CURRENT LITERATURE.
takes its title is the longest, the most important, and, with the exception of an admirable In memoriam notice of Lord Leighton, showing an intimate knowledge of the man, the most recent of the papers included in it. The writer looks back on the history and development of English art during the last thirty years or so.
It is not a mere catalogue of painters and pictures; it is a criti- cism, eminently able, thoughtful, and sane, but touched with a cer- tain enthusiasm, of the various phases which that period has pro- duced of artistic aim and popular appreciation. It is illustrated by reference to the foremost masters of the time and their chief works, but it is always a view of the whole subject. One of the most notable utterances in it is that which gives us the writer's conception of the " art for art's sake" maxim :— " Art is a perfectioning of life and its sources of pleasure and health through the sense of sight ; poetry, through the thoughts of the brain ; and it is the sign that the art of painting is becom- ing a dead language to a nation or to an individual when things that are not hers to give are demanded from art. Hence the cry raised by the new school of art for art's sake.' The affectations on one line bring about affectations on others. As influences have been demanded from art which are not hers to give, and the world has been somewhat wearied with the cant that mixes up, with no sense of distinction, the art of painting with the art of poetry, the art of preaching, the art of cultivating culture among the poorer classes, the swinging back of the pendulum has recently estab- lished another kind of cant ; this cant of the school which elimi- nates every quality from the aims of art but those which respond to the aesthetic sense, truncated and detached from all other Lenses. 'Art for art's sake' certainly, by all means ; but for the sake of an art which is really a response to our natures as they are developed and cultured in this our nineteenth century ; not affecting to be- long to creatures removed from savages by one kind of culture only. Surely it is only reasonable to ask for art, a beauty which shall be on the level of our tastes in other matters, thoroughly human and sympathetic in its qualities, and corresponding to our
enlightenment all round Art cannot teach us our duty to God or to man, but she can teach us a certain duty towards our- selves. And that lesson is, that those things which are interesting as recording human passions, sentiments, or actions; or that are beautiful as the waves of the sea, the hills, the flowers, the meadows ; or as the dreams of the poet are beautiful, such things expressed through the magnetic medium of great art, can brighten the darkest hours of life, and can be treasures and nourishing companions in all hours. Short of spiritual help is there any influence in life that can be a more constant comforter, a more sane influence, or one that can more effectually chase away despair ! To quote the famous sentence which concludes Mr. Pater's Essays on the Renaissance.' Well—! we are all condamnes, as Victor Hugo says : we are all under sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite reprieve—lee hommes sont tons condamnes a mort avec des surcis [2 sursid ihdefinis : we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest, at least among "the children of this world," in art and song."
About two-thirds of the volume are occupied with essays dealing with art directly. Others have a certain reference to it. Some papers have been reprinted from this journal, among which we may be allowed to mention as of considerable interest, and showing great insight into Goethe's character, "A Gossip about Goethe in his Birthplace." "The Kyrie Society" is a well- deserved recognition of one of the most successful social efforts of the day. Another good work is commemorated in the " Red Cross Hall." Finally, we have an essay on " The Reality of the Spiritual Life," too large a subject to be dealt with in a brief notice. The essay is written from the point of view of spiritual illuminati or illuminates. "Do we not more and more seek, as our fittest Church, the'spots where wild Nature has had her way ? " Mrs. Barrington quarrels with the word "super natural," and wants to assert the naturalness of the divine nature. Natural by all means, but not natural from the human standpoint. All that supernatural means is "higher than the nature which is in man." The book sadly needs a fuller table of contents, the paper on Goethe, for instance, and several others, having no separate mention at all in the contents ; and even to the pages of the various essays there is no running heading.
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