So you are the dressmaker, my dear?" she said. And a very charming young dressmaker I declare! Thirteen for dinner they said, and I would not go down for the world. And dear Archie just come home, and my cherry tabinet quite wasted!" And she stroked down her dress. "Just what I was at her age!" she said, seizing Hester's hand, and holding her a little off, scanning her up and down with half-closed eyes. "But time will make havoc." And she swayed herself to and fro, lifted her hand to feel that the likeness of her lover was in its place upon her forehead, and looked askance at the fire, with a half-sad, half-bitter little smile. "You will excuse me, my dear, if I poke your fire ?" And she made a little frisk towards the hearth. "The night is so cold, and you look such a sociable young person!" Hester placed her a chair, and fetched her a footstool, and then, at her bidding, sat facing her by the fender. 66 "What is the news from the world, my dear?" she said, dropping her voice and looking cautiously round her. They do tell such tales of the times. But Lady Helen don't allow any newspapers to come in. And Sir Archie is as close as an oyster. He laughs and says, 'I will not let them cut off your head, Cousin Madge.' (The Honourable Madge, my dear, to strangers.) So I said to myself, Our new dressmaker will have no scruples about telling me the truth.' "I know far less than you do, I am sure,” said Hester, fearfully. "I have come straight from London, and I was shut up in a steamer or a coach all the way. In Dublin, at night there was a crowd in the streets. They said some one was being taken to prison. It was terrible, the crowd was so quiet." Ah, ah!" said Miss Madge, nodding her head, "better did they shout and roar. And hist! my dear-what is your name? Hester! Excuse the Christian name. It is so much more comfortable between friends. I call myself Madge, the Honourable Madge. Ah!" "This country is safe, is it not ?" ventured Hester. "Safe!" echoed Miss Madge, with a terrible little laugh. Vesuvius, my dear, must be a nice safe place to live upon till the volcano begins to spout fire. Any night we may be hanged from our bed-posts.' Hester shuddered and drew nearer to the cherry tabinet. "Ör burned in our beds," said the Honourable Madge. "But that is no reason why we should have our dresses made unfashionably in the mean time. And I came here chiefly to compliment you on your dolls. Poor dolls would be burned, too, of course." "But, madam," pleaded Hester, "please pardon me if I ask you, does not Sir Archie Munro discountenance the disturbances? He does not concern himself with the troubles ?" "Don't he?" cried the Honourable Madge, giving her head a toss, and snapping her fingers. "It may be that he don't. He may or he may not. If I were a man I should, I can tell you, that's all. I would lead out my clan to do battle!" And the Honourable Madge grasped the poker, and made a fierce little flourish with it in the air. "Look in there," she said again, stabbing the fire, and making the red cinders drop about. burning? Does it not look like rows of houses La, my dear, don't turn so pale. And I wanted so much to speak to you about my new pink silk. Well, I'll bring it you in the morning.' And soon after this she pirouetted towards the door, pointed her toes in her long sandalled educational voyage may we hope that we are slippers, kissed hands to Hester, and disap- past the mysterious shoals where danger lies? peared. Then it is easy to say, "drink deep," but Nature has denied me a capacious swallow or a strong head, and I protest against the supercilious cruelty which would grudge me the little sip which quenches my inferior thirst. It was a very pale face that was raised in expectation when the third knock fell on Hester's door. "Come in," said Hester, all her weariness and fearfulness in her voice. "Have I come too soon?" asked Mrs. Hazeldean, advancing out of the shadows with two outstretched hands, "I ought to have let you rest. Have I come too soon?" Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. But Hester did not announce that she had had two visitors already. She only said "no" in thorough earnest; finding her fingers covered up in the clasp of two warm hands; letting her eyes take their delight in this new comer's rare face. TYRANNY OF ART. I, A wounded worm, am about to try turning, to see whether I can by any means wriggle out of my present abject condition, though, alas! a morbid development of the bump of veneration renders the hope a faint one. The first person singular is made use of in deference to the feelings of fellow-victims; but I am a representative man, and my class is a large one. Nature intended me to be happy, for she endowed me with a variety of tastes and a great capacity for enjoyment; but man has set up a number of artificial standards to which I am incapable of attaining, and this spoils my pleasure. Some of us are wise enough to take a line of their own and indulge their fancies, quite indifferent to the sneers or sermons of their kind; but as a rule we are dreadfully anxious to be in order, and to regulate our likes and dislikes in accordance with the dictates of acknowledged masters. We are diffident, subservient to authority, anxious to conciliate the cognoscenti; but we never get anything from them but contumely, which is most depressing. Persons of one taste wear its channel deep; I have many tastes and they are naturally all shallow. If I had no taste at all I might be esteemed, whereas each of my one-tasted acquaintances looks upon my feeble and partial admiration as a degradation to the art which he professes. When a man puts on a certain ineffable smile, accompanied with an elevation of the eyebrows and a slight shake of the head, I know what he is going to do; he is going to quote the only complete couplet of Pope that he knows. