EDITOR'S TABLE.

THE

HE World has been lamenting "The Lost Arts of Civilization." It thinks that the "sewing-machine has already destroyed one of the most beautiful, one of the most humanizing of arts-the art of needle-work, in which our mothers and grandmothers excelled, and from which they had comfort as well as occupation." It also tells us that "the planing, turning, and mortising machines, with their various applications, have converted the skillful carpenter of forty years back into a commonplace joiner and framer. There are no carpenters any more," it goes on to say; "the nice skill in that once-instructive art is all monopolized by machinery; . . . all that delicate work which so exercised his eye and hand, which created grades in his métier, and made the skillful carpenter really a man of accomplishments, all this is now transferred from his band to the jaws of the unreasoning, inexorable, brute machine." This lamenting critic, still casting his eye on the delights and results of bygone skill, assures us that "the mowing and reaping machines have made those beautiful arts of former time, mowing with the scythe and reaping with the grain-cradle, to be almost absolutely lost arts;" and he further says that "with photography and its developments must come the destruction of painting. Portraiture is already almost a lost art, landscape will soon follow, and the higher forms of historical painting will soon die.

...

. . . The plastic arts and architecture must in the same way yield to machinery, just as inevitably as the Geneva watch-maker must give way before the Waltham works. When an artist can cast you a thousand copies of a moulding, cornice, or frieze, at once and of the same pattern, the chisel will not dare attempt to compete." The writer concedes that the revolution he describes is favorable

to human progress; "it is itself progress," he says, "since the effect is to divert the more intelligent persons connected with any art from employment in it, and to drive them to seek employment in connection with some higher art. It is progress, too, in that it continually frees a larger number of persons from exhausting toil, and gives them increasing time to seek culture."

We cannot quite accept the consoling theory of the last few sentences. While the revolution described will, no doubt, release certain energies from a lower in order to advance them to a higher plane of effort, it will tend also to throw upon the world hosts of men wholly ignorant of any form of skilled labor, and from this will result, not progress, but a great decay of intelligence, of worth, and of morals. Indeed, this consequence of the

substitution of machinery for the skill of the individual laborer is already evident. The number of men unfitted for any definite cmployment, unskilled in any of the arts or crafts, is on the increase, who in a vagabond way flow into the great cities, where they depend upon chance opportunities for employment, and help to swell the ranks of the idle and the vicious.

But, while we cannot assent to the idea that general progress is to come of this revolution, we are not without our consolation. This lies in the fact that a reaction has begun in favor of individual taste and skill as opposed to machine-made articles. In furni ture this revival is more noteworthy than in other things, but we may confidently expect it to extend to other branches of manufacture in which machinery has been replacing manipulation by the individual. The canons of the revived art in furniture are that household articles should be pure and simple in style, substantial in manufacture, and that each product should be stamped by the individual skill of the craftsman. A mania for this kind of furniture has already begun, so that in one direction at least the supremacy of duplication is gone. The "thousand copies of a scroll" and the facility of the gluebrush are understood, and are coming rapidly under a general detestation. Machinery, of course, will continue in use, if for no other reason than because it reduces cost; and fortunately even a "brute machine" is amenable to advanced civilization. The example of the purer style has already been followed, inasmuch as we see it modifying and improving the designs of the machine-made article; and this is no light service.

There is another direction in which all the efforts to find a substitute for the skill of the hand have come to little. This is in engraving. A great deal is said about new processes, ingenious methods of using the camera and acids whereby drawing is copied and lines in relief formed; but no device has succeeded in giving the tone, the feeling, the quality that come from the finger-ends of the man charged with art-feeling.

In one particular the World writer seems to us wholly wrong. Painting shows no sign of a surrender to photography. Miniaturepainting has been fairly killed by the sunpictures, and perhaps portrait-painting suffers; but the world of ideal art is full of vitality, of exultation, of growth, of expres sion. Art-taste is an appetite that grows upon what it feeds; those who begin with photographs, or who enjoy photographs, are only thereby stimulated into greater zeal for the products of the pencil. Not only is divine color beyond the reach of the sunshadow, but imagination, creation, poetical feeling, subtile sentiment, strange and won

derful harmonies of color, expression of passion and emotion-these all lie without the reach of the camera and within the touch of that force in human nature called genius, which no machinery can imitate and no method of duplication supplant. As an historical fact, art is experiencing a great revival. It is taking possession of the world as it did four hundred years ago; an army of enthusiasts are enlisted in it, and everywhere we may see the signs of awakened public interest in this outcome of aesthetic culture. Painting and sculpture at least are possessed by the spirit of immortality.

