poet -cannot wholly escape the influences of baser humanity, and, watching the -struggles of ‘the blind and battling multitude’ from afar, he cannot -avoid being moved either to a passion of pity or to a passion of -disdain, or to both at once, in view of this combat, which seems to him -so poor and small, so low and vile. Men of genius know the mere -transitory character of those religions and those social laws which awe, -as by a phantasm of terror, weaker minds, and they refuse to allow their -lives to be dictated to or bound down; and in exact proportion to their -power of revolt is their attainment of greatness. - -The soul of Shelley was, besides, deeply imbued by that wide pantheism -which makes all the received religions of men look so trite, so poor, so -narrow and so mean. - - ‘Canst those imagine where those spirits live - Which make such delicate music in the woods? - . . . . . . . . . . - ’Tis hard to tell: - I have heard those more skilled in spirits say, - The bubbles, which enchantment of the sun - Sucks from the pale, faint water-flowers that pave - The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools, - Are the pavilions where such dwell and float - Under the green and golden atmosphere - Which noon-tide kindles through the woven leaves; - And when these burst, and the thin, fiery air, - The which they breathed within those lucent domes, - Ascends to flow like meteors through the night, - They ride on them, and rein their headlong speed, - And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire - Under the waters of the earth again. - - If such live thus, have others other lives, - Under pink blossoms or within the bells - Of meadow flowers, or folded violets deep, - Or on their dying odours when they die, - Or on the sunlight of the sphered dell?’ - -The loveliness of Nature filled him with awe and deep delight. - - ‘How glorious art thou, Earth! and if thou be - The shadow of some spirit lovelier still, - Though evil stain its work, and it should be - Like its creation, weak yet beautiful, - I could fall down and worship that and thee.’ - - ‘My soul is an enchanted boat, - Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float - Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing; - And thine doth like an angel sit - Beside the helm conducting it, - Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing - It seems to float ever, forever. - Upon that many-winding river, - Between mountains, woods, abysses, - A paradise of wildernesses! - Till, like one in slumber bound, - Borne to the ocean, I float down, around - Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound.’ - -This intimate sympathy with Nature, this perception of beauty in things -seen and unseen, this deep joy in the sense of existence, make the very -life of Shelley’s life; he is the ideal poet, feeding - - ‘on the aerial kisses - Of shapes that haunt thought’s wildernesses.’ - -Taine has said, with truth, of modern life,— - - ‘Nous ne savons plus prendre la vie en grand, sortir de nous mêmes; - nous nous contennons dans un petit bien-être personnel, dans une - petite œuvre viagère.’ [He is writing in the mountains beyond Naples.] - ‘Ici on reduit le vieux et le couvert au simple necessaire. Ainsi - dégagée l’âme, comme les yeux, pouvait contempler les vastes horizons - tout ce qui s’etend et dure au déla de l’homme.’ - -Modern life gives you six electric bells beside your bed, but not one -court or chamber that a great artist would care to copy. The poet -yawning among the electric bells becomes a common-place person, with a -mind obscured by a gourmet’s love of the table and the cellar; he is the -chameleon who has lost his luminous and magical powers of -transfiguration, and become a mere gorged lizard stuffed with sugar. - -Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, were in their different lives so great -because they had all the power to reject the drowsy and dulling -influences of the common world of men, and withdraw from it to Ravenna, -to Lirici, to Rydal. The commonplace of life, whether in occupations, -relationships, or so-called duties, eats away the poetry of temperament -with the slow, sure gnawing of the hidden insect which eats away the -tiger-skin until where the golden bronze and deep sable of the shining -fur once glistened, there is only a bald, bare spot, with neither colour -nor beauty left in it. There are millions on millions of ordinary human -lives to follow the common tracks and fulfil the common functions of -human life. When the poet is dragged down to any of these he is lost. -The moth who descried the star lies dead in the kitchen fire, degraded -and injured beyond recall. - - ‘There is a path on the sea’s azure floor; - No keel has ever ploughed that path before.’ - -Such should be the poet’s passage through life. Not his is it to sail by -chart and compass with common mariners along the sea roads marked out -for safety and for commerce. - -Above all else, the poet should be true to himself—to his own vision, -his own powers, his own soul, - - ‘like Heaven’s pure breath - Which he who grasps can hold not; like death, - Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way - Through temple, tower and palace, and the array - Of arms.’ - -The supreme glory of Shelley is that he, beyond all others, did go where -‘no keel ever ploughed before,’ did dwell more completely than any other -has ever dwelt - - ‘on an imagined shore - Where the gods spoke with him.’ - -The poet is wisest, and his creations are most beautiful when his -thoughts roam alone in - - ‘fields of Heaven-reflecting sea, - . . . . . . . . . . - Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of corn - Swayed by the summer air;’ - -and when he, like Proteus, marks - - ‘The shadow of fair ships, as mortals see - The floating bark of the light-laden moon - With that white star, it’s sightless pilot’s crest, - Borne down the rapid sunset’s ebbing sea; - Tracking their path no more by blood and groans, - And desolation, and the mingled voice - Of slavery and command; but by the light - Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours, - And music soft and mild, free, gentle voices, - That sweetest music, such as spirits love.’ - -And he is wisest when he says, with Apollo, - - ‘I shall gaze not on the deeds which make - My mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipse - Darkens the sphere I guide; but list, I hear - The small, clear, silver lute of the young Spirit - That sits i’ the morning star.’ - -If ever poet held that lute on earth, Shelley held it all through his -brief life; and if ever there be immortality for any soul, his surely is -living now beside that Spirit in the light of a ceaseless day. - - ‘Death is the veil which those who live call life; - They sleep, and it is lifted.’ - - - - - SOME FALLACIES OF - SCIENCE[K] - - ‘Le génie fait les philosophes et les poetes: le temps ne fait - que les savants.’—FONTENELLE. - - -Sir Lyon, _now_ Lord, Playfair, read to the assembled members of the -British Association, when they met at Aberdeen, a discourse both -eloquent and well suited to excite the enthusiasm of his audience, -already disposed by taste and bias to salute its propositions as gospel. -That there were truths in it, no one would dispute; that it was -exclusively composed of truth is not so evident to minds unswayed by -scientific prejudice. It, at all events, was a curious and complete -example of the scientific mind, of its views, conclusions and -expectations, and is therefore interesting in itself, if not as -overwhelming in its persuasions to the dispassionate reader as it was to -the sympathetic and selected audience to which it was addressed. -Scientific persons usually never address themselves to any other -audience than one thus pannelled and prepared. They like to see a crowd -of their own disciples in their halls ere they let fall their pearls of -wisdom. The novelist does not demand that he shall be only read by -novelists. The painter does not think that none but painters can be -permitted to judge a painting. The sculptor does not ask that every -critic of his work shall be a Phidias. The historian does not insist -that none but a Tacitus shall pass judgment on him. But the scientist -does exact that no opinion shall be formed of him and of his works -except by his own brethren, and sweeps aside all independent criticism -on a principle which, if carried out into other matters, would forbid -John Ruskin ever to give an opinion on painting, and would prohibit -Francisque Sareey from making any critical observations on actors. This -address satisfied its audience, because that audience was composed of -persons already willing to be satisfied; but if we can imagine some -listener altogether without such bias, if we can suppose some one -amongst the auditors with mind altogether unprejudiced, such an one -might without effort have found many weak places in this fine discourse, -and would have been sorely tempted to cry ‘Question! Question!’ at more -than one point in it. - ------ - -Footnote K: - - Suggested by an Address to the British Association at Aberdeen, 1885. - ------ - -Taken as a whole, the address was an admirable piece of special pleading -in favour of science, and of her superior claims upon the resources of -all states and the minds of all men. But special pleading has always -this disadvantage: that it seeks to prove too much; and the special -pleading of the President of the Aberdeen meeting is not free from this -defect. We know, of course, that, in his position, he could hardly say -less; that with his antecedents and reputation, he would not have wished -to say less; but those who are removed from the spell of his eloquence, -and peruse his arguments in the serene air of their studies, may be -pardoned if they be more critical than an audience of fellow-workers, -and mutual admirers, if they lay down the pages of his admirably-worded -praises of science, and ask themselves dispassionately: How much of this -is true? - -The main object of the discourse was to prove that science is the great -benefactress of the world. But is it proved? To the mind of the -scientist the doubt will seem as impious as the doubt of the sceptic -always does seem to the true believer. Yet it is a doubt which must be -entertained by those who are not led away by that bigotry of science, -which has so much and so grievously in common with the bigotry of -religions. - -Let us see what are the statements which the President of the British -Association brings forward in support of the position which he gives to -Science as the goddess and the benefactress of mankind. First, to do -this he casts down the Humanities beneath his feet, as the professors of -science always do; and, as an illustration of the uselessness which he -assigns to them, he asserts that were a Chrysoloras to teach Greek in -the Italian universities he would not hasten perceptibly the onward -march of Italy! - -What does this mean? It is a statement, but the statement of an opinion, -not of a fact. - -What is comprised under the vague term ‘the onward march of Italy?’ Does -it mean the return of Italy to her pristine excellence in all arts, her -love of learning, her grace of living? or does it mean the effort of -Italy to aggrandise herself at all cost, and to engage in foreign and -colonial wars whilst her cities groan under taxation and her peasantry -perish of pellagra? In the one case the teaching of Chrysoloras would be -of infinite value; in the other it would, no doubt, not harmonise with -the vulgar greeds and dangerous ambitions of the hour. If the ‘onward -march of Italy’ means that she is to kneel to a Crispi, submit to a -standing army, wait slavishly on Germany, and scramble for the sands of -Africa, the teachings of Chrysoloras would be wasted; but if it mean -that she is to husband her strength, cultivate her fertile fields, merit -her gift of beauty, and hold a high place in the true civilisation of -the world, then I beg leave to submit that Chrysoloras, or what his name -is here taken to symbolise, would do more for her than any other teacher -she could have, certainly more than any teacher she now possesses. Could -the classic knowledge and all which is begotten by it of serenity, -grace, trained eloquence and dispassionate meditation, be diffused once -more through the mind of Italian youth, it would, I think, produce a -generation which would not applaud Eritrea and Kassala, nor accept the -political tyrannies of state-appointed prefects. - -The scientists take for granted that the education of the schools -creates intelligence; very often it does no such thing. It creates a -superficial appearance of knowledge, indeed; but knowledge is like food, -unless it be thoroughly assimilated when absorbed, and thoroughly -digested, it can give no nourishment; it lies useless, a heavy and -unleavened mass. It is the fashion in these times to despise husbandmen -and husbandry, but it is much to be questioned if the city cad, with his -smattering of education, his dabbling in politics, his crude, conceited -opinions upon matters on which he is absolutely ignorant, be not a far -more ignorant, as he is undoubtedly a far more useless, person than the -peasant, who may never have opened a book or heard of arithmetic, but -thoroughly understands the soil he works on, the signs of the weather, -the rearing of plants and of animals, and the fruits of the earth which -he cultivates. The man of genius may be many-sided; nature has given him -the power to be so; but the mass of men do not and cannot obtain this -Protean power; to do one thing well is the utmost that the vast majority -can well hope to do; many never do so much, nor a quarter so much. To -this vast majority science would say: you may be as indifferent weavers, -ploughmen, carpenters, shopmen, what you will, but you must know where -the spermatic nerves are situated in the ichneumon, and you must -describe the difference between microzoaires and miraphytes, and you -must understand the solidification of nitric acid. Nor is the temper -which science and its teachers seem likely thus to give the human race, -one of fair promise. How much have not the men of science added to the -popular dread of cholera, which in its manifestation of cowardice and -selfishness has so grossly disgraced the Continent of Europe of late -years? Their real or imaginary creation, the microbe, has invested -cholera with a fanciful horror so new and hideous in the popular mind, -that popular terror of it grows ungovernable, and will, in great -likelihood, revolt beyond all restraint, municipal or imperial, whenever -the disease shall again revisit Europe with violence. Again, how many -nervous illnesses, how many imaginary diseases, have sprung into -existence since science, popularised, attracted the attention of mankind -to the mechanism of its own construction? It is a familiar truth that a -little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and of no knowledge is it truer -than of physiological knowledge. It has been said, that every one at -forty should be a fool or a physician, and so far as knowing what to -eat, drink and avoid, every one should be so; but, unhappily, those who -become the latter, _i.e._, those who become capable of controlling their -own constitutional ailments and weaknesses, are apt to contract in their -study of themselves an overweening tendency to think about themselves. -The generalisation of physiology amongst the masses means the -generalisation of this form of egotism. A child who was told and shown -something of anatomy, said, naively: ‘Oh, dear me! now that I know how I -am made, I shall be always thinking that I am coming to pieces.’ In a -less innocent way the effect of the popularisation of physiology is the -same on the multitude as on this child: it increases valetudinarianism, -nervousness and the diseases which spring from morbid fears and morbid -desires. Those nervous illnesses which are the peculiar privilege of -modern times, are largely due to the exaggerated attention to themselves -which science has taught to humankind. The Greek and the Latin said: -‘Let us eat and drink and enjoy, for to-morrow we die.’ Modern science -says: ‘Let us concentrate our whole mind on ourselves and our body, -although our mind like our body is only a conglomeration of gases which -will go out in the dark.’ The classic injunction and conclusion are the -more healthy and the more logical, and produced a race of men more -manly, more vigorous and more consistent with themselves. - -To return to the assertions contained in this address which we now -consider: in the address it is stated as a fact which all must rejoice -over, that in Boston one shoe factory, by its machines, does the work of -30,000 shoemakers in Paris, who have still to go through the weary -drudgery of hand-labour. Now, why is the ‘drudgery’ of sewing a shoe in -any way more ‘weary’ than the drudgery of oiling, feeding and attending -to a machine? Machine-work is, on the contrary, of all work the most -mechanical, the most absolute drudgery. There is no kind of proof that, -because the work of 30,000 shoemakers is done by a machine, mankind at -large is any the happier for this. We know that all machine-made work is -inferior to hand-work; inferior in durability, in excellence of quality, -and in its inevitable lack of that kind of individuality and originality -which handwork takes from the fingers which form it. In the _Seven Lamps -of Architecture_, there is an admirable exposition of this immeasurable -difference in quality which characterises hand-labour and machine-made -work; of the stone cut by steam and the stone cut by hand. Let us only -consider what ruin to the arts of India has been brought about by the -introduction of machinery. The exquisite beauty of Oriental work is due -to the individuality which is put into it; the worker, sitting beneath -his grove of date-trees, puts original feeling, individual character, -into each line graven on the metal, each thread woven in the woof, each -turn given to the ivory. Machines destroy all this. They make machines -of the men who tend them, and give a soulless and hateful monotony to -everything which they produce. - -Despite the vaunt of Playfair, the cobbler who sits on the village -green, doing sound, if simple work, honestly, giving a personality to -the shoe he labours on, and knowing on what foot it will be worn and -whither it will go, is a man, and maybe in his own humble way a good -artist; but the attendant who feeds the shoe-machine with oil, or takes -from it its thousands of machine-cut leathers, is no better than a -machine himself; so far from being ‘set free,’ he is in servitude. The -cobbler on the village green knows far more of freedom than he. - -This curious statement that hand-work, with its scope for originality -and individual interest is slavery, whilst the work of factories, -mechanical, monotonous and done in ugly chambers and unwholesome air, is -liberty, is surely the oddest delusion with which the fanatical and -biased mind of science ever delighted itself. Who can compare the -freedom of the native child in a village of Benares, shaping an ebony or -cocoanut toy under the palm-fronds of his home, with the green paroquets -swinging, and the monkeys chattering in the sun-lit bamboos above his -head, with the servitude of the poor little sickly and weary Hindoos, -thronging in patient flocks the noisome factory-chambers of Bombay? - -The President of the British Association seems to expect that all men -whom machines ‘set free’ from the drudgery of their daily calling, will, -all at once, do something infinitely better than they did before they -were free. But this seems to me a very rash conclusion. If the 30,000 -shoemakers are all ‘set free’ in Paris, by the introduction of the -Boston machine, is it so certain that their freedom will produce -anything better than a good pair of shoes? What greater freedom is there -in attending to the machine if they select to do that, or in entering -into another trade?—one thing or the other no doubt they must do, if -they want to earn their bread? What have they gained by being ‘set free, -and passed from one kind of occupation to another?’ I fail to see what -they have gained. Have the public gained? It is open to doubt. Where -will be the gain to their contemporaries, or to themselves, if these -30,000 shoemakers ‘set free’ become telegraph clerks or book-keepers? -Something they must become, unless they are to live as paupers or -mendicants. Where is their freedom? ‘Set free’ is a seductive and -resonant expression, but analysed it simply means nothing in this -instance. And, before quitting this subject, let me also remark that if -Playfair knew as much about shoes as he does about science, he would -know that a machine to make shoes is a most unwholesome invention, -because every shoe or boot which is not made _expressly_ for the foot -which is to wear it, is an ill-made shoe, and will cause suffering and -deformity to the unwise wearer. The vast mass of the population of every -‘civilised’ nation has deformed feet, because they buy and wear -ready-made shoes, thrusting their extremities into houses of leather -never designed for them. Machines which make shoes by the thousand can -only increase this evil. As it is, we never see by any chance any one -walk well, unless it be some one whose shoes are made with great care -and skill, adjusted to his feet alone, or peasants who have never shod -their feet at all and step out, with the bare sole set firmly and -lightly on their mother earth. Science can, no doubt, turn out millions -of cheap shoes, all exactly alike, but Nature will not consent to adopt -such monotony of contour in the feet which will wear them. - -The President of the British Association speaks of science always as of -a Demeter, with blessings in her hands, creating the fulness of the -fields and the joys of mankind. He forgets that the curse of Demeter -brought barrenness: and if we resist the charm of his eloquence and look -more closely at the tissue of it, we shall not be so content to accept -his declarations. What does the expression mean, ‘to benefit mankind?’ I -conclude that it must mean to increase its happiness and its health; all -the wisdom of the ages will avail it nothing if it pule in discontent -and fret in nervous sickness. Now, does science increase the sum of -human happiness? It is very doubtful. - -Let us take the electric telegraph as an instance of the benevolence of -science. Can it be said to make men happier? I think not. Politicians -and diplomatists agree that the hasty judgments and conflicting orders -which it favours and renders possible, double the chances of internecine -quarrels, and stimulate to irritation and haste, which banish -statesmanship. In business the same defects are due to it, and many a -rash speculation or unconsidered reply, an acceptance or refusal, forced -on men without there being time for any mature consideration, have led -to disastrous engagements and as disastrous failures. Even in private -life its conveniences may have a certain value, but the many troubles -and excitements brought by it are incalculable. Niobe hearing of the -death of her children by a printed line on a yellow sheet of paper, has -her grief robbed of all dignity and privacy, and intensified by a shock -which deals her its fatal blow without any preparation of the mind to -receive it. The telegraph, bridging space, may be, and is, no doubt, a -wonderful invention, but that it has contributed to the happiness or -wisdom of humanity is not so certain. Men cannot do without it now, no -doubt; neither can they do without alcohol. The telegraph, like nearly -all the inventions of the modern age, tends to shorten time but to -harass it, to make it possible to do much more in an hour, a day, a -year, than was done of old, but to make it impossible to do any of this -without agitation, brain-pressure and hurry. It has impaired language -and manners, it has vulgarised death, and it has increased the great -evils of immature choice and hasty action; these drawbacks weighed -against its uses must at the time prevent us from regarding its -invention as an unmixed blessing. Of the telephone may be said as much, -and more.