of thought has much to fear from the jealousy of a body barely tolerated in these days by public opinion, which could not attack Hoadley without destroying itself, even when its traditions were unbroken and its possession of authority uninterrupted.

After all the instrumentalities which can be brought to bear in this country against an obnoxious book have been examined, there seems fair reason for concluding that it has very little to fear except from refutation. How far it can be touched by this, our principle of abstaining from theological discussion prevents us from considering. It is not our business to determine whether the Essayists have conceded too much or too little. But thus much we may say that active controversy, however little it may promote charity towards those writers personally, will assuredly secure a better hearing for their opinions. There cannot be the slightest doubt that a vast proportion of this excitement is attributable to pure ignorance of the state of theological inquiry in the world, taken as a whole. It has thus happened that a volume essentially conservative in its objects, has been supposed to be destructive, though nobody provided with competent knowledge can fail for an instant to perceive that its authors have been striving to find a stand-point for belief from which the whole field of religious speculation should be visible. It is strange that the conservatism of the volume has never been detected through the treatment it has received from critics belonging to the Extreme Left of religious inquiry. An article in the Westminster Review, in which no taunt or persuasion is spared which might lead the Essayists on to the critic's theological position, has been cited over and over again by critics of Essays and Reviews as if its arguments were unanswerable when it urged that men who had gone so far must necessarily go further. Yet we should have thought that very small acquaintance with the history of religion would show that the admission that the Essayists

deed, for that matter, Servetus might have appealed to Calvin in precisely the same language which the Westminster Reviewer addresses to the Essayists, and we may be sure that he would not have been the less certainly burned for his pains. Nothing but the thought and study which refutation must necessitate, will show what is the relation of the Essays to the whole body of religious thought throughout the world. Yet it is not to be supposed that very wide reading or very deep thinking will be needed before the judgment of English theologians on this book is much mitigated. Only the other day the Evangelical community, shocked by the supposed latitudinarianism of Dr. Davidson's volume in the most recent edition of Horne's Introduction, selected a Mr. Ayre to re-write the same branch of the subject in a more orthodox spirit. Mr. Ayre had few qualifications except tolerable fairness, and the power of reading German. He evidently read as he wrote, and thus the first parts of his work contain nothing but the commonplace doctrines and commonplace arguments of his party and school. The doctrines continue to the end, but, as Mr. Ayre's studies go on, the arguments undergo a singular change. Nothing can be more curious than the comparison, already instituted by a contemporary, between Mr. Ayre's language at starting and his language when his work is advanced. The admissions he finally makes for the purpose of establishing his points, are enough to make the hair of Convocation stand on end.

There are of course not a few cler

1861.]

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gymen in the Church who are perfectly well aware that the effect of critically examining the opinions of the Essayists will be to produce greater leniency in judging them, and who are for that very reason determined that they shall not be examined. The low state of speculative culture in England, and the miserably small stock of positive knowledge which is frequently the result of the highest education given among us, explain the existence in this country of several religious theories which bottomed in wilful ignorance; but obstinate resistance to the invasion of habits of inquiry is not entirely confined to commonplace minds. It is strange to hear from one of the historical pulpits of London the avowal that, since any attempt to settle one of the points raised by the Essayists must necessarily open twenty others, all refutation is to be discouraged as perilous. Nothing can be done with such reasoners except to point out what is the reductio ad absurdum of their doctrine. Not very long ago, a meeting of clergymen and laymen belonging to the self-styled religious world, was held at the house of Lord Calthorpe, for the purpose of considering whether

measures

should not be taken for promoting the study of orthodox continental theology in England. Mr. Thomas Chambers, the Common Serjeant of London, who was present, vehemently opposed the proposal. A translation of an orthodox commentary on the Book of Daniel had, he stated, been placed in his hands. He had nothing to say against the book; it was very sound and very edifying. But, unluckily, the author had undertaken to confute some latitudinarian critic, and passages from this heretical writer had naturally been inserted in the text of the orthodox commentary. These passages, Mr. Chambers

declared, had so troubled his mind that he implored the meeting not to expose others to similar trials. The gentlemen present were touched by his appeal, and it was decided that the religious literature of the Continent should be placed under a general interdict. This may be

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absurd, but it is logical. absolute prohibition of refutation, on the plea that dangerous questions may emerge in its course, can be defended on no principle except Mr. Chambers's, and his principle would taboo half the Fathers of the Church on the ground that passages from antichristian writers are imbedded in their text.

It is important to observe that the system of religious teaching which has long been practised at the English Universities, and under which far the greater number of the English clergy have passed at one time or another, is founded on an exactly opposite principle to that of looking on the solution of theological difficulties as more perilous than useful. Both Oxford and Cambridge make Apologetic study part of their course. Both place in the hands of their students the best writers against the only forms of heterodoxy which have hitherto become popular in England. It is probably more through accident than anything else that this course of study has not been further extended. The several schools of theology which have risen up on the Continent have even now not found any exponent, or any adequate exponent, in this country; and so long as the Universities confined themselves to English controversy, they did as much as could be fairly expected of them. But the conditions of religious speculation among us have been altogether altered since familiarity with modern languages became a common accomplishment. The theological difficulties which Englishmen are beginning to be acquainted with, and which to Englishmen of the next generation will be as notorious as the argument of Hume against miracles, are not of a kind to be disposed of by Butler's Analogy and Paley's Evidences. Nobody now believes, against Butler, that there is a Natural Religion to which revelation is bound to show its conformity; nobody believes, against Paley, that Christianity is a figment of the second century. The questions of the day are far other than those

1861.]

