were not hurled as painted pamphlets against | wherein, as in England, pictorial, poetic, the Church. Lessing, it seems to be ad- and plain prose products are criticized and mitted, holds to no one faith sufficiently discussed to the mutual edification of artists, firmly to side as a partisan in any polemic authors, and hearers. It is said moreover strife. In Christianity he loves what is that æsthetics of the true transcendental simple in life, free in thought, manly in ac- sort find entrance into select art coteries, tion. In his art he does not trouble him- that thus speculative thought becomes as it self with legends of saints or manifestations were crystallized into visible and tangible of the supernatural; he believes that the form, and so in the end the arts in Dusselhighest function of art is to set forth a no- dorf may be supposed to reflect even the ble humanity, to depict the great men, abnormal phases of the national mind. minds, and deeds in history; he is content Perhaps at any rate it may be conceded to plant a firm foot in time and place, and that pictures produced within the last fifty he surrenders willingly to others the realms years indicate that the Dusseldorf school of imagination. The Dusseldorf school has been brought into contact with some has profited by the doctrines of Lessing. of the best intellects of the age. On the easel of Tidemand may now be seen an altar-piece for a Protestant Church in Norway, The Baptism of Christ". t"-a large work which, by its individuality, realism, and vigour, must be regarded as a direct reaction to the " spiritualism" that long reigned in Dusseldorf. 66 Professor Bendemann, now Director of the Academy, takes a middle course between "spiritualists" and "realists." He has just executed a vast cartoon, an episode in the destruction of Jerusalem; also a series of wall-paintings after a newly invented oil-process. Other signs of the times still more marked tell that a reaction has set in that in Dusseldorf, as in Germany and the world at large, art has forsaken idealism for individualism. It may be to some people a consolation to learn that the frescoes at Remagen, Munich, and Spires, wherein the so-called spiritual school of Germany has expended its fervour, are not likely soon to fade away. German frescoes, we repeat, have stood well; unlike failures perpetrated in England, they are not discoloured or faded; they do not, as the mural pictures at Westminster, blister, break into eruptions, and finally fall as dirty dust from the walls. On the contrary, with some few unimportant exceptions, chiefly of works unprotected from the weather, frescoes in Germany after a trial of more than twenty years remain sound and intact as if painted but yesterday. It will remain a special honour to Dusseldorf that she has naturalized in Northern Europe this ancient Italian mode of mural decoration. From The Spectator, 26 Dec. MR. BRIGHT AS AN OLD-TESTAMENT WORTHY. MR. BRIGHT, in his striking little speech at Birmingham on the occasion of his reelection, likened his own feelings, when asked to become a Minister of the Crown, to those of " the great woman" of Shunem, in one of the most pathetic and striking of all the narratives of the Old Testament, who, when entreated by the prophet Elisha to tell him how he could use his interest for her "with the King or the captain of the host," answered, with grave simplicity, "I dwell among mine own people." It is not for the first time, and probably not for the twentieth, that Mr. Bright, in his speeches, has had recourse to the language of the Old Testament to express with the greater force and vividness the true feeling at the bottom of his heart. The present writer remenbers perfectly the effect produced upon a vast audience in the days of Free-Trade monster meetings by the conclusion of one of Mr. Bright's speeches for untaxed bread, in which he reminded his audience of what "royal lips had uttered on divine authority, that the poor should not always be forgotten, that the patient abiding of the meek should not perish for ever." Quite lately he concluded one of his finest speeches on Ireland by reminding the House of Commons, -an audience rarely addressed in language of that kind, of the promise Intellectual life in Dusseldorf seems nei- that "to the upright there ariseth light in ther lower nor higher than at other centres the darkness." With a little patience we where painters or sculptors congregate. could easily multiply many fold the proofs Experience shows that, when an artist has how deeply ingrained in Mr. Bright's imworked hard during the morning, he sur-agination is the grave and sententious pasrenders the rest of the day to play. We sion of the Old Testament. We do not, hear, however, of certain literary and ar- indeed, mean that either free trade or tistic associations, of pen and pencil clubs, household suffrage are well-marked Old 6 66 -- the stately simplicity of the Old Testament about Mr. Bright's political style, and in