In France, the Great Revolution, while it multiplied the theatres with the natural extravagance of the time, yet, by a consequence equally inevitable, degraded the taste of the nation. For a long period the legitimate drama was almost extinguished: it was unexciting to a people trained day by day to revolutionary convulsion; the pageants on the stage were tame to the processions in the streets; and the struggles of kings and nobles were ridiculous to the men who had been employed in destroying a dynasty.

Napoleon at once perceived the evil, and adopted the only remedy. He found no less than thirty theatres in Paris. He was not a man to pause where he saw his way clearly before him; he closed twenty-two of those theatres, leaving but eight, and those chiefly of the old establishments, making a species of compensation to the closed houses.

On

On the return of the Bourbons the civil list, as in the old times, assisted in the support of the theatres. the accession of Louis Philippe, the popular triumph infused its extravagance even into the system of the drama. The number of the theatres increased, and a succession of writers of the "New School" filled the theatres with abomination. Gallantry became the spirit of the drama-everything before the scene was intrigue; married life was the perpetual burlesque. Wives were the habitual heroines of the intrigue, and husbands the habitual dupes! To keep faith with a husband was a standing jest on the stage, to keep it with a seducer was the height of human character. The former was always described as brutal, gross, dull, and born to be duped; the latter was captivating, generous, and irresistible by any matron alive. In fact, wives and widows were made for nothing else but to give way to the fascinations of this class of professors of the arts of "good society." The captivator was substantially described as a scoundrel, a gambler, and a vagabond of the basest kind, but withal so honourable, so tender, and so susceptible, that his atrocities disappeared, or rather were transmuted into virtues, by the brilliancy of his qualifications for seducing

the wife of his friend. Perjury, profligacy, and the betrayal of confidence in the most essential tie of human nature, were supreme in popularity in the Novel and on the Stage.

The direct consequence is, that the crime of adultery is lightly considered in France; even the pure speak of it without the abhorrence which, for every reason, it deserves. Its notoriety is rather thought of as an anecdote of the day, or the gossiping of the soirée; and the most acknowledged licentiousness does not exclude a man of a certain rank from general reception in good society.

One thing may be observed on the most casual intercourse with Frenchmen-that the vices which, in our country, create disgust and offence in grave society, and laughter and levity in the more careless, seldom produce either the one or the other in France. The topic is alluded to with neither a frown nor a smile; it is treated, in general, as a matter of course, either too natural to deserve censure, or too common to excite ridicule. It is seldom peculiarly alluded to, for the general conversation of "Good Society" is decorous; but to denounce it would be unmannered. The result is an extent of illegitimacy enough to corrupt the whole rising population. By the registers of 1848, of 30,000 children born in Paris in that year, there were 10,000 illegitimate, of which but 1700 were acknowledged by their parents!

The theatrical profession forms an important element in the population. The actors and actresses amount to about 5000. In England they are probably not as many hundreds. And though the French population is 35,000,000, while Great Britain has little more than twenty, yet the disproportion is enormous, and forms a characteristic difference of the two countries. The persons occupied in the "working" of the theatrical system amount perhaps to 10,000, and the families dependent on the whole form a very large and very influential class among the general orders of society.

But if the Treasury assists in their general support, it compels them to pay eight per cent of their receipts as a contribution to the hospitals.

This sum averages annually a million of francs, or £40,000 sterling.

In England we might learn something from the theatrical regulations of France. The trampling of our crowds at the doors of theatres, the occasional losses of life and limb, and the general inconvenience and confusion of the entrance on crowded nights, might be avoided by the mere adoption of French order.

