CHAPTER V. HUSHED-UP.

The saddest part of Marie's sad story now remains to be told.

One resource was left her, by employing which it was possible, at the

last moment, to avert for a few months the frightful prospect of the

torture and the stake. The unfortunate girl might stoop, on her side,

to use the weapons of deception against her enemies, and might defame

her own character by pleading pregnancy. That one miserable alternative

was all that now remained; and, in the extremity of mortal terror,

with the shadow of the executioner on her prison, and with the agony of

approaching torment and death at her heart, the forlorn creature accepted

it. If the law of strict morality must judge her in this matter without

consideration, and condemn her without appeal, the spirit of Christian

mercy--remembering how sorely she was tried, remembering the frailty of

our common humanity, remembering the warning word which forbade us to

judge one another--may open its sanctuary of tenderness to a sister in

affliction, and may offer her the tribute of its pity, without limit and

without blame.

The plea of pregnancy was admitted, and, at the eleventh hour, the period

of the execution was deferred. On the day when her ashes were to have been

cast to the winds, she was still in her prison, a living, breathing woman.

Her limbs were spared from the torture, her body was released from the

stake, until the twenty-ninth of July, seventeen hundred and eighty-two.

On that day her reprieve was to end, and the execution of her sentence

was absolutely to take place.

During the short period of grace which was now to elapse, the situation of

the friendless girl, accused of such incredible crimes and condemned to

so awful a doom, was discussed far and wide in French society. The case

became notorious beyond the limits of Caen. The report of it spread by

way of Rouen, from mouth to mouth, till it reached Paris; and from Paris

it penetrated into the palace of the King at Versailles. That unhappy

man, whose dreadful destiny it was to pay the penalty which the long and

noble endurance of the French people had too mercifully abstained from

inflicting on his guilty predecessors, had then lately mounted the fatal

steps of the throne. Louis the Sixteenth was sovereign of France when the

story of the poor servant-girl obtained its first court-circulation at

Versailles.

The conduct of the King, when the main facts of Marie's case came to

his ears, did all honour to his sense of duty and his sense of justice.

He instantly despatched his Royal order to suspend the execution of the

sentence. The report of Marie's fearful situation had reached him so short

a time before the period appointed for her death, that the Royal mandate

was only delivered to the parliament of Rouen on the twenty-sixth of July.

The girl's life now hung literally on a thread. An accident happening to

the courier, any delay in fulfilling the wearisome official formalities

proper to the occasion--and the execution might have taken its course.

The authorities at Rouen, feeling that the King's interference implied

a rebuke of their inconsiderate confirmation of the Caen sentence, did

their best to set themselves right for the future by registering the

Royal order on the day when they received it. The next morning, the

twenty-seventh, it was sent to Caen; and it reached the authorities there

on the twenty-eighth.

That twenty-eighth of July, seventeen hundred and eighty-two, fell on a

Sunday. Throughout the day and night the order lay in the office unopened.

Sunday was a holiday, and Procurator Revel was not disposed to occupy it

by so much as five minutes, performance of week-day work.

On Monday, the twenty-ninth, the crowd assembled to see the execution. The

stake was set up, the soldiers were called out, the executioner was ready.

All the preliminary horror of the torturing and burning was suffered to

darken round the miserable prisoner, before the wretches in authority saw

fit to open the message of mercy and to deliver it at the prison-gate.

She was now saved, as if by a miracle, for the second time! But the

cell-door was still closed on her. The only chance of ever opening it--the

only hope of publicly asserting her innocence, lay in appealing to the

King's justice by means of a written statement of her case, presenting

it exactly as it stood in all its details, from the beginning at Madame

Duparc's to the end in the prison of Caen. The production of such a

document as this was beset with obstacles; the chief of them being the

difficulty of gaining access to the voluminous reports of the evidence

given at the trial, which were only accessible in those days to persons

professionally connected with the courts of law. If Marie's case was to be

placed before the King, no man in France but a lawyer could undertake the

duty with the slightest chance of serving the interests of the prisoner

and the interests of truth.

In this disgraceful emergency a man was found to plead the girl's

cause, whose profession secured to him the privilege of examining the

evidence against her. This man--a barrister, named Lecauchois--not only

undertook to prepare a statement of the case from the records of the

court--but further devoted himself to collecting money for Marie, from

all the charitably-disposed inhabitants of the town. It is to be said

to his credit that he honestly faced the difficulties of his task, and

industriously completed the document which he had engaged to furnish. On

the other hand, it must be recorded to his shame, that his motives were

interested throughout, and that with almost incredible meanness he paid

himself for the employment of his time by putting the greater part of the

sum which he had collected for his client in his own pocket. With her one

friend, no less than with all her enemies, it seems to have been Marie's

hard fate to see the worst side of human nature, on every occasion when

she was brought into contact with her fellow-creatures.

The statement pleading for the revision of Marie's trial was sent to

Paris. An eminent barrister at the Court of Requests framed a petition

from it, the prayer of which was granted by the King. Acting under the

Royal order, the judges of the Court of Requests furnished themselves with

the reports of the evidence as drawn up at Caen; and after examining the

whole case, unanimously decided that there was good and sufficient reason

for the revision of the trial. The order to that effect was not issued to

the parliament of Rouen before the twenty-fourth of May, seventeen hundred

and eighty-four--nearly two years after the King's mercy had saved Marie

from the executioner. Who can say how slowly that long, long time must

have passed to the poor girl who was still languishing in her prison?

The Rouen parliament, feeling that it was held accountable for its

proceedings to a high court of judicature, acting under the direct

authority of the King himself, recognised at last, readily enough, that

the interests of its own reputation and the interests of rigid justice

were now intimately bound up together; and applied itself impartially, on

this occasion at least, to the consideration of Marie's case.

As a necessary consequence of this change of course, the authorities of

Caen began, for the first time, to feel seriously alarmed for themselves.

If the parliament of Rouen dealt fairly by the prisoner, a fatal exposure

of the whole party would be the certain result. Under these circumstances,

Procurator Revel and his friends sent a private requisition to the

authorities at Rouen, conjuring them to remember that the respectability

of their professional brethren was at stake, and suggesting that the legal

establishment of Marie's innocence was the error of all others which it

was now most urgently necessary to avoid. The parliament of Rouen was,

however, far too cautious, if not too honest, to commit itself to such

an atrocious proceeding as was here plainly indicated. After gaining as

much time as possible by prolonging their deliberations to the utmost, the

authorities resolved on adopting a middle course, which on the one hand

should not actually establish the prisoner's innocence, and, on the other,

should not publicly expose the disgraceful conduct of the prosecution

at Caen. Their decree, not issued until the twelfth of March, seventeen

hundred and eighty-five, annulled the sentence of Procurator Revel on

technical grounds; suppressed the further publication of the statement

of Marie's case, which had been drawn out by the advocate Lecauchois,

as libellous towards Monsieur Revel and Madame Duparc; and announced

that the prisoner was ordered to remain in confinement until more ample

information could be collected relating to the doubtful question of her

innocence or her guilt. No such information was at all likely to present

itself (more especially after the only existing narrative of the case

had been suppressed); and the practical effect of the decree, therefore,

was to keep Marie in prison for an indefinite period, after she had

been illegally deprived of her liberty already from August, seventeen

hundred and eighty-one, to March, seventeen hundred and eighty-five. Who

shall say that the respectable classes did not take good care of their

respectability on the eve of the French Revolution!

Marie's only hope of recovering her freedom, and exposing her unscrupulous

enemies to the obloquy and the punishment which they richly deserved, lay

in calling the attention of the higher tribunals of the capital to the

cruelly cunning decree of the parliament of Rouen. Accordingly, she once

more petitioned the throne. The King referred the document to his council;

and the council issued an order submitting the Rouen decree to the final

investigation of the parliament of Paris.

At last, then, after more than three miserable years of imprisonment,

the victim of Madame Duparc and Procurator Revel had burst her way

through all intervening obstacles of law and intricacies of office, to

the judgment-seat of that highest law-court in the country, which had the

final power of ending her long sufferings and of doing her signal justice

on her adversaries of all degrees. The parliament of Paris was now to

estimate the unutterable wrong that had been inflicted on her; and the

eloquent tongue of one of the first advocates of that famous bar was to

plead her cause openly before God, the king, and the country.

The pleading of Monsieur Fournel (Marie's counsel) before the parliament

of Paris, remains on record. At the outset, he assumes the highest ground

for the prisoner. He disclaims all intention of gaining her liberty by

taking the obvious technical objections to the illegal and irregular

sentences of Caen and Rouen. He insists on the necessity of vindicating

her innocence legally and morally before the world, and of obtaining the

fullest compensation that the law allows for the merciless injuries which

the original prosecution had inflicted on his client. In pursuance of this

design, he then proceeds to examine the evidence of the alleged poisoning

and the alleged robbery, step by step, pointing out in the fullest detail

the monstrous contradictions and improbabilities which have been already

briefly indicated in this narrative. The course thus pursued, with

signal clearness and ability, leads, as every one who has followed the

particulars of the case from the beginning will readily understand, to a

very serious result. The arguments for the defence cannot assert Marie's

innocence without shifting the whole weight of suspicion, in the matter

of Monsieur de Beaulieu's death by poisoning, on to the shoulders of her

mistress, Madame Duparc.

It is necessary, in order to prepare the reader for the extraordinary

termination of the proceedings, to examine this question of suspicion in

some of its most striking details.

The poisoning of Monsieur de Beaulieu may be accepted, in consideration

of the medical evidence, as a proved fact, to begin with. The question

that remains is, whether that poisoning was accidental or premeditated.

In either case, the evidence points directly at Madame Duparc, and leads

to the conclusion that she tried to shift the blame of the poisoning (if

accidental) and the guilt of it (if premeditated) from herself to her

servant.

Suppose the poisoning to have been accidental. Suppose arsenic to have

been purchased for some legitimate domestic purpose, and to have been

carelessly left in one of the salt-cellars, on the dresser--who salts

the hasty-pudding? Madame Duparc. Who--assuming that the dinner next

day really contained some small portion of poison, just enough to swear

by--prepared that dinner? Madame Duparc and her daughter, while the

servant was asleep. Having caused the death of her father, and having

produced symptoms of illness in herself and her guests, by a dreadful

accident, how does the circumstantial evidence further show that Madame

Duparc tried to fix the responsibility of that accident on her servant,

before she openly charged the girl with poisoning?

