mother, who carries him so reverently, yet with such power and purity in her look and bearing. It was honoured sympathetically by all who had the joy of seeing it borne as a banner through a great city as an act of the highest worship; not cut up into little morsels and set on a fork by every man who can write smart articles for a penny paper, bestowing a little supercilious praise and much wholesome advice on Holman Hunt and Tennyson, on Stevens* and Street alike.

But the result is that the world is poorer by the want of the work which only a sense of sympathy between the artist and his public inspires. "Action and reaction are equal," we are told, in science, and the artist cannot produce the best that is in him alone, any more than the most finished musician can play on a dumb piano. The receivers must do their share in the partnership. Mrs. Siddons once said that she lost all her power when annihilated by the coldness of the cream of the cream society of a salon, and preferred any marks of emotion of an unsophisticated if intelligent audience, to the chill of fashionable indifference; and when we complain of the poorness of our art, we must remember for how large a share of this we, the present public, are responsible. It may be all very well for the skylark to pour his strains of unpremeditated art" for his own pleasure and that of the little skylarks; but Shelley must have had the hope that "the world will listen then, as I am listening now."

The poet and the painter require intelligent cordial belief and sympathy, which is just what we have not to give, and therefore the reign of the highest art is probably at an end: no Phidias or Michelangelo, no Homer or Shakspeare, are likely again to arise. This is pre-eminently a scientific age-a time for the collection and co-ordination of facts; and what imagination we possess we use in the discovery of the laws by which Nature works, and in the application of our knowledge to the ordinary wants and comforts and pleasures of the human race. Electric telegraphs, phonographs, photographs abound; every possible adaptation of steam in majestic engines (almost, it seems, as intelligent as man), to promote our means of communication and locomotion over the surface of the earth, and of production in every conceivable form; great ships and engines of destruction in war, and (curious antithesis) ingenious contrivances for the saving of pain in disease everything, in short, connected with the comprehension and subjugation of the material world, is more and more carried to perfection. Yet in spite of these marvellous achievements, unless we can manage to secure a supply of good art, there can be no doubt that there will "have passed away a glory from the earth" which we can ill afford to lose.

There is no use in preaching what is called the common sense of the matter, and telling Keats (though he may have died of consumption, and not of the Edinburgh Review) that the critique on his poems was

*The monument to the Duke of Wellington has never received its due meed of praise. With all his faults, poor Stevens was a man of true genius.

flippant and unintelligent; or one artist that the account of his picture was written by a man who did not understand painting, and the next by a writer who had no notion of the requisites of true poetry. The artist is by necessity of his nature a thin-skinned, impressionable being, with sensitive nerves and perceptions, without which the power of creation does not exist. He writes and paints and acts and sculpts-in short, composes, invents, creates-to make the world feel as he is feeling. Fame is a vulgar word for the sentiment which inspires him; the longing after sympathy is a much truer expression of what the true artist desires. That of his own family and friends is not sufficient; he wants the world at large to hear and understand and join in what he has to say, whether it be in marble or on canvas, in music or in words. To grow such a creature to perfection is very rare in the history of mankind, and when our aloe does flower, we should make the most of it, and feed it with food convenient. Our blame depresses him, even stupid, unintelligent blame, more than our praise elevates him; "he is absurdly sensitive," says the hard-headed man of the world; but that is the very condition of the problem with which we have to deal; if he were not so, we should not have great works of art from him. He is an idealist by nature. If we declare that it is very absurd of our vines to require so much care and kindness, and that a little roughing and neglect will do them a great deal of good, we shall not get many grapes; and, after all, what we want is grapes-results, great artistic works.

