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wrung from them-forced upon them-by means of torture? It may seem strange that so horrible a question should be raised even in reference to the Government practices under the grim Nicholas. But those conversant with the traditions of the dreaded "Third Division"-of which the bland Schuvaloff was the head, before being appointed to the task of deceiving, as I must call it, the English Government, and Queen Victoria in person, by false assurances made in the name of the Czar "on a gentleman's word of honor"are well aware that torture has always been practiced in Russia against political offenders. Only a few weeks ago the German press and the London "Standard" have openly stated that torture was employed against Solovieff. No denial has come yet, though the Cabinet of St. Petersburg seldom scruples to deny the most patent facts.

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Nicholas Turguenieff, who, in his quality of a former member of the Russian Government administration, is always to be listened to with a great deal of attention, positively says: The replies and the declarations of the accused of 1826 resemble too much those which were formerly drawn out by the system of torture not to have been the result of analogous means. Only, one does not see the same frankness in the drawing up of the judicial protocols; for, though the results are given, there is silence as to the causes which brought them about. The Minister of War having been informed that Colonel Pestel had just been led into St. Petersburg, the first words which came from the Minister's lips were an order to subject him to the torture. I purposely use here a general expression, not wishing, by a more precise statement, to add disgust to the horror."

It is impossible, under these suspicious circumstances, to say how far we are to take the alleged avowals of the accused as genuine. "I would have been able," Ryleïeff is made to exclaim, in the "Judicial Report," " to stop all pro

ceedings; but I have, on the contrary, forced on action. I am the chief author of the events of December 26th. If any one has merited death for that rising, it is I!"

Was this a noble attempt to shield his friends? or were these words the outcome of a man's sufferings on the rack? We shall never know. Nor can we decide whether some of the accused had not, by cruel, fiendish means, been made to contradict and to incriminate each other in a manner which must have inwardly delighted the tyrannic victor. Let us draw the veil over these harrowing secrets of the dungeon! This much we know, that by barbarous atrocities was the reign of Nicholas initiated. Through pools of blood he waded to the throne; and the beams of the gallows served as supports for his proud imperial seat.

More than fifty years have passed since the martyrdom of the insurgents of December, 1825. To-day Russia, in which under Nicholas the stillness of death had reigned, is deeply troubled by disaffection-"an Empire of the Discontented." So Katkoff calls it in his "Moscow Gazette"; and when he, the supporter of autocracy, makes so general a confession, the absolutistic system, though still showing a face of brass, must indeed have feet of clay. In the next article I shall have to speak more fully of the attempt the successor of Nicholas made to thwart the progress of the constitutional movement, which recommenced after the Crimean war, by that liberation of the serfs which the organizer of the Leagues of 1821-25 had already inserted in his programme. For the present I will conclude with a hope that the contest we see daily going on may result in a triumph but too long delayed, and that, guided by the spirit of Pestel and Murawieff, the opponents of a brutal czardom may succeed in opening a new era for Russia, after the oppressive servitude of a thousand years.

KARL BLIND, in Contemporary Review.

THERE

MORALISTS ON BLUE CHINA.

HERE is an interesting tribe of natives on the northwest frontier of India who acknowledge but three deadly sins. The first is the smoking of tobacco, the next is an indiscretion reprobated by our own theologians, and the last deadly sin is to part one's hair in the middle. There is a simplicity about this prohibitory code which modern moralists would do well to imitate. In official reports on native manners (which the

natives help to pay for) the race to which we allude is spoken of rather rudely as "the superstitious Ziphs" (their real name is of no importance to the argument), and their ideas are held up to ridicule. Yet it is surely a wise thing to reduce the deadly sins to the utmost possible simplicity and to the smallest number. The tendency of modern moralists, and especially of virtuous pressmen, is, on the other hand, to add at

random to the list of deadly sins. Every one must be edified by the virtue of penny-a-liners, and of some of the gentlemen who do the picturegalleries. There is nothing like the austerity of pressmen, though Mr. Swinburne, carried away by his craze for alliteration, once compared it to the virtue of members of another profession. They have decided that a new deadly sin has appeared on the moral horizon, and this dulce scelus, suave flagitium (to quote an early Latin father), is the love of blue china.