In the first place, Madame Duparc is the only one of the dinner-party

who attributes the general uneasiness to poison. She not only does this,

but she indicates the kind of poison used, and declares in the kitchen

that it is burnt,--so as to lead to the inference that the servant,

who has removed the dishes, has thrown some of the poisoned food on the

fire. Here is a foregone conclusion on the subject of arsenic in Madame

Duparc's mind, and an inference in connection with it, directed at the

servant by Madame Duparc's lips. In the second place, if any trust at all

is to be put in the evidence touching the finding of arsenic on or about

Marie's person, that trust must be reposed in the testimony of Surgeon

Hébert, who first searched the girl. Where does he find the arsenic and

the bread crumbs? In Marie's pockets. Who takes the most inexplicably

officious notice of such a trifle as Marie's dress, at the most shockingly

inappropriate time, when the father of Madame Duparc lies dead in the

house? Madame Duparc herself. Who tells Marie to take off her Sunday

pockets, and sends her into her own room (which she herself has not

entered during the night, and which has been open to the intrusion of any

one else in the house) to tie on the very pockets in which the arsenic is

found? Madame Duparc. Who put the arsenic into the pockets? Is it jumping

to a conclusion to answer once more--Madame Duparc?

Thus far we have assumed that the mistress attempted to shift the blame

of a fatal accident on to the shoulders of the servant. Do the facts bear

out that theory, or do they lead to the suspicion that the woman was a

parricide, and that she tried to fix on the friendless country girl the

guilt of her dreadful crime?

If the poisoning of the hasty-pudding (to begin with) was accidental,

the salting of it, through which the poisoning was, to all appearance,

effected, must have been a part of the habitual cookery of the dish. So

far, however, from this being the case, Madame Duparc had expressly warned

her servant not to use salt; and only used the salt (or the arsenic)

herself, after asking a question which implied a direct contradiction of

her own directions, and the inconsistency of which she made no attempt

whatever to explain. Again, when her father was taken ill, if Madame

Duparc had been only the victim of an accident, would she have remained

content with no better help than that of an apothecary's boy? would she

not have sent, as her father grew worse, for the best medical assistance

which the town afforded? The facts show that she summoned just help

enough, barely to save appearances, and no more. The facts show that

she betrayed a singular anxiety to have the body laid out as soon as

possible after life was extinct. The facts show that she maintained

an unnatural composure on the day of the death. These are significant

circumstances. They speak for themselves independently of the evidence

given afterwards, in which she and her child contradicted each other as

to the time that elapsed when the old man had eaten his fatal meal, before

he was taken ill. Add to these serious facts the mysterious disappearance

from the house of the eldest son, which was never accounted for; and

the rumour of purchased poison, which was never investigated. Consider,

besides, whether the attempt to sacrifice the servant's life be not more

consistent with the ruthless determination of a criminal, than with the

terror of an innocent woman who shrinks from accepting the responsibility

of a frightful accident--and determine, at the same time, whether the

infinitesimal amount of injury done by the poisoned dinner can be most

probably attributed to lucky accident, or to premeditated doctoring of the

dishes with just arsenic enough to preserve appearances, and to implicate

the servant without too seriously injuring the company on whom she waited.

Give all these serious considerations their due weight; then look back to

the day of Monsieur de Beaulieu's death: and say if Madame Duparc was the

victim of a dreadful accident, or the perpetrator of an atrocious crime!

That she was one or the other, and that, in either case, she was the

originator of the vile conspiracy against her servant which these pages

disclose, was the conclusion to which Monsieur Fournel's pleading

on his client's behalf inevitably led. That pleading satisfactorily

demonstrated Marie's innocence of poisoning and theft, and her fair claim

to the fullest legal compensation for the wrong inflicted on her. On the

twenty-third of May, seventeen hundred and eighty-six, the parliament of

Paris issued its decree, discharging her from the remotest suspicion of

guilt, releasing her from her long imprisonment, and authorizing her to

bring an action for damages against the person or persons who had falsely

accused her of murder and theft. The truth had triumphed, and the poor

servant-girl had found laws to protect her at last.

Under these altered circumstances, what happened to Madame Duparc? What

happened to Procurator Revel and his fellow-conspirators? What happened

to the authorities of the parliament of Rouen?

Nothing.

The premonitory rumblings of that great earthquake of nations which

History calls the French Revolution, were, at this time, already

beginning to make themselves heard; and any public scandal which affected

the wealthier and higher classes involved a serious social risk, the

importance of which no man in France could then venture to estimate. If

Marie claimed the privilege which a sense of justice, or rather a sense

of decency, had forced the parliament of Paris to concede to her,--and,

through her counsel, she did claim it,--the consequences of the legal

inquiry into her case which her demand for damages necessarily involved,

would probably be the trying of Madame Duparc, either for parricide, or

for homicide by misadventure; the dismissal of Procurator Revel from the

functions which he had disgracefully abused; and the suspension from

office of the authorities at Caen and Rouen, who had in various ways

forfeited public confidence by aiding and abetting him.

Here, then, was no less a prospect in view than the disgrace of

a respectable family, and the dishonouring of the highest legal

functionaries of two important provincial towns! And for what end was the

dangerous exposure to be made? Merely to do justice to the daughter of

a common day-labourer, who had been illegally sentenced to torture and

burning, and illegally confined in prison for nearly five years. To make a

wholesale sacrifice of her superiors, no matter how wicked they might be,

for the sake of giving a mere servant-girl compensation for the undeserved

obloquy and misery of many years, was too preposterous and too suicidal

an act of justice to be thought of for a moment. Accordingly, when Marie

was prepared to bring her action for damages, the lawyers laid their

heads together, in the interests of society. It was found possible to put

her out of court at once and for ever, by taking a technical objection

to the proceedings in which she was plaintiff, at the very outset. This

disgraceful means of escape once discovered, the girl's guilty persecutors

instantly took advantage of it. She was formally put out of court, without

the possibility of any further appeal. Procurator Revel and the other

authorities retained their distinguished legal positions; and the question

of the guilt or innocence of Madame Duparc, in the matter of her father's

death, remains a mystery which no man can solve to this day.

After recording this scandalous termination of the legal proceedings,

it is gratifying to be able to conclude the story of Marie's unmerited

sufferings with a picture of her after-life which leaves an agreeable

impression on the mind.

If popular sympathy, after the servant-girl's release from prison,

could console her for the hard measure of injustice under which she had

suffered so long and so unavailingly, that sympathy was now offered to

her heartily and without limit. She became quite a public character in

Paris. The people followed her in crowds wherever she went. A subscription

was set on foot, which, for the time at least, secured her a comfortable

independence. Friends rose up in all directions to show her such attention

as might be in their power; and the simple country girl, when she was

taken to see the sights of Paris, actually beheld her own name placarded

in the showmen's bills, and her presence advertised as the greatest

attraction that could be offered to the public. When, in due course of

time, all this excitement had evaporated, Marie married prosperously,

and the government granted her its licence to open a shop for the sale of

stamped papers. The last we hear of her is, that she was a happy wife and

mother, and that she performed every duty of life in such a manner as to

justify the deep interest which had been universally felt for her by the

people of France.

* * * * *

Her story is related here, not only because it seemed to contain some

elements of interest in itself, but also because the facts of which it is

composed may claim to be of some little historical importance, as helping

to expose the unendurable corruptions of society in France before the

Revolution. It may not be amiss for those persons whose historical point

of view obstinately contracts its range to the Reign of Terror, to look

a little farther back--to remember that the hard case of oppression here

related had been, for something like one hundred years, the case (with

minor changes of circumstance) of the forlorn many against the powerful

few, all over France--and then to consider whether there was not a reason

and a necessity, a dreadful last necessity, for the French Revolution.

That Revolution has expiated, and is still expiating, its excesses, by

political failures, which all the world can see. But the social good

which it indisputably effected remains to this day. Take, as an example,

the administration of justice in France at the present time. Whatever its

shortcomings may still be, no innocent French woman could be treated, now,

as an innocent French woman was once treated at a period so little remote

from our own time as the end of the last century.

SKETCHES OF CHARACTER.-VI.

MY SPINSTERS.

[Introduced by an Innocent Old Man.]

My young bachelor friends, suspend your ordinary avocations for a few

minutes and listen to me. I am a benevolent old gentleman, residing

in a small country town, possessing a comfortable property, a devoted

housekeeper, and some charming domestic animals. I have no wife, no

children, no poor relations, no cares, and nothing to do. I am a nice,

harmless, idle old man; and I want to have a word with you in confidence,

my worthy young bachelor friends.

I have a mania. Is it saving money? No. Good living? No. Music? Smoking?

Angling? Pottery? Pictures? No, no, no,--nothing of the selfish sort.

My mania is as amiable as myself: it contemplates nothing less than the

future happiness of all the single ladies of my acquaintance. I call them

My Spinsters; and the one industrious object of my idle existence is to

help them to a matrimonial settlement in life. In my own youth I missed

the chance of getting a wife, as I have always firmly believed, for want

of meeting with a tender-hearted old gentleman like myself to help me to

the necessary spinster. It is possibly this reflection which originally

led to the formation of the benevolent mania that now possesses me.

Perhaps sheer idleness, a gallant turn of mind, and living in a small

country town, have had something to do with it also. You see I shirk

nothing. I do not attempt any deception as to the motive which induces me

to call you together. I appear before you in the character of an amateur

matrimonial agent having a few choice spinsters to dispose of; and I can

wait patiently, my brisk young bachelor friends, until I find that you

are ready to make me a bid.

Shall we proceed at once to business? Shall we try some soft and

sentimental Spinsters to begin with? I am anxious to avoid mistakes at

the outset, and I think softness and sentiment are perhaps the safest

attractions to start upon. Let us begin with the six unmarried sisters of

my friend Mr. Bettifer.

I became acquainted, gentlemen, with Mr. Bettifer in our local

reading-rooms, immediately after he came to settle in my neighbourhood.

