children on an English cliff, and near them some lambs are nibbling at the herbage that grows within the lips of a corroded cannon long since disused. In the distance a steamer is seen ploughing the blue channel waters. There was a broad epical power about these contrasted scenes that bore down all criticism.

In 1851, this painter, always versatile and ambitious and laborious, exhibited his Scene from the Midsummer Night's Dream,-in spite of Fuseli and others, the best rendering of the scene where Titania bids the fairies minister to the wishes of Bully Bottom with the ass's head. Some little touches of poetry in this picture delighted the public, and a special white rabbit in the centre carried away the bell; the coat, of a soft fluffy velvet, was wonderfully manipulated, and with an enjoyment that only true power and knowledge could have felt.

ox struggles for the bank, on which a dead goat lies; on the other side is a hare trying to scratch a hole in the thatch. Unfortunately the figure of the old man is badly drawn, and the whole is very cold and dim.

THE ORNAMENTAL ART COLLECTIONS AT THE KENSINGTON MUSEUM. ON the close of the mighty century of the classic revival, which swept away the civilization of the middle ages, the spirit of beauty, after her intense effort, seemed to fall asleep. The fine arts sank gradually into a state of lethargy and degradation, which endured through two whole centuries. After the peace of 1815, the gay and meretricious production of France gave the norm to all European countries. In Roman Catholic lands the deep-seated awe which alone can give birth to great schools of religious art was no more. ProIt should be one of the greatest blessings of success that testant countries asked for no religious art, and desired no it enables an author or artist to do as he likes, and to refuse apotheosis of the state. Nobility of form and chasteness of to do what he does not like; yet the wealthy man becomes colour had fled, seemingly for ever. But while all seemed often more timid than the poor man, and more subservient to most dead the awakening took place. It was not, however, the caprices of rich patrons; but such subserviency meets a new life; it was but a growing susceptibility to the beauties with its own certain punishment. A task done to order can of past epochs of industry. Pure Greek forms were the first never have the dash and glow of a spontaneous work. This thrust prominently forward. Numberless buildings in Eng. subserviency is doubly short-sighted, too; for the public, land and Germany bear witness to the wide prevalence of when it cannot lead, is obliged to follow. Landseer's order, what has been termed the Greek mania. Greek forms still pictures have not been successful, and their failure does maintain a strong hold in Germany, but in this country they credit to his originality and love of freedom. The patron have almost disappeared before the vigour of the so-called should never order, he should buy what he sees, and hear, mediæval revival. This revival, which began to spread some what the artist is wishing to paint. Of these orders, large thirty years ago, is a return to the principles which actuated in pretensions and not very triumphant, we may mention Van the art products of the middle ages. It must be borne in Amburgh and his Animals, a mere catalogue subject, a com- mind that both the Greek and mediæval art-revivals have mis ion for the great Duke of Wellington, who knew as gone hand in hand with a wide-spread study of Greek and much about art as he did about conic sections. Nor was mediaval literature and archæology. the Dialogue at Waterloo more successful, though commissioned by Mr. Vernon; the duke, stiff, cold, and a little fogy-fied, a lady and some Belgian peasants, made but a bald picture, though thoughtful in its meaning and intention. Still worse, because tame in treatment and pale in colour, was the Queen's commission of Royal Sports on Hill and Dale (1851), a feeble picture sent to the Royal Academy unfinished; the little interest that it had it derived from the fact of its conveying to a curious public some conception of the life that the Royal Family led in the Highlands.

The critics were unanimous in praising Landseer's portrait of his father, exhibited in 1818; a masterly bit of realism, much enhanced by the artist having a fine characteristic head to treat. Always popular and petted, Landseer had no party spring of struggle and neglect to sour or crab or harden. Only Lawrence is said to have surpassed him in income; in a monopoly of print-shop windows, only Wilkie equalled him. Yet though always successful, Landseer, like other men, has had his beginnings. For the copyright of the Highland Drover, his first successful picture, he received only two hundred guineas; but since that day publishers have wrangled for his copyright, and for the Peace and War Mr. Graves paid him three thousand guineas in addition to the twelve hundred paid by Mr. Vernon, and another three thousand for the Dialogue at Waterloo.

