dance of first-rate land close at hand. The Zulus do not make the most of it; we could render it far more productive they are savages and helpless, we are civilized and powerful. Let the Government withdraw its aggravating reservation laws; let the best men win; and, if we can, let us seize the farms for ourselves." Do we not do well to be angry, ragingly angry, at such utterances? I admit that they are not relatively frequent, for the Natalians in their norinal condition are among the finest types of just and honorable Englishmen. But the above mutterings are sometimes tacitly supported by men who are too much interested to denounce that which they are too much ashamed openly to advocate.

sistance."

Unhappily for the Zulus, the English are not the sole individuals tempted to perpetrate that " wrong which needs reThe Boers, compared to us, are as bloody wolves compared to surly dogs. For years past the whole gist of the policy of Downing Street, sick of disastrous South African wars, the grave of most administrative and many military reputations, has been "Peace with the Boers; rightly if possible-but, rightly or wrongly, peace with the Boers." "What peace, 77 a just man will reply, so long as the abominations of this race of hereditary native-slayers are endured, and even connived at ?" In defiance of treaty rights, they have bereft the Zulus under our protection of a part of their fairest inheritance, and have there established their New Republic"--and we submit. The course of transactions with reference to Swaziland convinces men qualified to judge that Swaziland will follow the same unjust fate. In vain do the natives plead with us for justice-in vain do local British administrators appeal against incessant encroachments. Neither is spoliation and oppression simply of a national nature inflicted on a country at large. Individual Boers with impunity rob and maltreat individual Zulus for private ends. The borders teem with stories of wrongs too precise and well authenticated to be imaginary.

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Within my own cognizance a mongrel Dutch Boer addressed an angry remonstrance to a superior civil authority against the decision of a subordinate English magistrate. Complainant had missed some sheep; his suspicions, destitute of corrobNEW SERIES.-VOL, LIV., No. 1.

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oration by facts, fell upon a neighboring Zulu, whose kraal he forthwith proceeded to harry, and whose cattle-yard he plundered in self-awarded compensation. The magistrate naturally pointed out that complainant had no right whatever to take the law into his own hands, and this mild remonstrance formed the gravamen of the appeal, which wound up with the menace : "You had better take care what you are about, or we shall act independently for ourselves, and try what a little shooting will do." Perhaps the incident would be scarcely worth mention were it not a straw indicating the current, and the nature of that current is irrefragably proved by the mixed horror and terror with which the natives regard the Transvaalers. "English nation," they plead in effect, "take from us what you deem just; require of us what you will, but save us from those malignant white fiends, the Boers." Even the warrior police force I have described, whose fathers-nay, many of whom themselves-fought like heroes against us, shrink from a conflict from their ruthless enemies, the Boers-a race derived from the most law-abiding and humane of European nations, but who, after the lapse of two centuries, are now characterized by the distorted profession of a religion they so often insult by their actions against the natives.

Afrikander patriots urge with a pathos which would be touching, were it ever so little founded on fact: "Indeed, sir, you are in error. Our countrymen have always. treated the natives with exceptional tenderness. When sometimes compelled, in vindication of law and order, to inflict punishment, they have carried out penalties with all possible humanity. The compassionate farmers often make the children of natives unhappily slain the objects of their special solicitude, convey them home, feed, educate, and treat them as members of their own families." Truly we here have an illustration of the " art of putting things." As regards a past which is within easy memory of the living, call into court evidence of the burnt kraals, the plundered cattle, and the slain bodies of Kafir men, women, and children. With reference to the present, we point to the extortion, the spurning and hounding, of the miserable natives of the Transvaal, and to the recognized " apprenticeship" of the orphans, which is

but a flimsy subterfuge for legalized slavery. If this proof be rejected, there is an end to the value of all evidence; and if such deeds may not be called atrocities, words have no longer any meaning.

Further hostilities with the Boers, wherein neither repute nor substantial advantage can possibly be gained, would be so deplorable, that every reasonable person must earnestly hope such an evil may be averted; and no doubt few are fully aware of the constantly recurring difficulties of the situation. But if we continue to acquiesce in Boer rapacity and cruelty,

not only shall we foster lawlessness to an extent which will be ultimately unendurable, but meanwhile we shall be conniving at a condition of affairs wherein war is a less evil than peace. Our plain duty is to arrest at all hazards the oppression of the helpless and unoffending natives, and to allow our colonial rulers to follow the principle so nobly illustrated by one of the most upright of our soldiers and administrators, Sir Hope Grant-" Fais ce que dois, advienne ce que pourra."-Blackwood's Magazine.

