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pets at Kidderminster; ribbons and watches at Coventry; cottons at Manchester; and woollen fabrics at Leeds. In such work a revival of the old trade guilds might take an honorable and useful part; no longer confining and restricting trade, but helping to bring to gether all the best examples of ancient work from which anything has to be learned, and of modern work to illustrate progress, to correct mistakes, and to stimulate honorable rivalry with foreign competitors.

These are some of the means of cultivating Art in the community, and of bringing it home to the minds and hearts of the people. There are others familiar to most of us. Picture exhibitions, for example-not merely great collections, hung closely, good and bad together, and left to tell their own story; but selections of a few great pictures, so hung as to be seen separately, and explained to the less instructed by competent critics, from time to time, in public lectures. Collections, again, of special works drawings, etchings, engravings such as those which have been, to their great honor, brought together by the Burlington Fine Arts Club in London, and by the Liverpool Art Club. In the churches, again, and in all places of worship, there is ample scope for effort by covering the walls with suitable pictures, by stained glass in the windows, by carving and other decorations-gifts for which individuals, in the true spirit of sacrifice, might well make themselves responsible. In the theatres, also, Art in the community might be materially helped by care and thought in the production of scenes, painted as works of Art, perfected in detail, and thus conveying solid lessons to those who can be instructed in no better

way.

While much might and should be done by corporate effort, or by those whose business is intimately associated with Art, we must, after all, in the present state of our knowledge, and with our present organization, rely to a great extent upon personal and individual effort. The idea of the community should be present to the minds of our richer classes, so that from private stores and accumulations something might be spared for the general benefit. It is lamentable to note the growth and dispersion of a no

ble collection of pictures-brought together with infinite pains and labor, kept in privacy during the owner's life, and then, at his death, broken up in the saleroom, and scattered throughout the land. It is too much, perhaps, to ask that such collections may be dedicated to the public-though Vernon, and Sheepshanks, and Ellis set admirable examples of such devotion; but, at least, the man who has taken pride in the formation of a gallery might spare some example of a great master for the benefit of his countrymen or his townsfolk. By such means inadequate corporate funds might be helped and supplemented, or set free for use in other ways. When we think of the private wealth of our great towns, of the fortunes made in them, of the millionaires who grow silently, and whose accumulations are revealed to the admiration and envy of the country after their death, we cannot but reflect with sadness upon the rarity of the instances in which any portion of such wealth is devoted to the benefit of the vast numbers of poorer people who have helped to make it. There is no considerable town in England in which there are not some people who, without feeling the loss themselves, or without injuring their families, could build a picture gallery, or give the public some fine work of Art, or decorate a building, or lay out a park or a garden, or endow a library with precious collections, or in numberless other ways-each according to his own taste and power-help to elevate, to brighten, and to dignify the corporate life of the community which has made them rich. Here, then, is a vast field for men of the wealthier class, who can raise themselves to the height of a great duty; who can comprehend the true nature of a community, and the function of each unit of it; who, in all its fulness, can realise the truth expressed by St. Paul-a truth at once sublime and familiar, soaring to the highest range, and descending to the humblest level-the truth that we are members one of another." In such cases, and especially in the corporate and public recognition of Art as a common means of refining and elevating the community, those who receive such blessings repay them a thousand-fold. They feel and acknowledge in their conduct the influence of a great picture; they stand before it in reverent

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admiration; however dimly understood, they carry with them to their homes and into their lives the lessons it has to teach. The beauty, the imagination, the power of Art exercise a direct and increasing influence upon the mass of the population wherever they are daily presented to inspection. You see this influence in their treatment of such things when they become the common possession. Give the people richly stocked gardens, and they leave the flowers untouched. Give them galleries and museums of Art-palaces in which they may wander at will-and hundreds of thousands pass through them in the year, and yet amongst the vast crowds there is no rudeness of manner, and no touch of harm to the works laid open to their study. Trust them and teach them; that is what we have to do with the people of our great towns in regard to Art. Give them buildings decorated with incidents from their own history; improve the design of houses and the architecture of streets; provide gardens and parks, and libraries, and galleries, and muse

ums; let there be open spaces in the towns arranged with regard to beauty as well as to health; let the community, by its corporate authorities, and by its wealthier members, recognise and promote public Art in every form; let us, one and all, learn that we are knit together in common tastes, and faculty of enjoyment, and power of appreciation, and capacity of rising into a region higher than that of the petty cares of daily life-and we shall see the reward in a growing intelligence amongst all classes; a keener perception of beauty in itself and in its application to habit and conduct; a nobler, better-ordered, brighter, more elevated communal life; less selfishness in all classes, the enjoyment of pleasures higher than those of sense, less drinking, less brutality, less coarseness of manner; a purer moral and social tone; a loftier mental standard; a true and real community of interest and sympathy; a municipal life nobler, fuller, richer than any the world has ever seen a life that would, indeed, be worth living.-Fortnightly Review.

MEDITATIONS OF A HINDU, PRINCE AND SCEPTIC.

BY A. C. LYALL.