But how can we conclude this biographical sketch of this great painter, who has elevated the animal kingdom, yet not lowered his own species, without mentioning Sir Edwin's Intest pictures, the Maid and the Magpie, and the Inundation in the Highlands. The first, though showing some decline of power and uncertainty of hand, was remarkable for a pretty face, and for wonderful textural imitation. The latter, with some serious defects, is a work of great power, and a broad grand feeling and large-minded force pervades every inch of it.

The moment chosen is one of those rare periodical devastations that ravage the Highlands, sweeping away cattle in droves, breaking down cottages, and frequently destroying life. The Highland family Sir Edwin represents has been driven on the roofs, below which one sees the yellow flood boiling along, sweeping down all before it. The central group of figures consist of an old Highland grandfather, two boys, and an

zed mother and child. The family pets, too, are there; Phful collie, the cat, and some fowls. Below, a dying

The new art-tendencies have originated with a few learned and enthusiastic minds, and not with the popular instinet. It was with a laudable desire to develop and popularize these beneficial tendencies that our government, in the year 1838, founded in London the first school of design. Many others soon followed in the provinces, all subsidized by the state. At that time the cause of pure taste was being urged by the few amid the impassiveness of the many. A few leading men, at whose head stood Pugin, had caught the spirit of medieval design; they taught that the works of the time were corrupt in design and vicious in colour. It was a startling thing to hear an ethical technology applied to buildings and manufactures. The advocates of mediaeval principles told us that the old age of their own style was debased, and that in its youth it was most severe and most pure. But they were as yet in a minority, for most men of taste seemed to incline rather to a return to the purer epochs of classic and Italian art. From the conflict of these two parties arose what is now called the war of the styles. The schools of design were founded chiefly to train in right principles young designers for textile fabrics, which should henceforth rival in beauty, as well as in quality, the productions of the continent, and preserve our superiority in the world's markets. The teachers of the head school by no means biassed the students in choice of style; they insisted only that every design should be true to its professed style. There were some who deemed the school, as then constituted, successful. There was no lack of lustre or of clever students, while three popular academicians were the teachers. Yet design, the object of the institution, did not flourish. By designing in the spirit of the schools men could not live; neither manufacturers nor public could take the required leap in taste, and only a few men of pure art-feeling cared for their productions.

In 1851 came the splendid international show. The distinguishing peculiarity of this country was its marked tendency towards mediavalism. It was patent in its houses of par liament, its cathedral restorations, in every new church, in street-houses, in the commonest patterned fabric. Indeed, where this style was not, we failed in competition with the foreigner.

At the close of that year a change of direction befell the schools of design. Mr. Cole became their working chief. This gentleman's energy in the matter of the great exhibition had been remarkable, and his talent seemed late in his life

to have first found its special scope. With him was asso-fantastic ornament; the early, though often graced by a conciated Mr. Redgrave, R.A.; and soon after, upon the junction ventional ornamentation, unrivalled in subtle feeling save by of Dr. Playfair and a scientific section, the whole scheme was early Greek work, yet rests its merit on its exquisite propor placed under the supervision of the Council of Education, with tions, and everywhere affects the impression of height. Westthe title of Department of Science and Art. minster Abbey and the Temple Church are instances of the unsculptured building art of this syle. Wells, Lincoln, Lichfield, and Llandaff offer examples of the exquisitely graceful and slender ornament. It is a pity that our architects in their capitals prefer the stunted ornament of foreign countries to the slender grace of the early English.

Then all the art schools were reorganized. The original idea of creating a class of designers was abandoned, the schools must form henceforth but a section of the general scheme of education. Each school of art must become a centre of wide-spread parochial teaching, so that the children of every national school might be taught the elements of drawing. It was resolved to make the schools self-supporting. The students' fees and district subscriptions were to stand in stead of the state subsidy. This step has been severely called in question. Support fluctuates; art is a tender thing. Its schools need foundations equally with colleges and grammar schools. A nobler scheme had been the institution of free schools wholly supported by the state, on the continental system, at least in our large cities. However, the event will test the soundness of present experiments.

