up Timothy as their model man morally and constitutionally, lauding and magnifying sobriety, but commending the temperate consumption of alcohol. When they had concluded, an elderly farmer rose and said: 'I've heard that kind of talk for the last forty years, and I can't see that people are a bit more sober now than when it commenced. It reminds me of what I once saw take place at a retreat for imbeciles. It is the custom there, after the patients have been in residence for a certain time, to put them to a kind of test to see whether they are fit to leave the asylum or not. They are taken to a trough full of water with a small pipe continually running into it and supplying it. They are given a ladle and told to empty it. Those who have not regained their senses keep ladling away, while the water flows in as fast as they ladle out, but them as isn't idiots stop the tap.'

ARTISTIC COPYRIGHT.

THE following arguments upon the question raised by the recommendation of the Royal Commissioners who sat to report and advise on the state of the Copyright laws, were originally embodied in a letter to Sir Coutts Lindsay. He, at the solicitation of the general body of the artistic profession, not members of the Royal Academy, convened a meeting at the Grosvenor Gallery on the evening of the 1st of February, to consider what step should be taken to prevent the terms of the Report from injuriously affecting the prospects of English Art. I was not able to attend the debate, and my letter was too late to serve the purpose of expressing my views. Since then I have read many articles on the subject which tend to make me recognise more and more the gravity of the danger which threatens the highest aims of our profession; and I feel with increased force that no artist of experience, with conscience to recognise his responsibility to future generations, dare fail to protest in some form against the incorporation in an Act of Parliament of the terms suggested by the Royal Commissioners. I feel, too, that there remains much to be said of a kind that could only be suggested by one who has had years of personal observation, of too intimate a character to be used in the memorial presented by a public institution like the Royal Academy, or in the resolutions of a public gathering like that at the Grosvenor Gallery; otherwise I would certainly avoid the appearance of challenging comparison with the able authors who have written on both sides of this question, which can now scarcely be canvassed without raising more than professional comment, so wide has the interest grown.

If the interests of the artisans themselves were not coincident with those of the Art, I recognise that there should be no hesitation in sacrificing the advantages of the workers to that of the work; but, in truth, without a due protection of the artist's claims to the reward which he has patiently earned by the sweat of his face, I hold that the good of the community itself, of the purchaser of modern works of art, of the print publisher, of the engraver, and indeed also of the nation and of the age, will be altogether lost. For the highest excellence in Art is necessarily of gradual development, requiring great outlay on the part of the artist, as he progresses in his aims. He is obliged, for instance, to incur heavy expense for spacious studios with good

light; for purchase of instruments, tools, easels, and other working furniture; for books, casts, engravings, draperies; for the hiring of models to paint from, and of servants to prepare his work; for frames, &c., to guard his sketches and drawings. I think, too, we may insist, as quite exceptional in its degree, upon the need of travel, and the providing of other opportunities for cultivating the taste of the never finished student, and for extending his knowledge of the Art of earlier days and other nations, and increasing his store of observation of Nature. Indeed, in the need of money to conduct the studies of his profession, the artist is more taxed than any young man devoted to other pursuits; so that, without due payment for his earlier productions, no great-minded worker can do his highest tasks.

These are no bare theoretic conclusions. Thirty-five years of travail in Art, with attentive observation of the careers of my fellowstudents, have convinced me that a certain degree of freedom from anxiety for mundane wants, in the long intervals elapsing between the completion of important and saleable works, is imperative for true success; that the reverse condition of life, long continued, brings failure inevitable. And since poetic Art is costly in its production, while low Art (by which I intend mere prosaic exercise of skill in imitation) is very cheap both as to time and money, it is obviously the duty of the State, anxious to foster national taste, to avoid putting hindrances in the way of the acquisition of means needful to the creation of noble works in Art, and indeed to watch, in all ways, that strivers in the earnest contest should not be left under the temptation of becoming half-hearted-of succumbing, in part or in whole, to the enemies in the field. Nor should they be deprived of weapons which their valour has won, with which alone they can act as good soldiers in the fight, which-I trust, it is needless to argue here-is as serious and loyal a battle as any that the cultivated sons of men have to engage in.

I venture now to declare, not only that the lesser degree of protection which artists would have under the proposed new form of the Copyright law, would be an injury to Art, but also that the present habits of thought about Art, and the law of 1862, make the degree of facility for practising altogether inadequate. In short, the discouragements to good Art are so great, that it is a wonder any men persevere in the attempt to lead and elevate public taste; that they do not early get led out of the true way; and, instead, follow the golden but devious paths of the uncultured crowd.