These two simple words "blue china" have become-it is difficult to say why-a kind of railing accusation. They are hurled at the heads of poets and painters and people at large, much as charges of having robbed a church and murdered a sainted grandmother are tossed about in American political journals. The original sin of the porcelain in question seems to be its blueness. Yet an amateur who is fond of Dresden, or who collects Anatolian ware, or Rhodian tiles, or Persian lamps, nay, even people who have no ceramic tastes of any description, often fall under the stern reprimand of the newspaper preacher, just as if their abodes were full of old Nanking and the hawthorn pattern. The accusation of dealing in blue china is the modern counterpart of the charge of witchcraft, or of the vague Roman offense of insulting the Emperor. There is no way of disproving it, and indeed the mere charge is supposed to carry its own evidence with it. How heinous is the offense of being "mixed up," as people charitably say, with blue china, may be gathered from the practice of the novelists. The old romancers used to have a good stock of villains always on hand, tasteful and varied patterns which had long been approved of by discriminating public taste. There was the wicked earl, whose wickedness ran in certain wellknown channels, and who generally died of passion and suppressed gout. There was the bad baronet. He persecuted rustic beauty, prosecuted interesting poachers, and often perished in consequence of a fall from his horse during a thunderstorm. We have also known him expire, blaspheming, when his yacht was struck by lightning, and in one noted case his skeleton was found in the hollow of an old oak-tree. Another favorite villain was the roaring pirate and smuggler of the Dirk Hatteraick type, while a fourth was the sanctimonious attorney. All these mischievous persons have resigned in favor of the newest villain out, the villain who is contaminated by a taste for blue china. We have not ascertained that this malevolent but craven wretch has ever been permitted by the novelist to do any real mischief. It is his intentions (which, like Wilkins Micawber, junior, he never carries out in any one direction) that are so baneful.

There is a lurking devil in his china-closet that would have frightened good Charles Lamb. "I have an almost feminine partiality for old china. When I go to see any great house I inquire for the china-closet," says that essayist. In his time the profligate and abominable character of the taste had not been discovered, and he made remarks which we dare not quote, for fear of raising the blush on the cheek of modest journalists. Lamb will be allowed by the virtuous the same off- chance as some theologians give the old heathen philosophers. Not utterly condemned to torment, he will pass his days with the wise of the older world, who can say:

66

“Siamo perduti, e sol di tanto offesi

Che senza speme vivemo in disio."

Charles Lamb sinned in loving blue china, but not against knowledge. He had not “sat under" the ethical critics of the fine arts. He was wont to point out to his cousin certain speciosa miracula upon a set of extraordinary old blue china, a recent purchase"; but if he lived now he would know better. He would use teacups adorned with the semblance of pink ribbon. It has been remarked, moreover, by a kindly critic that, even if Lamb did like porcelain, he partly redeemed his character for manliness by his taste for Irish stew (or was it cow-heel?) and gin-and-water. He was not altogether bad. But the curious spectacle of the taste of the last becoming the unpardonable sin of the present generation has led us away from the new villain of romancethe blue-china villain.

We are fresh from making this person's acquaintance in a novel where he is guilty of the last and worst offense with which the romancewriter can brand a character. The blue-china villain, a young and strong man, has just been horsewhipped by an elderly and virtuous earl. To be horsewhipped in a novel is to be deeply stained indeed. There is no court of appeal ; character is gone for ever. In the fiction to which we refer, it does not appear that the miscreant had been guilty of any other offense beyond liking porcelain. He aggravated this crime, however, in a horrid manner, by wearing a "silk smoking-suit," at the moment when he was beaten like a hound. The heroes of the late Mr. Lawrence, tremendous people, any one of whom could pitch a colossal Welsher over a horse-pond, used to wear silk smoking-suits, and it was counted to them for merit. They also adorned their arched insteps with slippers daintily charactered with enigmatic monograms in embossed gold." Yet what used to be a decided virtue in the eyes of the novelists has become degraded by association with the produce of Satsuma and with old Nanking. So relative, when all is said, are the so

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called absolute distinctions of human morality. When the Emperor Hwhang-ti invented blue china (his Majesty flourished in the mythic period of the Celestial Empire about 5260 B. C.), he little thought that he was founding the most corrupt sect of the modern world.