The idea was at the same time conceived of forming a museum that should teach by examples the principles of pure art. A large number of beautiful works purchased at the great exhibition, and the magnificent Soulages collection, formed a fitting nucleus. The museum was opened out at Marlborough House in 1852. It ostensibly displayed only works worthy of imitation; but annexed to it was a room which quickly gained the title of "the chamber of horrors," replete with specimens of fabrics reprehensible in design. This was too bad. The manufacturers were up in arms. Mr. Owen Jones had been a forward expositor of the new art theories, the eloquent champion of principles imbibed during a life-long | study of so-called Alhambra ornament, one of the most splendid of the medieval schools. His name and Marlborough House became terms of opprobrium. The public, led by a great writer, held up the new doctrines to ridicule. The department quietly unlearnt its new way of public instruction, and teaching by satire was given up. Years have passed since then, and gradually all branches of manufacture have felt the influence of the principles which this department must have the credit of first thrusting into notoriety.

In 1857 the museum and the whole department removed to Brompton, where it seems likely to remain. The whole institution may be conveniently regarded in three grand sections: the science division, which is lavishly represented in the museum building by scientific and educational collections; the training school and central school of art, located in buildings adjoining the museum; and the collection of fine art examples, which will be the theme for our ensuing remarks.

We shall first consider the gallery of architectural examples, which form the first grade of art study here. The general public pass uneasily through this gallery, these chipped and dusty casts being as much a mystery to them as were the dry bones to the prophet. In the student they awaken a regret that this medieval collection is not confronted with the galleries of the British Museum. We hope the day is not far off when the gods and sarcophagi of Egypt and the sculpture of Athens shall here stand side by side with the strange beauties of medieval architecture. The works of antiquity are here unrepresented save by a few models of temples and such casts of specimens of ancient art as are dealt out to the different schools for copies. But this gallery is a medieval display of great interest, rich in sculptured ornament of Romanesque and the three divisions of Gothic architecture. There is a fair number of photographs of French cathedrals here; but the Romanesque domes of Germany, and the beautiful though small cathedrals of our own land, are not represented, nor are the built marvels of the East here illustrated.

One cannot help reflecting on the steady regress which we have made during the last few years through the late and middle Gothic to the early Gothic style, which is the one now in vogue, and whose freshest examples are the Oxford Museum and All Saints' Church, Margaret-street, London. Few people estimate aright the great gulf of separation which there is between this style and its successors. The later styles array themselves in paint; the early seeks for coloured material. The later styles revel in natural or

And now as to the wonderful figural sculpture, which flowers so magnificently on the cathedrals of France. Great schools of sculpture were well nigh in their decline in the north, ere the Pisani began in Italy the revival of the art on classic precedent. The ridicule cast on the grotesque productions of the later middle ages is ill applied to these early gigantic works. Nothing in the whole range of antiquity can rival the sublimity of many of the figures which throng the portals of Rheims.

Why these great schools degenerated into a fantastic and odd caricaturing of nature, so utterly unlike the voluptuous but nature-true development of the corresponding Greek schools, remains one of the most curious problems ever presented to criticism. We would ask our carvers to study the unaffected, grand, and simple figures of the thirteenth century. Our figure carving is far behind many other branches of revived art: more especially as that early and majestic treatment of drapery is neglected and untaught in all the art schools. The dress of the time, which was faithfully imitated, and which bore much resemblance to Greek costume, was highly favourable to artistic treatment. A tunic for men, women, and angels, reaching from neck to foot, mostly girt about the waist. The outer garment of the men, a lengthened chlamys, i.e. a cloak clasped on the right shoulder, or a plain mantle, an oblong bit of stuff some three yards by one, thrown round the body and shoulders. The women wore mostly a similar mantle, partly covering the head and falling to the ground, or a cloak joined across tho bosom by a cord. But despite this similarity in plan to Greek costume, the effect is very different. The Greek aim was the apotheosis of the human form; that form to whose perfecting all their institutions tended. Their men are mostly naked, and although a deep reverence for modesty constrained their early artists to drape their females, yet they make the drapery to express the action of every limb. In this the slightness of the material aided them. Moreover, they seem to have wrought the countless folds peculiar to Greek sculpture to form a half tint which should act as a foil to the softness of the flesh. All is quite different in Gothic work. This affects in drapery that breadth which it loses by the absence of fleshy masses. The drapery has much independent play, and expresses generally but the main action of the figure. It eschews all creasing, puckering, twistings of bundles of folds, and broken splays; and especially delights in a broad, daring treatment of that feature of drapery which is formed by the angular fall between any two points. It contains, too, the secret of the choice of worthy parts and contrast of breadth and detail.