It is almost pathetic to see the nation doing the best it knows, offering its patronage and its public buildings, its monuments of great men and its money, and then to mark the results. It is fortunate that most of the frescoes are scaling off the walls of the Houses of Parliament. It is fortunate that Nelson and the Duke of York are hoisted up so high that they cannot be scrutinized at all; it is fortunate that most of the public statues are generally so begrimed with dirt and soot that few can make out their intention. But it is we who are responsible for half at least of their failures.† We have, as a nation, neither the artistic feeling which delights in the beautiful with a sort of worship, nor the sensuous religious instincts which require an outward and visible sign of our inward faith. Therefore our best chance of great work seems to be when the common-sense necessity is so large in its demands, that carrying it out even on merely utilitarian principles may give a grand result by the force of circumstances, almost without our will, -the very fulfilment of the working conditions on an enormous scale forcing a certain grandeur on the work. As, for instance, when a Quoique les applaudissemens que j'ai reçus m'aient beaucoup flatté, la moindre critique, quelque mauvaise qu'elle eût été, m'a toujours causé plus de chagrin que toutes les louanges ne m'aient fait de plaisir," writes Racine to his son. He was silent for twelve years after the "insuccès de Phêdre." 66 Quoique le Mercure Gallant' était au dessous de rien, les blessures qu'il fait n'en sont pas moins cruelles à la sensibilité d'un poëte," adds the Revue des Deux Mondes.

The group of "Asia," by Foley, in Prince Albert's Memorial, is one of the few excep. tions to the indifferent character of out-door statues in London.

viaduct is carried over a deep valley and river, upon a lofty series of arches, as in many Welsh railways and at Newcastle, there are elements of strength, durability, might, and therefore majesty, which the barest execution of the requirements cannot take away. The Suspension Bridge hung high in the air above the ships in the Menai Straits, and that over the narrow hollow of the Avon, have a beauty of lightness and grace all their own-Waterloo Bridge, which Canova declared to be worth coming to England to see are all specimens of a kind of work which we may hope to see multiplied, and even improved upon, as the adaptation of art to the common necessities of our civilization becomes more common, and is taken in hand by a higher and more educated class of men.

Nothing, however, can well be more depressing than the experience of the United States in respect to this question of art and education. Here is a country (in their own magniloquent hyperbole) "bounded on the north by the Aurora Borealis, and on the west by the setting sun," &c., &c., whose proud boast it is that every man, woman, and child (born on its soil) can read, write, and something more,-which has just celebrated its centenary of independent existence, and is in the very spring-time of its national life when the "sap is rising,"-a season which among other nations is that of their greatest artistic vigour, yet which has never produced a poet, painter, sculptor,* or architect above mediocrity. Strangely as it would seem at first sight, it is originality which is chiefly wanting in their art; it is all an echo of European models; they have no independent action of thought or interpretation of Nature. Here, again, it is probably the want of culture of the public which is to blame. Evidence is difficult to obtain on such a vast subject as the use made of the reading and writing so freely imparted at the schools in the United States, but there is very good testimony showing that, with the exception of great centres of civilization, like Boston, the nation, as a nation, reads little but newspapers and story-books; and these clearly would produce a soil utterly unfit for the growth of real art.

Lastly, let us not forget Mr. Mill's warning how much the nation, as well as the individual, must suffer by the stifling of original thought in the rigid conformity to system which our present mechanism of Government regulations, of centralized hard-and-fast rules, is bringing about in education.

The State has a right to exact a certain amount of training in the individuals who compose it, but has no right whatever to interfere as to how that result is obtained. Every encouragement should be held out to original action of all kinds, tending to develop the faculties-artistic, scientific, as well as practical-which remain to be utilized among the millions who are now coming under an influence hitherto painfully narrow, rigid, and shallow in its operations, in spite of its magnificent promises and high-sounding notes of self-satisfaction.

F. P. VERNEY.

Mr. Story may perhaps be considered an exception; but even the "Cleopatra," and "Sibyl" were produced under the influence of Rome.

LIFE IN CONSTANTINOPLE FIFTY

YEARS AGO.

