from those pick out all that is most quaint and furthest from commonplace. Lovers of art must have a taste for olives and caviare. And in looking at nature never forget that the smell of death is in all her sweetness, and that the grey decay of her softer moods more truly expresses her to the feeling mind than the garish gold of summer.

than in sentiment which analyzes the generations which thought finely; and present and tries to reproduce the past. Like all modern artists, they do not realize that what made the art of the great centuries was its spirit not its form, the growth of new thought which clothed itself in the forms of the past. Till that thought arises again I am content to believe that the houses and churches built by the one school are better than those built by the other, and heartily to admire for all its strangeness the wall-papers and chintzes and tiles designed by Messrs. Morris and their fellows; but I cannot consent to take them as the only artists who are to save us from the Philistines, or their principles as having the hope of the future in them.

I think that I have said enough to indicate the tendency of this school. These artists have taught me so much, and I owe them so much thanks for what they have taught me, that I am almost converted to believe that they have the key of the future; and certainly no other school can do more than fumble at the door. But they want faith and hopeand so with all their sense of beauty and all their technical skill, they fail in power of creation. Hopeless is thankless; and thankless art has no future. They remain fruitless because faithless; Atyspriests of beauty, impotent to add to the life of art: because they believe in death rather than in life. And when I feel this, their pretensions to infallibility rather gall me. The last time I saw my Oxford friend was in Bond Street - he had been looking at exhibitions black and white, and blue and green, and was full of the "sweetness" of his own friends and the worthlessness of everything else. I listened for a while to his jargoning, and then left him and turned into the National Gallery; and there sat down before a Titian and a Turner, and clean forgot all about him and his friends and their principles.

After all, I have not made out yet what these principles are. But as far as I can understand this school, it is based on fineness of sentiment rather than on knowledge, and the keynote of this sentiment is a longing "regret for the absents as Theocritus says, whether it be regret for a past life, or yearning for a distant ideal, or the less spiritual pains which consume Sicilian and Florentine lovers. This longing takes nowadays the form of regret, forced upon it by the vulgarity of the nineteenth century: for, seeing how vulgar the present is, it has no hope in the future. Regretfulness and disgust of modern commonplace has a double result. In the first place it leads to the state of mind which says, "The world is full of trouble and there is no certainty of anything else to come. It is better to enjoy what we have, or at least to give up preaching and divorce morality from art; to live the most perfect life in the moment, which is all that we can grasp;" then comes in the sensuousness and body-worship which to some extent is characteristic of the school; something of the spirit of the later Anthology; a Sehnsucht to which I HAVE some doubts about the psychoall objects are lawful; such a spirit as logical bearings of fear. In old English, inspires Mr. Pater's book and is put perplexity was often used as its equivinto more articulate form by Mr. Swin-alent, and it seems a pity that this usage burne; the spirit which says alternately, has been dropped. We want a word for "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow fear that would express a kind of mental we die," and "Let us fall in love with syllabub. Dr. Johnson, following Locke, death, for to-morrow we die." In the defines fear as In the defines fear as "a painful apprehension second place it leads to the rejection of future danger." Now I confess that I of whole periods and phases of art do not like the word "apprehension," and nature-the nineteenth century to which means a laying hold, because I begin with- and then all prosperous cannot help concluding that fear is altomaterial periods and countries. Noth-gether a letting go. If logicians would ing can be given to art by ancient Ro- let me, I would define fear per metaphoman, by Flemish, barbarian, American ram, and call it "resentment at being life. Study, they say, those nations and kicked out of one's rut." The most philo

66

From Temple Bar.