BEFORE the close of last year's Academy, an article-which was most important, as it summed up in logical completeness the current ideas upon the subject appeared in the New Review, written by the Duke of Marlborough. It gave judgment upon the relative merits of Continental and British Art. The verdict arrived at was unfavorable for England as far as its pictorial genius is concerned. The absence of all artistic instinct in this befogged nation was first laid down by Wincklemann. Strictural judgments of ourselves are always wholesomely in favor in this country, and so Wincklemann's view has never been without its champions among us, for malcontents have much used it as a last retreat in a Parthian attack; the keepers of the defending fort never having taken pains to demolish the distant cover; and in France the axiom has been welcomed as scarcely less precious than if it had risen on Gallic soil. That which makes it necessary to refer to the argument relied upon by the Duke of Marlborough here is that it does stand on a practical ground very rightly approved by a nation of shopkeepers such as the English are. The test so good for other products is applied with confidence to settle the worth of Art creations. The principle has been often before tacitly assumed as final, but the whole argument of the article is an open declaration of the infallibility of the tribunal cited. If accepted, the question of the ideals of our Art needs no further disquisition. The

matter is settled absolutely, with a perfect adaptability for the changing occasions of the future. The conclusion of the whole would be that henceforth Englishmen should consider themselves debarred from the consideration of the theory together with the practice of Art, for the whole 150 years of its effort seem to result in nothing but hopeless failure. Not only are they defeated now, but our national flag is so given up to our rivals that henceforth we should look upon ourselves at the best as only a province of France. The test is the demand in the market, and for portraiture the readiness of foreigners to pay English artists to paint their portraits, and it is shown that whereas French picture dealers never come to England to buy British works, the English picture dealers go in shoals to France, Belgium, etc., to buy works by the natives of these gifted countries. For all who accept the inference it remains only to search out what the ideals of Art are with Frenchmen, Belgians, etc., and to be thankful for due intelligence to understand these. case is, in fact, more than proved, for beyond what is stated we have foreigners of all races brought here to do their Art work on English soil; and the welcome they get from all quarters, to the great humiliation of English artists and Art, warrants the Duke of Marlborough's conclusions that Continental painting and sculpture far surpass English work, for they are patronized by the British Court, by the Government and public Corpora

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tions, by portrait sitters and by picture collectors. This foreign Art has an undoubtedly distinct character at its highest, as well as its lowest, and many young men -even before the appearance of the article referred to had been persuaded by the general tone of appreciation it gained to set themselves the task of cultivating the particular ideal adopted, and of imitating the manner of realizing this.

On such a wide scale the rule is a safe one among merchants, that what is the best in quality is the most in demand, and therefore the dearest, so that it seems a natural prejudice to sustain the principle to the very utmost extent as omnipotent. It applies in the first instance to articles of food and clothing, which are accepted by experienced sight and judgment as of the brand and locality which before have produced the most nourishing and delicious food or the best wearing materials and finest fabrics for dresses. The merchant has such respect for the knowledge and judgment of his customers that he feels he would not be acting in his own interest to purchase inferior articles, except at a lower price for everything is put to the test of use and cost and wear by the first and second buyers, and thus the dealer would quickly destroy his reputation with the consumers were he to select spurious or over-price goods.

This rule extends to weapons, to harness, to tools, and materials for practical work of all kinds, and to building materials of all descriptions, to all articles, in fact, consumed by contemporaries; but when we come to works of Art we ought to ask twice, at least, before we conclude that we are on equally safe ground with our test, since we are confronted with one very startling difference on the threshold of our inquiry for we never heard of the first and the later opinion of the worth of any commodity of daily utility being appraised so differently at first sight and afterward (within a few years it may be) as we constantly do of a work of Art. Within our own national experience there is in illustration the case of our first landscape painter, Wilson, who, when in Rome, was momentarily rescued from poverty by the good-hearted championship of Vernet, the seaport painter, who reproved the throng of English admirers and would-be patrons of his studio, of the fashionable class, for their disregard of their compatriot, whom