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring. Very mellifluous; but how is a man to get a large lump of knowledge all at once? Surely he must begin with a little. If knowledge be a good thing, a little of it must be better than none. Besides, if you come to that, what is a little, and what is much? At what point in our Why should Maule, my painting friend, rail at me so bitterly? It does not even appease him that I admire his own pictures, because it seems that the real merits are invisible to me, and that what gives me pleasure in them is of no artistic value. If I did not care for pictures at all, he would pity me merely; but that which excites his wrath and scorn is, that I get almost as much pleasure out of the minor beauties as he does out of the higher. He came upon me one day in the South Kensington Museum, gloating over one of Ward's pigs, and was not angry with me, "For you understand a good pig, I dare say;" he condescendingly remarked. But I thought he would have gone stark staring mad with me on another occasion for presuming to enjoy a landscape of Turner's. I did not know it was a Turner; it was a painting which took hold of my imagination. I did not know why. There was a haze in the atmosphere which recalled all the most beautiful real sunrises and sunsets I had ever seen; and the longer I looked, the more powerful was the effect produced upon me. So I looked on, and got my soul into the picture, as it were, until I seemed to be wandering and exploring, like a gamboge spirit, about that waste of water, cloud, and mountain, when Maule burst upon me. "A fellow like you, who has read bits of Ruskin without the slightest notion of what he means, hears that a picture is Turner's, and affects to understand it! Why, I tell you it is impossible you can like that picture." I explained humbly that I did not know who painted it, or I would not have presumed. Presumed!" cried he: "why you have been gazing at it like a man in a dream for half an hour!" "I beg pardon; I was in a sort of dream," I replied. "I meant no harm, but Claudes and Turners have that effect upon me, somehow." "Ignorant admiration like that is downright profanation," growled my friend; "such works ought not to be exposed to the vulgar gaze." It would be very nice to understand some of the principles upon which good pictures are distinguished from bad pictures. I have been through heaps and heaps of foreign churches and picture galleries, but I am ashamed to say that I could very seldom manage to extract the slightest pleasure from saints, martyrs, holy families, or the secular or mythological works of the most famous masters. Every now and then, indeed, I have been repaid for any amount of boredom. I do believe that I could go into Antwerp cathedral and gaze upon that Descent from the Cross, day after day, for months, without getting tired of it. It seems to me an inspiration, a miraculous picture. Without understanding why, the first glance at it told me that the painter was a genius; a man the hem of whose garment one would be proud to touch; something far superior to ordinary humanity; a demigod. And yet I have often looked at Rubens's picture in the Louvre, and at our own Rape of the Sabines, and it would never have occurred to me (if I had not been told), that the painter was a great master. Yet Maule tells me that if I admired the real beauties of the Descent, I could not fail to see those of all other Rubenses; while to me it seems utterly incredible that the two Rubenses I have mentioned should have been painted by the same man. It is evident that a great picture has a double power of pleasing, one appreciable only by the cognoscenti, the other adapted to the comprehension of the vulgar; and why should we not enjoy what has been provided for the gratification of our coarser tastes? Then there is sculpture. Why should not people be allowed to like marble drapery? Why tell them that the effect of a veiled figure is produced by a mere trick, and that they must not admire it? The poor honest folks have been yawning over naked stone men and women-trying to see the ideal-all their lives, and have failed. Statues have pleased them in a conservatory, because the gleaming white has brought out the green of the orange-trees, but in no other manner. And then they go to Windsor chapel and see the group to the memory of the Princess Charlotte; or they come across some such composition as the Reading Girl, and