virtually is that in the works of the great painters and sculptors the countenances and gestures are as a rule inexpressive, the story of the composition being told by skilfully given accessories. We need hardly say that this is not true even with regard to ancient art-to Greek sculpturewhere the sense of harmony, repose, and completeness of effect was so strong that expression and gesture are often partially sacrificed to beauty of feature and proportion of form. Even here, however, the educated and observant eye will find rich materials for the study of expression as well as of feature and form. But as applied to medieval and modern art, and especially to the great Italian schools of painting and sculpture, Mr. Darwin's statement is ludicrously wide of the mark-is, indeed, the exact reverse of the truth. Expression is the very point by which modern art is so broadly and decisively separated from ancient art. This element is so

predominant and distinctive as to constitute not only the glory of modern art, but to some extent its reproach as well. At least critics, like Winckelmann, devoted to classic art condemn modern or romantic art on the very ground of gesture being made too prominent, of a disproportionate attention being given to expression, beauty, harmony, and proportion being often sacrificed to the powerful rendering of passion. Critics of almost all schools, indeed, have recognised the tendency of modern art to make individual feeling unduly prominent, to give concentrated and intense, if not exaggerated, expression to emotion. The striking, and well-known contrast between ancient and modern art in this respect is brought vividly out in one of Browning's most characteristic poems, entitled Old Pictures in Florence.' While the whole poem is full of truth, stated in the author's eccentric and wayward style, a single stanza will sufficiently indicate the vital point of the contrast:

'On which I conclude that the early painters,

To cries of "Greek art, and what more wish you?"

Replied, "Become now self-acquainters,

And paint man, man-whatever the issue!

Make the hopes shine through the flesh they fray,
New fears aggrandise the rags and tatters,

So bring the invisible full into play,

Let the visible go to the dogs-what matters?"

From the very rise of modern art in Italy, its progress was marked by a series of masters and schools, whose aim was to give full expression to varieties of personal character. Their work is conspicuous for the force of well-defined feeling in the

face and gesture of individual figures, and the dramatic interest of the groups to which they belong. The names of Cimabue,. Giotto, Orcagna, and Massaccio, of Bellini, Titian, Giorgione, and Ghirlandajo, will sufficiently recall the long line of early but illustrious painters, remarkable for their vivid and powerful rendering of expression. Other contemporary masters devoted themselves almost exclusively to religious subjects, and became eminent for the exquisite truth and purity with which they delineated the more tender and intense affections, such as filial piety, saintly devotion, and maternal love. The best cha-racteristics of these previous schools were, it is well known, united in the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, and Raphael; and to say that the masterpieces of these great artistsare relatively expressionless, that expression is neglected or sacrificed in their works, is simply a blank confession of ignorance or insensibility. If illustrations were required they might be found near at hand. From Raphael's cartoons alone there might be obtained admirable exemplifications of almost every human emotion dealt with by Mr. Darwin-of sorrow, pity, anxiety, and acute suffering; of joy, expectation, and. enthusiasm; of hatred, malice, disgust, fear, wonder, horror,. and amazement.

He

But although there is no historic truth or relevancy in Mr. Darwin's statement about art, it has no doubt a meaning in relation to himself and his own narrow point of view. failed to find what he wanted in the best pictures and statues, because the great painters, while embodying in their worksthe whole range of human feeling, still select in the main for representation the pure, refined, and exalted emotions. These, as we already know, have little interest for Mr. Darwin. Had he taken a truer and more comprehensive view of the subject, instead of finding their works useless, he would have found them invaluable. Nay, even within the lower ranges and less noble aspects of emotion he deals with, Mr. Darwin would have found a little knowledge of art of essential service. We may take as a single example, his curious and highly characteristic account of tenderness and love:

'Love, tender feelings, &c.—Although the emotion of love (for instance, that of a mother for her infant) is one of the strongest of which the human mind is capable, it can hardly be said to have any proper or peculiar means of expression; and this is intelligible, as it has not habitually led to any special line of action. No doubt, as affection is a pleasurable sensation, it generally causes a gentle smile and some brightening of the eyes. A strong desire to touch the beloved person is com.. monly felt; and love is expressed by this means more plainly than by

any other. Hence we long to clasp in our arms those whom we tenderly love. We probably owe this desire to inherited habit, in association with the nursing and tending of our children, and with the mutual caresses of lovers.

With the lower animals we see the same principle of pleasure derived from contact in association with love. Dogs and cats manifestly take pleasure in rubbing against their masters and mistresses, and in being rubbed or patted by them. Many kinds of monkeys, as I am assured by the keepers in the Zoological Gardens, delight in fondling and being fondled by each other, and by persons to whom they are attached. Mr. Bartlett has described to me the behaviour of two chimpanzees rather older animals than those generally imported into this country-when they were first brought together. They sat opposite, touching each other with their much-protruded lips, and the one put his hand on the shoulder of the other. They then mutually folded each other in their arms. Afterwards they stood up, each with one arm on the shoulder of the other, lifted up their heads, opened their mouths, and yelled with delight."