A NIGHT TERROR IN AFRICA.

sophical remark of Falstaff's was that he was a "coward upon instinct." When all our instincts, which are but sublimated habits, are turned topsy-turvy, then we know what fear is. Though your particular rut must lead to the cannon's mouth, you are cheerful and impavid in it as a man just and firm of purpose should be; but when you are kicked into a neighbouring rut which may lead to the Hesperides, the blood freezes in your veins. Luckily a perfect terror, an utter annihilation of all ruts whatsoever, an overhead plunge into the unknown, comes but once or twice in any man's life. The occasion may be trivial. A belated jackass, the love-plaint of a feline Sappho, a brawl of rodents behind the wainscot, a pendant night-shirt whose fluttering tails are visited by playful moonbeams any of these things is sufficient. Or the occasion may be great; a convulsion of nature, or the approach of death in a strange garb. It matters not. The supreme moment of terror, when the scalp lifts like the lining of a hat, when a man is clothed from head to foot in a raiment of "goose-skin," when the knees refuse to bend, and are yet too weak to keep straight, and when the heart feels like the kernel of a rotten nut-that moment is never to be forgotten. Then the man feels the natural and the supernatural, the real and the ideal, the subject and the object, the ego and the non ego, the present and the remote, all jumbled together in a mad dance through his bewildered consciousness. Then Pope's line is reversed and sense leans for aid on metaphysic. Then the man discerns how infinitely little he is when reduced within his own circumference; how dependent he has been on a tiny world, outside which he is " quenched in a boggy Syrtis." Then he discovers how necessary to bis happiness are the ordinary conditions of thought, and that, if he only knew it, the most awful, the most intensely horrible thing the imagination can conceive of, is a syllogism with an alien conclusion. Then, for an instant, be learns what it is to be dead.

It lies on

tale intelligibly, I may be allowed to give some short description of the place. The city is named from one Pieter Maritz, whose sacred bard I bave never met with, and the memory of whose deeds, therefore - of the pounds of Boer tobacco he smoked in a green-stone pipe, of the hollands he drank, of the wide trousers he wore, and of the Dutch oaths he swore - must forever, as far as I am concerned, be 'whelmed in long night. Maritzburg (as the name is commonly abbreviated) is the seat of government and the headquarters of the garrison. All the other towns in Natal - Durban especially which consider themselves not to be sneezed at, are sneezed at by Maritzburg. We are slightly aristocratic in Maritzburg; we have been known to wear gloves; we have caught a little of the hoity-toitiness that lingers round the purlieus of bureaucracy. In this respect Maritzburg is not remarkable; but in another respect, namely, brilliancy of colouring, Maritzburg is one of the most remarkable towns I ever saw. a shoulder of table-land, surrounded on three sides by an amphitheatre of hills, which to a European eye are singularly brown and barren of aspect. In the midst of this great ugly basin Maritzburg absolutely blossoms. All its roofs are of red tile, all its hedges are rose-hedges, and nearly all its trees are peach-trees; and thus, when peaches and roses are in bloom there is red and pink enough to make the town look like a gigantic nosegay. Another peculiarity of the town is very pleasant; one, two, or even three streams of bright, clear, swiftly-flowing water run down each street. A large head of water comes downwards on the town from the top of the shoulder on which it is built, and this water-supply is subdivided as it enters the town into a multitude of small rivulets -or sluyts, as the Dutch call them. Thus, a street in Maritzburg is formed in the following way: each house stands well back from the road in its erf or plot of ground, then comes a thick and lofty hedge of roses, then a sluyt, then a raised footpath or The qualifications of a perfect terror causeway, then another sluyt, then the are three. It must be unexpected; it roadway. Now these sluyts, however must be absolutely incomprehensible; much they may add to the cleanliness of and it must culminate like a nightmare. the place, are exceedingly awkward to Once I had a terror which so perfectly the pedestrian. Every sluyt is about a fulfilled these requirements that no man may hope to have a better.

