own basis. And so they wait for the next competition, and again the next, and engage perhaps in each, with an equally fruitless result their efforts feverishly applied, their own solid work undone. This is the case even when the award is made in perfect good faith. Too often, however, competitions are made merely the cloak to a foregone conclusion, and then the affair may well be branded as jobbery. It is easy enough to invite various men to compete, while one of them is all the time destined for the prize, and by no means difficult, even in the most open of competitions, to decide upon grounds of favour rather than of merit. We have heard of a case in which one of the selected judges, not a sculptor by profession, himself entered into the competition at the last moment and gained the prize. The system is unsound altogether. It produces nothing of eminent value (to use the mildest term), and is scouted by some of the best sculptors. It has been tried too long already, is a failure, and should now die out.

The worst symptom and condition of our sculpture has as yet been only casually mentioned. It is the same which, in the history of all art, is ever the surest brand of decadence-a purblind reliance upon precedent, the crouching to authority, not in its essence and authentic meaning, but in the express form which it has assumed. This is the fatalest of signs in an art not rudeness, not ungainliness, not coarseness or stupidity, not even floridness and affectation, but this. Every art has its culminating point. Generations of powerful, superb men work up to it; the consummate man or men of the very nick of time realize it, fix it, appropriate its glory. Thenceforth it wanes; slowly, stopping and pulling up ever and anon, but still surely; and so it will continue until it either sinks into downright decrepitude, or else finds a new starting-point, and tends strenuously upward again. We need not follow out the examples of this principle in detail: painting, sculp

ture, architecture, the arts of decoration, all tell the same tale in their several cyclical periods. In sculp ture, no doubt the greatest period of Greek art remains to this day the central culmination. But it was not by attempting to reproduce it, but by starting afresh and applying it, that the greatest art of the Middle Ages culminated in the hands of such men as Verrocchio, Luca della Robbia, Cellini, Michael Angelo. In some of these, the Gothic impulse is as prominent as the classical: in none of them is the classical itself paramount, bet only the classical used and worked up into a new character.

Of course, in speaking of the reliance upon precedent shown by our current British art, we refer to the following in the ruts of Greek subjects and treatment, the pseudoclassical. We do not say that the average run of our sculpture presents any close approximation to the genuine character of Greek art -it does not reach high enough for that; nor yet that the aim is universal and exclusive. Many of ou works wander in far other direc tions, themselves of little promise. But, as far as we have a definite object of pursuit, it is the classical; and that for its own sake rather than for the lessons of catholic application which it is so well able to teach us. We turn over a catalogue of sculptural works, and find at the head of almost every page such titles as Andromeda, Venus Victrix, Narcissus, Hylas and the Nymphs, Jocasta and her Sons, & Bathing Nymph, Zephyr and Aurora, Psyche, Cupid and the Nymph Eucharis.

It is, we must confess, a problem of no small difficulty to reconcile the essential subject of sculpturetrue and beautiful human formwith the tendencies and require ments of our own age. Nor is it a light task to show, nor by any means obvious to the mind, why the subjects and the special form of treatment which produced the greatest sculpture in one age have little or no chance of resulting in similar excellence in another. But one thing is sufficiently clear to us

-that they do not so result; that the classical is a dead failure among us-dead in the literal sense of the word that it is the incubus, instead of the informing genius, of our work, and that the art will stagnate almost into inanition until some other aim shall be vigorously embodied in it, and steadily pursued.

Why, then, is the directly classical-the Greek form of art, or sculpture of gods, goddesses, and nymphs, of Cupids and Psyches, Auroras and Ganymedes-a failure among us Britons, and sure to continue such? There can be no doubt that they are peculiarly adapted for embodying the sculptural requirement of true and beautiful human form; and so far would seem to be the right thing. The answer perhaps lies in the very essence of all art. It is indeed true that this human form is the staple of sculpture; but it is also true that art, sculpture or whatever else, must above all things be vital-vital first, beautiful and well calculated for its special form afterwards. All art must express some real, inherent, implicit sense of the artist himself, and correspond to some distinct sympathy, some clear reality, of the age into which he is born; for the artist is but a part of his age, and cannot be isolated from it. The Greek assuredly illustrated this eternal principle of art in sculpturing a Venus or a Pallas; the Briton as assuredly goes against it.

The Greek believed that there was some being actually existent in that form, or of whose actual, personal essence that form was the fit human expression: the Briton believes and knows the reverse. The Greek enshrined the form and its meaning in his most reverent thoughts; the Briton regards it as a play of fancy and a mere object of art, a thing to be looked at and criticised. Its purpose, its hold upon the mind, is

