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ing. It is, because it is. Its shadow is the inverse of its light. Its smoke comes from its flame. Its depth is the result of its height. We love this more and that less, but we remain silent wherever we feel God. We are in the forest; the tortuosity of the tree is its secret. The sap knows what it is doing. The root knows its own business. We take things as they are; we are indulgent for that which is excellent, tender, or magnifi cent; we acquiesce in chefs-d'œuvre; we do not make use of one to find fault with

the other; we do not insist upon Phidias sculpturing cathedrals, or upon Pinaigrier glazing temples; the temple is the harmony, the cathedral is the mystery; they are two different forms of the sublime we do not claim for the minster

the perfection of the Parthenon, or for the Parthenon the grandeur of the minster. We are so far whimsical as to be satisfied with both being beautiful. We do not reproach for its sting the insect that gives us honey. We renounce our right to criticise the feet of the peacock, the cry of the swan, the plumage of the nightingale, the butterfly for having been caterpillar, the thorn of the rose, the smell of the lion, the skin of the elephant, the din of the cascade, the immobility of the Milky Way, the saltness of the ocean, the spots on the sun.

"The quandoque bonus dormitat is permitted to Horace. We raise no objection. What is certain is, that Homer would not say it of Horace. He would not take the trouble. Himself the eagle, he would find charming, indeed, Horace the chattering humming-bird. I grant it is pleasant for a man to feel himself superior, and say, 'Homer is puerile, Dante is childish.' It is indulging in a pretty smile. To crush these poor geniuses a little, why not? To be the Abbé Trublet, and say, Milton is a schoolboy,' it is pleasing. How witty is the man who finds that Shakespeare has no wit! That man is La Harpe, Delandine, Auger; he is, was, or shall be an academician. All these great men are made up of extravagance, bad taste, and childishness. What a fine decree to issue! These fashions tickle voluptuously those who have them; and, indeed, when one has said, 'This giant is small,' one fancies one is great. Every man has his own way. As for myself, the writer of these lines, I admire everything like a simpleton.

"That is why I have written this

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to which every generous spirit will respond. It is good to admire, heartily, enthusiastically, and sometimes to insist on doing nothing but admire.

There is another chord on which he strikes, where also he will find, in this country at least, a cordial response. It is when he insists upon it, that Art is not its own end or aim; it is not Art for art's sake; it is Art for the sake of Humanity, that we admire and should cultivate.

There appears to be in some critics, and in some authors who have written in their prefaces criticisms of their own works, some confusion of ideas on this subject. Impatient and irritated at that formal requisition which we suppose it was the custom at one time to make, of a distinct specific moral -what is sometimes called poetical justice; as if a whole drama or novel were written, like a fable in Esop, for no other purpose than to illustrate some virtuous precept or maxim of prudence ;-irritated, we say, at this narrow method of estimating the morality of art, they seem to have thrown themselves into the quite opposite and untenable doctrine, that art was to find its end in itself. In other words, art was to be cultivated solely for the pleasure which it gives. Truth of imitation is the only truth to be required from it. Like nature or like history, it is there, a positive fact. Like nature and like history, you may study it, and derive what good lesson you can from it. But this is no affair of the artist. He is not responsible for the lessons you extract; he gives you a truth, and because he has to please, it must be a truth that shall not shock, or disgust, or scandalise you: but beyond this he has no concern with your beliefs or your moralities.

Now this, which seems to give to art an enviable freedom, really robs art of all its greatness. If the poet no longer feels that he is ministering to the greatness of man, to his moral elevation, to his tendernessto his highest cultivation, in short

what is he better than any fiddler that stands upon the green, and collects the crowd around him for half an hour? His high occupation is gone. We do not ask the poet or the novelist to mould his incidents after some ideal of retributive justice; let him rather fashion them with all the licence and variety that he finds in real life: but he, the narrator he is there he cannot efface himself he must know what passions, what sentiments, he is waking out of the human heart. He is there to please, but he is there also to move and elevate this human heart. He cannot throw

aside his responsibility, or if he does, he throws aside his own greatness and the greatness of his art, and all its high aspirations.

It is now generally understood that the lesson to be learned when the curtain falls at the last act of the drama, and not till then, or at the last page of the last volume of the novel, is of the least possible importance. But whether, through the drama or the novel, we have been raised to a high level of thought and sentiment, or sunk to a very low level, is a question which the critic still asks. And he only ceases to ask it, when the drama or the novel is beneath his serious notice altogether is evidently powerless for good or for evil. Victor Hugo does well, therefore, when he links the great fact of human genius to the great fact of human progress, and insists that our admiration of the one and our faith in the other shall be indissolubly connected. The literature of mere literati-the literature of a caste-where "to be a poet was something like being a mandarin," he holds in slight estimation. He calls on minds of the highest power, to be also of the highest utility.

"Be useful! Be of some service. Do not be fastidious when it is necessary to be efficient and good. Art for art may be beautiful, but art for progress is more beautiful yet. Ah! you must think? Then think of making man better. You must dream? Here is the dream for you: the ideal of humanity.

VOL. XCVI.NO. DLXXXVI.