[L] - ------ - -Footnote L: - - Science having shouted many hallelujahs over the telephone, now - discovers that it is a terrible disseminator of disease! - ------ - -Playfair, proceeding in his enumeration of the benefits which science -confers on man, turns to that most familiar matter, air, and that -equally familiar element, water. He speaks with pride of all which -science has discovered concerning their component parts, and their uses -and effects upon the world. His pride, no doubt, may be justified in -much, but he passes over one great fact in connection with air and -water, _i.e._, that both have been polluted through the inventions of -science in a degree which may well be held to outweigh the value of the -discoveries of science. - -Were we to awake an Athenian of the time of Phidias from his mausoleum, -and take him with eyes to see and ears to hear and nostrils to smell, -into Blackpool or Belfast, even into Zurich or Munich, he would ask us, -in stupefaction, under what curse of the gods had the earth fallen that -mankind should dwell in such hideous clamour, such sooty darkness, such -foul stenches, such defiled and imprisoned air. He would survey the -begrimed toilers of the mills and looms, the pallid women, the stunted -offspring, the long lines of hideous houses, the soil ankle-deep with -cinder-dust, the skies a pall of lurid smoke, the country scorched and -blackened and accursed; he would survey all this, I say, asking by what -malediction of heaven and what madness of mankind the sweetest and chief -joys of Nature had been ruined and forgotten thus? He would behold the -dwarfed trees dying under the fume of poisonous gases, the clear river -changed to a slimy, crawling, stinking, putrid flood of filth; the -buoyant air, once sweet as the scent of cowslips or clover-grass, made -by the greed of man into a sickly, noxious, loathsome thing, loaded with -the stench of chemicals and the vapours of engine-belched steam. He -would stand amidst this hell of discordant sounds, between these walls -of blackened brick, under this sky of heavy-hanging soot; and he would -remember the world as it was; and if at his ears any prated of science, -he would smile in their faces, and say,—‘If these be the fruits of -science let me rather dwell with the forest beast and the untaught -barbarian.’ - -Yes; no doubt science can study air in her spectrum, and analyse water -in her retorts; she can tell why the green tree dies in the evil gas, -and the rose will not bloom where the blast-furnace roars: she can tell -you the why and the wherefore, and can give you a learned treatise on -the calcined dust which chokes up your lungs; but she cannot make the -green tree and the wild rose live in the hell she has created for men, -and she cannot make the skies she has blackened lighter, nor the rivers -she has poisoned run clean. Even we who dwell where the air is pure, and -the southern sun lights the smiling waves and the vine-clad hills, even -we cannot tell how beautiful was the earth in the days of the Greek -anthologists; when the silvery blue of wood-smoke alone rose from the -hearth fires; when the flame of the vegetable oils alone illumined the -fragrant night; when the white sails alone skimmed the violet seas; when -the hand alone threw the shuttle and wove the web; and when the vast -virgin forests filled the unpolluted air with their odorous breath. Even -we cannot tell what the radiance of the atmosphere, of the horizons, of -the sunrise and sunset, were when the world was young. Our loss is -terrible and hopeless, like the loss of all youth. It may be useless to -lament it, but in God’s name let us not be such purblind fools that we -call our loss our gain. - -Repose, leisure, silence, peace and sleep are all menaced and scattered -by the inventions of the last and present century. They are the greatest -though the simplest blessings that mankind has ever had; their -banishment may be welcomed by men greedy only of gold; but, meantime, -the mad-houses are crowded, spinal and cerebral diseases are in alarming -increase, heart-disease in divers shapes is general, where it once was -rare, and all the various forms of bodily and mental paralysis multiply -and crown the triumphs of the age. - -Let us turn for a moment to the consideration of politics and of war as -these are affected by the influence of science. Playfair speaks much of -the superior wisdom, the superior education, the superior devotion to -science, of Germany, as contrasted with those of any other nation; he -lauds to the skies her enormous grants to laboratories and professors of -physiology and chemistry and ‘original research’ (called by the vulgar, -vivisection); but the only result of all this expenditure and -instruction is a military despotism so colossal that, whilst it overawes -and paralyses both German liberty and European peace, it yet may fall -over from its own weight any day, like the giant of clay which it -resembles. Are we not then justified in objecting to accept, whilst the -chief issue of German culture is Militarism and anti-Semitism, such -praises of Germany, and refusing to render such homage to her? ‘By your -fruits ye shall be judged,’ is a just saying: and the fruits of Germany, -in the concert of Europe and the sum of political life, are dissension, -apprehension, absolutism, and the sacrifice of all other nations to the -pressure of the military Juggernaut which rolls before her; whilst in -her own national life the outcome of the sanguinary lessons given by the -government is little better than the barbarism of the middle ages -without its redeeming law of chivalry. The incessant and senseless duels -which maim and disfigure German youth remain a disgrace to civilisation, -and a duellist may fire three times at an adversary who _never returns -the fire_ and, killing him at the last, will only be punished by a -slight imprisonment, whilst he will be admired and deified by his -comrades.[M] Such barbarous brutality, such insensibility to generous -feeling, such universal resort to the arbitration of every trifling -dispute by the pistol or the sabre, is the chief characteristic of the -nation in which science rules supreme! Conscription, that curse of -nations, is forced on all weaklier powers by the enormous armed forces -of Germany; art suffers, trades suffer, families suffer; and we are -called on by a ‘scientific’ mind to admire as a model the nation which -is the cause of this suffering, as we are bidden to admire as models -also her mutilated and bandaged students, and her blue-spectacled and -blear-eyed school children! - ------ - -Footnote M: - - See _Times_ of September 19, 1885: account of duel in Munich. - ------ - -Again Playfair traces the defeat of France in 1870 to the inferiority of -her university teaching, and gives the opinion of the Institut de France -as his authority. It seems a singularly illogical and unphilosophical -decision for such an august body to have given forth publicly. The -causes of the defeat of France stretch farther back and have deeper -roots than can be accounted for by the omission of the state to create -more professors and laboratories. The whole teachings of history show -that all states, after reaching their perihelion, gradually decline and -sink into an inferior place amongst the nations. The day of France, as -of England, is already past its noon. Neither will ever be what they -have been. Neither will ever again give law to Europe as they gave it -once. But so many causes, some near, some remote, have all contributed -to bring about a decline which is as inevitable to nations as to -individuals, that it is surely most unphilosophic to contend that such -decay could have been averted by the creation of some hundred or -thousand more professors of natural or other science. It may be -excusable for such a professor to consider such professorships the one -universal panacea for all ills; but it is not an opinion in which those -who know France best and most intimately would be inclined to coincide. -They would conclude that, on the contrary, she has too many professors -already; that the grace, and wit, and courtesy, and wisdom and chivalry -have gone out of her since she was ruled from the desks of the -school-master, the physiologist and the notary, and that the whole -system of French colleges is calculated to emasculate and injure the -character of the schoolboy before he goes up for his baccalaureate. - -The German invasion of France was supported by all which science could -do, yet most military judges are agreed that unless the carelessness of -her foe had afforded her a fortnight’s preparation, Germany would have -been hopelessly beaten on her own territory; whilst, look at the -campaign how we may, it cannot stand a moment’s comparison with the -Eastern marches of Alexander, or the conquests of Roman generals. With -none of the resources of modern warfare, these great conquerors carried -fire and sword through the whole of the regions known to them, from the -sands of Africa to the ice-plains of the Baltic. What is there in modern -war, which can compare with the campaigns of Hannibal, the amazing -victories of Julius Cæsar, the deeds of the young Pompeiins, the story -of every Legion? In the English endeavour to rescue Gordon, with every -aid which modern science can invent, and assisted by every facility -which modern modes of transit lend to the transport of multitudes, an -army was despatched from Great Britain with orders to reach a city on -the Nile. The errand was too difficult to be accomplished; the generals -returned with their mission unfulfilled; the country received them with -honour. This is the height to which the assistance of modern science has -brought the would-be Cæsars of the age. - -What child’s play would this expedition to Khartoum have seemed to -Scipio Africanus or to Lucius Sylla! Yet all the ‘resources of science’ -did not save the modern expedition from failure, and, in the face of -Europe and Asia, it retreated in ignominy before the barbaric and -untrained followers of a half-mad prophet, after an enormous expenditure -of stores and treasure, and a perfectly useless waste of human life! - -War has been almost incessant since the empire of science, but it has -been characterised neither by magnanimity nor true triumph. Europe, -armed to the teeth, is like a muzzled pack of blood-hounds; every nation -lives in terror of the others; to such a pass has scientific warfare -brought the world. The multiplication of engines of destruction is one -of the chief occupations and boasts of a scientific age, and it can -claim a melancholy pre-eminence in the discovery of the means to inflict -the most agonising of all wounds through the medium of conical bullets -and shells of nitro-glycerine. To have added unspeakable horror to -death, and to have placed the power of secret and wholesale -assassination in the hands of ignorant and envious men, is one of the -chief benefits which this Egeria has brought to her eager pupil. And -when her worshippers laud her to the skies, as does the president of the -Aberdeen meeting, their silence on this side of her teaching is at once -significant and ominous. - -Playfair is obviously afraid that the Humanities will always obtain, in -England at least, a larger place in public teaching and in public -subsidies than pure science will be able to do. I wish his fear may be -justified. My own fears are on the other side. Science offers prizes to -the prurient curiosities and the nascent cruelties of youth with which -literature can never compete. To study all the mysteries of sex in -anatomy, and to indulge the power of a Nero in little when watching the -agonies of a scientifically-tortured or poisoned dog, are enjoyments -appealing to instincts in the frame of the school-boy, with which not -even the most indecent passage in his Greek or Latin authors can ever -pretend to measure attraction. The professors of science need have no -fear as to the potency of the charm which their curriculum will exercise -over the juvenile mind. Teaching which offers at once the penetration -into corporeal secrets and the power of torture over animals, possesses -a fascination for the minds of youth which it will never lose, because -its appeals are addressed to those coarsest and crudest impulses which -are strongest of all in the child and in the adolescent. - -What science is preparing for the future of man, in thus putting the -scalpel and the injecting-needle into the hands of children, is a darker -and wider question. One thing is certain, that in the future, as in the -streets and temples of Ancient Rome, there will be no altar to Pity. - -The acknowledged doctrine of the professors of ‘research,’ that all -knowledge is valuable because it is, or appears to be, knowledge, and -that all ways and methods of obtaining it are justified and sanctified, -bears so curious a likeness to the self-worship of the Papal dominion -and of the Spanish Inquisition, that we see, with a sense of despair, -how bigotry and despotism in some form or another are fated to reappear -so long as human life shall last. - -It is significant of the political immorality and readiness to tyrannise -over others in the pursuit of their aims, which characterise the -scientific classes, that they are willing to admire and support any -government, however despotic, which is willing in return to endow their -scholarships and erect their laboratories. They are inclined to -surrender all political liberty, if by so doing they can obtain a ruler -who will build them a number of new colleges, with every new instrument -ready to their hands for animal torture and physiological or chemical -experiment. - -A Lorenzo di Medici, devoted exclusively to the sciences instead of to -the arts, would be their ideal sovereign. Public liberties might perish -under him as they should; he would give science her free scope, her -desired endowments, her million living victims; he would be even too -enlightened to refuse her human subjects for the physiological -laboratory. - -This curious willingness of the pursuers of science to join hands with -tyranny, so long as tyranny helps themselves, is the darkest menace of -the world’s future. In time to come it may assume dimensions and aspects -which are undreamed of now. The demand of biologists and chemists to be -provided for out of the funds of the state, is a demand which has never -been made by literature or art, and would not be tolerated from them. -The exorbitant sums insisted on for the establishment of laboratories -and professorships, rob science of that character of disinterested -devotion which alone would make it worthy of esteem. ‘Give me a thousand -or fifteen hundred a year,’ says the physiologist to the state; ‘give me -money-grants also for experiments which I may spend at my good option -and for which I need return no account, and leave me to cut up dogs and -cats and horses at leisure. In return I will give you some new facts -about internal hydrocephalus or the length of time a new poison takes to -kill a guinea-pig.’ The agreement may, or may not, be worth the state’s -entering into with the physiologist, but in any case the physiologist -cannot deny that he makes a good income out of his science, and cannot -pretend to any disinterested or philanthropic selection of it. The -moment that any man accepts a salary for intellectual work, he must -submit to resign all claim to purely intellectual devotion to it. The -claims of scientists to be paid and provided for out of national funds -has many equivocal aspects, and will have many unwholesome results; -whilst the rapacity and insistence with which they are put forward are -as unbecoming as they are undisguised. The high priests of modern -science are not likely to shed tears like the Greek philosopher -Isocrates because they are compelled to take money. On the contrary, -they clamour loudly for their maintenance by their nation, with a -cupidity which has happily never disgraced either literature or art. - -As modern socialism aspires to make the world into one vast -allotment-ground, with every man’s half-acre meted out to him on which -to build his hut and hive his store, so science would change the world -into one vast class-room and laboratory, wherein all humanity (paying -very large fees) should sit at the feet of its professors, whom it would -clothe with purple and fine linen, and whom it would never presume to -oppose or to contradict. - -The world will gain nothing by delivering itself, as it is gradually -doing, from the bondage of the various churches and their priesthoods, -if in their stead it puts its neck under the yoke of a despotism, more -intellectual perhaps, but as bigoted, as arrogant, and as cruel. That -this danger lies before it from its submission to the demands of -science, no dispassionate student of humanity can doubt. - - - - - FEMALE SUFFRAGE - - -It is a singular fact that England, which has been always esteemed the -safest and slowest of all factors in European politics, should be now -seriously meditating on such a revolutionary course of action as the -political emancipation of women. It is a sign, and a very ominous sign, -of the restlessness and feverishness which have come upon this century -in its last twenty years of life, and from which England is suffering no -less than other nations, is perhaps even suffering more than they, since -when aged people take the diseases natural to youth it fares ill with -them, more ill than with the young. There are many evidences that before -very long, whichever political party may be in office, female suffrage -will be awarded at Westminster, and if it be so, it is scarcely to be -doubted that the French Chambers and the Representative Houses at -Washington will be loth to lag behind and resist such a precedent. The -influence on the world will scarcely be other than most injurious to its -prosperity and most degrading to its wisdom. - -It is true that the wholesale exercise of electoral rights by millions -of uneducated and unwashed men is a spectacle so absurd that a little -more or a little less absurdity may be held not to matter very greatly. -The intellectual world in political matters has voluntarily abdicated -already and given its sceptre to the mob. ‘Think you,’ said Publius -Scipio to the raging populace, ‘then, I shall fear those free whom I -sent in chains to the slave market?’ But the modern politician, of -whatever nation he be (with the solitary exception of Bismarck), does -fear the slaves whose chains he has struck off before they know how to -use their liberty, and has in him neither the candour nor the courage of -Scipio. - -Rationally, logically, political power ought to be alloted in proportion -to the stake which each voter possesses in the country. But this sound -principle has been totally disregarded in the present political systems -of both Europe and America. Vapourings anent the inherent ‘rights of -man’ have been allowed to oust out common-sense and logical action, and -he whose contributions to the financial and intellectual power of his -nation are of the largest and noblest order has no more electoral voice -in the direction of the nation than the drunken navvy or the howling -unit of the street-mob. This is esteemed liberty, and commends itself to -the populace, because it levels, or seems to level, intellect and wealth -with poverty and ignorance. It is probable that America will, in years -to come, be the first to change this, the doctrine of democracy, as -there are signs that the United States will probably grow less and less -democratic with every century, and its large land-owners will create an -aristocracy which will not be tolerant of the dominion of the mob. But -meantime Europe is swaying between absolutism and anarchy, with that -tendency of the pendulum to swing wildly from one extreme to the other -which has been always seen in the whole history of the world; and one of -the most curious facts of the epoch is that both democracy and -conservatism are inclined to support and promote female suffrage, -alleging each of them totally different motives for their conduct, and -totally different reasons for the opinions which they advance in its -favour. - -The motives of the Tory leaders are as unlike those of Mrs Fawcett, Mrs -Garratt, and the rest of the female agitators as stone is unlike water, -as water is unlike fire. The conservative gentlemen wish to admit women -into political life because they consider that women are always -religious, stationary, and wedded to ancient and stable ways; the female -agitators, on the contrary, clamour to have themselves and their sex -admitted within the political arena because they believe that women will -be foremost in all emancipation, innovation, and social democratic -works. It is an odd contradiction, and displays perhaps more than -anything else the utter confusion and the entire recklessness and -abandonment of principle characteristic of all political parties in the -latter half of the nineteenth century. It is very possible that as the -English labourer obtained his vote through the confusion and jealousies -of party against the sane, the serene, and the unbiased judgment of -patriots, so woman in England, and if in England, ultimately in America, -will obtain hers. Opportunist policies have always their sure issue in -sensational and hurried legislation; and in Europe at the present hour, -in England and France most especially, an opportunist policy is the only -policy pursued. - -What is there to be said in favour of female suffrage? It may be treated -as an open subject, since both Reactionists and Socialists can advance -for it claims and arguments of the most totally opposite nature. Perhaps -it may be said that there is some truth in both sides of these arguments -and entire truth in neither. It is probable that female politicians -would be many of them more reactionary than the Reactionists, and many -of them would be more socialistic than the Socialists. The golden mean -is not in favour with women or with mobs. - -In England, both the Conservative and Radical intentions are at present -limited to giving the suffrage to such women alone as are possessed of -real property. But it is certain that this limitation could not be -preserved; for the women without property would clamour to be admitted, -and would succeed by their clamour as the men without property have -done. No doubt, to see a woman of superior mind and character, capable -of possessing and administering a great estate, left without electoral -voice, whilst her carter, her porter, or the most illiterate labourer on -her estate possesses and can exercise it, is on the face of it absurd. -But it is not more absurd than that her brother should have his single -vote outnumbered and neutralised by the votes of the men-servants, -scullions and serving-boys who take his wage and fill his servants’ hall -and kitchen. It would be more honest to say that the whole existing -system of electoral power all over the world is absurd; and will remain -so, because in no nation is there the courage, perhaps in no nation is -there the intellectual power, capable of putting forward and sustaining -the logical doctrine of the _just supremacy of the fittest_: a doctrine -which it is surely more vitally necessary to insist on in a republic -than in a monarchy. It is because the fittest have not had the courage -to resist the pressure of those who are intellectually their inferiors, -and whose only strength lies in numbers, that democracy has been enabled -to become the power that it has. Theoretically, a republic is founded on -the doctrine of the supremacy of the fittest; but who can say that since -the days of Perikles any republic has carried out this doctrine -practically? The lawyer or the chemist who neglects his business to push -himself to the front in political life in France is certainly not the -most admirable product of the French intellect; nor can it be said by -any impartial student that every President of the United States has been -the highest type of humanity that the United States can produce. - -Alexander Dumas _fils_, the most accomplished, but the most rabid of the -advocates of female suffrage, resumes what seems to him the absurdity of -the whole system in a sentence. ‘Mme. de Sévigné ne peut pas voter; M. -Paul son jardinier peut voter.’ He does not seem to see that there is as -great an absurdity in the fact that were Mme. de Sévigné, Monsieur de -Sévigné, and were she living now, all her wit and wisdom would fail to -confer on her more voting power than would be possessed by ‘Paul son -jardinier.’ - -With all deference to him, I do not think that Mme. de Sévigné would -have cared a straw to rival Paul, the gardener, in going to the -electoral urn. Mme. de Sévigné, like every woman of wit and mind, had -means of exercising her influence so incomparably superior to the paltry -one of recording a vote in a herd that she would, I am sure, have had -the most profound contempt for the latter. Indeed, her contempt would -have probably extended to the whole electoral system and ‘government by -representation.’ Women of wit and genius must always be indifferent to -the opportunity of going up to the ballot booth in company with their -own footman and coachman. To those who have a sense of humour the -position is not one of dignity. Hypatia, when she feels herself the -equal of Julian, will not readily admit that Dadus, however -affranchised, is her equal. - -Absurdities are not cured by adding greater absurdities to them; -discrepancies are not remedied by greater discrepancies being united to -them. Whether women voted or not would not change by a hair’s breadth -the existing, and to many thinkers the deplorable fact, that under the -present electoral system throughout the world, the sage has no more -electoral power than the dunce, that Plato’s voice counts for no more -than a fool’s. The admission of women could do nothing to remedy this -evil. It would only bring into the science of politics what it has too -much of already—inferior intelligence and hysterical action. No: reply -both the French essayist and the conservative advocates of female -suffrage. Not so; because we should only admit women qualified to use it -by the possession of property. But it would be impossible to sustain -this limitation in the teeth of all the levelling tendencies of modern -legislation; it would speedily be declared unjust, intolerable, -aristocratic, iniquitous, and it would soon become impossible to deny to -Demos’s wife or mistress, mother or sister, what you award to Demos -himself. If women be admitted at all to the exercise of the franchise -they must be admitted wholesale down to the lowest dregs of humanity as -men are now admitted. The apple-woman will naturally argue that she has -as much right to it as the heiress; how can you say she has not when you -have given the apple-man as much electoral voice as the scholar? It is -idle to talk of awarding the female suffrage on any basis of property -when property has been deliberately rejected as a basis for male -suffrage. - -The project often insisted on by the advocates of the system, to give -votes only to unmarried women, may be dismissed without discussion, as -it would be found to be wholly untenable. It would give votes to the old -maids of Cranford village, and the enriched _cocottes_ of great cities, -and would deny them to a Mme. Roland or a Mme. de Staël, to Lady Burdett -Coutts or to Mme. Adam. The impossibility of any such limitation being -sustained if female suffrage be ever granted, renders it unnecessary to -dwell longer on its self-evident defects. - -Again, are women prepared to purchase electoral rights by their -willingness to fulfil military obligations? If not, how can they expect -political privileges unless they are prepared to renounce for them the -peculiar privileges which have been awarded to them in view of the -physical weakness of their sex? Dumas does, indeed, distinctly refuse to -let them be soldiers, on the plea that they are better occupied in -child-bearing, but in the same moment he asserts that they ought to be -judges and civil servants. It is difficult to see why to postpone an -assault to a beleaguered city because _Mme. la Générale est accouchée_ -would be more absurd than to adjourn the hearing of a pressing lawsuit -because _Mme. la Jugesse_ would be _sur la paille_. The much graver and -truer objection lies less in the physical than in the mental and moral -inferiority of women. I use moral in its broadest sense. Women on an -average have little sense of justice, and hardly any sense whatever of -awarding to others a freedom for which they do not care themselves. The -course of all modern legislation is its tendency to make by-laws, -fretting and vexatious laws trenching unjustifiably on the personal -liberty of the individual. If women were admitted to political power -these laws would be multiplied indefinitely and incessantly. The -_infiniment petit_ would be the dominate factor in politics. Such -meddling legislation as the Sunday Closing Act in England, and the Maine -Liquor Laws and Carolina Permissive Bill in the United States would be -the joy and aim of the mass of female voters. Women cannot understand -that you can make no nation virtuous by act of parliament; they would -construct their acts of parliament on purpose to make people virtuous -whether they chose or not, and would not see that this would be a form -of tyranny as bad as any other. A few years ago a State in America (I -think it was Maine or Massachusetts) decreed that because a few -Pomeranian dogs were given to biting people, all Pomeranian dogs within -the State, ill and well, young and old, should on a certain date be -killed; and they were killed, two thousand odd in number. Now, this is -precisely the kind of legislation which women would establish in their -moments of panic; the disregard of individual rights, the injustice to -innocent animals and their owners, the invasion of private property -under the doctrinaire’s plea of the general good, would all commend -themselves to women in their hysterical hours, for women are more -tyrannical and more self-absorbed than men. - -Renan in his ‘Marc-Aurèle’ observes that the decline of the Roman Empire -was hastened, and even, in much, primarily brought about by the elements -of feebleness, introduced into it by the Christian sects’ admission of -women into the active and religious life of men. The woman-worship -springing from the adoration of the virgin-mother was at the root of the -emasculation and indifference to political and martial duties, which it -brought into the lives of men who ceased to be either bold soldiers or -devoted citizens. - -I do not think the moral and mental qualities of the average woman so -inferior to those of the average man as is conventionally supposed. The -average man is not an intellectual nor a noble being; neither is the -average woman. But there are certain solid qualities in the male -creature which are lacking from the female; such qualities as patience -and calmness in judgment, which are of infinite value, and in which the -female character is almost invariably deficient; a lack in her which -makes the prophecy of Dumas, that she will one day fill judicial and -forensic duties, a most alarming prospect, as alarming as the prediction -of Goldwin Smith that the negro population will eventually outnumber and -extinguish the Aryan race in the United States. - -There are men with women’s minds, women with men’s minds; masculine -genius may exist in a female farm; feminine inconsistency in a male -farm; but these are exceptions to the rule, and such exceptions are -exceedingly rare. - -The Conservative or patrician party in England advocates the admission -of women into politics for much the same motives as influenced the early -Christians; they believe that her influence will be universally -exercised to preserve the moral excellences of the body politic, the -sanctity of the home, the supremacy of religion, the cautiousness of -timid and wary legislators. The class of which the Conservatives are -always thinking as the recipients of female suffrage would possibly in -the main part do so. They would be persons of property and education, -and as such might be trusted to do nothing rash. But they would be -closely wedded to their prejudices. They would be narrow in all their -views. Their church would hold a large place in their affections, and -their legislation would be of the character which they now give to their -county society. Moreover, as I have said, the suffrage once given to -women, it could not be restricted to persons of property. The female -factory hand in her garret would assert that she has as much right to -and need of a voice as the female landowner, and in face of the fact -that the male factory hand and the male landowner have been placed on -the same footing in political equality, the country would be unable to -refute the argument. - -The most intelligent and most eloquent of all the advocates of female -suffrage is, as I have said, undoubtedly Dumas _fils_. No man can argue -a case more persuasively; nor is any man more completely wedded to one -side of an argument than he. Yet even he, her special pleader, in his -famous _Appel aux Femmes_, admits that she would bring to science the -scorn of reason, and the indifference to suffering which she has shown -in so many centuries in the hallucinations and martyrdoms of religion; -that she would throw herself into it with _audace et frénésie_; that she -would hold all torture of no account if it solved an enigma, and would -give herself to the beasts of the field, ‘not to prove that Jesus lived, -but to know if Darwin was right;’ and he passes on to the triumphant -prediction that in sixty years’ time the world will see the offspring of -men and female monkeys, of women and apes; though wherein this prospect -for the future is glorious it were hard to say. - -Stripped of that exaggeration which characterises all the arguments of a -writer famous for anomaly, antithesis and audacity, his prediction that -his favourite client Woman will bring into her pursuit of the mysteries -of science, the same sort of _folie furieuse_, which Blandina and -Agatha, and all the feminine devotees of the early years of Christianity -brought into religion, is a prophecy undoubtedly correct. She will bring -the same into politics, into legislation, if she ever obtain a -preponderant power in them. - -The most dangerous tendency in English political life is at this moment -the tendency to legislate _per saltum_: female legislation would -invariably be conducted _per saltum_. The grasshopper-bounds of Mr -Gladstone would be outdone by the kangaroo-leaps of the female -legislator when she moved at all. A ‘masterly inactivity’ would not be -understood by her; nor the profound good sense contained in the advice -which is variously attributed to Talleyrand, Melbourne and Palmerston, -‘When in doubt do nothing.’ There is the most mischievous desire in -modern politicians to pull everything about, merely to look as if they -were great reformers; to strew the ashes of the old order around them -long ere they have even settled the foundations of the new; they do not -consider the inevitable imperfection which must characterise all human -institutions; they do not remember that if the system, whether political -or social, works reasonably well, it should be supported, even if it be -not symmetrically perfect in theory. These faults are characteristic of -modern politicians, because modern politicians are for the most part no -longer men trained from their youth in the philosophy of government, but -opportunists who view politics as a field of self-advancement. Women -will bring into politics these same faults greatly exaggerated and not -balanced by that rough and ready common sense which characterises most -men who are not specialists or visionaries. Whether the female -legislator would imprison all people who do not go to church, or would -imprison all people who do not attend scientific lectures, the despotism -would be equal; and it is certain that she would desire to imprison -either one class or the other. - -Some writer has said, ‘I can as little understand why any one should -fast in Lent, as I can understand why others should object to their -fasting if it please them.’ But this would never be the attitude of the -female politician in regard to either the fasting or the feasting of -others. Sir Henry Thomson, in his admirable treatise on gastronomy, -remarks on the unwisdom of those who, because a certain food is -palatable and nutritious to themselves, recommend it to every one they -know, making no account of the difference in constitution and digestion -of different persons. There exists a similar difference in mind and -character, for which women would never make any allowance when forcing -on the world in general their political or social nostrums. As we again -and again see the woman expecting from her son the purity of manners of -a maiden, and making no account, because she ignores them entirely, of -the imperious necessities of sex, so we should see her in matters of -national or universal import similarly disregarding or ignoring all -facts of which she chose to take no note. She would increase and -intensify the present despotisms and weaknesses of political life, and -she would put nothing in their place, for she would have lost her own -originality and charm. Science, indeed, presumes that in educating her -it would strengthen her reasoning powers and widen her mind into the -acceptance of true liberty. But what proof is there that science would -do anything of that sort? It has never yet showed any true liberality -itself. Nothing can exceed the arrogance and the despotism of its own -demands and pretensions, the immensity of its self-admiration, the -tyrannical character of its exactions. - -Dumas observes that happy women will not care for the suffrage because -they are happy; he might have added, that brilliant women will not, -because they have means of influencing men to any side and to any extent -they choose without it. Who, then, will care to exercise it? All the -unhappy women, all the fretful _déclassées_, all the thousands or tens -of thousands of spinsters who know as much or as little of human nature -as they do of political economy. What will such as these bring into -political life? They can bring nothing except their own crotches, their -own weakness, their own hysterical agitations. Happy women are fond of -men, but unhappy women hate them. The legislation voted for by unhappy -women would be as much against men, and all true liberty, as Dumas -himself is against them and it. Men at present legislate for women with -remarkable fairness; but women would never legislate for men with -anything approaching fairness, and as the numerical preponderance of -votes would soon be on the female side, if female electors were once -accepted, the prospect is alarming to all lovers of true freedom. - -The woman is the enemy of freedom. Give her power and she is at once -despotic, whether she be called Elizabeth Tudor or Theroigne de -Mirecourt, whether she be a beneficent or a malevolent ruler, whether -she be a sovereign or a revolutionist. The enormous pretensions to the -monopoly of a man’s life which women put forward in marriage, are born -of the desire to tyrannise. The rage and amazement displayed by the -woman when a man, whether her lover or her husband, is inconstant to -her, comes from that tenacity over the man as a property which wholly -blinds her to her own faults or lack of charm and power to keep him. A -very clever woman never blames a man for inconstancy to her: she may -perhaps blame herself. Women as a rule attach far too great a value to -themselves; the woman imagines herself necessary to the man because the -man is necessary to her. Hence that eternal antagonism of the woman -against the man which is one of the saddest things in human nature. -Every writer like Dumas, who does his best to increase this antagonism, -commits a great crime. The happiness of the human race lies in the -good-will existing between men and women. This good-will cannot exist so -long as women have the inflated idea of their own value which they now -possess largely in Europe and still more largely in America. A virtuous -woman may be above rubies, has said Solomon, but this depends very much -on the quality of the virtue; and the idea prevailing among women that -they are valuable, admirable and almost divine, merely because they are -women, is one of the most mischievous fallacies born of human vanity, -and accepted without analysis. - -It has been passed, like many another fallacy, from generation to -generation, and the enormous power of evil which lies in the female sex -has been underestimated or conventionally disregarded for the sake of a -poetic effect. The seducer is continually held up for condemnation, but -the temptress is seldom remembered. It is common to write of women as -the victims of men, and it is forgotten how many men are the victims in -their earliest youth of women. Even in marriage the woman, by her -infidelity, can inflict the most poignant, the most torturing dishonour -on the man; the man’s infidelity does not in the least touch the honour -of the woman. She can never be in doubt as to the fact of her children -being her own; but he may be perpetually tortured by such a doubt, nay, -may be compelled through lack of proof to give his name and shelter to -his offspring when he is morally convinced that they are not his. The -woman can bring shame into a great race as the man can never do, and -ofttimes brings it with impunity. In marriage, moreover, the influence -of the woman, whatever popular prejudices plead to the contrary, is -constantly belittling and injurious to the intelligence of the man. How -many great artists since the days of Andrea del Sarto have cursed the -woman who has made them barter their heritage of genius for the -‘pottage’ of worldly affluence? How much, how often, and how pitilessly -have the petty affairs, the personal greeds, the unsympathetic and -low-toned character of the woman he has unfortunately wedded, put lead -on the winged feet of the man of genius, and made him leave the Muses -for the god of barter beloved of the common people in the market-place? -Not infrequently what is called with pious praise a good woman, -blameless in her own conduct and devoted to what she conceives to be her -duties, has been more fatal to the originality, the integrity, and the -intellectual brilliancy of a man than the worst courtesan could have -been. The injury which women have done the minds of men may fairly be -set off against those social and physical injuries which men are said by -M. Dumas to inflict so ruthlessly on women. - -If outside monogamous marriage the woman suffers from the man, within it -man suffers from the woman. It is doubtful if but for the obligation to -accept it, which is entailed by property, and the desire for legitimate -heirs, one man in a hundred of the richer classes would consent to -marry. Whenever Socialism succeeds in abolishing property, monogamy will -be destroyed with it perforce. - -In the lower strata of society the conjugal association is made on more -equal terms: both work hard and both frequently come to blows. The poor -man loses less by marriage than the rich man, for he has his comforts, -his food and his clothes looked after gratis, but the poor woman gains -very little indeed by it; and if she got a hearing in the political -world, she would probably brawl against it, or, which is still more -likely, she would do worse and insist on marriage laws which should -restrict the personal freedom of the man as severely and as tyrannically -as the Sabbath observance laws do in Scotland, and as the Puritan -exactions did in the early years of American colonisation. - -The net result of the entrance of the woman into the political arena can -never be for the happiness of humanity. - -‘Prevant leur revanche de l’immobilité à laquelle on les a condamnées -elles vont courrir par n’importe quels chemins à côté de l’homme, devant -lui si elles peuvent, contre lui s’il le faut à la conquête d’un nouveau -monde. En matière de sensation la femme est l’extrême, l’excès, de -l’homme.’ Dumas recognises the inevitable hostility which will be -begotten between the sexes if they war in the same public arena; but he -passes over it. - -If female suffrage become law anywhere, it must be given to all women -who have not rendered themselves ineligible for it by criminality. The -result will scarcely be other than the emasculation and the confusion of -the whole world of politics. The ideal woman is, we know, the type of -heroism, fortitude, wisdom, sweetness and light; but even the ideal -woman is not always distinguished by breadth of thought, and it is here -a question not of the ideal woman at all, but of the millions of -ordinary women who have as little of the sage in them as of the angel. -Very few women are capable of being the sympathetic mistress of a great -man, or the ennobling mother of a child of genius. Most women are the -drag on the wheel of the higher aspirations, to the nobler impulses, to -the more original and unconventional opinions, of the men whom they -influence. The prospect of their increased ascendency over national -movements is very ominous. Is the mass of male humanity ready to accept -it? - -Women will not find happiness in hostility to men even if they obtain a -victory in it, which is very doubtful. Women of genius have never hated -men: they have perhaps liked them too well. To the woman of genius love -may not be the sole thing on earth, as it is to Gretchen; it is only one -amongst the many emotions, charms and delights of life; but she never -denies its attractions, its consolation, its supreme ecstasy, its -exquisite sympathies. Heloise and Aspasia can love better than Penelope. - -Who, then, will become those enemies of men to whom Dumas looks for the -emancipation of the weaker sex? All the _délaissées_, all the -_déclassées_, all the discontented, jaded, unloved, embittered women in -the world, all those, and their number is legion, who have not genius or -loveliness, fortune or power, the wisdom to be mute or the sorcery to -charm; women restless, feverish, envious, irritable, embittered, whose -time hangs heavy on their hands and whose brains seethe under the froth -of ill-assorted and ill-assimilated knowledge. - -‘Quarry the granite rock with razors,’ wrote John Newman, ‘or moor the -vessel with a thread of silk; then may you hope, with such keen and -delicate instruments as human knowledge and human understanding, to -contend against these giants, the passions and the pride of man;’—or -against the difference and the influence of sex. - -I know not why women should wish or clamour at once to resemble and to -quarrel with man. The attitude is an unnatural one; it is sterile, not -only physically but mentally. It is true that the prejudices and -conventionalities of society, and the fictions of monogamy have stranded -a vast number of women, undistinguished and unhappy, with no career and -no interests, who would imagine themselves disgraced if they enjoyed the -natural affections of life outside that pale of propriety which the -conventions of society have created. These are the women who would care -for political power and would be allowed to exercise it. What could the -world gain from such as these? What would it not lose of the small -modicum of freedom, of contentment, and of wisdom which it already -possesses? - -To most women success is measured by the balance at the bank, by the -applause of the hour, and nothing is esteemed which has not received the -hall-mark of the world’s approval. There are exceptions, no doubt; but -they have been and are, I think, fewer than the advocates of female -suffrage would have us believe. Men too often are mere _moutons de -Panurge_, but women are so almost invariably. The Arab who weeps when a -female child is born to him is perhaps more correct in his measurement -of the sex than the American who is prepared to make her the spoiled and -wayward sovereign of his household. - -I have previously used the words ‘mental and moral inferiority’; it is -perhaps necessary to explain them. By mental inferiority I do not mean -that the average women might not, if educated to it, learn as much -mathematics or as much metaphysics as the ordinary man. I do not deny -that Girton may produce senior wranglers or physiologists in time to -come; it may do so. But the female mind has a radical weakness which is -often also its peculiar charm; it is intensely subjective, it is only -reluctantly forced to be impersonal, and it has the strongest possible -tendency to tyranny, as I have said before. In public morality, also, -the female mind is unconsciously unscrupulous; it is seldom very frank -or honest, and it would burn down a temple to warm its own pannikin. -Women of perfect honesty of intentions and antecedents will adopt a -dishonest course, if they think it will serve an aim or a person they -care for, with a headlong and cynical completeness which leaves men far -behind it. In intrigue a man will often have scruples which the woman -brushes aside as carelessly as if they were cobwebs, if once her -passions or her jealousies are ardently involved. There is not much -veracity anywhere in human nature, but it may always be roughly -calculated that the man will be more truthful than the woman, in -ninety-nine cases out of a hundred; his judgments will be less coloured -by personal wishes and emotions, and his instincts towards justice will -be straighter and less mobile than hers. Were women admitted into public -life, bribery would become a still greater factor in that life than it -now is, which is needless. All the world over, what is wanted for the -health of the nations is the moral purification of politics, the -elimination of venal and personal views, the disinterested advocacy and -adoption of broad, just and magnanimous principles of action. Can it be -said that the entry of women into politics would have this effect? He -must be a sanguine man who can think that it would, and he must have but -little knowledge of women. - -_On a les défauts de ses qualités._ This is one of the most profound -axioms ever evolved out of a study of human nature. And all which -constitutes the charm of women, mutability, caprice, impressionability, -power of