needless candles only to put them out again, choral perambulations before a confirmation, stoles worn as mere ribbons' by clerics in choir, &c., forbidden by episcopal authority, lawfully exercised?

To such questions I cannot venture upon an answer, but I will end with a rejoinder to the late Bishop of London's parable of the coachman and horses-one of the cleverest of his many brilliant utterances True, my lord,' Mr. Westall might have replied, 'but in a fog the coachman, from his box, sees no further than any one else can, while the horses (poor unreasoning beasts) can at least feel the solid ground under their feet, and sometimes their instinct will lead them safely home.'

W. J. SCOTT.

AUGUSTIN RODIN

THE works of art were numerous in the Grand Palais de l'Art at the Paris Exhibition. A great power of idea and an extraordinary originality were necessary to make a striking impression at the first glance; it was, however, done by Rodin's marble group called 'The Kiss.' The public stood before it, surprised by something unusual, almost extraordinary, and did not know what to think of it. Is it an unfinished sketch, lacking skill and sinning by neglect? Is it an original, very original, manifestation of art? Is it a failure or a masterpiece? That group is very different from those seen around it; it overthrows all æsthetic theories of art, for it is so moving, so stimulating to thought, so unclassical, and so deeply touching man's soul. . . . That marble lives! All other statues possess, notwithstanding a great virtuosity of technique, a certain stiffness; in Rodin's group the flesh is vibrating, shivering with all nerves, it is soft and in harmony with all most secret sentiments and manifestations of the soul.

Yes, it is a masterpiece, which would be passed by with a smile of trifling by such a connoisseur of art as was Petronius, but before which would stand in admiration Paul Verlaine. It is the synthesis of the modern man, of that complicated being with its feverish passion, with delicate nerves, with longing after infinity, anxious to learn the secret of existence and to look into the depth of one's soul, to the source of sentiments. Among thousands of beautiful, harmonious statues, sometimes remarkable by force of expression, which I saw at the Exhibition, none of them expressed so powerfully the modern soul, none of them possessed such unusual marks of genius, as did 'The Kiss.'

Only very original, but philosophically inferior, works of the Prince Troubezkoy and Bartholomé could be mentioned beside Rodin's work.

When one looks on Rodin's former work, one can hardly imagine that The Kiss' was made by the same man, who created, beautiful, very quiet in its spiritual strength and harmony, the statue of St. John the Baptist and the elaborated bust of a lady, whose eyes look mirthfully, whose bosom seems to rise and to move the delicate lace of the bodice. The artist who reached such a perfection could rest on

his laurels, and create further beautiful works not pattern-like at all and generally appreciated in that country of high culture, where he would easily find purchasers and his fame would spread just the same. But Rodin belongs to the race of continually searching and always dissatisfied people; he wished to go forward, seeking the source of new art, creating a new epoch for it, to give us that which did not yet exist, to push the human spirit in its great effort of catching Infinity and in its desire of looking at the Unknown. All his activity, all his life was and is strained to find new paths, to advance to the confines of human knowledge and means. He wished to make our limited senses broader, to make us see further, that we might look into a dizzying depth, there, where are born and where die the sentiments and passions, to catch the life in its continual movement; he wished to chisel in marble that which is rendered by modern music, viz. the cry of the soul coming out from its prison.

If one could imagine a cataclysm which would destroy all works of our civilisation, of our culture and art, if then, by some singular accident, would be spared only the Exposition Rodin, then the future generation would have in it the whole psychology of the man of our times not such as he wishes to appear himself and to the world, but such as he is in his true, spiritual essence.

There are but very few people who do not retreat before the consequences of their own thoughts, and who would like to reach their sources; some instinctive fear stops us on the border of that depth; we prefer to glide on the surface of life, to keep the highway posts, to catch the willows growing on the shores, although they are frail and breakable, rather than to swim with foaming waves, which frighten us by their noise and whirlpools; there are but few courageous and daring people, but the public is never thankful to the guides, conducting them on the large river of knowledge, in which they fear to be drowned. Only when some truth becomes known by Promethean efforts, the crowd becomes slowly accustomed to it, and recollects the man who conquered it at the cost of his own life. The axiom of the ancients, Know thyself,' remained always a dead letter, engraved on granite, and nobody wishes to see before him a mirror reflecting his most secret depth. By this aversion one can explain the fact that Rodin's work seems to a certain portion of the public licentious. Why? It is not for the reason that his figures are nude, for always the most conservative æsthetics considered the nudity to be a necessary element of sculpture. On the other hand, what is there more shocking in 'The Kiss' than in sensual groups of nymphs and satyrs, Venus and Mars, &c., ornamenting gardens and porticoes of palaces?