THE recent introduction of elevators for carrying persons to the upper floors has already made a marked change in the new architecture of our city. It has been found that by making the top-floors of buildings easily accessible, they take preference even over those at a lower altitude for many kinds of business. The light is better, the air is purer, the situation is quieter, nine stories up than at three or four stories, and when the ninth story may be reached by a swiftmoving steam-elevator, every objection that might exist against this great height is removed. It seems strange that so simple a contrivance for utilizing upper stories and high spaces should not have come into vogue until within recent years. New devices for the substitute of steam, such as hydraulic power, are likely to greatly extend the use of this very comfortable way of "getting up-stairs."

There is an important change in our domestic architecture that is likely to come of the use of elevators. It is no new idea that the kitchen ought to be placed at the top of the house. At this point the disagreeable odors that now rise from the cooking-range and the laundry, and more or less permeate the whole house, would be carried off into the upper air. The healthfulness and the agree ableness of the living-rooms would evidently be greatly enhanced by the change of the kitchen base. Hitherto the great obstacle in the way has been, not only the labor of carrying supplies up the several pairs of stairs, and carrying refuse down them, but the dirt and litter certain to accrue there from. The elevator would remedy all this, fetching and carrying needed articles with facility and at little expenditure of time or energy. It would not be practicable, of course, to introduce steam or even hydraulic power into small residences; but elevators balanced by weights, after the manner of "dumb-waiters," now in many houses in use between kitchen and dining-room, would be sufficient for the purpose. As roofs of houses are now commonly built nearly flat, this space could be inclosed and used for the

IF

Literary.

F our first impressions do not deceive us, we have in Mr. Stedman's "Victorian Poets" one of the most valuable contributions ever made by an American to the department of literary criticism. This is high praise; for the studies of Lowell and Whipple are recognized everywhere as among the best that contemporary criticism can show, and to think of Mr. Stedman's work in connection with these is to associate it with the "Age of Elizabeth" and "Among my Books." That it makes good its claim to such association will be conceded, we think, by every careful and well-informed reader of the book, which takes an additional value from the large amount of biographical and historical information which it contains in addition to its purely literary features.

In regard to the scope of the work we cannot do better than quote the statement of it given by Mr. Stedman himself. He says:

"Although presented as a book of literary and biographical criticism, it also may be termed an historical survey of the course of British poetry during the present reign-if not a minute at least a compact and logical survey of the authors and works that mainly demand attention. Having made a study of the poets who rank as leaders of the recent British choir, a sense of proportion induced me to enlarge the result, and to use it as the basis of a guide-book to the metrical literature of the time and country in which those poets have flourished. It seemed to me that, by including a sketch of minor groups and schools, and giving a connection to the whole, I might offer a work that would have practical value for uses of record and reference, in addition to whatever qualities, as an essay in philosophical criticism, it should be found to possess."

The poets accepted as leaders of the choir, and of whom more or less elaborate studies are made, are Landor, Hood, Matthew Arnold, Procter ("Barry Cornwall"), Mrs. Browning, Tennyson, Robert Browning, Buchanan, Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne. Besides these, about one hundred and forty minor singers are discussed, though in many cases the criticism is confined to coupling Prefixed to an epithet with their names. the whole is an analytical study of "The Period," in which are set forth the principles which the subsequent chapters are intended to illustrate and expound.

Such being the scope of the book, we turn now to a consideration of the critical principles upon which Mr. Stedman has based his judgments; and here, again, we cannot do better than quote his own words:

I

"These essays are not written upon a theory. The author has no theory of poetry, and no particular school to uphold. favor a generous eclecticism, or universalism, in art, enjoying what is good, and believing that, as in Nature, the question is not whether this or that kind be the more excellent, but whether a work is excellent of its kind. Certain qualities, however, distinguish what is fine and lasting. The principles upon which I rely may be out of fashion

* Victorian Poets. By Edmund Clarence Stedman. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co.

just now, and not readily accepted. They are founded, nevertheless, in the Miltonian canon of poetry, from which simplicity no more can be excluded than sensuousness and passion. The spirit of criticism is intellectual; that of poetry (although our curiously-reasoning generation often has forgotten it) is normally the offspring of emotion; secondly, it may be, of thought. I find that the qualities upon which I have laid most stress, and which at once have opened the way to commendation, are and, as the basis of persistent growth and of simplicity and freshness, in work of all kinds; greatness in a masterpiece, simplicity, and spontaneity, refined by art, exalted by imagination, and sustained by intellectual power.