There must be some obscure though valid reason for the earnestness with which the moralist now condemns certain forms of ceramic profligacy. One can imagine the explanation of the superficial critic. He would say that delicacy of satire is not the strong point of the English feuilletonistes. He would point out that the same scribblers are very gregarious animals, and that, if any one gives them a lead in any direction, they are apt to rush down that steep place with unnecessary clamor. Thus it only needs a clever writer to make a very obvious point, in an amusing way, and lightly to chastise the affectation of persons who pretend to live for the beautiful, and who can only find the beautiful in bricd-brac. The success of a satire of that sort is a sufficient motive. At once the hack writers adopt the thing, and give it—as, to do them justice, they always do-a deeply moral meaning. They break the butterfly with iron poles, on tremendous wheels, on scaffolds as high as that which pleased Haman well. Another instance of the same practice was afforded in the last generation, or the generation before, by the hacks who were always talking about the "silver-fork school." To these persons, with their birth, breeding, and taste, silver forks seemed an outrage. Like manly Englishmen, they used the cold steel, when they ate peas, in the way still affected by the vigorous and unspoiled Teutonic race. The cry of "silver-fork school" was exactly analogous to the shriek of "blue china," which is raised, in season and out of season, by satirists who make up by their virulence for their want of originality.

This would be the explanation of the superficial observer. He would also hint that dull people are apt to envy and detest those who have tastes that they themselves do not possess. Suppose a writer on art to know nothing about itnot a very difficult thing to suppose. Let him rather detest all forms of plastic representations than otherwise; but let him, if he must have a preference, prefer pictures of Evangelical young ladies clinging to stone crosses in the midst of

howling seas. He may also like canvases which recall to him Bible stories, and the three or four historical anecdotes of which he has a muddy and confused recollection. If a critic of this sort finds people admiring works which have nothing but color, sentiment, drawing, and composition to recommend them, what will he do? He will write an article en colère, as the Paris newsboys used to say when they advertised a particularly ferocious essay in "Le Père Duchêne." He will protest that every one who likes what he does not like is "an oaf and an affected puppy." He will remember that he does not like blue china either, and he will lump all his aversions under that useful head. He will bethink him—and this is the moment when the angry critic is oddest and most amusing-that he is very righteous, and that all persons who like what he dislikes must be very wicked. He will draw the conclusion that some unlucky picture, by some unfortunate painter, is sapping the moral strength of the nation; and then he will rant in the most absurd way, and think he has done his duty as an æsthetic critic.

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Mr. Ruskin is perhaps partly responsible for all these sermons out of place. Mr. Ruskin generally, if not always, likes the pictures that the moralist who thunders against blue china dislikes. He hates the pictures that the moralist admires. But his method is just the same, though the victims are different. He is just as likely to call the harmless painters of whom he does not approve "dishonest," "sensual," 'corrupt," "devilish," etc., as the preacher from the opposite pulpit is to scream "morbid," "affected,” “unEnglish," "unmanly," "debasing," "corrupting," "blue china." We are born into a pharisaical period, and we must take the consequences of the situation. Some of the zeal that finds eternal fault with porcelain is of the sort displayed by the apostle who denounced alabastra. Meanwhile the price of the peccant article does not fall in the market. Perhaps people who liked blue china when it was innocent like it better now it is criminal. Already it is difficult to sin on less than five thousand pounds a year. Soon millionaires will have the vicious passion all to themselves, like deer-stalking.

The Saturday Review.

THIS

MR. BROWNING'S DRAMATIC IDYLS.*

that Pheidippides came upon the god Pan-the god of Arcadian and pastoral pleasures-in the course of his race, and received from the god a promise to assist Athens in the coming struggle, and a remonstrance with the Athenians for not having hitherto paid Pan due honors. This is a raw sort of legend, which needs poetic manipulation and motive to give it anything like beauty or force. Mr. Browning lends it none, but tells it in its bareness, without any effort to show what there was in the Arcadian goat-god-the god who was supposed to inspire those sudden, wild passions of fear, called panic-fear, such as seized Persia at Marathon-which would specially lead him to favor Athens, the most accomplished and least merely naturalistic of the states of Greece, or to fight in her ranks against the invading Persian. The theme might have been made poetical, but needs poetic motive to render it so. Mr. Browning has not attempted this, and the legend, in his versification of it, remains as wanting in artistic wholeness as it is in the gossipy story of Herodotus.

