among them. probably accept as the best eulogy of an active and laborious overseer of the Church that could be made: He threw himself articles. Here is a description into pastoral work of a kind given by one of them, not inrather different from the usual tended apparently to be favouroccupations of a bishop, breaking able, but which the reader will ground in his own person among the crowds of Manchester, seizing every opportunity to make himself known to, and become acquainted with, the mechanics and factory-workers, and all the children of toil; and it is with genuine relish that Mr. Hughes describes the result: "Room must still be found for some short notice of how this strange phenomenon of a bishop, striding about his diocese on foot, carrying his own blue bag containing his robes, stopping runaway carts, and talking familiarly with every one he met, gentle or simple, with a cheerful and healthy curiosity as to all they were thinking about or interested in, struck the Lancastrian folk. The factory hands and working people generally were taken as it were by storm, and had installed him long before the end of the year in a place in their hearts which he never lost. The following, which could be multiplied to any extent, may be taken as fair instances of their attitude. A sturdy Dissenting operative waited for him at the bottom of the stairs after one of his earliest meetings, and seized him by the hand with the remark, Ah, Bishop, thou'dst mak a foine Methody preacher!' Another waiting for him outside church after a charity sermon, forced a sovereign into his hand with, Bishop, here's a pound for thee.' Bishop, Thanks, my friend; for the charity? Operative, 'Nay, nay; for thyself."" Society, as it exists in Manchester, was not, however, quite so sure of this over-active prelate, who had not the slightest mind to pose in his lawn-sleeves as an object of provincial adoration; and the newspapers contended over him with many divers opinions, but on the whole a genuine enjoyment of a bishop who was continually furnishing subjects for "It is no uncommon thing to find him within the space of twenty-four nours speaking half-a-dozen times in as many places; and ranging, apart from a very scanty theology, over a field embracing such subjects as the evils of drunkenness, the statistics of crime, mischievous agitators, working hours, church collections, the evils of ignorance, young men's means of saving money, the effect of the Licensing Act, and costly funerals. This is no exaggeration.' In short, he interested himself in everything which concerned the people under his charge, and spoke always freely, sometimes perhaps a little rashly, warmly, frankly, with full confidence in the ultimate triumph in human hearts of the truth and the right, whatever falsehood and guile might oppose. The picture grows warmer and more genial as it comes to an end. The quiet country parson expands into the bishop, with a feeling, so far as the spectator is concerned, of a late but joyous development and almost elation in the larger stir and movement of life. His "readiness to talk to every one" reminds one of his friends of "what Thirlwall says of Socrates," that "perhaps there was hardly a mechanic who had not at some time or another been puzzled or diverted by his questions." His practical interference as arbiter, for instance, between employers and their workmen, does not seem to have been very successful. It was undertaken, however, with the same buoyant and eager desire to do good and make peace which, combined with a perhaps excessive confidence in his own power to do so, fostered by success and applause, is so apt to lead an impulsive man into trouble. The good Bishop married, late in his cheerful autumn, at this same exuberant period; and it is pleasant, and at the same time pathetic, to hear from the bridegroom of sixty that "we are as happy as the days are long." He ought to have been forty at the outside when this stage of life was reached. As it was, the late happiness did not last very long. Mr. Bryce, in a letter printed by Mr. Hughes in the Appendix to his volume, speaks of Bishop Fraser as the first of a new school of prelates. "No bishop in our time has been so popular or useful as he; none certainly has been so much lamented by the masses of the people." He was the bishop of the laity, the bishop of the Dissenters, of all the denominations," as he seems to have called himself; "the first citizen of his diocese, more influential than its political leaders or territorial magnates, not by his official dignity, but because the active duties of his post gave occasion for the display in a large sphere of the civic virtues he possessed, inexhaustible public spirit, untiring energy, perfect candour and honesty, quick and generous sympathy with every form of goodness. It would be difficult to say more of any man. Beside this lofty and large existence, which filled, in its last stage at least, so important a place in the public eye, it is a curious instance of the levelling power of death that we should place a life incomplete,1 too quickly ended, too imperfectly trained to have ever at tained the full measure of its capabilities, although full of a facile power which has received the fullest acknowledgment from the generation which it delighted. It is the fashion of the present time, when it does notice the suitors for its favour at all, to do so with an overwhelming, if capricious and arbitrary enthusiasm, of which it is difficult to make serious account, not always, indeed, choosing the wrong object for its admiration, yet carrying that admiration to such a wild transport of applause, that sober criticism, is put altogether out of court. Mr. Caldecott