He was then a very young man, in delicate health, with a tendency to

melancholy and a turn for metaphysics. I profited by his invitation as

soon as he was kind enough to ask me to call on him; and I found that he

lived with his six sisters, under the following agreeable circumstances.

On the morning of my visit, I was shown into a very long room, with a

piano at one end of it and an easel at another. Mr. Bettifer was alone at

his writing-desk when I came in. I apologised for interrupting him, but he

very politely assured me that my presence acted as an inestimable relief

to his mind, which had been stretched--to use his own strong language--on

the metaphysical rack all the morning. He gave his forehead a violent rub

as he mentioned this circumstance, and we sat down and looked seriously

at one another, in silence. Though not at all a bashful old man, I began

nevertheless to feel a little confused at this period of the interview.

"I know no question so embarrassing," began Mr. Bettifer, by way of

starting the talk pleasantly, "as the question on which I have been

engaged this morning--I refer to the subject of our own Personality.

Here am I, and there are you--let us say two Personalities. Are we a

permanent, or are we a transient thing? There is the problem, my dear sir,

which I have been vainly trying to solve since breakfast-time. Can you

(metaphysically speaking) be one and the same person, for example, for two

moments together, any more than two successive moments can be one and the

same moment?--My sister Kitty."

The door opened as my host propounded this alarming dilemma, and a tall

young lady glided serenely into the room. I rose and bowed. The tall young

lady sank softly into a chair opposite me. Mr. Bettifer went on:

"You may tell me that our substance is constantly changing. I grant you

that; but do you get me out of the difficulty? Not the least in the world.

For it is not substance, but----My sister Maria."

The door opened again. A second tall young lady glided in, and sank into

a chair by her sister's side. Mr. Bettifer went on:

"As I was about to remark, it is not substance, but consciousness, which

constitutes Personality. Now what is the nature of consciousness?--My

sisters Emily and Jane."

The door opened for the third time, and two tall young ladies glided in,

and sank into two chairs by the sides of their two sisters. Mr. Bettifer

went on:

"The nature of consciousness I take to be that it cannot be the same in

any two moments, nor consequently the personality constituted by it. Do

you grant me that?"

Lost in metaphysical bewilderment, I granted it directly. Just as I

said yes, the door opened again, a fifth tall young lady glided in,

and assisted in lengthening the charming row formed by her sisters. Mr.

Bettifer murmured indicatively, "My sister Elizabeth," and made a note of

what I had granted him, on the manuscript by his side.

"What lovely weather," I remarked, to change the conversation.

"Beautiful!" answered five melodious voices.

The door opened again.

"Beautiful, indeed!" said a sixth melodious voice.

"My sister Harriet," said Mr. Bettifer, finishing his note of my

metaphysical admission.

They all sat in one fascinating row. It was like being at a party. I felt

uncomfortable in my coloured trowsers--more uncomfortable still, when Mr.

Bettifer's sixth sister begged that she might not interrupt our previous

conversation.

"We are so fond of metaphysical subjects," said Miss Elizabeth.

"Except that we think them rather exhausting for dear Alfred," said Miss

Jane.

"Dear Alfred!" repeated the Misses Emily, Maria, and Kitty, in mellifluous

chorus.

Not having a heart of stone, I was so profoundly touched, that I would

have tried to resume the subject. But, Mr. Bettifer waved his hand

impatiently, and declared that my admission had increased the difficulties

of the original question until they had become quite insuperable. I had,

it appeared, innocently driven him to the conclusion, that our present

self was not our yesterday's self, but another self mistaken for it,

which, in its turn, had no connection with the self of to-morrow. As this

certainly sounded rather unsatisfactory, I agreed with Mr. Bettifer that

we had exhausted that particular view of the subject, and that we had

better defer starting another until a future opportunity. An embarrassing

pause followed our renunciation of metaphysics for the day. Miss Elizabeth

broke the silence by asking me if I was fond of pictures; and before I

could say Yes, Miss Harriet followed her by asking me if I was fond of

music.

"Will you show your picture, dear?" said Miss Elizabeth to Miss Harriet.

"Will you sing, dear?" said Miss Harriet to Miss Elizabeth.

"Do, dear!" said the Misses Jane and Emily to Miss Elizabeth.

"Do, dear!" said the Misses Maria and Kitty to Miss Harriet.

There was an artless symmetry and balance of affection in all that these

six sensitive creatures said and did. The fair Elizabeth was followed to

the end of the room where the piano was, by Jane and Emily. The lovely

Harriet was attended in the direction of the easel by Maria and Kitty. I

went to see the picture first.

The scene was the bottom of the sea; and the subject, A Forsaken Mermaid.

The unsentimental, or fishy lower half of the sea nymph was dexterously

hidden in a coral grove before which she was sitting, in an atmosphere

of limpid blue water. She had beautiful long green hair, and was shedding

those solid tears which we always see in pictures and never in real life.

Groups of pet fishes circled around her with their eyes fixed mournfully

on their forlorn mistress. A line at the top of the picture, and a strip

of blue above it, represented the surface of the ocean, and the sky;

the monotony of this part of the composition being artfully broken by a

receding golden galley with a purple sail, containing the fickle fisher

youth who had forsaken the mermaid. I had hardly had time to say what

a beautiful picture it was, before Miss Maria put her handkerchief to

her eyes, and, overcome by the pathetic nature of the scene portrayed,

hurriedly left the room. Miss Kitty followed, to attend on and console

her; and Miss Harriet, after covering up her picture with a sigh, followed

to assist Miss Kitty. I began to doubt whether I ought not to have

gone out next, to support all three; but Mr. Bettifer, who had hitherto

remained in the background, lost in metaphysical speculation, came forward

to remind me that the music was waiting to claim my admiration next.

"Excuse their excessive sensibility," he said. "I have done my best to

harden them and make them worldly; but it is not of the slightest use.

Will you come to the piano?"

Miss Elizabeth began to sing immediately, with the attendant sylphs, Jane

and Emily, on either side of her, to turn over the music.

The song was a ballad composition--music and words by the lovely singer

herself. A lady was dreaming in an ancient castle; a dog was howling in a

ruined courtyard; an owl was hooting in a neighbouring forest; a tyrant

was striding in an echoing hall; and a page was singing among moonlit

flowers. First five verses. Pause--and mournful symphony on the piano,

in the minor key. Ballad resumed:--The lady wakes with a scream. The

tyrant loads his arquebus. The faithful page, hearing the scream among

the moonlit flowers, advances to the castle. The dog gives a warning

bark. The tyrant fires a chance shot in the darkness. The page welters

in his blood. The lady dies of a broken heart. Miss Jane is so affected

by the catastrophe that Miss Emily is obliged to lead her from the room;

and Miss Elizabeth is so anxious about them both as to be forced to shut

up the piano, and hasten after them with a smelling-bottle in her hand.

Conclusion of the performance; and final exit of the six Miss Bettifers.

Tell yourselves off, my fortunate young bachelor friends, to the

corresponding number of half-a-dozen, with your offers ready on your

tongues, and your hearts thrown open to tender investigation, while

favourable circumstances yet give you a chance. My boys, my eager boys,

do you want pale cheeks, limpid eyes, swan-like necks, low waists, tall

forms, and no money? You do--I know you do. Go then, enviable youths!--go

tenderly--go immediately--go by sixes at a time, and try your luck with

the Miss Bettifers!

* * * * *

Let me now appeal to other, and possibly to fewer tastes, by trying a

sample of a new kind. It shall be something neither soft, yielding, nor

hysterical this time. You who agree with the poet that

Discourse may want an animated No,

To brush the surface and to make it flow--

you who like girls to have opinions of their own, and to play their parts

spiritedly in the give and take of conversation, do me the favour to

approach, and permit me to introduce you to the three Miss Cruttwells. At

the same time, gentlemen, I must inform you, with my usual candour, that

these Spinsters are short, sharp, and, on occasion, shrill. You must have

a talent for arguing, and a knack at instantaneous definition, or you will

find the Miss Cruttwells too much for you, and had better wait for my next

sample. And yet for a certain peculiar class of customer, these are really

very choice spinsters. For instance, any unmarried legal gentleman, who

would like to have his wits kept sharp for his profession, by constant

disputation, could not do better than address himself (as logically as

possible) to one of the Miss Cruttwells. Perhaps my legal bachelor will

be so obliging as to accompany me on a morning call?

It is a fine spring day, with a light air and plenty of round white clouds

flying over the blue sky, when we pay our visit. We find the three young

ladies in the morning room. Miss Martha Cruttwell is fond of statistical

subjects, and is annotating a pamphlet. Miss Barbara Cruttwell likes

geology, and is filling a cabinet with ticketed bits of stone. Miss

Charlotte Cruttwell has a manly taste for dogs, and is nursing two fat

puppies on her lap. All three have florid complexions; all three have

a habit of winking both eyes incessantly, and a way of wearing their

hair very tight, and very far off their faces. All three acknowledge my

young legal friend's bow in--what may seem to him--a very short, sharp

manner; and modestly refrain from helping him by saying a word to begin

the conversation. He is, perhaps, unreasonably disconcerted by this, and

therefore starts the talk weakly by saying that it is a fine day.

"Fine!" exclaims Miss Martha, with a look of amazement at her sister.

"Fine!" with a stare of perplexity at my young legal friend. "Dear me!

what do you mean, now, by a fine day?"

"We were just saying how cold it was," says Miss Barbara.

"And how very like rain," says Miss Charlotte, with a look at the white

clouds outside, which happen to be obscuring the sun for a few minutes.

"But what do you mean, now, by a fine day?" persists Miss Martha.

My young legal friend is put on his mettle by this time, and answers with

professional readiness:

"At this uncertain spring season, my definition of a fine day, is a day

on which you do not feel the want of your great-coat, your goloshes, or

your umbrella."

"Oh, no," says Miss Martha, "surely not! At least, that does not appear

to me to be at all a definition of a fine day. Barbara? Charlotte?"

"We think it quite impossible to call a day--when the sun is not

shining--a fine day," says Miss Barbara.

"We think that when clouds are in the sky there is always a chance

of rain; and, when there is a chance of rain, we think it is very

extraordinary to say that it is a fine day," adds Miss Charlotte.

