THE ALARMED AUTOCRAT !
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
Messrs. R. Osgood & Co. in advertising Miss SARAH ORME JEWETT'S book, Strangers and Wayfarers, quotes an extract from one of Mr. RUSSEL LOWELL'S letters, which runs thus:—
"I remember once at a dinner of the Royal Academy, wishing there might be a toast in honour of the Little Masters, such as TENNIEL, DU MAURIER, and their fellows."
He "wished" it, but was the wish a silent one, or did it find expression in a speech? No matter: there are the Old Masters and the Young Masters, there are the Middle-Aged Masters; there are the Great Masters; and, according to Mr. RUSSELL LOWELL, there are "the Little Masters," without any middle term at all. "The Little Masters," like children in the nursery of Art, not admitted to dinner, but who come in afterwards for dessert. May they come in for their just deserts, as no doubt they will some day. Well, according to this Lowelly estimation of merit, these would be the Lesser Masters, and after them the No Masters at all, except perhaps the Toast-Masters. But why not follow a kind of public school classification which divides one form—of course all the artists belong to the very best form, and, like Sir FREDERICK the President, show the very best form—into several compartments, so that we should have in one form say, the Fifth, Upper Fifth, Middle Fifth, subdivided into Upper and Lower Middle, then Lower Fifth, with a similar subdivision? Orders of merit to be worn in the button-hole could then be distributed, and a new Order of the "B.P.", not "British Public," but "Brush and Pencil," could be instituted, to be entitled fully, "The Masters of the Black and White Art."
