acquaintance with the difficulties of art, and some appreciation of its successes. Surely intelligent persons observing and loving Nature must be capable of judging to some extent whether she is well or ill painted.

Undoubtedly there are art-critics, of wide knowledge and sympathies, more capable than the public of judging pictures. But there are art-critics who have much to unlearn before they are capable of judging as well. There are those who, possessing some acquaintance with galleries and treatises on art, have never read the books in the running brooks,' and try pictures not by Nature's standard, but by arbitrary rules which they have crammed and are unable to apply. There are those who belong to cliques, and see each through the spectacles of his clique. There are those who pique themselves on relishing only what is caviare to the general,' and rejoice in that superiority which rises to the admiration of what, to minds on a lower level, seems ugliness and affectation. In short, the present state of artcriticism is not satisfactory, and I regard it as an advantage to art that an appeal lies from the critics to the public, which has often justly reversed their verdict. Of course the public taste is not infallible, or beyond the influence of fashion; yet in the long run it has a strong tendency to discriminate between the genuine and the spurious. Educated persons are beginning more and more to ask themselves, not whether a picture is after the manner of Turner or of Cox, nor what art-critics or professors say about it, but whether it conveys to their minds the sublimity or the beauty of Nature.'

1 Since writing the above, I have read Mr. Poynter's Lectures, lately published, in which occur the following passages :-

'The broad external facts of Nature are patent to everybody. An ignorant person discovers in a landscape picture that moonlight is represented, for he sees the moon in the sky, the reflection in the water, the light catching the roofs of the houses and the tops of the trees, and the candle-light shining through the windows. The picture may be the veriest daub, without a single point given correctly; but the fact of the moonshine is made clear, and the unpractised observer gazes with fond admiration on what he considers a miracle of faithful painting. . . . And so a mass of work, better no doubt than the very bad I have just quoted as an example, is accepted by the public as being admirably true, which, though rendering cleverly unimportant things, is thoroughly false in all points where a real artistic insight is necessary." Elsewhere Mr. Poynter says: It is almost impossible for the best artist of these days to free himself from the feeling that his best work is in some way put forward for criticism, and until he can do this there is not much chance of his attainment of a better style.'

I think that Mr. Poynter overdoes his contempt for the public, at least for the more educated part of it, in supposing them to delight only in false and coarse danbs, and to be wholly insensible to the refinements of painting. Those refinements may be, and I believe are, appreciated in their effect, and missed if absent, by numbers who have not technical knowledge enough to be aware how the effect is produced. As a matter of fact the public have and do for the most part appreciate the best pictures of the best artists of the day, and have sufficient discernment to detect occasional bad work even on the walls of the Royal Academy. Mr. Poynter will himself admit that with respect to Turner's later pictures the public were right and Mr. Ruskin was wrong. Though the opinions on art of men so eminent as Mr. Poynter

To return from this digression. The more careful study of Nature, the increasing habit of painting out of doors, and perhaps may be added photography, a valuable auxiliary to art if used with discretion, have greatly advanced the painting of landscape. More accuracy of form has been attained, more truth of colour, and many time-honoured conventionalities have disappeared. More attention has been drawn to the beauty of what used to be grandly ignored as the mere detail of Nature, beneath the notice of the artist, and interfering with the breadth of his effect, a beauty which did not escape Wordsworth when he painted in his way the mountain daisy— The beauty of its star-shaped shadow thrown

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On the smooth surface of the naked stone.

Artists now condescend to paint, and to paint carefully, weeds, grass, brambles, and ferns, which were generalised,' as it is called, that is to say, not painted at all, by most of the old masters. Not indeed by all; for Titian sometimes painted weeds finely. The historical painter never supposed himself exempt from the necessity of from time to time studying from his models; the landscape painter is beginning to discover that study from his models-the rocks, the rivers, the trees-is no less necessary to him, and that by neglect of it he deteriorates. The effect of this more conscientious study is apparent in our exhibitions, and in some measure in those of the Continent. Millais's foreground in Over the Hills and Far Away' is, I believe, better of its kind than anything painted by Turner; so are Brett's shingle, wet sand, and breaking waves; so are Vicat Cole's cornfields; so are Davis's cattle pieces; so are Leader's grass, gorse, and brambles; so are Loppe's glaciers; though none of these artists possess Turner's extent of knowledge, his imagination, and mastery of effect. To these names may be added those of Graham, of Hunter, of M'Whirter, of Smart, of M'Callum, of Hunt, of Henry Moore, of Oakes, of Parton, of C. E. Johnson, and many more, some of whom, perhaps scarcely enough appreciated in their day, may possibly, when they become old masters, be over-estimated at the expense of their successors by connoisseurs of the future.

Nor in this country alone has landscape art experienced a revival. Good landscape painters have appeared in Norway, in Sweden, in Russia, and indeed throughout the greater part of the Continent. America, too, can boast of her Church and her Bierstad, undaunted by the Rocky Mountains and Niagara.