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tation of a phase or period of art falls far lower, as being of a deadening influence. The supreme Greek art is too high a thing to be imitated, even had we the men capable of doing this with equal faculty. It is a model, an example of the qualities to be sought for, of that which made the Greek great, and might under the same conditions make the Modern great; but it is not a thing to be taken as it stands, and transferred into another block of marble. You lower its value as soon as you so treat it. The statue is a man's thought and art made substantial. You can beneficially study in it the sources of his thought, and the method of his art; but cannot abstract and appropriate them. To copy his facial angle, the straightness of his nose and forehead, the proportion of his head to his feet, is a poor process. You cannot be a Chaucer by writing a new set of Canterbury Tales, but only by seeing as many things as clearly, as beautifully, and as newly; another poem about Sordello will not be a Robert Browning's Sordello. The imitator is fated and a serf from the beginning. Had he even a small measure of the same faculty as his master, he would not imitate. The more he persuades himself that what he has to do is to attain the same result by the same means, the more incapable he will be of doing that rightly, or anything else. The art which is analysed into a glossary of precepts is a past art, and not a living one; a bit in the mouth, not a spur against the flanks. And it is thus that we see how even art so supreme as that of the Greeks may, to the servile henchman of it, not the freethoughted and aspiring student, become a veritable incubus.

Exception must always be made for the exceptional man. We are far from saying that no Mercury, Jupiter, or Juno, ought to be sculptured henceforth. The sculptor who is a Greek at heart will want to do them, and will do them well. If we had among us a sculptural Göthe or Keats, he would addict himself to such work to some effect. But we do say that sculpture will

not flourish among us until it is understood that no man is to suppose himself bound to attempt that class of subject, nor even until there are but few who feel the impulse to do so.

If now, going back upon our steps, we endeavour to find how 'to reconcile the essential subject of sculpture, true and beautiful human form, with the tendencies and requirements of our own age, we shall first recur to our distinction that, while the antique ideal is form so perfect as to be a fitting embodiment of deity, the modern ideal is expression and character, united as far as consistent to beautiful form, and so true and high as to bespeak the divinity that is within us.' To this we may add that the modern man is not only less drawn by his ideal of art than the Greek to beautiful form as his paramount object, but also less in the way of realizing it, even were he so minded. The double Greek discipline of of gymnastic' and 'music,' comprising respectively all that was demanded for the culture of the body and for the beautifying (or, as it is now termed, the æsthetic) refinement of the mind, specially qualified the society in which the Greek sculptor moved day by day to serve as an express model of what he required for the purposes of his art. Beautiful form was continually about him, and continually visible in its native grace and dignity. The modern is far from enjoying the same advantages. The body is not cultivated to the same pitch, nor the mind refined in a direction so consonant with personal beauty; and still less is there an equal opportunity for habitual study of the undisguised form. The inevitable result is that the average sculptor is not in any comparable degree imbued with the sense and love of human physical beauty, or incited to its embodiment. And as it is upon the average men that the average of the art depends, we may safely conclude that the natural, and therefore so far the right condition of our sculpture would be one in which the modern should feel,

study, and realize those elevating qualities of human nature which he is thoroughly in the way of, with something of the same insight and intensity which the Greek developed in the rendering of physical beauty. These qualities are what we have broadly summed up as expression and character-fully as visible in the modern society as in the ancient, and more subtle and multiform. Árt of such a kind, pursued in good faith and with a conviction and real study of its capabilities, and even moderate sense and skill, would be endless in interest, and would bid fair to elicit very soon such a public support of sculpture as Apollo and the Graces can never hope for. Of course, by expression and character we do not mean such character as Tam o'Shanter and Souter Johnny, nor such expression as the squalling infant that has broken his drumthat cherished memory of the Great Exhibition of 1851. We are speaking of expression and character so true and high as to bespeak the divinity that is within us.' This also we ask to have 'united as far as consistent to beautiful form? and it is consistent to an extent only perhaps limited by the requirements of truth in portraitsculpture, of contrast in subjects of mixed character, and of costume as a veiling of nude form, as well as by the fundamental consideration that the modern mind does not, so determinedly as the Grecian, regard beauty of form as the symbol of the divine. The very nature of the sculptural art, which is simplifying, calm, and abstract, entails beauty as an uniform element of treatment; and the art, as art, must of necessity sway the modern sculptor no less than the ancient.

It may be asked—Admitting the conditions of modern sculpture as above set forth, will it produce works so essentially and nobly sculptural as the ancient? We are not prepared to say for certain that it will. It must, we think, be conceded that the antique conditions subserve sculpture in a degree much more direct and absolute; and that sculpture has nothing else

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to embody quite so fully corresponding to its ideal as form expressive of godhead. But on the other hand we would aver without hesitation that the next best thing is to use the actual modern conditions, and not a make-believe of the ancient, to the highest sculptural purpose which they will answer; and that there is no saying, until this is fairly tried, how far they will go, or what they will lead to.

To state the exact starting-point needed for a true modern art of sculpture is not a task for us. It can only be done by a great sculptor, and that not in words, but practically in act. We may, however, observe that there are three phases of subject which seem well adapted to our purposes-portraiture, national character, and ideal inventions.