his constant and profound insight into the relation of politics to domestic life. The confession in his speech the other day that it had been his ambition to grow a freer man as he grew older, whereas he found himself becoming more and more fettered 66 Testament ideas, - that David wished for through Mr. Bright, some snatch of the a foreign policy of non-intervention, that stateliness and passion (in its higher sense) Solomon had conceived even that necessary of that great history into our rather petty, preliminary to the policy of a "free break- feverish, and technical modern politics. fast-table," a taxed breakfast-table, or In the first place, there is something of that the compound householder of Birmingham was anticipated among the citizens of Joppa, Jericho, or Jerusalem. The Old Testament references to foreign policy are couched much more in the tone of Mr. Bright's memorable Perish, Savoy!" than in the tone of his universal-brotherhood speeches. Indeed, Moab and Edom are not unfrequently referred to in the Old by his obligations to his friends, his party, Testament in terms not unlike those used and his country, his evidently sincere exby Mr. Bright of Turkey or Savoy, or any pression of feeling that to speak for him' other State for whom England might be to the Queen was doing him the very oppoexpected to go to war, and which Mr. site of a personal service, since, like the Bright would at such times gladly declare great woman of Shunem, he "dwelt to be his "wash-pot," or aspire to "cast among his own people," is a fair illustration his shoe" over them, not for good luck. of this simplicity. But there are other inOtherwise Mr. Bright is not quite in sym- stances still more striking, not only of this pathy with the tone of the Old Testament dignified simplicity, but of that value for on foreign policy. Ezekiel apparently did domestic life as at the heart of national life, not approve of Tyre's being a free port, which reminds us of the political tone of a and the trade with the Isles of Chittim, period when a shepherd was on the throne, the islands of the Mediterranean, was by and his ministers and friends brought home no means a matter of congratulation with to him his sins as a king, by the freshest, him; and yet his denunciation of the un- and simplest incidents taken from domestic righteous traffic of Tyre, apparently the life. Who but Mr. Bright could have Greek slave trade, the trade with "Javan spoken to the House of Commons, — and in the persons of men,". was couched in spoken to it with the greatest effect, language not unlike some of Mr. Bright's. such language as this, in pleading for a defiIn short, though we are by no means dis- nite line of policy on the great Civil War in posed to think of the middle-class Member America? "I want to know whether you for Birmingham as strongly resembling an feel as I feel on this question. When I can old Hebrew statesman or prophet, yet there get down to my home from this House, I is just enough of the Old Testament stamp find half-a-dozen little children playing upon in him to produce a certain grandeur and my hearth. How many members are there picturesqueness of effect in its contrast with who can say with me that the most innothe indistinct political types of our modern cent, the most pure, the most holy joy days. In contrast, at least, to his chief which in their past years they have felt, or colleagues, -to Mr. Gladstone, in whom in their future years they have hoped for, religious and secular qualities are curiously has not risen from contact and association mixed and confused, in a subtle amalgam of with our precious children? Well, then, if what we may call confluent contraries, re- that be so, if, when the hand of death takes minding one more of the mixtures of type one of these flowers from our dwelling, our characteristic of worthies of the New Testa-heart is overwhelmed with sorrow and our ment era than of the grand and simple out- household is covered with gloom, what lines of the Old, -to Mr. Cardwell, who would it be if our children were brought assuredly suggests nothing less than such a up to this infernal system, one hundred Hebrew minister of war as Joab, to Mr. and fifty thousand of them every year Lowe, whose mere existence tends to make brought into the world in these Slave the previous existence of Isaiah difficult of States, amongst their gentlemen,' amongst belief to a vivid imagination, in contrast this chivalry,' amongst these men that we to these, at least, Mr. Bright seems to re- can make our friends?" The grave simassure us that the race of the Old Testa- plicity and the power of simple domestic ment is really of one stock with the human- feeling in that passage, made subservient, ity of our own country and day. And there as it was, to a political rebuke in the most may be some interest, if there is not much reticent and fastidious political assembly in instruction, in noting the features to which the world, has scarcely any better parallel