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It is true that occasionally the artist succeeds in suggesting an incident, and in some cases-notably in Itchō's and Hokusai's paintings -in giving a highly dramatic character to a picture; but this is not esteemed by native connoisseurs as the highest branch of art, which is, in their opinion, merely the portrayal of some object or objects of beauty. This almost exclusive appeal to the eye rather than to the intellect, makes the study of a large collection of Japanese pictures a tiring task, however much one may admire individual specimens of the art. Beauty of form palls upon the eye when there is nothing beyond it to relieve the weight of admiration due; and effects which at first sight surprise and delight, lose part of their charm by repeated and lengthened study.

Nothing strikes the student of the art more than the extremely limited number of subjects at the command of the masters, with the exception of Tanyu, Itchō, Hokusai, and one or two others, and consequently the numerous repetitions of the same motives in every large collection. The well-recognised Buddhist saints and episodes; conventional landscapes without perspective; birds-such as cranes, sparrows, hawks, pheasants, pigeons, and poultry; mammalia-of which the favourites are horses, dogs, monkeys, and cattle; and endless reminiscences of vegetable life,-form the stock-in-trade of the majority of Japanese artists. In less skilful hands these subjects would be worn threadbare, but a true Japanese draughtsman never fails to give fresh grace and beauty to even the tritest motives. Their treatment of cranes, the most popular of all subjects, is a wonderful instance of this. Almost every artist in Japan has painted these birds either on the wing or on the ground, and yet it would be diffi

cult to find two which by any possibility could be considered to be replicas. In the portrayal of the human figure they are not so successful as with birds; but still they are able to infuse into it a life, vigour, and naturalism which cannot be surpassed-although, at the same time, they are plainly without that knowledge of the symmetry of form which was taught us by the Greeks. As caligraphists and colourists they are without rivals; and though their best works show defects of detail, there are observable in them brilliant effects and harmonious graces which testify that their right hands have been touched with live coals from the altar of genius. In the words of Mr Anderson, the art in its present form

"must be judged by itself, with a generous appreciation for its merits, and a liberal indulgence for such shortcomings as result from errors of teaching. We must recollect that the Japanese painter, fettered as he has been for centuries by traditions of practice that exaggerated the importance of caligraphic skill and excluded the study of chiaroscuro, perspective, and anatomy, has nevertheless succeeded and suggestiveness that might induce in revealing to us a wealth of grace the sternest critic to forgive all the faults of his system, though it may not justify the ardent admirers who cite those very faults as models for imitation."

In conclusion, we will only add that Mr Anderson's masterly and eloquent treatment of the subject is worthy of all praise; that his criticisms are marked by a true artistic feeling and a judicial discrimination; that as a specimen of typography the text is well worthy of the admirable illustrations furnished by Wilhelm Greve of Berlin; and that, taken altogether, the work forms a splendid monument of a beautiful art.

THE OLD SALOON.

CHRISTMAS is over and gone, and there are few, we think, beyond childhood, or at least youth, who are not relieved to be free of that clamour of general merrymaking which, whether real or not, is certainly a kind of human necessity in the midst of the frosts and chills of a northern winter. Christendom does not universally treat the feast according to English usage. We in Scotland are perhaps in the majority of nations when we make New-Year's Day the centre of friendly demonstration. But at all events a "festive season," a moment of protest against the dreary enveloping cold, the long succession of dark days, the monotone of winter, especially amid insular fogs and mists, is a necessity and we are all glad when it is well over. The usual reflections on such a subject are trite enough. Those thoughts that we give to the empty chairs, to the faces disappeared, to the hands that will clasp ours no more: every one expresses, and many people feel these inevitable recollections; but they are soothing in comparison with the pressure of Christmas presents, Christmas provisions, Christmas cards-that woful invention of recent times and all the conventional apparatus of the season. We have got over it more or less bravely, thank heaven! and now settle down again to the consideration of a steady-going year, newly established in harness, and fit for all we can get into it, or which Providence or fate, if you prefer the word, may get into it-of which, heaven help us! we know little enough. Anyhow, the light of the

common day comes back, always steady, whatever may interrupt it, whether a gust of gaiety or the gloom of mourning, a wedding or a funeral. None of the interruptions are half so wonderful as the steady pertinacy of human living, which goes on unwavering through them all.