he declared to be his superior. The kindly service produced but brief patronage. The dealers could sell nothing of Wilson's then, and the only merchant who later ventured upon the purchase of works at 16s. each after a term refused further investment in the wares on the ground that he had never sold a single canvas of all which he had bought previously. The fashionable class have, since this painter's subsequent neglect and death, slowly recognized Wilson's worth, as is proved by the prices they have accorded to the pictures so determinedly neglected at first. Hogarth's works had as strangely gone begging in his lifetime; one example is convincing. The six pictures of "Marriage à la Mode," in their beautifully carved frames, were bought from the great painter for 110gs., and in forty-seven years they sold for £1381; and now, notwithstanding the verdict by a great critic, Chesneau, against Hogarth, what would they not fetch? To come to later timespassing over, by the way, many other extraordinary examples of utter contempt of work in the beginning, which reflective years have estimated as among the most precious pearls in the nation's crown of glory, and also the wonderfully high appraisements of works which accorded with the taste of the passing day, and which have since sunk in commercial value to no more than the value of the frames-we have one glaring example of the uncertainty in the minds of picture merchants of more value to our argument, because it puts France on the same level with England in this matter. It is the wide difference between the first and final valuation by dealers of Millet's Angelus." This the painter offered in vain to successive Parisian picture-shops for £100, until he was compelled to accept about £75. It was brought to this country soon after, and refused by an amateur dealer at £200 ; and in another ten years or so it was sold, after Millet's death, at £27,000. As further evidence of the uncertainty of dealers' and buyers' judgment at first sight, let it be remembered that Turner's bequest to the nation consists of pictures which had been declined by the connoisseurs, speculative or otherwise. In his Life by Walter Thornbury, a contributor tells of Turner replying to a remark on some paintings standing in the passage of his house, which had recently been brought

in, "Yes, I send them to exhibitions, but they all come back again," and it is wel! known that his exquisite painting of Crossing the Brook" was refused by the gentleman for whom it was painted at the price of £300. Yet this work at an auction would now certainly bring more than twenty times the original sum.

With such facts before us we have to ask which judgment of the picture-dealers we shall accept, the first or the second?

In any investigation as to the ideals of Art it is ever of the first importance to determine how far the taste of the day is founded upon healthy study of the question. I am not able to conclude that artists themselves, who ought to be cautious as well as broad-minded, have not, and do not, come to opinions with but small care for their future reputation for judgment, for they have too often adopted the prejudices of the day without inquiry. On the Continent the claims of England to Art excellence have been but grudgingly acknowledged.

There is a frieze on the Palais de l'Industrie bearing the names of many great artists of the Continent, but among all, as I am assured, there is not that of one Englishman. To the concoctors of that list Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney (the three last wisely singled out by the Duke of Marlborough for some laudation), Wilson, Flaxman, Stothard, Wilkie, and Turner had worked altogether in vain. Bavarian artists, again, seem to have encouraged a similar prejudice, as any one may now see in the Pinacothek at Munich, for in a gallery painted about 1836 to do honor to the Art of the world, while, Italy, France, Spain, Holland, and Germany have representative men to stand for them, in the compartment devoted to England the figure of Sleeping Genius is portrayed, as he is just being aroused by a blast from the trumpet of Fame tingling in his startled ears. is true that the Dome of St. Paul's Cathedral is in the background, but this is there to localize the scene rather than as a triumph of Art. I do not know that even now there is much advance on this point, although, indeed, about two years since in a letter from Berlin I observed a questionably complimentary phrase to the effect that England was certainly now beginning to develop a School of Art: a decision arrived at, perhaps, from the fact

It

that in contributions to Continental exhibitions the works of Parisian inspiration by foreign artists settled in London appear in quantity, and to these with official Englishmen the grand prizes are always first given.

What has given ground for the prejudice is certainly the established indifference of the ruling classes to the claim that British artists have honestly earned, that they might be allowed to work on a scale deserving to be regarded as national.

There is a difficulty in any practica! artist taking upon himself to define what is true in taste, since naturally it will be concluded that he is defending his own choice and manner of work. In a degree this must, indeed, be allowed for, but at the worst it cannot be so misleading as the ipse dixit of professors who never show you on what level their words describing the shore being explored are to be read, and whether they are standing on vessels of good burthen, or are floating only on corks or feathers up and down the twisting currents of the bestained and much polluted stream of passing life. The ideal of Art in this day has to be eliminated from a confusing jumble of misrepresentation, which imagines the defiling flood as the crystal of the pure river it once was, and which it should ever be. I do not claim more than that my work, such as it is, ought to have enabled me to sift many hundreds of times my first theories, and to come to mature convictions which at my start in life it would have been a blessing to me to have had demonstrated by an elder of real experience.

ers.

