painting of the countenances. There is no danger that the technical merit of the picture will be overlooked, but the high position that it holds stands on other grounds than manipulative skill. We must bear this in mind, that the picture, to be judged fairly, must be judged by the principle of realisation—not hastily condemned because it does not follow the commonly adopted method of idealisation. Looking at it solely from the ideal point of view, the meaning and purpose of the picture would be utterly misunderstood. And after all, with regard to this question of idealisation, it is evident, in a system of treatment which is based upon the principle of embodying the greatest possible amount of truth, that in the highest parts of this picture the very power of realising necessitates the fullest powers of idealising—and so, in painting the head of Christ, the terms realise and idealise become almost synonymous. In his earnest desire to represent our Saviour with the greatest possible truthfulness, Mr. Hunt has attained by his method a result which, in holiness of feeling and depth of tenderness, rivals the efforts of the greatest masters of religious art.
I will urge this in conclusion. We may appreciate either principle of religious painting, without depreciating the other. We may admire the examples of both methods. It is especially an error in art-criticism to become a vehement partisan. There is an appropriateness and a value in both these principles, and we miserably narrow the kingdom of Art if we condemn Raphael because he was not a realist, or Holman Hunt because he is not an idealist.
OF SOME ODD PEOPLE AND ODD SIGHTS IN LONDON.
Walk about the streets of London with an observant eye, and amongst other strange sights you will notice many persons who pass you by with so abstracted an air that you feel sure that though their bodies are in London their souls are out of town. They are smiling fantastically—they are making strange gestures—they are muttering to themselves—their minds are far indeed from the turmoil of cabs, and omnibuses, and jostling people amongst whom they are making their way. These are the somnambulists of London. They exist in far greater numbers than is supposed.
By the term somnambulists, I do not of course mean that these people are asleep in the ordinary acceptance of the word, but that they are quite as unconscious of all sights and sounds around them as poor Madame Malibran assumed to be when she stepped over the wooden bridge in the last act of the famous opera, and let the candlestick fall. They are dreaming by daylight, and if you compel their attention by stopping, and addressing them, you would find them for a moment puzzled and disconcerted, just as a sleeper is when he is awakened before his regular time, and pressed back into life. I have more than once seen an illustrious writer and orator, who has recently passed away from amongst us, walking rapidly along the streets, and favouring the little boys with the sonorous periods which, at a later hour, he was about to pour upon the heads of his Parliamentary antagonists. How the little fellow with the muffins and the bell would stop short in his ringing upon being suddenly informed in a stern way by a casual passer-by, “that the impulses of a wild democracy—and a democracy had its impulses—were as phosphorus on the match, not Phosphorus the morning star.” How the man who carried the Dutch clocks about, and was giving notice of his presence by striking the hammer against the bell, desisted from his monotonous amusement on being told “that it was now notorious that he possessed enemies in all the Cabinets of Europe—friends in none!” The orators, and declaimers, and thinkers-aloud of the London streets are very numerous. So long, however, as these outward expressions are merely references to the business of the day, which may really occupy their thoughts, there is not much wonder that it should be so. The sights of London are familiar to them; some particular idea has got possession of their brain, and their attention is absorbed. If they are not retentive of speech, the ideas become words, and fly out to the astonishment of mankind.
These, however, are but the reasonable and natural somnambulists. The irrelevant speechifying apart, most of us walk about at times with the soul’s eyes cast inwards; but I rather mean that there is in London a large class of persons who pass through life engaged in a series of imaginary adventures, and who walk about our streets utterly unconscious of what is passing around them. The occasions of questioning people who suffer from this strange fancy are of course not very numerous; but it would probably be found that they did not carry out their dreams to legitimate conclusions, as authors do when they invent the incidents of a novel. They would rather travel round the same small circle of fancies, like tethered cattle. With all Dream-land before them, they are content with half an acre or so for their own use. Given a sensitive disposition—a monotonous occupation which requires no particular effort of attention—a solitary or an unhappy home—and one would expect a London somnambulist as the result. In the country a man could scarcely indulge in this continuous dreaming without becoming absolutely demented: in London the movement and stir, and the sight of the shops, and the constant necessity of avoiding the poles of the omnibuses and carriages are just sufficient to assist a man in keeping his wits at call even though he does not habitually make much use of them. In the neighbourhood of the Law Courts you may constantly see strange clients of this sort whose lives have been one feverish dream of bills and answers, and demurrers and rejoinders. The little old lady who haunts the precincts of the Chancellor’s Court at Lincoln’s Inn is not a mere delusion, nor the invention of an imaginative writer. You may see her there at her regular times and occasions passing in and out of the archway of Lincoln’s Inn which opens upon Chancery Lane, chirruping along with a bundle of papers in her hand, just as though she were in high practice, and getting on as a solicitor.
On the whole, perhaps, the Court of Chancery