were Cathodes a spike French; CALCETOS CAS when it was essential for a posible, from the acquisition dt was to make them friends, and treated them as if they were more aggravating because he " = ' The Belgians, who were of its other members, were their inferiors. They comgarity by the minority. They

Disk bat they were represented only

menes n. Pachament, and, what was worse in

w cone ch where the powet a. Pelement was nothing to that of the Nong and the butcanoracy, Dutchmen were constantly preferred for all administrative positions, so that in 1829 hardly one public official in ton was a Belgian. The same partiality which coloured the executive made itself apparent in legislation also. Trial by jury and judicial publicity were ablished in Belgium because they did not exist in Holland. A 153 was taken off colonial produce, clictly consumed in Holland, and impos d on meat and grain, the great products of Belgium. To discourage the use of French, civil advantages were given ✪ Datch. To curly the Catholic Church, the education of its clergy id, to crown all, King William eansed wiiversal gate 15ty of the press and by the signal

perversions of justice by which he succeeded, through the verdicts of removable judges, in imprisoning and banishing outspoken critics. In the face of facts like these it is idle to represent the Belgian Revolution of August, 1830, either as, on the one hand, a mere ricochet of the French Revolution of July, or, on the other, as an unavoidable result of the original composition of the kingdom. The Belgian Revolution had been in contemplation before that of France broke out, and its causes lay, not in the original situation of things, but in the positive maladministration of the King, which had in the course of fifteen years rendered the situation thoroughly insupportable. He had incensed the Catholics by his aggressive interference with their spiritual affairs, the Liberals by his violations of justice and of modern liberties, and all alike by his gross partialities for the Dutch. He was engaged in a task which required, above most, that he should have faith in justice and in scrupulous equity, and he wanted the courage to exercise the faith which was the one condition of his success.

The separation of the two countries having become inevitable, European diplomacy determined to sanction the experiment of Belgian independence as the course best calculated to save the territory from French annexation. This experiment has always been regarded as a particularly interesting one, because it serves to solve, by a kind of crucial instance, two of the most important political questions of the present time. It helps to decide the fate of small States in the presence of the modern military empires, and the fate of constitutional government in a Catholic country. There are many persons who declare that the days of small States are gone, and that they cannot possibly thrive or endure under existing political conditions. There are many more who believe, with Bossuet, that absolute monarchy is the natural form of government for a Catholic country, and that the Romish Church and the modern State cannot possibly be reconciled together. Now these two impossibilities constitute precisely the task to which Belgium is called, and, to make bad worse, they both present themselves to her in specially difficult forms. Belgium is not only a small State, but a small State divided between two different races who speak two different languages, and adjoining the territory of a great Power which is allied with the one race by language, which in former days possessed the country, and which often harbours the dream of conquering it back again. Then, Belgium is not only a Catholic country but the most Catholic of Catholic countries, and it is not only a modern State but the most modern of modern States. No other Catholic nation contains so small a proportion of dissentients from the faith; out of its five millions of inhabitants not 15,000 belong to other communions. Nor is there any other Catholic nation where the dogmas of the Church are still, on the whole, so sincerely accepted. The educated intelligence is, no doubt, there, as elsewhere, departing farther from the traditional creed, and freethinking enjoys, if not a very numerous, at least a very

In short, while the symbolic stage of art is by its nature synthetic, tending regularly towards the classical equilibrium between the mental conception and the physical means, and gradually subjecting art to the all-engrossing interest in form belonging to the classic phase; the romantic stage, on the other hand, is absolutely disintegrative, destroying the classical equilibrium, developing the means beyond their just limits, and gradually substituting a non-artistic aim for the classical desire for mere beauty of form; until at length the art, no longer vital, becomes entirely subject to laws of development belonging to other mental products, and artistic form is, as it were, dragged in the footsteps of literary and scientific movement.

Thus we have attempted, in accordance with our definition of that half of the science of Esthetics which we have called Comparative, to show the laws which regulate the genesis and evolution of art. We have seen that the artist is but the individual example of a necessary condition of art; that the civilization of an artistic period cherishes and modifies, but does not produce or direct, the art of that period, which is born of certain inevitable tendencies in human nature, and which grows in accordance with certain necessary phenomena of mental change, and action, and reaction we have seen that the Hegelian classification of art into symbolic, classic, and romantic is correct in its definition of each of these conditions, but erroneous in limiting this definition to the essential nature of any one art: we have seen that no art is radically either symbolic, classic, or romantic, but that every art is by turns, and according to its degree of development, symbolic, classic, and romantic: we have seen also the evolution of art in its classic stage, as it passes through the three phases which we have conventionally designated as heroic, dramatic, and idyllic. In the course of this study we have had occasion to show, almost at every step, that the general nature of all the arts is the same, because they are all due to the same mental cravings; that the general evolution of all the arts has been absolutely homogeneous, and that all special differences in the nature and evolution of the various arts, compared with each other, are due to the differences in the physical means which they respectively employ. We have thus, in our rough outline of a system of Comparative Esthetics, attempted to bring the genesis and evolution of art into the domain of positive science, by showing them to be referable to unvarying law. It belongs to the other great branch of the science-to Absolute Esthetics-to bring within the domain of law the more complex phenomena of the effects on themind, and of the consequent absolute value of those various arts, and stages and phases of art, the mere evolution of which constitutes. the legitimate field of study of Comparative Esthetics.

