The old Club was resuscitated a year or two ago, and is very much a going concern again. In this centennial year, not only is a book or booklet being published in celebration of the event, but the annual' week.' of first-class cricket at Bath is invested with an especial significance. The Bath enclosure has experienced certain vicissitudes. It has from time to time, thanks to the proximity of the historic and picturesque Avon, suffered from flooding. An example of this occurred little more than twenty years ago, when a match between Somerset and Hampshire had finally to be abandoned owing to a portion of the playing space being inundated to the extent of four feet of water.

Mention of Hampshire,' the cradle of cricket,' serves to remind us that the Lansdown tradition must be placed second only to that of Hambledon and its merrie men.' From it directly emerged, as we have seen, the Somerset County Cricket Club, by this time half a century old. Admitted to the first-class championship in 1891, it speedily developed a side which included such brilliant exponents as the incomparable S. M. J. Woods, H. T. Hewett, the brothers Palairet, Tyler, Martyn (second to none among amateur wicketkeepers), Roe, Challen, Hedley, and Leonard Braund. The county team has endured and survived some indifferent fortune, chiefly traceable to the difficulty of mustering the full strength of an eleven so largely compact of the amateur element; but, take it for all in all, it still must rank as the most interesting and thoroughly' sporting' combination to be found in the west of old England.

Finally, it is worthy of mention that the Bath and Taunton grounds have been the scene of several notable records both for and against the county. Somerset lost no match in 1890, the year before its elevation to first-class rank. H. T. Hewett and Lionel Palairet's 346 against Yorkshire remained unbeaten for five years as a first wicket performance. In 1895-96 the brothers Palairet each exceeded the hundred twice in partnerships v. Middlesex and Sussex-an exploit not even performed by the Graces. In 1921 Mr. J. C. White captured all ten wickets of Worcestershire in an innings. And Mr. A. C. Maclaren's unforgettable 424 at Taunton in 1895 was a record only lowered, if it was lowered, by the Australian Ponsford's innings in an intercolonial fixture which not all of us might be disposed to consider as quite first-class cricket.

PERCY CROSS STANDING.

THE ROYAL ACADEMY, 1925

THE Royal Academy Exhibition is for most people who care about pictures a very great annual enjoyment. Why, since art exists to be enjoyed, should anyone break in upon the public with criticisms and discussions, with fine-drawn distinctions, comparisons, and theories? The excuse of criticism is that art cannot be enjoyed without being first understood, and cannot be understood by most men without taking thought, without analysing impressions and comparing them. We artists resent very much the impertinent intrusion of a professional critic between ourselves and the public; but we do not therefore deny the necessity for truly critical thought, still less the inevitability of critical discussion in a late, self-conscious, and sophisticated age. Many artists of the weaker sort, those less imaginative and less penetrating painters who always exist upon the fringes of the company, are themselves victims of theories to which the application of really critical thought would be salutary in the highest degree; perhaps, indeed, there are few, even among the elect, who can, by an unerring artistic perception, see the sincerity, truth, and fineness in a work of art with immediate certainty, and sift the dross from the gold in any collection of pictures without long reflection and comparison. Indeed, to do so a man must perhaps have a part of that mind which, as Pope says of Shakespeare, 'seems to have known the world by intuition, to have looked through Nature at one glance.' But in these cases, however swift the process of judgment at any moment or however rapid the movement of the mind upon the point of essential importance may always have been, a maturity of real critical method, as well as a habit of honest thought supports each new perception; and those most gifted with direct insight never deny the necessity of true critical method for the just appreciation of works of art. There are principles and criteria of judgment; art is not a mere 'matter of taste,' as sentimental Antinomians suppose. If, then, painters feel that the works upon which not only weeks, but the developing feelings and abilities of a lifetime, have been concentrated, deserve better than to be thrown for a few days to the mercies of a pack of literary Dogberries, filling the air with barbarous dissonance,' whose opinions,

gilded with printers' ink, shall then guide the public taste and direct the buyers' choice, it is not because criticism is out of place or because the public does not need guidance. People will discuss the pictures, and knowledge and taste of a kind above the average may be at times possessed by men without the capacity or opportunity to apply it to practice. But painters do feel intensely that the professional critic of to-day, even if (as is rare) he has some literary culture or some faint feeling for poetry, and something of what is known outside the arts as 'good taste,' is not, in fact, qualified to judge of pictures or to talk of them. He 'darkens counsel by words without knowledge.' It is not as a professional critic, but as a painter, that I propose to speak now of the Academy Exhibition. Even so I feel it to be an impertinence, and will endeavour to do no more than to suggest those qualities in the works of serious and experienced painters which we who are trying to follow in their footsteps have realised to be fine, strong, and true. The public, in so far as it submits to the dictation of the professional critic, is blinded to his lack of all true critical method, because it is hypnotised, hypnotised by the array of large and apparently magnanimous theories- obtruding false rules pranked in reason's garb '--and by the specious appearance of unanimity between the writers. Theories are always to be jealously examined, not less in the arts than in other practical activities, and the particular theories so much advertised of late years are not the result of scholarship or philosophy, but of commercial intrigue aided by cowardice and sentimentalism. As I have said before, in The Nineteenth Century of March 1924, half the critics are dealers' agents and paid agitators, whose writing is not criticism, but advertisement; the rest are sentimentalists with no eye for real originality, who imagine that anything apparently new or odd must be original and true, especially if it be the performance of the young and inexperienced; and against this combination the trustees of public money capitulate their reason and, like the curate who said damn to show he was broad-minded, outdo the dealers' highest hopes in embracing the 'irregular sallies and trifling conceits' of every charlatan. Nor is there any end to the chain of time-servers ; one rogue is usher to another still.' As for the unanimity of critics, more might be said than shall be said here. In any case, as Bacon has it,' all colours agree in the dark.' But it would be interesting, quite interesting, for those who suppose that unanimity is evidence of the rightness of their opinions to be present when the critics have an exhibition to themselves. When theories and interests both fail, it is diverting to watch a group with blank minds before an obviously important' picture, building up their 'unanimous opinion' by a series of tentative phrases thrown out, caught up,

