architecture, whose materials are necessarily large and impressive magnitudes.

The result of this rapid examination of the effects of art in its various forms is, that it involves as an essential factor a certain amount of vague and undefinable emotion. Hence art will always have its mysterious side, and a full appreciation of art in all its parts will include a susceptibility of mind to this particular emotional effect. Accordingly a mind which cannot enjoy without perfectly comprehending the whence and the why of its delight, must, it would seem, be debarred from a portion of the pleasures of art.

We have so far said nothing as to the relative merits of the pleasure which is made definite by intellectual reflection, and that which defies such a process of illumination. In truth, it is difficult to compare the two modes of enjoyment. While such intellectual activity tends to destroy a certain charm which belongs to these undefined emotional effects, it adds a new gratification of its own. The question of the superiority of the one or of the other form of enjoyment may, as we have already remarked, best be referred to individual taste. Some minds of a highly intellectual order, and unequally developed in an emotional direction, will prefer those effects of art which lend themselves to clear definition; other minds, of an opposite order, will rather choose the opposite type of æsthetic effect. This difference will affect the person's relative appreciations of the several arts. Thus, the first type of mind will prefer music united to language to "absolute" music. Many persons, like Lessing, fail to enjoy instrumental music just because of its indefiniteness. Others, like Schumann, would regard all minute inquiries into the what and why of instrumental music as irrelevant. They prefer to keep its meaning screened, so to speak, from the rude light of day.

It is another question as to the proper range of this influence, both in art as a whole and in the several arts. It is plain, from what has been said, that this depends, to some extent, on the artist himself. Thus, for example, a musical composer may seek to render instrumental music minutely descriptive. On the other hand, a painter may lean to an obscure mode of presenting his subject. So, too, the poet may fall into the way of suggesting his scenes and events in shadowy outline, and of dwelling on those aspects of nature and of life which most deeply stir vague and undefinable emotions. Is it possible to lay down any rules as to the right management of this material of art?

No rigid maxims, we think, can be looked for here. A wide margin must clearly be allowed for differences of individual taste. All that can be safely said is, that the intellectual and the emotional have each their rights. On the one hand, culture tends, as has been remarked already, so to strengthen the intellectual impulses that a mode of enjoyment, from which clear apprehension of objects and ideas is wholly excluded, is unsatisfying and incomplete. On the other hand, art is not science: it aims primarily at an emotional, not an intellectual, result. Some of the

deepest feelings of pleasure are, as we have shown, afforded by objects and suggestions which leave the intellect comparatively inactive. Further, as we have seen, these modes of pleasure are not only compatible with intellectual culture; they even presuppose (at least in their highest degree) a certain measure of it. To this we may now add, that our modern culture adds to the value of this undefined emotional enjoyment. Accustomed as we are to the scientific attitude of mind, to regarding nature and life only as an object for intellectual comprehension, there is an exquisite sense of relief in abandoning ourselves for the nonce to the emotional attitude-to viewing nature and life through the dim medium of a fancy which gives to each object the form and colour most precious to our feeling. We may thus safely conclude that each mode of gratification has its rightful place in art.

More definite rules for artistic guidance may perhaps be found if we have to deal with special varieties of art. By considering the materials at the command of a particular art, and its varied possibilities, we may roughly ascertain the extent to which this factor is admissible. Thus, for example, it may be safely said that vague suggestion cannot be introduced into pictorial art to the same extent as into music. The eye desires clear and well-defined objects: it is the organ of perception par excellence, and it could never be long satisfied with misty "nocturnes " Οι with a dreamy symbolic type of art. Music, on the other hand, by making use of inarticulate sounds-that is to say, a necessarily vague mode of expression-is under no such obligation to meet the intellectual needs. Finally, poetry may be said to offer ample scope for each mode of pleasure. Its medium, verbal signs, allows of the most definite modes of presentation. On the other hand, it is capable of the widest and most various suggestion of the vague and incomplete sort. Hence we ask of the poet an equal satisfaction of intellect and of emotion, clear perception of fact and dreamy imagination of the unknown and the ideal. We are here reasoning that the special aim of an art must be inferred from its special capabilities. Thus, having found how far these vague modes of delight are capable of being produced by the several arts, we can roughly determine their proper functions in relation to this particular kind of emotional effect.

There is one relation of our subject about which a word or two may appropriately be said in conclusion. As we have had occasion to remark in passing, what is new in impressions and their groupings affects us with wonder and a sense of the mysterious; on the other hand, what is customary and familiar appears intelligible on this very ground. Thus, in musical art, certain sequences of harmony, and certain modulations of key, overawe us, so to speak, by their very strangeness; whereas more familiar arrangements seem comparatively clear and comprehensible. In the first case, we have the peculiar delight of the vague and mysterious; in the other, the quieter gratification of intellectual comprehension. If, as we have argued, each mode of delight is a proper effect of art, we

must ask how they may be combined. Every work of genius supplies the solution of this problem. It meets our intellectual needs by keeping within those general rules of form which in art answer to the uniformities of nature. On the other hand, in its originality it provides ample novelty of detail, and so unfolds to eye or ear the hidden and mysterious powers of art. If all artists were men of creative genius, there would be no question of the relative worth of fixed form and of novelty of combination. But unfortunately this is not so. Hence we find, on the one hand, those who are content to keep to rules of art without endeavouring to reach a new embodiment of beauty; on the other hand, those who recklessly strain themselves to invent some new wonder, no matter how formless. The first yield but the cool satisfaction of intellectual perception; the second impress and stir our minds for an instant to a sense of the strange and wonderful, but only to leave them permanently unsatisfied.