At the end of this gallery is a collection of British sculp ture. Our sculptors deserve much sympathy. We all know that great sculpture has always been religious or historical. The unsensuousness of Protestantism has heretofore forbidden the former. The apathy of governments and the ignobleness of our costume check the latter. But, since they are restrained to individual personification, do they, in choice of subject, do their skill justice? Must our best sculptor give us a fleshy Venus as his masterwork? Are there no ideas in the Greek creed touching more closely on our own? or were there no strange creations in the wild mythology of the north? Are wind-perplexed girls at the sea-side worthy subjects of the severe art? Are there no women in Dante, Shakspeare, Eschylus? Our sculptors have a praise,-they totally reject French voluptuousness.

On the ground-floor, in one of the north rooms, lie various pieces of carving, bought last year in Italy, and among them the far-famed singing gallery of S. Maria Novella, Florence. We congratulate the good fraternity for ejecting it from their

church, on the charge of incongruity, and the museum authorities for purchasing a fine specimen of technical skill, which Italy can very well spare. The chiselling is perfect in spirit. There is an altar-piece by Ferucci, which is a clever work,-like most of the sculpture of the time, lacking devotional feeling, but here and there, as in the little figures, teeming with all the floating graces of good Italian carving. There are four little statues by one of the Pisani, interesting only for their antiquity.

care to see such master-works must go to St. Denis and Bourges. These great works are purely decorative in character, in conformity with the material, and do not, like later glass, usurp the province of mural painting. The queer strained action of the figures is a fruitful source of modern mirth, but much of it may be regarded as a strenuous effort to express that exuberance of gesture which is peculiar to all early ages, and which is utterly unknown in modern England. All the windows of the middle ages are made up of pieces of glass stained in the making, and merely shaded afterwards; but in modern times enamel painting, i.e. painting on the colours, has been sometimes adopted, of which art there are two beautiful specihere from Sèvres and Munich (Nos. 2,038, 2,039), but its expense and inferior brightness render it unsuitable for its purpose as a transmitter of light.

There are many interesting works of sculpture in the central court. There are the busts of two popes, magnificent in spirit and execution. There is a curious Flemish altarpiece of carved and painted wood, which, though in handioraft clever enough, yet, by dint of ugliness of feature, meanness of the figures, and idolatrous sentiment, is well adapted to make the medieval arts stink in this country. Nor have In a corridor on the west side of the building will be found these later works, with all their barbarity of form and colour, some materials thrown together, illustrative of the course of the look of divinity by which the rude earlier works are the very popular art of wood-engraving. Here shine the distinguished. There is more real art, and certainly mar- splendid works of Dürer and Burgkmair. The draughtsmen vellous invention, in the French stone retable (No. 16), for our periodicals should note the delicate precision and although grotesque silliness everywhere abounds in it. It knowledge of these old works: these are not a maze of mere is a treat to turn to the contemporaneous exquisite low reliefs scratches: there are clothes on the figures, which fold and of the Italian masters, whose subtle feeling and delicate crease according to certain fixed laws of form. The figures manipulation remain unrivalled. In this court stands a cast in modern woodcuts seem garnished with straws; and when of Michael Angelo's colossal statue of David,-a wonderful actual rendering is attempted, it is often spoiled by following display of the new science which Vesalius was just giving to accidents of the folds which weaken and often hide completely the world, but which can enter into no sort of rivalry with the main law. Modern wood-cutting, too, is not honest in the majestic colossi of antiquity. The great sculptor has attempting feats of execution which belong rightfully to broken the very trite rule in art, that the grander the scale of metal plates. This little gallery will probably become one of subject the more subdued should be the detail. The head is the most important and practical sections of the whole museum, too big; the mouth absurdly small, which has induced a and we hope that it may be plentifully contributed to. narrowing of the jaw, and childishness of the lower part of the face, quite inconsistent with the grim power of the frontal region. Connoisseurs cannot but look with pleasure into the cases containing the clay sketches, where the learning and feeling of the great masters appear in all the freshness of first touches. They may be advantageously studied in conjunction with the beautiful sketches in the flat, in the gallery of photographs.