capped, and elaborated. It is especially entertaining to a painter, to whom the mental processes whereby a picture is actually created are not unknown. Some unanimity is, however, we suppose, necessary to the credit of critics, and what if the means to produce it be creditable or no? As for the painters, it is often said that they never agree; but this is not quite true. Real opinions naturally vary, yet it will be found that fundamentally all serious artists have in all ages had the same aims and followed the same ideals; they have, moreover, appreciated each other in spite of every difference of speech and manner. It is only the votaries of divergent and ephemeral fashions whose views are so bewilderingly irreconcilable. The public is naturally unable to find agreement between the painters of the fashion of the 'eighties, the fashion, now moribund, unwept, unnoted, and for ever dead,' of Peter Graham and Marcus Stone, and the fashion of the moment, equally ephemeral because equally frivolous and vain. It is of the utmost importance, then, to realise that the theories of critics and the fashions of painters (and the two cause each other, if we may speak of 'cause ') are equally idle and equally empty. Both are the products of a brain of feathers and a heart of lead.' The tradition of serious art has never ceased, and, we may believe, never will cease. In the Academy may be seen the products of the fashions of two generations whose weak hearts have been drawn by the glozing tempters ease and applause and gold; but let us pass them by- non raggionam' di lor, guarda e passa-for serious art may be seen also. I have deemed it necessary to say so much because it matters very much to us whether our paintings are appreciated or not; we do not paint only for painters, but for all who care for serious and beautiful things, for all who value truth. There are some things which a painter may see and point out which might escape those who do not paint, because technique and subject, mechanics and expression, manner and matter, form and content, are inseparably interwoven and correlated. 'Style,' the language of art, with which every hour of a painter's life is concerned, is subservient to the impression made upon the natural mind, yet is the source, or at least the condition, of it. It is this full interacting development of form and content, technique and expression, which is the aim of art, and its attainment is the criterion of excellence. My only object in this paper is to indicate the true qualities of style upon which all serious painters are agreed, assuring the reader on their behalf that the fashionable manners, whether of this or of the last generation, are as easy to exercise as true style is difficult; and more could not be said. Any art student of ordinary wit could produce a Marcus Stone or a Modernist equivalent in a day or an afternoon; no one but themselves could produce a

Sargent, a Clausen, or a Glyn Philpot, or anything approaching them.

A critic usually begins by hunting up the names he knows. We will do as much for one name-a name honoured above every one that the world has known since the deaths of Watts and Holman Hunt, and comparable only with theirs in the lifetime of any grown man. Are there, in spite of his passing, any paintings from the hand of Sargent? There are only two. Neither is perhaps among his greatest works; yet he was always great, and no portrait-painter now living is ever more than very good. The treatment of the earlier portraits was usually very solid and very rich, and every year has added to their mellow depth and grandeur; moreover, the immense pains bestowed on them by an intellect so brilliant, so strong, and so serious produced studies of character which stand among the biographical masterpieces of all ages. Some of his later works-and the two in this year's Academy are of this kind-have been lighter both in the technical treatment and in the indication of character; suggestion has, as so often happens in the fullest maturity of very great minds, replaced statement, and the ordinary beholder, though he still feels he is reading the work of a great historian, is not always able to follow the brief Tacitean phrases, the Thucydidean involutions, the allusive progress of the style. But the painting of Lady Curzondoubly moving now when we remember that both the painter and the illustrious husband of the sitter have passed away-is full of penetration and suggestion, and grows more impressive the longer we look at it. In the hands of any lesser artist, a dress of white satin, a gilded chair, earrings and ropes of pearls, though all these would have been less richly and brilliantly treated, would have detracted from the face; but Sargent can rise to a greater and more commanding height in the treatment of the head than even in the accessories; and a perfect visual and intellectual unity is preserved in the whole work. The other portrait, of Mr. George MacMillan, is in some ways less striking; but it is still a Sargent. Some may perhaps feel that both are a little cold in colour-nor will time mellow them as it has mellowed works more thickly and liquidly painted-but they still show how fine a colourist Sargent was, a colourist who could, like Velasquez, obtain more glow, richness, and harmony with black and grey and white than another painter could with all the crimson and azure glazes of the Venetian tradition or all the cadmiums and spectrums of the modern. And, as I have said, Sargent combined the depth of characterisation which repays close study with the breadth of aspect and effect which satisfies at any distance. Compare the portrait of Lady Curzon with any other which can be seen from the same spot, and Sargent's power of seeing his subject as a whole will be appreciated.