The traits, therefore, which I have deprecated earnestly are in the first place obscurity and hardness, and these either naturalimplying defective voice and insight, or affected-implying conceit and poor judgment; and, secondly, that excess of elaborate ornament which places decoration above construction, until the sense of originality is lost-if, indeed, it ever existed. Both obscurity and super-ornamentation are used insensibly to disguise the lack of imagination, just as a weak and florid singer hides with trills and flourishes his inability to strike a simple, pure note, or to change without a sliding scale."

It is beyond our purpose to follow Mr. Stedman step by step through his work, nor could it be done usefully without occupying more space than we can spare; we will content ourselves, therefore, with indicating briefly his theory and method. As he defines it, the dominant method which has distinguished the Victorian period is the idyllic, which is a combination of an art-school, taking its models from old English poetry and from the delicate classicism of Landor and Keats, and of the contemplative didactic school, which had the imaginative strain of Wordsworth for its loftiest exemplar. The leader, and to some extent the founder, of the idyllic school is Tennyson; and, while in his hands rhythm, melody, and the general technical excellence of poetry, have been carried much farther than ever before, its influence has maintained an atmosphere unfavorable to the revival of high passion and dramatic power. Nevertheless, in spite of this adverse influ ence, a new dramatic and lyric school has arisen, under the leadership of Browning and Rossetti, and is engaged in a vigorous effort to reunite beauty and passion in rhythmical art. "Swinburne, beyond the rest, having carried expression to its farthest extreme, obeys a healthful impulse in seeking to renew the true dramatic vigor and thus begin another cycle of poetic song." This new school is obtaining the favor of a new gen. eration, and Mr. Stedman believes that we are entering upon an era which will witness a glorious revival of dramatic poetry in England.

Of the more special features of Mr. Stedman's work, the most noticeable, perhaps, aside from the ample knowledge and wide culture displayed, is its judicial and studiously temperate tone. There are no attempts at paradox or epigram, no pungent allusions, no affected brilliancy, no mere rhetorical garniture of any kind. The most anxious care is taken to avoid even the appearance of dogmatic dicta, or final pronouncements,

and there are probably fewer saperlatives in the book than in any other recent volume of criticism. It is by no means certain, indeed, that this caution is not carried too far; and there is no doubt that it impairs the force and effectiveness of the style. Surely it is as much a mistake on the part of a critic to under-state his thought as to over-state it; and that Mr. Stedman does frequently understate his, be would probably be the first to admit. At worst, however, this is but the reverse side of the cardinal critical virtue; and the virtue is not exhibited so often that we need be hypercritical as to the particular phase which it may assume.

Great pains have been taken to render the volume serviceable as a reference-book, and, besides an admirable analytical index, there are copious marginal notes throughout, and a list comprising all the poets mentioned as belonging to the period under review.

MR. LONGFELLOW's new volume, "The Masque of Pandora, and other Poems" (Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co.), is a collec tion of poems some of which, as The Hanging of the Crane," "Morituri Salutamus," "Charles Sumner," etc., have already appeared, while others are now published for the first time. The longest poem, which gives its title to the book, is dramatic in form, and gives a pleasing version of the old myth of Pandora's box-relating the fashioning of Pandora by Vulcan, the breathing of life into her by Zeus, her fruitless temptation of Prometheus, her successful attempt upon Epimetheus, and finally her opening of the fatal box, whereby were released

"Fever of the heart and brain,
Sorrow, pestilence, and pain,
Moans of anguish, maniac laughter,
All the evils that hereafter

Shall afflict and vex mankind."