But why should not higher objects be held in view? The drama is a public necessity; the people will have it, whether good or bad. Why should not Government offer prizes to the best drama, tragic or comic? Why should the most distinguished work of poetic genius find no encouragement from the Government of a nation boasting of its love of letters? Why shall that encouragement be left to the caprice of managers, to the finances of struggling establishments, or to the tastes of theatres, forced by their poverty to pander to the rabble. Why should not the mischievous performances of those theatres be put down, and dramas, founded on the higher principles of our nature, be the instruments of putting them down? Why should not heroism, honour, and patriotism, be taught on the national stage, as well as the triumphs of the highroad, laxity among the higher ranks, and vice among all? The drama has been charged with corruption. Is that corruption essential? It has been charged with being a nucleus of the loose principles, as its places of representation have been haunted by the loose characters, of society. But what are these but excrescences, generated by the carelessness of society, by the indolence of magistracy, and by the general misconception of the real purposes and possible power of the stage? That power is magnificent. It takes human nature in her most impressible form, in the time of the glowing heart and the ready tear, of the senses animated by scenery, melted by music, and spelled by the living realities of representation. Why should not impressions be Imade in that hour which the man

would carry with him through all the contingencies of life, and which would throw a light on every period of his being?

The conditions of recompense to authors in France make some advance to justice. The author of a Drama is entitled to a profit on its performance in every theatre of France during his life, with a continuance for ten years after to his heirs. For a piece of three or five acts, the remuneration is one twelfth part of the gross receipts, and for a piece in one act, one twentyfourth. A similar compensation has been adopted in the English theatre, but seems to have become completely nugatory, from the managers' purchasing the author's rights-the transaction here being made a private one, and the remuneration being at the mercy of the manager. But in France it is a public matter, an affair of law, and looked to by an agent in Paris, who registers the performance of the piece at all the theatres in the city, and in the provinces.

Still, this is injustice. Why should the labour of the intellect be less permanent than the labour of the hands? Why should not the author be entitled to make his full demand instead of this pittance? If his play is worth acting, why is it not worth paying for?-and why should he be prohibited from having the fruit of his brain as an inheritance to his family, as well as the fruit of any other toil?

If, instead of being a man of genius, delighting and elevating the mind of a nation, he were a blacksmith, he might leave his tools and his trade to his children without any limit; or if, with the produce of his play, he purchased a cow, or a cabin, no man could lay a claim upon either. But he must be taxed for being a man of talent; and men of no talent must be entitled, by an absurd law and a palpable injustice, to tear the fruit of his intellectual supremacy from his children after ten short years of possession.

No man leaves Paris without regret, and without a wish for the liberty and peace of its people.

ON the publication of the first volume of Mr Ruskin's work on Modern Painters, a notice appeared of it in this Magazine. Since that time a second volume has been published of the same work, with two other works on architecture. It is the second volume of his Modern Painters which will at present chiefly engage our attention. His architectural works can only receive a slight and casual notice; on some future occasion they may tempt us into a fuller examination.

Although the second volume of the Modern Painters will be the immediate subject of our review, we must permit ourselves to glance back upon the first, in order to connect together the topics treated by the two, and to prevent our paper from wearing quite the aspect of a metaphysical essay; for it is the nature of the sentiment of the beautiful, and its sources in the human mind, which is the main subject of this second volume. In the first, he had entered at once into the arena of criticism, elevating the modern artists, and one amongst them in particular, at the expense of the old masters, who, with some few exceptions, find themselves very rudely handled.

As we have already intimated, we do not hold Mr Ruskin to be a safe guide in matters of art, and the present volume demonstrates that he is no safe guide in matters of philosophy. He is a man of undoubted power and vigour of mind; he feels strongly, and he thinks independently: but he is hasty and impetuous; can very rarely, on any subject, deliver a calm and temperate judgment; and, when he enters on the discussion of general principles, shows an utter inability to seize on, or to appreciate, the wide generalisations of philosophy. He is not, therefore, one of those men who can ever become an authority to be appealed to by the less instructed in any of the fine arts, or on any topic

whatever; and this we say with the utmost confidence, because, although we may be unable in many cases to dispute his judgment-as where he speaks of paintings we have not seen, or technicalities of art we do not affect to understand-yet he so frequently stands forth on the broad arena where general and familiar principles are discussed, that it is utterly impossible to be mistaken in the man.