I

ALL the world over, I wonder, in lands that I never have trod,
Are the people eternally seeking for the signs and steps of a God?
Westward across the ocean, and Northward ayont the snow,
Do they all stand gazing, as ever, and what do the wisest know?

II

Here, in this mystical India, the deities hover and swarm
Like the wild bees heard in the
In the air men hear their voices,
Yet we all say, "Whence is the

tree-tops, or the gusts of a gathering storm;
their feet on the rocks are seen,
message, and what may the wonders mean?"

III

A million shrines stand open, and ever the censer swings,

As they bow to a mystic symbol, or the figures of ancient kings;
And the incense rises ever, and rises the endless cry

Of those who are heavy laden, and of cowards, loth to die.

IV

For the Destiny drives us together, like deer in a pass of the hills.
Above is the sky, and around us, the sound and the shot that kille
Pushed by a Power we see not, and struck by a hand unknown,
We pray to the trees for shelter, and press our lips to a stone.

V

The trees wave a shadowy answer, and the rock frowns hollow and grim,
And the form and the nod of the demon are caught in the twilight dim;
And we look to the sunlight falling afar on the mountain crest,

Is there never a path runs upward to a refuge there and a rest?

VI

The path, ah! who has shown it, and which is the faithful guide?
The haven, ah! who has known it? for steep is the mountain side.
For ever the shot strikes surely, and ever the wasted breath
Of the praying multitude rises, whose answer is only death.

VII

Here are the tombs of my kinsfolk, the first of an ancient name,
Chiefs who were slain on the war-field, and women who died in flame;

They are gods, these kings of the foretime, they are spirits who guard our

race

Ever I watch and worship; they sit with a marble face.

VIII

And the myriad idols around me, and the legion of muttering priests,
The revels and rites unholy, the dark unspeakable feasts!
What have they wrung from the Silence?

Hath even a whisper come
Of the secret-Whence and Whither? Alas! for the gods are dumb.

IX

Shall I list to the word of the English, who come from the uttermost sea?
"The Secret, hath it been told you, and what is your message to me?"
It is nought but the wide-world story how the earth and the heavens began,
How the gods are glad and angry, and a Deity once was man.

X

I had thought, "Perchance in the cities where the rulers of India dwell,.
Whose orders flash from the far land, who girdle the earth with a spell,
They have fathomed the depths we float on, or measured the unknown
main-"

Sadly they turn from the venture, and say that the quest is vain.

XI

Is life, then, a dream and delusion, and where shall the dreamer awake?
Is the world seen like shadows on water, and what if the mirror break?
Shall it pass, as a camp that is struck, as a tent that is gathered and gone
From the sands that were lamp-lit at eve, and at morning are level and lone?

XII

Is there nought in the heaven above, whence the hail and the levin are hurled,
But the wind that is swept around us by the rush of the rolling world?
The wind that shall scatter my ashes, and bear me to silence and sleep
With the dirge, and the sounds of lamenting, and voices of women who weep.

Cornhill Magazine.

POPES AND CARDINALS.

It is one of the penalties of greatness in this world that a man in the position of the Pope has, in his old age, to lie in state-to see his career sketched in newspapers and magazines-to know that he is the subject of protocols, notes, and declarations, that his demise is the topic of discussion in all the chancelleries of Europe to hear his conduct canvassed, as the Times a few years ago canvassed that of a Prime Minister, in the past tense, even before he has perhaps seriously thought of shuffling off this mortal coil, and now and then to have to assist at his own obsequies, to overhear the candid criticism of friends and enemies alike over his grave, their speculations as to who shall take his place when he is gone and what shall be done when he has reached the end of the furrow; and in the case of Pius IX. the criticism and speculation have been particularly free and frank.

There is, or has been till now, a superstition that none of the Popes can outlive St. Peter, and, as far as the history of the Papacy can be traced, no Pope till now has reigned longer than the Apostolic Founder of the Holy See. Pius VI. reigned within three or four months of five-and-twenty years; and till the reign of Pius IX. this was the nearest approach to the alleged pontificate of Peter. The duration of that is said to have been twenty-five years, two months and seven days. Sylvester I. reigned twenty-four years, and Adrian's reign fell short of that only by about ten days. The longest reign next to these is the reign of Pius VII. That was twenty-three years and a half. But Pius IX. is now in the fiftieth year of his Episcopate, in the thirty-first year of his Pontificate, and in the eighty-fifth year of his age. He has, with one or two exceptions, outlived all the Cardinals who took part in his election in the June of 1846, has confuted the old belief embodied in the words Non videbis annos Petri, and is to-day, with one exception-that of Queen Victoria-the oldest reigning sovereign in Europe. Her Majesty is the Pope's senior as a sovereign by nearly ten years. But with this exception the Pope has seen every throne in Europe change its

occupant since the triple crown was placed on his brows in St. Peter's, and some of them he has seen refilled more than once.