My legal bachelor starts another topic, and finds his faculty for

impromptu definition exercised by the three Miss Cruttwells, always

in the same briskly-disputatious manner. He goes away--as I hope and

trust--thinking what an excellent lawyer's wife any one of the three

young ladies would make. If he could only be present in the spirit, after

leaving the abode of the Miss Cruttwells in the body, his admiration of

my three disputatious spinsters would, I think, be greatly increased. He

would find that, though they could all agree to a miracle in differing

with him while he was present, they would begin to vary in opinion, the

moment their visitor's subjects of conversation were referred to in his

absence. He would, probably, for example, hear them take up the topic of

the weather again, the instant the house-door had closed after him, in

these terms:

"Do you know," he might hear Miss Martha say, "I am not so sure after all,

Charlotte, that you were right in saying that it could not be a fine day,

because there were clouds in the sky?"

"You only say that," Miss Charlotte would be sure to reply, "because the

sun happens to be peeping out, just now, for a minute or two. If it rains

in half-an-hour, which is more than likely, who would be right then?"

"On reflection," Miss Barbara might remark next, "I don't agree with

either of you, and I also dispute the opinion of the gentleman who has

just left us. It is neither a fine day, nor a bad day."

"But it must be one or the other."

"No, it needn't. It may be an indifferent day."

"What do you mean by an indifferent day?"

So they go on, these clever girls of mine, these mistresses in the art of

fencing applied to the tongue. I have not presented this sample from my

collection, as one which is likely to suit any great number. But, there

are peculiarly constituted bachelors in this world; and I like to be able

to show that my assortment of spinsters is various enough to warrant me

in addressing even the most alarming eccentricities of taste. Will nobody

offer for this disputatious sample--not even for the dog-fancying Miss

Charlotte, with the two fat puppies thrown in? No? Take away the Miss

Cruttwells, and let us try what we can do, thirdly and lastly, with the

Miss Duckseys produced in their place.

I confidently anticipate a brisk competition and a ready market for the

spinsters now about to be submitted to inspection. You have already had a

sentimental sample, gentlemen, and a disputatious sample. In now offering

a domestic sample, I have but one regret, which is, that my spinsters

on the present occasion are unhappily limited to two in number. I wish

I had a dozen to produce of the same interesting texture and the same

unimpeachable quality.

The whole world, gentlemen, at the present writing, means, in the

estimation of the two Miss Duckseys, papa, mamma, and brother George. This

loving sample can be warranted never yet to have looked beyond the sacred

precincts of the family circle. All their innocent powers of admiration

and appreciation have been hitherto limited within the boundaries of home.

If Miss Violet Ducksey wants to see a lovely girl, she looks at Miss Rose

Ducksey, and vice versâ; if both want to behold manly dignity, matronly

sweetness, and youthful beauty, both look immediately at papa, mamma, and

brother George. I have been admitted into the unparalleled family circle,

of which I now speak. I have seen--to say nothing, for the present, of

papa and mamma--I have seen brother George come in from business, and sit

down by the fireside, and be welcomed by Miss Violet and Miss Rose, as

if he had just returned, after having been reported dead, from the other

end of the world. I have seen those two devoted sisters race across the

room, in fond contention which should sit first on brother George's knee.

I have even seen both sit upon him together, each taking a knee, when

he has been half-an-hour later than usual at the office. I have never

beheld their lovely arms tired of clasping brother George's neck, never

heard their rosy lips cease kissing brother George's cheeks, except when

they were otherwise occupied for the moment in calling him "Dear!" On the

word of honour of a harmless spinster-fancying old man, I declare that I

have seen brother George fondled to such an extent by his sisters that,

although a lusty and long-suffering youth, he has fallen asleep under

it from sheer exhaustion. Even then, I have observed Miss Rose and Miss

Violet contending (in each other's arms) which should have the privilege

of casting her handkerchief over his face. And that touching contest

concluded, I have quitted the house at a late hour, leaving Violet on

papa's bosom, and Rose entwined round mamma's waist. Beautiful! beautiful!

Am I exaggerating? Go, and judge for yourselves, my bachelor friends. Go,

if you like, and meet my domestic sample at a ball.

My bachelor is introduced to Miss Violet, and takes his place with her

in a quadrille. He begins a lively conversation, and finds her attention

wandering. She has not heard a word that he has been saying, and she

interrupts him in the middle of a sentence with a question which has not

the slightest relation to anything that he has hitherto offered by way of

a remark.

"Have you ever met my sister Rose before?"

"No, I have not had the honour--"

"She is standing there, at the other end, in a blue dress. Now, do tell

me, does she not look charming?"

My bachelor makes the necessary answer, and goes on to another subject.

Miss Violet's attention wanders again, and she asks another abrupt

question.

"What did you think of mamma, when you were introduced to her?"

My bachelor friend makes another necessary answer. Miss Violet, without

appearing to be at all impressed by it, looks into the distance in search

of her maternal parent, and then addresses her partner again:

"It is not a pleasant thing for young people to confess," she says,

with the most artless candour, "but I really do think that mamma is the

handsomest woman in the room. There she is, taking an ice, next to the old

lady with the diamonds. Is she not beautiful? Do you know, when we were

dressing to-night, Rose and I begged and prayed her not to wear a cap.

We said, 'Don't, mamma; please don't. Put it off for another year.' And

mamma said, in her sweet way, 'Nonsense, my loves! I am an old woman. You

must accustom yourselves to that idea, and you must let me wear a cap;

you must, darlings, indeed.' And we said--what do you think we said?"

(Another necessary answer.)

"We said, 'You are studying papa's feelings, dear--you are afraid of being

taken for our youngest sister if you go in your hair,--and it is on papa's

account that you wear a cap. Sly mamma!'--Have you been introduced to

papa?"

Later in the evening my bachelor friend is presented to Miss Rose. He asks

for the honour of dancing with her. She inquires if it is for the waltz,

and hearing that it is, draws back and curtsies apologetically.

"Thank you, I must keep the waltz for my brother George. My sister and I

always keep waltzes for our brother George."

My bachelor draws back. The dance proceeds. He hears a soft voice behind

him. It is Miss Violet who is speaking.

"You are a judge of waltzing?" she says, in tones of the gentlest

insinuation. "Do pray look at George and Rose. No, thank you: I never

dance when George and Rose are waltzing. It is a much greater treat to me

to look on. I always look on. I do, indeed."

Perhaps my bachelor does not frequent balls. It is of no consequence. Let

him be a diner-out; let him meet my domestic sample at the social board;

and he will only witness fresh instances of that all-absorbing interest

in each other, which is the remarkable peculiarity of the whole Ducksey

family, and of the young ladies in particular. He will find them admiring

one another with the same touching and demonstrative affection over the

dishes on the dinner-table, as amid the mazes of the dance. He will hear

from the venerable Mr. Ducksey that George never gave him a moment's

uneasiness from the hour of his birth. He will hear from Mrs. Ducksey

that her one regret in this life is, that she can never be thankful

enough for her daughters. And (to return to the young ladies, who are

the main objects of these remarks), he will find, by some such fragments

of dialogue as the following, that no general subjects of conversation

whatever have the power of alluring the minds of the two Miss Duckseys

from the contemplation of their own domestic interests, and the faithful

remembrance of their own particular friends.

It is the interval, let us say, between the removal of the fish and the

appearance of the meat. The most brilliant man in the company has been

talking with great sprightliness and effect; has paused for a moment to

collect his ideas before telling one of the good stories for which he is

famous; and is just ready to begin--when Miss Rose stops him and silences

all her neighbours by anxiously addressing her sister, who sits opposite

to her at the table.

"Violet, dear."

"Yes, dear."

(Profound silence follows. The next course fails to make its appearance.

Nobody wanting to take any wine. The brilliant guest sits back in his

chair, dogged and speechless. The host and hostess look at each other

nervously. Miss Rose goes on with the happy artlessness of a child, as if

nobody but her sister was present.)

"Do you know I have made up my mind what I shall give mamma's Susan when

she is married?"

"Not a silk dress? That's my present."

"What do you think, dear, of a locket with our hair in it?"

"Sweet."

(The silence of the tomb falls on the dinner-table. The host and hostess

begin to get angry. The guests look at each other. The second course

persists in not coming in. The brilliant guest suffers from a dry cough.

Miss Violet, in her turn, addresses Miss Rose across the table.)

"Rose, I met Ellen Davis to-day."

"Has she heard from Clara?"

"Yes; Clara's uncle and aunt won't let her come."

"Tiresome people! Did you go on to Brompton? Did you see Jane? Is Jane to

be depended on?"

"If Jane's cold gets better, she and that odious cousin of hers are sure

to come. Uncle Frank, of course, makes his usual excuse."

So the simple-hearted sisters prattle on in public; so do they carry

their own innocent affections and interests about with them into the

society they adorn; so do they cast the extinguishing sunshine of their

young hearts over the temporary flashes of worldly merriment, and the

short-lived blaze of dinner eloquence. Without another word of preliminary

recommendation, I confidently submit the Miss Duckseys to brisk public

competition. I can promise the two fortunate youths who may woo and win

them, plenty of difficulties in weaning their affections from the family

hearth, with showers of tears and poignant bursts of anguish on the

wedding day. All properly-constituted bridegrooms feel, as I have been

given to understand, inexpressibly comforted and encouraged by a display

of violent grief on the part of the bride when she is starting on her

wedding tour. And, besides, in the particular case of the Miss Duckseys,

there would always be the special resource of taking brother George into

the carriage, as a sure palliative, during the first few stages of the

honeymoon trip.

DRAMATIC GRUB STREET.[D]

EXPLORED IN TWO LETTERS.

LETTER THE FIRST. FROM MR. READER TO MR. AUTHOR.

MY DEAR SIR,--I am sufficiently well-educated, and sufficiently refined

in my tastes and habits, to be a member of the large class of persons

usually honoured by literary courtesy with the title of the Intelligent

Public. In the interests of the order to which I belong, I have a little

complaint to make against the managers of our theatres, and a question to

put afterwards, which you, as a literary man, will, I have no doubt, be

both able and willing to answer.

