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hosts of would-be critics and historians-people who write guide-books to art, art manuals, dissertations on the old masters, and what not, performances that solemnly and ponderously echo the stale ecstasies of enthusiastic but undiscriminating admirers.

Art writers who manufacture admiration for the market are commonly discreet enough not to betray themselves by glaring mistakes, but many persons in society who rave about High Art and the Old Masters are very apt, like untrained claqueurs, to applaud in the wrong place. A great many old paintings are admired by artists solely because of their technical qualities-the arrangement of lines, the balance of parts, the harmony of tints, the mastery of difficulties in drawing, but which are admitted to be inferior in their literary quality, that is, in the conception and vraisemblance of the scene depicted. But your imitator does not discern this difference, and admires, through thick and thin, good qualities and bad qualities alike. In truth, it is only by comprehending the artist's point of view that old art generally has any valuable significance whatever. The Scriptural subjects especially, that so abound in Europe, are for the most part simply repellent to every discerning mind not under subjection to current notions, not attitudinizing for the sake of effect, or not in the position of a student who sees in them indications of growth or record of changes in the history of art. Beautiful they commonly are not. Inspiring they are not. In any right sense, adequate or effective reproductions of the times or the events they are not. Full of absurdities, puerile in idea, melodramatic and sensational, they often are; but some noted critics have found some special things in them to praise, and as a consequence intellectual apes everywhere fall down and worship them without reservation.

But sham admiration in art is by no means confined to those who prostrate themselves before old productions. There is another class that reverse the process and manufacture raptures over everything that, being new, is also outré. In the school of painting that this class admires, everything that is established is worthless, and nothing commendable but extravagance and novelty. It has set up ugliness instead of beauty, the meaningless instead of meaning, incompleteness instead of completeness, rude slap-dash instead of masterly method; and all these things are indiscriminately praised by a disorderly camp of followers.

It is not easy, doubtless, for one to maintain a just and discreet ground in these things-to respect authority without surrendering one's independence to it; to distrust one's own knowledge and susceptibilities without blindly following the lead of others; to try honestly to appreciate everything we are called upon to admire, but bestowing praise only when we genuinely feel it-it is doubtless difficult to hit this golden mean, but the main difficulty is, we do not commonly want to hit it. People are too often dogmatic and self-sufficient, and refuse their franchise from pure insensibility or from pure obstinacy; or else they affect an appreciation which at heart they

do not feel. Whether it is more agreeable to encounter the Philistinism that does not feel, or the counterfeit that pretends to feel, we leave each reader to decide for himself.

TAXING SAVINGS BANKS.

IN the early part of the century a device known as banks for savings came into existence in all the principal cities of Great Britain. The genesis of these institutions had been a plan on the part of an English gentlewoman to encourage her tenantry in habits of industry and economy, by promising a bounty on Christmas-day to all who would each week deposit in her hands, for safe-keeping, a certain proportion of their earnings. A Scotch clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Duncan, took up the idea and extended it, organizing the first plan of an institution for savings. The sole purpose was a benevolent one, being simply to encourage the poor to save for future emergencies a part of their earnings by paying them a bounty for doing so. This bounty was not paid from interest derived from investments of the funds deposited, but from contributions of the benevolent. A little later we find savings banks organized under laws of Parliament, which paid a stipulated interest, the Government guaranteeing subsidies sufficient for the purpose. Under this plan banks multiplied, until at last the Government bounty was withdrawn, leaving them wholly to their own resources. They went on prosperously nevertheless, and, although ceasing to be eleemosynary institutions, their moral and benevolent character was still acknowledged and recognized. Savings banks were not organized in our own country until they had reached in England their fully developed form. Here they were from the beginning self-supporting and independent institutions, organized under charters from the State, but in no way depending upon public bequests. But this fact, instead of lessening their primary benevolent character, simply increases it; for it is assuredly better that institutions should confer the good they do without public expenditure than by means of it. But the fact that savings banks do not now depend upon State bounties has led many people to overlook their fundamental character, and has absolutely brought about schemes for taxing them. The State supports prisons and almshouses, and bestows large sums upon charitable institutions of all kinds; but a system of savings which reduces the number of candidates for almshouses and prisons, and renders the service of the charitable less imperative, is looked upon in the same light as a whisky-still, a tobaccoshop, or a dance-house, and is taxed. Now, what is it that the State proposes to tax? The slowly accumulated savings of hard-working sewing-women; the mite which widows put aside for their little ones in time of sickness; the small savings which the illpaid artisan manages by strict self-denial to bring together; the innumerable small sums that sober and abstemious living withholds from the alehouse and the gin-palace; the little beginnings of capital

