of the Brotherhood. And in this work of liberation BurneJones bore his full share. But in spite of this, and although the freedom art lives in to-day-and, after all, freedom must precede an effort of any kind-is probably largely due to the Pre-Raphaelites, it seems to us that at present there is a great deal more to be learnt from the side of their scheme that failed than from the side of it that triumphed. There is not the slightest prospect of art relapsing again into dull formality and a conventional routine. On the other hand, there is a great danger of our forgetting the close connexion that must exist between art and life. And in so far as we forget this there is danger of our coming to treat art as something apart from, and above, the ordinary needs of humanity, something not made for daily use, and not appreciable by the common understanding.

This is the danger of our day. To have told the prehistoric singer of the deeds of valour of his tribe or clan, or the prehistoric draughtsman who scratched on wood or bone subjects of the battle or chase, that he was not to separate art from life, would have been as ridiculously superfluous as it would have been to tell Shakespeare or Tintoret the same thing. Ages which are at the source or zenith of art do not need to be reminded of its derivation. But in a critical age it is very different. Criticism examines the thing itself, analyses the thing itself, and explains with great subtlety the nature of the pleasure to be derived from the thing itself. But, on the other hand, not being creative, it is very apt to lose sight of the creative effort that went to make the thing. It is apt, that is to say, to treat the object of its criticism as an isolated phenomenon, or group of phenomena, and to ignore its relation to life. That this is the tendency of modern criticism is sufficiently obvious. Strange as it may seem that a subject which through all the history of the human race has formed a main part of its activity and preoccupation should have dwindled to such dimensions, yet there is no denying the fact that art to-day is generally treated by those interested in it as if its raison d'être was to gratify the taste of a small and highly cultured minority. However useful and valuable in many ways modern criticism may be, it certainly has a tendency to lift the subject of art into a region where it can be approached only by the specialist.

This is bound to happen if we allow ourselves to think of art as a thing separate from life. On the other hand, no sooner do we begin to dwell on its connexion with life and growth out of life than such a view of the subject comes to

seem inadequate. Once admit this connexion between life and art, and the connecting links themselves become clear. There follows the perception that the higher manifestations of art painting, sculpture, architecture-are bound to be accompanied by those intermediate manifestations which go under the name of crafts. It would obviously be absurd to expect of an age that it should express itself in the more lofty and abstract forms of art before it had mastered the more simple and homely ones. And, as a matter of fact, those higher forms have always been supported and based upon the lower. We need scarcely remind the reader of the keen sense of beauty and effect in every branch of craftsmanship which supported eighteenth-century painting in England. Far more intimate is the connexion during the Italian Renaissance. In those days the arts and crafts were branches of the same calling, practised often by the same men, interdependent on each other, and nourished, like the upper and lower branches of a tree, by the same circulating sap. Moreover, during the Renaissance craftsmanship itself was less artificially propagated and more firmly based on life than in our eighteenth-century movement. Consequently, it was more fruitful and its yield of higher art forms much richer and more varied. To realise how these higher forms are built up out of the lower, and how both depend on life, one has only to visit a modern exhibition, to look at the pictures on the walls, and, comparing their loose, insecure surfaces, made up of smears and blotches of paint, with the lustrous, ivory-smooth texture of an old master to ask, What is it that exists in the latter which does not exist in the former? And, again, what was it that existed in the Italian life of that period which does not exist in English life to-day? The answer to both questions is contained in the word craftsmanship.'

Thus, not only does great art express the life of its age, but it is actually built up out of that life. Craftsmanship on life and art on craftsmanship is the order of that building. And as soon as we grasp and enter into the significance of this connexion our whole view of art (if we have been accustomed to look at it as detached) becomes changed. Our interest in the subject begins to do for us exactly what it did for Morris and Watts. It begins to nourish an interest in life. It becomes a human tie. For it is no more possible to be fond of art in this way, without going on to consider the stages of its progress, the soil that nourishes it, and the national and social conditions which call it forth,

than it would be to be passionately interested in the last chapter of a book without wanting to turn back to the first.