Like many thousands of other people, I am fond of reading and fond of

going to the theatre. In regard to my reading, I have no complaint

to make--for the press supplies me abundantly with English poems,

histories, biographies, novels, essays, travels, criticisms, all of modern

production. But, in regard to going to the theatre, I write with something

like a sense of injury--for nobody supplies me with a good play. There

is living literature of a genuine sort in the English libraries of the

present time. Why (I beg to inquire) is there no living literature of a

genuine sort in the English theatre of the present time, also?

Say, I am a Frenchman, fond of the imaginative literature of my country,

well-read in all the best specimens of it,--I mean, best in a literary

point of view, for I am not touching moral questions now. When I shut up

Balzac, Victor Hugo, Dumas, and Soulié, and go to the theatre--what do I

find? Balzac, Victor Hugo, Dumas, and Soulié again. The men who have been

interesting me in my arm-chair, interesting me once more in my stall.

The men who can really invent and observe for the reader, inventing and

observing for the spectator also. What is the necessary consequence? The

literary standard of the stage is raised; and the dramatist by profession

must be as clever a man, in his way, as good an inventor, as correct a

writer, as the novelist. And what, in my case, follows that consequence?

Clearly this: the managers of theatres get my money at night, as the

publishers of books get it in the day.

Do the managers get my money from me in England? By no manner of means.

For they hardly ever condescend to address me.

I get up from reading the best works of our best living writers, and go

to the theatre, here. What do I see? The play that I have seen before

in Paris. This may do very well for my servant, who does not understand

French, or for my tradesman, who has never had time to go to Paris,--but

it is only showing _me_ an old figure in a foreign dress, which does

not become it like its native costume. But, perhaps, our dramatic

entertainment is not a play adapted from the French Drama. Perhaps, it

is something English--a Burlesque. Delightful, I have no doubt, to a fast

young farmer from the country, or to a convivial lawyer's clerk, who has

never read anything but a newspaper in his life. But is it satisfactory

to _me_? It is, if I want to go and see the Drama satirised. But I go to

enjoy a new play--and I am rewarded by seeing all my favourite ideas and

characters in some old play, ridiculed. This, like the adapted drama, is

the sort of entertainment I do _not_ want.

I read at home many original stories, by many original authors, that

delight me. I go to the theatre, and naturally want original stories by

original authors, which will also delight me there. Do I get what I ask

for? Yes, if I want to see an old play over again. But, if I want a new

play? Why, _then_ I must have the French adaptation, or the Burlesque.

The publisher can understand that there are people among his customers

who possess cultivated tastes, and can cater for them accordingly, when

they ask for something new. The manager, in the same case, recognises

no difference between me and my servant. My footman goes to see the

play-actors, and cares very little what they perform in. If my taste is

not his taste, we may part at the theatre door,--he goes in, and I go

home. It may be said, Why is my footman's taste not to be provided for?

By way of answering that question, I will ask another:--Why is my footman

not to have the chance of improving his taste, and making it as good as

mine?

The case between the two countries seems to stand thus, then:--In France,

the most eminent imaginative writers work, as a matter of course, for

the stage, as well as for the library table. In England, the most eminent

imaginative writers work for the library table alone. What is the reason

of this? To what do you attribute the present shameful dearth of stage

literature? To the dearth of good actors?--or, if not to that, to what

other cause?

Of one thing I am certain, that there is no want of a large and a ready

audience for original English plays, possessing genuine dramatic merit,

and appealing, as forcibly as our best novels do, to the tastes, the

interests, and the sympathies of our own time. You, who have had some

experience of society, know as well as I do, that there is in this country

a very large class of persons whose minds are stiffened by no Puritanical

scruples, whose circumstances in the world are easy, whose time is at

their own disposal, who are the very people to make a good audience and a

paying audience at a theatre, and who yet, hardly ever darken theatrical

doors more than two or three times in a year. You know this; and you know

also that the systematic neglect of the theatre in these people, has been

forced on them, in the first instance, by the shock inflicted on their

good sense by nine-tenths of the so-called new entertainments which are

offered to them. I am not speaking now of gorgeous scenic revivals of old

plays--for which I have a great respect, because they offer to sensible

people the only decent substitute for genuine dramatic novelty to be met

with at the present time. I am referring to the "new entertainments"

which are, in the vast majority of cases, second-hand entertainments

to every man in the theatre who is familiar with the French writers--or

insufferably coarse entertainments to every man who has elevated his taste

by making himself acquainted with the best modern literature of his own

land. Let my servant, let my small tradesman, let the fast young farmers

and lawyers' clerks, be all catered for! But surely, if they have their

theatre, I, and my large class, ought to have our theatre too? The fast

young farmer has his dramatists, just as he has his novelists in the penny

journals. We, on our side, have got our great novelists (whose works the

fast young farmer does not read)--why, I ask again, are we not to have

our great dramatists as well?

With high esteem, yours, my dear Sir,

A. READER.

LETTER THE SECOND. FROM MR. AUTHOR TO MR. READER.

MY DEAR SIR,--I thoroughly understand your complaint, and I think I can

answer your question. My reply will probably a little astonish you--for I

mean to speak the plain truth boldly. The public ought to know the real

state of the case, as regards the present position of the English stage

towards English Literature, for the public alone can work the needful

reform.

You ask, if I attribute the present dearth of stage literature to the

dearth of good actors? I reply to that in the negative. When the good

literature comes, the good actors will come also, where they are wanted.

In many branches of the theatrical art they are not wanted. We have as

good living actors among us now as ever trod the stage. And we should have

more if dramatic literature called for more. It is literature that makes

the actor--not the actor who makes literature. I could name men to you,

now on the stage, whose advance in their profession they owe entirely to

the rare opportunities, which the occasional appearance of a genuinely

good play has afforded to them, of stepping out--men whose sense of the

picturesque and the natural in their art, lay dormant, until the pen of

the writer woke it into action. Show me a school of dramatists, and I

will show you a school of actors soon afterwards--as surely as the effect

follows the cause.

You have spoken of France. I will now speak of France also; for the

literary comparison with our neighbours is as applicable to the main point

of my letter as it was to the main point of yours.

Suppose me to be a French novelist. If I am a successful man, my work has

a certain market value at the publisher's. So far my case is the same if

I am an English novelist--but there the analogy stops. In France, the

manager of the theatre can compete with the publisher for the purchase

of any new idea that I have to sell. In France, the market value of my

new play is as high, or higher, than the market value of my new novel.

Remember, I am not now writing of French theatres which have assistance

from the Government, but of French theatres which depend, as our theatres

do, entirely on the public. Any one of those theatres will give me

as much, I repeat, for the toil of my brains, on their behalf, as the

publisher will give for the toil of my brains on his. Now, so far is this

from being the case in England, that it is a fact perfectly well known to

every literary man in the country, that, while the remuneration for every

other species of literature has enormously increased in the last hundred

years, the remuneration for dramatic writing has steadily decreased, to

such a minimum of pecuniary recognition as to make it impossible for a

man who lives by the successful use of his pen, as a writer of books, to

alter the nature of his literary practice, and live, or nearly live, in

comfortable circumstances, by the use of his pen, as a writer of plays. It

is time that this fact was generally known, to justify successful living

authors for their apparent neglect of one of the highest branches of their

Art. I tell you, in plain terms, that I could only write a play for the

English stage--a successful play, mind--by consenting to what would be,

in my case, and in the cases of all my successful brethren, a serious

pecuniary sacrifice.

Let me make the meanness of the remuneration for stage-writing in our

day, as compared with what that remuneration was in past times, clear to

your mind by one or two examples. Rather more than a hundred years ago,

Doctor Johnson wrote a very bad play called Irene, which proved a total

failure on representation, and which tottered, rather than "ran," for

just nine nights, to wretched houses. Excluding his literary copyright

of a hundred pounds, the Doctor's dramatic profit on a play that was a

failure--remember that!--amounted to one hundred and ninety-five pounds,

being just forty-five pounds _more_ than the remuneration now paid, to

my certain knowledge, for many a play within the last five years, which

has had a successful run of sixty, and, in some cases, even of a hundred

nights!

I can imagine your amazement at reading this--but I can also assure you

that any higher rate of remuneration is exceptional. Let me, however, give

the managers the benefit of the exception. Sometimes two hundred pounds

have been paid, within the last five years, for a play; and, on one or

two rare occasions, three hundred. If Shakspere came to life again, and

took Macbeth to an English theatre, in this year, eighteen hundred and

sixty-three, that is the highest market remuneration he could get for it.

You are to understand that this miserable decline in the money-reward held

out to dramatic literature is peculiar to our own day. Without going back

again so long as a century--without going back farther than the time of

George Colman, the younger--I may remind you that the Comedy of John Bull

brought the author twelve hundred pounds. Since then, six or seven hundred

pounds have been paid for a new play; and, later yet, five hundred pounds.

We have now dropped to three hundred pounds, as the exception, and to

one hundred and fifty, as the rule. I am speaking, remember, of plays in

not less than three acts, which are, or are supposed to be, original--of

plays which run from sixty to a hundred nights, and which put their bread

(buttered thickly on both sides) into the mouths of actors and managers.

As to the remuneration for ordinary translations from the French, I would

rather not mention what that is. And, indeed, there is no need I should

do so. We are talking of the stage in its present relation to English

literature. Suppose I wrote for it, as some of my friends suggest I

should; and suppose I could produce one thoroughly original play, with a

story of my own sole invention, with characters of my own sole creation,

every year. The utmost annual income the English stage would, at present

prices, pay me, after exhausting my brains in its service, would be three

hundred pounds!

I use the expression "exhausting my brains," advisedly. For a man who

produces a new work, every year, which has any real value and completeness

as a work of literary art, does, let him be who he may, for a time,

exhaust his brain by the process, and leave it sorely in need of an

after-period of absolute repose. Three hundred a-year, therefore, is the

utmost that a fertile original author can expect to get by the English

stage, at present market-rates of remuneration.