that industry brings together after desperate effort as the foundation of better things in the future; the humble consecrated products of prudence, temperance, energy, thrift and wise forethought. These are the elements of the wealth that a great State lays its hands upon for the purpose of taxation! To state the fact is to establish the rank injustice of the proposition. The State does not tax churches, although churches represent a good deal of wealth; it does not tax schools, nor hospitals, nor asylums, nor charitable guilds-it aids and encourages them all; but it proposes to tax savings banks, which are as beneficent in their practical operation as any or all of these institutions. The savings banks of New York are not business schemes. They are not organized for profit. They do not issue stock and do not pay dividends to stockholders. They are not in any particular money-making devices, but are distinctly institutions of trust, and should be exempted from taxation as well as trust companies. It is, indeed, impossible to understand why trust companies, which are depositories for specific purposes of funds belonging to the richer classes, are not taxed, while savings banks, which are depositories of funds belonging to the poorer classes, should be expected to pay taxes. The scheme to tax our savings banks may, ere this reaches our readers, have been consummated, or may have come to naught, but the attempt must in either case be characterized as eminently unwise and unjust.

THE SPRING EXHIBITIONS.

THE annual spring exhibitions of pictures are occasions when we may properly take note of the progress or the variations that mark the course of our national art. In using the term “national art," we are well aware that art in this country is generally declared to be utterly without national character; but, whether this is true or not, the question momentarily before us relates to those indications of movement and those manifestations of taste that pertain to our American group of painters, and consequently the subject has sufficient national significance to justify the use of the term.

The exhibitions of the National Academy of Design and of the Society of American Artists are peculiarly indicative of current artistic tendencies, the latter embodying the latest and the most revolutionary ideas in art, and the first displaying the conservative principles of established methods, with such modifications as current theories have produced. The old and the new school for the most part occupy hostile camps, and yet they manifestly need each other. All reactionary movements go too far, just as all conservatism is too tenacious. The artists of the new society are inspired by some very just ideas. They have a great contempt for mere prettiness, for emasculated art in all its forms, for sentimentalism and feebleness, for mere smoothness and polish, and they paint with great directness, simplicity, and vigor. But they have carried their con

tempt for sentimentalism so far as to exclude sentiment, and in their delight in rude strength have forgotten that the real purpose of art is the illustration of beauty. "Among the best gifts bestowed upon us is the sense of beauty, and first among the servants of beauty is art," declares a recent writer on art; and he adds, "The picture that does not fan into a glow our sense of beauty, whether as connected with charm or glory, has no sufficient reason for existence." The italics here are our own. How many of the paintings produced by the artists of the new school will stand this test? No doubt this question can also be asked of the pictures in the Academy Exhibition, but at least we see recognition there of the prime necessity of beauty, and occasionally a painting may be said to have attained it. But our younger men seem to deny the principle. They produce works that are sometimes interesting in technique, but they do not conceive things or paint things that even touch our sense of beauty, let alone "fan it into a glow." In truth, they appear to conceive things and paint things that shall purposely deny the principle of beauty in art, that shall be servants of ugliness rather than servants of the elements that charm and delight. But these gentlemen will find their ground permanently untenable. Mutual admiration may hold them together for a time, but Mutual Admiration Societies are tolerably sure to ultimately degenerate into societies of mutual disgust. Artists can not flourish except by their hold on human sympathies and susceptibilities, by their power to move the public heart. Judged by this test, we do not see that the new school has made any advance over last year. They still persist in disdaining finish, imagining that brush-marks are acceptable instead of textures. Their flesh rarely looks like flesh, but commonly like fresh layers from the palette. They are fond of painting turbulent skies, but it is whirls of paint and not sweep of clouds that they give us. Their canvases, however, are always vigorous, and are valuable as giving unqualifiedly the artist's own impressions, rather than artificial and studied pretense. Their work, in its extreme forms, can never stand, but as a protest against opposite extremes of smoothness and lifeless imitation it will do some good, and force freshening ideas into conventional methods-advancing art just as pre-Raphaelitism advanced it, but, like pre-Raphaelitism, failing as a distinct method.

