the teachings of his German uncle. English Judaism is without signs of life the only working of the spirit, the abortive reform agitation, was due to a similar movement in Germany. And English Jews have themselves much to blame for the neglect that English criticism has shown for Mordecai.

What we have attempted to show has been that the adverse criticism on the Mordecai part of Daniel Deronda has been due to lack of sympathy and want of knowledge on the part of the critics, and hence its failure is not (if we must use the word) objective. If a young lady refuses to see any pathos in Othello's fate because she dislikes dark complexions, we blame the young lady, not Shakspeare and if the critics have refused to see the pathos of Mordecai's fate because he is a Jew of the present day-so much the worse for the critics!

We have not attempted to criticise Daniel Deronda as a whole. Whether it errs in the juxtapositions of two parts appealing to such widely diverse interests, or in the position of the hero -which seems to partake of that unstable equilibrium which the proverb assigns to him that sitteth on two stools or in the frequent introduction

of physiological psychology couched in Spenserian phraseology, we have not cared to inquire. We have only spoken because we have some of the knowledge and all of the sympathy which alone, we contend, are needed to make the Mordecai part of Daniel Deronda as great a success as all must acknowledge to have attended the part relating to Gwendolen Harleth. If this be so, the lovers of English literature will have the gratification of knowing that the hand of one of our greatest artists has not lost its cunning in these last days. Indeed, if a higher subject argue higher faculties, the successful treatment of a great world - problem would seem to be an advance on her previous studies of village life.

One word more of explanation. I have spoken throughout the above remarks in the plural, as feeling that most of what I have said would be shared by all Jews who have the knowledge and the sympathy which enable them to recognise in Mordecai Cohen not only the finest representative of their religion and race in all literature, but also the most impressive personality in English fiction.

JOSEPH JACOBS.

THE opening of Sir Coutts Lindsay's magnificent Gallery in New Bond Street implies something more than a mere addition to the formidable list of annual picture exhibitions. That a picture-gallery on such a scale, and so sumptuously fitted, should be erected by private enterprise, is in itself a fact to be noted: and though some of the decorative detail is rather rich than refined in style; though we may be puzzled by the architectural anomaly of a grand entrance and staircase which seem to lead to nothing; yet having once found our way into the principal room, we cannot but feel that there is something in the impression produced by the pictures, as grouped on these spacious and richlyhung walls, quite alien from that sense of confusion and weariness which the eye experiences in ranging over the closely-packed walls of an average exhibition room. The distribution of the pictures, both on the walls and in the catalogue under artists' names, is something more than a mere matter of arrangement; it indicates that view of the art of painting, not unfamiliar in France (and accepted by ourselves in our estimate of old pictures), which regards a painting in reference to the individuality of the artist rather than to the mere facts of the subject; and this not only in regard to qualities of manipulation, but taking into account also the mental attitude of the artist towards his subject. If only the possibility of this view of painting, as a form of expression of the relation of individual intellect to life and nature, could be thus suggested to some small proportion of our holiday picturegazers, the Grosvenor Gallery would have had a raison d'être. The avowed position of its owner, however, is that his gallery is to represent the best and

most intellectual art of the day; that he invites the contribution only of works of the highest standard, and in such limited number as to avoid all crowding of the walls, and give the gallery the air of a picture saloon in a private palace, rather than of an exhibition filled from the public drag-net.

Certainly this is a consummation devoutly to be wished, and the attainment of which would seem to be perfectly compatible with that entire absence either of opposition or of devotion to any special school of painting which is earnestly professed at the Grosvenor Gallery. As a matter of fact, however, this first exhibition is to some extent a demonstration in favour of certain modes or fashions of painting (not bound together in such coherency as to constitute a "school") which have not so far found favour in the public eye. Some of those who are recognised in another place, by the initiated and the laity alike, as among our most gifted artists, are here represented only by works painted some time since, for other occasions, and now lent by their present owners. On the other hand, artists who have long since indignantly flicked from their boots the dust of Burlington House (not perhaps without some preliminary invitation so to do) are found here in high state

"Amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats."

Others who may complain of having been fairly (or unfairly) turned out of doors by the recognised institution for promoting Art, are here had in dignity and estimation. Without concluding that the Grosvenor Gallery is intended to be either a nursery of neo-Italian painting, or a casual ward for the

reception of homeless artists, it is impossible to ignore the tendencies illustrated in its opening exhibition.

