because it would be open to any member, when an obnoxious bill or resolution was brought forward, to move the adjournment, and, if supported by the majority, to carry it in silence, and to exclude the minority from any chance of obtaining a hearing. The American practice, which is that motions to adjourn are always in order, taking precedence of all others, and must be decided without debate, seems open to abuse. But the prohibition of motions for adjournment in connection with questions to Ministers, especially if the Speaker were allowed, as has been suggested, to ask the House to give a hearing on such occasions to matters of urgency, appears to involve no appreciable hardship. In no assembly is it allowed to disturb the order of public business by forcing on debates of which previous notice has not been given. In France the right to make a brief comment upon a Minister's answer to a question is recognised, but the tendency to slip from a simple question into an interpellation is guarded against. It was open to Mr. O'Donnell on the 14th of June to have given notice of a motion embodying what he had got to say with reference to M. Challemel Lacour's appointment; and if he had been compelled to do this a public scandal and a deplorable waste of time would have been spared. Few men have the courage to persevere, after time has been allowed for reflection, in a course condemned by the prevalent feeling of their fellows. At any rate, if some inconvenience is likely to follow from the restriction of a privilege which has grown up in recent years, it must be weighed against the far greater inconveniences which, it is now plain, will flow from its continued toleration.

The evils of obstruction' proper cannot be altogether eradicated by the increase of the Speaker's powers, or by their stringent exercise. If there should be at any time in the House of Commons a number of persons bent upon impeding the course of Parliamentary business, and careless of all consequences, the punishment of a few among them will perhaps be unavailing to control the rest. The country will then look to Parliament to provide another remedy; and it can hardly be doubted that the most efficient remedy is the clôture, secured against abuse by the conditions adopted in France. It is surely wiser to accept this limited change than to trust to the wisdom of a partisan majority exercising the inherent right' which Sir William Harcourt declares to be superior to all rules and precedents, and impulsively endowing a Prime Minister, Radical or Tory, with the iron hand.'

EDWARD D. J. WILSON.

MODERN FRENCH ART.

THERE is an interesting chapter in the Memorabilia' of Xenophon, which records a conversation between Socrates and the painter Parrhasius. The latter, then a young man, was doubtless already showing that tendency to occupy himself with ignoble and even vicious subjects for which he was afterwards notorious, and we find Socrates endeavouring to persuade him to abide by the traditions of the olden time, which allowed nothing to be represented but what was noble and beautiful. He argues that it is the business of the artist to portray not only the outward form of man, but also, as he puts it, the workings of the mind as they are expressed by the form.'"Surely," he asks, " nobleness and generosity, meanness and illiberality, self-control and wisdom, insolence and vulgarity, make themselves seen in the countenance and postures of men as they stand or move." (6 "It is so," answered Parrhasius. Cannot, then, these things be represented?" "Undoubtedly they can." do you think then that men look upon with more satisfaction— pictures in which noble and good and loveable characters are portrayed, or those which exhibit what is deformed and evil and detestable?" "By Zeus," he said, "Socrates, there can be no question about the matter!"'

"Which

What Socrates seems to imply in these remarks is that works of art which represent the actions and feelings of men, produce the same sort of effect on the beholder as would result from actual intercourse. As we see men in real life consorting with the good to their own satisfaction and profit, so a picture which portrays good actions and pure or noble feelings imparts a moral influence of an elevating kind. There is therefore an obligation on the artist so to choose his subjects that those who look on his work shall come in contact only with what is ennobling.

ance.

This view of art is not one, however, which finds universal acceptIn opposition to it it is urged, and urged with considerable force, that this importation of moral ideas into art opens the door to sentiments and prejudices which may easily be destructive of sound criticism. A work of art, it is said, must be judged on artistic grounds alone; if it is good as art, this is all we ought to require of it. This contention that art stands by itself, and exists, as the phrase

goes, for its own sake, is in English minds especially associated with the art school of France, where artists as a rule in choosing their subjects seem to care only that the situation shall be striking, and where critics are content if these situations are represented with force and technical skill.

It is no part of the intention of the present article to enter on a discussion of these opposing views. There can be no doubt, on the one hand, that it may be often advisable to protest strongly against the intrusion of certain moral and religious prejudices in a militant attitude into the domain of art criticism; and nothing which is here said about the necessity of adopting to some extent the moral point of view, must be taken as implying that technical excellence is not of essential importance in all works of which the critic is to judge favourably. No matter what may have been the intention of the painter in his work, no matter how full his mind has been of pure and elevated ideas which he has sought to convey by it, if the work fails as art, it fails altogether. Such things as awkward composition, unnatural posing, bad drawing, slovenly execution, neither gods nor men nor hanging committees can be asked to tolerate.

Yet, on the other hand, to make his work technically blameless is only a part of what the artist has to do. We cannot accept this as the all-in-all of art without finding that we are doing violence to a part

of our nature. It is true that where a work of art is purely ornamental, it appeals only to the artistic sense, and can be dealt with on artistic grounds alone; but whenever what is represented is some aspect of human life, the work at once evokes a different set of feelings. It is a plain fact of experience, as Socrates pointed out, that we look on certain scenes with delight and profit, and turn from others in disgust. It is equally certain that these feelings arise naturally in the mind when we look at representations of those scenes, and it is only by making an effort that we can avoid taking such considerations into account.