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That the poet should be beyond humanity in one way, by the wings, by the immense flight, by the sudden possible disappearance in the fathomless, it is well, it must be so, but on condition of reappearance. He may depart, but he must return. Let him have wings for the infinite, provided he has feet for the flying, he is seen walking. Let him beearth, and that, after having been seen come man again, after he has gone out of humanity. After he has been seen an archangel, let him be once more a brother. Let the star which is in that eye weep a tear, and that tear be the human tear. Thus, human and superhuman, he shall be the poet. But to Show me thy foot, genius, and let me be altogether beyond man is not to be. see if, like myself, thou hast earthly dust in thy heel.

"If thou hast not some of that dust,

if thou hast never walked in my pathway, thou dost not know me and I do not know thee. Go away. Thou believest thyself an angel, thou art but a

bird.

"Aid from the strong for the weak, help from the great for the small, help from the free for the slaves, help from the thinkers for the ignorant, help from the solitary for the multitude. Such is the law."

At first approach to the subject, one would say of Shakespeare that he had pre-eminently followed art for art. His object was to amuse, and sway, and agitate with tears and laughter the pit of a theatre. All varieties of passion he brought before them, leaving the multitude, if it pleased, to make selection-to approve or disapprove. But, in reality, no writer has been more frequently recognised amongst the people as "guide, philosopher, and friend," and this owing to the genuine human sympathy he has with all those very passions he gives utterance to. In his dramas we see ourselves; we watch, we

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warn ourselves. It is Humanity in the confessional. He, too, understood, what Victor Hugo so eloquently describes, the sensitiveness of a multitude-the readiness of untutored or unscholarly mobs to entertain the sublime and the beautiful.

"Have you ever gone," says Victor Hugo, who must have known well what he was here describing, "on a fête-day to a theatre open gratuitously to all? What do you think of that auditory? Do you know of any other more spontaneous and intelligent? The court of Versailles admires like a well-drilled regiment; the people throw themselves passionately into the beautiful. They pack together, crowd, amalgamate, combine, and knead themselves in the theatre; a living paste that the poet is about to mould. The powerful thumb of Molière will presently make its mark upon it. The house is crowded; the vast multitude lurks, listens, loves; all consciences, deeply moved, throw off their inner fire; all eyes glisten; the huge beast with a thousand heads is there, the Mob of Burke, the Plebs of Titus Livius, the Fex urbis of Cicero ; it caresses the beautiful; it smiles at it with the grace of a woman; it is literary in the most refined sense of the word; nothing equals the delicacy of this monster. All at once the sublime passes, and the sombre electricity of the abyss heaves up suddenly all this pile of hearts."

Victor Hugo is great upon this mob. We must find room for another quotation. There are many from this part of the book we should like to fill our pages with; it being understood that we should take the liberty of abridging ourquotations where and how we pleased -a liberty we have already taken.

"Sacrifice to the mob,' O poet! Sacrifice to that unfortunate, disinherited, vanquished, vagabond, shoemob; sacrifice to it, if it must be and less, famished, repudiated, despairing when it must be, thy repose, thy fortune, thy joy, thy country, thy liberty, thy life. The mob is the human race in misery. The mob is the mournful commencement of the people. The mob is the great victim of darkness. Sacrifice to it! Sacrifice thyself! Let thyself be hunted; let thyself be exiled as Voltaire to Ferney, as D'Aubigné to Geneva, as Dante to Verona, as Juvenal to Syene, as Eschylus to Gela, as John to Patmos, as Elias to Horeb, as Thueydides to Thrace. Sacrifice to the mob. Sacrifice to it thy gold, and thy blood, which is more than thy gold, and thy thought, which is more than thy blood, thought; sacrifice to it everything exand thy love, which is more than thy cept justice. Receive its complaint;

listen to its faults and the faults of others. Listen to what it has to confess and to denounce to thee. Stretch forth to it the ear, the hand, the arm, the heart. Do everything for it, excepting evil. Alas! it suffers so much and it knows nothing. Correct it, warn it, instruct it, guide it. Put it to the school of honesty. Make it spell truth; teach it to read virtue, probity, generosity, mercy. Hold thy book wide open. Be there, attentive, vigilant, kind, faithful, humble. Light up the brain, inflame the mind, extinguish egotism, show good example. Poverty is privation; be thou abnegation. Teach! Irradiate! They need thee; thou art their great thirst. To learn is the first necessity; to live is but the second."

In sentiments of this kind we shall all sympathise. Here perhaps is the best of all opportunities for gracefully closing this marvellously strange book of Victor Hugo's.

CORNELIUS O'DOWD UPON MEN AND WOMEN, AND OTHER THINGS

IN GENERAL.

PART VII.

MORAL AID.

I was just preparing for a day's fly-fishing, had sent off rods and nets and tackle to my boat, when my friend arrived, as breathless as a man might after some hundred miles' railroading, to tell me he had heard a great part of the debate on Disraeli's motion, and to impart to me his impressions of the various speakers.