The Academy Exhibition is very large, and has more reputable pictures than usual, but the only striking subjects are four or five landscapes, and perhaps as many portraits. We can not say that the portraits exhibit any new characteristics, but in some of the landscapes there is a distinct indication of modern thought. This is specially manifest in a painting by Mr. Swain Gifford, representing a windswept plain on the coast, on which stands one solitary twisted tree. The subject is nothing, but the painting is everything; it shows that landscape art does not really consist, as once supposed, in selecting place and picturesque conditions, but in method of treatment, by means of sky and clouds and atmos

phere and light (conditions found everywhere), painting a picture full of strange and subtile fascinations. This is the most important and significant revelation, as it seems to us, that recent art has made, and, Mr. Gifford's picture being an excellent exemplification of it, we for this reason select it for special mention. We could wish that the exhibition gave us in other directions fresh suggestions; but, for the most part, while there is much to please, there is little that is bold or new. "It should be expected from the artist," says a writer, "that the sentiments, requirements, and aspirations of his country should find worthy expression in the character of his work." This expectation has little realization in anything that our artists are doing. A good many painters show advance in technical skill, and there are indications of larger artistic knowledge; but there is almost no evidenee that art beyond its mere decorative form is coming into closer relations with the people, or is even attempting to reflect the longings, sympathies, and emotions of the great turbulent life that lies all around us.

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART. THE opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in its new building in Central Park occurred on the 1st of April, certain notable official ceremonies taking place two days earlier. Our citizens and visitors to New York have long known the museum as it stood in its temporary quarters in Fourteenth Street, but its installation in its present permanent place must be, and will be, looked upon as the real beginning of its career. It is a noble and worthy

beginning. The museum occupies a building that is only a twelfth part of the structure as it will appear when completed, and, although the spectacle that opens to the visitor as he enters the main hall is not strikingly extensive, it yet impresses him as a noble segment of a large and promising whole. A great museum can not be built up in a day nor in a generation. The Metropolitan Museum starts with the Cesnola collections of Cypriote antiquities, which in themselves are of almost priceless value; it has a large collection of Flemish paintings; a collection of Oriental porcelain that is very noticeable; there are ancient glass from Cyprus and old Venetian glass; a collection of old lace and embroideries; and some examples of modern sculpture. In addition to these there are many objects lent to the museum-statuary, bronzes, porcelain, carved ivories, old books, and a very extensive collection of modern paintings. The loan-collection of pictures is of itself of immense interest, and gives New York the best permanent gallery it has ever had. We say permanent, because the present collection will remain on exhibition until next October, and we may depend, judging by the past, on the generosity of collectors and private owners to maintain the loan-gallery at its present standard.

This museum has been projected on a large scale. It has been planned with the ultimate expectation that it will reach the dimensions of the great museums abroad, and attain a reputation in no wise inferior. This in itself is a satisfaction; but, while we are glad that the scheme is a comprehensive one, it is a pleasure to know that the part carried out has its measure of completeness, which, so far as it goes, is of profound interest.