IT

T has often been said that the Turk never changes, that he is now just what he was when he first appeared in Asia Minor. There is very little truth in this observation, for in fact he is like other men, and his character has been modified by the circumstances in which he has been placed, as well as by constant intermarriage with other races. He has changed in some respects for the better, and in others for the worse. There is probably no important city in the world, unless it be Cairo, which has been so radically changed during the last fifty years as the capital of the Turkish Empire. The dress, the customs, the people, the Government, have all been transformed under the influence of European civilization; and these changes have exerted more or less influence in all parts of the Empire.

In this impatient age, when men will hardly give a moment to the consideration of anything but the future, and are always anxiously waiting for to-morrow's telegrams, it is easy to forget that we cannot understand either the present or the future without constant reference to the past. No one can fairly judge the Turks or the Christians of this Empire, or form any idea of their probable destiny, who is not acquainted with their condition fifty years ago, in the time of the last of the Ottoman Sultans; and a brief sketch of Constantinople as it was at that time cannot fail to suggest some interesting considerations to those who are watching the course of events in the East. As contemporary records are even more valuable than personal reminiscences, I shall quote freely from the private journal of a late English resident, a member of the Levant Company, and, after its dissolution, for many years the leading English banker in Constantinople, with a world-wide reputation for integrity, and in every way a perfect specimen of an English gentleman of the old school. He came to Constanti

nople in 1823, and his journal was continued till 1827. been published.

It has never

The reigning Sultan was Mahmoud II., the Reformer, who came to the throne in 1808, after the murder of Sultan Selim and the execution of his brother Moustapha, and after narrowly escaping death himself. The insurrection in Moldavia and Wallachia had been put down in 1821, and Ali Pacha, the famous Albanian chief of Janina, had been treacherously put to death in 1822; but the war of the Greek Revolution was still in progress, and the battle of Navarino was not fought until 1827. War was declared against Russia the same year. Halet Pacha had been strangled in 1822, and Mohammed Selim Pacha was Grand Vizier. Lord Strangford and Mr. Stratford Canning (Lord Stratford) represented England at the Sublime Porte during this period. The relation of the European Powers to the Sultan at this time cannot be better illustrated than by the following account of the reception of Mr. Stratford Canning in April, 1826. The ceremony was not so humiliating as it was in 1621, when Sir Thomas Rowe made such vigorous but unavailing attempts to have it modified; when the Ambassador was forced down upon his knees, and compelled to kiss the earth at the feet of the Sultan; when he was often beaten by the Janissaries on leaving the palace; or, as in the case of the Ambassador of Louis XIV., struck in the face by a soldier in the presence of the Grand Vizier; but although there had been some ameliorations in the ceremony, its significance was exactly the same in 1826 as in 1621, and the same religious scruples were advanced as a reason why they could not be modified in favour of Giaours by the Caliph of Islam. They were all the more humiliating for those who submitted to them, from the fact that there was one Power in Europe which had never recognized them. Even as early as 1499 the Russian Ambassador refused to submit to any such degradation. In 1514 a new Ambassador was specially instructed "on no account to compromise his dignity, or prostrate himself before the Sultan; to deliver his letters and presents with his own hands, and not to inquire after his health unless he first inquired after that of the Czar." The Turks seem to have had an instinctive fear of Russia even at that early day, when they were strong and Russia was weak. But could Sultan Mahmoud have looked forward twenty-five years, he would no doubt have treated Lord Stratford with more respect and consideration. In 1826, however, the haughty pride of the Caliph was unbroken, and he little thought that his descendants would reign only by the favour of Europe.

"After having an audience of the Grand Vizier, the 10th was fixed for the Ambassador's audience of the Sultan, when he, accompanied by all the English residents at Constantinople, left the Embassy in the morning at a quarter before six, in procession, on horseback. At Topkhana, about five minutes' ride from the Embassy, we embarked in boats and crossed the harbour to Stamboul. We found horses waiting