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is, in such expressions, rejected as untrue. Of course a difference of opinion may arise as to which is the true in this sense, and which is not. The Greek would name the healthful fufilment of certain functions; the Graduate less healthiness in physical respects, but a conformity to that unworldly character, which belongs to the Christians of the carly ages. We have no wish to dispute with either. Both

agrec
with

us, that the object of Art is to give a sensible form to a mental conception.

But in one point, we again differ from the Graduate. In fixing his ideal he seems to be guided by moral considerations,—whereas it is our conviction, that the moral standaril is a most unfair crite. rion of the merit of an artist. With that nobleness of mind which he exhibits throughout his book, he rejects with indignation all subservience to worldly utility; but he has not reached the acknor. ledgment of the highest artistical freedom, and a moral or religious utility is the goal to which he would still compel the artist. Why not let every artist write down his own conceptions ?-Why bind him down to certain moral theories, that may end in making him the tool of an enslaving faction ? Besides, in the present state of thought, painting and sculpture will, at best, prove but inefficient teachers.

On this subject, however, we do not dwell, as the Graduate promises to discuss it more at length in a third volume, which is yet to come. For the same reason, we do not so much as touch upon his chapters concerning “ Typical Beauty,” which seem to uz a mistaken reading of a profound truth ; but we here take leave of an author, from whose suggestions we have derived much instruction, for whose talents we have the highest admiration, but of whose tendencies, as we have said, we have uneasy suspicions.

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JOE HUISTLY'S KIT;

OR,
THE MYTHOS OF PAN.

For shadows, Rembrandt might have stood there : for human passions, Hogarth holds forth the pencil.

A huge blast furnace, sweltering heat, one roar like a northern wind; giant power of toil, wondrous influence of flexibility over stubbornness; the primeval, welded bowels of the carth pouring molten forth, and liquid, as from the freshest fountain of the eternal mother; grim shadows from rereward wall and iron-girded roof ; broad glare now running with its greedy tongue across the granite floor, now coiling swiftly back again, in the pauses of each blast, as a serpent to its lair !

And here sit Flukes, and Jinkle, and Truckling Jim, and Bob the Brassy, and Drooping Mite, and Ben the Parson; swarthy, bare-arm Titans for the work they have to do. But it's Whitsun's Eve; they are about to be jolly, and have a night of it! Flukes and Jinkle are laying down the coppers on a dog-match to come off on Monday—Grizzle, the under-shot-jawed mastiff, looking on from his bed in the warm ash-heap, with outstretched nose and stedfast eye, as if odds were none against him ! Jim and Bob are scoring a round of cribbage on a down-turned keg, whilst Mite, who is somewhat senile and tear-dropping, cares not for amusements so strong, but has an ear whilst Ben halloos the last broadside murder from the " Sheers," not forgetting that on the reddest glow, which serves instead of a tablecloth, lie pipes and shag. It is as I say, Whitsun's Eve!

Well! Titans have been immemorially a thirsty crew, and here comes the Titan drop at last, in an especial Brown Tom, who, beside being astride on his barrel, has a wig on his head as crisp as an alderman's, though young Joe has come running with him the whole way from the “ Hart," where the company keep score! But, bless you, Brown Tom wears his wig crisply: when he has three XXX's in him ! “ Hallo !” cries Flukes, looking up as Joe sets down the gallon jug I very properly call. Tom, from the brown, and comfortable, and pipe-smoking little gentleman depicted thereon ; " be the mates a-coming and what

-be the'st afeter?' They be ;” and then Joe hesitates.

At last he says, 'Measter wur at the Hart, a-paying sum on 'em, and so I ak’s for a holiday; and a' got it.'

“Whew!" whistles Flukes; “where be’st a-going ?”

" To Lichfield,” answers Joe, and as he speaks his eyes dilate, and the ragged smock heaves as from the throe of some deep inarticulate gladness.

“ The'st could get smock and ha’lows nearer wum, I reckon," says Jinkle, as he scores a new hieroglyphic on the keg.

" It in'na a smock," replies Joe, moving away ; " but good

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night 'n.”

NO. XIX.--YOL. IV.

“The'st dunna go dry-lipped," cries Flukes, as he fills a horn and holds it forth ; for there is a something in the boy that has ever had a mastery over his coarse, hard nature. Well, and what in’na, eh?—the’st bin on this holiday a while?”

They all press now with eager questions, cven senile drooping eyes look up, till Joe, putting back Brown Ton's glory almost untasted on the keg, says, “Well, measters, it be to harken to the Minster-organ.

“Ha! ha! ha! ha!” roars round above the blast. But Joe is gone, and they have it to themselves till the other mates come, the pipes are lighted, and the business of the night fairly set in.

Joe is on with fleet steps beneath the clear June night,-for Nature has spread her beautiful mantle over the tired and shutlidded Day-far away from those belching flames and lurid smoke, to where the serenity of heaven lies calm and still upon a cluster of forgemen's cottages beyond the swarth common.