we refer, and which import, as we think, different as of course the style must ne -- in cessarily be, - than Nathan's narrative to David of the pet lamb stolen by the rich man from the poor. usually less personal than Mr. Bright in his assaults, though he did once withstand Mr. Disraeli to the face for his "mixture of servility and pomposity," but his power of concentrating into a sentence scorn and loathing for a policy that he thinks dishonest and injurious, is quite Hebrew in its force. We need only remind our readers of his denunciation of the policy of building the Alabama: "There may be men outside, there may be men sitting amongst your legislators, who will build and equip corsair ships to prey upon the commerce of a friendly power, - who will disregard the laws and the honour of their country, who will trample on the proclamation of their Sovereign, and who for the sake of the glittering profit that sometimes waits on crime will cover themselves with everlasting infamy." Has not that in it some of that old Hebrew wrath, anger which is not mortification, not, even in the least degree, personal irritation, but that impersonal wrath which dilates character, the sort of wrath which Luther said was purifying, and without which he could not write? And this tendency of Mr. Bright's to reduce political policy and events as far as he can to their real meaning in their bearing on domestic life, though it does, we think, not unfrequently mislead him into a view of war more humane than just, is closely allied with another great quality in which he shows some affinity to the statesmen of the Old Testament, the faculty of vision which, wherever it can, puts a picture in the place of an argument. Political economy truly understood requires a good deal of imagination in one sense, but it is the clear imagination of intrinsically uninteresting transactions. Mr. Bright, however, even in his speeches on Free Trade, translates his arguments into pictures of a higher kind, pictures requiring power and passion to paint. Does not this bit of a speech delivered in 1845 at a meeting of the Anti-Corn Law League, considered as a plea against the Corn Laws, imply a very remarkable faculty of vision, something indeed of a Hebrew seer's power, though applied to a different Most of all, Mr. Bright is, we will not field of thought? - Since the time when say, the most religious of our statesmen, we first came to London to ask the atten- he is probably not so, certainly not more tion of Parliament to the question of the profoundly religious than the Prime MinisCorn Law two millions of human beings ter, but his religion is of the Old Testahave been added to the population of the ment type. We do not mean this in the United Kingdom. The table is here as be- sense of ecclesiastics, we do not mean that 'fore; the food is spread in about the same it rests more on "the law" and less on the quantity as before; but two millions of fresh love of God than that of other public men; guests have arrived. These two but that it is of the Old Testament type in millions are so many arguments for the the sense of affecting him directly through Anti-Corn Law League, so many em- his political imagination, in the sense of phatic condemnations of the policy of this giving to the larger questions of political iniquitous law. I see them now in my life a special religious bearing, which they mind's eye ranged before me, old men and have not, at least do not seem to have, in young children, all looking to the Govern- the minds of other statesmen. Of course, ment for bread, some endeavouring to re- numbers of politicians besides Mr. Bright sist the stroke of famine, clamorous and use the ordinary formulæ about "Providenturbulent, but still arguing with us, some tial" guidance. But Mr. Bright does not dying mute and uncomplaining. Multitudes speak in formulæ. He may not indeed exhave died of hunger in the United Kingdom actly believe in the "Lord of Hosts," though since we first asked the Government to re-even of that he showed traces during the peal the Corn Law, and although the great great civil war in the United States. But and powerful may not regard those who he does believe in One who overrules the suffer mutely and die in silence, yet the re-evil actions even of armies, and who cording angel will note down their patient brings light out of darkness' for the endurance and the heavy guilt of those by upright, where man would least expect whom they have been sacrificed." Has not it. Whether," he said, five years ago, that in it a snatch of some of the prophetic "whether the war in the United States will descriptions of famine? Lift up thy hands give freedom to the race which white men towards the Lord for the life of thy young have trampled in the dust, and whether the children that faint for hunger in the top of issue will purify a nation steeped in crimes every street. The young and the against that race, is known only to the Suold lie on the ground in the