Such is now the position of the dramatic writer--a special man, with a

special faculty. What is now the position of the dramatic performer, when

he happens to be a special man, with a special faculty also? Is his income

three hundred a-year? Is his manager's income three hundred a-year? The

popular actors of the time when Colman got his twelve hundred pounds would

be struck dumb with amazement, if they saw what salaries their successors

are getting now. If stage remuneration has decreased sordidly in our time

for authorship, it has increased splendidly for actorship. When a manager

tells me now that his theatre cannot afford to pay me as much for my idea

in the form of a play, as the publisher can afford to pay me for it in

the form of a novel--he really means that he and his actors take a great

deal more now from the nightly receipts of the theatres than they ever

thought of taking in the time of John Bull. When the actors' profits from

the theatre are largely increased, somebody else's profits from the same

theatre must be decreased. That somebody else is the dramatic author.

There you have the real secret of the mean rate at which the English stage

now estimates the assistance of English Literature.

There are persons whose interest it may be to deny this; and who will

deny it. It is not a question of assertion or denial, but a question

of figures. How much per week did a popular actor get in Colman's time?

How much per week does a popular actor get now? The biographies of dead

players will answer the first question. And the managers' books, for

the past ten or fifteen years, will answer the second. I must not give

offence by comparisons between living and dead men--I must not enter

into details, because they would lead me too near to the private affairs

of other people. But I tell you again, that the remuneration for acting

has immensely increased, and the remuneration for dramatic writing has

immensely decreased, in our time; and I am not afraid of having that

assertion contradicted by proofs.

It is useless to attempt a defence of the present system by telling me

that a different plan of remunerating the dramatic author was adopted in

former times, and that a different plan is also practised on the French

stage. I am not discussing which plan is best, or which plan is worst. I

am only dealing with the plain fact, that the present stage-estimate of

the author is barbarously low--an estimate which men who had any value for

literature, any idea of its importance, any artist-like sympathy with its

great difficulties, and its great achievements, would be ashamed to make.

I prove that fact by reference to the proceedings of a better past time,

and by a plain appeal to the market-value of all kinds of literature,

off the stage, at the present time; and I leave the means of effecting a

reform to those who are bound in common honour and common justice to make

the reform. It is not my business to re-adjust the commercial machinery

of theatres; I don't sit in the treasury, and handle the strings of the

moneybags. I say that the present system is a base one towards literature,

and that the history of the past, and the experience of the present, prove

it to be so. All the reasoning in the world which tries to convince us

that a wrong is necessary, will not succeed in proving that wrong to be

right.

Having now established the existence of the abuse, it is easy enough to

get on to the consequences that have arisen from it. At the present low

rate of remuneration, a man of ability wastes his powers if he writes for

the stage--unless he is prepared to put himself out of the category of

authors, by turning manager and actor, and taking a theatre for himself.

There are men still in existence, who occasionally write for the stage,

for the love and honour of their Art. Once, perhaps, in two or three

years, one of these devoted men will try single-handed to dissipate the

dense dramatic fog that hangs over the theatre and the audience. For

the brief allotted space of time, the one toiling hand lets in a little

light, unthanked by the actors, unaided by the critics, unnoticed by

the audience. The time expires--the fog gathers back--the toiling hand

disappears. Sometimes it returns once more bravely to the hard, hopeless

work: and out of all the hundreds whom it has tried to enlighten, there

shall not be one who is grateful enough to know it again.

These exceptional men--too few, too scattered, too personally unimportant

in the republic of letters, to have any strong or lasting influence--are

not the professed dramatists of our times. These are not the writers

who make so much as a clerk's income out of the stage. The few men of

practical ability who now write for the English Theatre, are men of the

world, who know that they are throwing away their talents if they take

the trouble to invent, for an average remuneration of one hundred and

fifty pounds. The well-paid Frenchman supplies them with a story and

characters ready made. The Original Adaptation is rattled off in a week:

and the dramatic author beats the clerk after all, by getting so much

more money for so much less manual exercise in the shape of writing.

Below this clever tactician, who foils the theatre with its own weapons,

come the rank-and-file of hack-writers, who work still more cheaply, and

give still less (I am rejoiced to say) for the money. The stage results

of this sort of authorship, as you have already implied, virtually drive

the intelligent classes out of the theatre. Half a century since, the

prosperity of the manager's treasury would have suffered in consequence.

But the increase of wealth and population, and the railway connection

between London and the country, more than supply in quantity what

audiences have lost in quality. Not only does the manager lose nothing in

the way of profit--he absolutely gains by getting a vast nightly majority

into his theatre, whose ignorant insensibility nothing can shock. Let him

cast what garbage he pleases before them, the unquestioning mouths of his

audience open, and snap at it. I am sorry and ashamed to write in this way

of any assemblage of my own countrymen; but a large experience of theatres

forces me to confess that I am writing the truth. If you want to find

out who the people are who know nothing whatever, even by hearsay, of the

progress of the literature of their own time--who have caught no chance

vestige of any one of the ideas which are floating about before their

very eyes--who are, to all social intents and purposes, as far behind the

age they live in, as any people out of a lunatic asylum can be--go to a

theatre, and be very careful, in doing so, to pick out the most popular

performance of the day. The actors themselves, when they are men of any

intelligence, are thoroughly aware of the utter incapacity of the tribunal

which is supposed to judge them. Not very long ago, an actor, standing

deservedly in the front rank of his profession, happened to play even more

admirably than usual in a certain new part. Meeting him soon afterwards,

I offered him my mite of praise in all sincerity. "Yes," was his reply.

"I know that I act my very best in that part, for I hardly get a hand of

applause in it through the whole evening." Such is the condition to which

the dearth of good literature has now reduced the audiences of English

theatres--even in the estimation of the men who act before them.

And what is to remedy this? Nothing can remedy it but a change for the

better in the audiences.

I have good hope that this change is slowly, very slowly, beginning. "When

things are at the worst they are sure to mend." I really think that, in

dramatic matters, they have been at the worst; and I have therefore some

belief that the next turn of Fortune's wheel may be in our favour. In

certain theatres, I fancy I notice already symptoms of a slight additional

sprinkling of intelligence among the audiences. If I am right; if this

sprinkling increases; if the few people who have brains in their heads

will express themselves boldly; if those who are fit to lead the opinion

of their neighbours will resolutely make the attempt to lead it, instead

of indolently wrapping themselves up in their own contempt--then there

may be a creditable dramatic future yet in store for the countrymen of

Shakspere. Perhaps we may yet live to see the day when managers will be

forced to seek out the writers who are really setting their mark on the

literature of the age--when "starvation prices" shall have given place to

a fair remuneration--and when the prompter shall have his share with the

publisher in the best work that can be done for him by the best writers

of the time.

Meanwhile, there is a large audience of intelligent people, with plenty

of money in their pockets, waiting for a theatre to go to. Supposing

that such an amazing moral portent should ever appear in the English

firmament, as a theatrical speculator who can actually claim some slight

acquaintance with contemporary literature; and supposing that unparalleled

man to be smitten with a sudden desire to ascertain what the circulation

actually is of serial publications and successful novels which address

the educated classes; I think I may safely predict the consequences that

would follow, as soon as our ideal manager had received his information

and recovered from his astonishment. London would be startled, one fine

morning, by finding a new theatre opened. Names that are now well known

on title-pages only, would then appear on play-bills also; and tens of

thousands of readers, who now pass the theatre-door with indifference,

would be turned into tens of thousands of play-goers also. What a cry of

astonishment would be heard thereupon in the remotest fastnesses of old

theatrical London! "Merciful Heaven! There is a large public, after all,

for well-paid original plays, as well as for well-paid original books.

And a man has turned up, at last, of our own managerial order, who has

absolutely found it out!"

With true regard, yours, my dear Sir,

A. N. AUTHOR.

TO THINK, OR BE THOUGHT FOR?

If anything I can say here, on the subject of the painter's Art, will

encourage intelligent people of any rank to turn a deaf ear to all that

critics, connoisseurs, lecturers, and compilers of guide-books can tell

them; to trust entirely to their own common sense when they are looking

at pictures; and to express their opinions boldly, without the slightest

reference to any precedents whatever--I shall have exactly achieved the

object with which I now apply myself to the writing of this paper.

Let me first ask, in regard to pictures in general, what it is that

prevents the public from judging for themselves, and why the influence

of Art in England is still limited to select circles,--still unfelt, as

the phrase is, by all but the cultivated classes? Why do people want to

look at their guide-books, before they can make up their minds about

an old picture? Why do they ask connoisseurs and professional friends

for a marked catalogue, before they venture inside the walls of the

exhibition-rooms in Trafalgar Square? Why, when they are, for the most

part, always ready to tell each other unreservedly what books they like,

or what musical compositions are favourites with them, do they hesitate

the moment pictures turn up as a topic of conversation, and intrench

themselves doubtfully behind such cautious phrases, as, "I don't pretend

to understand the subject,"--"I believe such and such a picture is much

admired,"--"I am no judge," and so on?

No judge! Does a really good picture want you to be a judge? Does it want

you to have anything but eyes in your head, and the undisturbed possession

of your senses? Is there any other branch of intellectual art which has

such a direct appeal, by the very nature of it, to every sane human being

as the art of painting? There it is, able to represent through a medium

which offers itself to you palpably, in the shape of so many visible feet

of canvass, actual human facts, and distinct aspects of Nature, which

poetry can only describe, and which music can but obscurely hint at. The

Art which can do this--and which has done it over and over again both

in past and present times--is surely of all arts that one which least

requires a course of critical training, before it can be approached on

familiar terms. Whenever I see an intelligent man, which I often do,

standing before a really eloquent and true picture, and asking his marked

catalogue, or his newspaper, or his guide-book, whether he may safely

admire it or not--I think of a man standing winking both eyes in the

full glare of a cloudless August noon, and inquiring deferentially of an

astronomical friend whether he is really justified in saying that the sun

shines!

But, we have not yet fairly got at the main obstacle which hinders the

public from judging of pictures for themselves, and which, by a natural

consequence, limits the influence of Art on the nation generally. For my

own part, I have long thought, and shall always continue to believe, that

this same obstacle is nothing more or less than the Conceit of Criticism,

which has got obstructively between Art and the people,--which has kept

them asunder, and will keep them asunder, until it is fairly pulled out

of the way, and set aside at once and for ever in its proper background

place.

This is a bold thing to say; but I think I can advance some proofs that

my assertion is not altogether so wild as it may appear at first sight.