headlong self-abandonment, mingled with intense subjectiveness -and self-engrossment, would all make of women an inferior but of a most -dangerous political force. Where Mr Gladstone has sent out troops and -recalled them a dozen times, she, with similar but still greater -oscillations of purpose, would send them out and recall them five -hundred times. The _Souvent femme varie_ of Francois the First is true -to all time. But in all her variations it is the Sejanus, the Orloff, -the Biron, the Bothwell of the moment, whom she would wade through seas -of blood to please. This makes at once her dangerousness and her charm. - -As scientists look forward to the time when every man will be bald from -boyhood, thus having outgrown the last likeness to the beasts that -perish, so enthusiasts for female suffrage look forward to a time when -woman will have shed all her fair follies and rectified all her amusing -inconsistencies. What will she be like then? Very unlovely it may safely -be predicted, as unlovely as the men without hair; very mischievous for -evil, it may also be deemed certain. - -A French physiologist, who lectured in Russia not very long ago, was -amazed at the howls of impatience and disdain which was aroused in the -female students amongst his audience in Moscow by his simple statement -that the claims of the arts must not be wholly lost sight of in the -demands and inquiries of science. They would not tolerate even the -mention of the arts; in their fanaticism they would only worship one -God. The youths were willing to award a place to art; the maidens would -hear of nothing but science. ‘_Une grande sécheresse de cœur domine la -femme qui se donne à la Science_;’ and with this dryness of the soul -comes an unmerciful and intolerant disposition to tyranny over the minds -of others. - -It cannot be denied that the quality which in women bestows most -happiness on those around them, is that which is called in French and -has no exact descriptive word in English, _gaîte de cœur_. Not frivolous -unusefulness, or passion for diversion and excitement, but a sweet and -happy spirit, finding pleasure in small things and great, and shedding a -light like that of Moore’s wild freshness of morning on the beaten -tracks of life. Where will this pleasant gaiety and smiling radiance go -when, harassed, heated, and blown by the bitter winds of strife, the -woman seeks to outshriek the man on political platforms, or when with -blood-stained hands she bends over the torture-trough of the -physiological laboratory? - -The humanities do not harden a woman: erudition may leave her loveliness -and grace of form and mind; though as proficient a Greek and Latin -scholar as any of the learned Italian women of the Renaissance, yet she -may be the joy of her home and the angel of the poor. A love of -learning, of art, of nature, keeps long young the heart in which it has -a place. But the noisy conflicts of the polling-booths and the pitiless -cruelties of the laboratories will not do so. There is in every woman, -even in the best woman, a sleeping potentiality for crime, a curious -possibility of fiendish evil. Even her maternal love is dangerously near -an insane ferocity, which at times breaks out in infanticide or -child-murder. Everything which tends to efface in her gentler and softer -instincts tends to make of her a worse curse to the world than any man -has ever been. If, indeed, in the centuries to come she should develop -into the foe of man, which Dumas _fils_ wishes her to become, it is by -no means improbable that men, in sheer self-defence, will be compelled -to turn on her and chain her down into the impotency of servitude once -more. - -If she once leave the power which nature has given her over her lovers, -her friends, her sons, to become the opponent, the jealous rival and the -acrid enemy of men, then men, it may be with surety predicted, will not -long keep the gloves on as they fight with her, but with the brutality -which is natural to the male animal and which is only curbed, not -effaced, by the graceful hypocrisies of society and of courtship, will -with his closed fists send her down into that lower place of _la femelle -de l’homme_, from which it has been the effort and the boast of -Christianity and of civilisation to raise her. Woman can never truly -conquer man, except by those irresistible weapons which the Queen of the -Amazons leaned on in her strife with Alexander. - -Man has, I repeat, been very fair in his dealings with women, as far as -legislation goes; he could easily have kept her from all time to the -harem, and it has been a proof of his fairness, if not of his wisdom, -that he has not done so. I have but little doubt but that, before long, -he will cede to her clamour, and let her seat herself beside him, or -opposite to him, on the benches of his representative houses. When he -does, he will, I think, regret the loss of the harem. - -There is a lax and perilous inclination in the mass of mankind, in these -latter days of the century, to give anything which is much asked for. - - ‘To yield to clamour and to pallid fears, - What wisdom, temperance and truth deny;’ - -to let the reins go, and the steeds, which draw the chariot of national -fate, gallop headlong, whither they will, downhill if they choose. The -pessimism prevalent in the classes which think, lies at the root of -their indifference to change, and their apathy and indolence before -fresh demands. Men who do think at all, see how unsatisfactory all -things are, how unreal all religions, how fictitious the bond of -marriage, how mutable the laws of property, how appalling the future of -the world, when there will not be even standing-room upon it for all the -billions of peoples begotten. And they are, therefore, in that mood -which makes them willing to try any new thing, even as men at death’s -door languidly affirm their despairing readiness to try any nostrum or -panacea tendered to them. - -Woman may, will, very possibly, snatch from the nerveless hand of the -sick man those legal and legislative rights which she covets. The -political movements of modern times have been always in the direction of -giving unlimited power to blind and unmeasured masses, whose use of that -which is thus rashly given them the boldest prophet dare not predict. -Such movement will probably give political power to women. - -I confess that I, for one, dread the day which shall see this further -development of that crude and restless character of the nineteenth -century, which, with sublime self-contentment and self-conceit, it has -presumed to call Progress. - - - - - VULGARITY - - -If the present age were less of a hypocrite than it is, probably its -conscience would compel it to acknowledge that vulgarity is excessively -common in it; more common than in any preceding time, despite its very -bountiful assumptions of good taste and generalised education. - -Vulgarity is almost a modern vice; it is doubtful whether classic ages -knew it at all, except in that sense in which it must be said that even -Socrates was vulgar, _i.e._, inquisitiveness, and in that other sense of -love of display to which the tailless dog of Alkibiades was a mournful -victim. We are aware that Alkibiades said he cut off his dog’s tail and -ears to give the Athenians something to talk of, that they might not -gossip about what else he was doing. But though gossip was no doubt rife -in Athens, still, vulgarity in its worst sense, that is, in the struggle -to seem what the struggler is not, could have had no existence in times -when every man’s place was marked out for him, and the lines of -demarcation could not be overstepped. Vulgarity began when the freedman -began to give himself airs, and strut and talk as though he had been a -porphyrogenitus; and this pretension was only possible in a decadence. - -There may be a vast vulgarity of soul with an admirable polish of -manners, and there may be a vast vulgarity of manner with a generous -delicacy of soul. But, in this life, we are usually compelled to go by -appearances, and we can seldom see beyond them, except in the cases of -those few dear to, and intimate with us. We must be pardoned if we judge -by the externals which are palpable to us and do not divine the virtues -hidden beneath them. - -An essayist has recently defined good manners as courtesy and -truthfulness. Now this is simply nonsense. A person may be full of -kindly courtesies, and never utter the shadow of an untruth, and yet he -may have red-hot hands, a strident voice, an insupportable manner, -dropped aspirates, and a horribly gross joviality, which make him the -vulgarest of the vulgar. It is often said that a perfect Christian is a -perfect gentleman, but this also is a very doubtful postulate. The good -Christian may ‘love his neighbour as himself,’ and yet he may offend his -ear with a cockney accent and sit down to his table with unwashed hands. -‘Manners make the man,’ is an old copy-book adage, and is not quiet true -either: but it is certain that, without good manners, the virtues of a -saint may be more offensive, by far, to society than the vices of a -sinner. It is a mistake to confuse moral qualities with the social -qualities which come from culture and from breeding. - -I have said that Socrates must have been in a certain degree vulgar, -because he was so abominably inquisitive. For surely all interrogation -is vulgar? When strangers visit us, we can at once tell whether they are -ill-bred or high-bred persons by the mere fact of whether they do, or do -not, ask us questions. Even in intimacy, much interrogation is a -vulgarity; it may be taken for granted that your friend will tell you -what he wishes you to know. Here and there when a question seems -necessary, if silence would imply coldness and indifference, then must -it be put with the utmost delicacy and without any kind of semblance of -its being considered a demand which must be answered. All interrogation -for purposes of curiosity is vulgar, curiosity itself being so vulgar; -and even the plea of friendship or of love cannot be pleaded in -extenuation of it. But if love and friendship be pardoned their -inquisitiveness, the anxiety of the general public to have their -curiosity satisfied as to the habits, ways and scandals of those who are -conspicuous in any way, is mere vulgar intrusiveness, which the ‘society -newspapers,’ as they are called, do, in all countries, feed to a most -pernicious degree. Private life has no longer any door that it can shut -and bolt against the intrusion of the crowd. Whether a royal prince has -quarrelled with his wife, or a country mayoress has quarelled with a -house-maid, the press, large or small, metropolitan or provincial, -serves up the story to the rapacious curiosity of the world-wide, or the -merely local public. This intrusion on personal and wholly private -matters is an evil which increases every day; it is a twofold evil, for -it is alike a curse to those whose privacy it poisons, and a curse to -those whose debased appetites it feeds. It would be wholly impossible, -in an age which was not vulgar, for those journals which live on -personalities to find a public. They are created by the greed of the -multitude which calls for them. It is useless to blame the proprietors -and editors who live on them; the true culprits are the readers—the -legions of readers—who relish and patronise them, and without whose -support such carrion flies could not live out a summer. - -‘It is so easy to talk about people’ is the excuse constantly made by -those who are reproved for gossiping about others who are not even, -perhaps, their personal acquaintances. Yes, it is very easy; the most -mindless creature can do it; the asp, be he ever so small, can sting the -hero, and perchance can slay him; but gossip of a malicious kind is -intensely vulgar, and to none but the vulgar should it be welcome, even -if their vulgarity be such as is hidden under a cloak of good manners. -It is true that there is a sort of spurious wit which springs out of -calumny, and which is _malgré nous_ too often diverting to the best of -us, and this sort of personality has a kind of contagious attraction -which is apt to grow even on those who loathe it, much as absinthe does. -But it is none the less vulgar, and vulgarises the mind which admits its -charm, as absinthe slowly eats up the vitality and the digestive powers -of those who yield to its attraction. Were there no vulgarity, it may be -said that there would be no scandal; for scandal is born of that marked -desire to think ill of others, and that restless inquisitiveness into -affairs that do not concern us, which is pre-eminently vulgar. When we -talk of the follies of our friends, or the backslidings of our -acquaintances, in a duchess’s boudoir, we are every whit as vulgar as -the fishwives or the village dames jabbering of the sins of Jack and -Jill in any ale-house. The roots of the vulgarity are the -same—inquisitiveness and idleness. All personalities are vulgar; and -whether personalities are used as the base weapons to turn an argument, -or as the equally base bait wherewith to make the fortunes of a -newspaper, they are alike offensive and unpardonable. The best -characteristic of the best society would be that they should be -absolutely forbidden in it. - -Another reason why the present age is more vulgar than any preceding it, -may also be found in the fact that, in it pretension is infinitely more -abundant, because infinitely more successful than it ever was before. An -autocratic aristocracy, or a perfect equality, would equally make -pretension impossible. But, at the present time, aristocracy is without -power, and equality has no existence outside the dreams of Utopians. The -result is, that the whole vast mass of humanity, uncontrolled, can -struggle, and push, and strive, and sweat, and exhaust itself, to appear -something that it is not, and all repose and calm and dignity, which are -the foes of vulgarity, are destroyed. - -Essayists have often attempted to define high breeding; but it remains -indefinable. Its incomparable charm, its perfect ease, its dignity which -is never asserted, yet which the most obtuse can always feel is in -reserve, its very manner of performing all the trifling acts of social -usage and obligation, are beyond definition. They are too delicate and -too subtle for the harshness of classification. The courtier of the old -story who, when told by Louis Quatorze to go first, went first without -protest, was a high-bred gentleman. Charles the First, when he kept his -patience and his peace under the insults of his trial at Westminster, -was one also. Mme. du Barry screams and sobs at the foot of the -guillotine; Marie Antoinette is calm. - -True, I once knew a perfectly well-bred person who yet could neither -read nor write. I can see her now in her little cottage in the -Derbyshire woods, on the brown, flashing water of the Derwent River -(Darron, as the people of Derbyshire call it), a fair, neat, stout, old -woman with a round face and a clean mob cap. She had been a factory girl -in her youth (indeed, all her womanhood had worked at the cotton mill on -the river), and now was too old to do anything except to keep her -one-roomed cottage, with its tall lancet windows, its peaked red roof, -and its sweet-smelling garden, with its high elder hedge, as neat and -fresh and clean as human hands could make them. Dear old Mary! with her -racy, Chaucerian English, and her happy, cheerful temper, and her silver -spectacles, which some of the ‘gentry’ had given her, and her big Bible -on the little round table, and the black kettle boiling in the wide -fireplace, and her casements wide open to the nodding moss-roses and the -sweet-brier boughs! Dear old Mary! she was a bit of Shakespeare’s -England, of Milton’s England, of Spenser’s England, and the memory of -her, and of her cottage by the brown, bright river often comes back to -me across the width of years. She was a perfectly well-bred person; she -made one welcome to her little home with simple, perfect courtesy, -without flutter, or fuss, or any effort of any sort; she had neither -envy nor servility; grateful for all kindness, she never either abused -the ‘gentry’ or flattered them; and her admirable manner never varied to -the peddler at her door or to the squire of her village; would never -have varied, I am sure, if the queen of her country had crossed her -door-step. For she had the repose of contentment, of simplicity, and of -that self-respect which can never exist where envy and effort are. She -could neither read nor write; she scrubbed and washed and worked for -herself; she had never left that one little green nook of Derbyshire, or -seen other roads than the steep shady highway which went up to the pine -woods behind her house; but she was a perfectly well-bred woman, born of -a time calmer, broader, wiser, more generous than ours. - -A few miles off in the valley, where she never by any chance went, the -excursion trains used to vomit forth, at Easter and in Whitsun week, -throngs of the mill hands of the period, cads and their flames, tawdry, -blowzy, noisy, drunken; the women with dress that aped ‘the fashion,’ -and pyramids of artificial flowers on their heads; the men as grotesque -and hideous in their own way; tearing through woods and fields like -swarms of devastating locusts, and dragging the fern and hawthorn boughs -they had torn down in the dust, ending the lovely spring day in -pot-houses, drinking gin and bitters, or heavy ales by the quart, and -tumbling pell-mell into the night train, roaring music-hall choruses; -sodden, tipsy, yelling, loathsome creatures, such as make the monkey -look a king, and the newt seem an angel beside humanity—exact semblance -and emblem of the vulgarity of the age. - -Far away from those green hills and vales of Derbyshire I pass to-day in -Tuscany a little wine-house built this year; it has been run up in a few -months by a speculative builder; it has its name and purpose gaudily -sprawling in letters two feet long across its front; it has bright -pistachio shutters and a slate roof with no eaves; it has a dusty -gravelled space in front of it; it looks tawdry, stingy, pretentious, -meagre, squalid, fine, all in one. A little way off it is another -wine-house, built somewhere about the sixteenth century; it is made of -solid grey stone; it has a roof of brown tiles, with overhanging eaves -like a broad-leafed hat drawn down to shade a modest countenance; it has -deep arched windows, with some carved stone around and above them; it -has an outside stairway in stone and some ivy creeping about it; it has -grass before it and some cherry and peach trees; the only sign of its -calling is the bough hung above the doorway. The two wine-houses are, -methinks, most apt examples of the sobriety and beauty which our -forefathers put into the humblest things of life and the flimsy -tawdriness and unendurable hideousness which the present age displays in -all it produces. I have not a doubt that the one under the cherry tree, -with its bough for a sign, and its deep casements, and its clean, aged -look, will be soon deserted by the majority of the carters and fruit -growers and river fishermen who pass this way, in favour of its vulgar -rival, where I am quite sure the wines will be watered tenfold and the -artichokes fried in rancid oil; its patrons will eat and drink ill, but -they will go to the new one, I doubt not, all of them, except a few old -men, who will cling to the habit of their youth. Very possibly those who -own the old one will feel compelled to adapt themselves to the progress -of the age; will cut the eaves off their roof, hew down their fruit -trees, whitewash their grey stone, and turn their fine old windows into -glass doors with pistachio blinds—and still it will not equal its rival -in the eyes of the carters and fishers and gardeners, since it was not -made yesterday! Neither its owners nor its customers can scarcely be -expected to be wiser than are all the municipal counsellors of Europe. - -Perfect simplicity is the antithesis of vulgarity, and simplicity is the -quality which modern life is most calculated to destroy. The whole -tendency of modern education is to create an intense self-consciousness; -and whoever is self-conscious has lost the charm of simplicity, and has -already become vulgar in a manner. The most high-bred persons are those -in whom we find a perfect naturalness, an entire absence of -self-consciousness. The whole influence of modern education is to -concentrate the mind of the child on itself; as it grows up this egoism -becomes confirmed; you have at once an individual both self-absorbed and -affected, both hard towards others and vain of itself. - -When pretension was less possible, vulgarity was less visible, because -its chief root did not exist. When the French nobility, in the time of -Louis Quatorze, began to _engraisser leurs terres_ with the ill-acquired -fortunes of farmer-generals’ daughters, their manners began to -deteriorate and their courtesy began to be no more than an empty shell -filled with rottenness. They were not yet vulgar in their manners, but -vulgarity had begun to taint their minds and their race, and their -_mésalliances_ did not have the power to save them from the scaffold. -Cowardice is always vulgar, and the present age is pre-eminently -cowardly; full of egotistic nervousness and unconcealed fear of all -those physical dangers to which science has told all men they are -liable. Pasteur is its god, and the microbe its Mephistopheles. A French -writer defined it, the other day, as the age of the ‘infinitely little.’ -It might be also defined as the age of absorbing self-consciousness. It -is eternally placing itself in innumerable attitudes to pose before the -camera of a photographer; the old, the ugly, the obscure, the deformed, -delight in multiplying their likenesses on cardboard, even more than do -the young, the beautiful, the famous, and the well-made. All the -resources of invention are taxed to reproduce effigies of persons who -have not a good feature in their faces or a correct line in their limbs, -and all the resources of science are solicited to keep breath in the -bodies of people who had better never have lived at all. Cymon grins -before a camera as self-satisfied as though he were Adonis, and Demos is -told that he is the one sacred offspring of the gods to which all -creation is freely sacrificed. Out of this self-worship springs a -hideous, a blatant vulgarity, which is more likely to increase than to -diminish. Exaggeration of our own value is one of the most offensive of -all the forms of vulgarity, and science has much to answer for in its -present pompous and sycophantic attitude before the importance and the -excellence of humanity. Humanity gets drunk on such intoxicating -flattery of itself. - -Remark how even what is called the ‘best’ society sins as these do who -forsake the grey stone house for the slate-roofed and stuccoed one. -There has been an endless outcry about good taste in the last score of -years. But where is it to be really found? Not in the crowds who rush -all over the world by steam, nor in those who dwell in modern cities. -Good taste cannot be gregarious. Good taste cannot endure a square box -to live in, however the square box may be coloured. That the modern poet -can reside in Westbourne Grove, and the modern painter in Cromwell Road, -is enough to set the hair of all the Muses on end. If Carlyle had lived -at Concord, like Emerson, how much calmer and wiser thought, how much -less jaundiced raving, would the world have had from him! That is to -say, if he would have had the soul to feel the green and fragrant -tranquillity of Concord, which is doubtful. Cities may do good to the -minds of men by the friction of opinions found in them, but life spent -only in cities under their present conditions is debasing and -pernicious, for those conditions are essentially and hopelessly vulgar. - -If the soul of Shelley in the body of Sardanapalus, with the riches of -Crœsus, could now dwell in Paris, London, or New York, it is doubtful -whether he would be able to resist the pressure of the social forces -round him and strike out any new forms of pleasure or festivity. All -that he would be able to do would, perhaps, be to give better dinners -than other people. The forms of entertainment in them are monotonous, -and trivial where they are not coarse. When a man colossally rich, and -therefore boundlessly powerful, appears, what new thing does he -originate? What fresh grace does he add to society; what imagination -does he bring into his efforts to amuse the world? None; absolutely -none. He may have more gold plate than other people; he may have more -powdered footmen about his hall; he may have rosewood mangers for his -stables; but he has no invention, no brilliancy, no independence of -tradition; he will follow all the old worn ways of what is called -pleasure, and he will ask crowds to push and perspire on his staircases, -and will conceive that he has amused the world. - -When one reflects on the immense possibilities of an enormously rich -man, or a very great prince, and sees all the _banalité_, the -repetition, and the utter lack of any imagination, in all that these -rich men and these great princes do, one is forced to conclude that the -vulgarity of the world at large has been too much for them, and that -they can no more struggle against it than a rhinoceros against a -quagmire; his very weight serves to make the poor giant sink deeper and -quicker into the slime. - -From his birth to his death it is hard indeed for any man, even the -greatest, to escape the vulgarity of the world around him. Scarcely is -he born than the world seizes him, to make him absurd with the fussy -conventionalities of the baptismal ceremony, and, after clogging his -steps, and clinging to him throughout his whole existence, vulgarity -will seize on his dead body and make even that grotesque with the low -comedy of its funeral rites. Had Victor Hugo not possessed very real -qualities of greatness in him he would have been made ridiculous forever -by the farce of the burial which Paris intended as an honour to him. - -All ceremonies of life which ought to be characterised by simplicity and -dignity, vulgarity has marked and seized for its own. What can be more -vulgar than the marriage ceremony in what are called civilised -countries? What can more completely take away all delicacy, sanctity, -privacy and poetry from love than these crowds, this parade, these -coarse exhibitions, this public advertisement of what should be hidden -away in silence and in sacred solitude? To see a marriage at the -Madeleine or St Philippe du Roule, or St George’s, Hanover Square, or -any other great church in any great city of the world, is to see the -vulgarity of modern life at its height. The rape of the Sabines, or the -rough bridal still in favour with the Turcomans and Tartars, is modesty -and beauty beside the fashionable wedding of the nineteenth century, or -the grotesque commonplace of civil marriage. Catullus would not have -written ‘O Hymen Hymenæ!’ if he had been taken to contemplate the -thousand and one rare petticoats of a modern trousseau, or the -tricolored scarf of a continental mayor, or the chairs and tables of a -registry office in England or America. - -Modern habit has contrived to dwarf and to vulgarise everything, from -the highest passions to the simplest actions; and its chains are so -strong that the king in his palace and the philosopher in his study -cannot keep altogether free of them. - -Why has it done so? Presumably because this vulgarity is acceptable and -agreeable to the majority. In modern life the majority, however blatant, -ignorant or incapable, gives the law, and the _âmes d’elite_ have, being -few in number, no power to oppose to the flood of coarse commonplace, -with which they are surrounded and overwhelmed. Plutocracy is everywhere -replacing aristocracy, and has its arrogance without its elegance. The -tendency of the age is not towards the equalising of fortunes, despite -the boasts of modern liberalism; it is rather towards the creation of -enormous individual fortunes, rapidly acquired and lying in an -indigested mass on the stomach of Humanity. It is not the possessors of -these riches who will purify the world from vulgarity. Vulgarity is, on -the contrary, likely to live, and multiply, and increase in power and in -extent. Haste is one of its parents, and pretension the other. Hurry can -never be either gracious or graceful, and the effort to appear what we -are not is the deadliest foe to peace and to personal dignity. - - ‘Dans les anciennes sociétés l’aristocracie de l’argent était - contrepesée par l’aristocracie de la naissance, l’aristocracie de - l’esprit, et l’aristocracie du cœur. Mais nous, en abandonnant - jusqu’au souvenir même de ces distinctions, nous n’avons laissé - subsister que celles que la fortune peut mettre entre les hommes.... - Dans les anciennes sociétés la fortune comme la noblesse représentait - quelque chose d’autre, si je puis ainsi dire, et de plus qu’elle-même. - Elle était vraiment une force sociale parcequ’elle était une force - morale. On s’enrichssiait honêtement: de telle sorte que la richesse - représentait non-seulement, comme je crois que disent les économistes, - le travail accumulé de trois ou quatre générations, mais encore toutes - les vertus modestes qui perpétuent l’amour du travail dans une même - famille, et querque chose enfin de plus haut, de plus noble, de plus - rare que lout cela: le sacrifice de l’égoïsme à l’intérèt, la - considération, la dignité du nom. Il n’y a plus d’effort, il n’y a - même pas de travail, à l’origine d’un grand nombre de ces nouvelles - fortunes, et l’on peut se demander s’il y a, seulement de - l’intelligence. Mais, en revanche, il y a de l’audace, et surtout - cette conviction que la richesse n’a pas de juges mais seulement des - envieux et des adorateurs. C’est ce qui fait aujourd’hui l’immoralité - toute particulière et toute nouvelle de cette adoration que nous - professons publiquement pour lui. Le temps approche où il ne sera pas - fâcheux, mais honteux, d’être pauvre.’ - -These words of the celebrated French critic, Brunetière, written -_apropos_ of _La France Juive_, are essentially true, even if truth is -in them somewhat exaggerated, for in the middle ages riches were often -acquired by violence, or pandering to vice in high places. The modern -worship of riches _per se_ is a vulgarity, and as he has said, it even -amounts to a crime. - -Such opinions as his are opposed to the temper of the age; are called -reactionary, old-fashioned and exclusive; but there is a great truth in -them. If the edge were not rubbed off of personal dignity, if the bloom -were not brushed off of good taste, and the appreciation of privacy and -_recueillement_ greatly weakened, all the personalities of the press and -of society would never have been endured or permitted to attain the -growth which they have attained. The faults of an age are begotten and -borne out of itself; it suffers from what it creates. One looks in vain, -in this age, for any indication of any new revolt against the bond of -vulgarity, or return to more delicate, more dignified, more reserved -manners of life. If socialism should have its way with the world (which -is probable), it will not only be vulgar, it will be sordid; all -loveliness will perish; and, with all ambition forbidden, heroism and -greatness will be things unknown, and genius a crime against the -divinity of the Eternal Mediocre. The socialism of Bakounine, of Marx, -of Krapotkine, of Tolstoï, is the dreariest and dullest of all earthly -things—an Utopia without an idea, a level as blank and hopeless as the -dust plains of a Russian summer. It may be a vision, dreary as it is, -which will one day be realised. There is hourly growing in the world a -dull and sullen antagonism against all superiority, all pre-eminent -excellence, whether of intellect, birth or manner; and this jealousy has -the germs in it of that universal war on superiority which will be -necessary to bring about the triumph of socialism. At present, society -is stronger than the socialists; is stronger in Germany, in America, in -Italy, in Russia, even in France; but how much longer it will have this -superior strength who can say? Socialism being founded, not on love, as -it pretends, but on hatred—hatred of superiority—appeals to a malignant -instinct in human nature, in the mediocrity of human nature, which is -likely to increase as the vast and terrible increase of population makes -the struggle of existence more close and more desperate. Socialism will -very possibly ravage and lay waste the earth like a hydra-headed Attila; -but there will be nothing to be hoped for from it in aid of the graces, -the charms, or the dignity of life. Were riches more careful of these, -they would hold their own better in the contest with socialism. Were -society more elegant, more self-respecting, more intelligent, more -distinguished, it would give its defenders much more reason and strength -to plead in favour of its preservation. - -But society is on the whole both stupid and vulgar. It scarcely knows -the good from the bad in anything. If a fashion is set, it follows the -fashion sheepishly, without knowing why it does so. It has neither -genuine conscience, nor genuine taste. It will stone A. for what it -admires in B., and will crucify Y. for what it smilingly condones in Z. -It has no true standard for anything. It is at once hypercritical and -over-indulgent. What it calls its taste is but a purblind servility. It -will take the deformed basset-hound as a pet, and neglect all the -beautiful canine races; it will broil in throngs on a bare strip of -sand, and avoid all the lovely places by wood and sea; it will worship a -black rose, and never glance at all the roses which nature has made. If -only Fashion decree, the basset-hound, the bare sand, and the black rose -are to it the idols of the hour. It has no consistency; it will change -the Japanese for the Rococo, the Renaissance for the Queen Anne, the -Watteau for the Oriental, or mix them all together, at the mere -weathercock dictate of fashion or caprice. It has no more consistency in -its code of morals; it will ask Messalina anywhere as long as a prince -speaks to her and she is the fashion; if the prince ceases to speak and -she ceases to be the fashion, it puts up its fan at her vices, and -scores her name out of its visiting list. There is no reality in either -its pretensions to morality or good taste. - -When we think of the immense potentialities and capabilities of society, -of all that it might become, of all that it might accomplish, and behold -the monotony of insipid folly, of ape-like imitation, of consummate -hypocrisy, in which it is content to roll on through the course of the -years, one cannot but feel that, if its ultimate doom be to be swallowed -up and vomited forth again, lifeless and shapeless, by the dragon of -socialism, it will have no more than its due; that it will fall through -its own sloth and vileness as the empire of Rome fell under the hordes -of the barbarians. - -That charming writer Gustave Droz has said that railways are at once the -symbol and the outcome of the vulgarity of the age; and that whoever -lets himself be shot through space like a parcel through a tube, and -condescends to eat in a crowd at a station buffet, cannot by any -possibility retain dignity of appearance or elegance of manners. The -inelegant scrambling and pushing, and elbowing and vociferating of a -modern railway station form an exact and painful image of this restless, -rude and gregarious century. - -Compare the stately progress of a Queen Elizabeth, or a Louis Quatorze -through the provinces, calm, leisurely, dignified, magnificent, with the -modern monarch or prince always in movement as if he were a -_commis-voyageur_, interviewed ridiculously on a square of red carpet on -a station platform, and breathlessly listening to a breathless mayor’s -silly and verbose address of welcome; then rushing off, as if he were -paid so much an hour, to be jostled at a dog show, hustled at an -agricultural exhibition, and forced to shake hands with the very -politicians who have just brought before the House the abolition of the -royal prerogative. It is not the question here of whether royalty is, or -is not, better upheld or abolished; but so long as royalty exists, and -so long as its existence is dear to many millions, and esteemed of -benefit by them, it is infinitely to be regretted that it should have -lost, as it has lost, all the divinity which should hedge a king. - -Recent publications of royal feelings and royal doings may be of use to -the enemies of royalty by showing what twaddling nothings fill up its -day; but to royalty itself they can only be belittleing and injurious in -a great degree, whilst the want of delicacy which could give to the -public eye such intimate revelations of personal emotions and struggles -with poverty, as the publication of the _Letters of the Princess Alice -of England_ made public property, is so staring and so strange that it -seems like the public desecration of a grave. - -Books, in which the most trivial and personal details are published in -print by those who should veil their faces like the Latin in sorrow and -veil them in their purples, could only be possible in an age in which -vulgarity has even reached up and sapped the very foundations of all -thrones. One cannot but feel pity for the poor dead princess, who would -surely have writhed under such indignity, when one sees in the crudeness -and cruelty of print her homely descriptions of suckling her children -and struggling with a narrow purse, descriptions so plainly intended for -no eyes but those of the person to whom they were addressed. Better—how -much better!—have buried with her those humble letters in which the soul -is seen naked as in its prayer-closet, and which are no more fit to be -dragged out into the garish day of publicity than the bodily nakedness -of a chaste woman is fit to be pilloried in a market-place. I repeat, -only an age intensely and despairingly vulgar could have rendered the -publication of such letters as those royal letters to royal persons -possible. Letters of intimacy are the most sacred things of life; they -are the proofs of the most intimate trust and confidence which can be -placed in us; and to make them public is to violate all the sweetest -sanctities of life and of death. - -_La pudeur de l’âme_ is forever destroyed where such exposure of -feelings, the most intimate and the most personal, becomes possible. In -the preface to those letters it is said that the public will in these -days know everything about us, and therefore it is better that they -should know the truth from us. Not so; this attitude is indeed -submission to the mob: it is unveiling the bosom in the market-place. -Any amount of calumny cannot destroy dignity; but dignity is forever -destroyed when it condescends to call in the multitude to count its -tears and see its kisses. - -The great man and the great woman should say to the world: ‘Think of me -what you choose. It is indifferent to me. You are not my master; and I -shall never accept you as a judge.’ This should be the attitude of all -royalty, whether that of the king, the hero, or the genius. - - - - - THE STATE AS AN IMMORAL - FACTOR - - -The tendency of the last years of the nineteenth century is toward -increase in the powers of the state and decrease in the powers of the -individual citizen. Whether the government of a country be at this -moment nominally free, or whether it be avowedly despotic, whether it be -an empire, a republic, a constitutional monarchy, or a self-governing -and neutralised principality, the actual government is a substitution of -state machinery for individual choice and individual liberty. In Servia, -in Bulgaria, in France, in Germany, in England, in America, in -Australia, anywhere you will, the outward forms of government differ -widely, but beneath all there is the same interference of the state with -personal volition, the same obligation for the individual to accept the -dictum of the state in lieu of his own judgment. The only difference is -that such a pretension is natural and excusable in an autocracy; in a -constitutional or republican state it is an anomaly, even an absurdity. -But whether it be considered admirable or accursed, the fact is -conspicuous that every year adds to the pretensions and powers of the -state, and every year diminishes the personal freedom of the man. - -To whatever the fact be traceable, it is there, and it is probably due -to the increase of a purely _doctrinaire_ education, which with itself -increases the number of persons who look upon humanity as a -drill-sergeant looks upon battalions of conscripts; the battalions must -learn to move mechanically in masses, and no single unit of them must be -allowed to murmur or to fall out of the ranks. That this conscript, or -that, may be in torture all the while matters nothing whatever to the -drill-sergeant. That what would have been an excellent citizen makes a -rebellious or inefficient conscript is not his business either; he only -requires a battalion which moves with mechanical precision. The state is -but a drill-sergeant on a large scale, with a whole nationality marched -out on the parade-ground. - -Whatever were in other respects the evils attendant on other ages than -this, those ages were favourable to the development of individuality, -and therefore of genius. The present age is opposed to such development; -and the more the state manipulates the man, the more completely will -individuality and originality be destroyed. The state requires a -tax-paying machine in which there is no hitch, an exchequer in which -there is never a deficit, and a public, monotonous, obedient, -colourless, spiritless, moving unanimously and humbly like a flock of -sheep along a straight, high road between two walls. That is the ideal -of every bureaucracy; and what is the state except a crystallised -bureaucracy? It is the habit of those who uphold the despotism of -government to speak as though it were some impersonal entity, some -unerring guide, some half-divine thing like the pillar of fire which the -Israelites imagined conducted them in their exodus. In actual fact, the -state is only the executive; representing the momentary decisions of a -majority which is not even at all times a genuine majority, but is, in -frequent cases, a fabricated and fictitious preponderance, artificially -and arbitrarily produced. There can be nothing noble, sacred, or -unerring in such a majority; it is fallible and fallacious; it may be in -the right, it may be in the wrong; it may light by accident on wisdom, -or it may plunge by panic into folly. There is nothing in its origin or -its construction which can render it imposing in the sight of an -intelligent and high-spirited man. But the mass of men are not -intelligent and not high-spirited, and so the incubus which lies on them -through it they support, as the camel his burden, sweating beneath it at -every pore. The state is the empty cap of Gessler, to which all but Tell -consent to bow. - -It has been made a reproach to the centuries preceding this one that in -them privilege occupied the place of law; but, though privilege was -capricious and often unjust, it was always elastic, sometimes benignant; -law—civil law, such as the state frames and enforces—is never elastic -and is never benignant. It is an engine which rolls on its own iron -lines, and crushes what it finds opposed to it, without any regard to -the excellence of what it may destroy. - -The nation, like the child, becomes either brutalised by over-drilling, -or emasculated by having all its actions and opinions continually -prescribed for it. It is to be doubted whether any precautions or any -system could compass what the state in many countries is now -endeavouring to do, by regulation and prohibition, to prevent the spread -of infectious maladies. But it is certain that the nervous terrors -inspired by state laws and by-laws beget a malady of the mind more -injurious than the bodily ills which so absorb the state. Whether -Pasteur’s inoculation for rabies be a curse or a boon to mankind, there -can be no question that the exaggerated ideas which it creates, the -fictitious importance which it lends to what was previously a most rare -malady, the nightmare horrors it invokes, and the lies which its -propagandists, to justify its pretences, find themselves compelled to -invent, produce a dementia and hysteria in the public mind which is a -disease far more widespread and dangerous than mere canine rabies -(unassisted by science and government) could ever have become. - -The dissemination of cowardice is a greater evil than would be the -increase of any physical ill whatever. To direct the minds of men in -nervous terror to their own bodies is to make of them a trembling and -shivering pack of prostrate poltroons. The microbe may be the cause of -disease; but the nervous terrors generated in the microbe’s name are -worse evils than any bacillus. It is the physiologist’s trade to -increase these terrors; he lives by them, and by them alone has his -being, but when the state takes his crotchets and quackeries in earnest -and forces them upon the public as law, the effect is physically and -mentally disastrous. The cholera as a disease is bad enough, but worse -than itself by far are the brutal egotism, the palsied terror, the -convulsive agonies, with which it is met, and which the state in all -countries does so much to increase. Fear alone kills five-tenths of its -victims, and during its latest visitation in the streets of Naples -people would spring up from their seats, shriek that they had cholera, -and fall dead in convulsions, caused by sheer panic; whilst in many -country places the villagers fired on railway trains which they imagined -might carry the dreaded malady amongst them. This kind of panic cannot -be entirely controlled by any state, but it might be mitigated by -judicious moderation, instead of being, as it is, intensified and -hounded on by the press, the physiologists, and the governments all over -the known world. - -The state has already passed its cold, hard, iron-plated arms between -the parent and the offspring, and is daily dragging and forcing them -asunder. The old moral law may say ‘Honour your father and mother,’ -etc., etc., but the state says, on the contrary: ‘Leave your mother ill -and untended whilst you attend to your own education; and summon your -father to be fined and imprisoned if he dare lay a hand on you when you -disgrace and deride him.’ The other day a working man in London was -sentenced to a fortnight’s imprisonment with hard labour, because, being -justly angry with his little girl for disobeying his orders and staying -out night after night in the streets, he struck her twice with a -leathern strap, and she was ‘slightly bruised.’ The man asked -pertinently what was the world coming to if a parent might not correct -his child as he thought fit. What can be the relations of this father -and daughter when he leaves the prison to which she sent him? What -authority can he have in her sight? What obedience will he be able to -exact from her? The bruises from the strap would soon pass away, but the -rupture, by the sentence of the tribunal, of parental and filial ties -can never be healed. The moral injury done to the girl by this -interference of the state is irreparable, ineffaceable. The state has -practically told her that disobedience is no offence, and has allowed -her to be the accuser and jailer of one who, by another canon of law, is -said to be set in authority over her both by God and man. - -The moral and the civil law alike decree and enforce the inviolability -of property; anything which is the property of another, be it but of the -value of a copper coin, cannot be taken by you without your becoming -liable to punishment as a thief. This, by the general consent of -mankind, has been esteemed correct, just and necessary. But the state -breaks this law, derides it, rides rough-shod over it, when for its own -purposes it requires the property of a private person; it calls the -process by various names—condemnation, expropriation, annexation, etc.; -but it is a seizure, a violent seizure, and a essentially seizure -against the owner’s will. If a man enter your kitchen-garden and take a -few onions or a few potatoes, you can hold, prosecute and imprison him; -the state takes the whole garden, and turns you out of it, and turns it -into anything else which for the moment seems to the state excellent or -advantageous, and against the impersonal robber you can do naught. The -state considers it compensation enough to pay an arbitrary value; but -not only are there many possessions, notably in land, for the loss of -which no equivalent could reconcile us, but the state herein sets up a -principle which is never accorded in law. If the man who steals the -onions offers to pay their value, he is not allowed to do so, nor is the -owner of the onions allowed to accept such compensation; it is called -‘compounding a felony.’ The state alone may commit this felony with -impunity, and pay what it chooses after committing it. - -The state continually tampers with and tramples on private property, -taking for itself what and where and how it pleases; the example given -to the public is profoundly immoral. The plea put forth in excuse for -its action by the state is that of public benefit; the interests of the -public cannot, it avers, be sacrificed to private interest or ownership -or rights of any sort. But herein it sets up a dangerous precedent. The -man who steals the potatoes might argue in his own justification that it -is better in the interest of the public that one person should lose a -few potatoes than that another person should starve for want of them, -and so, either in prison or in poorhouse, become chargeable to the -nation. If private rights and the sacredness of property can be set at -naught by the state for its own purposes, they cannot be logically held -to be sacred in its courts of law for any individual. The state claims -immunity for theft on the score of convenience, so then may the -individual. - -If the civil law be in conflict with and contradiction of religious law, -as has been shown elsewhere,[N] it is none the less in perpetual -opposition to moral law and to all the finer and more generous instincts -of the human soul. It preaches egotism as the first duty of man, and -studiously inculcates cowardice as the highest wisdom. In its strenuous -endeavour to cure physical ills it does not heed what infamies it may -sow broadcast in the spiritual fields of the mind and heart. It treats -altruism as criminal when altruism means indifference to the contagion -of any infectious malady. The precautions enjoined in any such malady, -stripped bare of their pretences, really mean the naked selfishness of -the _sauve qui peut_. The pole-axe used on the herd which has been in -contact with another herd infected by pleuro-pneumonia or anthrax would -be used on the human herd suffering from typhoid, or small-pox, or -yellow fever, or diphtheria, if the state had the courage to follow out -its own teachings to their logical conclusions. Who shall say that it -will not be so used some day in the future, when increase of population -shall have made mere numbers of trifling account, and the terrors -excited by physiologists of ungovernable force? - ------ - -Footnote N: - - See article ‘The Failure of Christianity.’ - ------ - -We have gained little by the emancipation of human society from the -tyranny of the churches if in its stead we substitute the tyranny of the -state. One may as well be burned at the stake as compelled to submit to -the prophylactic of Pasteur or the serum of Roux. When once we admit -that the law should compel vaccination from small-pox, there is no -logical reason for refusing to admit that the law shall enforce any -infusion or inoculation which its chemical and medical advisers may -suggest to it, or even any surgical interference with Nature. - -On the first of May, 1890, a French surgeon, M. Lannelongue, had a -little imbecile child in his hospital; he fancied that he should like to -try trepanning on the child as a cure for imbecility. In the words of -the report,— - - ‘Il taillait la suture sagittale et parallèlement avec elle une longue - et étroite incision cranienne depuis la suture frontale à la suture - occipitale; il en resulta pour la partie osseusse une perte de - substance longue de 9 centimetres et large de 6 millimetres, et il en - resulta pour le cerveau un véritable débridement.’ - -If this child live, and be no longer imbecile, the parents of all idiots -will presumably be compelled by law to submit their children to this -operation of trepanning and excision. Such a law would be the only -logical issue of existing hygienic laws. - -In the battlefield the state requires from its sons the most unflinching -fortitude; but in civil life it allows them, even bids them, to be -unblushing poltroons. - -An officer, being sent out by the English War Office this year to fill a -distinguished post in Hong Kong, was ordered to be vaccinated before -going to it; and the vaccination was made a condition of the -appointment. In this instance a man thirty years old was thought worthy -of confidence and employment by the state, but such a fool or babe in -his own affairs that he could not be trusted to look after his own -health. You cannot make a human character fearful and nervous, and then -call upon it for the highest qualities of resolve, of capacity, and of -courage. You cannot coerce and torment a man, and then expect from him -intrepidity, presence of mind and ready invention in perilous moments. - -A few years ago nobody thought it a matter of the slightest consequence -to be bitten by a healthy dog; as a veterinary surgeon has justly said, -a scratch from a rusty nail or the jagged tin of a sardine-box is much -more truly dangerous than a dog’s tooth. Yet in the last five years the -physiologists and the state, which in all countries protects them, have -succeeded in so inoculating the public mind with senseless terrors that -even the accidental touch of a puppy’s lips or the kindly lick of his -tongue throws thousands of people into an insanity of fear. Dr Bell has -justly said: ‘Pasteur does not cure rabies; he creates it.’ In like -manner the state does not cure either folly or fear: it creates both. - -The state is the enemy of all volition in the individual: hence it is -the enemy of all manliness, of all force, of all independence, and of -all originality. The exigencies of the state, from its monstrous -taxation to its irritating by-laws, are in continual antagonism with all -those who have character uncowed and vision unobscured. Under the -terrorising generic term of the law, the state cunningly, and for its -own purposes, confounds its own petty regulations and fiscal exactions -with the genuine solemnity of moral and criminal laws. The latter any -man who is not a criminal will feel bound to respect; the former no man -who has an opinion and courage of his own will care to observe. Trumpery -police and municipal regulations are merged by the ingenuity of the -state into a nominal identity with genuine law; and for all its -purposes, whether of social tyranny or of fiscal extortion, the union is -to the state as useful as it is fictitious. The state has everywhere -discovered that it is lucrative and imposing to worry and fleece the -honest citizen; and everywhere it shapes its civil code, therefore, -mercilessly and cunningly towards this end. - -Under the incessant meddling of government and its offspring, -bureaucracy, the man becomes poor of spirit and helpless. He is like a -child who, never being permitted to have its own way, has no knowledge -of taking care of itself or of avoiding accidents. As, here and there, a -child is of a rare and strong enough stuff to break his leading-strings, -and grows, when recaptured, dogged and sullen, so are there men who -resist the dogma and dictation of the state, and when coerced and -chastised become rebels to its rules. The petty tyrannies of the state -gall and fret them at every step; and the citizen who is law-abiding, so -far as the greater moral code is concerned, is stung and whipped into -continual contumacy by the impertinent interference of the civil code -with his daily life. - -Why should a man fill up a census-return, declare his income to a -tax-gatherer, muzzle his dog, send his children to schools he -disapproves, ask permission of the state to marry, or do perpetually -what he dislikes or condemns, because the state wishes him to do these -things? When a man is a criminal, the state has a right to lay hands on -him; but whilst he is innocent of all crime his opinions and his -objections should be respected. There may be many reasons—harmless or -excellent reasons—why publicity about his life is offensive or injurious -to him; what right has the state to pry into his privacy and force him -to write its details in staring letters for all who run to read? The -state only teaches him to lie. - -‘You ask me things that I have no right to tell you,’ replied Jeanne -d’Arc to her judges. So may the innocent man, tormented by the state, -reply to the state, which has no business with his private life until he -has made it forfeit by a crime. - -The moment that the states leaves the broad lines of public affairs to -meddle with the private interests and actions of its people, it is -compelled to enlist in its service spies and informers. Without these it -cannot make up its long lists of transgressions; it cannot know whom to -summon and what to prosecute. - -That duplicity which is in the Italian character so universally -ingrained there that the noblest natures are tainted by it—a duplicity -which makes entire confidence impossible, and secrecy an instinct strong -as life—can be philosophically traced to the influences which the -constant dread of the detectives and spies employed under their various -governments for so many centuries has left upon their national -temperament. Dissimulation, so long made necessary, has become part and -parcel of the essence of their being. Such secretiveness is the -inevitable product of domestic espionage and trivial interference from -the state, as the imposition of a gate-tax makes the peasantry who pass -the gate ingenious in concealment and in subterfuge. - -The requisitions and regulations of the state dress themselves vainly in -the pomp of law; they set themselves up side by side with moral law; but -they are not moral law, and cannot possess its impressiveness. Even a -thief will acknowledge that ‘Thou shalt not steal’ is a just and solemn -commandment: but that to carry across a frontier, without declaring it, -a roll of tobacco (which you honestly bought, and which is strictly your -own) is also a heinous crime, both common-sense and conscience refuse to -admit The Irish peasant could never be brought to see why the private -illicit whisky-still was illicit, and as such was condemned and -destroyed, and the convictions which followed its destruction were -amongst the bitterest causes of Irish disaffection. A man caught in the -act of taking his neighbour’s goods knows that his punishment is -deserved; but a man punished for using or enjoying his own is filled -with chafing rage against the injustice of his lot. Between a moral law, -and a fiscal or municipal or communal imposition or decree, there is as -much difference as there is between a living body and a galvanised -corpse. When in a great war a nation is urged by high appeal to -sacrifice its last ounce of gold, its last shred of treasure, to save -the country, the response is willingly made from patriotism; but when -the revenue officer and the tax-gatherer demand, threaten, fine and -seize, the contributor can only feel the irritating impoverishment of -such a process, and yields his purse reluctantly. Electoral rights are -considered to give him a compensating share in the control of public -expenditure; but this is mere fiction: he may disapprove in every item -the expenditure of the state; he cannot alter it. - -Tolstoï has constantly affirmed that there is no necessity for any -government anywhere: it is not _a_ government, but _all_ governments, on -which he wages war. He considers that all are alike corrupt, tyrannical -and opposed to a fine and free ideal of life. It is certain that they -are not ‘the control of the fittest’ in any actual sense, for the whole -aspect of public life tends every year more and more to alienate from it -those whose capacity and character are higher than those of their -fellows: it becomes more and more a routine, an _engrenage_, a trade. - -From a military, as from a financial, point of view this result is of -advantage to the government, whether it be imperial or republican; but -it is hostile to the character of a nation, morally and æsthetically. In -its best aspect, the state is like a parent who seeks to play Providence -to his offspring, to foresee and ward off all accident and all evil, and -to provide for all possible contingencies, bad and good. As the parent -inevitably fails in doing this, so the state fails, and must fail, in -such a task. - -Strikes, with their concomitant evils, are only another form of tyranny; -but they have this good in them—that they are opposed to the tyranny of -the state, and tend to lessen it by the unpleasant shock which they give -to its self-conceit and self-complacency. Trades-unions turn to their -own purposes the lesson which the state has taught them—_i.e._, a brutal -sacrifice of individual will and welfare to a despotic majority. - -There is more or less truth and justification in all revolutions because -they are protests against bureaucracy. When they are successful, they -abjure their own origin and become in their turn the bureaucratic -tyranny, sometimes modified, sometimes exaggerated, but always tending -towards reproduction of that which they destroyed. And the bureaucratic -influence is always immoral and unwholesome, were it only in the -impatience which it excites in all courageous men and the apathy to -which it reduces all those who are without courage. Its manifold and -emasculating commands are to all real strength as the cords in which -Gulliver was bound by the pygmies. - -The state only aims at instilling those qualities in its public by which -its demands are obeyed and its exchequer is filled. Its highest -attainment is the reduction of mankind to clockwork. In its atmosphere -all those finer and more delicate liberties which require liberal -treatment and spacious expansion inevitably dry up and perish. Take a -homely instance. A poor, hard-working family found a little stray dog; -they took it in, sheltered, fed it, and attached themselves to it; it -was in one of the streets of London; the police after a time summoned -them for keeping a dog without a licence; the woman, who was a widow, -pleaded that she had taken it out of pity, that they had tried to lose -it, but that it always came back to them; she was ordered to pay the -amount of the dog-tax and two guineas’ costs; _i.e._, the state said to -her: ‘Charity is the costliest of indulgences; you are poor; you have no -right to be humane.’ The lesson given by the state was the vilest and -meanest which could be given. This woman’s children, growing up, will -remember that she was ruined for being kind; they will harden their -hearts, in accordance with the lesson; if they become brutal to animals -and men, it is the state which will have made them so. - -All the state’s edicts in all countries inculcate similar egotism; -generosity is in its sight a lawless and unlawful thing: it is so busied -in urging the use of disinfectants and ordering the destruction of -buildings and of beasts, the exile of families and the closing of -drains, that it never sees the logical issue of its injunctions, which -is to leave the sick man alone and flee from his infected vicinity: it -is so intent on insisting on the value of state education that it never -perceives that it is enjoining on the child to advance itself at any -cost and leave its procreators to starve in their hovel. The virtues of -self-sacrifice, of disinterested affection, of humanity, of -self-effacement, are nothing to it; by its own form of organism it is -debarred from even admiring them; they come in its way; they obstruct -it; it destroys them. - -Mr Ruskin, in one of the papers of his _Fors Clavigera_, speaks of an -acacia tree, young and beautiful, green as acacias only are green in -Venice, where no dust ever is; it grew beside the water steps of the -Academy of the Arts and was a morning and evening joy to him. One day he -found a man belonging to the municipality cutting it down root and -branch. ‘Why do you murder that tree?’ he asked. The man replied, ‘_Per -far pulizia_’ (to clean the place). The acacia and the municipality of -Venice are an allegory of the human soul and its controller, the state. -The acacia was a thing of grace and verdure, a sunrise and sunset -pleasure to a great soul; it had fragrance in its white blossoms and -shade in its fair branches; it fitly accompanied the steps which lead to -the feasts of Carpaccio and the pageants of Gian Bellini. But in the -sight of the Venetian municipality it was irregular and unclean. So are -all the graces and greenness of the human soul to the state, which -merely requires a community tax-paying, decree-obeying, uniform, -passionless, enduring as the ass, meek as the lamb, with neither will -nor wishes; a featureless humanity practising the goose-step in eternal -routine and obedience. - -When the man has become a passive creature, with no will of his own, -taking the military yoke unquestioningly, assigning his property, -educating his family, holding his tenures, ordering his daily life, in -strict accord with the regulations of the state, he will have his spirit -and his individuality annihilated, and he will, in compensation to -himself, be brutal to all those over whom he has power. The cowed -conscript of Prussia becomes the hectoring bully of Alsace.[O] - ------ - -Footnote O: - - Whoever may care to study the brutal treatment of conscripts and - soldiers in Germany by their officers is referred to the revelations - published this year by Kurt Abel and Captain Miller, both - eye-witnesses of these tortures. - ------ - -‘_Libera chiesà in libero stato_’ is the favourite stock phrase of -Italian politicians; but it is an untruth—nay, an impossibility—not only -in Italy, but in the whole world. The church cannot be liberal because -liberality stultifies itself; the state cannot be liberal because its -whole existence is bound up with dominion. In all the political schemes -which exist now, working themselves out in actuality, or proposed as a -panacea to the world, there is no true liberality; there is only a -choice between despotism and anarchy. In religious institutions it is -the same; they are all egotisms in disguise. Socialism wants what it -calls equality; but its idea of equality is to cut down all tall trees -that the brushwood may not feel itself overtopped. Plutocracy, like its -almost extinct predecessor, aristocracy, wishes, on the other hand, to -keep all the brushwood low, so that it may grow above it at its own pace -and liking. Which is the better of the two? - -Civil liberty is the first quality of a truly free life; and in the -present age the tendency of the state is everywhere to admit this in -theory, but to deny it in practice. To be able to go through the comedy -of the voting-urn is considered privilege enough to atone for the loss -of civil and moral freedom in all other things. If it be true that a -nation has the government which it deserves to have, then the merits of -all the nations are small indeed. With some the state assumes the guise -of a police officer, and in others of a cuirassier, and in others of an -attorney; but in all it is a despot issuing its petty laws with the pomp -of Jove; thrusting its truncheon, or its sword, or its quill into the -heart of domestic life, and breaking the backbone of the man who has -spirit enough to resist it. The views of the state are like those of the -Venetian municipality concerning the acacia. Its one aim is a -methodical, monotonous, mathematically-measured regularity: it admits of -no expansion; it tolerates no exceptions; of beauty it has no -consciousness; of any range beyond that covered by its own vision it is -ignorant. It may work on a large scale—even on an enormous scale—but it -cannot work on a great one. Greatness can be the offspring alone of -volition and of genius: it is everywhere the continual effort of the -state to coerce the one and to suffocate the other. - -The fatal general conception of the state as an abstract entity, free -from all mortal blemish, and incapable of error, is the most disastrous -misconception into which the mind of man could possibly have fallen. If -the human race would only understand, and take the trouble to realise, -that government by the state can be nothing better than government by a -multitude of clerks, it would cease to be enamoured of this -misconception. Government, absolute and unelastic, by a million of -Bumbles, the elevation to supreme and most meddlesome power of a -Bureaucracy employing an army of spies and informers in its service; -this is all that the rule of the state can ever be, or can ever mean, -for mankind. It is impossible that it should ever be otherwise. - -Were there some neighbouring planet, populated by demi-gods or some -angels, from whom the earth could obtain a superior race to undertake -its rule, the domination of this superior race might be beneficial, -though it is questionable whether it would, even then, be agreeable. -Socialism calls itself liberty, but it is the negation of liberty, since -it would permit the state, _i.e._, the bureaucracy, to enter into and -ordain every item of private or of public life. The only sect which has -any conception of liberty is that which is called Individualism, and it -is singular and lamentable how few followers Individualism obtains. It -is due, perhaps, to the fact that so few human beings possess any -individuality. - -The mass of men are willing to be dominated, have no initiative, no -ambition, no moral courage; it is easier to them to join a herd and be -driven on with it; it saves them thought and responsibility. Were -Individualism general, there would be no standing armies, there would be -no affiliation to secret societies, there would be no formation of the -public mind by the pressure of a public press, there would be no -acceptance of the dicta of priests and physicians, there would be no -political councils, there would be no ministers of education. But -Individualism is extremely rare, whether as a quality or a doctrine. -Where it does exist, as in Tolstoï or Auberon Herbert, it is regarded by -the mass of men as abnormal, as something approaching a disease. Yet it -will be the resistance of Individualism which will alone save the world -(if it be saved indeed) from the approaching slavery of that tyranny of -mediocrity which is called the authority of the state. For government by -the state merely means government by multitudes of hired, blatant, -pompous official servants, such as we are now blessed with; but with the -powers of those official servants indefinitely extended until the -tentacles of the state should stretch out like that of the octopus and -draw into its maw all human life. - -No one who studies the signs of the times can fail to be struck by the -growing tendency to invoke the aid of what is called the state in all -matters; and those who would be alarmed and disgusted at the despotism -of a single ruler, are disposed meekly to accept the despotism of the -impalpable, impersonal and most dangerous legislator. No one who has -observed the action of a bureaucracy can, without dread, see its -omnipotence desired; for the fact cannot be too often repeated, that the -omnipotence of the state is the omnipotence of its minions in a -multitude of greater or smaller offices throughout the country cursed by -them. Through whom can the espionage which is necessary to secure the -working of permissive bills, of total abstinence laws, of muzzling -regulations, of medical and hygienic interference, be exercised, and the -vast machinery of fines and dues which accompany these be manipulated, -except by hordes of officials gaining their livelihood by torturing the -public? - -The state is always spoken of as if it were an impersonal force, -magnified into semi-divinity of more than mortal power and prescience, -wholly aloof from all human error, and meteing out the most infallible -justice from the purest balance. Instead of that the state is nothing, -can be nothing, more than a host of parasites fastened on the body -politic, more or less fattening thereon, and trained to regard the -public as a mere taxable entity, always in the wrong and always to be -preyed upon at pleasure. It may be unintelligible why mankind ever laid -its head under the heel of a single human tyrant, but it is surely more -perplexing still why it lies down under the feet of a million of -government spies and scriveners. That there is a singular increase in -public pusillanimity everywhere is unquestionable; its outcome is the -tendency, daily increasing, to look to the government in every detail -and every difficulty. - - - - - THE PENALTIES OF A WELL-KNOWN - NAME - - -When in childhood, if we be made of the stuff which dreams ambitious -dreams, we see the allegorical figure of Fame blowing her long trumpet -down the billowy clouds, we think how delightful and glorious it must be -to have a name which echoes from that golden clarion. Nothing seems to -us worth the having, except a share in that echoing windy blast. To be -famous: it is the vision of all poetic youth, of all ambitious energies, -of all struggling and unrecognised talent. To be picked out by the -capricious goddess and lifted up from the crowd to sit beside her on her -throne of cloud, seems to the fancy of youth the loftiest and loveliest -of destinies. - -In early youth we know not what we do, we cannot measure all we part -with in seeking the publicity which accompanies success; we do not -realise that the long trumpet of our goddess Fame will mercilessly blow -away our dearest secrets to the ears of all, and so strain and magnify -them that they will be no more recognised by us, though become the toy -of all. We do not appreciate, until