contact with scenes of beauty, in moments otherwise rendered happy, is both present and future bliss.

The second favourable circumstance is the guidance of some skilled monitor. In the presence of a beautiful scene, or a work of art, we derive great benefit from being shown where and how to direct our attention. We may chance to be misled, but it is assumed that we can find some one more advanced than ourselves in the conditions that regulate æsthetic pleasure. This is the rôle of the Art instructor for all.

It ought to be superfluous to remark that the landscape taste grows exactly with the devotion that we give to it. An occasional weary moment beguiled, a transient glance on the road to business, will not carry forward any taste, any rich emotional response to nature or art. We must surrender some portion of our vital energy to the accumulating of those innumerable little rills of pleasure that flow out in the presence of natural grandeur, or artistic adornment.

So far I have kept in view the main chance, how to aggrandize natural susceptibility to art pleasure, and so to create an enduring fund of delight. This is taste in the best, although not in the only, sense of the word. The cultivation of taste further implies discrimination and judgment of effects; it warns us against being pleased with certain things, on the ground that to be so pleased either interferes with the highest enjoyment of art on the whole, or brings us into collision with some of the other interests of life-as truth, utility, morality— which are liable to be sacrificed to the ends of art. This branch of æsthetics, even more than the other, needs a monitor; and taking the two together, we can see the

scope that there is for Art teaching to the general community.

A short application to the chief branches of Art, study, will complete the design of this chapter.

Of Music there is nothing further to be said. It is the art most universally cultivated by the mass of people; and this cultivation is followed by the taste. Without being able to perform, one may acquire the taste by listening to performances, under the favourable conditions above laid down.

Elocution is hardly yet begun to be thought of as a refining social pleasure. I shall allude to it again presently.

The group of Arts addressed to the eye-Painting, Design, Sculpture, Architecture-are the enjoyment of many; but their production is confined to a few. The culture of Taste in them has, therefore, to be carried on by the study of the works. The enjoyment increases in the manner already illustrated; while the discriminative taste may want a great deal of instruction. To reconcile all the elements in a picture, or a building, needs many adjustments and restraints that are not understood by mere natural sense, however acute.

The Poetic art raises all the questions of art culture, and on it we may expend the remainder of our observations. As being the union of language with pictures of nature and life, it exceeds the other arts in the number of elements to be reconciled. It affects a greater surface of sense and emotion than either music (by itself) or painting.

The poetic culture is involved in the course of Literature, beginning with the mother tongue. The refine

ments of poetry are connected with many kinds of pure composition. Every literary teacher contributes to the poetic taste, both as enjoyment and as discrimination. By reading poets and critics, under favourable auspices, we are strengthened and confirmed in the same. gifts.

The susceptibility to poetry includes the ear, the eye, the emotional nature, a pretty wide experience of life, and no little book knowledge. The increasing compass of allusions in modern poetry makes it less. and less the recreation of the mass of people: but there is always enough in the generality of poets to touch the chords of average human nature.

The Ideal character of Poetry was unavoidably touched in connection with moral teaching. Herein lies both its strength and its weakness. To idealize is to transcend reality or fact, and bring about a collision between ourselves and the world. The intense pleasure of the ideal is what redeems the discrepancy. The fine frenzy, the ecstasy, of the poet's world, is the inspiration to virtue, by being the spiritual reward of selfdenial. It performs the part assigned to religion. Hence poets assume to themselves the vocation of being the best teachers of virtue; Horace testifies thus for Homer, and Milton for the Greek tragedians. The question recurs By what means do they produce their magical effects, and are these means in themselves always favourable to virtue? The poet must make himself agreeable to the multitude, and this demands concessions to human weakness; above all things, it needs indulgences, illusions, and liberal promises. But there is much else in a true poem; and poetic taste and culture

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consists in finding pleasure apart from the exaggerations that come home to the least cultivated.

It needs little examination to discover that the strongest stimulant of Art productions is in the direction of illimitable appetite and desire-the passions of love, malevolence, ambition, sensuality. These must be stirred more or less to make the interest of a poem or a picture. The highest Art and the highest Art education check and control the outgoings of the fiery passions; hold in subjection the demons that are unavoidably raised. No greater triumph can be effected by an Artist or by an education in Art.

The two developments of poetry that have brought into greater prominence both its lights and its shadows are Fiction or Romance, and the Drama. Both have been highly popular; yet both have been inveighed against as unfavourable to morality. Although, of the two, dramatic representation is most attacked, there is but one question between them.

Fiction names a wide class; and the difference between the best and the worst examples is the whole difference between good and evil-virtue and vice. This, however, settles nothing. The crucial instances are such fictions as are most disseminated and most popular; that are imbibed by the ordinary mind without misgivings. Now, if we take the approved romances of the present day, we find much of the highest art, together with an essential tincture of indulgence in sentiment or ideality. It depends on the reader, whether the high art or the grosser element is most influential. The

proper aim of Art education and culture is to enable

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us to feel these higher artistic effects, at the least possible expenditure of gross and grovelling passion. Such an education as this would be worthy of being promoted by all the means at our disposal.

The indulgence in the pleasures of Fiction is met by one very intelligible regulation; namely, putting it on the level of Stimulants, to be used with moderation. The late Andrew Combe contended for a moderate use of Fiction. We can fall back upon the sober realities of life without revulsion, after a sparing allowance of Ideality, but not after excess.

The numerous works of genius that take the form of Fiction, together with Poetry in the more narrow sense, are undoubtedly an education in themselves. The force, elegance, and affluence of diction in general, the refinements and delicacies of conversational style in particular, the pourtraying of character and the depicting of scenery and life, the wise maxims wittily expressed, not to mention the inspiriting ideals,-cannot go for nothing upon the mind of the reader. They are efficacious, however, just in proportion to previous culture; with a vast majority of fiction readers, the effect is barely to be traced; these in their haste extract only the plot, sentiment and passion, and let all the rest escape them. To gain the full impression of a work of the highest genius demands slow perusal, and a considerable pause before entering on any other.

It seems strange that so rich a display of colloquial art as we find in the prose romance should do so little to refine the conversational part of our social intercourse. Perhaps it does more than we are aware of.

The Drama differs from Fiction in general only in