main, anti-democratic. Some well-known exceptions only establish the rule. Our practical purpose is to invite attention to the arts of Sculpture, Music, and Painting'; under this relation to point out their place in the natural system of society, and excite the professors of these arts, for their own honour and advantage, to occupy it.

Literature has shown them the way, and has taken with her, hand in hand, the democratic and diffusive art of engraving. Books, embellished and illustrated with the greatest care, journals and newspapers of all descriptions, are now published at a cost which brings them within the reach of the humblest classes. Authors, like farmers and cotton-print makers, begin to rely on the masses as their best customers. This has effected a great revolution in literature itself. As long as the opulent only were its patrons, it was too often stuffed with foolish errors and false refinement. The aspirations of the poor, and the hopes of the humble, as well as their sufferings, were only lampooned. Their honest efforts to improve their condition, and take a higher place in society, were continually snubbed by the tuft-hunters of literature. They were continually admonished to remain in their condition, and not imitate their betters in acquirements, dress, manners, and language. Literature has now become more manly and independent. Looking to a world-wide market, it must please all customers, and can only do that by being natural. By becoming cheap, it became essentially comprehensive and vigorous, healthy, pure, and truthful. To every class it imparts instruction and amusement. There are hardly any so low but they are cheered in their solitude and their social hours by some kind of reading, or by hearing at second-hand the tales, the jokes, the anecdotes, the information, that are gathered from the journals. In the great natural system of society, and in that division of labour which springs from diversity of sex and diversity of climate, and which pervades the world, literature has taken its appropriate place. No longer the handmaid of any class, it ministers to the pleasures of those who supply food and clothing, quite as much as to those who sit on the throne and direct public affairs. It has outgrown alike the fetters and the blandishments of the politically great, and stands recognised, before the face of Heaven, the helpmate and friend, a part and parcel of the toiling masses.

Of Sculpture nothing like this can be said even in Italy. It provides plaster casts and models of some of the favourites of the people. The busts of Milton, Byron, Scott, Nelson, &c., are now

generally accessible, and are cheap and lasting mementos of the noble-minded men the people admire. But in general, clothed in antique drapery, speaking in allegories that only the learned can read, Sculpture only fills the niches of Christian churches, and emblazons the tomb-stones of Christians with figures that are as foreign to the thoughts and life of the Englishman as to those of the Sandwich Islander. To neither our climate nor our manners is Sculpture yet reconciled. She was at home in Greece, where the mythology she still embodies was the creed of the people; where the human figure, unimpeded by dress, was continually exhibited in all its attitudes and vigour; where every man was a practical connoisseur of muscular development, as he is here of mechanical skill; and where a bright pure atmosphere preserved the finest touches of the chisel in all their original sharpness. In old Rome too, and in modern Italy also, at the revival of the art, where the mythology of the Greeks and the earliest impressions of Christianity were to some extent traditionally preserved, Sculpture was congenial to the then form of society, and did adapt itself to the habits and feelings of the people. Costly in her productions, and speaking only to the initiated few, except as she preserves the forms of national heroes, including the heroes of industry, Sculpture, as now cultivated, seems to have no place in the natural system of society. That system is now developing with amazing rapidity; and to find a place in it, to be honoured by the multitude, she must, like the earthenware manufacturer, perform her task by ministering to their wants. She must not confine herself to the halls of the great-she must ennoble the workshop. She must leave the monsters of fable, the allegories of an irregular fancy, and an ignorant faith, and the garb of a foreign people, to fix in imperishable marble the improvements, the hopes, and the faith of our own people. She must help to raise up and improve the democracy. She must return to labour some reward for the subsistence, the clothing, and the shelter which labour supplies, or she will pass, as society goes onward, into the oblivion which has fallen on the useless Greek fire, and the lost imperial Tyrian dye.

Painting, though diverted from her place by those who preferred the historical to the domestic-the school of West to that of Hogarth-is getting more amongst the people than Sculpture. It is less, however, by her mere works on the canvas, than by her designs for the burin, that she fills the place destined for her in the natural system of society. By both, however, she now appeals

to other classes than kings and senators, generals and admirals ; and to other feelings than those of admiration for factitious heroes, and of superstitious reverence for mystical or supernatural events. By her vivid representations of rags and roofless cabins of the daring violators of custom-house regulations-of the victims of game-laws of criminals, the offspring of legal injustice-by her bold satires of the foolish eccentricities of men armed with power, or endowed with wealth, she has become a great teacher on the side of Nature, and the auxiliary of honest labour. Her charms are prized accordingly. Her fearless exposures have been a great help to liberty. Now that she seeks rewards from administering to the enjoyments of the multitude, she too has become generous and truthful, and is scoffed at when she yet lends her pallet to gild and hide the chains of superstition, or consecrate the deeds of the despot and the man-slayer.