This thing happened to me in the city of Pieter-Maritzburg, in the colony of Natal; and in order that I may tell my

yard below the footpath, and being bridged over by innumerable slabs of stone and logs of wood, forms in fact a series of traps and pitfalls. If I have drawn my picture rightly, the reader will

see that to walk along a footpath in Ma- coincidence. The character of the sound ritzburg on a dark night, without the was very remarkable. The path was hard assistance of a single street-lamp, requires and firm, with many small stones scatsome care, even if the mind is unoccu- tered here and there, and with gravel pied and the senses under control; but sprinkled on it. My boots made a crunchto walk there on a dark night, hearing ing noise as I walked. But this footfall behind one the- But I must proceed was most evidently caused by feet that in due order. were neither shod, nor (being unshod) of On the night when the terror came to a horny or hoofy kind. And yet, on the me I was returning from the fort at the other hand, there was nothing of the dull top of the town to the hotel where I was thud that would be made by the naked staying, which was at the lower end. I foot of a man, or by any animal with a had a distance of about one mile to walk. soft paw going pit-a-pat over the ground, It was midnight. The night was dark, as Bunyan describes it, "with a great but not with a thick, murky darkness. padding pace." There was an undoubted There was no moon, and the sky was impact on the gravel- of that I was clouded over; but the edges of the hori-sure and beyond that I could liken the zon could be just distinguished, and the sound to nothing earthly. Again, the roadway and hedges made out with little supposition that my follower was a beast trouble. In short, the night was not one in which a man has to grope his way, though he could hardly walk quickly and boldly. Every one had gone to bed, and not a light was visible in the street, except an oil lamp hanging before the hotel, the glimmer of which, the street being quite straight, I could see in the distance almost as soon as I started on my walk. There was no wind. All was so still that the liquid warbling of the frogs in the vley below the town sounded near and loud. Besides this, and the multitudinous murmur of nature, which she never wholly intermits. in her most silent watches, and which one hears and hears not, there was perfect quiet.

was negatived by the too evident mockery of the sound. No beast, surely, would go to the trouble of "keeping time" with a belated wayfarer, and the cessation and renewal of these footsteps concurrently with mine proved that mockery was deliberately intended. I say no beast; but, perhaps, I ought to have excepted the ape tribe. A monstrous ape, whose mind was just developing to a human enjoyment of mischief, might have pleased his genius with this hideous mimicry. But an ape always walks with a shuffling, shambling gait, and for him the tripping levity of these steps would have been impossible. An ape is not accustomed to walk on two I had got but a little way on my journey, legs, and the creature that pursued me walking cautiously along the raised foot-was so accustomed; there was a regupath, when I became aware that I was larity and firmness in what I may call the followed. Close behind me the sound-accentuation of the tread, however gentle, very soft and gentle, but unmistakable light, and aerial that tread might be, of a footfall made itself heard. I which left no room for doubt. stopped, and the footfall stopped also.

When I first became conscious that I

I could see nothing whatever, and the was being pursued of set purpose by a soundthough so faint as to be almost footfall, I was startled, but scarcely terrilike an echo of my own steps - had ap-fied. A savage beast was out of the peared to be close at hand; not more, in question, and Maritzburg was entirely fact, than three or four yards distant. Ifree from crimes of violence: the white thought I had been mistaken, and walked inhabitants were too well off to become on again. Yes! again came the footfall, highway robbers; while to attack one of and no- -not an echo. Whenever an the superior race was quite alien from echo is heard there is a certain interval of the habits and ideas of the Coolie or time between the sound and its reverber- Kafir population. I began, then, by ation. This interval may be momentary being more curious than alarmed. But a mere fraction of a second-but is as the strangeness of the circumstance always appreciable; or rather, to put it forced itself more and more on my attenanother way, if the echo is appreciable, tion my curiosity soon passed through there must be an interval. Now, the fear to horror. I tried in vain to conrhythm-the "time" as rowing men vince myself that I was mistaken. I would say of this footfall was exact. stopped short at least half-a-dozen times, As my foot touched the ground so did and then walked on with a quick impulse. that other foot, in precise and unvarying 'I walked as fast as I could; I took short