has been one of the recipients of this boundless approval. His charming talent, so humorous, so easy, so enjoyable, a delight both to himself and the public, has been vaunted to every echo, as if it had been the highest genius. We are not perhaps very rich at this moment in serious art. But of such artists as we possess, no one, however high in aims or accomplished in execution, has received so universal a meed of honour and praise, as has sounded forth the early reputation of the young maker of picturebooks, the ready illustrator, the lively and humorous artist of the roadside and the street. We have not one word to say against Caldecott. His picturebooks are delightful. They are the toy-books of children of a larger growth, which have given perhaps more pleasure to the generation than any other series of contemporary production in the way of familiar art. The fountain was fresh and sparkling, a new and bright and fascinating stream; the life, the fun, the understanding in their gay and lively images is beyond praise,-under 1 Randolph Caldecott: His Early Art Career. By Henry Blackburn. London: Sampson Low & Co. standing not only of men and their ways, but of the still more pathetic humour and engaging simplicity of those dumb members of society, the dogs and horses, the beast and birds, whose expression and character are more difficult to seize than those of men, and always captivating when a fine instinct finds them out. All the animals for instance in the story of the Mad Dog, how admirable they are! from the engaging innocence of the wistful puppy, so wise, so foolish, so irresistible, appealing to every human sentiment, up to the solid gravity of the big retriever, father of dogs, tolerant and benignant as becomes his position, how many wonderful characteristic varieties! And when the final tragedy arrives, and the hunted victim, with a hoarse cry of anguish in his throat, and every hair upon his poor coat staring, dies in despair, the victim probably, like so many of his betters, of a misconception, how pitiful, yet how genuine, is the climax! These dogs are almost more than men. They are men reflected in the clearest, intensest mirror of a narrower consciousness-a reflection almost always amusing, though in some cases tragic, the meaning intensified by the dumb suggestiveness both of pleasure and pain. The same force of expression descends even to still life. How the spoon bridles and simpers, while the dish puts on a manly semblance of protection and triumph! It is humanity masquerading, but with a delightful absurdity and fatuity which goes beyond man. The men and women, indeed, are the worst of the exhibition. They require more from the hand of the artist than Caldecott perhaps had to give; and this is the reason why his last picturebooks dwindle as they go on, and are by no means so strong as the first; but his animals are always delightful. This generation, at least, will never outgrow the pleasure of them. They are perhaps above the range of the children for whom they were originally intended, in all the bravery of their pinks and blues; but for the grownup children few such simple feasts of pleasure and sympathetic laughter have ever been spread. But having said this, and having done full justice at the same time to Caldecott's hunting-scenes, and the amusing groups which he picks. up on his travels, we cannot claim for this genial, bright, and keeneyed artist any great or serious standing in art. He began to maintain himself by his pencil before he had learned anything, while he was indeed no more than a very clever and humorous amateur; and notwithstanding his continuous and never-flagging work, he never had time to accomplish the tremendous round of art education, or to qualify himself thoroughly as an artist. There is something in this very fact that propitiates the English public. Fond of the accidental in everything, we are seldom more pleased than when we find that the sketch which takes our fancy, whether in art or music or literature, has been executed by some one who has no right to know anything about these high crafts, but has by mere intuition, by stress of genius, outstripped the students and done better than all the qualified persons. Something of the same feeling no doubt inspired the applause when the productions. of a nameless young person calling himself "Boz" came first before the public. These sketches, to our own mind, do not give half so much promise of a Dickens as the preludes of Michael Angelo Titmarsh gave of Thackeray; but the young clerk, who had no possible claim to a hearing, jumped the obstacles which the other found it so hard to get over. Caldecott also was a young clerk, brought up in a Manchester bank, and diligent enough at his desk, though covering every scrap of paper and blotting-pad within his reach wtth pen-and-ink scratches, which were the delight of his fellow-clerks, and kept the office in a general roar. Blotting-paper, by the way, is an admirable medium for the caricaturist. The dots and specks and blurred lines, which come upon it by nature in its simplest use, afford foundations which are precious for all kinds of comic representations, and it is easy to see how the pad on the office desk might become a perfect picturegallery of illustrations, in which the outline of every unconscious customer, the trick of his hair, the angle of his eyebrows, would come in with amazing effect. A more amusing member of the little community in an office it would be difficult to find, and no doubt his fellow-clerks owed him many a pleasant break in the monotony of business days. We can scarcely call Mr Blackburn the biographer of his friend, for the present volume is nothing