8

and to Khartoum, the envoys to be influential Arabs, each envoyand this Zobeir laid down as essential to any chance of success-to hold a Firman from the Sultan empowering and lubricating his mission of conciliation and peace. After gaining all possible information, and inviting all possible communications from the sheiks and notables of the several disaffected districts, the envoys would return to Cairo, make their reports, and offer suggestions as to compromises and subsidies. Subsidies, he often affirmed and Hamed cordially concurredwould prove the best soothing-syrup for the Soudan. A conference at which England, the Porte, and the Arab subjects of the Porte must be represented, should then assemble at Cairo, and consider future action and the remodelling of social and financial administration in the Egyptian Soudan Provinces. However, this is all quite outside the present article. Khartoum is now the seat of prudent administration of other people's affairs according to English ideas; it possesses a native university growing in favour and stature, boulevards, and a residential quarter; a service of trams thrums for many hours of the twenty-four, and the early promotion of a taxi-cab company may confidently be looked for. But at the time it seemed reasonable to suppose that, whatever might be tried later on, the reports furnished by Commissions in sympathy of blood, religion, and prejudice with the people of the Soudan would have been of use.

In his interesting paper Mr. Sidney Low describes the Zobeir of his recent acquaintance as a 'shrewd, humorous, kindly old gentleman, who chatted pleasantly after luncheon.' It only needs a whisky-andsoda and the Daily Mail on a side-table to complete the contrast of this Zobeir and the sombre personage of the Governor's cottage days. When I knew him he was a striking-looking man, extremely spare and narrow and long. He usually wore a fez, sometimes a turban, and sometimes a silk skull-cap of outspoken magenta; occasionally flowing Arab raiment, and sometimes an undress light blue uniform of the shade worn by the Cent Gardes of the Second Empire, but usually a dark or mustard-coloured narrow-cut overcoat and dark striped trousers, with the strident patent-leather boots or shoes so much in vogue with Orientals when in semi-European civilian dress. He had finely shaped, sensitive hands, with very long fingers, and long thin feet. The complexion was very dark, verging, indeed, on black; the forehead prominent and skull-like, from the skin being very tight; the eyes sunken and rather lustreless. He wore no jewellery except a pale and opaque ruby ring which came from the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and which he gave to me when I left Gibraltar. He very seldom came out of customs, and desires of the people they will have to deal with. They have good instinct of government. If they were sent up to inquire and explain, freed from expense, and able to give subsidies, with God's will, there is good hope of success. This is my deliberate opinion after thinking all over carefully.'

* Gessi writes that Zobeir, in his great days, was rich enough to play on the sensitive nerves of those whose co-operation he desired.'

doors with me into the grounds, for I think it made him realise unpleasantly the obvious confines of his circumstances, but his walk had that swift smoothness we call stealing action in a horse.

Zobeir's last words to me were sad and serious; he wished to swear on the Koran that they were true, and sent for witnesses, wax, his seal, and a little cresset oil lamp: a signed paper being duly executed. I shall not forget our leave-taking. This is what he wished recorded:

I am becoming an old man, and from now I only look forward to death; but before I die I should like to see the country of my young days quiet and peaceful, and trade up and down the Nile. I may never go back to my own country; but if this ever comes to pass by the advice I now give, my people will bless and remember my name for good and for blessing. I do not wish to be made a great man. I shall have my reward and my blessing long after I am in my grave. If I can be of use, then it is well; if I cannot be of use, then it is well; but let me and my family depart from Egypt and from the Soudan. We will go to one of the holy cities-to Mecca, to Medina, or to Jerusalem-and so I will end my time.

Jerusalem must, I think, have been thrown in by Hamed out of compliment to my own religious susceptibilities. Possibly some fragments of the familiar hymn which cites its glories and satis factions lingered amongst his Regent's Park and Borough Road

memories.

RIBBLESDALE.

REFLECTIONS AT THE SALON AND

THE ROYAL ACADEMY

'I CANNOT understand your attitude of mind; you seem to do nothing but find fault,' were the words I heard uttered, in rather a tart tone, by an English visitor seated for the moment back to back with me on a settee in one of the galleries of the Salon. What excuse his companion might have given for the accusation I had no means of judging; but the remark chimed in with a feeling I have often had in reading what are called criticisms on the annual exhibitions of the Salon and the Royal Academy, still more in overhearing the remarks made by visitors at the Academy private view. At this latter function the correct tone seems to be to sneer at the whole show, and to remark that this is the worst Academy we have had for years. Do people who launch these light-hearted shafts ever consider or realise that even to produce a good presentable oil painting is one of the most difficult of achievements, requiring long and arduous application before the attempt can be made with any chance of success? Or is it a subconsciousness of the difficulty of the task that makes them envious of those who have more or less mastered it, desirous to belittle what they cannot achieve themselves, like that graceless little boy in Punch: 'I can't sing, and I can't speak French, but I can punch his head' ?

