indeed, could scarcely have been less amenable to discipline as discipline is understood in European armies, or to an orderly life. A companion of Byron, who was with him to the last, tells us that:

Nothing distressed him more than the conduct of the Suliotes he had taken into his pay: they thought of nothing but extorting money from him. There were 300 in his force, and over 100 demanded double pay and triple rations, pretending to be officers, whose dignity would not permit them to lounge in the coffee-houses, unless attended by a henchman and a pipe-bearer.

At length a climax was reached. The fierce and uncontrolled lawlessness of these wild men rose to such a pitch that it became absolutely necessary to get rid of them, and this was only accomplished by the advance of a month's pay to the truculent warriors. Byron's Suliote bodyguard, now increased to fifty, remained with him to the last. When he rode out he was attended by the whole, though whether as a protection, or by way of adding éclat to his official status, is not clear. His bodyguard on these occasions was on foot, and although the men carried their muskets, they were always able to keep up with the horses, even at full speed, such was the effect of their early training. The cavalcade was preceded by the captain of the guard and a few men ; then came Byron, usually with a friend, followed closely by his black groom and valet, both dressed like the Chasseurs' behind the carriages of ambassadors, the tail consisting of the rest of the guard.

Of the ceaseless worries and anxieties that beset Byron's path and assuredly hastened his end it is needless to tell. Is not the story set forth, with a wealth of detail, in the Life and Letters by his friend and biographer, Moore? With the poet's death on April 19, 1824, the curtain falls, and remains down so far as concerns the Suliotes. All that we can learn is that at the conclusion of the long-drawn-out' war of independence' such of the tribe as remained alive were absorbed into the populace and their identity lost. Their country remained in possession of their bitter enemies, the Turks, till restored to Greece early in the present century.

TEIGNMOUTH.

MODERNISM IN THE ARTS

IN the nineteenth century belief in 'progress' was a religion. In the twentieth it lingers as a superstition, vulgarised to the level of a poster, which I have seen, bearing the word and depicting St. Paul's in the year 2000, dwarfed by surrounding skyscrapers. The thought of most was expressed by Dean Inge in his Romanes Lecture. The Victorian optimism and wealth have crossed the Atlantic together. Let them go.

Why do we turn against the spirit of the age? The great Victorians all waged contention with their time's decay, and we have come to believe them right. The modern-the industrial— world, which began 150 years ago, is on the wrong road. Life is the only wealth. If we think at all we are disciples, often ungrateful enough, of Ruskin. We are the legatees of all the multitudinous instruments of well-being of the ages; but we seem to have fallen into an irremediable mediocrity. 'We see all things from pole to pole, but never once possess our soul.' So our despondency persuades us. Our overpopulated country does not value 'the progress which can be measured by statistics.' Athens was evσúνоптоs—all visible easily from one point; Florence was not larger than a modern spa. Quality is better than quantity, and there is incompatibility between the two.

The arts are the index of a nation's quality. We cannot produce a Parthenon or a Durham (though we can, significantly, produce a cathedral in the Byzantine style): they were the work of a great race; we are Byzantines. We have no Beethoven, no Turner, no Goethe; this is the 'progress' of a hundred years. Even Mill thought he would rather be Socrates unhappy than a pig happy. Nor are we happy. The slums are not an improvement on the fields of Essex. But vague dissatisfaction makes desire vain. In any case, theoretical melancholy is a waste of time. If we can act let us go a little deeper into the evil; but the first feature of that evil is the habit of despair. No moods must cloud our eyes. It is as much a duty to hope as to face facts. Perhaps the greatest original idea of the Middle Ages was that of accidia, or ungrateful gloom, as a mortal sin. Dante hears the VOL. XCV-No. 566

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melancholy crying in their self-chosen misery, 'Tristi fummo' ('We were unhappy').

Nel aer dolce che dal sol s'allegra
Portando dentro accidioso fummo

('unhappy in the sweet air that rejoices in the sun, carrying within ourselves the fog of gloom ').

Heaven denies them what they have refused. Happiness is an art and a duty; to despond is to accuse the universe: it is not for us to take on us the mystery of things or arrogate the office of the Geist der Stets verneint.

The modern age has brought us some good, means of communication especially, which bring together men who might have remained in isolation, and have ameliorated the prolonged and silent separations of our forefathers. This is all that it can be said we owe to the industrial age; all else was won by the humanism of the eighteenth century, however much more recent knowledge has confirmed the gains. Society is more humane; torture is obsolete; knowledge is more diffused, and ecclesiastical fanaticism moribund; even among the dregs of parochial busybodies hardly one could now be found who believes that the floor of hell is covered with unbaptised babies not a span long.' None would go back on the 'emancipation' of women, though it is hard to know what it means. The mothers of Elizabethan England asked for no emancipation, and were often scholars; they read the Testament in Greek. Here, again, is the reminder: we are a lesser race. A Hypatia might lecture in Alexandria: in Athens her epitaph might have been, 'She lived unknown'; but where in Alexandria were Antigone, or Alkestis, or Iphigenia, where even Electra or Clytemnestra, Medea or Hecuba, Phædra or Deianeira, Jocasta or Cassandra or Andromache, where the Fates of the Parthenon or the Demeter of Cnidos? Where in our literature or art are Shakespeare's women? And so the sense of inferiority pursues us. An age of decline may be taken for an age of 'progress,' because all things do not progress and decline together. The' years that bring the philosophic mind' to a race, as to an individual, take away the creative gift and the strong quality of humanity. And how have we used the victory of freedom of thought? Partly, as they did, in the decline of the ancient world, in the luxury of Oriental and syncretistic theosophies and pitiful necromancy; partly, as they did, in true scholarship and ordered speculation. However, no general good has ever been