The Papacy itself is no longer what it was. It is no longer, politically, one of the Powers of Europe. But the throne of St. Peter still stands; St. Peter's successor is still a sovereign, and is still entitled to the pre-eminence of honor accorded to him of old by Catholic sovereigns, although Pius IX. has had to share the common fate of the crowd of grand dukes and duchesses whose rule reproduced in Italy a few years ago the English heptarchy; and to-day he is like the rest of the sovereigns de jure in the Almanach de Gotha-a king without a kingdom. Time has brought its bitterness even to him. He has survived his own greatness, been shorn of almost all his feathers, and reduced to a palace and a garden, but, like Bacon, the gallant old man scorns to go out in snuff," and he has done his best to make up for the loss of his princely prerogatives by arrogating to himself the spiritual prerogatives which till now have been vested in general assemblies of the Church, decreeing his own personal infallibility and constituting himself absolute sovereign of the intellect and conscience of Christendom. These things, independently of all political changes, make the pontificate of Pius IX. one of the most notable in the history of the papacy; and the first question that the next conclave will have to ask itself when it assembles will be whether it has anything left to do but to register the last decree that the Cardinal Chamberlain happens to find in the pigeon-holes of the papal escritoire.

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Yet, after all, it was only by a mishap that Cardinal Mastai-Ferretti attained the triple crown at all. The popular candidate was Cardinal Gizzi, and the most powerful man in the college itself was Cardinal Lambruschini. MastaiFerretti was only one of a crowd, and in the first ballot he hardly seemed to be in the running. Lambruschini had the highest number of votes, and everything seemed to mark him out as the future Pope. But there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip even in a conclave; and

the Italians have a proverb that, in these contests, the favorite never wins. He did not in this case. In the second and third ballot Mastai-Ferretti came more and more distinctly to the front, Gizzi disappeared from the lists, and Lambruschini fell hopelessly into the rear. But if Lambruschini could only have kept open the conclave a few hours longer, he might have displaced his rival, and perhaps have placed the tiara upon his own brows, or, if not there, might at least have placed it upon the brows of his friend Franzoni; for Mastai-Ferretti was in bad odor with the court of Austria on account of his sympathy with the National party of Italy, and when the ballot that made him Pope was taken, the Austrian Plenipotentiary was on his way from Vienna with a veto in his pocket against the Archbishop of Imola, and with Cardinals enough in his train to turn the scale in favor of the Genoese Cardinal. The veto arrived a few hours too late, and the lagging Cardinals, entering the Holy City the day after the fair, found the Romans shouting vivas in honor of a sovereign whose name they hardly knew how to pronounce. The telegraph and the railway have put an end to all risk of anything of this kind happening again; for Rome is now within speaking distance of Vienna, Paris, Berlin, and London; and unless the conclave sits, as it is said it will sit, within twenty-four hours of the Pope's death, and, under a dispensing bull, elects his successor in presenti cadavere, there will be time between the announcement of the Pope's death and the day usually fixed for the holding of the conclave for all the Cardinals of Europe to reach Rome and to give their votes.

That implies, also, that the Veto Powers will this time be able to make their voices heard, if they wish, in the conclave, and that Prince Bismarck will have an opportunity to assert his right to a veto as well as Austria, Spain, France, and Portugal. At present these are the only powers that possess a veto upon the nomination of a Pope, and it has been challenged in the case of Portugal, although that is the only case in which it is said to rest upon a papal bull. Its origin in the case of France, Spain and Austria is only to be traced conjecturally; but the right itself has never been denied, and it has frequently been exer

cised. Austria intended to exercise it in the case of Pius IX., and the court of Madrid did exercise it in the case of Cardinal Giustiniani in 1830, and exercised it without assigning a reason, although the reason may possibly be conjectured from the fact that the Cardinal had been Nuncio at the Spanish court, and was apt to be frank in his criticism upon the foibles of persons in high position. The court of France, in 1823, tried to place its veto upon the election of Leo XII., and that veto would have barred his election if the French Cardinals had not been outwitted by the Italians, as the Austrians were outwitted by the Roman party in 1846.

66

These vetos are the only check upon the absolute power of the College of Cardinals to place any one whom they can agree upon themselves by a vote of two-thirds upon the throne of St. Peter; and, as far as the Roman Catholic Church itself is concerned, the choice of the sacred college is final and binding upon all, whether that choice be ratified by the veto powers or not. The bull of Nicholas II., vesting the power of election in the College of Cardinals, prescribes a form of procedure which is hardly distinguishable from that by which the head of one of our own Oxford colleges is chosen. M. About has put the papal constitution into a sentence: The Pope elects the Cardinals, and the Cardinals elect the Pope." That is the key to the whole papal system. Yet, except when in conclave, a Cardinal, as such, has no more voice or authority in the government of the Holy See than an acolyte who swings a censer in St. Peter's. He need not even be in orders at all; and that has been the case with some of the most distinguished of the Cardinals. Clement XII., in 1735, made even a child of eight years old-Don Louis of Bourbon-a Cardinal. Sixtus V. paid a similar compliment to one of his nephews, and Paul IV. startled the Sacred College by nominating a lawless and ferocious condottiere to the Cardinalate-Carlo Caraffa - one of his own nephews, who, knowing the weak side of the Pope, contrived to be surprised kneeling before a crucifix in an agony of remorse. Leo X. offered the red hat to Raphael, to console him for the loss of Maria di Bibliena, the niece of one of

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