are those of whom Servius tells us, and whom he does not fail to denounce as dangerous. "Manes sunt illo tempore animæ, quo de aliis recedentibus corporibus, necdum in alia transiere. Sunt autem noxia." Thus a consensus of opinion stamps them as the most troublesome of the nats.

The Chinese hill tribes believe that man has only three souls, and these are more satisfactorily disposed of. One appropriately and conveniently remains in the grave, another takes up his position at the ancestral board, and the third roams about unrestrained in the spirit world and not necessarily upon earth. Many of the hill women are fond, as in India, of giving their dead child a dog, or (by dint of prayers and supplications) the departed soul of an old and experienced person as a guide, that the infant wanderer may not miss its way on the path to the spirit world. For this reason it was that the Mongolians sent slaves to accompany their dead princes. The Chinese, however, have a more humane idea. They believe that since it is likely that the dead man will be unable to find his way safely to the world of spirits, and may as probably as not stray from the right path, the kings of the under-world furnish him with a little devil to act the part of guide and servant to the newly disembodied spirit on its journey. The Poles used to have a notion of a similar kind, though they, like the Chinese, did not display it in such an unpleasant way for survivors. It was their custom to lay bears' claws in the grave, to serve the dead man as hooks with the help of which he might climb the great glass mountain. According to the common notion among the Karenns, the dead renew as "plu-pho" in the world of Plu, under the sovereignty of the great king Cootay or Theedo, the occupations which they had followed while as yet mortals upon earth-a curious hint at the caste system of the Hindoos, which has no place with the Karenns while they are alive.

Some of the tribes are so impressed with the dangers that may come upon them through departed spirits that they destroy their villages when the death of a grown-up person takes place, just as many negro tribes do with the house in which the dead man lived. It is, of course, a very simple matter with them where the houses are mere wattled shanties that can be restored in a day's time by a moderately industrious man. Where the houses are at all of a better and more substantial character, or where the community is fairly numerous, it is generally found quite sufficient to purify the house with the aid of a witch doctor and propitiate the new nats. Anything that gives very great trouble is much more speedily found out to be grossly superstitious than a measure which entails no great labour, while at the same time, being of a very obvious and extensive character, it seems likely to be efficacious. The destruction of the house or village is of course intended to get rid of the dangerous proximity of the departed spirits, who, according to the Laos and many other tribes, withdraw into a corner of the house where the death has occurred, and have a knack of making themselves extremely unpleasant unless they are well cared for. The Ho have an idea which is curiously at variance with the Western theories as to

the habits of ghosts. This semi-Chinese tribe aver that the spirits of dead men wander about during the day, but when night comes on retire to their homes in the most domestic possible way, for all the world as if they were good solid flesh and blood. Possibly this may be due to the difficulty of suddenly changing the habits they were accustomed to while yet they existed upon earth in the bodies of men, and it may be only the newly enfranchised spirits that act in this way, though the Ho do not say so. The opponents of the destruction of villages to dispossess the nats have a very strong case in the argument that as long as the demons are in the houses one knows where they are, and is enabled to conciliate them with more or less success; whereas if they are ruthlessly evicted they wander about homeless and in an aggrieved state of mind, likely to be extremely dangerous to the luckless wights who come in their way, especially as the victims have not the means of finding out where to propitiate them, however respectful their sentiments may be. It seems, therefore, that house-burning will shortly be altogether abandoned as selfish and antagonistic to the public welfare.

