162

NOEL PATON'S "ILLUSTRATIONS OF

SLAVERY."

THE brow of genius is encircled by a halo diviner
than its own when its efforts are consecrated to the
welfare of humanity. The inspired artist-whether in
literature, painting, or any of the arts-who feels and
works up to the conviction that his gift is a trust from
God for the good of man, is, by "right divine," the
world's teacher, moulding its opinions, ennobling its
aspirations, giving it a glimpse of the time, far distant it
may be, but sure-

When mercy, justice, purity on each longing heart enthroned,
Men shall nobly live this little life in the light of that beyond.

Not that we think genius most powerful for good when
it sets itself avowedly, through the medium of any of its
productions, to inculcate a direct lesson, for the best
and most influential works are suggestive, not didactic.
A book or a painting, full of thought and feeling that
touches the depths of our common nature, produced

without any directly moral purpose, will influence more deeply and more permanently than any-where, at every step, the voice of the moral "guide, philosopher, and friend" is sounding in our ears, telling us what to admire and love, and what to shun. All works on such a false principle as this have been, and must necessarily be, more or less failures. This cannot be better illustrated than by some of the "Temperance Tales" and other teetotal fictions with which the age abounds, which, by much trumpeting, may attain a temporary popularity, and then pass quietly to the regions of Chaos and Old Night, to be remembered no more for ever. The writer having only one end in view, all his ingenuity must be bent to the attainment of it; and hence his pages are crowded with scenes and characters which, however irrelevant and unnatural, bring the story to the foregone denouement, and violently point the moral, though they cannot be said to adorn the tale. Evils, in the body social or politic, when viewed from one point, and shown up for a certain purpose, may be readily exaggerated out of all proportion to truth and nature, insomuch that the pictures of them become caricatures, not portraits; and this is an achievement within the reach of very humble talents. Your own proper nose, for example, may be considerably beyond the usual size, but that is no reason why

the artist should represent your face as being wholly or even chiefly, composed of that useful protuberance. The artist is bound to give the nose its due proportion and place, in keeping with the other features; but he is not entitled to devote his skill entirely to the delineation of that feature alone, otherwise his production, however funny or sensational it may be, is assuredly not a likeness. And so with books or pictures which profess to illustrate and enforce particular views and opinions on social problems.

For our own part, we cannot read a book that sets forth in the preface the moral it proposes to inculcate, and then, at the end, recapitulates the said moral, in case you may forget it. Such finger-post literature and morality may do for children, but is sorry food for men and women. The influence of a picture or a book should breathe from it as fragrance breathes from a flower; and the lesson it teaches will be felt to be all the more powerful, because it has been suggested, not taught. Considered in this light, the pregnant meaning embodied in the lines of Tennyson may be partially appreciated :

"Oh, to what uses shall we put

The wild-wood flower that simply blows?
And is there any moral shut

Within the bosom of the rose ?

But any man that walks the mead,

In bud, or blade, or bloom, may find,
According as his humours lead,

A meaning suited to his mind.

And liberal applications lie

In art, like Nature, dearest friend;
And 'twere to cramp its use, if I

Should hook it to some useful end."

But while all this is true, to a greater or lesser degree, of all productions whose avowed object is the inculcation of particular views on certain social and moral problems, it is perhaps true, to the least extent, as respects the subject of slavery. For it is impossible to exaggerate the horrors of slavery. War, terrible though it be, has, in many instances, helped civilisation, developed valour and chivalry, and shown the world not a few examples of the sublimest self-abnegation. Religious persecution has been a hideous and stupendous evil; but the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church; "and what," as the wisest and calmest of modern essayists observes, "I venture to think of more importance than the establishment of any earthly Church, the blood of martyrs has been the seed of freedom of opinion." "But," the same essayist continues, "what can we say for slavery and the slave trade? What good can be said to have come out of

them? What they may bring out is hid in the inscrutable ways of God, and one is loath to be'ieve that all this misery goes for nothing. But at present what have we? Sugar-for incalculable cruelty, for evils which, even in this world, one sees no end to, danger of states, degradation of humanity-for all these things, more rice, cotton, and sugar. That is chiefly what we get."

We therefore think that Noel Paton has worthily employed his genius in illustrating, as he has done, this great curse and shame of humanity, in the five sketches entitled "Bond and Free," commissioned by the Glasgow Art Union. Here the painter has compressed into a space that may be taken in at a glance the chief features of the infamous institution. The first sketch, entitled "Verbum Dei," represents the "Divine Man," our common brother-one hand uplifted to heaven, the other laid upon the head of a beautiful quadroon girl, surrounded by a number of abject "chattels," out of whose eyes, nevertheless, human souls do visibly look, who are listening, with a glimmering apprehension of their meaning, to the strange and heavenly words the Saviour is uttering, "God has made of one blood all nations of men." One day, masters and slaves alike, shall learn the full import of that divine speech.

The next sketch is the "Slave Auction," with its interesting "trade announcements " "Selling off,