Here it will be seen that in Mr. Darwin's view, maternal love can hardly be said to have any proper or peculiar means of expression. But had he carefully studied the Madonnas of some of the great masters, he would have found abundant reasons for a different opinion. We may give, as an instance, a description of one by Shelley:

'But perhaps the most interesting of all the pictures of Guido which I saw was a Madonna Lattante. She is leaning over her child, and the maternal feelings with which she is pervaded are shadowed forth on her soft and gentle countenance and in her simple and affectionate gestures. There is what an unfeeling observer would call a dulness in the expression of her face; her eyes are almost closed, her lip depressed; there is a serious and even heavy relaxation, as it were, of all the muscles which are called into action by ordinary emotions; but it is only as if the spirit of love, almost insupportable from its intensity, were brooding over and weighing down the soul, or whatever it is, without which the material frame is inanimate and inexpressive.' This gives the main characteristics of the emotion. It is marked not only by absorbed devotion, but by infinite yearning and an almost divine compassion. It has, moreover, an element of latent sadness, of attendrissement inseparable, perhaps, from the depth and intensity of pure affection. The utter selfforgetfulness of the emotion, the complete outgoing of heart to the beloved object, subdues the harsher lines with which the violent and selfish passions-such as fear and jealousy, hatred and revenge-furrow and scar the countenance. All hard lines and unlovely shadows melt away in the softened and radiant fulness of maternal fruition. From the object of devotion being neither superior in nature as in heavenly love, nor

in position and power as in conjugal affection, but wholly dependent and usually infolded within the caressing arms, the eyes will naturally have a downward gaze, and the lids, from the constancy of the habit, will be slightly drooped. Again, the strong maternal yearning, touched with seriousness in its depth and intensity, will slightly depress the corners of the mouth. The eyes and mouth, the main expressive centres of intensely human emotion, thus aid in portraying the dominant feeling. To so marked an extent is this the case, that there are many celebrated pictures, where, apart from the presence of the Divine Child, or other accessories, the expression of the Madonnas would at once be recognised as that of maternal love. The expression proper to other forms of the general emotion touched or charged with religious feeling or with devotion for a lofty ideal of any kind, are illustrated in the imaginative portraiture of saints and martyrs. Religious devotion, for example-the intense but calm and steadfast fervour of conscious absorption in a higher life, and the rapture of ideal passion, of ecstatic emotional fruition, are represented respectively in Raphael's St. Catherine and St. Cecilia.

It will be seen from the latter part of the passage quoted, that Mr. Darwin regards the highest form of this absorbing emotion-mutual love as a cutaneous affection, resting ultimately on the mutual contact and irritation of adjacent claws and skins, and represented in the most lively form by the favourite actions and occupations of apes and monkeys. This view of the matter may be appropriately left without com

ment.

Before passing from the passage, which may be described throughout as a favourable specimen of the author's manner, we may however notice a characteristic piece of reasoning it contains. Just as Mr. Darwin's account of human intelligence and human emotion is an inversion of the true method of nature, so his argumentation is an inversion of the true method of reasoning. Much of it when carefully analysed will be found to rest on the novel principle that the effect produces its own cause. Thus, in the passage on love, Mr. Darwin argues that the desire of caressing springs from the habit of caressing; and as on this theory the habit cannot be traced to desire, it is perhaps ultimately resolvable into an aversion. And if so, on Darwinian principles, the desire of caressing would be explained by an aversion to caressing. This may be paralleled with the exquisite logical sea-saw in The Descent of Man' on the relation of higher mental power to language, the growth of speech being traced to the existence

of higher mental power, and the higher mental power ascribed to the use of language.

We must pass in conclusion from Mr. Darwin's acephalous method of gathering his facts to his equally characteristic and truncated method of explaining them. Mr. Darwin's great object in undertaking the explanation of expressive movements is to explain them away, to show that they are not essentially or ultimately expressive at all. The attempt, it need hardly be said, is unsuccessful, but it is interesting to follow the steps of the curious process. The two distinctive principles Mr. Darwin lays down for the interpretation of expression are those of serviceable associable habits, and of antithesis. His third principle, that of the direct action of the nervous system, may be thrown out of account, as it is not peculiar to Mr. Darwin, but common to him with other writers of the same school. The interesting point about the two principles as explained by Mr. Darwin is that they neutralise each other, are, in fact, mutually destructive. The first principle that of serviceable, associable habits-rests on the assumption that gestures and facial movements are not originally expressive. On the contrary, they are wholly concerned with physically serviceable actions, the satisfaction of bodily wants, of mere animal appetites and desires. These in a reflex and automatic way become subsequently, through the influence of association, expressive of internal states, of mental desires and emotions. On the other hand, the second principle, that of antithesis, rests on the assumption that from the first a large class of gestures and movements are intentionally expressive, are adopted for the very purpose of manifesting outwardly inward states of feeling and desire. There is no doubt a good deal of truth in this view, but it is fatal to Mr. Darwin's general theory, as well as to the force of his first principle. He denies, and he is bound to deny, the intentional use of special muscles for the purpose of expression. They can originally be exerted, he maintains, only for bodily, not for mental purposes. Yet under the head of antithesis are included large classes of significant movements that are intentionally employed for expression, and have no other use. In these it is obvious that volition must have an active and essential share. They are, moreover, as primitive and original as the first class of expressive movements, being indeed their necessary correlatives. And correlatives, it need hardly be said, exist and are manifested in mutual dependence on each other.

According to the theory an antithetical expression is a spontaneous or intuitive reaction from a strongly - marked