Gobiah and the hound shared the honors of the day, and all went merry as a marriage-bell.
The capture, with its varying and contradictory details, was the sensation of the period, and would have filled the columns of a newspaper, had one existed, for a month. It subsided in due course, and Koche, after another futile attempt to get himself despatched, went to work as before with vigor and good cheer. His sovereign character was now universally recognized, and he was invariably addressed by his title in full. He accepted it in good humor, tinged with a little pride. The Zealanders looked upon him with secret respect, while by his own people he was regarded as one who, had their lot been less hopeless, would have proved the leader and saviour of the nation.
Two years elapsed, when an American vessel, ready for sea, was boarded by Mate-oro, and a demand made for the fugitive king. The ship was searched from deck to keel, but no trace of him found. Unwilling to anger the fierce chief, who still declared he was aboard, she lay over a day, and the search was renewed with like effect. In the afternoon she stood out to sea, and at nightfall her hull was down, and the island had disappeared, all save one volcanic peak that rose like a pyramid above the waves. Then Koche came out from the fore-chains, in which he had in some mysterious manner buried himself, and caught a last glance of his native mountain as it sank for ever from his view.
[NECESSITY VERSUS ART.]
We live in very busy days, and our lives hurry on to their end after a very unceremonious fashion. Courtesy is out of date, and the world scrambles on chiefly according to the principle embodied in the words, “Every one for himself, and God for all.” This is the age of individualism on the one hand, of levelling on the other. The system of aggregate life, of Christian brotherhood, and helpful fellowship is broken, and each one lives his little span to himself, jealously cherishing a phantom of independence which, when appealed to for protection, has a tendency to shelter itself under the broader ægis of state supremacy. We live fast, and our lives wear us out. We pass through all the emotions, all the experiences, of life in fewer years than our forefathers took to study their classics or prepare themselves for a profession. Young men who have reached the nil admirari stage before they are twenty, and young women who, before they are out of their teens, have gone through the various religious phases, and made up their minds that infidelity is the only rational system to adopt, are unfortunately on the increase among us. After pleasure, after controversy, what remains? Nothing but business. The mind of our day is essentially practical. A certain social necessity exists of living as well as your neighbors do, and of not “going down in the world.” Certain artificial habits are formed almost unconsciously in early youth; certain fictitious indispensabilities grow up silently by your side, and, to keep up appearances, a certain amount of money is wanted. In a new country where there is no privileged class, no landed aristocracy, no law of primogeniture, each individual, to keep his head above water, imagines he must take some means to increase his income as years go on. This means that the whole community should devote itself to commerce. But how does this “necessity” affect the abstract principles of right and wrong, of moral beauty, of intellectual development? In this race for life, where is all that makes life beautiful? This utilitarian spirit looks upon all that from its own point of view, as an auctioneer, not as an artist. The question is, “Will it pay?” or “How much will it bring?” not “Is it civilizing, is it beautifying, is it ennobling?”
Beauty is nothing to modern critics; it is no longer judged by an abstract standard, but by the use which can be made of it. It is utterly debased from its original estate; for, from being the consolation of the many, it has become the luxury of the few. Rich men think it right and proper that they should be surrounded by ornamental objects, not because they appreciate their worth, but because it shows off the wealth whose surplus they could afford to waste on such expensive baubles. Costliness in ornamentation is the fashion of our day, as simplicity and studied ruggedness were the fashion in the days of Cromwell; and, cost what it may, the fashion must be followed. Do these men care for their treasures? See what they would do with them if it ever became the fashion again to sit on wooden chairs, and eschew looking-glasses. They are valued, as in a shop, by the price they cost; and old or new, elaborate or plain, it is all the same. The number of figures on a Dresden vase is nothing: the number of dollars the vase cost is everything. Some people would think nothing of a gem of workmanship if it was got “at a bargain” or picked up on an old stall; some would not be satisfied if the velvet they wore had been purchased at half price, so that they could not boast it had cost twenty-five dollars a yard! We will hope that such people are exceptions; still, they exist. This is the exaggeration of the spirit of the age, and prevails chiefly among those whom the latter half of the age has just landed among the inhabitants of the modern El Dorado; but, in a more or less rampant state, this spirit shows its cloven foot everywhere on this vast continent.
But this is not the worst. If the appreciation of true art is wanting in the patron, the time to perfect æsthetic productions is wanting to the artist. Nowadays everything must be done at once; people cannot wait; their houses must be run up in six weeks; for their churches they will not wait longer than a year. Ornaments of all kinds must be forthcoming immediately, and, indeed, if any vegetable model could be found, which, like the acanthus leaf of Greek sculpture, might be identified with the idea of our modern “art,” who shall say that the mushroom is not a most fitting type? Must we suppose it to be the result of our wonderfully rapid progress in art that we should constantly change our ideals, and demand quite a different standard of beauty this month from that we asked for last June? No doubt we are so much more enlightened now that we could not wear the same colors we wore last spring, and really thought quite pretty then, or that we could not sit upon a sofa of the same shape as we found perfectly charming last year! Of course, since our standards of taste vary so quickly, it could hardly be expected that very minute care should be bestowed on our ornamental surroundings. In old days, when men worked for future ages, the leg of a chair was as delicately carved as a cathedral buttress; when houses were built for twenty coming generations to live in, the sculpture of a mantelpiece was wrought with as much care as a monumental effigy. But nous avons changé tout cela. Our houses are only intended to stand till they are pulled down to make room for a railway depot, or till some advantageous offer is accepted to turn them into a suite of modiste’s or confectioner’s show-rooms. Our furniture is meant to remain under our eyes only until we see a set five times as gorgeous and ten times as expensive, when the things we once thought so perfect will be sent as antiquated rubbish to some auction-room, or ignominously hidden in the nursery or garret. And in the meanwhile, where is art, nay, where is even comfort? Shall we not very soon have overshot the mark, and find our lives becoming little short of a pilgrimage from hotel to hotel? An English lady, whose husband owned estates in all parts of England, Scotland, and Wales, and who had at least six country-houses, each claiming the advantages of family residence during a short part of the year, once said to a friend less plentifully encumbered: “My dear, I envy you. I have half a dozen houses in the country, and a large town-house; and, among them all, I have not got a home!”
This constant change of fashion necessitates flimsiness of material and carelessness of detail. But this is not all: it kills the artist spirit. The old workmen had a chance of becoming artists because they had plenty of time to exercise and sharpen their faculties; they became used to certain sorts of work, and could perfect their ingenuity in one particular line; and they had plenty of room for originality. Now, on the contrary, it is more likely that the artist will degenerate into a mere workman. He is hurried in his designs; he is often dictated to by ignorant patrons, who, not having the divine afflatus themselves, have not even the wit to trust to those who have; he is called upon for six times the amount of invention that any man’s brains can possibly furnish within a given time; and, to crown all, he is limited as to price—which simply means as to materials, size, detail, and ornamentation. He is in danger of becoming either a drudge or a renegade, very often both. His art gets to be a mere bread-winning business, a dry round of machine work, a careless fulfilling of an unpleasant contract; and, under such adverse influences, no wonder the creator-spirit leaves him, and he becomes simply a mechanic.