The Lord Mayor on Saturday entertained the Royal Academy and
other " representatives of Art" at dinner at the Mansion House, and made a delicious speech. The other day, he said, Queen Victoria had honoured Science by opening the collection of scientific appliances at South Kensington, and on Saturday he told his guests that the City fostered Art by giving great prices for its productions. "In thus speaking of the power of wealth, he did not for one moment intend to detract from the power of genius, but he knew how important it was that genius should be in comfortable circumstances, in order to realise the great dreams with which its mind might be inspired." There spoke the typical Lord Mayor,—the supreme fibs and outcome of the City system of thought. Alderman Cotton has risen to the conception that genius has value, or even power, but then it must be " genius in comfortable circumstance." The divinus afflatus is impossible except to a man with a good balance. That Rogers can benefit the world is conceivable, for was he not banker, as well as poet ? but that Burns should, is incredible to a Lord Mayor who evi- dently thinks that if he could but catch a great painter in poverty, feed him with turtle, and solace him with Consols, he should be able to bring out his loftiest capacity.
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