_February 28, 1867._
25. I have your pleasant letter with references to Frederick. I will
look at them carefully.[A] Mr. Carlyle himself will be pleased to hear
this letter when he comes home. I heard from him last week at Mentone.
He is well, and glad of the light and calm of Italy. I must get back
to the evil light and uncalm, of the places I was taking you through.
[A] Appendix 2.
(Parenthetically, did you see the article in the 'Times' of yesterday
on bribery, and the conclusion of the commission--"No one sold any
opinions, for no one had any opinions to sell"?)
Both on Thursday and Friday last I had been tormented by many things,
and wanted to disturb my course of thought any way I could. I have
told you what entertainment I got on Friday, first, for it was then
that I began meditating over these letters; let me tell you now what
entertainment I found on Thursday.
26. You may have heard that a company of Japanese jugglers has come
over to exhibit in London. There has long been an increasing interest
in Japanese art, which has been very harmful to many of our own
painters, and I greatly desired to see what these people were, and
what they did. Well, I have seen Blondin, and various English and
French circus work, but never yet anything that surprised me so much
as one of these men's exercises on a suspended pole. Its special
character was a close approximation to the action and power of the
monkey; even to the prehensile power in the foot; so that I asked a
sculptor-friend who sat in front of me, whether he thought such a
grasp could be acquired by practice, or indicated difference in race.
He said he thought it might be got by practice. There was also much
inconceivably dexterous work in spinning of tops,--making them pass in
balanced motion along the edge of a sword, and along a level string,
and the like;--the father performing in the presence of his two
children, who encouraged him continually with short, sharp cries, like
those of animals. Then there was some fairly good sleight-of-hand
juggling of little interest; ending with a dance by the juggler, first
as an animal, and then as a goblin, Now, there was this great
difference between the Japanese masks used in this dance and our
common pantomime masks for beasts and demons,--that our English masks
are only stupidly and loathsomely ugly, by exaggeration of feature, or
of defect of feature. But the Japanese masks (like the frequent
monsters of Japanese art) were inventively frightful, like fearful
dreams; and whatever power it is that acts on human minds, enabling
them to invent such, appears to me not only to deserve the term
"demoniacal," as the only word expressive of its character; but to be
logically capable of no other definition.
27. The impression, therefore, produced upon me by the whole scene,
was that of being in the presence of human creatures of a partially
inferior race, but not without great human gentleness, domestic
affection, and ingenious intellect; who were, nevertheless, as a
nation, afflicted by an evil spirit, and driven by it to recreate
themselves in achieving, or beholding the achievement, through years
of patience, of a certain correspondence with the nature of the lower
animals.
28. These, then, were the two forms of diversion or recreation of my
mind possible to me, in two days, when I needed such help, in this
metropolis of England. I might, as a rich man, have had better music,
if I had so chosen, though, even so, not rational or helpful; but a
poor man could only have these, or worse than these, if he cared for
any manner of spectacle. (I am not at present, observe, speaking of
pure acting, which is a study, and recreative only as a noble book is;
but of means of _mere_ amusement.)
Now, lastly, in illustration of the effect of these and other such
"amusements," and of the desire to obtain them, on the minds of our
youth, read the 'Times' correspondent's letter from Paris, in the
tenth page of the paper, to-day;[A] and that will be quite enough for
you to read, for the present, I believe.
[A] Appendix 3.