The story is effectively told, but the verse is narrative rather than dramatic, and the lyrics, of which there are many, are quite the best part of the poem. These are in the form of choruses emphasizing the salient episodes of the drama, and the following, à propos of the remorse of Pandora and Epimetheus, points the moral of the entire story:

แ

CHORUS OF THE EUMENIDES.
Never shall souls like these
Escape the Eumenides,

The daughters dark of Acheron and Night!
Unquenched our torches glare,

Our scourges in the air

Send forth prophetic sounds before they smite.
"Never by lapse of time

The sou! defaced by crime
Into its former self returns again;
For every guilty deed
Holds in itself the seed
Of retribution and undying pain.
"Never shall be the losB
Restored till Helios

Hath purified them with heavenly fires;
Then what was lost is won,

And the new life begun,
Kindled with nobler passious and desires."

"The Hanging of the Crane " has already taken its place among the favorite lyrics of home; it is in Longfellow's most tender and characteristic vein, and the verse is peculiarly finished and melodious. "Morituri Salutamus," the poem delivered at the fiftieth an

motive, with an endeavor, either conscious or not, of reproducing the ideas of Rubens, mixed with ordinary, we might say commonplace, thought.

Seen against a gilded background, which gleams in many points and masses between the men and women, and among the great boughs and leaves of the trees, the Abundantia of the earth is represented by a black-haired, southern-looking woman, with two large infants clinging to her lap. Rich clothing is draped upon her, and fruit and flowers in great masses droop from baskets borne in the hands and on the shoulders of a crew whom the artist apparently designed to be half satyr and half human. Dark faces of men pale upon the gilded sky with big, cunning eyes and black locks of hair. One of these men is dancing with a blond, innocentlooking child, he in shadow and she in a full light that takes away from her face and form nearly all shading; and she stands before the spectator about as a good reproduction of the manner in which Rubens might have treated such a subject, or as if the figures had been executed by a direct pupil of that master. On the other side of the painting jolly children are loaded with the fullness of the harvest, and grapes, poultry, and goats, are mixed up with them in free and careless profusion.

The other picture represents a scene in a galley whose golden prow breasts the waves, and whose big sail flops in the breeze, green and blue and golden as a peacock's plumes, over the heads of a band of men, women, and children, who load down the great barge. Here, as in the companion painting, a mother and her offspring give the key of the subject of the picture. Besides these figures, half a dozen in number, composed of the woman, babies, and two or three little girls, a mass of others fill up the scene. One fair, blond girl, with heavy contours to her pink flesh, sits with her naked back turned toward the beholder-a truly Rubens type of figure, both in its feeling and treatment. Another girl, with bare legs, is stretching out into the waves to catch in a shell the seaweeds and shells cast up from the water. All these figures, as well as the boat itself, are bound together by splendid colors of all textures that are filled with rich tones, from the peacock-colored sail to the woman's splendid skirts, and the pink and crimson lining of the sea-shells scattered so freely everywhere. Such are the main features of these two paint ings.

Markart, who is a pupil of Piloty, appears to be a man of great but irregular sources of imagination and power. All his people show a great want of thoroughly good drawing, and the legs, arms, and torsos of nearly every one are inaccurate and impossible. But nobody accustomed to study works of this character can fail to recognize the remarkable freedom and power with which his figures are sketched upon the canvas. He does not hesitate to draw one of his children in full light with a bent body and twisted limbs, in an attitude that would have daunted many a more mature painter thau he; nor does he doubt his power to succeed in filling in the great masses of bright

flesh in the back of the woman in the barge. It is the same, too, with his use of rich colors. He glazes and lays in superb body-colors because he likes to see them in the picture, and apparently from a keen relish for such tints, but not from any real knowledge

how to use them.

The result of this richness of conception and imperfect fulfillment of the idea has been to produce a dazzling effect in both instances, but the paintings are at the same time entirely without repose either in the composition of form or in light and shade. These pictures have been said to recall Titian, but no painters could be farther apart than the painter of the "Entombment" of the Louvre, with its absolutely perfect relations of line and color, and light and shade, and the man who painted the "Abundantiæ." That Markart resembles Rubens, with his flowing forms, big lights, and superfluous colors, is quite apparent; but it is Rubens in his pictures in the Louvre, and not with his chastened powers exhibited at their best, in the mature and well-balanced "Descent from the Cross," at Antwerp.