This is to be, so to speak, humanly fond of art, and this is the kind of fondness for art that enriches life. And for us, as we think, the interest and value of the Pre-Raphaelite movement lie in the fact that it illustrates in a double way the rightness and value of this human estimate of the subject. As we have pointed out, one-half of the genius of the movement adopted the view that art and life are inseparable, that art must be built up to from below, and can only occur as the result of certain conditions of life. The other half held the view that art is separable from life, that it is a species of dream or vision, to be nourished in a total imaginative seclusion from the spirit of its own age. Of these two views, it may be said that the first brought nothing but happiness to its holders, the second nothing but unhappiness. The first bound its teachers more closely and sympathetically to their own generation; the second alienated them from the world altogether. Finally, the first has bequeathed to the present and future a steadfast resolve to set about the building-up process and to prepare those conditions of life which in the future may express themselves in noble forms of art; while the second has left behind it works from which its own profound depression and aloofness from life are the main impressions to be derived, and which, far from adding to the reality of art, by appealing to the general heart of humanity, have encouraged a view of the subject in keeping with their own estranged and visionary

character.

There is an especial need at present, it seems to us, to dwell on these different views of art. The conditions under which we live are undergoing violent change. The scientific achievements of the last century have mapped out the life of Europe on a new plan. To that plan modern life-not in art only, but in science, politics, and everything else has to adapt itself. It seems as if what served as a basis for the art of the past two centuries-the support of a wealthy and cultured class-would scarcely sustain the art of the future. Meantime, until the new conditions of life have attained the stability which allows of artistic expression, there is an interlude, a gap, as it were, between life and art. Of this interlude the champions of the detached view of art avail themselves to press upon our notice all kinds of artistic inventions and dreams of their own, which they have evolved out of their own imagination, and which speedily

disappear and pass away. Now is the time, then, amid these distractions, for those who remember that art is bound to be an expression of life, to fix their eyes steadily upon life itself, not to be put off or deceived by these apparitions of a day, but to go on telling themselves that the art which does not express life is worth nothing; that it is out of the elements of modern life that our art must be evolved; and that in that life, in its largeness of outlook, its breadth and extension of human sympathy, there are beginning, perhaps, already to shape themselves the characteristics of the art of the future.

ART. XI. THE GREAT CONSULT.'

1. Speeches of the Rt. Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, M.P., on the Fiscal Question. Times' Reports.

2. Address by Sir Spencer Walpole, K.C.B., to the Cobden Club, November 28, 1904.

I T is now a year and four months since Mr. Chamberlain's action on the Fiscal Question caused the rupture of Mr. Balfour's Ministry. On October 3, 1903, the ExSecretary of State for the Colonies began at Glasgow that 'campaign' which was destined to divide political parties upon new lines, according to the view men take of his fiscal projects, relegating almost at once to the background those matters of party dissension on which for nearly twenty years electoral battles had been chiefly fought.

Mr. Chamberlain did not take action without having carefully surveyed the ground. In speeches in the House of Commons and at Birmingham he had already indicated the direction in which he wished to move. He could rest assured of the support of powerful organs in the press; and long before he left the Cabinet he and his friends had been strenuously working to provide an effective political organisation, centred at Birmingham, which should exercise influence over electoral bodies and committees in every part of the country. But with his appearance on the platform at Glasgow, free from all official trammels, the avowed leader of a new policy, on which he wished to consult the people, the stage of serious public discussion of definite proposals was for the first time reached.

Here, then, the public suddenly found itself confronted with a problem of great perplexity, familiar enough to our ancestors and the statesmen of half a century ago, but which the existing generation had had no reason to study for itself. There is no nation in the world which can so truly boast itself a 'self-governing country'; and accordingly Englishmen prepared to get up the subject' by the light of all the information available, to examine statistics, to read and to listen to innumerable speeches and newspaper articles, argumentative or polemical, to watch the course of leading statesmen, and, finally, in due time, to judge for themselves. A whole nation in serious debate affords a subject well worthy of contemplation. At Glasgow 'the great 'consult began.' What has since been the trend of the national debate?