Portraiture is one of the most permanently valuable forms of any art, and has peculiar strength in bringing one back to reality from slip-slop and conventionalism. No nobler office can be presented to any artist than to transmit, in excellent art, the features of great men to posterity. At the present day, the question of sculptural portraiture is complicated with the especial untractableness of our costume. This is so ungainly and unsculpturesque as to suggest, what has been so often tried, a resort to classical drapery; while, on the other hand, that expedient throws an untruthful and hybrid air over the whole treatment. The remedy is, we conceive, worse than the disease. The modern costume must be grappled with as one of the obstacles which the art has to overcome; modified and accommodated at the sculptor's best judgment, but not evaded. The difficulty, moreover, scarcely affects bustsculpture; and this, as Mr. Falkener sensibly points out in his recent work, Daedalus, is a motive for restricting ourselves in great measure to busts. Indeed, these are sufficient for nine-tenths, or ninety-nine hundredths, of the men whom we carve, and would be sufficient under all conditions quite apart from the difficulty of costume. It

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is only a very considerable man indeed of whom we need care to preserve so much as a half-figure in sculpture, and only a plainly great man to whom a full-length can fitly be devoted. Legs and feet have not much to do with the portraiture of the man; trousers and boots still less. Hands, however, are really a typical part of him, replete with character and meaning; and if he himself is of importance enough to make them worth preserving, they merit on every account a careful study and expressive rendering very different from what is to be found in the mere 'sculptural hand' which the routine artist innocently tags on to his sleeve.

National character is a subject specially suited to the cosmopolitan tendencies of our age, and affords almost limitless variety of material, individuality, and treatment.

We

do not refer to such directly ethnological study as is evidenced, for instance, in the collection by M. Cordier, now exhibiting in London (though neither need such subjects be excluded); but to the rendering of whatever is beautiful, suggestive, and sculpturally available, in the character, type, costume, employments, or intellectual purposes of the various nations of the earth. This has truth, like portraiture an open field for all differences of feeling and perception in the sculptors; no restriction as to the number or quality of phases of beauty which it may include; and a real demand upon the artist's mind in seizing and presenting his subject. This range of the art is much more pursued by foreign sculptors, and especially the French, than by

our own.

For ideal inventions we have of course no suggestions to offer. They are the highest attempts to which the sculptor can gird himself, and not to be meddled with at all save by the fewest. We cannot even venture to define with any distinct limitation what should be accepted as ideal inventions; but we may at once and finally exclude a figure with no idea and no invention in it, named after a god of

the antique mythology. The name must not be allowed to tell for anything whatever. The subjects which we more particularly contemplate are such as embody an abstract principle, a moral or intellectual conception, some great fact in the Divine government of the world, any of which may be given either in a directly symbolic personation, or by example invented by the sculptor and manifestly designed to impress the central idea. In such subjects the opportunity for using nude form of perfect beauty is, we need hardly observe, no less unfettered than in mythologic subjects. Approaching or equalling these in the inventive power which they elicit, though not so strictly inventive in conception, are religious subjects undertaken by a truly deep and reverent mind, or monumental portrait sculpture of the demigods and heroes, such as Dante, Shakspeare, or Cromwell, more especially when it is attempted to represent the cycle of the man's mind and work by accessory personifying groups or the like. We may add too that there may be genuine wealth of idea-that idea of art itself, of beauty and power, which is the most final and infallible test of a work of art even in such a subject as a single human figure, embodying no more than its own noble manhood or womanhood. This must always be one of the most essential materials of vital or great sculpture; and we confess for our own part that we would much rather see living sculptors who have no native Hellenism within them produce such works with no title at all, or merely such a name as 'a study of the beauty of manly form,' than parading ever-succeeding Apollos, Marses, or Endymions. There would be more truth, modesty, sense, and promise in the plan.

We shall conclude by casting a glance upon the roll of our living sculptors. It will be no more than a glance, because it is no part of our object to attack or criticise individuals. If our estimate of the condition of sculpture is correct,

our respect for the sculptors as a body cannot be great. With the general body we shall not interfere; but we subjoin the list of the sculptors who are at present members or associates of the Royal Academy, and who therefore stand professionally at the head of their art. We shall not say a word in disparagement of any one of them, but will simply ask the reader to call to mind the general character of their works, and test our review of the art by them, as far as may be fair, not forgetting that these are the picked men only. The names are, among Academicians, Messrs. Baily, Foley, Gibson, MacDowell, Marshall, and Westmacott; and among Associates, Mr. Weekes and Baron Marochetti (a foreigner both in birth and in the character of his art).

Although we shall not disparage any of these gentlemen, we may be permitted to dwell a moment upon the names of two of their number. Mr. Gibson takes eminent standing among the living sculptors, not only of Britain, but of Europe. For knowledge and refined skill he is deservedly renowned; and, if these excellences, applied to the service of 'classical' sculpture exclusively, could give the art a healthy impulse, we might have seen by this time, throughout our whole school, worthier fruits of Mr. Gibson's long and indefatigable labours than we do. We have already expressed our conviction that these are not the means to a good end. Even had Mr. Gibson realized in his own works the high ideal of classic art, we do not be lieve he would have carried the art of his contemporaries onwards; and as it stands, we can only say that, while producing certain works which uphold our national credit on their own account, he has helped to keep up a mistaken object of pursuit among his fellows, and to rivet the fetters of conventionalism upon them. The second sculptor whom we would single out is Mr. Foley. His classical or ideal subjects appear to us very unequal; one or two may compete with the very best works of the school in