for the first time get hold of a bit of sculpture they can comprehend, and which gives them real pleasure. Short-lived is their triumph. Some blow-fly of an art-critic is certain to taint their enjoyment. "Pretty in its way. A piece of mechanical work carefully executed; but, my dear fellow, that is not Art." Well, but what is? The Laocoon, doubtless. What percentage of educated travellers can derive pleasure from looking at that? Perhaps if we had casts of works of art which we can understand, dispersed more generally throughout our public gardens and institutions, we might, in a few generations, be educated up to the higher branches. At present, with very few exceptions, the English people are in the position of a boy attending a lecture on mechanics who has not read algebra. People, again, who admire the most intellectual poetry, never will allow those who prefer an inferior style to rest in peace. It was a common custom some years ago, and may be still, for debating societies to argue upon Byron's pretensions to be called a poet. Yet that was in the true spirit of the Art Tyrant. Thousands of Byron's fellow countrymen might find an artistic want satisfied by his poetry; they never cared for Milton or Pope; they never thought they liked poetry at all, until Byron came in their way, and suited them. Now, because another order of poetry suits the critic better, why should he spoil the only intellectual delight the Byron lovers have, by perpetually uncovering their idol's clay feet? They listen to the troublesome critic because he is cleverer and better up in the subject than they are, and he abuses his power. The critic himself probably thought Lara the noblest effort of poetical genius in the language, when he was seventeen. If his taste prefer at a later period Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Browning, or Tennyson, that is no reason for turning up his nose at his old friend. But musical tyrants are the worst tyrants, and their slaves are beyond measure the most numerous. Almost every young lady learns music, and a very large number of young men who are fond of the society of young ladies, study it too, in order to ingratiate themselves. All these people might receive pleasure instead of pain from their pursuits, if it were not for the Art Tyranny which forces them to neglect what they like, for something else which a conventional rule asserts that they ought to like. No doubt a man with a refined classical taste gets a very high and intense pleasure out of classical music; but then the ear he has been blessed with, is a very different organ to the ears of the unhappy thousands of his slaves and imitators, who are too vain to own the inferiority of their drums. For me, I own fairly that I loathe good music. I wish I liked it; I wish I liked everything. But I don't like it. As for talking in a depreciatory tone of that which is too high for my attainment, I repudiate such vain folly, which is the affectation of ignorance. The fact is a sad one, that I am so utterly devoid of musical taste, that if I modestly allude to a favourite tune or performer, my classical friends laugh scornfully. And yet a cunning violin or violoncello playercan draw the tears to my eyes; some combinations of sounds fill me with awe; others make me long to dance or sing; others to fight; others plunge me into melancholy but pleasing reveries of the past. But nothing which the tyrant artists admit to be music, has this effect upon me; only what they condemn as trash. The Christy Minstrels raise me to paradise; a Sonata in F sends me to the antipodes thereof. Home, Sweet Home, is charming; but the variations upon it excite within me the germs of a canine howl. Why am I a degraded wretch because my drums are so organised? Do not call what I like to listen to, music; call it sweet sound; only let me have it in peace, and do not attempt to force upon me what gives me pain in place of what affords me the keenest pleasure. When I heard Mademoiselle Schneider sing Dites lui, I was distracted by conflicting desires to worship her, eat her, and hear her go on for ever. Offenbach, whom the Art Tyrants would roast at a slow fire if they could, has supplied a want in my life; I feel a personal gratitude to the man who has given me such true and lasting pleasure. Lasting, because in hours of weariness and depression his airs come back upon my memory, revive and cheer LEAVES FROM THE MAHOGANY TREE. TABLE FURNITURE (CHINA, GLASS, &C.). We have before us while we write, two things: a portfolio of photographs: and that simple, useful, but not very beautiful object, a balanced ivory-handled Sheffield dinner-knife. The steel is good, the blade is constructed on sensible principles, being capable of receiving a fine edge, and being thicker on the back than on the front, and thicker at the bottom than the top; but in point of beauty of form, the implement might be made by a Bosjesman. Nor is this Sheffield dinner-knife altogether framed after even the severest common sense, for it is rounded at the top as if it were intended for a lunatic asylum, and, moreover, the binding of the handle is put on in such