It may be said that certain men, notwithstanding the obstacles to success in great Art pointed out above, have surmounted all difficulties in the end; and this is true-but at what cost has this been? At the squandering of much of the best years of their life in comparatively mechanical work, done to get the money for daily wants which they would have already gained had they been fairly paid;

at the cost to the world for ever of all that creative work which in middle life it is the man's strongest instinct to produce; at the loss of those years which the patrons of the Old Masters competed with one another to employ in the highest tasks; for ancient talent, even in its immature first fruits, was welcomed in its day, and rewarded with opportunity, profit, and honour. The error is indeed a lamentable one in a nation that consents to see its most able and earnest servants hindered from worthy employment until they have already become grey-headed. The great aim should be to save the most valuable part of the life of an artist who once gives proof of having been trusted by the gods with the kindling spark of divine fire; and, to do this, let us study to make such laws for the defence of the young imaginative artist that he may find the means to exercise his best talent from the profits of his already achieved works; let us dread to stifle by harsh treatment the spirit that makes all burdens light. (And here I must say, although I can scarcely expect to impress those who do not already know it, that triumph in Art under the happiest conditions is not given gratuitously, but sold by the gods—as Plato says all objects of desire are—for labour.) Let us dread to drive the artist from poetic work to practise the mere art of covering the surface of a canvas with a bare, correct representation of any given person or object; but let us so order things that he may find freedom to cultivate, increase, and exercise his power of invention, design, and composition, without which in some kind a painting is but a sign-board, be it ever so well manipulated, and a statue but a figure-head carving, notwithstanding the most exact chiselling. Surely we have enough of such work, both on canvas and in marble, and not sufficient by any means of the work done with more extended aims, which evokes from the latest observer tributes of increasing praise to the artist, nation, and age. Seeing that it may help to explain how fatal would be the change proposed, I hope it is relevant here to establish that some condition of things detrimental to Art exists at this time. It is proved by the fact that in late years the number of works sent to the Royal Academy and other public exhibitions, dealing with historic subjects and works of imagination or from the artist's own inspiration, have become more and more rare; that now the galleries are filled with portraits of persons, facts, or scenes in which the least possible time has been expended upon the design or soul of the picture, and in which the chief aim is to make effective each minute's devotion to the task; while in sculpture the skill of the English artist is too often made apparent only by the chasing of the lines and surfaces of the figure, rather than in the development of the living soul within. The inducement to choose this lighter work is in the saving of days which must be otherwise expended in preliminary study of a subject, by reading of authors whose works furnish fit episodes for illustration, and in deliberate consideration of

opportunities of treatment. This labour is saved, and much of the time also, which should be devoted to experimental sketches, both rough and finished, on paper and on canvas, in outline, in light and shade, and even in colour, except for the sculptor, who should do his last preparatory work in clay or wax.

6

The road to power is that this is true in the career of

Burke, speaking of politicians, says: which will be most frequently trod;' and Art: that which leads only to debt, and inability to be just and generous, and which soon even takes away the means necessary to pursue the journey, will not, and cannot, be followed by even the most enthusiastic-the most inspired-artist.

It is easy now to see that this adverse condition of things is, next to a general spirit of jealousy against any novelty in Art, mainly the effect of the present state of Copyright law, with the first advance (made in 1862) towards destroying the artist's right to reproduce his own designs, and its toleration of piratical photographers, defeating all intended protection for the property of the young artist. When a painter, not yet established in the favour of the public, wishes to have his work engraved, the publisher refuses to treat on anything like terms sufficient to compensate him for the great amount of extra time which the working out of a difficult subject has cost; with the plea that, if the engraving should not sell, no one will divide the loss with himself, while, should it prove a source of profit, photographers in number will pirate his property, first for exportation and very soon for open sale in England. This, because the law makes the prosecution of a culprit cost between 601. and 70%., and, as I am authoritatively informed, with no result; because the traceable pirate manages always to be a person of no property, and on his plea of poverty the offender escapes from all penalty but the loss of his camera. In France, where--may we say? -the Government is, like Hogarth's King of Prussia, an encourager of the Fine Arts,' such piracy is treated as a criminal offence with imprisonment; and so the photographers are persuaded to make terms with the possessor of the copyright before reproducing a favourite work of Art, and the author of it thus, directly or indirectly, obtains his just reward. Now, with us the piratical trade is so flagrantly conducted that one photographer alone was for years sending out to America and Australia five hundred copies per week of a single work; and every one knows how throughout England such photographs in thousands are sold by shopkeepers as well as by hawkers.' I have often been told that the artist (thus condemned to scarcely concealable poverty) should be proud of the opportunity provided for him to carry delight to the most distant and the poorest; but I, for

It would be interesting to inquire how much of the profits made by the photographs from Mr. Armstead's alto-relievo, the best sculpture yet done in England, was paid to him.