1 Lord Acton held that the emancipation of conscience from authority was the chief content of history: it is our chief glory. T. H. Green said that the criterion of progress was 'the value set on persons.' In this also we may pride ourselves. Yet Renan's opinion in the Vie de Jésus is disquieting: Nos civilisations . . . ne sauraient nous donner aucune idée de ce que valait l'homme à des époques

gained but weak men have misused it. Suffice it that the good exists. We have certainly, like the late ages of the ancient world, subtlety, cleverness, knowledge, all the past to enjoy, every opportunity for appreciation. Since we are critics, let us be good critics. The Renascence was a revival first of appreciation and then of creation. Such a thing may happen again.

Only the fringe of modern art could be touched on here, its analysis only indicated. But a beginning must be made.

If we consider modern painting, the absence of greatness, except in Sargent and George Clausen, is easily felt. Many positive qualities exist. First, there is a high standard of technique. All the leaders of the art have turned with disgust from the 'blottesque,' the flabby dulness to which the general decline of craftsmanship had dragged painting. Draughtsmanship is not often the strong point of Northern schools, but the precision and subtlety of drawing of Mr. Sargent, of Mr. Glyn Philpot, or of Mr. W. T. Wood, is a sign of revival in the most virile element in painting it is, in the English school, almost new. Turner, Alfred Stevens, and Leighton are hitherto the only great draughtsmen of our race. To choose examples among contemporaries is seldom just, often invidious, and usually arbitrary. Those mentioned are, however, evidence of one indisputable kind of excellence. One may be allowed to mention Mr. Brangwyn and Mr. Cayley Robinson as evidence of the interest in decoration, which is also a sign of revival. (Alfred Stevens's and W. B. Richmond's mosaics in St. Paul's, Leighton's frescoes in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Watts's Fiero Pasto in the Tate and his Lawgivers in Lincoln's Inn, Ford Madox Brown's panels at Manchester and his Work, and the glass and tapestry designs of Burne-Jones are only adumbrations of what they might have done.) It would be ungrateful to deny the considerable number of beautiful and sincere pictures produced; yet the very excellence of what is done makes it worth while and incumbent to reflect wherein lies the dissatisfaction which we often feel. Reynolds has a 'native and inherent dignity' which is seldom attained by a modern painter who is a surer draughtsman. Again, Leighton, for all his salon suavity, has a wholeness, a sane nobility, which seems deliberately shunned by more original designers. Why should an accomplished draughtsman wantonly inflate the thighs and crush in the chests and skulls of his figures, as if from fear of resembling Leighton, and paint a child with a blue face to harmonise in a

où l'originalité de chacun avait pour se développer un champs plus libre'; and he speaks of the 'énergie surprenante' of 'ces ames entières.' We have levelled down as well as up.

The type is partly derived from a well-known artist's model, but is caricatured for some complex emotional reasons. And there are other models.

' scheme '? What is the aberration of feeling which produces depraved Mongoloid types because their mere strangeness will move imagination easier than normality? Or, again, why should exquisite draughtsmanship feel it necessary to elongate trees to the character of grasses, and a genuine lover of Nature yet lean to night and twilight as if more poetical than day? Turner was not afraid of the sun. Nor did he turn garish limelight on to viridian grass with violet shadows and call it sunlight. It is the surest sign of real strength to prefer always the via media, the greatly normal. If we turn to mural decoration, we find either an extravagant globularity (where 'power' is sought) or an extravagant straightness and flatness (where 'dignity' or 'repose'). Why should one-sided qualities be sought at all? It is like the striking of a self-conscious attitude. So far I have thought only of serious and finished artists. We suffer from a multitude of vulgar painters. Of them, and of the host of frivolous or dishonest ones, it may be a waste of time to speak, save to ask why they are taken, not only seriously, but as representative of the age. Painting is not exceptional. Literature shows, as Professor Saintsbury said, a' troubled unrest of style, a vagabond curiosity of matter.' But probably even Professor Saintsbury, who has read everything, has not read much of the colossal cataract. A good deal, we hope, in the classic phrase, 'falls stillborn from the Press.' Our grandfathers read many pretty bad novels; but never before have so many foolish books abounded. Even the novelists and playwrights who have a true vision of the grimness or absurdities of life, lack the great normality, the irradiation of universal power. All the best literature of the day is prosaic, and in prose; one is almost tempted to feel that poetry is the pastime of coteries and poseurs. Only Hardy survives amid a generation of Epigoni. Music has sunk with a speed unparalleled by any other art at any time. The most prodigal exploitation of technical resources cannot recapture the accent of Beethoven, even for an instant, even by a plagiarism. The modern spirit works.

What is the modern spirit? It is a recurrence of an inevitable decline. It is an anæmia, a sophistication. It is dissipation of mind, wantonness, abnormality. It is hysteria. In our case it might be called urbanisation. Nor does it work only within. Patronage fluctuates with taste and with economic circumstances; and the arts depend on patronage. Moreover, there are the critics, honest and dishonest. Lastly, the citadel is betrayed by fear and sentimentalism. This much is pretty certain. This is also certain, that 'the truth shall set you free,' and merely to become aware is a deliverance. And I am not going to assume that we have not the will to act afterwards. It is not a scholastic speculation, but a very practical proposal to look into the matter more in detail.