Notwithstanding the troubles that may be caused by the departed spirit, the dead are not on the whole so badly treated as perhaps in countries where" first-class" and "third-class" funerals are to be had. There are a few" skeleton hills" in every district, where the dead are finally deposited and far from which the nomads never go. It is not always possible to inter a body there immediately. The death may occur in the busy seasons of seed-time or harvest, and the corpse is therefore buried temporarily anywhere near the village, and afterwards, when time serves, sometimes as long as several years afterwards, the bones are carried off to the sacred hill and there laid to rest with a few jewels or whatever valuables the deceased may have left behind. The ceremonial observed on these occasions is a tribal secret, and each community keeps the exact locality of its "skeleton hill" as far as possible unknown to strangers, whether of another village or of the plains. Ordinarily these hill nomads are meek, harmless, broken-spirited people, as different as possible from fierce Bedouins or raiding Mongolians. They are too hard-worked to have any time for interfering with their neighbours, and wish for nothing so much as to be let alone. In British Burma many of them are beginning to be tempted down to settled habitations on the lower slopes, or even in the plains; but in native Burmese territory, where they have had dire experience of district governors, whole villages occasionally die of famine and pestilence rather than risk themselves in the low country, where they may be seized and sold into slavery. Nevertheless, in spite of their weakness, whether for offence or defence, the hill tribes are proud enough, and look down upon the inhabitants of the lowlands as "Oukthahs," inferior people, "lower born" in the physical sense of the word, descendants of the hill men, and with no claim to their antiquity or to their nearness to the heavens, whence came the fallen spirits from whom all mankind are descended. SHWAY YOE,

213

Rossetti and the Religion of Beauty.

AMONG those picturesque aspects of life which the advance of civilisation is tending to reduce to smoothness and uniformity, we may include that hubbub and conflict which in rougher days used to salute the appearance of any markedly new influence in science, literature, or art. Prejudice -not long since so formidable and ubiquitous a giant-now shows sometimes little more vitality than Bunyan's Pope or Pagan; and the men who stone one of our modern prophets do it hurriedly, feeling that they may be interrupted at any moment by having to make arrangements for his interment in Westminster Abbey.

Now, while it would be absurd not to rejoice in this increasing receptivity of cultivated men-absurd to wish the struggle of genius sharper, or its recognition longer deferred-we may yet note one incidental advantage which belonged to the older régime. While victory was kept longer in doubt, and while the conflict was rougher, the advocates of a new cause felt a stronger obligation to master it in all its aspects, and to set it forth with such exposition as might best prepare a place for it in ordinary minds. The merits of Wordsworth (to take an obvious instance) were long ignored by the public; but in the meantime his admirers had explained them so often and so fully, that the recognition which was at last accorded to them was given on those merits, and not in mere deference to the authority of any esoteric circle.

The exhibition of Dante Rossetti's pictures which now covers the walls of Burlington House is the visible sign of the admission of a new strain of thought and emotion within the pale of our artistic orthodoxy. And since Rossetti's poetry expresses with singular exactness the same range of ideas as his painting, and is at any rate not inferior to his painting in technical skill, we may fairly say that his poetry also has attained hereby some sort of general recognition, and that the enthusiastic notices which appeared on his decease embodied a view of him to which the public is willing to some extent to defer.

Yet it hardly seems that enough has been done to make that deference spontaneous or intelligent. The students of Rossetti's poemstaking their tone from Mr. Swinburne's magnificent eulogy-have for the most part rather set forth their artistic excellence than endeavoured to explain their contents, or to indicate the relation of the poet's habit of thought and feeling to the ideas which Englishmen are accustomed to trust or admire. And consequently many critics, whose ethical point of view demands respect, continue to find in Rossetti's works an enigma not

worth the pains of solution, and to decry them as obscure, fantastic, or even as grossly immoral in tendency.

It will be the object of this essay-written from a point of view of by no means exclusive sympathy with the movement which Rossetti led-to show, in the first place, the great practical importance of that movement for good or evil; and, further, to trace such relations between this Religion of Art, this Worship of Beauty, and the older and more accredited manifestations of the Higher Life, as may indicate to the moralist on what points he should concentrate his efforts if, hopeless of withstanding the rising stream, he seeks at least to retain some power of deepening or modifying its channel.