On all these occasions he displays a very marked and rather peculiar combination of power and weakness-of power, the result of natural strength of mind; of weakness, the inevitable consequence of a passionate haste, and an overweening confidence. When we hear a person of this intellectual character throwing all but unmitigated abuse upon works which men have long consented to admire, and lavishing upon some other works encomiums which no conceivable perfection of human art could justify, it is utterly impossible to attach any weight to his opinion, on the ground that he has made an especial study of any one branch of art. Such a man we cannot trust out of our sight a moment; we cannot give him one inch of ground more than his reasoning covers, or our own experience would grant to him.

We shall not here revive the controversy on the comparative merits of the ancient and modern landscapepainters, nor on the later productions of Mr Turner, whether they are the eccentricities of genius or its fullest development; we have said enough on these subjects before. It is Mr Ruskin's book, and not the pictures of Claude or Turner, that we have to criticise; it is his style, and his manner of thinking, that we have to pass judgment on.

In all Mr Ruskin's works, and in almost every page of them, whether on painting, or architecture, or philosophy, or ecclesiastical controversy, two characteristics invariably prevail :

Modern Painters, vol. ii.—The

an extreme dogmatism, and a passion for singularity. Every man who thinks earnestly would convert all the world to his own opinions; but while Mr Ruskin would convert all the world to his own tastes as well as opinions, he manifests the greatest repugnance to think for a moment like any one else. He has a mortal aversion to mingle with a crowd. It is quite enough for an opinion to be commonplace to insure it his contempt: if it has passed out of fashion, he may revive it; but to think with the existing multitude would be impossible. Yet that multitude are to think with him. He is as bent on unity in matters of taste as others are on unity in matters of religion; and he sets the example by diverging, wherever he can, from the tastes of others.

Between these two characteristics there is no real contradiction; or rather the contradiction is quite familiar. The man who most affects singularity is generally the most dogmatic he is the very man who expresses most surprise that others should differ from him. No one is so impatient of contradiction as he who is perpetually contradicting others; and on the gravest matters of religion those are often found to be most zealous for unity of belief who have some pet heresy of their own, for which they are battling all their lives. The same overweening confidence lies, in fact, at the basis of both these characteristics. In Mr Ruskin they are both seen in great force. No matter what the subject he discusses, -taste or ecclesiastical governmentwe always find the same combination of singularity, with a dogmatism approaching to intolerance. Thus, the Ionic pillar is universally admired. Mr Ruskin finds that the fluted shaft gives an appearance of weakness. No one ever felt this, so long as the fluted column is manifestly of sufficient diameter to sustain the weight imposed on it. But this objection of apparent insecurity has been very commonly made to the spiral or twisted column. Here, therefore, Mr Ruskin abruptly dismisses the objection. He was at liberty to defend the spiral column: we should say here, also, that if the weight imposed

was evidently not too great for even a spiral column to support, this objection has no place; but why cast the same objection, (which perhaps in all cases was a mere after-thought) against the Ionic shaft, when it had never been felt at all? It has been a general remark, that, amongst other results of the railway, it has given a new field to the architect, as well as to the engineer. Therefore Mr Ruskin resolves that our railroad stations ought to have no architecture at all. Of course, if he limited his objections to inappropriate ornament, he would be agreeing with all the world: he decides there should be no architecture whatever; merely build.ings more or less spacious, to protect men and goods from the weather. He has never been so unfortunate, we suppose, as to come an hour too soon, or the unlucky five minutes too late, to a railway station, or he would have been glad enough to find himself in something better than the large shed he proposes. On the grave subject of ecclesiastical government he has stepped forward into controversy; and here he shows both his usual propensities in high relief. He has some quite peculiar projects of his own; the appointment of some hundreds of bishops-we know not what —and a Church discipline to be carried out by trial by jury. Desirable or not, they are manifestly as impracticable as the revival of chivalry. But let that pass. Let every man think and propose his best. But his dogmatism amounts to a disease, when, turning from his own novelties, he can speak in the flippant intolerant manner that he does of the national and now time-honoured Church of Scotland.