Very interesting is the collection of textile fabrics, ancient and modern. The chaste and beautiful silk stuffs of the early middle ages we owe to the art-loving industry of the Saracens, the vast extent and artistic worth of whose silk manufactures may not be known to many of our readers. For complete information on this point and medieval fabrics generally, we cannot but refer them to Bock's work on liturgical vestments, now publishing in parts in Germany, wherein the whole deThere is a good deal of fine furniture about this court: velopment of the silk manufacture is thoroughly investigated. ancient and modern examples in close contrast: the former There is but little in the museum as yet to give an idea of chiefly of the time of the Renaissance, the latter specimens the knightly garb or ecclesiastical garments of the middle bought at the two great exhibitions. If smoothness, fine ages. We remark, in No. 9,792, a beautifully wrought altar finish, and exuberance of decoration, make up the intrinsic frontal of the thirteenth century, displaying a grace of draw. worth of furniture, the modern has no cause to fear compari-ing astonishing for the time and fabric, and an intense son with the old; but to those who look for nobility of ensemble, and fitness to purpose, new work must be most unsatisfactory. The main virtue of the old furniture lies in intelligent arrangement of parts,-which modern works, with all their pretence to design, sadly lack,-and in inappropriate decoration: but in the execution also there is a certain rough, dogged look, which is very fascinating, and which is quite absent from modern work. Moreover, the extent to which suitable ornamentation was formerly carried,-exemplified, for instance, in the large coffers,-contrasts strangely with the miserable plainness of our own time. Furniture is a matter in which one would think that a home-loving people would take special pride and interest, and it was not therefore gratifying to find ourselves herein excelled by strangers in our great exhibition, save in a Gothic style, which cannot soon prevail in modern dwelling-houses. There are three of the best specimens here of the London and Paris exhibitions, viz., Crace's, Barbetti's, and Fourdinois' cabinets.

earnestness of expression. On turning to the Indian stuffs here exhibited, and marking their close connexion with ancient Saracenic works, one fully feels the conservatism of eastern art. The same rigid laws of colour and of form distribution remain changeless through ages. We notice their exact conformity to what are now termed medieval principles in their harmony of colour, and conventional form perfectly defined, and following the natural principle of growth. It is gratifying to notice the gradual progress of the western nations in these aesthetical principles during the last few years, not now too proud to learn from people and epochs long deemed simply barbarous.

Perhaps the most distinguished feature of the museum is its splendid show of pottery. There are here the means for a complete study of this beautiful art, which, more than any other perhaps, demands initiation. The processes of other arts are comparatively simple and above board, but this is an art essentially connected with the once mystic science of chemistry, an art possessing secrets whose owners jealous of them, and sometimes have taken them with them to the grave. The art has been prolific of manias, and we need to carefully question its claims to our admiration.

are

All our readers must be aware of the stained glass mania now raging in this country. It happens to be a species of pictorial representation which is gladly welcomed where mural painting would be deemed a religious outrage. The extreme interest now taken in this subject renders it desirable that good specimens should find their way into the museum. There are very few specimens here at all, and most of these are but poor, giving no idea of what stained glass, as a decorative means, really is. It is certainly difficult now to procure old glass, so carefully is it treasured up, but specimens might be deposited here of new work by our best modern glass houses, which tread closely on the heels of our ancestors in In the early middle ages enamelled terra-cotta ware, glit he latter manner of work. The vast and solemn harmoniestering with many colours, was produced in great abundance of early glass are little likely to be imitated, and those who by the Saracens in Spain. This old Moresque ware is much

The famous pottery of antiquity is simply unglazed terracotta, ornamented with monochromatic designs. The worth of these red vases lies in shape-beauty, and in the life and quaint grace with which the beautiful myths of Greece are depicted. Vain are all attempts to revive this manufacture; the quaint and often grim feeling and half-impatient artistic skill are not attainable by modern workmen.

tiful animated whole nations. It is our noble and useful work to gather the beauties of the past into public collections, where they may instruct and purify the taste of the present.

Much has been done already, but far more remains to do; we here behold numerous facts falling in disorderly, the authorities, disclaiming any pretence to scientific arrange. ment, desiring the whole to be judged as a scheme in transition. There is as yet no grouping in our art-knowledge, no subordination. Art is far behind most of the sciences in this respect. It is true that canons and standards of art are subjects of continuous strife, and that wars of styles are waged by hot partizans with a bitterness incomprehensible to the outer world. This constant strife certainly hinders the learned in these matters from joining in a great effort to marshal our art-knowledge, by gathering under one roof all our abundant but scattered materials. The day should not be far distant when the grand ancient art collections of the British Museum shall be congregated under one roof with the varied collection of the arts of medieval and modern Europe now at Brompton, and the former edifice become simply the national bookcase. The same concentrative course might well be followed in regard to our scientific collections.