strides - long strides; I sauntered slowly | ghost cannot speak unless spoken to is (this was very difficult); but all to no founded on strictly logical reasoning. purpose. Exactly as I did so did the By addressing an uncanniness in words, footfall; stopping when I stopped, and however bold and masterful, you at once keeping perfect time with my varied limit your range of available hypotheses paces. Only one thing I noticed, and to two: you confess, by implication, that that was a slight hesitation when I sud- the thing you address must be either a denly changed my steps from fast to human being or a supernatural being. slow, from long to short, or vice versa; There is no escape from the alternative. as if the thing that followed me could not You do not hold converse with a halluinstantaneously accommodate itself to cination, an extraordinary shadow, an unthe change. But this hesitation was only expected light, a mysterious sound, an momentary. Indeed, the versatile quick-inexplicable phenomenon. If you are ness, with which its gait was made to strong-minded enough to infer that your correspond with mine through every visitant is the result of a heedless supper, mode of puzzling alternation, was some-you do not (in default of a medicinething marvellous. No drum-major ever had such command over the rhythm of

In the surprise and terror now gradually stealing over me it will easily be imagined how difficult it was to keep a footing on the raised causeway. More than once I all but slipped into the sluyt, and whenever I did stumble a feeling of unsurmountable alarm came over me that, if I fell, something would be on me and at me. It was better to be upright on two shaky legs, which might be called on for instant flight, than prone in a ditch, helpless, and with I knew not what stalking jauntily around. No; I was sure I could walk no longer on the causeway. With sudden resolution, I jumped a floundering, stumbling, headlong jump from the path, over the sluyt that ran on the roadway side, and got on the broad road itself. Having gained the middle of the road, I stood still and listened. At first there was silence. Then I heard my own jump exactly repeated in faint, ethereal mimicry. I heard the same stumbling jump, the same long strides, the same little run of recovery on the road. I could bear it no longer. "Who's there?" I shouted.

The only certain theory respecting "The Night-side of Nature at which, after diligent study of Mrs. Crowe and other approved writers, I have been able to arrive, is, that it is bad, fatally bad, policy to speak to anything uncanny ghost, for instance. If ever you meet with a companion who seems likely to turn round the corner of bogeydom, remember that "Silence is golden," and that speech is exceedingly base metal. The probability of this theory is easily demonstrated. When you speak to an uncanniness you thereby-ipso facto recognize it; you promote it to a raison d'être. The popular superstition that a

chest) exorcise by any form of words the bit of cucumber that is troubling you. By speaking you personify, where it is for the interest of your sanity that personality should be out of the question. Treat, then, a ghost with the insular pride of an Englishman. Consider him a foreigner, and therefore a suspicious character, of whose social status you cannot be sure. Domineer over him by not saying "How d'ye do?" If you so much as "pass the time of day," with him, your acquaintance ripens with awful rapidity into intimacy of the closet. It is far better, if the temptation to speak becomes too strong, to retire at once under the bedclothes, when that friendly shelter is present, and abstract your thoughts altogether from what may be outside. It is not, I believe, within the memory of the chroniclers that any uncanny thing has ever attempted to lift the shrouding drapery. You may, indeed, feel somewhat ticklish about those lumpy and angular parts which mark out the human outline, however deeply smothered under blankets; but you are - if there is truth in history-absolutely safe. And if there is no haven of blankets and counterpanes, and the thing must be faced, recollect-cleave, cling to the recollection - that supernatural etiquette does not permit a grisliness to introduce itself. The golden sceptre of speech must first be held out.

a I had, I say, made a shocking blunder in speaking. And yet I almost think I should have been relieved by an answer. But not so much as a Hem! was vouchsafed in reply; there was not the faintest whisper of a voice; it was nil, et præterea nil-absolute nothingness, made sensible by a footfall. There was nothing for it but to walk on. But now I had not the smallest remnant of reason left: that divine particula aura had quite de

serted me. I now pursued my way, as | print had been made by the gentleman in Coleridge says,

Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head,
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

Just so I walked, and the footfall tered softly behind me.

question, non constat that it was not formed on the sands by a viewless foot a second or two before Robinson came up to the spot. Thus the reflection so comforting to the sagacious mariner vanishes at once. Robinson, thou reasonest not well. But there was a very different repat-flection equally applicable to his case and to mine. I do not say that it is deducible from the principles of scientific theology - I leave that to the General Assembly - but I distinctly remember that it struck me very forcibly, even in my extremest fright. It was this: What end could be served by the terrifying to imbecility of a harmless night-walker? If divines have not instructed us to little purpose, we all believe that the "mucklehorned Clootie" has serious business in hand. He has no leisure for idle schoolboy tricks. Even if practical jokes were consonant with his imperial dignity, his sterner duties leave him no time for pranks which would better befit the idleness of a cavalry subaltern. This con

The question, "What is it?" had by this time tenfold horrors. It may, perhaps, be suggested that I was no longer able to follow out any inquiry; but I was; only, by my insensate rasliness of speech, I had shut myself out from any natural explanation. I was ex hypothesi confined to the supernatural. I could not even, as the satirist says, "hold the eel of science by the tail." The thing that dogged me was, I was compelled to think, either, first, a visitor from superior regions, or, secondly, a visitor from inferior (very inferior) regions; or, thirdly, no visitor at all, but a lingerer who ought to be elsewhere when the cock crew. Oh, for the welcome summons of an ear-sideration would be weighty in Europe, splitting cock-a-doodle-doo ! Oh, for a much more in South Africa, which, from steam fire-engine fed by a river of holy the mere fact of its being sparsely popuwater ! The sheer mischievousness of lated, must be looked on as comparathe trick narrowed my speculations by tively out of his way. The whole mediaforbidding the notion of celestial minis- val theory of witchcraft appears to me to try. I was driven, irresistibly propelled, have gone astray simply by missing this to the alternative of "auld Hornie" (by train of reasoning. Was I not, therefore, self or agent) or some wandering ghost justified in rejecting the intervention of who had business with me. As to the him whom, in the north of England, first supposition, I was unable to adopt with a quaint recognition of his perennial the reasoning of Robinson Crusoe under youth conjoined with senile cunning, very similar circumstances. When that they call "th' ould lad"? Stay; he has solitary was frightened out of his wits by underlings. Qui facit per alium facit the apparition of a footprint on the sands per se. Cob, Mob, and Chittabob were of his desert island, he comforted him- doubtless at liberty. If their annals are self by the conclusion that it could not writ true, it would just suit their tastes to have been the archenemy, because, says "tickle the catastrophe " of a shuddering Robinson, "as I lived quite on the other mortal. Yes, here was a flaw in my calside of the island, he would never have culations; but, as a matter of fact, I did been so simple as to leave a mark in a not think of Cob, Mob, and Chittabob. place where it was ten thousand to one I was thus reduced to the last hypothesis, whether I should ever see it or not, and namely, that a ghost was dogging me. I in the sand, too, which the first surge of do not mean, of course, to assert that in the sea upon a high wind would have the rush of excited surmises, which defaced entirely." And he continues: passed through my mind, I actually rea"All this seemed inconsistent with the soned as consecutively as I am now setthing itself, and with all notions we usu- ting down my thoughts. I only wish it ally entertain of the subtlety of the to be understood that, after taking leave devil." With the deepest respect for of my scientific senses by the unpardonRobinson Crusoe's metaphysical and the-able folly of speaking, I came finally to ological powers, evidenced in his conver- some such conclusion by some such sations with Friday-powers in which I method. .confess myself far his inferior - I cannot in this one instance admit the cogency of his reasoning. If the alarming foot

I was now walking with all my speed, but my utmost speed (though I have always been reputed a pretty good stepper)