From the æsthetic side such an attempt will be regarded with indifference, and from the ethical side with little hope. Even so bold a peacemaker as the author of Natural Religion has shrunk from this task; for the art which he admits as an element in his Church of Civilisation is an art very different from Rossetti's. It is an art manifestly untainted by sensuousness, manifestly akin to virtue; an art which, like Wordsworth's, finds its revelation in sea and sky and mountain rather than in "eyes which the sun-gate of the soul unbar," or in

Such fire as Love's soul-winnowing hands distil,
Even from his inmost ark of light and dew.

Yet, however slight the points of contact between the ethical and the æsthetic theories of life may be, it is important that they should be noted and dwelt upon. For assuredly the "æsthetic movement" is not a mere fashion of the day-the modish pastime of nincompoops and charlatans. The imitators who surround its leaders, and whose jargon almost disgusts us with the very mysteries of art, the very vocabulary of emotion-these men are but the straws that mark the current, the inevitable parasites of a rapidly rising cause. We have, indeed, only to look around us to perceive that—whether or not the conditions of the modern world are favourable to artistic excellence-all the main forces of civilisation are tending towards artistic activity. The increase of wealth, the diffusion of education, the gradual decline of the military, the hieratic, the aristocratic ideals-each of these causes removes some obstacle from the artist's path or offers some fresh fresh prize to his endeavours. Art has outlived both the Puritans and the Inquisition; she is no longer deadened by the spirit of self-mortification, nor enslaved by a jealous orthodoxy. The increased wealth of the world makes the artist's life stable and secure, while it sets free a surplus income so large that an increasing share of it must almost necessarily be diverted to some form of æsthetic expenditure.

And more than this. It is evident, especially in new countries, that a need is felt of some kind of social distinction-some new aristocracy— based on differences other than those of birth and wealth. Not, indeed, that rank and family are likely to cease to be held in honour; but, as

power is gradually dissociated from them, they lose their exclusive predominance, and take their place on the same footing as other graces and dignities of life. Still less need we assume any slackening in the pursuit of riches; the fact being rather that this pursuit is so widely successful that in civilised capitals even immense opulence can now scarcely confer on its possessor all the distinction which he desires. In America, accordingly, where modern instincts find their freest field, we have before our eyes the process of the gradual distribution of the old prerogatives of birth amongst wealth, culture, and the proletariat. In Europe a class privileged by birth used to supply at once the rulers and the ideals of other men. In America the rule has passed to the multitude; largely swayed in subordinate matters by organised wealth, but in the last resort supreme. The ideal of the new community at first was Wealth; but, as its best literature and its best society plainly show, that ideal is shifting in the direction of Culture. The younger cities, the coarser classes, still bow down undisguisedly to the god Dollar; but when this Philistine deity is rejected as shaming his worshippers, æsthetic Culture seems somehow the only Power ready to instal itself in the vacant shrine.

And all over the world the spread of Science, the diffusion of Morality, tend in this same direction. For the net result of Science and Morality for the mass of men is simply to give them comfort and leisure, to leave them cheerful, peaceful, and anxious for occupation. Nay, even the sexual instinct, as men become less vehement and unbridled, merges in larger and larger measure into the mere æsthetic enjoyment of beauty; till Stesichorus might now maintain with more truth than of old that our modern Helen is not herself fought for by two continents, but rather her owλov or image is blamelessly diffused over the albums of two hemispheres.

It is by no means clear that these modern conditions are favourable to the development either of the highest art or of the highest virtue. It is not certain even that they are permanent-that this æsthetic paradise of the well-to-do may not sometimes be convulsed by an invasion from the rough world without. Meantime, however, it exists and spreads, and its leading figures exert an influence which few men of science, and fewer theologians, can surpass. And alike to savant, to theologian, and to moralist, it must be important to trace the workings of a powerful mind, concerned with interests which are so different from theirs, but which for a large section of society are becoming daily more paramount and engrossing.

"Under the arch of Life," says Rossetti in a sonnet whose Platonism is the more impressive because probably unconscious

Under the arch of Life, where love and death,

Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw

Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe,

I drew it in as simply as my breath.,