I must, however, be allowed to express some regret that many of our landscape painters confine themselves so much to special departments of landscape. Having achieved success in some one field, the will always command respect, the claim apparently set up on behalf of a few artists to the exclusive right of judging pictures, together with entire immunity from criticism for themselves, is as inadmissible as would be a similar pretension with respect to literature by a small coterie of authors.

artist is too much disposed to linger there, instead of ranging to pastures new. There is a tendency to too much subdivision in art. It is difficult to give a good reason for a hard line of demarcation between the figure painter and the landscape painter; but the further subdivision of landscape painters into marine painters, mountain painters, architectural painters, &c., seems positively injurious, limiting the artist's vision and narrowing his mind. Every truth of form and colour is related immediately or remotely to every other, and the most comprehensive survey is necessary for a thorough acquaintance with myriad-minded Nature. When an artist shall be found to combine the technical skill and power of truly rendering particular scenes, possessed by the best painters of our day, with an imagination ranging over Nature, and stored with what is grand and beautiful in all her aspects, then, and not till then, will arise the Michael Angelo of landscape.

R. P. COLLIER.

THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY AND

THE LATE ELECTION.

A SEQUEL.

IN a former article on this subject it was asserted that the result of the late general election was a surprise to both Liberals and Conservatives, and still more so to that great body of the public which cannot properly be classed with either. It was further suggested that the gulf which in our crowded cities separates the rich from the poor, keeping the former in as complete ignorance of the latter as if they were on another continent, might to some extent explain the fact. And I pointed out what I conceive to be the danger to be apprehended from the political action of a class which is so completely hidden from our view, and liable to such sudden impulses. It was not intended to place this view before the public as a party view, or to leave it to be supposed that this was all which the Conservative party had to say about its own defeat. And I have therefore asked permission to supplement my article of last month by some remarks of a more practical character, explaining what seem to Conservatives to have been the actual efficient causes of the Liberal victory.

Conservatives believe that the institutions of this country represent a political theory more conducive to the welfare of society than any which has as yet been submitted to the test of experience; that while individual freedom is secured by them, those moral qualities are developed in the people at the same time, which are not less essential to national happiness than either mental culture or material prosperity. They see in this country at the present day, we will not say a party, but a body of opinion hostile to these institutions, and in favour of reforming them in such a manner as to provide rather for their ultimate extinction than for their more effectual invigoration.

Since writing the above I have read a speech by Mr. Leonard Courtney in the House of Commons which gives utterance to the same apprehension. Very few of them had seen the three last elections without feelings of anxiety and concern. He did not like to see these big turn-over majorities: they were unpleasant: they showed great instability in the public mind.'

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They consider it their duty to resist the progress of these opinions by every means at their command, and to use for that purpose all the advantages which the accidents of birth, wealth, or rank may confer upon them. When, therefore, they find themselves suddenly deprived of a position which enabled them to give effect to these convictions, without being forewarned of the event by any such signs and tokens as usually proclaim to governments the unpopularity of their public policy, they are naturally led to inquire whether anything else can be in fault. They fail to discover any strong wave of popular passion,' any deeply marked resentment at what the Government either did or left undone, any craving for organic change, any soreness at neglected grievances, adequate to explain this abrupt withdrawal of confidence from the Conservative Administration. Some there was of each, no doubt. But we cannot allow that any change has taken place in the feeling of the country towards the Government at all corresponding to the present disparity of parties in the House of Commons. In support of this assertion I may quote a leading article in the Times of the 4th of May last, long after that journal had given in its adhesion to the new order of things, wherein the writer says :—

In the House of Commons the minority will insist upon its privilege of mature deliberation all the more resolutely, because the result of the recent elections was not determined in any appreciable degree by a popular cry for any particular reforms. After the general election of 1868 the disestablishment of the Irish Church was seen to have been decreed beyond challenge by the vast majority of the electoral body. But no project of reform at present occupies such a position, or can be said to have been predetermined by a powerful movement of national opinion. No question is to the electors of our day what Parliamentary reform or free trade was to a former generation. Parliament has, therefore, a much wider scope for the discussion not only of details, but of principles; and ministers, however great and well-disciplined their majority may be, are bound to remember this. They must be prepared to expound and enforce the reforms on which they are bent, with much more elaboration and patience than if the country had pronounced with eager enthusiasm in favour of their plans. It is remarkable that the adverse verdict of the country, so far as its meaning can be interpreted, was not provoked by the inertness in legislation evinced by Lord Beaconsfield's government. The electors were not angry with the late ministers because they failed to extend the franchise, or to reorganise county government, or to pass a criminal code. What alarmed them was the supposed purposes of the Prime Minister; what they demanded was a change of men rather than measures.

If this is the state of the case, some parentage must be found for the loss of a hundred and nine seats other than the supposed purposes of the Prime Minister.' What the writer means by this expression is not quite clear; but if he means Imperialism and 'jingoism,' and so forth, these ideas are thought to find a congenial soil in the imagination of the working classes, as we have been told over and over again by the Liberals themselves.2 The working men were badly off, and they

2 See especially a remarkable article in the Spectator, May 8.