Music, though universally diffused, is less cultivated for the masses than the few. Most of her original compositions are for the great, and only descend to the vulgar when the rich are tired of them. Those who have witnessed the effects of Music amongst different classes, will hardly think that her natural home is the Opera-House. The poorly-fed and hard-worked German student is an enthusiast for music. The infant in arms, and the girl that bears it, dance with delight at the merry sounds of the street musicians. The tired soldier on his march is cheered by a brisk strathspey. The sailor, heaving and treading round with the capstan, works with double spirit when the band plays. After a day's toil, it refreshes and exhilarates the peasant and the artisan. But music at the Opera, for those who are cloyed with pleasurewho come sweltering in food and wine from the clubs-is only adding to a surfeit: it is heaping pleasure on pleasure, till the overloaded sensorium loses all sensibility. The concord of sweet sounds has to struggle for inlet amidst a tumult of feverish sensations, and is often lost in noise. Music, like literature, is in its proper place when it is ministering to the enjoyment of the toiling masses. It seems felt and appreciated when it escapes from the Opera-House to the street, and is really prized and honoured when it becomes at once popular and vulgar.

In the natural system of society, art must administer to art. Noisome smells of necessary preparations must be overcome by the perfumer. His skill receives only a small part of its due application when it is limited to the toilette. It must sweeten the work

shop and rob the manufactory of the effluvia which makes it offensive and injurious. So, the proper office of Music is to cheer the labourer. Every man-of-war, every regiment, has a band. Why should not every factory have its orchestra? Why are the ears of workmen to be for ever tortured, when the noises might be made musical or overborne by music? The natural office of the

Fine Arts is not merely to add to the pleasures of the opulent, but to diffuse enjoyment amidst the workers. Their professors limit their utility and degrade them from their higher station when they adapt themselves and their works only to the politically great. Classes pass away; industrious man lives for ever. Great wealth,

high rank, political power, are but the ephemeral creations of a political system that is fast wearing out; and if the Fine Arts would win a durable hold on the affections of mankind, they must be adapted, not to decaying classes, but to the ever-living multitude.

If events in our own society; if the progress of the people and the success of literature, from being adapted to the wants of the multitude, make no impression on the professors of Scripture, painting, and music, let them cast their eyes across the Atlantic. There, within a few days' sail or steaming, is a population speaking our language, which promises, while many artists now budding into reputation will still be alive, to amount to more than 100,000,000. Amongst that mighty people there are few or none of those classes for whom the Fine Arts have been exclusively cultivated here. So cultivated, they can have no success there; and instead of sharing in the wealth and power of that great nation, they will be cast aside as the mere accessories and ornaments to a worn-out political system. We are aware of the many temptations which, in the present distribution of property, induce professors and artists of all kinds to worship wealth; but the main gist of our argument is, that the few wealthy have it not in their power, in the long run, to bestow equal rewards to the industrious, though less wealthy many. On the whole, literary men and artists, who work for the great public, are better rewarded now than ever they were, when they ate the bitter bread of royal and noble patronage. Unfortunately the Fine Arts have been tempted and perverted by the politically great. Springing from nature for Music, Sculpture, and Painting are not decreed and regulated by law-they really belong to the natural system of society, and their sole end and destination, their true place in that great system, is to give pleasure to those who minister to the physical wants of the community.

THE CONVERTED MAN.

BY FRANCES BROWN.

It was in the days of our gentility-we entertain a prejudice against specifying the number of years that have elapsed since that period that we had the honour of being the opposite neighbour and frequent visitor of Scrutley House. Such was the designation bestowed by its owner on a large mansion, new and square, with nice curtained windows, and very high paling in front, lately erected in Lumberton Place, one of the most aristocratic suburbs of our native city, a large provincial town, which, besides being connected, at least in name, with sporting associations, has been long famous for seriousness and sectaries.

Mr. and Mrs. Scrutley were spoken of by their acquaintances as a most exemplary pair. Thirty years of his "sojourn in this valley of tears, as the good man delighted to call it, had been passed in close attention to a yearly increasing warehouse. She had devoted twenty to the management of his domestic affairs; both had been seriously brought up, though in circumstances very different from those under which they entered that mansion; but, being prudent for this world and the next, they had prospered by eschewing the vanities, if not the pride of life, and risen to wealth and importance by the united practice of economy and religion.

At the period of our acquaintance with the family, Mr. Scrutley had not retired from business, but the event was talked of; he had been an alderman, and expected to be lord mayor; was a member of "The Society for the Suppression of Vice, a general patron of Sabbath Schools, and his name, together with that of Mrs. S., appeared at the head of all missionary lists whatever. Moreover, they had just taken possession of the aforesaid house, discovered their arms, and mounted a carriage, in which Mrs. Scrutley delighted to pay visits to the poor and the pious of the neighbourhood, accompanied by her eldest daughter Emma, a pretty but rather subdued-looking girl of sixteen; and occasionally, when, as the lady remarked, it was proper, by three very little and remarkably quiet girls, kept at all seasons in the nursery, which included