1

These are most pointedly displayed, perhaps, in the dedication of one end of the room entirely to the works of Mr. Burne Jones. Since this artist declined public demonstration of his powers, there can be no question that he has achieved a far higher technique; as little question, perhaps, that his possible path in art has been more sharply restricted and defined. The painter of Love Disguised as Reason, one of the last works of his that was seen at the old Water-Colour Society, might, so far as one could then judge, have taken one of two very different paths; might have developed an art combining latter-day passion or Sehn-sucht with something of the intellectual naïveté of which Chaucer is the type; or he might, from the point of departure of some other drawings of that period, have developed what might be called the mystical-decorative style. To the latter his scale has inclined; for the Days of Creation, mystical in subject, is emphatically decorative painting. An exquisite finish of execution, a richness and harmony of colour, scarcely to be over-rated, we do doubtless see in this painting. But if we attempt to carry our inquiry beyond the external aspect to the thought of the painting, we are brought up at once. In these graceful and melancholy winged figures which stand dreamily holding the symbols of their several offices, there is positively not a thought or a meaning deeper than might furnish matter for a child's Sunday picture-book. There is no attempt at distinctive character or expression in the various figures; their faces have the same gentle vacuity of sentiment; they stand in a row, looking certainly, as is said of the days in Genesis, "very good," and only by the contents of the crystal globes they hold, the last of which exhibits a little

1 As, to a certain limited extent, Mr. Morris has succeeded in combining them in poetry.

No. 212.-VOL. XXXVI.

Adam and Eve, do we find out what they are severally intended to symbolise. Putting out of question the light in which the Mosaic account of creation is now regarded by most educated persons, it seems incredible that in the present day a grown man should paint, for grown men and women to look at, anything so infantile in sentiment as this; should bestow all this beauty of colour and manipulation upon such a piece of child's scenery. Were these panels a "predella" to some great ideal painting, we might accept them as embodying that degree of symbolism which would afford a suitable decorative adjunct to the principal work; we might even conclude that this alone is their intention, but for comparison with the painting beside them, Venus' Mirror. But here, in a painting of quite a different scope, intended to represent no angels or genii, but terrestrial women, we find the same type of face as in the angels of the Days; the same dreamy vacuity of expression, the same type of mouth which is the peculiar delight of certain painters and their critics, who will describe it for you as "moulded by passive potentialities of passion," or "fullblown with illimitable desire." Quitting however, these inexplicable females who, in front of a landscape mapped

out

with conventional regularity, gaze with such unaccountable agony of solemnity on the reflection of their own faces in the pond, we gladly recognise in some of the larger symbolical figures a more masculine and healthy feeling. Fides is a noble design, though in a somewhat conventional style; and in the unfinished Sibyl there is a freedom of action and expression, and a largeness of manner which seem to promise that the artist, if he can shake himself free from the affected sentimentalism which has beset his genius, may yet rise above decorative painting.

A word in reply to that lifting of the eyebrows which will be the comment on the last remark, on the part of those who do continually affirm that

I

all painting is decorative, and that only under such a character does the art achieve its highest aims and capabilities. Such an axiom, reduced to its plain meaning, probably intends to infer that a majority of the productions of the great age of Italian painting, omitting the Venetian school (a pretty considerable exception), were painted on walls and ceilings, and as part of the decoration of buildings, and not as things complete in themselves; and the moral drawn is-if we would produce equal results, let us go and do likewise. Something no doubt may be said for the idea of bringing this art more home to the people at large by making it more a part of the decoration of our public buildings; though even here it would be rash to count on thus awakening the same kind of naïve and unaffected interest in such an art, as was natural when the middle and lower class mind was so much more shut out from literary and other intellectual interests than is now the case. As to the further corollary which seems to be implied, that we have no great art now because we paint on canvas-let us paint on wet plaster instead, and we shall be sure to have a great style; of people who reason thus we can only conclude, as Canning did of those who professed to like dry champagne, that "they would say anything." The idea of greater dignity supposed to belong to what is called decorative painting is a fallacy. That is, for all intellectual purposes, the greatest painting which has in itself the most complete individuality and intensity of poetic expression, independent of its surroundings. To say that it cannot exercise its highest influence on us, unless forming a portion of a scheme of mural decoration, is as rational as to say that Tennyson or Browning cannot come home to our minds with their full meaning unless we have their words engraved on the walls instead of being bound up in volumes.

