that he must think of some brilliant plan, but when his work was over his brain felt so deadened and incapable of effort that he could only eat his rice and lie down and sleep. He decided that the way to freedom lay through his daily toil; he would devote himself to his 'ricksha until he had saved enough for a passage to Hong Kong, and then fly. But he did not earn money fast. A very short day's work tired him considerably, until he was accustomed to it. Then the purchase money for the brass-ringed 'ricksha had to be paid, and Wu recompensed for his board and lodging and when he had a few cents over it was a great temptation to piece out the rice meals with delicacies from the food-stall at the corner. They were appalling concoctions, but very palatable after an unvaried diet of grain.

The day's work was woefully hard, but perhaps this was a redeeming quality, for when it was over he had no energy to lament either past or present, but would lay his tired length down upon the k'ang and sleep soundly, conscious only that the night was not long enough for rest. He was out soon after daybreak, searching the streets for a fare, or else waiting on the cold stand with his wadded coat over his shoulders. And at noon he came in, yearning for a chop and a glass of beer, and Wu gave him rice and weak tea. He spent the afternoon running up and down the Bund, to house and office, jetty and station; and at dusk returned wearily, and partook of millet and hard biscuit and more weak tea. Sometimes there were eggs, never very fresh, boiled hard and eaten with plenty of rough gritty salt. And the rain drenched him, and the snow chilled him, and the wind cut him, and the sun baked him. And his face grew pinched and wistful, while his muscle developed abnormally.

Time slipped by unheeding, until one

winter morning the sound of bells woke him in the early dawn and he guessed that it must be Christmas. While he was out in the,streets looking for a fare a girl waved to him across the road. He ran obediently to her side and found that he must take her to church. They spoke no word in their common language, but he knew that she was English, and that she had a Christmas face, full of kindliness for others. He put down the shafts at the church door and stood panting while she burrowed in her muff. She paid him with a 'ricksha ticket from a tiny purse, and then, because it was Christmas, gave him also a small coin and a bright nod. Her opinion of the Chinese rose when she noticed his clear, enlightened face, but she never guessed that it was an English heart that beat under the blue poo tunic.

He watched her as she went into church. A green wreath round a pillar near the door proclaimed the festive season; so did the organ just beginning to breathe a Christmas hymn. He saw his fellow-countrymen rising to their feet, heard the burst of praise, and a look of despairing home-sickness came into his face. He was minded to leave his 'ricksha where it stood and entertake off cap and queue and go and kneel in a workhouse seat, if there was such a thing. But he positively dared not. For he knew that the words and tunes, familiar since his childhood, breaking in upon this strange life of his, would set him weeping, and the bland churchwarden might feel it his duty to eject a poor half-witted Chinese. He stepped between the shafts, swung round, and ran swiftly until he was out of ear-shot.

knowing that it would be fatal to go near. He could only think of two ways of escape from his present plight: the river was one exit, the opium-den another. But he scorned both. Either he would get out of this false position honorably, or else he would remain in it. The life was at all events an honest one. But he loathed it, and every circumstance that went to make it, and himself for having descended into it.

He ran the short winter days into
Blackwood's Magazine.

spring, and still there was no word or sign from Allerton. The warm weather came. He discarded the fur cap and fastened his queue inside a shady, coneshaped hat of millet-straw. The foreign population of Shanghai dispersed in all directions, up river, home, or to Japan. The sun shone down upon Fielding and wore him thin, and he ran the long summer days into autumn again.

Philippa Bridges.

This book contains many illustrations of the art of the many different peoples of Austria-Hungary. The introductory articles, by Mr. A. S. Levetus, Dr. M. Haberlandt, and Mr. A. KrieschKörösföi, give us facts rather than fancies and explain to us the conditions in which all this diverse art has arisen. There are two points to be noted about it-the first, that East and West meet in Austria-Hungary in art as in other things; the second, that this art is closely connected with the main events in the peasants' lives and with their main occupations. Any one looking through these illustrations can see at a glance the Byzantine influence in the patterns of Bosnian wood-carving or in those on a doorway at Zsobok, in Transylvania. Bosnian carpets are quite Oriental: they look more Persian than Turkish; but modern Western influences are just as clear in the art of most of the German races. We are told, indeed, that the ornament of the Eastern and Southern Slavs originated in a remote antiquity, whereas the ornament of the Germans, West Slavs, and Italians passed into peasant art in the last four centuries. Thus the Western ornament is often imperfectly fitted to • Peasant Art in Austria and Hungary. Edited by Charles Holme. The Studio Special Number, Autumn, 1911. (The Studio.)

ern.

the object, whereas the Eastern seems as natural as the plumage of a bird or the veining of a leaf; and thus we are able to understand why Eastern decoration is usually so superior to WestWestern life is always changing and the changes pass quickly from one people to another. Even in the Middle Ages the great Gothic art was in a state of continual structural change, and for this reason it never had time to develop any system of ornament perfectly suited to its structure. So it has been all through our history with every kind of object made by Europeans-with buildings, furniture, clothes, jewelry, and all kinds of tools and vessels. They have changed with the incessant changes in our life, and ornament has never had time to adapt itself to their new forms. But in the East, as life itself changes little, so there is little change in the form of things made by man, and consequently in the ornament applied to them; and thus ornament has had time to adapt itself perfectly to every object.

But this difference between European and Oriental ornament is also the difference between the art of the wealthier classes in Europe and living peasant arts everywhere. The life of

the wealthier classes changes far more swiftly than the life of peasants, and everything that they use changes with

it.

