INTELLECTUAL GYMNASTICS.
The notes relating to Zelanian art and literature were very full, and they were complimentary. ’Tis said that art develops only with age, and that while the aspect of Nature may appeal to the poetic or artistic imagination, art arises from dominant ideas, from deeply-seated sentiments, and as in new, active, progressive, and commercial countries the dominant ideas do not lend themselves to reverie, and could not be feelingly expressed on canvas, art in Zelania must be “imported” for a season. But literature has come, and literature is civilisation.
The notes continue:—
“Literature, or, to broaden the theme and say the taste for knowledge and for general reading in Zelania, deserves many compliments. While there is not, as yet, a literature bearing a distinctive stamp of Zelanian genius, many volumes with real merit, both in prose and verse, have been written, and the topics show a versatile taste, knowledge, and imagination.
“While from the very nature of things Zelania must be a land of romance, poesy, and song, of the stage, of the race, and the hall, yet from the sturdiness of the stock there must first come a sufficiency of works of a graver character as the present exuberance of society tones down toward restful meditation. To-day Zelania is ‘waltzing,’ to-morrow she will walk, and next week she will think.
“Zelania has many well-managed libraries, and, considering the population, the Zelanians buy, pay for, and read, more books than any other people on earth. The kind of books? Well, just the kind that any student would expect—trash, the most of it, as trashy trash is the taste of the times, everywhere.
Silica Terraces, Orakei Korako, between Rotorua and Taupo.
“But it shows the desire for reading, and, as these children grow older, a more sober class of books will find its way from the shelves to the desk of the reader. Even now in Zelania the taste for blood and thunder literature is waning, while gay and chaste humour, with glimpses of the philosophy of life, is in growing favor. The heart of a nation may be seen through its laws, but the heart, and the soul, and the laws are the product of national literature. Literature is civilisation.
“The Zelanians are a new community—the people have but recently come together—society is in a ‘stew,’ as the members have but little mutual ‘acquaintance,’ and as the new environment, the air, and the aspect of Nature suggest hilarity, all the sermonising in the world would not convert this Zelanian ‘holiday’ into a prayer-meeting. In the Zelanian character there appears the sparkling diamond, and in the Zelanian fibre there are also the oak and the steel that will tell in the morrows.
“As an evidence of the mental appetite, or the reading habit, the 800,000 Zelanians have and support 200 newspapers, several of which rank with the great journals of the globe, and the average tone of no press in the world is higher than that of Zelania.
“True to the racial defects,” Oseba said, “the Zelanians, like the Australians and the Americans, are not linguists. These wonderful people seem neither desirous nor capable of speaking ‘strange tongues.’ With brief experience, I thought this unfortunate, but I gradually changed my mind, for not only is the world coming to the use of the English speech,[C] but as ‘silence is golden,’ and it is manifestly easier to keep quiet in one than in several languages, this weakness has a virtuous side.
“I have often noticed while abroad how prone are the masters of many tongues, when striving to keep silent in one, to break out in some less euphoneous speech, and thus give themselves away, or at least arouse a contagious smile of good-natured disapproval.
“But mental gymnastics in Zelania have produced a high order of visible results.
“Though the country is very new in all phases of modern being, political, social, judicial, educational and religious, it possesses a wonderfully symmetrical form. For its present splendid condition the country is indebted to the efforts of men who were themselves the products of hard but happy and interesting colonial life.
“New and distant as this country is, narrow as has been the political, industrial and social horizon, by the vigor of inherited pluck and the resistless persuasiveness of the romantic environment, in physical courage, in moral stamina and in intellectual force, Zelania’s leading men will compare well with those trained in the great world’s historic centres.
“The present Premier, who has guided the ship of State during more than ten years of its most wonderful progress, graduated in the rugged school of industrial activity, and, casting off the implements of custom and delusion, he not only made Zelania a more conspicuously red patch on the world’s map, but himself became a recognised force in the Councils of Empire.
“But with others than her progressive statesmen, Zelania is rich in sturdy manhood and ability—grey matter. Her schools and colleges rank well with the educational institutions of older and richer countries; her instructors are profoundly learned; her judiciary, with its present head, would adorn the bench of the Motherland itself; and her professionals in law and medicine, if cast in a body in any other country, would not lower the average.
“Of course, my children, as yet not all the milestones are statues; not all who loaf in the parks are poets, nor are all who stroll in the streets philosophers, but according to the prevailing notion in Zelania, this noble aspiration will soon be realised.
“These, my children, though I drank not with the statesmen, I came not before the courts, I ‘feed’ no solicitor, and my health was perfect during my sojourn in Zelania, were my impressions on these themes.”