prized for its lustre and its beautiful ornamentation. The manufacture of this ware passing over into Italy appears under the title of Majolica, so termed after the island of Majorca, a chief seat of Saracen industry. At the close of the fifteenth century it is found attaining perfection in central Italy. Called also Faenza and Raphael ware, the Majolica became soon one of Italy's proudest glories. It became especially splendid under Maestro Giorgio da Gubbio, who wrought in the beginning of the sixteenth century. The museum contains, perhaps, the finest collection of his works extant. They are famed for their many-hued lustres, and a gorgeous gold ruby colour, whose secret seems lost by the middle of the century. Great artists then began to paint and draw for this fabric, lavishing on it all the luxuriance of renaissance ornament. Their works are admired for artistic invention, fancy of decoration, and freedom of execution, sometimes approaching sheer carelessness; but the earlier wares are the delight of connoisseurs for effects of hue, which are the glory of the material, and which too soon, as in the case of stained glass, gave way to skilful drawing. Modern attempts to revive this art are unsuccessful; the execution lacks the old racy freedom, and beside the rougher splendours of the old material modern smoothness is mean. The secrets of the art seemed to have been lost in Italy by the end of the seventeenth century: in part, perhaps, dying The union of science and art in the Brompton museum with their jealous owners, partly falling into oblivion before wears, to say the least, a motley complexion. But even as the rage for the newly-introduced Chinese porcelain. This things go, the influence of the art-museum has been great, fair and delicate fabric, mingling clay and glass,-the pride and it has been an important auxiliary in the wide-spreading of China,-was only first perfectly produced in Europe by art-movement which is one of the most striking features of Böttcher, in Germany, in 1709, and for years remained our age. No one can look at our many manufactures, stuffs, jealously guarded in that country; but about 1770 it began carpets, papers,-what you will, and not perceive the steady to be made at Sèvres, near Paris, which soon gained the pre-progress of its purifying influence, and the gradual prevaeminence among European factories. Beautiful examples of lence of the sound principles which it embodies. Sèvres ware are to be found in the museum, in which antique and modern tendencies of art are made to harmonize admirably. Our own high-class pottery is meritorious, but it is rather the honour of our manufacturers to infuse beauty into our every-day ware. The museum contains many excellent specimens of the reptile-strewn works of Bernard Palissy, whom we cannot help admiring more as a man than an artist, in spite of the curious skill lavished on his productions.

It is in the working of metal, in the absence of pottery, that the middle ages stand pre-eminent. Gold and silver vessels, often beautifully adorned with enamelling, attain the acme of grace and beauty. The church chalices, especially the earlier ones, display a ravishing loveliness of shape, and a proportion so exquisite, that one is led to conjecture,-comparing other branches of synchronous art,-that some system was regu. larly followed, whose secret is lost. The comparative simplicity of ornament is remarkable on the early chalices, as is the prodigality of figural decoration. A passion for the human figure pervades early medieval art quite as much as it did the early Greek, and altogether dominates over mere ornament, which itself partakes in both arts in some sort of the subtleties and grace of human form, and expresses but the spring and elasticity of vegetable life; but when it has come to imitate the externals rather than the main law of this life, the ideal treatment of the human figure seems also to cease, and the new art epoch too often grasps but the body, missing the actuating thought. The two grand and perfect epochs, when figure and ornament attained together their highest majesty, were the age of Phidias, and of the cathedral builders of the thirteenth century. Both epochs have their terrors and their tenderness lettered in the writings of Eschylus and Dante, and we believe that, missing the study of one or both these sublime epochs, none can reach the highest pinnacle of art.

It is a school for the public and the art workman alike. It should excite emulation, render toil no longer a subject of dislike, but one of delight and pride. The workman's heart should be in his work, and this can only be by rekindling a love of beauty, and purging our age of its confessed ugliness. But our artists and workmen need cheering. They must not be too much depressed by the saddening eloquence of the great art critic who heads their cause, who sees art hand in hand with superstition, and around whose heart sorrow seems to thicken as it must do around the hearts of all true critics. Let our artists and workmen with sound and reverent mind move on beneath the fair banner of hope, believing the splendour of their country to be but in the bud, and more eagerly seizing than heretofore the valuable teaching which an institution like this spreads out before them.