The only defensible position in regard to this habit of depreciation is when it is based (as it sometimes though rarely is) on a really intellectually conceived ideal as to what a 'picture,' in the full sense of the word, should stand for. Generally speaking, the exceptions of the depreciatory art-critic (professional type) are nowadays made in favour of that which is more or less ugly, outré, and half-finished; those of the Society critics are in favour of what is highly finished and commonplace; something, in fact, which does not puzzle them. That there are many paintings in the annual exhibitions, and comparatively few pictures in the true aesthetic sense of the word, is true enough. For a picture is not a mere representation of a scene, however cleverly executed and life-like. To raise it to the status of a picture rightly to be so accepted it must have what can only be imperfectly 949 3 R

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described in words as a certain unity of design and intent, to which all the details are subordinate. This is partly shown in what is called composition, which refers to the lines of the design, and this can be defined and pointed out-that is the physical element in unity of conception; but there is another element also, unity of intention and purpose, which is more easily felt than defined, but which may be recognised best, perhaps, in the perception that there are no disturbing or extraneous incidents in the composition to distract the attention from its main object; according to the dictum of Millet, that whatever incident in a painting does not assist in bringing out its leading idea is a positive and not merely a negative injury to it. Then there is the quality of unity and harmony in the colour scheme, which also must be perceived rather than defined; for the finest and most subtle harmony in colour is of the nature of an inspiration, and the painter himself probably hardly knows how he arrived at it. There is a further source of interest, in a picture, in the manner in which pigment has been used to represent or suggest facts in nature; in other words, in the artist's perception of the relation of cause and effect in painting; in his manner of indicating what cannot be exactly imitated, which is really what is meant by the quality of breadth' in painting. Take as an instance Mr. Joseph Bail's masterly little picture, Le Repas du Soir, in the Salon. At the first glance we seem to see a realistic representation of a lighted interior with four figures and a great many table utensils and other bric-a-brac. But in fact there is no realism; the apparent realism results from an exact knowledge of the effect of light and colour and texture, and of the manner in which brushwork can best convey their impression; there is a multiplicity of detail, but it is all broadly indicated. An attempt at more minute realism would only have rendered the picture hard in quality. The artist knew exactly how far he could go, and what brushwork could do; hence his success.

If to all the qualities above indicated a picture adds a philosophic or historic meaning, or illustrates an important scene or character, it may gain an added interest on that account; but it does not by any means follow. A special meaning or legend to a picture may only serve to circumscribe or narrow its suggestiveness. Take for example two such opposite kinds of pictures as Mr. Sims's The Fountain at the Academy, and M. Bail's picture just referred to. The Fountain is of course a piece of pure fantasy, to be taken just for what it is; no story could be put to it; but if M. Bail's picture represented a special scene and personages out of some novel known to us, would that add anything to its value? I think not; it is more interesting as an abstract picture of a scene in human life of which we may make our own story ; to specialise the figures would spoil its balance. There are cases, even of important pictures, where the meaning of the picture has overridden its other qualities. Millet's celebrated Angelus, for example,

is not really a very good picture, either in colour or composition; by no means the best thing that Millet has left us; but it has the merit of simplicity and directness of purpose, and it appeals to a sense of religious reverence which finds a response in the hearts of many people, in England especially, who care little for art for its own sake. Hence its immense popularity, not as a work of art, but as a religious utterance. It is a typical instance of a picture in which the subject has overridden the art.

Of course, as has been already remarked, the number of works, either at the Academy or the Salon, which fulfil all the conditions that should characterise a picture as a work of art in the highest sense of the word, form only a small minority of those exhibited. But those who on that account speak with a kind of contempt of these collections, as exhibiting only the poverty and want of aim of modern painting, forget two points which should be taken into account. In comparing such an annual show of contemporary work with the contents of historic galleries like the National Gallery and the Louvre, they surely lose sight of the fact that such galleries contain, in the main, the pick of the works of former days, those which have been thought worth preserving or have been sought out and purchased as typical examples of this or that painter. There may have been plenty of inferior works of former days which have passed into oblivion. Even as it is, the vast collection of the Louvre contains many pictures which, however useful historically, are of very little interest in themselves. Secondly, it must be remembered that the art of painting has an illustrative value as well as an aesthetic value. Painting, in an illustrative sense, has a right to take all life as its province, whether the life of history or of fiction; and if a painter has given us a new and more vivid realisation of some scene in history or in fiction than we had before, or has placed on record something of the life of his day with truth and character, he has done what was in itself worth doing, even if the result cannot rank as pure art in the highest sense. M. Tattegrain's terrible picture of Les Bouches Inutiles, exhibited a good many years ago at the Salon, showing the misery of the non-combatants of a besieged medieval town turned out into the snow to starve-a picture which I at least have never forgotten-threw a new and lurid light on the ferocious realities of medieval warfare. Mr. Abbey's Gloster and Lady Anne, which made such a sensation some years ago at the Academy, and, which this year figures as No. 1 in the New Salon, gave a new and most dramatic interest to a scene in Shakespeare. Even such a picture as Mr. Frith's Derby Day, which is certainly not 'high art,' has a justification and a distinct value as a carefully worked out record of a characteristic scene of English life. It is, no doubt, the weakness of the English public, the average exhibition-goers, that they think chiefly of the subject of a picture, the story which it tells, and have for the most part