It will be worth while to make, in passing, a single quotation from this pamphlet, Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds. He tells us, in one place, that in the New Testament the ministers of the Church "are called, and call themselves, with absolute indifference, Deacons, Bishops, Elders, Evangelists, according to what they are doing at the time of speaking." With such a writer one might, at all events, have hoped to live in peace. But no. He discovers, nevertheless, that Episcopacy is the Scriptural form

of Church government; and, having satisfied his own mind of this, no opposition or diversity of opinion is for a moment to be tolerated.

"But how," he says, "unite the two great sects of paralysed Protestants? By keeping simply to Scripture. The members of the Scottish Church have not a shadow of excuse for refusing Episcopacy: it has indeed been abused among them, grievously abused; but it is in the Bible, and that is all they have a right to ask.

They have also no shadow of excuse for refusing to employ a written form of prayer. It may not be to their taste-it may not be the way in which they like to pray; but it is no question, at present, of likes or dislikes, but of duties; and the acceptance of such a form on their part would go half way to reconcile them with their brethren. Let them allege such objections as they can reasonably advance against the English form, and let these be carefully and humbly weighed by the pastors of both Churches: some of them ought to be at once forestalled. For the English Church, on the other hand, must," &c.

Into Mr Ruskin's own religious tenets, further than he has chosen to reveal them in his works, we have no wish to pry.

But he must cease to Mr Ruskin if they do not exhibit some salient peculiarity, coupled with a confidence, unusual even amongst zealots, that his peculiar views will speedily triumph. If he can be presumed to belong to any sect, it must be the last and smallest one amongst us-some sect as exclusive as German mysticism, with pretensions as great as those of the Church of Rome.

One word on the style of Mr Ruskin it will save the trouble of alluding to it on particular ocasions. It is very unequal. In both his architectural works he writes generally with great ease, spirit, and clearness. There is a racy vigour in the page. But when he would be very eloquent, as he is disposed to be in the Modern Painters, he becomes very verbose, tedious, obscure, extravagant. There is no discipline in his style, no moderation, no repose. Those qualities which he has known how to praise in art he has not aimed at in his own writing. A rank luxuriance of a semi-poetical diction lies about, perfectly unrestrained; meta

phorical language comes before us in every species of disorder; and hyperbolical expressions are used till they become commonplace. Verbal criticism he would probably look upon as a very puerile business: he need fear nothing of the kind from us; we should as soon think of criticising or pruning a jungle. To add to the confusion, he appears at times to have proposed to himself the imitation of some of our older writers: pages are written in the rhythm of Jeremy Taylor; sometimes it is the venerable Hooker who seems to be his type; and he has even succeeded in combining whatever is most tedious and prolix in both these great writers. If the reader wishes a specimen of this sort of modern antique, he may turn to the fifteenth chapter of the second volume of the Modern Painters.

Coupled with this matter of style, and almost inseparable from it, is the violence of his manner on subjects which cannot possibly justify so vehement a zeal. We like a generous enthusiasm on any art-we delight in it; but who can travel in sympathy with a writer who exhausts on so much paint and canvass every term of rapture that the Alps themselves could have called forth? One need not be a utilitarian philosopher-or what Mr Ruskin describes as suchto smile at the lofty position on which he puts the landscape-painter, and the egregious and impossible demands he makes upon the art itself. And the condemnation and opprobrium with which he overwhelms the luckless artist who has offended him is quite as violent. The bough of a tree, "in the left hand upper corner" of a landscape of Poussin's, calls forth this terrible denunciation:

"This latter is a representation of an ornamental group of elephants' tusks,

with feathers tied to the ends of them. Not the wildest imagination could ever conjure up in it the remotest resemblance to the bough of a tree. It might be the claws of a witch-the talons of an eagle the horns of a fiend; but it is a full assemblage of every conceivable falsehood which can be told respecting foliage-a piece of work so barbarous in every way that one glance at it ought to prove the complete charlatanism and trickery of the whole system of the old landscape-painters.

I will say here at once, that such