SLOP-SHOP LITERATURE. THE title at the head of this paper, without much stretching, could be made to include a very broad area of literature. It would take in those very learned, neatly printed, and profusely illustrated trade histories, which are only published for the purpose of advertising a particular business. Waxend on the Human Foot, Daniel Lambert on Corns, and Sleeveboard on the Roman Toga, are not authors wishing to make their fellow-creatures more learned, and to secure for themselves the immortality of the British Museum Library, but shoemakers anxious to sell a particular boot, and tailors interested in the sale of paletôts and sixteen-shilling trowsers. We have most of us seen a treatise upon umbrellas, a history of boots and shoes, another of the cocoa-nut palm, and a discourse upon teeth, which point with unerring constancy to the shops of their masters. A few of us may have noticed a very costly, gilt-edged history of wool and woollens, written, so the title-page asserts, by Messrs. Samuel Brothers. Moses and We have now glanced at the leading features of this splen- Son have long kept a poet of no mean ability in their estabdid museum. Picture galleries are of old date, but museums lishment; but the clothiers of Ludgate-hill, so it seems, are of ornamental art are new things. The mind cannot but more ambitious. The task of writing the history of their revert to epochs which, actuated by a single living idea, were, trade was one that could not be entrusted to hireling hands, in the impetuous onflow of their own life, too eagerly pro- so the inventors of the "Sydenham trowsers" became themducing to busy themselves with the works of gone-by ages; selves the Hume and Smollett of their raw material. About but modern nations seem almost to have reached the bourne eighteen months ago a similar volume was issued under the of the production of forms, and our present decorative efforts somewhat inflated title of " Commercial Enterprise and Social are confined to an eclectic imitation of great past ones, made Progress; or, Gleanings in London, Sheffield, Glasgow, and in times when a special outpouring of the spirit of the beau-Dublin." The "gleanings" appeared to consist chiefly of

advertisements of second-rate firms, and the descriptions were all written with a palpable advertising object.

This, however, is not the kind of slop-shop literature to which I wish to direct attention; as I am not fond of exposing adulterations in every other trade but my own. The slop-shop literature of which I speak is that which is written as literature, published as literature, and bought and read as literature. The people who write it and put it together are called "authors" and "literary men," and the people who sell it are called "publishers." The English language is very elastic, and those who use it often stretch it to the

utmost.

man can understand thoroughly more than one subject, and yet he is called upon to pass judgment upon twenty. Lord Brougham, great and exceptional as he undoubtedly is, has an encyclopædical reputation only among encyclopædical men; and when a writer who has devoted himself to one branch of human knowledge tests him upon that branch, an exposure of his lordship's superficial acquirements naturally follows. If Lord Brougham, and wonders of his class, are not infallible at all times upon all subjects, how shall the nameless critic's opinions upon everything be regarded? Sound common-sense, a logical head, and a stock of welldefined principles may uphold a writer upon "all things and many others" to a certain extent, but they can never preserve him from exposing his weakness to the initiated when he writes upon subjects he knows little about. If he is not content to manufacture agreeable articles out of books he is incapable of analyzing, he is sure to do an injustice to the authors, and to injure the property of the publishers. He will fall into the dogmatic cant of ignorant criticism, which any literary slop-worker can easily assume; and instead of presenting the readers of his journal with the condensed contents of the volumes before him, he will point out errors that have no existence, and make suggestions that can never be followed. Those uninquiring minds that are entirely governed by the "opinions of the press" will at once see how superior the reviewer is to the author, and will duly pity the ignorance of the latter, as directed.

Not one of the so-called "critical journals" is so managed that each book is invariably sent to the right man and to no