This instability is most extreme and most obvious in clothes. Fashions in dress never have time to develop their logic before they are superseded. So we take it for granted that fashion must be irrational, and accept its changes as we accept the changes of the weather. But there are changes of fashion almost as quick and arbitrary in many other arts, and these spread from one country to another as easily as news. So for all the wealthier classes of Europe there is a cosmopolitan art, characterless and unstable, expressing nothing except the imitative instinct and the desire for display; and wherever peasants have been long exposed to the influence of this art they have deserted their own art for it and bought dull and ugly things where they used to make things beautiful and interesting for themselves. Peasant art, we are told, and especially national dress, has died or is dying in the least primitive parts of Austria. The Government and different societies try to revive it by means of home industries. "Schools are organized and teachers sent from village to village to teach new methods and designs. But the school work, beautifully executed as it is, loses in comparison with the naïve charm in the spontaneous designs" of the true peasant art, and for a very simple reason. The true peasant art, as we have said, is closely connected with the life of the peasants. A great amount of thought, Mr. Levetus tells us, is spent upon the Austrian peasant's bed. It has bed-linen beautifully embroidered, and bed curtains worked in silks that are used only when a child is born. Then there are marriage coffers filled with fine embroidery. Among the Slovaks a mother used to make her daughter's bridal cap, which the bride never wore again after her

wedding until she died. An old Slovak woman, we are told, was offered a large sum of money for her bridal cap and refused it, saying, "How will my mother know me? I cannot do it." In the Tyrol men carve love-offerings of wood. In Carniola, a great bee-keeping country, the boards used to protect the hives are painted with curious designs. In parts of Bohemia and Moravia houses are whitewashed every spring and redecorated with frescoes. This work is always done by women. In Zakopane "each peasant builds his own house and adorns it with pierced woodcarving, no two designs being alike."

Now it is clear that art of this kind, which grows out of the pleasure peasants take in making things for themselves, must be different in character from art which they are taught so that they may make things for other people. The latter is not true peasant art at all: it is art practised by peasants to please the taste of sophisticated people who are tired of the mechanical perfection of cosmopolitan art. It is only when the peasant makes things for his own household, or for households just like his own that he expresses his own tastes and character and sets himself his own problem. Then in his quiet life, that suffers little change from generation to generation, the forms of things are fixed by his wants; and the ornament, that expresses his pleasure in making them and his desire to make them as beautiful as living things, fits itself more and more perfectly to whatever it adorns, as rhythm in poetry fits itself to sense. But when his life is invaded by change, and, for whatever reason, he ceases to make things for himself, then his artistic faculty, unless it is very strong, dies for want of an object. He can still be taught technical skill, but he cannot be taught to express himself, for his teachers do not know his native language, but only a kind of artistic

Esperanto which is foreign to every

one.

It is easy to over-estimate peasant art for sentimental reasons and because it is free from the damning defects of cosmopolitan art. Unlike the work of great artists, its value is chiefly for those who produce it. It is a mere fashion that makes rich people buy it and keep it in their houses, for there it loses all its significance and is as much out of place as house-leeks when they are used for carpet bedding. As for the imitations of peasant art, they are like folksongs played on a piano-organ. Their crudeness is merely lack of finish; and if an article of commerce is not well finished it has nothing to recommend it. The roughness of true peasant art is pleasant to us because it suits and expresses the life of the peasant. He does the best he can, and will not sacrifice his own taste and his pleasure in his work to high finish. Indeed, it is only when peasant art is content with a certain amount of roughness that it can flourish and abound, for only then is it within the powers of a man of average artistic capacity. Many men can learn to express themselves in things that are roughly made and ornamented; many can be taught to produce highly-finished articles that express nothing; only the born artist can express himself through a high finish.

Thus peasant art is valuable because it allows the ordinary man to express himself artistically and to experience a pleasure which only artists know in more sophisticated societies. Ruskin pointed out that in Gothic architecture the ordinary craftsman was able to express himself, but when the Renaissance came, with its higher standard of finish, only great architects and sculptors produced expressive work; the rest were all turned into mechanics. So it is with peasant art; and, just as Gothic was superseded by Renaissance when the modern world LIVING AGE. VOL. LIV. 2812

began, so now peasant art constantly tends to be superseded by work that attempting more, accomplishes nothing.

There is no doubt that high finish, even when merely mechanical, has a natural and very strong attraction for the human mind. That is proved by the history of all arts, and it seems to be one of the chief reasons why they so often decline after reaching a certain height of excellence. For high finish, though it pleases us so much, is not an artistic quality, since by itself it expresses nothing. It can be combined with every kind of artistic vice, and has been so combined in Sèvres china, in Louis Quinze furniture, and in a hundred different articles that one can see any day in Bond-street shop windows. Yet the fact remains that it has an attraction so strong that often everything else is sacrificed to it. The earlier Flemish painting was killed by it; the development of Renaissance architecture was fatally checked by it; and now that machinery has made it easy and common in a thousand articles of daily use they have become as uninteresting as the universe itself would be if mechanical theories of its origin were true. And just as these theories have a strange power of intimidating us and of shaking our faith in our own instincts and experiences, so mechanical finish has a strange power of intimidating the peasant and putting him out of conceit with his own workmanship. No doubt he sees something rustic and clumsy in that workmanship when he compares it with the factory products of a great city, just as a rustic himself is often put to shame by the mechanical cleverness of a cockney and by wit repeated from the musichalls and the comic papers. To him the factory product seems to have a kind of perfection; and so it has-the perfection of a machine that can do exactly what it tries to do, that can