we are satisfied with—to press on to the invention
of new wonders which will satisfy them
in turn, and so may conduce to the furtherance
of that development of new things,
which seems to be one great object of the
world's existence.

But there are those who criticise the new
race only to condemn it. "Fie on it!" they
say, " 'tis an impatient, restless age." And
indeed there is some truth in this. There is
scarcely any, if there is any, invention of
modern times but will be found, on examination
to minister to this feeling of impatience,
and haste.

The railroad, the telegraph, the serial
novel for those who are in too great haste or
too impatient to face a large and ponderous
volume, the photograph which saves them
from the necessity of sitting for their
portrait—all these things down to the lucifer
match or the elastic boot, minister in their
separate ways to this characteristic of the
day, and even the funerals which had to
creep through our streets may now be seen
advancing along them at a rapid trot.

Against these and the like tendencies of the
new age, it has been said that there are many
who take exception. Nor are there wanting
those who, cleaving to the past, its art, its
letters, and all things belonging to it, draw
comparisons with it, unfavourable to all that is
fresh and of the present, those who—honestly
some, and with right and good intent—would
speak of a change which may have taken
place in the conditions under which some
art is practised, as destructive to that art's best
interests and even ruinous to its existence.
Trust me, that art is little worth, which it is in
the power of circumstances to crush; and
trust me, too, that those very conditions
which you object to will bring about some
noble change to which they were indispensable,
some new and great development, which had
not been without them.

But perhaps of all the forms, in which
novelty can be developed, there is not one
which it is so difficult to get a welcome for as
novelty in art. This sounds like a paradoxical
and startling assertion. Let it not be
misunderstood.

Of all these qualities connected with art—
using that word in its largest sense—perhaps
newness is the most difficult and dangerous
to deal with, and the most indispensably
requiring a master's hand. A new style, new
situations, new types, these things need the
strength of a giant in art to mould them
into such shape as the world will accept.
For men of leaser strength, the old types, the
old situations, are—with those modifications
though, and those characteristics of
individuality which will surely come out in the
work of every man who is not a servile
imitator only—the safest to produce.

To return for a moment to the great town
in which these words are written. The plays
which are being acted nightly here, and
received with enthusiasm by the most
theatrical people in the world, are reproductions,
in almost every instance, of what that world
is well accustomed to.

The jovial trooper who does some great
service to the disguised lady, who turning
out of course to be Madame de Pompadour,
involves the bold dragoon in every species of
court intrigue—a play of this description will
keep an audience in a state of rapture for
four or five hours at a stretch; while another,
illustrating the history of a wife whose former
husband, supposed to be dead, turns out to
be alive, and who, after harassing and
persecuting everybody throughout the drama, is
at length disposed of in a duel, will so move
and affect the spectators, that the piece is
interrupted by the groans and sobs of this
most sympathetic of audiences.

It is indeed a good and glorious work, to
start aside from all that has been done
before, and, shaking off the restraints of
antecedent Art, to give some daring novelty to
the world. But who shall do this, or who
can ? It is the function of a Shakspeare or a
Sterne, of a Hogarth or a Turner; and of
some who, happily still living, and of this
age, must not, because they are so, be
mentioned in these pages. In the hands of lesser
men, to attempt this highest and most
distinctive office of Genius, is to pain the public
they appeal to by an exhibition either of
affectation or effort; or else, in nobler
instances, of an ambitious mind which has set
itself a task beyond its strength.

So much for new things in Art. So much,
indeed, must, for the present, suffice for
new things in general. Not that the subject
is exhausted, or even nearly so. Exhausted!
Why, the sun does not set upon that day
which has not added some new thing to one's
stock of knowledge, or given some new lesson
to one's experience. A lesson, it is true,
commonly inculcated with stripes more or
less heavy, as the case may be, but not more
weighty, or more numerous, by one fraction
of an iota, than was absolutely needed to
enforce the truth. If this be so of days, what
shall be said of years? With what new
things is not the year, which is but now
beginning, pregnant? With what changes,
with what opportunities, with what losses,
with what gains? Who knows from what
old and harassing perplexities its inevitable
course may extricate us? Who knows what
sources of unexpected happiness it may open
to us? And who knows, too, the reader asks,
with what sorrow, with what labour, with
what trial, it comes charged among us?

Well, be they what they may, let us meet
them with a stout heart. The trouble that
is faced with courage, and with a determined
cheerfulness, is by that alone deprived of
half its sting; and he who has much to
endure, will endure it all the better if he is
able to say, with the sturdy hero of a play
which the writer of these lines witnessed not