By the Conceit of Criticism, I desire to express, in one word, the

conventional laws and formulas, the authoritative rules and regulations

which individual men set up to guide the tastes and influence the opinions

of their fellow-creatures. When Criticism does not speak in too arbitrary

a language, and when the laws it makes are ratified by the consent and

approbation of intelligent people in general, I have as much respect

for it as any one. But, when Criticism sits altogether apart, speaks

opinions that find no answering echo in the general heart, and measures

the greatness of intellectual work by anything rather than by its power

of appealing to all capacities for admiration and enjoyment, from the

very highest to the very humblest,--then, as it seems to me, Criticism

becomes the expression of individual conceit, and forfeits all claim to

consideration and respect. From that moment, it is Obstructive--for it

has set itself up fatally between the Art of Painting and the honest and

general appreciation of that Art by the People.

Let me try to make this still clearer by an example. A great deal of

obstructive criticism undoubtedly continues to hang as closely as it can

about Poetry and Music. But there are, nevertheless, stateable instances,

in relation to these two Arts, of the voice of the critic and the voice of

the people being on the same side. The tragedy of Hamlet, for example, is

critically considered to be the masterpiece of dramatic poetry; and the

tragedy of Hamlet is also, according to the testimony of every sort of

manager, the play, of all others, which can be invariably depended on to

fill a theatre with the greatest certainty, act it when and how you will.

Again, in music, the Don Giovanni of Mozart, which is the admiration even

of the direst pedant producible from the ranks of musical connoisseurs,

is also the irresistible popular attraction which is always sure to fill

the pit and gallery at the opera. Here, at any rate, are two instances in

which two great achievements of the past in poetry and music are alike

viewed with admiration by the man who appreciates by instinct, and the

man who appreciates by rule.

If we apply the same test to the achievements of the past in Painting,

where shall we find a similar instance of genuine concurrence between the

few who are appointed to teach, and the many who are expected to learn?

I put myself in the position of a man of fair capacity and average

education, who labours under the fatal delusion that he will be helped to

a sincere appreciation of the works of the Old Masters by asking critics

and connoisseurs to form his opinions for him. I am sent to Italy as a

matter of course. A general chorus of learned authorities tells me that

Michael Angelo and Raphael are the two greatest painters that ever lived;

and that the two recognised masterpieces of the highest High Art are the

Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel, and the Transfiguration, in the

Vatican picture gallery. It is not only Lanzi and Vasari, and hosts of

later sages running smoothly along the same critical grooves, who give

me this information. Even the greatest of English portrait-painters, Sir

Joshua Reynolds, sings steadily with the critical chorus, note for note.

When experience has made me wiser, I am able to detect clearly enough in

the main principles which Reynolds has adopted in his Lectures on Art, the

reason of his notorious want of success whenever he tried to rise above

portraits to the regions of historical painting. But at the period of my

innocence, I am simply puzzled and amazed, when I come to such a passage

as the following in Sir Joshua's famous Fifth Lecture, where he sums up

the comparative merits of Michael Angelo and Raphael:--

"If we put these great artists in a line of comparison with each

other (lectures Sir Joshua), Raphael had more taste and fancy,

Michael Angelo more genius and imagination. The one excelled

in beauty, the other in energy. Michael Angelo had more of the

poetical inspiration; his ideas are vast and sublime; his people

are a superior order of beings; there is nothing about them,

nothing in the air of their actions or their attitudes, or the

style and cast of their limbs or features, that reminds us of

their belonging to our own species."

Here I get plainly enough at what Sir Joshua considers to be the crowning

excellence of high art. It is one great proof of the poetry and sublimity

of Michael Angelo's pictures that the people represented in them never

remind us of our own species: which seems equivalent to saying that the

representation of a man made in the image of Michael Angelo is a grander

sight than the representation of a man made in the image of God. I am a

little staggered by these principles of criticism; but as all the learned

authorities that I can get at seem to have adopted them, I do my best to

follow the example of my teachers, and set off reverently for Rome to see

the two works of art which my critical masters tell me are the sublimest

pictures that the world has yet beheld.

I go first to the Sistine Chapel; and, on a great blue-coloured wall at

one end of it, I see painted a confusion of naked, knotty-bodied figures,

sprawling up or tumbling down below a single figure, posted aloft in the

middle, and apparently threatening the rest with his hand. If I ask Lanzi,

or Vasari, or Sir Joshua Reynolds, or the gentleman who has compiled

Murray's Handbook for Central Italy, or any other competent authorities,

what this grotesquely startling piece of painter's work can possibly be,

I am answered that it is actually intended to represent the unimaginably

awful spectacle of the Last Judgment! And I am further informed that,

estimated by the critical tests applied to it by these competent

authorities, the picture is pronounced to be a masterpiece of grandeur and

sublimity. I resolve to look a little closer at this celebrated work, and

to try if I can get at any fair estimate of it by employing such plain,

uncritical tests, as will do for me and for everybody.

Here is a fresco, which aspires to represent the most impressive of all

Christian subjects; it is painted on the wall of a Christian church, by

a man belonging to a Christian community--what evidences of religious

feeling has it to show me? I look at the lower part of the composition

first, and see--a combination of the orthodox nursery notion of the devil,

with the Heathen idea of the conveyance to the infernal regions, in the

shape of a horned and tailed ferryman giving condemned souls a cast across

a river! Pretty well, I think, to begin with.

Let me try and discover next what evidences of extraordinary intellectual

ability the picture presents. I look up towards the top now, by way of

a change, and I find Michael Angelo's conception of the entrance of a

martyr into the kingdom of Heaven, displayed before me in the shape of

a flayed man, presenting his own skin, as a sort of credential, to the

hideous figure with the threatening hand--which I will not, even in

writing, identify with the name of Our Saviour. Elsewhere, I see nothing

but unnatural distortion and hopeless confusion; fighting figures,

tearing figures, tumbling figures, kicking figures; and, to crown all,

a caricatured portrait, with a pair of ass's ears, of a certain Messer

Biagio of Sienna, who had the sense and courage, when the Last Judgment

was first shown on completion, to protest against every figure in it being

painted stark-naked!

I see such things as these, and many more equally preposterous, which it

is not worth while to mention. All other people with eyes in their heads

see them, too. They are actual matters of fact, not debateable matters

of taste. But I am not--on that account--justified, nor is any other

uncritical person justified, in saying a word against the picture. It may

palpably outrage all the religious proprieties of the subject; but, then,

it is full of "fine foreshortening," and therefore we uncritical people

must hold our tongues. It may violate just as plainly all the intellectual

proprieties, counting from the flayed man with his skin in his hand, at

the top, to Messer Biagio of Sienna with his ass's ears, at the bottom;

but, then, it exhibits "masterly anatomical detail," and therefore we

uncritical spectators must hold our tongues. It may strike us forcibly

that, if people are to be painted at all, as in this picture, rising out

of their graves in their own bodies as they lived, it is surely important

(to say nothing of giving them the benefit of the shrouds in which they

were buried) to represent them as having the usual general proportions of

human beings. But Sir Joshua Reynolds interposes critically, and tells us

the figures on the wall and ceiling of the Sistine Chapel are sublime,

because they don't remind us of our own species. Why should they not

remind us of our own species? Because they are prophets, sibyls, and such

like, cries the chorus of critics indignantly. And what then? If I had

been on intimate terms with Jeremiah, or if I had been the ancient king

to whom the sibyl brought the mysterious books, would not my friend in the

one case, and the messenger in the other, have appeared before me bearing

the ordinary proportions and exhibiting the usual appearance of my own

species? Does not Sacred History inform me that the prophet was a Man, and

does not Profane History describe the sibyl as an Old Woman? Is old age

never venerable and striking in real life?--But I am uttering heresies. I

am mutinously summoning reason and common sense to help me in estimating

an Old Master. This will never do: I had better follow the example of all

the travellers I see about me, by turning away in despair, and leaving

the Last Judgment to the critics and connoisseurs.

Having thus discovered that one masterpiece of High Art does not address

itself to me, and to the large majority whom I represent, let me go

next to the picture gallery, and see how the second masterpiece (the

Transfiguration, by Raphael) can vindicate its magnificent reputation

among critics and connoisseurs. This picture I approach under the

advantage of knowing, beforehand, that I must make allowances for minor

defects in it, which are recognised by the learned authorities themselves.

I am indeed prepared to be disappointed, at the outset, because I have

been prepared to make allowances:

First, for defects of colour, which spoil the general effect of the

picture on the spectator; all the lights being lividly tinged with green,

and all the shadows being grimly hardened with black. This mischief is

said to have been worked by the tricks of French cleaners and restorers,

who have so fatally tampered with the whole surface, that Raphael's

original colouring must be given up as lost. Rather a considerable loss,

this, to begin with; but not Raphael's fault. Therefore, let it by no

means depreciate the picture in my estimation.

Secondly, I have to make allowances for the introduction of two Roman

Catholic Saints (St. Julian and St. Lawrence), represented by the painter

as being actually present at the Transfiguration, in order to please

Cardinal de' Medici, for whom the picture was painted. This _is_ Raphael's

fault. This sets him forth in the rather anomalous character of a great

painter with no respect for his art. I have some doubts about him, after

that,--doubts which my critical friends might possibly share if Raphael

were only a modern painter.

Thirdly, I have to make allowances for the scene of the Transfiguration

on the high mountain, and the scene of the inability of the disciples

to cure the boy possessed with a devil, being represented, without the

slightest division, one at the top and the other at the bottom of the same

canvass,--both events thus appearing to be connected by happening in the

same place, within view of each other, when we know very well that they

were only connected by happening at the same time. Also, when I see some

of the disciples painted in the act of pointing up to the Transfiguration,

the mountain itself being the background against which they stand, I am to

remember (though the whole of the rest of the picture is most absolutely

and unflinchingly literal in treatment) that here Raphael has suddenly

broken out into allegory, and desires to indicate by the pointing hands

of the disciples that it is the duty of the afflicted to look to Heaven

for relief in their calamities. Having made all these rather important

allowances, I may now look impartially at the upper half of this famous

composition.

