The annual banquet of the Royal Academy was held on
Saturday last, and there were some bright speeches, the best being Lord Salisbury's and Mr. Morley's. Lord Salisbury was in high spirits, and told the artists that they had produced many portraits of Liberal leaders, "including, I may say, a picture of M. Rochefort." There was also a picture of "The Flowing Tide," a group of hungry little boys waiting till the tide comes up. He humorously deprecated the Academicians' desire for a grant from "our grandmother the State." If they got one, they would pass "under the microscope of Parlia- mentary taste ;" their President "would be selected by com- petitive examination ;" they would be forbidden by Act of Parliament to work more than eight hours a day; and an inspector would be sent down, probably selected by the County Council, "to see that all models were properly draped." Mr. Morley returned thanks for Literature, "the happiest of callings, and most imperishable of the arts," and alluded to the " odd " fact that of two recent Prime Ministers, one had made a spirited translation of Homer, while another was always studying him. Three recent Secretaries for Ireland had been engaged in literature, and the House of Commons still possessed the author of the most fascinating of literary biographies, and the historian of the Holy Roman Empire. The devotion required by Literature was as great as that required by Art—(not quite true that, is it Mr. Morley, in such cases, for example, as Shelley's ?)—and one of its new duties was to resist the "appalling forces which are ready at a moment's notice to deface and deform our English tongue." Mr. Morley, we note, like every one else, places Cardinal New- man first among the living or recent masters of English prose.
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