board of aldermen, or of weavers, or of doctors. The artist is given the task of painting a number of men of about the same age, dressed usually much alike, in dark doublets and plain white collars, seated at a table, or standing together, or examining a dead body. They have all a certain grave simplicity; their faces are full of good sense, but also of modesty. At first one rather pities the artists who had these corporation pictures always on hand; but the triumph is the greater when in this monotony of costume and lack of incident they give us pictures absorbing at once in their realism and their dignity. As one looks, the individuality of those grave and reverend seigniors comes out. Here is not a finer kind of photograph, as at first one thought, but a real picture,—a dozen portraits, a dozen lives and characters, in one frame. And as the expression of a people's spirit they have an interest and charm all their own. One reads Dutch history in these faces, bourgeois but not vulgar, simple but self-respecting and demanding respect. These are the descendants of the bold Beggars who made Philip II. tremble; these are the men whose brothers were great navigators and fighting captains, who in the interest of trade founded colonies, built ships, sought the Northwest Passage, defied Louis XIV., and were ready at need to sink their land rather than see it conquered. These are the men who made democracy a success; and one feels that in their hands it is safe from trickery and mistake. Picturesque or splendid it can never be, and the burghers of Amsterdam are a long way behind Veronese's noble feasters in this respect. But, since life for most of us will always be more broomstick than banquet, let us take what comfort we can in the dead level, remembering that it is, after all, the greatest good of the greatest number.
But as to where between the two schools right lies, we can only echo George Sand: "Let the realists, if they like, go on proclaiming that all is prose, and the idealists that all is poetry. The first will have their days of sunshine, the last their rainy days. In all arts the victory remains with a privileged few who go their own ways."
LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
There is no other instance in literary history of a great reputation so slowly, laboriously, and painfully acquired as was that of Carlyle. None of the common obstacles—poverty, obscurity, the shadow of other men's popularity, the neglect and repulses which genius must be prepared to encounter at the outset—was absent in his case; most of them, indeed, were present in an aggravated degree; and they were supplemented by others that proceeded from the peculiarities of his mental and physical constitution, as well as from the unwelcome nature of the doctrines which he conceived it to be his mission to teach. The inattention and indifference with which his utterances were at first received were succeeded by a repugnance which even those who were least hostile found it difficult to overcome. His style, so unlike that of any former writer, so opposite to all accepted models, was a stumbling-block with even the small circle, or, more correctly speaking, the isolated individuals, who acknowledged his power and originality as a thinker. It was not merely considered harsh, obscure, and loaded with affectations, but denounced as a barbarous compound, unworthy to be classed as English, and endurable, at the best, as the uncouth garb of eccentric