I find myself soon looking away again. It may be that three figures

clothed in gracefully fluttering drapery, and dancing at symmetrically

exact distances from each other in the air, represent such an unearthly

spectacle as the Transfiguration to the satisfaction of great judges of

art. I can also imagine that some few select persons may be able to look

at the top of the high mountain, as represented in the picture, without

feeling their gravity in the smallest degree endangered by seeing that

the ugly knob of ground on which the disciples are lying prostrate, is

barely big enough to hold them, and most certainly would not hold them

if they all moved briskly on it together. These things are matters of

taste, on which I have the misfortune to differ with the connoisseurs. Not

feeling bold enough to venture on defending myself against the masters

who are teaching me to appreciate High Art, I can only look away from

the upper part of the picture, and try if I can derive any useful or

pleasant impressions from the lower half of the composition, in which

no supernatural event is depicted, and which it is therefore perfectly

justifiable to judge by referring it to the standard of dramatic truth,

or, in one word, of Nature.

As for this portion of the picture, I can hardly believe my eyes when

I first look at it. Excepting the convulsed face of the boy, and a

certain hard eagerness in the look of the man who is holding him, all

the other faces display a stony inexpressiveness, which, when I think of

the great name of Raphael in connection with what I see, fairly amazes

me. I look down incredulously at my guide-book. Yes! there is indeed

the critical authority of Lanzi quoted for my benefit. Lanzi tells me

in plain terms that I behold represented in the picture before me "the

most pathetic story Raphael ever conceived," and refers, in proof of

it, to the "compassion evinced by the apostles." I look attentively

at them all, and behold an assembly of hard-featured, bearded men,

standing, sitting, and gesticulating, in conventional academic attitudes;

their faces not expressing naturally, not even affecting to express

artificially, compassion for the suffering boy, humility at their own

incapability to relieve him, or any other human emotion likely to be

suggested by the situation in which they are placed. I find it still more

dismaying to look next at the figure of a brawny woman, with her back

to the spectator, entreating the help of the apostles theatrically on

one knee, with her insensible classical profile turned in one direction,

and both her muscular arms stretched out in the other; it is still more

dismaying to look at such a figure as this, and then to be gravely

told by Lanzi that I am contemplating "the affliction of a beautiful

and interesting female." I observe, on entering the room in which the

Transfiguration is placed, as I have previously observed on entering

the Sistine Chapel, groups of spectators before the picture consulting

their guide-books--looking attentively at the work of High Art which

they are ordered to admire--trying hard to admire it--then, with dismay

in their faces, looking round at each other, shutting up their books,

and retreating from High Art in despair. I observe these groups for a

little while, and I end in following their example. We members of the

general public may admire Hamlet and Don Giovanni, honestly, along with

the critics, but the two sublimest pictures (according to the learned

authorities) which the world has yet beheld, appeal to none of us; and we

leave them, altogether discouraged on the subject of Art for the future.

From that time forth we look at pictures with a fatal self-distrust. Some

of us recklessly take our opinions from others; some of us cautiously keep

our opinions to ourselves; and some of us indolently abstain from having

anything to do with an opinion at all.

Is this exaggerated? Have I misrepresented facts in the example I have

quoted of obstructive criticism on Art, and of its discouraging effects

on the public mind? Let the doubting reader, by all means, judge for

himself. Let him refer to any recognised authority he pleases, and he will

find that the two pictures of which I have been writing are critically

and officially considered, to this day, as the two masterworks of the

highest school of painting. Having ascertained that, let him next, if

possible, procure a sight of some print or small copy from any part of

either picture (there is a copy of the whole of the Transfiguration in the

Gallery at the Crystal Palace), and practically test the truth of what I

have said. Or, in the event of his not choosing to take that trouble, let

him ask any unprofessional and uncritical friend who has seen the pictures

themselves--and the more intelligent and unprejudiced that friend, the

better for my purpose--what the effect on him was of The Last Judgment,

or The Transfiguration. If I can only be assured of the sincerity of the

witness, I shall not be afraid of the result of the examination.

Other readers who have visited the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican Gallery

can testify for themselves (but, few of them will--I know them!) whether I

have misrepresented their impressions or not. To that part of my audience

I have nothing to say, except that I beg them not to believe that I am

a heretic in relation to all works by all old masters, because I have

spoken out about the Last Judgment and the Transfiguration. I am not

blind, I hope, to the merits of any picture, provided it will bear honest

investigation on uncritical principles. I have seen such exceptional

works by ones and twos, amid many hundreds of utterly worthless canvasses

with undeservedly famous names attached to them, in Italy and elsewhere.

My valet-de-place has not pointed them out to me; my guide-book, which

criticises according to authority, has not recommended me to look at

them, except in very rare cases indeed. I discovered them for myself,

and others may discover them as readily as I did, if they will only

take their minds out of leading-strings when they enter a gallery, and

challenge a picture boldly to do its duty by explaining its own merits to

them without the assistance of an interpreter. Having given that simple

receipt for the finding out and enjoying of good pictures, I need give no

more. It is no part of my object to attempt to impose my own tastes and

preferences on others. I want--if I may be allowed to repeat my motives

once more in the plainest terms--to do all I can to shake the influence

of authority in matters of Art, because I see that authority standing

drearily and persistently aloof from all popular sympathy; because I see

it keeping pictures and the people apart; because I find it setting up as

masterpieces, two of the worst of many palpably bad and barbarous works

of past times; and lastly, because I find it purchasing pictures for the

National Gallery of England, for which, in nine cases out of ten, the

nation has no concern or care, which have no merits but technical merits,

and which have not the last and lowest recommendation of winning general

approval even among the critics and connoisseurs themselves.

And what remedy against this? I say at the end, as I said at the

beginning, the remedy is to judge for ourselves, and to express our

opinions, privately and publicly, on every possible occasion, without

hesitation, without compromise, without reference to any precedents

whatever. Public opinion has had its victories in other matters, and may

yet have its victory in matters of Art. We, the people, have a gallery

that is called ours; let us do our best to have it filled for the future

with pictures (no matter when or by whom painted), that we can get some

honest enjoyment and benefit from. Let us, in Parliament and out of

it, before dinner and after dinner, in the presence of authorities just

as coolly as out of the presence of authorities, say plainly once for

all, that the sort of High Art which is professedly bought _for us_,

and which does actually address itself to nobody but painters, critics,

and connoisseurs, is not High Art at all, but the lowest of the Low:

because it is the narrowest as to its sphere of action, and the most

scantily furnished as to its means of doing good. We shall shock the

connoisseurs (especially the elderly ones) by taking this course; we

shall get indignantly reprimanded by the critics, and flatly contradicted

by the lecturers; but we shall also, sooner or later, get a collection

of pictures bought for us that we, mere mankind, can appreciate and

understand. It may be a revolutionary sentiment, but I think that the

carrying out of this reform (as well as of a few others) is a part of

the national business which the people of England have got to do for

themselves, and in which no existing authorities will assist them. There

is a great deal of social litter accumulating about us. Suppose, when

we start the business of setting things to rights, that we try the new

broom gently at first, by sweeping away a little High Art, and having the

temerity to form our own opinions?

SOCIAL GRIEVANCES.--IV.

SAVE ME FROM MY FRIENDS.

A few days ago, I was walking in a street at the western part of London,

and I encountered a mendicant individual of an almost extinct species.

Some years since, the oratorical beggar, who addressed himself to the

public on each side of the way, in a neat speech spoken from the middle

of the road, was almost as constant and regular in his appearances as the

postman himself. Of late, however, this well-known figure--this cadger

Cicero of modern days--has all but disappeared; the easy public ear having

probably grown rather deaf, in course of time, to the persuasive power

of orators with only two subjects to illustrate--their moral virtues and

their physical destitution.

With these thoughts in my mind, I stopped to look at the rare and wretched

object for charity whom I had met by chance, and to listen to the address

which he was delivering for the benefit of the street population and the

street passengers on both sides of the pavement. He was a tall, sturdy,

self-satisfied, healthy-looking vagabond, with a face which would have

been almost handsome if it had not been disfigured by the expression

which Nature sets, like a brand, on the countenance of a common impostor.

As for his style of oratory, I will not do him the injustice of merely

describing it. Here is a specimen, faithfully reported for the public,

from the original speech:--

"Good Christian people, will you be so obliging as to leave off your

various occupations for a few minutes only, and listen to the harrowing

statement of a father of a family, who is reduced to acknowledge his

misfortunes in the public streets? Work, honest work, is all I ask for;

and I cannot get it. Why?--I ask, most respectfully, why? Good Christian

people, I think it is because I have no friends. Alas! indeed I have no

friends. My wife and seven babes are, I am shocked to tell you, without

food. Yes, without food. Oh, yes, without food. Because we have no

friends: I assure you I am right in saying because we have no friends.

Why am I and my wife and my seven babes starving in a land of plenty?

Why have I no share in the wholesome necessaries of life, which I see,

with my hungry eyes, in butchers' and bakers' shops on each side of me?

Can anybody give me a reason for this? I think, good Christian people,

nobody can. Must I perish in a land of plenty because I have no work

and because I have no friends? I cannot perish in a land of plenty. No,

I cannot perish in a land of plenty. Oh, no, I cannot perish in a land

of plenty. Bear with my importunity, if you please, and listen to my

harrowing statement. I am the father of a starving family, and I have got

no friends."

With this neat return to the introductory passage of his speech, the

mendicant individual paused; collected the pecuniary tokens of public

approval; and walked forward, with a funereal slowness of step, to deliver

a second edition of his address in another part of the street.

While I had been looking at this man, I had also been insensibly led to

compare myself, as I stood on the pavement, with my oratorical vagrant,

as he stood in the roadway. In some important respects, I found, to

my own astonishment, that the result of the comparison was not by any

means flattering on my side. I might certainly assume, without paying

myself any extraordinary compliment, that I was the honester man of the

two; also that I was better educated and a little better clad. But here

my superiority ceased. The beggar was far in advance of me in all the

outward and visible signs of inward mental comfort which combine to form

the appearance of a healthily-constituted man. After perplexing myself,

for some time, in the attempt to discover the reason for the enviably

prosperous and contented aspect of this vagabond--which appeared palpably

to any sharp observer, through his assumed expression of suffering

and despair--I came to the singular conclusion that the secret of his

personal advantages over me, lay in the very circumstance on which he

chiefly relied for awakening the sympathies of the charitable public--the

circumstance of his having no friends.