The end of the year brought us so many books, which are our staple commodity in the Old Saloon, that we can scarcely expect the. new-born year to produce already such an overflow; but yet there are enough for all comers in the red and blue and brown volumes that arrange themselves in a comely row upon the table, and offer us every kind of mental entertainment, from the solid food of thoughtful history to those fiery hors-d'œuvres, most justly named, which stimulate and pique the appetite when it fears to encounter more substantial fare. Mr Lowell's little book is neither one nor the other. If we were to continue the metaphor, we might compare it to the soup, thin, but clear and most carefully compounded, with suggestions of all manner of fine savours, and the most intelligent cookery, which preludes a diner soigné on the table of all refined and cultivated feeders. is not of the nature of an oxtail or hare, or-prince of soups-of that homely but delightful broth, on which, north of the Tweed, we were all brought up in an older age--the pot au feu, but more substantial than anything with a French name, of Scotland. On those vigorous productions of the insular kitchen, a man could make

It

1 Democracy, and other Addresses. By James Russell Lowell. London: Macmillan & Co.

his dinner with satisfaction both to the inner man of inclination and the physical necessities of being. But it is so quite a different category that Mr Lowell's fine concoction belongs. The rude appetite might reject it as washy; the refined accepts its fine combination of lightly flavoured essences as the fit beginning of a feast.

evolved among us with such completeness in these later days. Mr Lowell is himself the fine type of which that image is the exaggeration. The peculiar development which has in it so much of the recoil from over-practical surroundings, and the fastidious individualism in which a number of educated men shut out from public life are so apt to take refuge-is softened in him not only by a native geniality always delightful to encounter, but by the only practical touch which seems possible to the highest class of lettered American-the uses of the diplomatic service, which give more consistency and solidity than mere literature imparts. More especially during his last tenure of office, Mr Lowell has been the darling of polite society, which has not only loved and prized him as is his due, but has been highly amused by the occasional rougher lick, as of a Republican tongue, with which it has pleased him to season that overrefinement which is the special quality of his race. No man has been in such request for those elegant little essay-speeches which have become a necessity of the times-speeches which, without taking the place of the more general after-dinner article, has de

The writer is one of those Americans-nay, is perhaps the American par excellence who has wrought that change in public opinion in respect to his country which, to an observer who has lived long enough to be aware of it, is one of the most curious things in recent history. When Dickens crossed the Atlantic, and produced those Notes' which are now antediluvian, the Yankee was still an object pour rire-always a comic figure wherever produced, and with a sharp prejudice attached to him, probably derived from the days of Repudiation, which many an English household then remembered keenly, but which now most people, and above all the sinners themselves, have forgotten. It was a kind of revelation to the superficially judging, slightly informed masses when the war broke out, and there was displayed to us, through the smoke and clouds, a glimpse of something like society-vancé that heavier performance and rural families of established position, in a word, the gentlemen whom we had not hitherto discovered in America. This, more than anything else, we believe, engendered that English leaning to the cause of the South, which puzzled and exasperated so many people both on this side of the Atlantic and on that. Probably it is for our sins in this description that the American gentleman that all-cultured and accomplished being, the last and finest type of dilettante, for whom all the ages have laboured-has been

improved upon it, as it is the mission of the graceful American to do.

Address on unveiling the bust of Fielding-Address on unveiling the bust of Coleridge-Address as president of the Wordsworth Society,--such are some of the components of which this little book is made up, all of them felicitous, pleasant to hear, just enough to accentuate the mild enthusiasm of such occasions, when all was thin and fine and delicate, and any special vigour of sentiment or opinion was unnecessary. We ask ourselves, however, whether it was

worth the trouble to reprint them? A book is a book, whether it is much worth keeping on our shelves or not. We have heard of an expedient employed by the owner of a number of books-whom we will not call, however, a booklover-who burns his superfluous volumes at the end of the year, and makes ghastly mirth over the pleasantness with which they consume away into solid redness like a block of wood. Our soul shrinks from the thought. Burn a book! as well almost burn a man; nor would we have the mind be moved by the badness or smallness of the book, any more than we could with safety allow that an ugly, petty, or deformed man might be given up to the flames. The principle in this case is everything. Therefore there lies a great responsibility upon the head of him who adds unnecessarily to the number of books. We excuse with the warmest fellow-feeling the man who has no other means of utterance, and must publish or die. But Mr Lowell had already got, hot and hot, that incense of human praise which is so sweet to most men. He had already been applauded, caressed to the echo, and, no doubt a motive still more present with him, had already done all the good he was likely to do, in respect of Fielding and the poets. Why, then, reprint these genial and pretty addresses, which had served their purpose so well? Every principle in our soul rises up against the suggestion of burning: but we know what will happen. We will keep this little volume on our shelves in a dusty corner until that end of time which comes to all men arrives to us: and then it will be carted away with a shoal of other such and sold as waste paper. Why put this burden upon a respectful critic's soul?