a way that it harbours cleaning sand and dust while the letters of the maker's name, stamped unwisely at the bottom of the blade, also receive their share of the grit and blackness of the knife-board. : Now, this knife in the eyes of a jury of æsthetic epicureans stands arraigned as grossly deficient in several essential points, and its deficiencies represent the great wants of our modern commercial art productions. The prisoner at the bar-the table-knife of Sheffield-as part of the furniture of our dinner-tables, does not satisfy our craving for the beautiful, nor does it meet the requirement of our less exacting common sense. At the table of a man of taste, everything, even the simplest, should be sensibly adapted to its purpose, and should also be beautiful to the eye. It is no reason, because knives are cheap, and are thrown out by thousands from Sheffield warehouses, that they should be senseless in shape, and ugly in form. It is not impossible to unite the useful and the beautiful. The modest, vases of Etruria were beautiful, and the penny lamps of Pompeii were as exquisite in shape as they were judicious in structure. The Sheffield manufacturer may be indifferent himself to beauty of form or ornament; but that is no reason why he should refuse to meet the demands of the people of taste. He might at least make his knives useful; yet to be useful, a dinner knife should be sharp at the point, because it is not merely the carver who has to sever drumsticks, and penetrate between the interstices of joints. "But when were such things as dinner-knives beautiful ?" asks Mr. Sheffield. What can a dinner-knife be, but a steel blade thrust into a square or a round handle? Our answers are ready filed and docketted at our elbow. They are here in our portfolio of photographs from the antiquarian collection of that very practical virtuoso, the great shipbuilder, Robert Napier, Esq. We see before us, photographs of knives, forks, and spoons of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (that is from the reigns of Henry the Eighth to that of Charles the Second), of many countries, but chiefly Italy, France, Germany, and England. They are all beautiful, and are all works of art, though some of them are of such rude materials as box-wood and maple wood. Our first photograph is of a rich crystal fork-spoon, mounted in silver gilt. It perhaps indicates the origin of the fork: a spoon sawn into long teeth, so as in some degree to unite the two purposes of the flesh fork and the spoon. By-the-by there can be no doubt that the rounded top of the dinner knife is a convention dating back to the Queen Anne times, and earlier, when even well-bred people ate with their knives. A page or two further on we find a fork (date 1552, but there is no doubt that forks were used in Italy even at the beginning of the sixteenth century) with an exquisite steel handle embellished with busts of negroes and floriated scrolls. It is contained in an elaborately carved boxwood case, mounted with silver. People carried about their knives and forks then; and at London ordinaries in Fleet-street or near St. Paul's, gallants like Gratiano and Mercutio, fresh from their Venetian tour, would produce such forks from their perfumed doublets, to the wonder, disgust, and amusement of untravelled men. The next example we take up is still more admirable and it comes, indeed, from a skilful hand. It is a Flemish knife handle of the seventeenth century, surmounted by groups of Amorini (the Amorini are pretty allegorical creatures of the Cupid family). It is not only delightful to look at, but it furnishes an excellent grip, and is with reasonable care imperishable. Then we come to a Dutch knifehandle, in boxwood, of the seventeenth cen tury, carved with scriptural subjects in oval medallions; next, to a knife and fork (seventeenth century) with handles of tulips, leaves, and Cupids; next, to a German one with animals gnawing and tearing each other; next, to a Cinque-Cento spoon, with masks, cornucopias, and acanthus leaves; next, to a fine silver knife-handle with niello flowers; lastly, to ivory spoons used by poor mendicant friars of taste, who were forbidden silver. The handles are beautifully carved with little crisp quaint male and female figures seated underneath a tree. In these matters, then, it really seems we have less taste than the men of the seventeenth century, who could not discover steam, and who never saw a cotton mill in full work. The phantom voice from Sheffield answers: Well, they are beautiful; but, Heaven bless your imperfect vision, those knives were individual works of art, and cost gold! They could not throw them out as we do, ten thousand a day." "Granted, fair sir; that is exactly what we are driving at. It is individuality and intellectual work that we want to see on our dinner-tables, and the more of it the better. This very work, reduced gentlewomen and mechanics of talent and originality could produce, and would enjoy producing, thanks to our schools of art, at no very tremendous cost. They would be sure of a good market too." ing curve of the handle is adorned with a female figure, full of