And then, Rodin does not reproduce at all the vulgar sensuality, but the rushing, foaming passion, with its fatal strength, with its delight and pain, with its warm desire for infinity, with its tragical

instability, with its presentiments of disenchantment, with its flights towards superhuman heights, and with its rolling down into a bottomless chasm.

In Rodin's special exhibition there were at least thirty groups in which the artist tried to express the problem of passion; 'she' and 'he' striving to melt by the miracle of love into one. But he succeeded only in 'The Kiss,' exhibited in the Grand Palais; there, the two are one; one does not know whether only for a moment or for ever, but the miracle was performed by the power of the artist's genius. In his other works one can at once notice the fruitless efforts separation, dissonance, future full of bottomless suffering.

I take only two groups. Carried by the Waves' represents a nymph swimming on the billows, with a youth, who puts his arms round her neck and is dragged by her into a bottomless abyss. It is difficult to see the faces of both of them, so much they are bent; the whole tragedy of the situation is expressed in mad movements, by which they rush to peril with frightful swiftness. The other group is called 'The Kiss of the Wave,' and it symbolises the spiritual dissonance between the great soul of the man and the light, unconscious soul of the woman. On a rock kneels on one knee a young woman; a butterfly rests on her shoulder. At her feet kneels a man leaning his head on her bosom. One cannot forget the expression of his face, on which is depicted the fulness of infinite love, giving itself without any restriction, the tenderness, the softness, and in the meantime the fire of passion; on his brows one can read sublime thoughts, Titanic flights, great desire to fight with the world for ideas, but in the meantime one can notice on his mouth the traces of weariness, of the pain of life and desire for help, for support, from that woman's heart. The face of that man alone is a poem! 'She,' frightened by the grandeur that lies at her feet, perchance would like to love him with the same strength, but she does not dare to promise; she feels her incapability, she pities the kneeling man, her heart is not bad, but her soul is weak, childish, small-animula blandula; embarrassed, she puts one hand on the shoulders of her beloved; with the second she holds the toes of her bent foot, and she is charmingly thoughtful about her own inconstancy.

Both those works are not sketches but finished groups, deep in thought, marvellous in beautiful forms; especially the latter is one of those masterpieces about which one can think for hours.

That psychology of 'two' will be synthesised by Rodin in a great work, on which the artist has worked for ten years but has not yet finished; it is called The Gate of Hell.' It represents (one could bodies of men, women,

·

see it in plaster) a gigantic door and on it

and devils, all in the most various positions, representing strength, suffering, horror, and despair.

Besides the groups expressing plastically the tragedy of two,' there is a great number of studies of the bodies of men as well as of women, in the most difficult positions; bold, often brutal things, all made with the purpose of representing the greatest possible perfection of movement in sculpture.

I omit a great many portraits, superb by their expression and characteristics, and I pass to the group called 'Les Bourgeois de Calais.' It represents the burghers of that town handing the keys to the enemy after having exhausted all means of defence. The men, clad in long clothes, full of despair, hardly able to walk because of crushing grief, advance slowly; every face expresses complicated, painful sentiments of humiliation, of secret hatred and desire for vengeance.

That gigantic group is characterised by life, movement, expression, is, one can say, the last word of that most modern art which tries to bring out not so much the beauty and harmony of the body as the expression of the spirit, effort of sentiments, and the pulse of life.

And now let us look at the statue of Balzac, that extraordinary work, which two years ago aroused so many contradictory judgments, such a storm of discussions, and now has conquered the unfavourable public opinion and dominated that hall at the Exhibition, and the people looking at it with respect. Already at the entrance Balzac looked on you with his eagle-like deep eyes. The whole statue, when looked at from near, seems to be a block of marble leaning on one side; from a distance that block represents a short man, with broad shoulders, wrapped in a floating dress, something between a morning gown and a monk's habit, walking towards the spectator. The aim of the artist was to represent the impression of movement, and he succeeded entirely. The powerful head, set on a thick nude neck, comes out from the habit; the large square brow is that of genius; the eyes look straight, the lips are open in a smile. It seems that the great psychologist was interrupted in his work by a visit of a friend, and came to meet him in his ordinary white monkish habit which he usually wore while writing.

When one embraces Rodin's work with one glance, one notices that Balzac dominates everything, as a symbol of genius, of strength, and power; behind him Victor Hugo raises his inspired eyes, and 'The Burghers of Calais' bend their humiliated heads. All round one sees several hundred statues, busts, sketches, the gigantic result of the efforts of one man; and every one of those works, even the smallest one, tells us about the fight of spirit with matter, about the triumph of the artist's fancy and will over technical difficulties, about the triumph of a genius, and about the beginning of a new era in sculpture. And the man who produced work in such quantity and of such a quality writes to me: 'Such a sympathetic letter as yours is one of the rewards which sustain the efforts for I am very