He lightly taps upon a door, lifts the latch, goes in : an old woman sits read. ing a very blackened book by the strong fire-blaze, for pits lie beneath the soil, and no inflated beadle steps out here to dole parish. given coals. This woman kceps a dame-school, and has soothed Joe's rugged orphanage with the music of a softened word, and many an ill-spared slice from the hard-won loaf! Blessings on such bread !--the manna of the world. She knows-ready ear for the impulse of the natural heart—that Joe has got the holiday; so without more ado, she lays aside the book, and dives her palsied hand into a ponderous leather pocket that is beneath her quilted gown, and as she sits, touches the floor; wherefrom at last, after a jingle that would be music to a baby's wondering ear, comes forth a little lump of papers, which a girl, hitherto in the chimney, corner, steps quickly near to see unwrapped. One by one the papers fall into the dame’s lap—the huckster's score, the blurred scrap of copy, the packman's list of wares, the leaf of the thumbed spelling-book, and, last, from a fragment of some ancient gown, perhaps the one of the long-past marriage-May, comes forth, bright like a jewel as it is, a minted sovereign, brighter for the little beaded drops of toil that stand upon

it ! The palsied creature knows it is the hoarded thrift of years gathered up liko sandgrains from the shore ; and, if hoarding it in her heart would add one jewel-drop, there she would hoard it, for Joe has soothed her weariness, and brightened up her fire, and said God's words of grace in such poor human speech as his coarse nurture lias. Yet

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withal she doesn't know Joe's big secret, and the grace of nature will not let her ask it. But there is a word of caution.

“It's hard-earned, Joe; and the folks in the towns be a pinch

ing lot."

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They wun'na take we much in, gran’an,” says Joe, “but I'll a' my sights on. Good night on thee!"

The aged creature blesses, and Joe is glad to get away for his secret riots to have vent ; but Nell knows it, trust me; she comes to the door with something which Joe tucks under his smock pretty quickly, and then, with a nod, he is off, looking back, though his steps are eager.

Far away out in the woodlands the night is still more glorious; the moonlight sleeps upon the gnarled trunks, and flickers like a winged spirit on the gently-waving leaves ; and Joe, freshened by the night, gets on bravely, though now and then stopping to satiate the large wonder that is upon him.

He rests as dawn comes ; then gets on more slowly as day gathers up and life comes out with newer freshness. Men and women, villages and trees, lanes and brooks, each one is a book; for this is the first time Joe has been a traveller; so it is farm noon before he comes within sight of Lichfield Minster. He waits for evening before he ventures nearer, for he is ashamed to meet the smart holiday-folks in his poor ragged smoke-discoloured smock. Yet is there not soul-eagerness to know if “the big organ" Scrape, the itinerant fiddler, has told him about, makes sweeter sounds than such as he has so long heard in the depth and articulateness of the mighty forge?

Evening has fallen. He steals into the Cathedral, gray, cold, silent. The verger is sleeping on a tomb-stone; the organ is there, yet has no tongue ; nothing but the Spirit of God is above and around !

Black hands, timid feet, wonder-expressing gaze into the gathering shadows, and Joe reaches the choir ; when lo! at his ear, the entrancing wonder bursts forth in its mighty articulate

His ears seem filled ; his heart to swell and throb ; a haze, a sort of reeling film to gather on his eyes ; that which in the forge-blast was a struggling power, blind, groping, flushes within the soul angel-winged ; the swathement of genius is burst; the power to articulate and create is born; the forge-boy knows he is musician ; and that in the forge-blast, the winter's wind,

ness !

the voice of man, one great universal spirit of NATURE'S HARMONY waits, but, for the recognising car.

Joe is as rigid as the dead beneath his fect, when the verger's stick, cold as a coffin-nail, touches him on the face. With a sort of stupid stare, as one awakened from a sleep, very visible by the clear orthodox light of the verger, now uncovered, lantern Joe looks round, and beholds not only the little frigid icicle of the church's much-to-be-lamented leanness, but an odd, strangelooking man, that has just stepped down from the organ-loft. He is strangely dressed, and has a haggard, unnatural countenance, though marked and sensitive ; a chorister's surplice twisted round his head for the nonce, he might pass for chief eunuch in the seventh heaven of Mahomet. He, whoever he be, recognises the power new-born, for the brotherhood alone know that the baptism of genius is by flowing tears ; and Joe's flow ; but just as this stranger speaks in a musical foreign tongue, the verger raises his stick again against infringing-implied-smock-frocked-pauper wickedness, and Joe is gone; his footfall lingering slowly though, on the faint echoes of the aisle.

Joe has a penny besides the minted-honesty ; but this won't get a bed, so far in the green lane, where the evening sun had glinted on him, he finds one rent free, though without four-posts or curtains ; and as certain larks and thrushes and fieldfares (it may be the womankind amongst them) are up by times on the duties of their little democratic commonwealths, and sing, and chirp, and twitter, like veritable human orators, Joc 's

away

into the town.

He lingers about the Minster till the shops are open, and then he has a greedy eye for every window, passing by some quicker than others, till at last, in a little odd sort of bookseller's window, and in the very furthest corner hangs—a-ama (I must have it out at last, Joe) a kit, a little dried-up skeleton of a fiddle, as if it had been played upon till it had become an anatomy; and it hangs there with a world of dust upon it, thicker than that on the few discoloured books that have stood so long open at certain pages, that every parish boy and chorister know their contents by heart, for even a friendly draught has never turned them over. Well, having viewed it, and peeped at it as acutely as a logician might with the mind's eye the three necessary propositions to his syllogism, Joe, like a mouse about to go into a trap-suspected

up, too, and

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