streets." preme. In His hands are alike the breath Again, Mr. Bright's power of wrath, of man and the life of States. I am willing not personal vindictiveness, for no man is to commit to Him the issue of this dread alarmning length, though four small volumes about a tragedy so rich in picture and passion as this do not strike us as too much for any one who can really enter into Mr. contest; but I implore of Him, and I beseech this House, that my country may lift nor hand nor voice in aid of the most stupendous act of guilt that history has recorded in the annals of mankind." That Browning's works. Anyhow, the publicacertainly is not couched in the primitive and simple style of the Old Testament. But remembering that it was spoken in the House of Commons, it has the impress of that large and devout faith in God's government of the world which is rarely enough expressed by our politicians, and which gives to politics a solemnity and grandeur of the ancient and higher kind. We are by no means insensible to those political qualities of Mr. Bright's which tend to identify him with some of the poorest elements of our modern middle-class prejudice. Still, take him as a whole, and we shall scarcely find another statesman in the House who does so much to give to our political life the simplicity of a passion that is neither petty nor personal; the vision of one who sees many of those implied meanings of abstract policy on which other men only reason and think; who expresses, with so great a power to kindle in others, the wrath which political meanness and selfishness deserve; and who discerns so steadily, through the blinding twilight which we call day, the vision of a world of order diviner and nobler than our own. Surely, with all his faults, Mr. Bright is not a figure whom our national Parliament could spare. tion in instalments will do much to get over this difficulty. A public that has once tasted will not be satisfied to desist till it has drunk off all it can get of the draught, and this little volume is certainly in itself by no means alarming, offering as it does two separate pauses to the reader, and rising in fascination as it travels round each separate wind of the spiral in which the narrative mounts upwards towards a complete view of the tragedy on which it is based. The story itself, as far as the mere germ goes, is easily told. Mr. Browning found on a bookstall in Florence, the description of the scene of the discovery is one of the most graphic passages of the poem, amidst much rubbish, an old book, part print, part MS., purporting to be the actual pleadings in a Roman murder case of the year 1698, in which one. Count Guido Franceschini, of Arezzo, with four cut-throats in his pay, murdered his wife, a child of seventeen years who had a fortnight ago borne him an heir, and with her the old couple who had brought her up, and who had at first given themselves out as her parents. The Count and his four accomplices were arrested before the death of the wife (Pompilia), who survived her wounds four days. Count Guido pleaded, first, that the murder was a justifiable vindication of his honour, since his wife had fled from his house to Rome with a certain handsome priest, Canon Caponsacchi, and As Mr. Browning issues his new poem in had been incited to this crime by the old instalments, we may well suppose that he couple who had brought her up, and who wishes it to be read, and studied, and con- had passed themselves off on her husband as ceived in instalments; indeed, that, with her parents. To this the prosecuting counthe help his prologue gives us, each of the sel rejoined that he by his horrible cruelty subsequent parts (of which each volume, and treachery had deliberately set a trap except the first, which contains two, will for her, intending to drive her from his seemingly contain three) will form a whole home in this Canon's company in order that in itself, organically complete, though he himself might get a divorce and still suited, like each of the parts of the old keep her property, that the girl was pure From The Spectator. Greek trilogies, to constitute, in conjunc- of all guilt, and that the letters produced tion with the other poetic facets or develop- as hers to Caponsacchi had been delibements of the same story, a still more im-rately forged by the husband, she herself bepressive and various whole. So far as we ing unable either to read or write; on can judge from the quarter now presented to us, no one of Mr. Browning's works is likely to take a stronger hold on the public mind, if any so strong- the only disadvantage being what the public may think its which the judgment of the tribunal was death to Guido and his accomplices. Thereupon, however, there was an appeal to the Pope in person, as Count Guido, though a layman, had taken some steps towards holy orders, and was to a certain slight extent entitled to the special privileges of the priesthood; whereupon the good old Pope, Innocent XII., then eighty-ness