Flanking the wall devoted to the works of Mr. Burne Jones, we find

some singular productions which seem to be the ghosts of the early Renaissance revived. One painter gives us a modern Pinturicchio. Another imparts a certain colour of his own to figures in the draperies and the manner of Botticelli, and in looking at his painting of Love and the Maiden, we at least share the wonder of the latter at the sight of the remarkable youth before her, who, from the perspective relation of his legs to the tree trunks on either side of him, must be straddling his limbs in a manner which would make his front view still more remarkable. Next to this we find a starved, bloodless, nude figure, with oakum hair, which we are invited to accept as the mother of the human race. Such an

art as this reminds one of the dead crew who rose again to work the ship of the Ancient Mariner. That the figures here are more naïve, more at variance with the ideal of the subject represented, than in many productions of fifteenth-century art which are justly admired, need not be implied; but what was "childlike" in the earlier days of art becomes only "childish" when revived in the face of our present culture; and between the two epithets there lies a whole world of meaning.

Turning to the portion of the walls occupied by Mr. Whistler, while still among the singularities of the exhibition, we are in a more healthy atmosphere. Mr. Whistler's art is at least no echo of anything else; it expresses his own artistic idiosyncrasy. If we fail to find sufficient motive for painting, on a scale of life size, what may be called phantoms of figures, we at least feel that these are genuine as far as they go; and that the idea of painting the general impression of a figure rather than its accidental details of costume is logically comprehensible. The figure of the girl in white is full of character and feeling; and the slightly-painted dress is no mere bundle of drapery; it is filled with the figure, in a manner testifying to that power of draughtsmanship to

which the artist's life-studies and other drawings bear witness more fully. His Nocturnes are again in the debateable land; they can hardly be called nature; they are rather accidents of effect to which everything else is sacrificed. This, though reasonable enough within limits, brings us to a region hardly convenient to dwell in ; the air is too thin. As Samuel Johnson said of certain literary vagaries"Nothing odd will do for long; a dictum which must apply to this phase of the art of Mr. Whistler; who has, however, other props already for his artistic fame, and a long career, let us hope, in which to embody the suggestions of his genius in less fleeting and insubstantial forms. That he can do so is amply proved by his admirable painting of Mr. Carlyle which hangs in the vestibule, and which may be called one of the most strongly characteristic of contemporary portraits.

The works of Mr. Holman Hunt in the gallery are not among his most important, but they are sufficiently characteristic of his practice to suggest certain reflections. If in Mr. Whistler's works we seem to have the soul of painting with but little of the body, in the works of Mr. Hunt we have the body without the soul. That he is a remarkable phenomenon in contemporary English art no one with any sense or perception in regard to painting would think of questioning. Such a production as his Afterglow is a triumph of realistic force such as only the rarest insight into the relation of pigments to light, and the most intense and concentrated assiduity, could attain to. But his art seems to stop at the outsides of things. The body is there, brilliant, forcible, glowing; but where is the informing soul? It is worth while to contrast his smaller painting of An Italian Girl with the halflength of a girl by Mr. Leslie, under the title Palm Blossom, which hangs nearly opposite. In Mr. Hunt's painting the outside of the girl is there unquestionably, down even to the minute wrinkles on her lips; and the

dress is a beautiful harmony of low

tones. But of the expression, the character of the child, there is nothing: she turns up to us mechanically a dull, carefully-painted face, with every wrinkle of the skin studied, and that is all; while Mr. Leslie's little girl, though a painting, let it be admitted, of far less force and individuality in a certain sense (for execution and colour such as Mr. Hunt's are hard facts that claim their full value), has a real life and character looking through her features. Of humour Mr. Hunt does not seem to have a shred, in his painting at least; witness The Lantern-maker's Courtship, in which the mechanical clockwork action of the figure contrasts with the intended humour of the incident in a manner almost painful in its incongruity. It is of no use-despite of such unremitting zeal, of speciallyarranged exhibitions, and the support of a large portion of the press, Mr. Hunt and his not too discreet or reticent admirers will not persuade the world that this is the highest kind of thing to be looked for from painting, unless we are to regard the art as consisting in mere imitative realism; a theory which, in the eyes of some persons, would apparently be considered as involving no sacrifice of any kind. Indeed, those who have taken note of the kind of temper in which the claims of this artist to unquestioning veneration are upheld, the restricted mental culture and the bigotry of assertion which go hand-in-hand in this worship, may be excused if they hardly find themselves attracted to the shrine of the painter by the nature of the incense burned before him.

Of the paintings which represent the names of Poynter, Millais, and Tadema, there is less call to speak, their respective standing and position in contemporary art being little questioned or open to question, while the works exhibited here under their names scarcely illustrate their highest or most characteristic powers: the small pictures by Mr. Poynter contain, indeed, some of his most beautiful