more than a collection of sketches, a number of them already known to the world, with a scanty thread of accompanying explanations, breaking off abruptly in the middle, and entering into few particulars of the artist's life. The reason for this is stated with great frankness. It is to leave room for another volume. "At a future time more may be written, and many delightful reminiscences recorded," says the author, whose power of manufacturing biggish books out of small materials is not unknown to the public, and who evidently has not miscalculated the forbear ance of the peculiar audience which has perhaps more interest in what he has to show than in what he has to tell. It is, however, a sort of liberty which ought not to be taken with any serious audience; and in the point of view of literature the book does not deserve any consideration whatever. It is a scrambling record of the outset of a life in which there were no particularly interesting features. The letters given in illustration of the young man's character are just such letters as a cheerful young clerk would write to his comrades in the office, neither more nor less interesting than such compositions would naturally be; yet rather less than more, as they show indications of having been subjected to an injudicious process of selection, and chosen as the clever parts of familiar compositions in which, probably, there were portions not intended to be clever, of more in terest. Caldecott, like many young artists, especially of his imperfectly trained kind, was more apt with his pencil than with any other medium, and there is a flavour of Mr Chuckster in the letters which we could have done without. It is evident, however, that neither Mr Blackburn nor Caldecott's correspondents had any feeling of this kind. To show how entirely without perception they were in this respect, it is enough to quote the indiscriminating way in which, as Mr Blackburn says, "one of his friends writes of him very truly:" "Caldecott's ability was general, not special. It found its natural and most agreeable outlet in art and humour; but everybody who knew him and those who received his letters, saw that there were perhaps a dozen ways in which he would have distinguished himself, had he been drawn to them." "It occurs to me that Caldecott's art was of a quality that appears about once in a century. It had delightful characteristics, most happily blended. He had a delicate fancy, and his humour was as racy as it was refined. He had a keen sense of beauty, and, to sum up all, A better authority, Mr. Frederick very well-known illustrations of Locker, puts the artist's special the Washington Irving books introand probably sole gift in a very duced in this supposed collection of different and much more genuine unpublished work. It is a kind of light:deception in its way, and not fair to the purchaser of a book which calls itself a new book, and may be presumed to be a biography. It is neither one nor the other. The story of Randolph Caldecott, such as it was, breaks off in the middle, and half of the illustrations are repetitions from his previously published works, and from the universally known pages of Punch' and other journals. There are, indeed, a fair amount of clever pen and-ink scratches, many of them very clever, which are original; but the majority of the prints have been seen before, and the letter-press is of exceedingly little importance. It would scarcely detract, indeed, from our knowledge of the artist, if we had never seen it at all. he had charm.' It may be added that he was an admirable illustrator of books, taking up the idea of the writer whose work he was to embellish with an honesty and faithfulness all the more remarkable from the extreme quickness of his own eye to note any passing group and humorous figure, and the fertility of the world around in furnishing irresistible studies. We are unaware of any other illustrated books so perfect as Washington Irving's 'Old Christmas' and 'Bracebridge Hall,' as illustrated by Caldecott. Perhaps the quaintness of the costumes and the neatness of the little word-pictures which he rendered into figures captivated his imagination, and made him triumphant over difficulties which were too many for him in works of a more modern kind for certainly both his villagers and his gentlefolk in these two charming little books come as near perfection in expressing the author's ideas, and in realising our own, as it is easy to imagine. The illustrations which he did for other books are less remarkable, perhaps because the bocks themselves were so, and Breton peasants and the like did not afford the necessary concentration of keen observation and pleasant humour in which the artist's soul delighted. We object, however, to have reproductions of the This dislocation of the subject, with the avowed purpose of leaving more to be written at a future time, is, we conceive, an offence of the first class against literary morality. Caldecott, with all his gifts, is not an artist of sufficient importance or interest to warrant the most arrant bookmaker in thus dividhis little life, poor fellow! into two, and eking out his baskets of fragments with so many things which have already had their award. It is something very like trading upon an interesting name. We are by no means sure that it would not be expedient to revise altogether our code of what is permitted and not permitted by the standard of literary honour. To spin out into three volumes, for instance, what would be much better in one is a practice which is approved, nay, enforced, by the supposed practical persons involved, the publishers, whose will and wish is of so much importance to the literary |