we have lost it, the delightful -unregarded peace with which the obscure of this world can love, hate, -caress, curse, move, sit still, be sick, be sorry, be gay or glad, bear -their children, bury their dead, unnoted, untormented unobserved. - -It is true that celebrity has its pleasant side. To possess a name which -is an open sesame wherever it is pronounced is not only agreeable, but -is often useful. It opens doors easily, whether they be of palaces or of -railway stations; it saves you from arrest if you be sketching -fortifications; it obtains attention for you from every one, from -ministers to innkeepers; in a word, it marks you as something out of the -common, not lightly to be meddled with, or neglected with impunity. It -has its practical uses and its daily advantages, if it have also this -prosaic drawback, that, like other conspicuous personages, you pay fifty -per cent. dearer than ordinary people for everything which you consume. - -Fame, like position, has its ugly side; whatever phase of it be taken, -whatever celebrity, notoriety, distinction, or fashion, it brings its -own penalties with it, and it may be that these penalties underweigh its -pleasures. - -The most cruel of its penalties is the loss of privacy which it entails; -the difficulty which it raises to the enjoyment of free and unobserved -movement. Whether the owner of a well-known name desire privacy for the -rest of solitude, for the indulgence of some affection of which it is -desired that the world shall know nothing, for the sake of repose, and -ease, or for the pursuit of some especial study, the _incognito_ sighed -for is almost always impossible to obtain. - -Find the most retired and obscure of places, amidst hills where no foot -but the herdsman’s treads, and pastures which feel no step but those of -the cattle, a mountain or forest nook which you fondly believe none but -yourself and one other know of as existing on the face of the globe; yet -brief will be your and your companion’s enjoyment of it if your lives, -or one of your lives, be famous; the press will track you like a -sleuth-hound, and all your precautions will be made as naught, and, -indifferent to the harm they do or the misery they create, the Paul Prys -of broadsheets will let in the glare of day upon your dusky, mossy dell. - -The artist has, no doubt, in this much for which to blame himself: why -does the dramatist deign to bow from his box? why does the composer -salute his audience? why does the painter have shows at his studio? why -does the great writer tell his confidences to the newspaper hack? - -Because they are afraid of creating the enmity and the unpopularity -which would be engendered by their refusal. Behind this vulgar, -intrusive espionage and examination there lies the whole force of the -malignity of petty natures and inferior minds, _i.e._, two thirds of the -world. The greater is afraid of the lesser; the giant fears the sling or -the stone of the pigmy; he is alone, and the pigmies are multitudinous -as the drops in the sea. - -We give away the magic belt which makes us invisible, without knowing in -the least all that we give away with it: all that delightful -independence and repose which are the portion of the _humbles de la -terre_, who, all the same, do not value it, do not appreciate it; do -not, indeed, ever cease from dissatisfaction at it In their ignorance -they think how glorious it must be to stand in the white blaze of the -electric light of celebrity; how enviable and delightful it surely is to -move forever in a buzz of wondering voices and a dust of rolling -chariots, never to stir unchronicled and never to act uncommented. -Hardly can one persuade them of the treasure which they possess in their -own obscurity? If we tell them of it, they think we laugh at them or -lie. - -Privacy is the necessity of good and great art, as it is the corollary -of dignity and decorum of life. But it is bought with a price; it is -bought by incurring the dislike and vindictiveness of all who are -checked in their petty malice and prying curiosity and are sent away -from closed doors. - -The ideal literary life is that of Michelet; the ideal artistic life is -that of Corot. Imagine the one leaving the song of the birds and the -sound of the seas to squabble at a Copyright Congress, or the other -leaving his green trees and his shining waters to pour out the secrets -with which nature had intrusted him in the ear of a newspaper reporter! -If a correspondent of the press had hidden behind an elder-bush on a -grassy path at Shottery, methinks Shakespeare would have chucked him -into the nearest ditch; and if a stenographer had inquired of Dante what -meats had tasted so bitter to him at Can Grande’s table, beyond a doubt -the meddler would have learned the coldness and the length of a -Florentine rapier. But then no one of these men was occupied with his -own personality, none of them had the restless uneasiness, the morbid -fear, which besets the modern hero, lest, if his contemporaries do not -prate of him, generations to come will know naught of him. - -In modern life also, the fox, with his pen and ink hidden under his fur, -creeps in, wearing the harmless skin of a familiar house-dog, and the -unhappy hare or pullet, who has received, caressed, and fed him without -suspicion, sees too late an account of the good nature and of his -habitation travestied and sent flying on a news sheet to the four -quarters of the globe. Against treachery of this kind there is no -protection possible. All that can be done is to be very slow in giving -or allowing introductions; very wary in making new acquaintances, and -wholly indifferent to the odium incurred by being called exclusive. - -Interrogation is always ill-bred; and an intrusion that takes the form -of a prolonged interrogation is an intrusion so intolerable that any -rudeness whatever is justifiable in its repression. - -The man of genius gives his work, his creation, his _alter ego_, to the -world, whether it be in political policy, in literary composition, in -music, sculpture, painting, or statuary. This the world has full right -to judge, to examine, to applaud, or to condemn; but beyond this, into -the pale of his private life it has no possible title to entry. It is -said in the common jargon of criticism that without knowing the habits, -temperament, physique and position of the artist, it is impossible to -correctly judge his creation. It is, on the contrary, a hindrance to the -unbiassed judgment of any works to be already prejudiced _per_ or -_contra_ by knowledge of the accidents and attributes of those who have -produced them. It is a morbid appetite, as well as a vulgar taste, that -makes the public invade the privacy of those who lead, instruct, or -adorn their century, and these last have themselves to thank, in a great -measure, for the pests which they have let loose. - -Every day any one who bears a name in any way celebrated receives -requests or questions from persons who are unknown to him, demanding his -views on everything from Buddhism to blacking, and inquiring into every -detail of his existence, from his personal affections to his favourite -dish at dinner. If he deign to answer them, he is as silly as the -senders. - -Sometimes you will hear that a town has been named after you in America, -or Australia, or Africa; it is usually a few planks laid down in a -barren plain, and you are expected to be grateful that your patronymic -will be shouted on a siding as the railway train rushes by it. Sometimes -an enthusiastic and unknown letter writer will implore you to tell him -or her ‘everything’ about yourself, from your birth onwards; and if, as -you will certainly do if you are in your senses, you consign the -impudent appeal to the waste-paper basket, your undesired correspondent -will probably fill up the _lacuna_ from his or her own imagination. Were -all this the offspring of genuine admiration, it might be in a measure -excused, though it would always be ill-bred, noxious and odious. But it -is either an impertinent curiosity or a desire to make money. - -The moment that your name is well known, the demands made upon you will -be as numerous as they will be imperative. Though you may never have -given any permission or any data for a biography, the fact will not -prevent hundreds of biographies appearing about you: that they are -fictitious and unauthorised matters nothing either to those who publish -or to those who read. Descriptions, often wholly inaccurate, of your -habits, your tastes, your appearance, your manner of life, will be put -in circulation, no matter how offensive or how injurious to you they may -be. Your opinions will be demanded by strangers whose only object is to -obtain for themselves some information which they can turn to profit. -From the frequency or rarity of your dreams to the length of your menu -at dinner, nothing will escape the insatiable appetite of an unwholesome -and injurious inquisitiveness. Obscure nonentities from Missouri or -Nevada will imagine that they honour you by writing that they have -baptised their brats in your name, and requesting some present or -acknowledgment in return for their unwelcome effrontery in taking you as -an eponymus. - -It is probable, nay, I think, certain, that in no epoch of the world’s -history was prominence in any art or any career ever rendered so -extremely uncomfortable as in ours, never so heavily handicapped with -the observation and penalty-weight of inquisitive misrepresentation. All -the inventions of the age tend to increase a thousandfold all that -minute examination of and impudent interference with others which were -alive in the race in the days of Miltiades and Socrates, but which has -now, in its so-called scientific toys, the means of gratifying this -mischievous propensity in an infinitely greater and more dangerous -degree. - -The instant that any man or woman accomplishes anything which is in any -way remarkable, the curiosity of the public is roused and fastens on his -or her private life to the neglect and detriment of his or her -creations. The composer of the ‘Cavalleria Rusticana,’ an opera which, -whatever may or may not be its artistic merit, has had charm and melody -enough to run like a flame of fire across Italy, awakening the applause -of the whole nation, had dwelt in obscurity and poverty up to the moment -when his work aroused a fury of delight in his country people. Lo! the -press immediately seizes on every detail of his hard and laborious life, -and makes a jest of his long hair. What has his life or his hair to do -with the score of the ‘Cavalleria Rusticana?’ What has the fact that he -has written music which, if not original, or spiritual, has the secret -of rousing the enthusiasm of the populace, to do with the private -circumstances, habits, or preferences of his daily existence? It is an -intolerable impudence which can presume to pry into the latter because -the former has revealed in him that magic gift of inspiration which -makes him momentarily master of the souls of others. - -The human mind is too quickly coloured, too easily disturbed, for it to -be possible to shake off all alien bias and reflected hues; and it is -more just to the dead than to the living, because it is not by the dead -moved either to that envy or detraction, that favour or adulation, which -it unconsciously imbibes from all it hears and knows of the living. - -Whoever else may deem that the phonograph, the telephone, and the -photographic apparatus are beneficial to the world, every man and woman -who has a name of celebrity in that world must curse them with deadliest -hatred. Life is either a miserable and weak submission to their demands, -or a perpetual and exhausting struggle against and conflict with their -pretensions, in the course of which warfare enemies are made inevitably -and continually by the tens of thousands. He who bends beneath the -decrees of the sovereign spy is popular at the price of dignity and -peace. Those who refuse to so stoop are marked out for abuse and calumny -from all those who live by or are diverted by the results of the -espionage. There is no middle way between the two; you must be the -obedient slave or the irreconcilable opponent of all the numerous and -varied forms of public inquiry and personal interference. The walls of -Varzin have never been high enough to keep out the interviewer, and the -trees of Faringford have never been so thickly planted that they availed -to screen the study of the poet. The little, through these means and -methods, have found out that they can annoy, harass, torment, and turn -to profit, the great. Who that knows humanity could hope that the former -would abstain from the exercise of such power? - -The worst result of the literary clamour for these arrays of facts, or -presumed facts, is that the ordinary multitude, who have not the talent -of the original seekers, imitate the latter, and deem it of more -importance to know what any famous person eats, drinks, and wears, in -what way he sins, and in what manner he sorrows, than it does to rightly -measure and value his picture, his position, his romance, or his poem. -Journalistic inquisitiveness has begotten an unwholesome appetite, an -impudent curiosity, in the world, which leaves those conspicuous in it -neither peace nor privacy. - -The press throughout the whole world feeds this appetite, and the -victims, either from timidity or vanity, do not do what they might do to -condemn and resist it. The interviewer too often finds his impertinent -intrusion unresented for him, or the public which employs him, to reach -any consciousness of his intolerable effrontery. He has behind him those -many-handed powders of anathema, misrepresentation, and depreciation -which are called the fourth estate, and almost all celebrity is afraid -of provoking the reprisals in print which would follow on a proper and -peremptory ejection of the unsought visitor. - -Because a man or woman more gifted than the common multitude bestows -upon the world some poem or romance, some picture, statue, or musical -composition, of excellence and beauty, by what possible right can the -world pry into his or her privacy and discuss his or her fortunes and -character? The work belongs to the public, the creator of the work does -not. The invasion of private life and character never was so great or so -general as it is in the last years of this century. It is born of two -despicable parents, curiosity and malignity. Beneath all the flattery, -which too frequently covers with flowers the snake of inquisitiveness, -the snake’s hiss of envy may be plainly heard by those who have ears to -hear. It is the hope to find, sometime, some flaw, some moral or -physical disease, some lesion of brain or decay of fortune, in the -private life of those whom they profess to admire or adore, which brings -the interviewer crawling to the threshold and peering through the -keyhole. What rapture for those who cannot write anything more worthy -than a newspaper paragraph to discover that the author of ‘Salammbo’ was -an epileptic! What consolation for those who cannot string rhymes -together at a child’s party to stand beside the bedside of Heine and -watch ‘the pale Jew writhe and sweat!’ - -In Dalou’s monument to Eugene Delacroix he represents the great painter -with his chin sunk in the _cache-nez_, which his chilly and fragile -organisation led to his wearing generally, no matter whether the weather -were fine or foul. Dalou has outraged art, but he has delighted his -contemporaries and crystallised their taste; the _cache-nez_ about the -throat of the man of genius enchants the common herd, which catches cold -perpetually, but could not paint an inch of canvas or a foot of fresco, -and feels jealously, restlessly, malignantly, grudgingly, that the -creator of the ‘Entreé des Croises’ and the ‘Barque de Dante,’ who was -so far above them in all else is brought nearer to them by that folded -foulard. The monument in the gardens of the Luxembourg is an epitome of -the sentiment of the age; time, glory and art bend before Delacroix and -offer him the palms of immortality; Apollo throws his lyre away in -sympathy and ecstasy; but what the mortal crowds see and applaud is the -disfiguring neckerchief! - -It is the habit of scholars to lament that so little is known of the -private life of Shakespeare. It is, rather, most fortunate that we know -so little, and that little but vaguely. What can we want to know more -than the plays tell us? Why should we desire to have records which, -drawing earthwards the man, might draw us also downwards from that high -empyrean of thought where we can dwell through the magic of the poet’s -incantations? - -It may be a natural instinct which leads the crowd to crave and seek -personal details of the lives of those who are greater than their -fellows, but it is an instinct to be discouraged and repressed by all -who care for the dignity of art. The cry of the realists for _documents -humains_ is a phase of it, and results from the poverty of imagination -in those who require such documents as the scaffolding of their -creations. The supreme gift of the true artist is a rapidity of -perception and comprehension which is totally unlike the slow piecemeal -observations of others. As the musician reads the page of a score at a -glance, as the author comprehends the essence of a book by a flash of -intelligence, as the painter sees at a glance the points and lines and -hues of a landscape, whilst the ordinary man plods through the musical -composition note by note, the book page by page, the landscape detail by -detail, so the true artist, whether poet, painter, or dramatist, sees -human nature, penetrating its disguises and embracing all its force and -weakness by that insight which is within him. The catalogues, the -classifications, the microscopic examinations, which are required to -make up these ‘_documents_,’ are required by those who have not that -instantaneous comprehension which is the supreme gift of all supreme -talent. The man who takes his notebook and enumerates in it the -vegetables, the fish, the game, of the markets, missing no bruise on a -peach, no feather in a bird, no stain on the slab where the perch and -trout lie dying, will make a painstaking inventory, but he will not see -the whole scene as Teniers or Callot saw it. - -When the true poet or artist takes up in his hand a single garden pear -or russet apple, he will behold, through its suggestions, as in a -sorcerer’s mirror, a whole smiling land of orchard and of meadow; he -will smell the sweet scent of ripe fruit and wet leaves; he will tread a -thousand grassy ways and wade in a thousand rippling streams; he will -hear the matin’s bell and the even song, the lowing kine and the -bleating flocks; he will think in a second of time of the trees which -were in blossom when Drake and Raleigh sailed, and the fields which were -green when the Tudor and Valois met, and the sunsets of long, long ago, -when Picardy was in the flames of war, and all over the Norman lands the -bowmen tramped and the fair knights rode. - -The phrasing of modern metaphysics calls this faculty assimilation; in -other days it has been called imagination: be its name what it will, it -is the one essential and especial possession of the poetic mind, which -makes it travel over space, and annihilate time, and behold the endless -life of innumerable forests as suggested to it by a single green leaf. -When the writer, therefore, asks clamorously for folios on folios of -_documents humains_, he proves that he has not this faculty, and that he -is making an inventory of human qualities and vices rather than a -portrait of them. - - - - - THE LEGISLATION OF FEAR - - -To any one convinced of what seems to be a supreme truth, that the -happiness of humanity can only be secured by the liberty of the -individual, the tendency of opinion in Europe in this present year must -be a matter of grave anxiety. The liberty of the public is everywhere -suffering from the return to reaction of their governments. The excesses -of a few are made the excuse for the annoyance and restriction of the -many. Legislation by fear is everywhere replacing legislation by -justice, and is likely to continue to do so. The only statesman who has -spoken of anarchy in any kind of philosophic spirit is Lord Rosebery, -who called it ‘that strange sect of which we know so little.’ All other -political speakers have treated of it only with blind abuse. In truth we -do know almost nothing of it; we do not know even who are its high -priests and guiding spirits. We know that it is a secret society, and we -know that secret societies have always had, in all climes and for all -races, the most singular and irresistible fascination. To meet it, -ordinary society has only its stupid and brutal police system; its -armies of spies, who, as the journey of Caserio from Cette to Lyons -proves, are hopelessly useless, even when they are truthful. - -It is true that, in the long run, secret societies have always been -conquered and dispersed by ordinary society, but they are constantly -reappearing in new forms, and it is certain that they have an extreme -attraction for certain minds and classes of men, that they exact and -receive an universal obedience which is never given to ordinary laws. -They constitute a phase, a phenomenon, of human nature which is in -itself so strange that it ought to be examined with the most calm and -open-minded philosophy, instead of being judged by the screams of -frightened crowds and the coarse invective of such politicians as -Crispi. The curious power which can induce young men to risk their -lives, and give them willingly to the scaffold, cannot be worthily -examined and met by a rough classification of these men amongst monsters -and wretches. That they have been brought, in their youth, to entire -insensibility to personal danger and absolute indifference to death, -whether to suffer it or cause it, is an indisputable fact; but no one -seems to care to investigate the means by which they are brought to this -state of feeling, nor the social causes by which this doctrine of -destruction has been begotten. They are classed amongst criminals and -sent to the scaffold. But it is certain that they are different to -ordinary criminals; they may be much worse than they, but they are -certainly different, and are in a sense entirely free from egotism, -which is the usual motive of common crimes, except so far as they are -seduced by the egotism of vanity. - -It is impossible not to recognise great qualities allied to great -cruelties in anarchists and nihilists, and, in the former, to great -follies. When we remember the ghastly punishment of even the slightest -political offences in Russia, yet see continually that some one is found -who dares place on the Tsar’s dressing-table or writing-table a skull, a -threatening letter, a dagger, or some other emblem and menace of death; -that to do this, access is obtained into the most private and -carefully-guarded apartments of imperial palaces; that who it is that -does this can never be ascertained (_i.e._, there is no traitor who -betrays the secret), and that the most elaborate and constant vigilance -which terror can devise and absolutism command is impotent to trace the -manner in which entrance is effected, we must admit that no common -organisation can be at work, and that no common qualities must exist in -those affiliated to it. There is no doubt that anarchism is a much more -vulgar and much more guilty creed than nihilism. The latter has the -reason of its being in the most brutal government that the world holds; -it lives in a hell and only strives to escape from that hell, and -liberate from it its fellows. Anarchy, with no such excuse, strikes -alike at the good and the bad; strikes indeed at the good by preference. -Yet there are qualities in it which we have been accustomed to consider -virtues; there are resolution, patience, _sang froid_ and absolute -indifference to peril; it is these which make it formidable. It also -cannot be doubted that behind its Caserios and its Vaillants there must -be some higher intelligence, some calm, trained, dominant minds. It has -grown up in the dark, and by stealth; unsuspected, unseen, until it is -strong enough to shake like an earthquake the existing institutions of -the world. We see the bomb, the pistol, the knife; but we do not see the -power which directs these, any more than we see that volcanic stratum -which makes the solid earth divide and crumble. - -The existing clumsy machinery of tribunals and police offices will not -have more faculty to detect it than has the public in general. There are -no seismographic instruments in the political world. There are only a -scaffold and a house of detention. This age, which is squeamish about -execution, has invented the infernal torture of solitary confinement. It -need not surprise us if there be a return to rack and thumbscrew, these -primitive agencies being refined and intensified by the superior -resources of science. It is, I believe, proved that Stambuloff tortured -his political prisoners with the old-fashioned forms of torture. These -can scarcely be worse than the solitary confinement in humid underground -cells in which Francesco Crispi causes those who displease him to be -confined. Men in the freshness of youth, in the full promise of talent, -are shut up in these infernal holes in solitude for a score of years, -their health ruined and their minds distraught. Many of these men have -no fault whatever except that the authorities are afraid of their -political doctrines and of the sympathy the populace feel for them. -Where is the regard for ‘life’ in these fell sentences? Death would be a -thousand times more merciful. - -A youth of twenty-one was in the second week of July condemned at -Florence to fifteen months’ imprisonment for having called the _pretore_ -of a petty court and his subordinate _vigliacchi_ (scoundrels); an -expression so appropriate to the officials of these vicious and corrupt -little tribunals that it was unpardonable. If at the end of the fifteen -months this lad comes out of prison at war with society, a second -Caserio, a second Vaillant, whose will be the fault? - -A young lady of good family saved a little dog from the guards in Paris, -and when she had seen it safely up its staircase turned in righteous -indignation on the men. ‘Are you not ashamed to persecute innocent -little animals?’ she said to them. ‘You would be better employed in -catching thieves.’ This just remark so infuriated them, as a similar -observation did the Florentine _pretore_, that they seized her, cuffed -her, dragged her along under repeated blows, tearing some of her clothes -off her back, and, reaching the police-station, locked her up with the -low riff-raff of the streets. This took place in a fashionable quarter -of Paris. If the male relatives of the young gentlewoman had lynched the -guards who thus outraged her they would only have done their duty; but -we know that the Parisian tribunals would have condemned them had they -done so, and absolved the rascally myrmidons of the law. There is no -justice anywhere if police are compromised by it. - -At Mantua, in the month of August of this year, a poor woman, who has -five children to maintain by her daily labour, was arrested by a guard -for bathing in a piece of water outside the town (she ought to have been -rewarded for her unusual cleanliness); and being taken before the -tribunal she was sentenced to a fine. She exclaimed as she heard the -sentence, ‘And the brigadier who brought this misery on me has his -decoration!’ She was condemned to further punishment for the rebellious -utterance; her defender, a young lawyer, in vain protested, and, for -thus protesting, was himself arrested and charged with the misdemeanour -of endeavouring ‘to withdraw a prisoner from just authority’! Can -anything be more infamous? - -In July at Ravenna eight young lads were flung into prison for singing -the Hymn of Labour. - -Yet more absurd still. In Florence a band of young men were arrested for -singing the choruses from the _Prophète_, which sounded revolutionary to -the ears of the police. At the same time, the indulgence shown to the -crimes of the police is boundless. - -A poor man named Pascia was, in the same city, last week condemned to -thirty-five days’ imprisonment for having said an impudent word to the -guards. On hearing the sentence his wife, a young woman with a baby in -her arms, expostulated, asking who would now earn her own and her -child’s bread. She was arrested, and locked up for the night on the -charge of ‘outraging authority.’ - -On the twenty-second of April of this year, Alfredo Ghazzi, -Customs-house guard on the Italian border of the Tresa, fired into a -fishing-boat on the Tresa, having received no provocation whatever, and -maimed two men, named Zennari and Zannori, of whom the former died; the -latter, after a long illness recovered. The military tribunal of Milan -_entirely_ absolved the guard Ghazzi. - -For an offence of the kind (_reanto arbitrario in servizio_), even -though ending in its victim’s death, the legal maximum of punishment is -only two years’ imprisonment; but in this instance not even a fine was -levied. - -In Prussia the murder of men, women and children is frequent by the -bayonets and the bullets of guards and sentinels. The other day a little -boy was on the grass of a square in Berlin; the guard tried to arrest -him; the child, frightened, ran away; the guard shot him dead. Such -occurrences are frequent. If a newspaper condemns them the editor is -imprisoned. It is wholly illogical to tell anarchists that human life is -sacred when its sanctity can be disregarded at will by any soldier or -police officer. The public was convulsed with horror before the -assassination of Carnot; quite rightly; but why is it wholly unmoved at -the assassination of the fishermen of Tresa, or of the child of Berlin? - -The English nation has not perhaps been greatly interested in the fate -of the conscript Evangelisto; has perhaps never heard of him. Briefly, -he was, in the spring of this year, a young trooper, a peasant who had -recently joined at Padua, could not learn to ride and had weak health; -he was bullied to death by the officer immediately over him; he was made -to ride with his feet tied beneath his horse, when he fell he was pulled -up into the saddle and beaten, his hands being tied; once again he fell, -and then never rose again; they swore at him and flung water over him in -vain; he was dead. The officer who killed him is still at large and -retains his position in the cavalry; being young, rich, and of rank, he -drives four-in-hand about Udine, where he is now quartered, and when he -is hissed and hooted by the country people they are arrested. Now, if -the Italian press were to say what it has not said about this -disgraceful affair under the new law, such lawful and proper censure -would be called calumny of the army, and would be visited with fine and -imprisonment. - -The soldier is to be inviolable and revered as a god, when his bayonet -or his sabre are the instruments of oppression of the government; but at -other times he is considered as carrion with which his superiors may do -whatever they choose. - -It is constantly stated that the officer who tortured Evangelisto to -death will be brought to trial, but months have elapsed since the -tragedy and the young man is still enjoying himself[P] in full -possession of his military rank. How could any public writer, who does -his duty to the public, castigate too severely such atrocities as these? - ------ - -Footnote P: - - Since this was written, the officer, Blanc-Tassinari, has been tried - by a _civil tribunal_, found guilty of ‘culpable homicide and abuse of - authority,’ and condemned to five months’ detention in a fortress, and - a fine of £20 (500 fr.). This punishment will entail no privation, as - he is rich, and will live as he pleases in the fortress, and when the - five months have expired, will rejoin his regiment as if nothing had - happened. De Felice, Molinari, Garibaldi-Bosco, Barbato, and hundreds - of intelligent and disinterested patriots are brought before military - courts, are sentenced to twenty, twenty-five, thirty years’ - imprisonment, are condemned to prison diet, to shaved heads, to forced - labour, to solitary cells, whilst this young brute, who made the lives - of his soldiers a martyrdom, and is found guilty of culpable homicide, - receives practically no chastisement whatever. And the English Press - upholds and justifies the Government under which such enormities are - possible. - ------ - -Yet even to hint at the brutality which goes on in the barracks is -considered almost treason in Italy even as in Germany. - -The legislation of fear goes hand in hand with a military despotism. The -one is the outcome of the other. - -The commercial world, the financial world, and the world of pleasure are -beside themselves with terror. In Italy this passion of fear is being -used to secure the passing of laws which will completely paralyse the -press and enable the government on any pretext to carry away its foes -out of the Chambers, and to confine to _domicilio coatto_ any person, -male or female, in whom it may suspect any danger to itself, or who may -be merely personally disliked by the men in office. - -There is no exact equivalent in English for _domicilio coatto_; it means -the right of Government to send anyone it pleases to reside in any -district it selects, for as long a period as it may choose to ordain. A -journalist was the other day arrested in Rome whilst talking with a -friend, his offence being the expression of republican opinions. He was -ordered to reside in an obscure village where he had been born, but -which he had left when in swaddling clothes; his house, family and means -of livelihood were all in Rome. He had been previously domiciled in -Bologna, whence he had been expelled for the same offence of opinion. -The confinement of a man of this profession to an obscure and remote -village is, of course, the deprivation of all his means of livelihood. -There is nothing he can do in such a place; meanwhile his family must -starve in Rome or wherever they go. - -Another journalist, merely accused of _desiring another form of -government than the monarchial_, was put in the felon’s dock, loaded -with chains and surrounded by gendarmes, in the same place where Paolo -Lega had been sentenced an hour before. A seller of alabaster statuettes -and ornaments, though there was nothing against him except the suspicion -of the police, was so harrassed by the latter in Civita Vecchia that he -sold off all his stock at ruinous prices, and went towards Massa, his -native place, hoping to dwell there in peace; he was, however, arrested -at Corneto, on a vague charge of anarchism and flung into prison. These -are only a few examples out of thousands. Can any better plan be devised -for the conversion of industrious, harmless and prosperous persons into -paupers and criminals? - -It apparently seems a little thing to the violent old man who throughout -1894 has been unfortunately paramount in Italy, to uproot men from their -homes and occupations and pitchfork them into some hamlet where they -were born, or some barren sea-shore or desolate isle. But to a man who -maintains himself by the work of either his hands or his brain, such -deportation from the place where all his interests lie, is a sentence of -ruin and starvation for him and his family; and if the Government gives -him a meagre pittance to keep life in him (which it does not do unless -he is actually a criminal or one condemned as such), all the women and -children belonging to him must fall into complete misery, being deprived -of his support. The English Press takes no notice of these seizures of -citizens, and their condemnation to _domicilio coatto_, perhaps it does -not comprehend what _domicilio coatto_ means; or perhaps it thinks that -it would not matter at all to a journalist, a solicitor, or a merchant, -living and working in York, in Exeter, or in London, to be suddenly -transported thence to some obscure hamlet in Hants, in Connaught, or in -Merionethshire, and ordered never to leave that place. - -There is a project for deporting all those thus uprooted and condemned -in Italy to ‘_domicilio coatto_,’ to an island on the Red Sea, there to -rot out their wretched lives in fever and famine. On a barren shore, -where not a blade of grass will grow, in face of a sun-scorched sea -which no vessel ever visits save once a year, the skiffs of -pearl-fishers, many of the most intelligent, the most disinterested, and -the most patriotic men of Italy will be left to die by inches in the -festering heat, deriving what consolation they may from the reflection -that whilst honest men are thus dealt with for the sin of political -opinion, the men who forged, robbed and disgraced their nation, at the -Banca Romana, are set at liberty and caressed and acclaimed by the -populace. - -‘I hope the country will draw a parallel between Tanlungo and -ourselves,’ said Dr Barbato, a man of high talent and character, who has -been condemned to the agonies of solitary confinement in the prisons of -Perugia for political offences; he is well known as a writer; and when -the famous Liberal deputy, Cavallotti, was allowed to see him the other -day, he merely said that he hoped he might be allowed more air, as the -confinement to his cell made him suffer from almost continual vertigo, -which prevented him from pursuing any intellectual thought. - -The fortresses, prisons and penitentiaries are crowded all over Italy -with prisoners, many of them as worthy of respect as Dr Barbato, as -innocent as Molinari, as high-spirited and noble-hearted as De Felice. -Under the additions which have been made to the Code in the last -parliamentary sessions these captives will be increased by thousands. - -Here is the text of some articles in the draft of the new laws recently -passed at Montecitorio:— - - ‘Whoso uses the press to excite to crime, does not merely commit an - offence of the press but commits a common felony, with the aggravation - of turning to a felonious purpose an instrument designed to uphold - education and instruction. Whereas the destructive aim of those who - would reduce existing society to the last gasp, is above all, to - inoculate the army with the passion of discord and insubordination, - the army which is our joy and pride by its example of patriotism, of - self-denial, and of self-sacrifice, we propose, with the second - article of this projected addition to the code, a punishment for this - especial offence which, as the code stands at present, escapes penal - chastisement. Thus we propose that any incitement to lawlessness, any - propaganda leading to insubordination and rebellion, do not cease to - be felonious offences because the offender employs the medium of the - press instead of that of speech, and ... this form of offence should - also be raised to the honour (_sic_) of a crime meet to be judged by - the assizes whenever the offender shall use for such purpose the - public press, and the greater gravity of the offence shall render it - more ignoble, and shall not any longer allow it to escape under an - aureole of political glory.’ - -It then proceeds to provide that such offence shall be punishable by a -term of not less than five and of not more than ten years; and it is -plain with what ease this clause may be stretched to comprehend and -condemn every phase of liberal opinion in any way obnoxious to the -Government in power. - -Literature itself is threatened in the most perilous and insolent manner -by the following lines in Article 2 of this Crispian programme:— - - ‘Whosoever by means of the press, or in whatever other figurative - sense (_qualsiasi altro senso figurativo_) instigates the military to - disobey any law, or to be lacking in respect to their superiors, or to - violate in any manner the duties of discipline, or the decorum of the - army or of men under arms, or exposes it to the dislike or the - ridicule of civil persons, shall be punished by imprisonment of a term - varying from three to thirty months, and with the fine of from three - hundred to three thousand francs.’ - -With such a comprehensive decree as this the delightful _Abbozzi -Militare_ of De Amicis might be condemned as wanting in respect, whilst -Dante, were he living, would be sent much further than Ravenna. - -Every one who attacks in print existing institutions is to be dragged -into a criminal court, and from thence to prison; the philosophic -republican, the meditative layman, who dares to bring his well-weighed -thoughts to bear against existing institutions, will be set in the same -dock with the thief, the forger, and the murderer, and from the dock -will pass to the _ergastolo_, to the diet, the clothes, and the -existence, of common felons. - -This is a violation of intellectual and personal liberty which does not -concern Italian writers alone; it is one which should rouse the alarm, -the indignation and the sympathy of every thinker in every clime who -from his study endeavours to enlighten and liberate the world. - -Stripped of its pompous verbiage this addition to the Code will enable -the government to silence and put away every public writer, orator, -pressman, or deputy, who is displeasing or annoying to them. Observe the -provision to treat as penal all judgments of the press passed on -verdicts of the tribunals. The tribunals are at present merely held in -some slight check by the expression of public opinion given in the daily -press. This check is to be removed and the most conscientious, the most -honourable of journalists, may be treated as a common malefactor and -deprived of trial by jury. To be judged by jury has hitherto been the -inalienable right of newspaper proprietors or of contributors to the -press. It is impossible to exaggerate this menace to the liberties of -the press. An insolent and unscrupulous minister, and a timid and -servile parliament, have reduced the Italian press to the level of the -Russian press. - -There is scarcely any political article which the ingenuity of a public -prosecutor could not twist into a criminal offence, and this project of -law is so carefully worded that the meshes of its net are wide enough to -entrap all expressions of opinion. Anything by its various sections may -be construed into incitement to disorder or rebellion. John Bright and -Stuart Mill would be condemned with Krapotkine and Tolstoï. A writer -writing against conscription would be treated as equally guilty with one -writing in favour of regicide. - -The assassination of opinion is a greater crime than the assassination -of a man. John Milton has said that, ‘It is to hit the image of God in -the eye.’ - -The whole provisions of these new laws are no less infamous; they will -legalise arbitrary and unexplained arrest, and will condemn to -‘_domicilio coatto_’ any deputy or citizen who may be suspected or -obnoxious, and the law can be stretched to include and smite the -simplest expression of individual views, the mere theory and deductions -of philosophic studies. - -This paper could under it be easily attacked as an _apologia pro -anarchia_. - -The printing press may not be an unmixed good, but it is certain that -the absolute freedom of its usage is its right and its necessity. - -The purpose of anarchism in its outrages is no doubt to make all -government impossible through terror, but they will probably only -succeed in making through terror every government a tyranny. The extent -to which terror can carry already existing governments is nowhere seen -so conspicuously as in Italy, where reaction is violent and entirely -unscrupulous in its paroxysm of fear. - -It is grotesque, it is impudent, of such governments as exist at the -close of this century to expect that any writer, gifted with any -originality of thought and having the courage of his opinions, should be -content with them or offer them any adulation. The governments of the -immediate moment are conspicuous for all the defects which must irritate -persons of any intelligence and independence. All have overwhelmed their -nations with fiscal burdens; all lay the weight of a constant -preparation for war on their people; all harass and torment the lives of -men by meddlesome dictation; all patronise and propagate the lowest -forms of art; all muddle away millions of the public treasure; all are -opportunists with neither consistency nor continuity. There is not a -single government which can command the respect of any independent -thinker. Yet we are told to revere government as a sacred custodian -throned upon the purity of spotless snows! - -‘Two things are necessary to this country—liberty and government,’ said -Casimir-Perier in his opening address. He might have added that no one -has ever yet succeeded in making the two dwell in unison. Liberty and -government are dog and cat; there can be no amity or affinity between -them. Governments are sustained because men make a sacrifice, sometimes -compulsory, sometimes voluntary, of their liberties to sustain -government. What is the idea of liberty which Casimir-Perier has in his -mind? This kind of nobly sounding phrase is much beloved by politicans; -they usually mean nothing by them. He will certainly leave the -Prefectures and all their subordinates as he finds them; he will allow -the Department of Seine et Oise to be poisoned, despite its inhabitants’ -piteous protests; he will sustain and probably give still more power to -the police and the detective system; he will not prevent arbitrary -arrests in the streets of innocent persons, nor domiciliary visits on -suspicion to private houses; he certainly will not touch conscription; -he in all likelihood will revive obsolete press laws, and he will -without doubt harass and muzzle the socialists on every occasion; he -will have his _Cabinet Noir_ and secret services like the ministers of -the Empire, and he will not alter by a hair’s breadth the spoliation of -the public for taxation, the worry of the citizen by bye-laws, the -corruption of municipal and political elections, and the impossibility -for any Royalist to obtain justice at any _mairie_, prefecture, or -tribunal. - -As the Republican can obtain no justice in Germany, as the Jew can -obtain none in Russia, as the Ecclesiastic and the Socialist alike can -obtain none in Italy, so the Royalist and the Socialist alike can obtain -none in France. The same tendency to mete out justice by political -weights and measures is to be observed in England, although not to so -great an extent, because in England the character and position of judges -and magistrates are far higher and less accessible to corruption and -prejudice. Yet even there, since political bias is allowed to influence -the issue of cards for State balls, and admittance to the opening of -State Ceremonies, it will soon inevitably influence legal decisions in -the country. Interference with the freedom of the press would not yet in -a political sense be tolerated in England, but its tribunals have come -grievously near to it in some recent verdicts, and the mere existence of -Lord Campbell’s Vigilance Society is an invasion of the liberty of -literature; whilst the steps to be taken are not many which would carry -the _Times_ the _Post_ the _Standard_, and many other journals from -their servile adulation of the sham Sylla of Italy to the advocacy of a -similar tyranny to his over Great Britain. Neither Conservatism nor -Radicalism is any protection against tyranny, _i.e._, incessant -interference with the individual liberty of the citizen; and republics -are as opposed to individualism as monarchies and empires. - -Carnot lies dead in the Pantheon, and liberty lies dying in the world. -His tender and unselfish heart would have ached with an impersonal -sorrow, greater even than his grief for those he loved, could he have -known that his death would have been made an excuse for intemperate -authority and pusillanimous power to gag the lips and chain the strength -of nations. - - THE END - - - - - - - - - --------------------------------------------------------- - - COLSTON AND COMPANY, LTD., PRINTERS, EDINBURGH - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - Transcriber’s Note - - French quotations occasionally are lacking diacritical marks, but - are given here as printed. - ‘Tolstoï’ also appears twice as ‘Tolstoi’, which has been corrected - to accommodate text searches. - The word ‘eponymous’ appears only twice, both times as ‘eponymus’ - and appears here as printed. - -Other errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, -and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the -original. - - 6.19 by the[ the] way Removed. - 185.22 a scholar or a conno[ssi/iss]eur Transposed. - 190.32 given over to the abso[ul/lu]te will Transposed. - 191.23 Tolsto[i/ï] and St Paul Replaced. - 220.1 Packed like[d] herrings Removed. - 221.11 a hyb[ir/ri]d, self-contained opponent Transposed. - 261.7 we have the ‘Good-night[’] Added. - 274.25 of gastro[mon/nom]y and of sport Transposed. - 300.16 will be awarded at Westmin[i]ster Removed. - 314.8 i[s/n] his admirable treatise on gastronomy Replaced. - 341.14 are called reaction[o/a]ry, old-fashioned Replaced. - 364.22 mathemat[h]ically-measured Removed. - 372.22 is justifiable in its repression[.] Added. - 383.18 the coarse invective of such politic[i]ans Inserted. - 393.33 of not less tha[t/n] five Replaced. - 395.26 with Krapotkine and Tolsto[i/ï] Replaced. - 397.18 is much beloved by politic[i]ans Inserted. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIEWS AND OPINIONS *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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