The first place amongst real slop-shop literature ought to be given to the modern British drama. It claims a position in the world of letters to which it has not been entitled for years. The clever tradesmen who have discovered how much easier it is to take the product of a Frenchman's wit and ingenuity, and turn it into English, than to invent a coherent plot, and fill it up with natural characters, may be complimented for their shrewdness, but for nothing else. Six easy lessons in the French language, and a good French and English dictionary, are all the modern dramatic author requires to start him fairly in business. The managers look upon him with favour, and open their doors to him, because he brings them nothing possessing any dangerous originality. The cost of producing a piece is ten times the "author's" fee for translating it; and, therefore, the conductors of London theatres are cautious in selecting their ventures. A drama that has been successful in Paris has been tried and not found wanting, and the theatrical speculator welcomes its appear-other. When an important volume is announced,—a volume ance in an English dress because he can produce it with less risk than would attend the production of an original piece. All this is very clever trading on the part of both manager and "author," but nothing more. Even when the translator aspires to become an "adapter," '—a softener down of French manners for the English market, a man who has sufficient talent to turn the Italian Boulevard, Paris, into Regent-street, London, and the gardens of the Tuileries into St. James's Park, he is still nothing more than a slop-shop author. He may take his wages as a crafty middleman, he may flatter himself, in his secret heart, that Shakspeare borrowed his plots and characters in the same unscrupulous way; but he must be kept down to his proper level in the world of literature. If he turns virtuous after a long and profitable career, and writes books with not over clean hands, like the Eighth Commandment by Mr. Charles Reade, it shall not absolve him from his original sin. His motto must still be the trading principle that has always governed him :-" Gentlemen's own materials made up."

A slop-shop drama produces a slop-shop order of criticism, for no journal cares to devote much space or capital to the analysis of mere "amusements." What was formerly treated as an art by actors, upheld as an art by managers, and jealously preserved as an art by literary critics, like William Hazlitt, is now chiefly watched over by reporters and "general writers." The literature of the stage is "noticed," not criticized; and in the leading literary organs the record of its productions is stuffed away in a lumber-corner for paragraphs. No able editor cares a straw about it, but devotes his attention to telegrams and universal politics. An attempt was made, about two years ago, in the daily press, by Mr. John Oxenford, to alter the system of scribbling long criticisms upon plays in a hurried hour after the performance, by presenting a weekly digest instead. This would have given time for reflection and careful writing on the part of the critic, but the Times declined to adhere to the suggestion, and it fell to the ground. It was the only symptom of a "revival" in real dramatic criticism, that we have seen for some years past; but it was not strong enough to overthrow the established slop-shop plan.

If dramatic criticism shows symptoms of degeneracy and even of approaching extinction, the censorship of general literature is in no healthier condition. A hundred books on all subjects, science, art, and politics: works of imagination and collections of facts, will flow in weekly to an important literary journal; and flow out to three, six, or at the most to a dozen "reviewers," as they are called. No one ordinary

that will excite much discussion and interest, and become a landmark of that particular publishing "season,"—a critic is sought for whose researches have been carried on in the same workings as the author. It would be dangerous to place such a book in any other hands than those of a special reviewer, and, for once, an article appears whose verdict, favourable or unfavourable, is uttered with a voice of real authority. This is the exception, however, and not the rule; and nine-tenths of the books which appear every year are cut open, tasted, and marked with black or white brands (thə whitey-brown or medium brand is almost unknown in such "noticing") by a small knot of slop-shop reviewers.

Another obtrusive branch of slop-shop literature is the newspaper "leader." It has been manufactured for years on a certain mechanical and unvarying plan. It must nearly always be of a certain length, no matter what may be its subject matter; and its writers must generally be men with very dormant, elastic, or negative opinions. A writer who is not cast in this mould is soon disposed of as an impracticable man,-a grit that is always getting into the very sensitive machinery of a daily organ. Some honourable exceptions there are, both amongst editors and contributors, to this melancholy rule,-men who respect each other, and neither write, nor cause to be written, that which is not meant; but they are very few. The Swiss,-the free lances,-with the ready pen and unquestioning mind, are those who provide most of the daily thinking material for those who only think they think. Such writers are shielded from observation, and speak only through the brazen head. Their morality is on a par with that of the outcasts of the street, but no "midnight meeting" is ever held to reform them.

Apart from the principles which animate most leaderwriters, it is curious to examine the construction of their articles. The fixed length, or frame work, which they have to fill up, imposes on them a style of composition which is somewhat monotonous. The middle of their articles contains all they really have to say, the introduction and peroration being mostly devoted to ornament. The kernel of a leader can generally be extracted from a few lines near the centre, and nothing will ever be lost by passing over the first two or three paragraphs. The learning which the cheap press often displays is very encouraging to those who wish well to such organs. If you want Greek, Latin, French, Johnsonian words, and scraps of pedantry from all quarters of the globe, you can have it in any quantity for the small charge of a penny. Although most of these leaders, social and political, which the common people try to read and digest, undoubtedly