It is an interesting question, whether the development of art tends to narrow and even to annihilate the region of new creation. J. S. Mill tells us he was much troubled by the thought that musical combinations would some day be exhausted; and German pessimists affirm that original creation in art, as in science, is becoming rarer and rarer. the other side, there are many who assert that, in the works of one living dramatic poet and musician, we have an absolutely new revelation of art. It certainly would be a sad reflection that at some future day the world would no longer be thrilled by the delicious wonder of a new development in art. Yet, even if this is to be so, the consequences may not be so dreary as one might at first suppose. By the time this apex of development is reached, the storehouse of art-works will, it may be presumed, have become full, and thus there will then be ample novel material for each successive generation of the lovers of art. Even now there is a wide field for elevating wonder in the works of art which we have been able to preserve from the past. It does not seem to be the most devoted friends of art who are wont to complain of its narrow limits.

573

Kirks, Ministers, and Manses.

IN Scotland the clergy of the ancient faith showed the invariable excellence of their taste in the selection of sites for the monastic establishments. Their lines seem to have fallen to them in the very pleasantest spots, and in the most fertile country. They reared their abbey-stedes in some rich haugh by the river-side, where the cattle grazed up to their fetlocks in clover, or in some sheltered nook of the weather-beaten coast, whence, enjoying such sunshine as there was, they gazed out upon the glories of the ocean. When it pleased them, like the wizard sire of the Lady of Branksome, to pace their "cloistered halls" in "studious mood," they were soothed in their meditations by the murmur of the stream, or the breaking of the surf upon the beach. This sense of religious repose came the stronger on them for the turmoil that was raging unceasingly without their walls. So far, at least, as material or æsthetic enjoyment went, these were the halcyon days of the Church. Even now the romantically-inclined tourist may feel that he might do worse for himself than by constructing a summer lodge in the wilderness out of the magnificent fragments of Dryburgh or Melrose. Beautiful as these abbeys are in their decay, what must they have seemed by contrast in the days when feud, fire-raising, pillage, and slaughter were the every-day occupations of the surrounding gentry? A peaceable man could not help himself; he had to keep his paternal possessions by the strong hand, or pay mail to somebody who would relieve him of the duty. The fortalices of the lesser barons and lairds were built for strength and not for comfort. The very farmhouses were so many bartizaned peel-towers, where beasts could be penned on the lower floor, while the air and the light filtered in through loopholes. Even when stormed or abandoned, as was often the case, fire speedily spent itself on the massive masonry and ponderous iron gratings, and when their proprietors returned to them they were cheaply restored. The rude furniture or "plenishing" counted for little; all that suffered serious damage was the roof.

Very different was the lot of the early Churchmen who had their home in the stately convent hard by. The more lawless the times and the manners, the more snugly they feathered their nests; the blacker the atrocities of the incorrigible sinners they confessed, the more ample the incomings of the saintly confessors. Those who neither feared God nor regarded man, had still in the midst of their wildest excesses a shadowy horror of future retribution, and showed a grudging generosity

to the ministers of religion. The Church and the monks had their dues sooner or later, and the more habitually spiritual duties had been neglected, the heavier was the reckoning in the end. The priest, when he sat by the sinner's deathbed, could dictate his own terms of absolution; or, if the culprit fell impenitent on the battle-field, there were masses to be founded for the repose of his soul. Public opinion was imperative on that point. So acre was added to acre, and endowment to endowment, with occasionally a lordship or a barony thrown in. The Church was lavish of the gifts of its devotees, and prodigal in its patronage of art. It is still a mystery how in those troubled times it secured the services of those admirable artists whose names are forgotten, though their monuments remain. The tenants of the convents tilled their lands in peace when there were raiding and fire-raising all around them. Their sleek cows ruminated quietly under the shadow of the cross, when the staring-coated secular beasts were half-starving in impracticable morasses, if they had been saved from being driven off at the spear-point. There were always haunches and pasties for the refectory tables, for there was sanctuary for the persecuted deer within the bounds of conventual freeforestry. Butts of Bordeaux from the sunny Gascon vineyards were left to mellow undisturbed among the cobwebs in the spacious cellarage. The cowl and the frock passed the wearer scathless, while the knights and gentry were shifting for their living, and could seldom venture to ride beyond their marches without their armed jackmen at their backs. The monkish dignitaries clothed themselves in soft raiment, made themselves comfortable among the cushions in their easy-chairs, fared sumptuously every day, and fasted as if they had been making festival. Above all, the bearers of mitres and croziers exercised a great share of that civil supremacy which has always been the ambition of the clerical mind. The bishops and mitred abbots sat in the Parliament and the Privy Council, and having nearly a monopoly of the ready money that was so scarce, held their own with the Crown and the highest of the nobles.

Things have greatly changed in these respects since the blessed light of the Reformation broke through the clouds of medieval superstition, though the Presbyterian divines had their turn of an ascendency which they exercised autocratically enough. The landowners have been reclaiming the wastes, and generally improving their properties. Rentrolls have been swelling amazingly, especially during the last generation. Intelligent enterprise and scientific farming have got the better of a reluctant soil and an abominable climate. But the clergy have, perhaps, profited the least by the general advance in prosperity, and the laymen, enriched and enlightened, stand in different relations to the Church. Endowments have been ascertained and fixed by the law, relieving even the most devout attendants on Presbyterian ordinances within the pale of the Establishment of all voluntary responsibilities for the support of the priesthood. As matter of fact, almost all the larger landowners, with a great proportion of the lairds in comfortable circumstances, belong