It ought to be interesting, however, to hear what such a writer has to say upon the subject of Democracy. Who so well qualified to judge of the results of such a régime, and the advantages of it, as one of the most highly trained representatives of the greatest democracy in the world? It is true that Mr Lowell, like so many more of his countrymen, makes his appreciation of the systems of government of his native country apparent, by spending as little of his time as is practicable under their immediate sway. But, on the other hand, a democratic Government has the wit to employ his services, which is something in its favour, although not to leave him, as would have been better still, to represent his country permanently at the Court of St James's, where he was so entirely a persona gratissima. The short address on this subject which gives its name to this little volume was delivered at Birmingham, not an inappropriate place in which to discuss such a problem; and it is rather in the character of an apologist of democracy, making out that it is not so bad as it seems, and that it has not at all done the harm that might have been expected from it-which is a thing that may be said of all systems of government-that Mr Lowell speaks. And also that it is a system of which, since we cannot stem the advancing tide of it, it is expedient to make the best. "There is no good," he says, "in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your great-coat."

"To the door of every generation there comes a knocking; and unless the household, like the Thane of Cawdor and his wife, have been doing a deed without a name, they need not shudder. It turns out at worst to be a poor relation who wishes to get in out of the cold. The porter

always grumbles, and is slow to open, Who's there, in the name of Beelzebub?' he mutters. Not a change for the better in our human housekeeping has ever taken place that wise and good men have not opposed it have not prophesied, with the alderman, that the world would wake up to find its throat cut in consequence of it. The world, on the contrary, wakes up, rubs its eyes, yawns, stretches itself, and goes about its business as if nothing had happened. Suppression of the slave-trade, abolition of slavery, trade-unions-at all of these excellent pecple shook their heads despondingly, and murmured, 'Ichabod. But the trade-unions are now debating instead of conspiring, and we all read their discussions with comfort and hope, sure that they are learning the business of citizenship and the difficulties of practical legis

lation."

It is a whimsical comment upon these words to read in the last number of the Century,' one of the best-known of American magazines, a stern attack upon the valuable institutions last commended, under the title of "A Tyranny that cannot live in America." The The anonymous writer who makes this attack speaks somewhat big about "the people's instinctive perception of the fact that equality of opportunity brings a differentiation of natural abilities, and secures to the State the best results of the greatest powers." "All classes of society," he adds, "with a single exception, have learned the lesson thoroughly and applied it; organised labour alone refuses to admit its truth, and strives to resist its application." We wonder which is right: and whether it will be found that the trades-unions which Mr Lowell amiably commends for debating instead of conspiring, are a tyranny which America will not endure.

Mr Lowell's plea, however, is both dignified and genial, though his arguments in favour of democ

racy are all of the palliative kind. There is no doubt perfect reason in his ironical complaint of "the some European paupers whom

countries are good enough to send over to us, who have not attained to the same skill in the manufacture of them; " but it is perhaps a more doubtful conclusion when he boasts that "We have taken from

Europe the poorest, the most ignorant, the most turbulent of her people, and have made them over into good citizens, who have added to our wealth, and who are ready to die in defence of a country and institutions which they know to be worth dying for." We most earnestly hope it may prove so, and we have great faith in at once the assimilating power and the uncompromising logic of that strong American character which is a new fact among the nations. But there is no doubt that to absorb all that scum of Europe, and reduce it to harmlessness, is no easy task. Mr Lowell is full of epigrams, as might be expected. Nothing is more natural for people whose education has been neglected than to spell evolution with an initial r," he says. "Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those that never come." It is always pleasant to meet with those winged little sayings which attach themselves to our memories.

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There is one thing, however, on which we may take this occasion to say our say. "People are continually saying that America is in the air," Mr Lowell tells us: "and I am glad to think it is, since this means only that a clearer conception of human claims and human duties is beginning to be prevalent." It may mean that, though we scarcely think so; but it does assuredly mean a confusion of magnitudes and a false impression of greatness, which the present half

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