"Corny," said he, "I wish you had been there. These fellows are too long-winded, and they are marvellously given to saying what has just been said by some one else on their own side a short time before." I agreed with him perfectly. The summary in the 'Times' is as good as the whole debate. We all of us knew, besides, pretty much what each speaker would say, and how he would say it; still it was a little strange to see Gladstone, at the very moment that he is bidding, and bidding high, for popular favour, assail those organs of public opinion -the newspapers-so universally regarded as the especial defence of democracy.

For my own part I liked Seymour Fitzgerald best; he came nearer to the true issue than any one else. As to the challenge, What is your own policy? it was too grossly absurd to be listened to. What would be said of the doctor who had destroyed his patient's chance of recovery, saying to the newly-called-in physician, "What is it that you advise? let us see if you can save him " "?

This was all that the Ministry were able to say: Don't talk of our blunders, but tell us how will you cure the patient? Give him to me, as he was given to you. Call me in at the first seizure-not at his agony and I will answer you.

First of all, I would never have either ignored at first, or subsequently insulted, the public opinion of a great nation, even though that great nation was in a passion, and not talking the soundest good sense; secondly, I would never have suggested to a weak but proud people, that the price of any assistance to them must be certain concessions, which, when made, were left totally unrecognised and unrewarded; and, lastly, I would no more have gone to France for aid, than I would ask a man to back my bill, who knew, by refusing his name, he could smash my credit, and whose manifest interest it was to impugn my solvency and elevate his own. But certainly, above all things, and to my amazement, no speaker on the Opposition side alluded to this. I never would have so mystified the whole British nation-exciting a sympathy for Denmark, subscriptions for her wounded, and aid for her destitute-with abuse of an ancient ally; and a cowering, craven, helpless dread of what France might and could, and possibly would, do; till, in the conflict of our feelings-some of them honourable enough, others just the opposite-we have presented ourselves before Europe in a light, that only by remembering what we once were rescues us from being despicable.

It is not very easy to say how the Danes would have fared if, instead of depending on England, they had addressed themselves originally to France. From a variety of causes -some creditable enough to her, others less meritorious-France is fond of these "missions." They redound usually to her influence in Europe; they raise her prestige as a great military power, and occa

sionally too they pay in a more commercial and palpable manner; so that, like the Irishman who "married for love and a trifle of money," she has the pleasure of feeling that even her generosity has not been bad as a speculation.

I really do not see why the Danes did not think of this. They knew -all the world knows-that of the two sorts of aid one is patented by France, and is called “material aid,” being an efficient, active, and able support, to distinguish it from the English article, called "moral aid," which it is perfectly immaterial to any one whether he has it or not.

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Now there is no doubt the Danes were perfectly well aware which of these two they wanted; but the misfortune was, they did not hit upon the right road. They wanted a strong pick-me-up," but they turned the wrong corner, and got into the Temperance Hotel! Had they had the time and the temper for it, it would have done them good to have heard our praises of our own tap, and how superior in all invigorating properties the fresh, sparkling fluid from our pump was, to the hot, stimulating, exciting liquor of the man over the way."

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They would have heard, too, how, though we once were licensed for strong drink, and had a roaring trade, yet we gradually had gone on diluting and diluting, till we arrived at last at the pure element, which, strange to say, a few old customers of the house still continued to believe to be spirit; though, whenever a new-comer dropped in, he left it there untasted, and went over to the other establishment.

The mistake of the poor Danes was irreparable. They drank such gallons of our well, that they had no stomach for anything after it.

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But, in all sober seriousness, when shall we have heard the last of this rotten cant, moral aid" own brother, I believe, of that other humbug, "masterly inactivity"? Moral aid is the bread-pill of the quack doctor efficacious only

when there's nothing the matter with you.

Had the good Samaritan been one of the moral-aid disciples, he would have given the sick man an eloquent lecture on wounds, punctured and incised. He would have explained the dangers of hæmorrhage, primary and secondary; he would have expatiated on reparation by first intention and by granulation; and, lastly, he would have assured the sufferer that it was by a special Providence that he himself had come by, otherwise the other would have died without ever hearing one of these valuable truths. Not a drop of wine and oil, no bandaging, no mere "material aid," would he have descended to: these are the appliances of a very inferior philanthropy.

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Will nobody give us a tabular view of the working results of the two systems? Perhaps, indeed, they would tell us that it was moral aid drove the French out of the Peninsula, and moral aid was the support we lent to Europe on the field of Waterloo. Do not for a moment mistake me. I neither disparage sympathy nor despise advice. have seen far too much of life not to prize both highly; but give them to me for what they are, and not as substitutes for something with no affinity to them. I can be very grateful for a drink of butter-milk when I am thirsty; but don't say to me, "Isn't that better and more wholesome than all the claret that ever was bottled? Thank your stars that you came in here, for my neighbour yonder would have plied you with La Rose and Margaux, and they ruin a man's stomach."

I know of no national practice so universal in England as "advicegiving." It is a mania of our people, growing out of the combined result of parliamentary government and immense national prosperity. Every one in Great Britain who is richer than his neighbour has a prescriptive right to advise him. I never knew the man who dared to dispute that privilege; hence, as we

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