HIS is by far the best book which Mr. Brown- fate. The chief point of the legend is the story ing has published for many years. Though not reaching the level of his "Men and Women," or of the finest portions of “The Ring and the Book," it has many passages full of his characteristic power, and except where a rough style gives dramatic force to the sketch, as in the picture of John Bunyan's penitents, Ned Bratts and his wife, nothing at all of the truculent ugliness, the ostentatious broken-windedness of his latest gasping style of English verse. Of course, his subjects are, as usual with Mr. Browning, startling subjects. He not only loves to flash his weird figures upon the imagination with all the suddenness and abruptness of a magic lantern, but to present you with a subject that takes your breath away as much by the singularity of its attitude as by the suddenness of its appearance. He rejects purposely the shading and the moral atmosphere which make the grimmest subjects seem natural when they are given in connection with all the conditions of their history and origin, for his object is to make you see the wonder of the world, rather than its harmony, or the context which, partly at least, explains it. But assuming, as the critic always must assume, the poet's special bent and genius, there is nothing specially harsh in this volume, and much that is really powerful, while the harshest pictures in it are lent a touch of grandeur by the purpose which penetrates the life portrayed.

We do not take great interest in the first or second of the Idyls. The picture of Martin Relph's remorse for his cowardice, or other motive only half-understood even by himself, in not having stayed the execution of an innocent woman by shouting out that he saw the messenger arriving with the reprieve, is somewhat too vague and unfinished to be interesting. The man hardly knows what his own guilt was, or whether he really was guilty of anything but unreadiness of nature; nor is the confusion in his mind which has grown up since the fatal day as to what it is of which he accuses himself, painted with sufficient force to make the picture interesting from that point of view. For a very different reason we can not admire Mr. Browning's "Pheidippides "-the idyl whose subject is the great runner, who took to Sparta within two days the news of the Persian invasion, and came back only to announce the coldness and jealousy of the Spartans, and their willingness to leave Athens to her

* Dramatic Idyls. By Robert Browning. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

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The first of these Idyls which strikes us as fully worthy of Mr. Browning is the fine story, reminding us of Emily Brontë and the figures in Wuthering Heights," of the father and son, Halbert and Hob-two wild North-England savages who agreed to live and growl at each other, till at last the passion in them broke loose in the scene described in the following idyl :

"HALBERT AND HOB. "Here is a thing that happened. Like wild beasts whelped, for den,

In a wild part of North England, there lived once two wild men

Inhabiting one homestead, neither a hovel nor hut, Time out of mind their birthright: father and son, these-but

Such a son, such a father! Most wildness by degrees

Softens away: yet, last of their line, the wildest and worst were these.

Criminals, then? Why, no: they did not murder and rob;

But, give them a word, they returned a blow-old

Halbert as young Hob:

Harsh and fierce of word, rough and savage of deed,

Hated or feared the more-who knows? the genuine wild-beast breed.

"Thus were they found by the few sparse folk of the country-side;

But how fared each with other? E'en beasts couch, hide by hide,

In a growling, grudged agreement: so, father and son lay curled

The closelier up in their den because the last of their kind in the world.

"Still, beast irks beast on occasion. One Christmas night of snow,

Came father and son to words-such words! more cruel because the blow

To crown each word was wanting, while taunt matched gibe, and curse

Competed with oath in wager, like pastime in hell -nay, worse:

For pastime turned to earnest, as up there sprang at last

The son at the throat of the father, seized him and held him fast.

"Out of this house you go!'-(there followed a hideous oath)

'This oven where now we bake, too hot to hold us both!

If there's snow outside, there's coolness: out with you, bide a spell

In the drift and save the sexton the charge of a parish shell!'

"Now, the old trunk was tough, was solid as stump of oak

Untouched at the core by a thousand years: much less had its seventy broke

One whipcord nerve in the muscly mass from neck to shoulder-blade

Of the mountainous man, whereon his child's rash hand like a feather weighed.

Nevertheless at once did the mammoth shut his eyes,

Drop chin to breast, drop hands to sides, stand stiffened-arms and thighs

All of a piece-struck mute, much as a sentry stands,

Patient to take the enemy's fire: his captain so commands.

"Whereat the son's wrath flew to fury at such sheer

scorn

Of his puny strength by the giant eld thus acting the babe new-born :

And Neither will this turn serve!' yelled he. 'Out with you! Trundle, log!

If you can not tramp and trudge like a man, try all-fours like a dog!'

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"

"Still the old man stood mute. So, logwise-down The closing couplet throws out this grim picture to floor in fine relief against that "reason in nature Pulled from his fireside place, dragged on from which transmitted so hard and savage a disposi

hearth to door

Was he pushed, a very log, staircase along, until A certain turn in the steps was reached, a yard from the house-door-sill.

tion from father to son, and from son to son's son, and also against that “reason out of nature" which touched in turn both father and son with a softening remorse for their unfilial passion "Then the father opened his eyes—each spark of the father more spontaneously, but with little

their rage extinct

effect on his subsequent life; the son only through

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