Books of the Day.

Of all the reasons for regret furnished by the

Lord Macaulay left his "History of England," perhaps none has been so keenly felt or so frequently expressed as that caused by the reflection that his pen dropped from his nerveless fingers when he was just at the threshold of what must necessarily have been the culminating feature of his great work-the story of the reign of Queen Anne. No one before him was ever so qualified as he to give an adequate and satisfactory account of that most brilliant and momentous epoch in the modern history of England; and in the nature of things it can hardly be expected that another writer with his peculiar qualifications for it will again address himself to the task. The vivid imagination and graphic pen which have given immortal interest to the battle of the Boyne and the siege of Londonderry would have found still more congenial employment in describing the campaigns of Marlborough; and, when one thinks of the manner in which he could and would have treated the Augustan age of English literature, the loss becomes almost too grievous to contemplate.

St If this lovely and readable but radier superficial

loss but slightly by

history, the regret which it causes will hardly be dissipated by the "History of the Reign of Queen Anne," which Dr. John Hill Burton, the historian (and historiographer-royal) of Scotland, has just published.* To read a chapter of Burton immediately after a chapter of Macaulay is like passing from the brilliant sunshine and purple magnificence of the East to the foggy atmosphere and arid wastes of an English down unreclaimed and scarcely encroached upon by the civilizing hand of art. Dr. Burton's theory of history is that it should be “a plain, undecorated statement of well-ascertained facts"; but, while it will be candidly acknowledged that he has gotten rid of the "decorations," the reader will hardly admit that the statements of fact are thereby rendered "plain "-the truth being that Dr. Burton's style is as pedantic and laboriously in

* A History of the Reign of Queen Anne. By John Hill Burton, D. C. L. Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons. Three Volumes. 8vo. Pp. 350, 352, 338.

volved as if he consciously avoided that directness and simplicity of statement which a writer should aim at who is so hostile to "rhetoretic effects." The following passage is a fair example of his average style, selected because it is at once short and complete in itself:

The army had made all arrangements for departure, whether to fight elsewhere or to return home. The heavy siege-artillery had been embarked. It is not distinctly known whether the commander [Marlborough] arranged all this as a deep strategem, or, on the other hand, struck by an appearance of favorable conditions, he at once abandoned a fixed intention to depart. Whichever alternative we adopt, we see a man who must have possessed, for giving effect to it, two great qualities-the

one a supreme capacity for manipulating the movement

of troops, the other a clearness of judgment and percep

tion impervious to confusedness or unsteadiness of nerve.

inspired it and the steps which led to it were curiously destitute of either magnanimity or dignity. No community of blood or kindred, no memories of the past or aspirations for the future shared in common, no generous resolve to bury old wrongs in a new career of mutual helpfulness, no reciprocal sentiments of friendship or kindness, brought the two peoples together: the Act of Union was simply a hard and reluctant bargain between two trading nations, each trying to get the better of the other, and each grudging the other every shilling of possible profit that might be made out of the transaction. Scotland demanded as the price of union a share in the lucrative trade monopolies enjoyed by the then rapidly expanding English commerce: England it was cheaper to grant a share in the trade than to grumblingly paid the price under the conviction that

risk losing it all in the dubious and costly alternative of war. A really significant event in the history of the world was probably never brought about by paltrier motives or marked by meaner incidents; and, though he deals with it at great length, Dr. Burton is constrained to admit that "the interest is not of a kind to hold its intensity through after-generations."

Another topic, which is treated at a length altogether disproportionate to its relative importance, is "The Sacheverell Commotions." Two long chapters are devoted to these, and the trial of Sacheverell is rehearsed with a minuteness of detail that would hardly be justified if the work were five times as extensive as it really is. This disproportion is the more noticeable, because the influence which the Sacheverell "persecution" had in discrediting the Whigs and changing the Queen's policy and advisers is by no means rendered clear by Dr. Burton.