EV

VERYBODY who has thought, or so much as read on the subject, knows pretty well at the present day that each form and each material or subdivision of fine art has its appropriate object and treatment. The painter knows that his province is different from the sculptor's. The water-colourist knows that his special range of subject and method of treatment are by no means identical with the oil-painter's; nor the oil-painter's with the fresco-painter's; nor any one of these with the glass-painter's. The sculptor knows that some things lend themselves to marble, and some others to bronze: and so on, through a lengthy range of divisions and subdivisions of the material wherewith fine art works. In the same way, not only the practitioners, but the scholars, students, critics (not always either students or scholars), observers, and generally all persons at all seriously influenced by art, recognise this same principle as an abstract proposition.

We limit ourselves to saying that this principle is 'known,' and is recognised as an abstract proposition,' because unfortunately it is by no means a rule of conduct, though it may be of belief. Nothing is commoner in_art-perhaps in art commoner than even in other pursuits-than to find a man talking reasonably, within a narrower or a wider range of thought and opinion, and acting or practically bestowing his influence in a manner not only unreasonable in itself, but quite inconsistent with his professed beliefs. And thus, although it may be perfectly true that the principle which we have glanced at is admitted as a fundamental and universal canon of art, it remains no less true that it is continually violated in practice. In decorative or applied art, the violation becomes more glaring than in fine art proper; as the latter, presenting in many cases an object per se, isolated and self-contained, may to a certain extent plead whatever measure of success it realizes as

its own justification. It may with a certain plausibility profess, 'I am successful; I am well executed and (within bounds) effective. If your traditions and terms of art do not square with me, you must enlarge them. It is not for me to modify myself, but for you.' The plea is indeed a fallacious and futile one, even in this case; because (to give the most obvious and concrete reason) the branch of art which transgresses its own special subject and treatment with moderate success would abide in these with great success, and these would be realized with great success by the form of art apposite to themselves. But even this plea fails in the case of decorative or applied art; which, as its very name implies, must decorate and apply to something else, and which cannot do either to any purpose if it arrogates to itself the qualities proper to some other form of art. The chaotic condition of the extant European practice in this respect was but too manifest in the Great Exhibition of 1851, and again in 1855. Of other countries we will not now speak; but, as regards Britain at least, there is reason to expect a very notable advance in the forthcoming Exhibition of 1862, an advance of course encumbered by a vast deal of the fog and rubbish of which it seeks to be clear, but still decided. To this the Government Schools of Art, with their active organization and strict system of precept, will undoubtedly have contributed in no degree.

mean

The cause why the practitioner of any particular form of art directs his efforts to transcending the means of that form, and combining it with those of some other, is substantially ill-regulated ambition, or, in the plainest language, vanity; simple wrong-headedness intervenes sometimes, but, as we have already implied, seldom at the present day. The designer of a painted window knows perfectly well that rich colour and invention of decorative design are the essen

tials of his art. If he deadens his colour to the requirements of a historical picture, destroys the decorativeness of his window by historical grouping and composition, and cares more for the academical drawing of his knees and toes than the patterns of his draperies, he does this, not under any real misapprehension as to which process would make his glass look best in the church, but through the itch to do more than other glass-painters have done, and to show his competence in points of art with which they concerned themselves but slightly. Now, vanity is a very fatal motive for a work of art as wholly fatal, perhaps, as any other that could be named. Even the self-display of a great man-a Tintoret or Rubens in painting, a Ghiberti in sculpture, or a Michael Angelo in both-is a grave deduction from the harmony and perfectness of achievement, and would tell still more destructively were it not for the idea and evidence of power associated with it in such cases. When it comes to the self-display of a small man, and this taking the form of an overweening disregard of his own material, the result is in the last degree hopeless and depressing.

There is another point of view from which this violation of the special conditions of an art may be regarded, and one which tells no less decisively against the abuse. In many cases, though not in all, incapacity is at the root of it as much as vanity; and the vanity which founds itself upon incapacity is surely the meanest of all. To take the instances from our immediate subject-sculpture.

When Monti carves a veiled face, or when the sculptor of a Belgian churchmonument elaborates the lace and trimmings of his episcopal effigy, the vulgar exclaim, 'How wonderful a difficulty overcome!'

But the adept in art smiles, knowing full well that this is a difficulty trivial indeed in comparison with the one which ought to have been grappled with, and is thus superseded or left unconquered. The

blotchy contour of a face under a veil, or the mechanical imitation of lace and mercery, is no difficulty at all in comparison with the thorough rendering of a human face. It is that which the sculptor was called upon to do, and has not done; and his complacency is as misplaced as it is petty.

From these general considerations upon appropriateness of treatment in all art, we pass to inquire, What is the right object and end of sculpture? The answer is obvious: Form,-true form invariably, and beautiful form as the rule, whenever the subject admits of it. And as the human form is at once the noblest and most beautiful, and the one offering the highest range of subject, and eliciting the greatest intellect in the sculptor, human form beyond all other is of course the staple of sculpture. It has been recognised as such in all ages, and will so continue to the end of time. More than any other school of sculpture, the Grecian school, the greatest in the world, addicted itself to the study and rendering of the human form in its uttermost simplicity, beauty, and majestygodlike form, expressive of godhead; a wonder, a lesson, and a despair, to all succeeding ages.

True and beautiful human form being the central object of sculpture, the next inquiry is how this truth and beauty may be presented in the most evident and impressive guise. Reason and example combine to tell us that vital energy in perfect self-control is the aspect of permanence most satisfying to the eye and the mind in a single figure, and, as a general principle, in a sculp tured group as well. Any expression or action which is merely transitory or of the moment becomes ineffective, if not actually displeasing, for permanent contemplation; still more any violence, contortion, or insignificant transition from one posture to another. This is the rule, and one not to be lightly infringed; though exceptions must of necessity occur, to which, as exceptions, it would be pedantry to object, as the range of the sculptor's invention and art