poetry and grace, holding a cornucopia, which twines into the scroll of the handle. Below the spout, is a spirited large grotesque masque, and at the base are raised gadroons. Now, this is an epergne worthy the table of a gourmet of thought, refinement, and taste; one who wants his eyes, between the courses and during the lulls of talking, to rest, not on mere silver plate and tame conventional figures, but on a production of mind. " But," a melancholy voice of scepticism replies: "but you have selected one of the masterpieces of the pottery of the world; how are men of moderate means to obtain such masterpieces ?" Our reply is, that fine bits of Palissy, fit for such purposes, though inferior to the example selected, are easily obtainable if a man have taste and patience. The gay If we were lucky enough to get a good bit of Palissy ware, well modelled, richly coloured, pleasant to the eye, and suggestive to the mind, we would try and also get a certain number of Palissy fruit and preserve dishes to match. These would not only have more individuality than Dresden or Worcester china, but the relievi would be sharper, the tints purer, the design less hackneyed, and the enamel colours and glaze more brilliant. fruit will show all the pleasanter when contrasting with the deep indigo blues and chocolate browns of the French ware. If we had the choice, we would specially select those curious dishes, with rivulets in the centre, and shells and fish, spotted trout and lizards, frogs or efts, all round. Palissy used to search for these creatures in the ponds, brooks, and hazel coverts, round Fontainebleau; and they always show his patient love of nature, his industry, and his skill. He observed their colours, and reproduced them with most laborious care. The olive-green tints of a tench, the golden orange of a perch, the emerald armour of the lizard, the low-toned greenish greys of a miller's thumb-he took note of them all, and toiled at the furnace mouth until the stubborn clay glowed with the transmitted dyes. These Palissy dishes are quaint, but they are never repulsive, and, half hidden with fruit and vine leaves, would just sufficiently attract and rouse the attention, without too much occupying it. We have before us, photographis of two such dishes-the one has a translucent brook flowing round the bottom, while on an island in the centre are fish, shells, and pebbles. On the broad sloping bank of the margin, crawl one or two lizards; there, also lurk a coiledup snake and a frog. The plants the artist has moulded, are ferns, ivy, oak leaves, and acorns. Apostle spoons are especial favourites of ours. The shape is a sensible one. We sometimes want to sip out of a spoon, not to thrust it bodily into our mouths; besides, a spoon handle adapts itself naturally to purposes of ornamentation. We have a photograph by our side, with a fine German example of the sixteenth century. The bowl is engraved with floral scrolls, and on the stem is a plump little Bacchus bestriding a barrel, and holding a cup and grapes. Let us pass on to another branch of table furniture-epergnes. The present stereotyped masses of silver vases on palm-trees, or rocks and figures, satisfy no one who knows what good art is. They are unmeaning and conventional; see one, you see all; they are redeemed only by the piles of crimson flushed azaleas and green drooping ferns which adorn them. Far better buy a rare old piece of Palissy, and introduce your flowers on either side of it, or in it, if it be a ewer, a vase, or a small fountain, of that wonderful man's work. It is good to think of such a man, of his heroism and struggles through the rain of contempt and the storms of envy, despised, mocked, contemned, until at last, when he had broken up his very bed and chairs, to feed his greedy and pitiless furnaces, the mould opened and disclosed the secret of new beauty. We turn to some Toulouse photographs for an example of Palissy work that would do for a central epergne at a modern dinner-table, and we almost instantly find one-beautiful in design, rich in ever-glowing colours, original in character, and a chef d'œuvre of the great potter of the sixteenth century. It is a vase about eleven inches high, grounded with that dark-blue transparent enamel in which Palissy delighted. It is indigo without its opaqueness, the early twilight hue of an Italian sky. The body of the vase (the drum as it is technically called) bears on each side a cartouche, with on one side a river nymph reclining, on the other the goddess Flora. Finely modelled masks-it is supposed In the second dish, the central island is from the hand of the great sculptor Jean studded with cockle shells, which are surGoujon, who was cruelly shot during the mas- rounded by a circle of small univalves. At sacre of St. Bartholomew, while at work on a each end is a large frog. In the circular rivuscaffold at the Louvre-occupy the spaces under let disport a pike, two carp, and a miller's the spout and the handle; and the intervening thumb while on the raised border, artfully spaces are filled with scroll foliage. The sweep-grouped, are two large lizards, two crayfish, a |