Forbidding as the style is, however, this is not the worst defect that can be alleged against the work. The simplest record of the events of Queen Anne's reign, provided it were tolerably complete, could hardly fail to possess both interest and value, and these qualities can not be altogether denied to Dr. Burton's history; but, while the arbitrary arrangements dictated by chronology must be carefully avoided by the historian who aims at being something more than a mere annalist, yet it is no less important that the proper sequence of events should be preserved than that their relation to each other should be pointed out. And it is in this regard that Dr. Burton's work is most open to criticism. His grouping of subjects is intelligible enough, and on the whole helpful; but, in his treatment of them, the different groups are so completely detached from each other that it is impossible for the reader either But the most conspicuous defect of the work in to gather from them a general impression of the this regard is the closing chapter on "Intellectual reign as a whole, or to learn what occurrences in the Progress." Next to Marlborough's victories, the several groups were contemporaneous with each thing that gives its most distinguishing feature to the other. This is due partly to the scanty use of dates reign of Queen Anne is the literature then produced; and to the curious inexactness of those which are and the very first question which an historian, proposused; but, it is due much more decidedly to the ing to deal with that reign, should ask himself should method of treatment adopted by the author, which be, whether he is competent to deal with that literarenders his chapters separate and complete essays ture. The task is certainly one that might discourrather than closely interlinked parts of one organic age the most adventurous, and little surprise would whole. All sense of the progression or sequence of be caused by a failure to do it complete justice; but events is completely lost, and, when one of the in- Dr. Burton's method of getting over the difficulty is frequent dates is encountered, the reader will be surely the very worst that could possibly have been quite as likely to be perplexed as assisted by it. A adopted. In point of fact, he does not get over the slight experiment has convinced us that, for one who difficulty at all, or even make an attempt to do so; desires really to study the period, it would be quite he simply evades it. He begins his chapter by sayworth while to go over the book once, inserting co- ing that "it would be a discourtesy to suppose that pious marginal dates, and then reperuse it with spe- any reader requires to be informed about" Pope, cial attention to the significance of these dates. Addison, Arbuthnot, Steele, and the more important works of Defoe; and, accordingly, of the fifty-three pages devoted to literature, eleven are devoted to "Tom Brown" (not Sir Thomas Browne, but a forgotten scribbler of that name), ten to Defoe's "Review" (the least important of all his publications, and only interesting to Dr. Burton because of its rarity), seventeen to showing that Swift was a vain, fussy, ambitious, pushing, and heartless màn, and an indecent writer, five to the "Law of Libels," one to

Even when we confine our examination to the separate topics to which special prominence is given, the result is scarcely more satisfactory. Far too much space is used in detailing the causes and circumstances of the Union between England and Scotland. This was undoubtedly an event of the first importance not only in the history of England but in the history of Europe; but, while its results were of the utmost consequence, the motives which

the newspaper press, three to copyright, and two to the study of classical literature. Neither Addison nor Steele is mentioned, Pope is dismissed in a page and a half, Gay in half a page (while Brome, whom Gay is thought to have imitated, gets three times as much), Arbuthnot and Parnell in half a page each.

The objections to such a method are so numerous and obvious that it would be a "discourtesy to the reader" to attempt to mention them all; but it may be worth while to point out the fact that a consistent application of the author's rule would have curtailed his narrative in a similar degree throughout. A larger number of readers, doubtless, know that Marlborough was the hero of Blenheim, Ramillies, and Malplaquet, than are familiar with the characters, works, and literary qualities of the group of authors named; therefore the author has betrayed "discourtesy to the reader" in narrating those battles in full, instead of confining himself to digging out from the rubbishheap of forgotten history an account of the minor skirmishes and marches that marked the campaigns. Every reader of history knows the significance and results of the Treaty of Utrecht; hence, in accordance with his rule, Dr. Burton should have excused himself from treating that, and refreshed our recollections with a minute account of the abortive Conference of Gertruydenberg, which preceded it, and which the world has totally forgotten. The truth is, however, that, if such a doctrine were accepted as valid, the historian would be excluded from every field or subject that had been treated before him in such a way that a well-informed reader might fairly be supposed to be acquainted with it; and no long time would elapse before this entire department of letters would be fenced off and prohibited to all future intruders.