Markart has power and imagination, but the "Abundantia" cannot be regarded as more than pictures showing great though immature talent.

A CORRESPONDENT, whose art-training entitles his opinions to respect, sends us from Richmond the subjoined description of Foley's statue to Stonewall Jackson, recently erected in that city, and unveiled on the 26th ultimo:

"Amid the fervid enthusiasm on the occasion of the unveiling of the General Jackson statue, probably not one in ten thousand looked upon the effigy otherwise than subjectively. The glamour of the past rose up and intervened, and the bronze shone through it as the personification of the deeds of Stonewall Jackson the successful chieftain, rather than as a work of art representing the man in his habit as he lived. When the excitement had died down, it was curious and interesting to note, as was the fortune of the writer, the calmer criticisms of the crowd as they pressed forward for a nearer view. It was the old story; and had the Stonewall Brigade and the other veterans that thronged the vicinity been furnished with chalk, as was the Athenian populace of old, in the well-known legend, one day to mark the excellences and the next the defects of the work, the result would have been exactly the same as in the classic story the bronze would have been whitened by their comments.

"The sculptor who has to manage a single pedestrian portrait figure must find himself in something of a dilemma in attempting to avoid imitation on the one hand or bald com

monplace on the other. The possible per

mutations and combinations of the members of the human frame have been wellnigh exhausted. The lamented Foley not only had this common difficulty to contend with in dealing with the figure in question, but the greater one of artificially presenting a subject whose externals were so entirely dissociated from the picturesque. Jackson's career was full of dash, yet he was slow, one might say plodding, in his habit. His demeanor was of that quiet sort that excluded any suggestion of the military hero. In short, to convert into

a striking work of art this man whose general appearance was the antithesis of his character as developed by the war, was no easy task for the artist. It may be safely asserted that he has succeeded: skillfully avoiding the tame face is self-contained and noble in expression; without touching the over-dramatic. The the eyes evidently fixed on something of moment; the head turned to the right. The line of vision is somewhat higher than the eye, and the chin slightly raised in consequence. The hair and beard are handled perfectly, exhibiting, as do all the details, a masterly technique. The weight is upon the right leg, and it evidently bears it, without, however, any of the exaggerated bowing back of the leg or protrusion of the calf so often used to give the sense of firmness. The arm on the same side is akimbo on the hip, and so managed as to assist the feeling of solidity; while the gloved hand, in crumpling the gauntlet which it holds, assures us that the attention of the owner is fixed on some tense and absorbing matter. The left leg is in advance of the other, and, from the knee down, nearly parallel with it. This gives additional firmness to the figure-the necessity of bending it to obtain a change of line being obviated by the accessories. The left hand clusps the sword -hilt, the knuckles to the front, at once giving an easy turn to the wrist, and a chance for nice expression in the anatomy. The military cape has fallen into the hollow of the elbow, and thence drapes to the section of stone-wall upon which the point of the naked sword rests, and which rids the composition of gaps and the spindly look so often the defect of single figures unrelieved by accessories. As to the likeness, the figure is said to be too full and round. It may be that the artist knew this, and sacrificed the matter of fact to the matter of art, rather than imitate a meagreness which would have marred his work and remanded it to the limbo of slouching figures which disfigure our streets and galleries. But it is said that the widow of General Jackson considers it an excellent portrait.

"The best view of the statue is from its

left, with the nose just cutting the line of the cheek. This aspect will expose both limbs and the right arm, and mass the composition very effectively. The figure is about eight feet high."

MR. WILLIAM HART is now engaged upon a painting entitled "A September Morning in the Keene Valley." The view, however, is more of a suggestive character than illustrative of a real study from Nature; or, in other words, it is a composition of a pasturefield, surrounded by hills resembling in form those which are found in Essex County, bordering on the Adirondack region. The landscape is partly obscured by the fog which is drifting slowly up the rugged hill-sides. In the foreground there is a group of cows browsing as they move along to the richer pasturage in the distance. The cows are in the shadow of the trees which line the road on the right, but come out strong against a bright area of sunshine in the middle ground. There is no suggestion of autumn colors in the foliage of the trees, which are yet fresh and green, but the ferns and weeds in their shade show some rich, brown tones, indicating the approach of frosty weather. In the background, obscured by the early morning fog, there is a suggestion of a mountain-peak.