I have no word of blame for the dealOf course, they are not all of one grade in any respect. Some, indeed, within certain lines, acquire an independent knowledge of Art, but their business, whatever they may feel privately, is to learn the taste of the day, and to adapt their course to meet this. At times they make mistakes even from over-desire to be safe. You could not expect that any one of them would declare his prime motive in his dealing Often-not altogether falsely-he uses the protestation of intense devotion to the interests of Art in the largest sense as a stalking horse for his nearest interests, but no sensible person would take him seriously as a perfect guide to the nation for reaching its highest pinnacle of glory. For an artist so to

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adapt himself to the market is a prostitution of all honest aims; it is the selling of his soul alive, and when the example is followed, believe me that Art is on the road to the grave. The corpse may be fair and well decked out, but never more will it be raised up from the bier. His Grace has apportioned some well-deserved praise to a few members of the English school, mixed with his strictures others. He will quickly see that the meritorious are not of the number turning out of their way to catch the favor of the 66 shrewd Scotch and Americans' who buy in obedience to the fashion of the time. There are too many caterers to spoilt children of fortune who pass for true artists. They have learned the trick of the trade. They know all the stock sentiments. They offer the faded tints and lines worn out and discarded by the truly inspired, and they can delight in the evidence of the ease, even, too, of the perfection, with which they have done their work. However they may display their well-drilled powers, their god is the market, and to this they sacrifice, having no fear of losing, and the largest reward being offered; but the end is not yet.

To prepare at closer hand for the investigation of the true ideal in Art, we must consider the matter in a manner parallel to that which Socrates recommends about philosophy. If the whimsical and ignorant infant patients imagined by the Athenian dialectician were asked for their favorite provider of food, would they choose the physician whose experience made him a wise adviser for the training of youth destined for great athletic achievements? They would rather, it is justly pointed out, choose the confectioner who would indulge them with sweetmeats and pastry for their food, and demur loudly to the wholesome food which the guardian of health would supply. There are surely but few among the rich backing the dealers who are beyond the stage of these children. The stomach soon sends retribution for folly in too great indulgence in sweetmeats and other unwholesome dainties; but where does the penalty fall for transgressions of good judgment in taste? Not on the culprits at all, but only on the national Art, which many poor men are giving their lives to keep vigorous and to enlarge. It would not be It would not be difficult to prove that often misdirected

potentates have spent not only their own but also the public money in encouraging one dishonest quack after another, and it seems to have given them more joy when the impostor was a foreigner; and thus the public prejudice against native power has been increased. The fact is that our misfortune is in the general flippant estimate by the great of the importance of Art to a country. The Duke gives evidence of this in the following sentence :—“ We may be, and no doubt are, in matter of Empire, the Romans of modern Europe; but in Art and all that pertains to Art teaching the French are the modern Athenians, and Paris is the modern Athens." He is perfectly unaffected with any feeling that perhaps there is fault somewhere outside the circles of workers when he brings himself to decide that the country which made its sacrifices, and showed its iron will under the leadership of his great ancestor, that Europe should not be given back to Cæsarism (as it did again in the great war against Napoleon), must now go down to posterity branded as a set of warriors fighting for no great object, that is, so far as any evidence in beauty of design left for the New Zealander to see could save them from the slur, and he never acknowledges the extreme improbability of such incapacity in a race which has produced incontestably the greatest poets the world has yet known. Surely he must see the absurdity of such a sweeping condemnation while the array of great masters England has produced in the face of the indifference of the great stand before all honest eyes, so that some even are quoted in his paper. What of use the rich have done in Art has mainly been to patronize portraiture. The result in the highest examples has been so noble that this alone has established the greatest aptitude of our race for the Art. What other modern country has come near to the greatness of our portraitists of a century since? In other branches of the pursuit the workman has had to embrace continual poverty. Yet what Frenchman has painted a picture equal in living movement to Wilkie's "Blindman's Buff," one in sweetness like Leslie's "Mother and Babe"? Who has done one equal in honest and dignified pathos to F. Walker's "Vale of Rest" Or let it be asked, what Turner have they had? In one other interest than portraiture the rich here