of outline, and sometimes an intelsix years of age, and near his end, re- lectual touch of caricature, often a sharp viewed the case himself, at the instance, sarcasm, that could not have proceeded amongst others, of the Emperor's Envoy, from the inside of the situation he is paintwho took the side of the nobleman; and ing for us, that could only proceed from after reviewing it, ordered the execution to one outside it like himself, but who is looktake place immediately, in the most public ing (very keenly) into it. He paints, as he spot in Rome. Such is the mere skeleton always paints, with wonderful swiftness and of the story. Mr. Browning makes it, of brilliance, but also with a certain wilful course, after his fashion, the occasion for a carelessness and singularity, something rich and shrewd semi-dramatic picture of like the qualities shown in old David Cox's all the various influences at work in the fine water-colour sketches, and with a Roman society of the day; of the provincial singular contempt for sweetness and finish society in the country towns of the Pope's of style. In fertility of intellectual redominions; of the poor nobility, the hang- source there is no poetry anywhere like ers-on of the Church, who danced attend- Mr. Browning's; in the brilliancy of his ance on the Cardinals, hoping for profitable descriptions of character he has no rival; sinecures; of the professional Roman law- but for beauty of form he seems to us to yers, deep in ecclesiastical precedents, and have, as usual, almost a contempt. We Ciceronian eloquence, and in the verses of do not mean that there are not here and Horace and Ovid, who pleaded in the case; there one or two lines of perfect loveliness, of the eloquent and brilliant worldly not only in thought, but expression, Churchman of the time, part priest, part but that even the very finest are marred fashionable poet; and finally, of the popu- by the close proximity of crabbed English, lace of Rome itself. It is part of Mr. and grammar so condensed as to be either Browning's plan to give us the view taken grating or excessively obscure, and that of this great case from all sides. In this very frequently his narrative, though lucid volume, after his own prologue, he gives us enough in drift, is couched in almost carethe view favourable to Count Guido taken fully eccentric English, - singular nouns by one half of Rome, and then the view with no article, and used in the abstract favourable to his victim taken by the other sense; plural adjectives accumulated on half of Rome. In the three subsequent one substantive as the Germans only pile volumes he is to give us, first, the educated them; new-coined combinations of nouns or critical view of the pending trial taken like " ring-thing," the need for the coinage in the most refined Roman drawing-rooms; not being very clear; oddly interpolated then the criminal's own defence; then the ejaculations (quaint gestures of the narradying wife's statement of her own case; tor, as it were, interspersed in the narrathen the speech of the handsome young tive); and now and then a parenthesis, Canon who took her away from Count which is so long, striking, and interesting Guido's cruelty at Arezzo; then the law-in itself as to break the current of the story yers' pleadings on either side; finally, the in which it is imbedded, and give a groworking of the old Pope's mind on the day tesque effect to the whole, as if one gem when he gives the final judgment; then were imbedded in the surface of another, Count Guido's last confession; and last, the a curiosity, compounded of two beauties, poet's own final presentation of the pure but so compounded as to be itself not beaugold of the tragedy, set free from all the tiful, only odd. Mr. Browning begins his alloys of accidental onesided criticism. story very characteristically. He says: — "Do you see this square old yellow Book, I toss I' the air, and catch again, and twirl about By the crumpled vellum covers, - pure crude fact, Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard, And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since?" Here is room enough for the free working of Mr. Browning's genius, and in this first volume, which is all we at present have, Mr. Browning's genius certainly has its fullest swing. He overflows, as he always overflows, in intellectual point, in acute comment, in quaint illustration. He is, as he always is, semi-dramatic, with the keenest of all eyes for every qualifying circumstance which alters the point of view That seems to us highly expressive even of each age and each individual, never of the intellectual fashion in which Mr. quite dramatic, for we never lose sight of Browning treats his subjects, tossing them the critical eye of the poet himself, who in the air to catch them again, twirling discriminates all these different shades of them about by their crumpled outside surthought, and tosses them off with a sharp-faces, and generally displaying his sense |