Whether or not it is worth while to make such an effort is a matter which may be left for discussion. Common sense would suggest that we should accept the facts of our nature as they stand, and give full importance to all the feelings that are natural to us in each situation. And if any further argument were needed to enforce this view, it could be found in the practice of the great art schools of the past. What gives to Greek art and to that of the early Renaissance period their high position, is not only the mastery of the workman over his materials, and his fine sense of artistic effect, but his effort in everything to express ideas. The statues of the best period of Hellenic art are not merely beautiful shapes, not merely finely-posed and accurate representations of the human form, but are the embodiment of the moral conceptions of the people-forcible presentments of that type of human character, strong at once and

reposeful, which Greek moralists inculcated and the best men of the nation strove to realise. In the same way those deeper experiences of human nature, which the medieval world owed to Christianity, were wrought by the great Italian masters into their work; and if we find them dwelling at times upon sorrow and pain it was not for the sake of mere effect, but for the sake of some spiritual expression associated with them. To come in contact with works of this order at once raises our ideal of the true function of the artist. He becomes, in view of these great achievements of the past, no mere minister to our sense of the beautiful, no conjuror surprising us by startling effects, and taking our eyes captive by feats of dexterity; but one rather who has the power of calling forth our deeper feelings, and of giving us a clearer insight into human nature in all its capacity for tender or noble emotion. It is his to show the spirit of man victorious over circumstance and trouble and death; to keep bright before our minds the ideals which are apt to grow dim to those involved in the business of the world; and, as Bacon finely observes about the function of poetry, to feed our aspirations after perfection, and 'to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it.'

If there is any truth in these suggestions, it is allowable to look at modern art, not of course exclusively, but to a certain extent from the moral point of view; that is, with reference to the effort in it to represent what is pure or tender or dignified in human nature. This does not mean a demand for grand subjects or exalted sentiment ; a child-a peasant girl-a simple scene of charity-affords ample scope for that sympathetic treatment which at once gives to a painting the higher artistic value; and it is the grievous scarcity of work of this kind, as well as of the worthy treatment of great themes, which is the first and most important point to notice about the art of modern France.

The Fine Arts section of the International Exhibition of 1878 gave an opportunity for a comparison of the schools of the different European countries. As a result of this it was difficult to resist the conclusion, that the work of the most important school, that of France, though excelling the rest in academic qualities, had really less of true interest to offer. For example, whatever were the shortcomings from a technical point of view of English art, there was in it a feeling for beauty and for nature, a delight in brightness and colour, and a wholesome freshness, which had a value above all the hard and unsympathetic cleverness of the French painters. With the notable exception of the 'Cierge à la Madone' of M. Laugée, with its quaint and serious presentment of the religious life of the thirteenthcentury peasant-a picture now in the Luxembourg-there was hardly anything which had the poetic feeling which gives charm to art. What was most conspicuous upon the walls of the French

section were vast canvasses, executed, it is true, in a very vigorous and workmanlike manner, which represented for the most part scenes from which in real life we should have been glad to turn our eyes.

For instance, it was impossible for the eye to travel far without lighting upon some scene of death, and death in its least noble aspects. There was death in battle, death in the waters, death by pestilence, death by the stroke of the headsman, death by slow lingering after wounds. There were the seven sons of Saul, bound and pierced, in every possible attitude of crucifixion, and hanging dead, dying, or tortured aloft, while Rizpah, a strong virago, fought with the vultures below. There was St. Sebastian, after his first martyrdom, with all the apparatus of death about him, appearing before the Roman Emperor, and feigning that he had risen from the tomb. Nor was the grave permitted to keep its secrets; but in one picture, and that by one of the most serious of the French painters, M. Laurens, a dead man was shown dragged from his coffin, and set up to answer at a mock trial for the acts he had done in life. A powerful picture by M. Sylvestre, which gained the Prix du Salon in 1876, and now hangs in the Luxembourg, represented Locusta trying upon the person of a slave, in the presence of Nero, the poison prepared for Britannicus. On the floor the dying man had flung himself in horrible convulsions, while the murderers looked quietly down upon him. In all this class of work, however, M. P. P. L. Glaize carried off the palm with his Conjuration of Roman Youths,' in which the conspirators were ratifying their oath by drinking the blood of a slain man, whose hideous figure, with all the ghastly detail necessary to explain the subject, was a prominent object in the composition,

It is pleasant to find that in this year's Salon such work as this is far less obtrusive than in previous exhibitions, while pictures and statues conceived with earnest feeling and carried out in a poetic manner, it is by no means impossible to find. At the same time the criticism offered above applies to a very large extent; the subjects of many of the most important pictures are dealt with without any regard for the dignity or pathos which might be given to their treatment, and this want makes itself all the more felt the higher the technical qualities displayed. Thus, to take a very conspicuous instance, the Flagellation of our Lord,' by M. Bouguereau, is one of the great pictures of this year. In composition and drawing, and especially in finish, the work takes a high place; but in the case of the principal figure the artist seems to have had no other aim but that of portraying the extremity of physical suffering. The form of the Christ hangs from fastenings round the upstretched arms, and would but for them sink helplessly upon the floor; the body is bent inwards to avoid the blows, and the head hangs back. The representation of any figure in miserable agony like this would be wholly painful; but