It can not be denied, of course, that there are both reason and plausibility in the doctrine of Professor Seeley and his school, that history proper has nothing to do with literature, the arts, industry, science, social progress, and the like; and a writer could hardly be blamed who, having accepted this doctrine, should write a history of the reign of Queen Anne without attempting to deal with its literature. But this, it will have been seen, is not the position of Dr. Burton. He acknowledges the obligation to deal with literature as one of the most significant phenomena of the period of which he treats; and, since he recognizes the obligation, his manner of fulfilling it becomes, of course, a legitimate subject of criticism. This being so, the inadequacy of his method of treatment can hardly be emphasized too strongly. An audience collected for the purpose of seeing "Hamlet," who, on the rising of the curtain, should be calmly informed by the manager that, owing to their presumed familiarity with the leading character, it would be omitted in order to secure prominence for the minor and less familiar rôles, would hardly have better reason to complain than would the reader of a history of the age of Anne, who, on coming to the chapter on "Intellectual Progress," should find Pope, Addison, Steele, Swift, Defoe, and Arbuthnot, calmly confided to the rela

tions he may already have established with them. The parallel, indeed, is closer than may at first sight appear; for, as to the play-goer the character of "Hamlet" is the main attraction of the play, so, to many students of the reign of Queen Anne, its literature is incomparably more interesting than any other feature of the time.

Less important than this, but still requiring notice at our hands, is the inexactness in the matter of dates. The mistakes here are so numerous that they can be explained more easily on the supposition of carelessness than of lack of knowledge; but this can not apply to such a slip as calling Madame de Maintenon a "concubine" of Louis XIV. Somehow, the adroit and wily Widow Scarron takes a feebler hold upon our sympathies than do the frail sisters who really deserved the epithet; but few facts relating to the private life of the Grand Monarch are now better established than that Madame de Maintenon was his honestly-married wife, and no serious historian should permit himself either to remain ignorant of this or to ignore it.

When engaged in fault-finding, it is incumbent upon the critic to state his reasons and marshal his evidence; but, in the pleasanter task of according praise, it is permitted to him to be brief: so we may say in a concluding paragraph that, in spite of the grave defects which we have pointed out, Dr. Burton's history is not without interest for the reader and value for the student. The preference of the author for what is curious and obscure has enabled him to bring to light many facts and suggestive details that had been overlooked or rejected by previous workers in this field; and, however arid the text may be at times, the notes, in which many of these details are embodied, are nearly always entertaining. Moreover, it can not be denied that Dr. Burton has really contributed something to the understanding of the characters of Queen Anne, of Marlborough, and of the mighty Duchess, Sarah. During the period cov ered by this history, Marlborough was enacting the most brilliant scenes of his long and checkered career; and, in the splendid figure of the conquering general and all-powerful diplomatist, one hardly recognizes the treacherous hypocrite of Macaulay's earlier narrative. The general effect of Dr. Burton's work is to make us think more favorably than heretofore of all those who were conspicuous upon the great stage of politics and war; and it seems strange that, with his amiable disposition to take a lenient view of most faults and frailties, he should deal so harshly with Swift, the self-torturing cynic whose sufferings so far outweighed his mistakes of judgment and infirmities of temper.

To many readers, perhaps, in first taking up the new volume of the "International Scientific Series," it will seem surprising that a scientist so eminent as Professor Huxley should devote an entire book to a creature so common, and so low in the scale of life, as the crayfish; but such readers will speedily discover that not only is the volume "An Introduction to the Study of Zoology," as the author says, but that it will serve for the general reader as a most

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