VERNON LEE.

BELGIUM: THE PROBLEM OF LIBERTY IN

CATHOLIC COUNTRIES.

THE

HE jubilee of Belgian Independence which is now being celebrated affords a natural occasion for asking the question how far the Belgian experiment has succeeded in the past and how it seems likely to fare in the future? The creation of the kingdom of Belgium, fifty years ago, was regarded at the time with almost universal impatience and distrust. It dissolved what was thought an exceptionally hopeful political arrangement; it constituted what was believed to be an exceptionally hopeless one. Belgium and Holland appeared to belong to one another more even by mutual interest than by mutual contiguity. They were not only the neighbours but the complements of each other, the one supplying exactly what the other needed. Holland was

a commercial country, Belgium an agricultural and manufacturing one. The Dutch colonies gave a market for Belgian produce, and Belgian produce furnished employment for Dutch ships. Then neither country seemed by itself strong enough to endure in the ordinary struggle of States, but when united they made a kingdom of substantial size, whose independence other powers would be obliged to respect. Their very differences of religion and language were looked upon less as sources of peril than as guarantees of stability and progress. To unite the most exclusively Catholic country in Europe with the most decidedly Protestant one would save the former from lapsing under obscurantist and retrograde influences. And, as to differences of language, Holland with its German dialect would prove an obstacle to the encroachments of France, and Belgium with its Latin specch would constitute a similar barrier to those of Germany. No arrangement, therefore, was more natural, or more likely to conduce both to the prosperity of the people immediately concerned and to the general balance of power in Europe, than the establishment of the kingdom of

the United Netherlands by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 appeared to be. No doubt the consent of Belgium had not been gained to it; on the contrary, the Belgian bishops and notables had declared against it by a considerable majority; but the hope was legitimately indulged that all objection to the union would eventually disappear under the experience of its unquestionable advantages.

This hope would have been gratified had it not been for the gross misgovernment of the country by the Dutch King. If the horse threw off the rider, as Pitt predicted when a union of Belgium and Holland was suggested to him in 1790, it was due more to the rider's unskilful horsemanship than to any other cause. William I. was a superior but opinionated man, who mistook the nature of the task to which he was called when he received the sceptre of Belgium, and whose policy towards that country was, from first to last, exactly the opposite of what the situation demanded. Since the Belgians had been made his subjects without their own consent, they ought to have been wooed even after they were won. There was only one way of overcoming any dislike they might entertain to their new position, and that was to treat them with confidence, with consideration, with scrupulous and even favourable respect for their equal rights, and to make their position morally agreeable as well as materially advantageous. William's tactics were precisely the reverse. He had no confidence in them. He suspected them of French leanings because they were Catholics and spoke French; and he looked upon them as a dangerous class whom it was essential for the public safety to restrain, as far as possible, from the acquisition of political power. What he had to do was to make them friends, and he failed to do it, because he always treated them as if they were enemies, and the treatment was the more aggravating because he showered his favours on their neighbours. The Belgians, who were unwilling to enter his house as the equals of its other members, were naturally opposed to remaining in it as their inferiors. They complained of it as a government of the majority by the minority. They were more numerous than the Dutch, but they were represented only by the same number of deputies in Parliament, and, what was worse in a country where the power of Parliament was nothing to that of the King and the bureaucracy, Dutchmen were constantly preferred for all administrative positions, so that in 1829 hardly one public official in ten was a Belgian. The same partiality which coloured the executive made itself apparent in legislation also. Trial by jury and judicial publicity were abolished in Belgium because they did not exist in Holland. A tax was taken off colonial produce, chiefly consumed in Holland, and imposed on meat and grain, the great products of Belgium. To discourage the use of French, civil advantages were given to Dutch. To curb the Catholic Church, the education of its clergy was interfered with. Aud, to crown all, King William caused universal indignation by trampling on the liberty of the press and by the signal