and why he is going. "Oh," says our friend with the kind eyes, "that's old feyther! we're taking him out with us to start the new cemetery."

The reply seems a little startling at first; until, indeed, we recollect that the man was not an artist, except in the elementary sense that he used words to express thought. The reply was bad Art from the point of view of one who is accustomed to measure his words and balance his sentences so that they shall express precisely what he means, and no more than he means. But the fault lies in the Paint, not in the Passion. For what does the man mean, except that which men in all ages have meant when they refuse to part with their kindred even in death. If he had said, "We take him with us that our bones may rest by his bones," he would have spoken the language of prophets and kings-as he thought their thoughts. Let us be just. The emigrant ship with its heavy freight of troubled souls is as legitimate a subject for Art as the waggons which Pharaoh sent up from Egypt to Beersheba for Jacob and his sons and his sons' wives and their little ones. The careworn faces of the emigrant women are as full of pathos as the faces of Naomi and her daughter. The man meant precisely what Ruth meant when she said, "Entreat me not to leave thee, nor to return from following after thee;" and yet!—

Half a dozen gentleman are seated round the table

after dinner. The ladies have withdrawn.

The host

As

is telling a capital story. It is about an emigrant ship, the British "rough," and the singular purpose for which "old feyther" is being taken out; and the story ends with an appropriate peal of merry laughter. the laughter ceases, and there is silence for a moment, a sweet sound is heard. It is singing. contralto voice. It is in the next room. men rise, and move quietly to the door. half open, so they can hear the singer's words, and they are these: "Entreat me not to leave thee; where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried."

It is a low

The gentle

The door is

But that is the very thing at which they have just been laughing; and they are not laughing now. It is true our host did not tell his story in a contralto voice, sweet and low; but that is not sufficient to account for the change; for he, too, can move men to passion or to What is this strange difference between the words of these two emigrants, the rough Englishman and the Moabitish woman, who mean the same thing? Is it only the difference of their way of putting it?

tears.

It is, after all, only the difference in the way of putting it. The Commonplace in Art, in posse, is the looking at the face of Nature and seeing only a mask. The Commonplace in Art, in esse, is the mask presented to us instead of the face. It is the putting of the

The

secondary truth in the place of the primary. Commonplace in Art is the attempt to tell a story-a true story and missing the point.

Take for instance that oldest of old stories,-the supplanting of the elder brother by the younger, and the stealing of his blessing. Men have wept over it, have trembled, have revolted. It is indeed pathetic, or terrible, or revolting, according to the point from which it is viewed. The helplessness of brute force against craft—and yet strength and cunning alike looking for a supernatural intervention in its favour. The low conception these people must have had of the Divine Nature, in thinking that God could be tricked into blessing the wrong man. But though these thoughts grow out of the story, they are not of the essence of it. To realise them only is to miss the real point. The real point of it is that the blessing of one does not exhaust the source of blessing-is not at the cost of another, who must for ever remain unblessed. The cry is always going up from weak hearts that somebody has "taken away my birthright." Who is this smooth fellow, this polished Greek, that has robbed us of our inheritance-the splendour of the human form? Surely that was the birthright of us all! What are these hands, covered with goodly raiment which should be mine, that have cheated me of my blessing? Were women beautiful only in the time of

Helen? Were men the sons of God only during the

Renaissance ? Is there but one blessing?

over.

Is there There is. And the two The first is "the fatness heaven "-the second is

not a blessing for me also? blessings are curiously alike. of the earth and the dew of "the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth" -not a great difference, nor one for the artist to fret Who then is this that comes so late to claim the inheritance which has already been given to the sculptors of the gods and the painters of the saints? -this rough fellow, fresh from the fields and hills and crowded streets of the great city?—this modern painter of the common aspects of nature, the common life of men and women, the common sufferings of humanity?—this rebel to the authority of Classic Art?-this outlaw of the schools?

He is one of whom the final promise stands thus: "It shall come to pass when thou shalt break loose that thou shalt shake his yoke from off thy neck."

VI.

THE SUN GOD.

I.-EASTER IN THE STUDIO.

HE painter has indeed "broken loose, and shaken

THE

from off his neck the yoke" of the schools. But though there may be only one birthright, there are many blessings-and of these there are two which he cannot forfeit. So long as there are sentient beings on the Earth, with perceptions limited to time and space, there will be the mystery of the unknown force which governs all things. So long as there is summer and winter there will be the loveliness of growth and decay. There is no Enchanted Island without an Enchanter. What Baldur was to the Norseman, what Osiris was to the Egyptian, what Adonis was to the Greek-that Christ is to the Christian. And to the Church that bears his name Christ is what the Sun is to the natural world.

It is thus that Easter has become not only the chief festival of Christendom, marking as it does the rising of our Sun-God, but the central theme of religious Art